InterstellarNet: Origins (11 page)

TSC, like ISI, was a wildly successful megaconglomerate with interplanetary scope. To call TSC an archenemy of ISI would be simplistic, since the two corporations partnered as often as they competed. The solar system was certainly big enough for the both of them.

The absence of an ISI file gave the false impression that Alicia had never consulted for ISI; he was equally skeptical that she had never had dealings with TSC.

Alicia’s computer and PDA were both gone. Given her last email, he had hopes that her softcopy files were not.

■□■

Justin’s Boston hotel catered to business travelers, with fast wireless broadband in each suite. Around bites of room-service pepperoni pizza in Alicia’s honor, he directed his PDA to open a secure connection with her archival service.

Even the names of the backed-up folders and files were encrypted.

“Number and size of files?” he asked.

“Thirty-seven folders, containing seven hundred forty-three files. Approximately eighty-four gigabytes.”

“Decrypt folder names. Display the names of all folders in the archive, sorted by last modification date.”

The most recently updated folders were named ISI and TSC.

Both folders had last been changed a week earlier, three days before Alicia’s death. The next day, she had seen her lawyer to execute a codicil to her will, replacing her sister’s name with Justin’s.

The PDA was not up to the task of decrypting gigabyte files, and he wasn’t up to reviewing them. “Bridge in my home workstation, also on a secure link. Download a copy of Alicia’s archive there. Leave everything encrypted for now.”

3

It was almost midnight when Justin got home from the Richmond train station, but he was too keyed up to sleep. The number of questions about Alicia kept growing. Leaving his suitcase in the front hall, he went to his den. Setting his PDA on the desk beside his workstation, he asked, “Have all files from Alicia’s archive been downloaded?”

The two computers compared notes. “Yes,” the PDA answered.

“Display archive configuration.” A structure of many files and folders spilled down the screen. “Show the content of the ISI folder in plaintext, newest files first.” He got himself a Coke and some peanuts while the workstation cranked away. When this decryption was done he saw nothing unusual. Her last consulting assignment from ISI, work done two years earlier, was something he had himself arranged. The most recent file was a current org chart, apparently hacked from ISI’s intranet. Why had she wanted that information?

“Now show the content of the TSC folder in plaintext, newest files first.”

Three months ago, TSC had received an unusual rush order from a small-fry wholesale trading company. The requisition included several expensive, and apparently very specialized, electronics assemblies that were identified only by part numbers. Alicia had been retained to do some basic commercial intelligence gathering: trace the goods to the end user and understand how he was using these items. TSC was in part interested in basic market research, but reading between the lines they were mostly curious about the urgency implied by the contract’s huge penalty for late delivery.

Crunching peanuts, Justin continued to read. Alicia had hacked into the ordering company’s mainframe and identified another trading company that had earlier requested the TSC parts. She’d penetrated Company B, and they, too, were a front. He stopped chewing when he got to a third company. ISI secretly controlled Interplanetary Amalgamated Trading. He had himself, on occasion, bought a competitor’s product through Amalgamated’s auspices for analysis in ISI’s labs. There was no indication Alicia had accessed Amalgamated’s computers.

Did the change soon after to Alicia’s will somehow mean that she had known about the link between ISI and Amalgamated?

An old photo of Alicia and him on a beach getaway sat on a bookshelf. He set it beside his workstation. “Background radio, WZAP.” Sometimes soft music helped him think. Sometimes it put him to sleep. He would be happy if tonight it did either.

“Query: What are the electronics components identified by part number in the TSC folder? Order standard product literature via my personal email account. Standard encryption.”

Justin caught himself yawning and realized that he had been doing so for a while. The clock in a corner of the PDA screen read 2:07 a.m. He deleted the decrypted files and went to bed.

4

Aquarians
: the popular name for the intelligent species of the Luyten 789-6 solar system, approximately 10.5 light-years from Earth. The name comes from the constellation, Aquarius, in which Luyten 789-6 is observed. Aquarians, like earlier-discovered ET species, engage in e-commerce with their interstellar neighbors.

Although Aquarians are well regarded for their advanced computational algorithms, it is interesting to note that they compute mentally rather than by computer. Their chief import from humanity is industrial technology.

—Internetopedia

When Justin’s PDA chimed to announce a company-internal call, he was in his ISI office, sorting through the backlog from his Boston trip. Over the four-day weekend, company mail servers had filed twenty voicemails and over three hundred work emails.

The top window at that moment on his PDA screen held the abstract of a report from ISI’s atmospheric physics department. They were responding to his forwarding of a recently received Aquarian parallel-processing technique. His referral message the week before had speculated that the ET method might be adaptable to weather forecasting. From their initial results, the computational efficiencies made practical by the Aquarian algorithm would let ISI extend their predictions by as much as a day. That would be a huge advantage in marketing forecasts to agribusinesses, fishing fleets, spacecraft launchers, power companies, and commodities speculators.

The PDA chimed again. This time, Justin glanced at the caller ID. The incoming call was from Arlen Crawford, ISI’s VP of Contracts—who also happened to be Justin’s boss. ISI employed only one xenotechnomist, and Justin had to report to someone. They often went weeks without speaking. They went far longer without face-to-face meetings, since Arlen’s office was at ISI headquarters in Scotland.

Justin looked puzzled. “Call accepted.”

“Justin? Are you by yourself?”

“Hello, Arlen. Yes, I’m in my office and alone. Why do you ask?”

“Would you mind closing the door?”

Looking more puzzled, Justin complied. “What can I do for you?”

“I have to ask about something that’s rather irregular.”

Justin said nothing.

“Well, there’s no graceful way to bring this up, so I’ll just get right to it. Justin, the Security Department has informed me you have been in contact with our TSC rivals.”

“Oh?”

“I’m told that it was on your short leave of absence. Late last night, actually.”

Justin frowned. “It sounds like I’ve been under surveillance. Why is that, Arlen?”

“Nothing of the sort. I’m told the security people use artificial intelligences to monitor traffic on the corporate networks. They’d like to know why you contacted TSC last night.”

“It was a personal matter, Arlen. There’s no cause for Security to be concerned.”

“But they
are
concerned.”

Justin’s jaw clenched. “How does it happen that the company sees my private email, composed at home using my
personal
digital assistant, and sent over the public network?”

At a loss for words, Arlen glanced off-camera.

Amateurs, Michael thought. Of course
he
had a lot more skin in the game than this middle-management drone. He walked around Arlen’s desk into camera view. “As I’m sure you know, Dr. Matthews, to transmit even personal messages requires accessing a ’net directory. Your PDA is apparently set to query an ISI directory server for address lookups.”

Matthews glared. “And you are?”

“Michael Zhang. Corporate security.”

“So you would have me believe that Security monitors every name lookup to see if any employee is in contact with another company?”

“Yes.”

Matthews shook his head. “I don’t accept that. Ignoring innocent ’net surfing, I know of a dozen joint ventures between the two companies. Each such project is a reason for ISI employees to have regular contacts with TSC.”

Michael shrugged. “Dr. Matthews, your beliefs are of very little interest to me. That we did notice your message should, however, be important to you. Think about that.

“I will expect your prompt explanation as to why that message was sent.”

Michael’s finger stabbed down to the top of Arlen’s desk. The call window on Arlen’s PDA froze. “End of transmission.”

“Save that call,” Justin ordered his PDA. “Every last bit of it. And change your default setting for directory lookup to a public server.”

“Will that matter?” Arlen’s eyes were glued to Michael’s PDA, on whose tiny screen Justin Matthews stared into space in shock and disbelief. Creaking noises from the PDA were synchronized with Justin’s squirming in his leather chair.

“Not really.” Zhang reclaimed his PDA, insulted by the question. “Matthews is obviously without a clue that his office and home are bugged.”

■□■

What the
hell
was going on?

Justin sat tipped back in a kitchen chair, his shoulders propped against a dinette wall. The call from his boss and the Security guy made less sense each time he replayed it. All that he had gained from the final few viewings, as nuances of posture, concentration, and very controlled anger had penetrated, was a scarier and scarier impression of Zhang. A very chilling fellow.

Technomics was a difficult topic; xenotechnomics was even tougher. Mastering the subject, however, had ingrained a useful skill in Justin. When he couldn’t make sense of something, he knew to mentally step back and look at the bigger picture.

Or maybe that discipline was Dad’s doing. He knew what Dad would say.

So what
was
the bigger picture here? TSC had retained Alicia to identify the mysterious purchaser of what Justin now knew were ultrasensitive radio receivers, items a well-funded radio astronomer might buy. She had traced the sale to ISI, whether or not she recognized the fact, although his appointment as executor and the current ISI org chart in her archive suggested that she had. She was dead in what might truly be an accident—joyriding with a car’s automatics turned off was not unheard of—but the timing was suspicious. The subsequent disappearances of her PDA and workstation were certainly suspicious. Then came the apparent theft of her billing records for TSC and ISI, as though to remove any suggestion that she had ever had an involvement with either megacorp. Finally, Zhang’s comments notwithstanding, Justin didn’t accept that ISI would be monitoring every employee for possible access to the TSC ’net site. That meant that Justin personally was under ISI surveillance.

Through metaphorical mists a pattern was emerging, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. Could he seriously contend that ISI, where he had been happily employed since university, was involved in something so nefarious that it would kill to cover its tracks?

He brought the beach snapshot of himself and Alicia into the kitchen. They were a study in contrasts. She was short and wiry, with cascades of brown hair framing a delicate, tanned face. Her dark eyes were intense. He towered over her and was built like a moose by comparison. He was black-haired with pale blue eyes and an open, trusting expression.

Maybe too trusting. Picking up the picture, he told her. “I
will
get to the bottom of this.”

She wasn’t impressed. Maybe one of the reasons they had become such good friends was that she didn’t impress easily. Most of his college acquaintances had not known how to deal with the near-celebrity of his modestly famous parents or his excess of competence, but Alicia had understood. “Bad luck,” she had once told him. “
Two
parents who played key roles in first contact with the Leos. What are you supposed to do for an encore?”

There was never any question that Alicia would be successful, if only in the tight-knit community of hackers: the only group whose opinion seriously mattered to her. She had never approved of his decision to switch majors from computer science to technomics. “You’re on the slippery slope to xenotech, and back into the family’s alien business.” She’d been right about his direction if wrong about his motivation—or, at least, so Justin still thought.

“So where did hacking get you?” he finally asked the picture.

An enigmatic smile was his only answer.

■□■

“Lock,” Justin ordered.

Recognizing Justin’s voice, his car chirped in acknowledgment. The chirp and the louder clicks of door locks engaging echoed in the cavernous garage beneath his building.