Shock (24 page)

With her back against the door to the main hall, Joanna took a number of deep breaths. Combining the controlled respiration with a short reassuring soliloquy, she was able to calm herself down enough to proceed. Tentatively she moved forward, slowly it first but then gaining confidence when her dizziness faded. She reached the server room door. After one last look back at the door to the corridor, she reached into her purse and pulled out Wingate's blue access card. Quickly she swiped it through the card swipe. Any residual concern she'd had about whether the card would work was dispelled with the mechanical click. She opened the door. In the next instant she was inside, hurrying over to the server console.

WHAT RANDY PORTER LIKED MOST ABOUT COMPUTERS WAS the games. He could play them all day and yearn for more when he got home at night. It was like an addiction. Sometimes he wouldn't go to bed until three or four in the morning because with the World Wide Web someone was always up and willing to play. Even at 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. he hated to give up and only did so because he knew he'd be a total zombie at work the following day.

What was so good about his job at the Wingate Clinic was that he could indulge himself during office hours. It had been different back when he'd first been hired straight out of the University of Massachusetts. He'd had to put in long hours getting the Wingate local area network online. And then there'd been the demand for the best security available. That had required extra work and even some outside consulting. And finally there'd been the web page: that had taken a number of months to set up and then modify until everybody was happy. But now everything was humming along just fine, which meant there was little for him to do except be available for the occasional software or hardware glitch. Even those problems were usually because the individual involved was so dorky that they didn't realize they were doing something incredibly stupid. Of course, Randy didn't tell the individual that. He was always polite and pretended it was the machine's fault.

Randy's normal day began at his keyboard in his cubicle. With the help of Windows 2000 Active Directory, he checked to make sure all systems were running normally and all terminals were in a locked position. That generally took him about fifteen minutes.

After a coffee break he'd return to his cubicle for his morning gaming. To avoid being caught by Christine Parham, the office manager, he'd frequently move around to various workstations that were not in use. That made him hard to find on occasion, but that never led to any trouble since everybody thought he was off fixing someone's computer.

On May 1Oth at 11:11 in the morning Randy was locked in mortal combat with a slippery, talented opponent with the moniker of SCREAMER. The game, Unreal Tournament, was Randy's current favorite. And at that moment he was locked in a tense standoff in which he or SCREAMER would imminently be killed. Randy's palms were damp from anxiety, but he pressed on, fully believing that his experience and expertise would give him the upper hand.

There was a sudden unexpected beep. Randy reacted by practically leaping out of his ergonomic chair. At the bottom right-hand corner of his screen a small window had popped up. Within the window the words SERVER ROOM BREACHED were blinking insistently. Before Randy could respond to this prompt, he heard a fateful zapping noise that yanked his attention back to the main window. To his chagrin the view was a virtual ceiling. A second later his adversary's face appeared, peering down at him with a gloating smile. It took less time than a Pentium 4 processor for Randy's brain to compute that he'd been killed.

"Crap!" Randy muttered. It was the first time he'd been killed for over a week, and it was a letdown, big time. Irritably he looked back at the blinking window responsible for distracting his attention at such a critical juncture. Someone had opened the server room door. Randy didn't like anyone going into the server room and monkeying around. He considered it his domain. There was no reason for anybody to be in there unless it was IBM servicing the equipment, and if that happened it was his responsibility to be in there with them.

Randy exited from Unreal Tournament and pushed his joystick around behind the monitor so it was less obvious. Then he stood up. He was going to see who the hell was in the server room. Whoever it was, was responsible for getting him killed.

WHEN THE CELL PHONE'S VIBRATION WENT OFF, JOANNA'S heart leaped into her mouth. She'd been struggling with her anxiety from the moment she'd come through the outer server room door. She'd found herself clumsy at the keyboard. It took her longer to carry out simple tasks, which only made her more anxious - and worse still at the keys.

Assuming the call was Deborah, Joanna knew she had only seconds to get out of the server room before Randy Porter appeared. Still all thumbs, she began exiting the system. All she had to do was cancel out the windows she'd brought up onto the screen, but it seemed to take forever since her movement with the mouse was so jerky. Finally the last window disappeared, leaving the screen blank. Quickly Joanna tossed the cracking software back into her purse; she'd had yet to insert the CD into the drive. Her phone had gone off only minutes after she'd sat down at the server-room console, and she had only been in the initial stages of giving herself access.

Frantically she snatched her purse from the desktop and dashed over to the server room door. But the second she opened it she heard the telltale sound of the outer door opening. In total panic, Joanna let go of the door she was holding and took a step backward. She felt desperate and completely trapped. With no other choice, she darted back around the vertically oriented electronic units each about the size of a shallow, four-drawer file cabinet. Scrunching down in a tight ball behind the farthest unit, she tried to make herself as small as possible. It was hardly a hiding place, but she had no other choice.

Joanna's heart was beating so hard she was certain that whoever was coming would be able to hear it. It was literally pulsing in her ears. She could feel perspiration appear within her clutched fists, which were pressed against her cheeks. She tried to prepare herself for being discovered by thinking of what she would say. The problem was, there was absolutely nothing that she could say.

FROM THE MOMENT RANDY HAD LEFT HIS CUBICLE ENROUTE to the server room, he'd been silently venting his anger. He was upset more for having been interrupted and subsequently killed than for someone going into his server room. By the time he arrived on the scene, he was thinking more of getting back to Unreal Tournament and rechallenging SCREAMER than yelling at the person who'd violated his domain.

"What the blazes?" Randy questioned when he came on the open server-room door and the empty room beyond. He looked back at the outer door to the corridor which he'd left ajar, wondering how whoever had been in the server room had gotten out. His eyes then breezed around the inside of the server room for a second time. All was in order. He looked at the server room console. It too was as he'd left it, with the monitor displaying its screen saver. Then he grasped the door and swung it back and forth on its hinges. What had suddenly occurred to him was the possibility that when he'd last been in the room, he'd not closed the door completely, and it had just swung open.

With a shrug, Randy pulled the door closed. He heard the reassuring click and then tried to push it open again. It stayed firmly locked. With a final shrug, he turned around, and with the intent of getting back to his cubicle and SCREAMER, he hurried back out into the hallway.

"IT'S OKAY, IT'S OKAY!" DEBORAH REPEATED IN A SOOTHING voice. She was holding Joanna by the shoulders, trying to calm her down. Joanna was trembling with an occasional sob. They were in the lab, standing next to the window where Deborah had spoken with Spencer earlier that morning. Mare had seen them come in, but she'd apparently noticed Joanna's distress, and respecting their privacy, she'd not come over.

Deborah had called Joanna's cell phone the moment she'd seen Randy's head suddenly pop up above the room partition just prior to his dashing from his cubicle. Deborah had to make the call on the run because Randy was moving quickly. Her worst fears were realized when Randy made a beeline for the main corridor and turned in the direction of the server room. The other problem was that she didn't see Joanna, and her intuition told her that there'd not been enough time for Joanna to have gotten out.

When Randy had gone directly to the server room's outer door and immediately gone in, any minuscule hope Deborah had entertained that he was heading elsewhere than the server room was dashed. Coming up to the door herself, she hadn't known what to do. Unable to make up her mind, she'd done nothing.

Agonizing minutes had passed. Deborah had debated whether she should go in and try to defuse whatever situation had developed. She had even envisioned charging in, grabbing Joanna, and bolting for the car. Then to her utter surprise, Randy Porter had reemerged, alone and seemingly calmer than when he'd gone in.

Deborah had quickly bent over and taken a drink from the water fountain to avoid the impression she was loitering. Randy had passed behind her; and she'd sensed his pace slowed. But he had not stopped. When she'd righted herself, Randy had been a distance away. He'd been heading back down the corridor in the direction he'd come but with his upper torso twisted to keep Deborah in sight. When he'd caught her eye he'd given her the thumbs-up sign. Deborah had blushed as it had dawned on her that a significant portion of her derriere had most likely been exposed when she'd bent over the relatively low water fountain.

"I'm not cut out for this!" Joanna said angrily in response to Deborah's attempts to calm her, although whom she was angry at ."as not immediately clear. She pressed her lips together, but they quivered as if she might cry again. "I'm serious!"

Deborah shushed her.

"I'm not cut out for this," Joanna repeated, lowering her voice. I fell apart in there. I was pathetic."

"I beg to differ with you," Deborah said. "Whatever you did, it worked. He didn't see you. Ease up! You're being too hard on yourself."

"You really think so?" Joanna took several uneven breaths.

"Absolutely," Deborah said. "Anyone else, including myself, would have blown it. But you pulled it off somehow, and here we are, ready to give it another college try."

"But I'm not going back in there," Joanna said. "Forget about it."

'Are you really ready to give up after all the effort we've been through?"

"It's your turn," Joanna said. "You go in the server room. I'll stand guard."

If I could, I would," Deborah said. "The trouble is I don't have the facility you have with computers. And you could tell me what to do until you're blue in the face, and I guarantee I'd screw it up."

Joanna stared back at Deborah as if she were angry with her.

"I'm sorry I'm not a computer nerd," Deborah said. "But I don't think we should give up. We both want to find out what happened to our eggs, and now I have a new interest."

"I suppose you're going to make me ask what it is," Joanna muttered.

Deborah glanced over at Mare to make sure she wasn't trying to overhear their conversation. Then she lowered her voice and explained to Joanna the human eggs versus swine eggs episode that had occurred that morning. Joanna was immediately intrigued despite her distress.

"That's strange," Joanna exclaimed.

Deborah's expression suggested she hardly considered strange to be a strong enough word. "Incredible is more like it," she said. "Think about it! They spent ninety thousand dollars for a half-dozen eggs from us and then have several hundred for me to screw around with today. I mean, I'm an amateur with this nuclear-transfer stuff. That's more than strange."

"All right, it's incredible," Joanna said.

"So we have even more reason to create ourselves a pathway into their computer files," Deborah said. "I want to find out what kind of research they're doing and how they're getting all these eggs."

Joanna shook her head. "That may be an appropriate motivation, but I'm telling you: I don't think I'll be able to convince myself to go back in there."

"But we're better off than we were before," Deborah said.

"I can't see how," Joanna said.

"As near as I can tell, Mr. Randy Porter leapt up out of his seat simultaneously with your opening the server room door. That tells us he's got it wired to pop up on his monitor. I mean, it stands to reason. The timing couldn't have been a coincidence."

"I suppose that seems like a reasonable assumption," Joanna agreed. "But how does that help us?"

"Simply because it means we have to do more than watch him sit in his cubicle," Deborah said. "We've got to lure him out and keep him occupied."

Joanna nodded as she thought over what Deborah was saying. "Am I to believe you have some plan to do this?"

"Of course," Deborah said with a sly smile. "When he passed me a few minutes ago in the hall while I was bending over the water fountain, he practically got torticollis. Judging from that reaction, I'd be very surprised if I couldn't corner him in the dining room at lunch and have a chat. I trust I'll be able to keep him interested. Then, when you're finished in the server room, you can give my cell phone a call to rescue me."

Joanna nodded again, but she didn't totally agree, not right away.

"Here's how it is going to work," Deborah said, sensing Joanna's lingering doubt. "Go back to administration and make sure Randy Porter is in his cubicle. Then go to yours. I don't care if you work or not, it really doesn't matter. What matters is for you to watch for Randy Porter to leave for lunch. The moment he does, call me. That way maybe I can even intercept him on his way to the dining room, which might be easier than if I get there when he's already sitting. As soon as I make contact and it's working, I'll call you. That's when you duck back into the server room and do what you have to do. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it's far bet--.-- to be doing it over the lunch hour. It makes a lot more sense. When you're finished, come directly to the dining room. You can rescue me and have lunch at the same time."