Streams of Babel (31 page)

"How do you know this stuff? And please don't call me that again. If you want us to listen to you at all, don't act like a lunatic."

"I know because I'm a hacker. I'm a scunge-wad, disgusting hacker who could rob the Commonwealth Bank if I wanted to, without ever leaving this chair. How many times have I said this stuff now? I'm sleep deprived and on a short fuse, Mac. But maybe instead of being condescending, you ought to listen to me."

"We're here," Miss Susan says into a microphone, and I flinch, thinking it would blare all through that little room. She had said Tyler wouldn't know I was here.

But the agent just flicks at a little earpiece, like mine for
Trinitron, and says, "Let's take this from the top, just one more time. About these computer programs. Okay? Maybe I'll get it this time."

"In your dreams. I need to share this stuff with a seasoned programmer. Do you have any in USIC?
Yet?
"

"Don't antagonize me, Mr. Ping"

"Don't try to lie to me. Just get me Hamdani. He's doing favors for you, and we both know it, so—"

"Mr. Hamdani helped us out for a few nights. He is not on our payroll." The agent shifts a little. "You've got bad information, Mr. Moderate Hacker."

Tyler laughs. "Just get the guy for me. And maybe I won't add ten grand to your grandmother's water bill next month, just to repay the insult."

"Oh my." I turn to Miss Susan. Hearing English so constantly, even for two days, I understand more. "Why does he speak in that tone?"

She leans up to the intercom and says, "Should I just bring Shahzad in? We've pulled him from Trinitron. His gig is off."

I let her pull me around the corner into the room. I notice that Tyler Ping does not look at all surprised as I fall into a chair beside the agent.

He flings disks into my hands, explaining them one by one. His English is fast, but many computer terms are universal.

"Hamdani, here's some programs I've been perfecting for a little more than a year. I call this program Dog Leash. You program in the log-ins you want to follow, and it searches all your favorite chat sites. Once it finds one of those log-ins, it 'leashes' and follows it and creates a record on your hard drive of everywhere that person goes online."

He tosses the disk into my hands, and he has written
USIC BULLSHIT 1
in magic marker. I have a similar program. I shrug, unimpressed, because of one glitch. "After the person logs off, you have to start from scratch," I suggest.

"Uh-uh. With Dog Leash, they're
leashed.
Permanently. From any terminal. You're only screwed if they change log-ins"

I wonder in amazement if the thing actually works and try to work my head through the problems he had solved that I couldn't. But he moves on.

"These guys are already using a program to make chatter disappear, right?"

I don't answer.

"Their program is stupid. It just makes the color of the type seek out the color of the screen and change to match it. The type isn't actually disappearing."

I feel fire of embarrassment hit my face. I would have realized this myself if I'd had more time to think—and more license to think freely.

"We walked together to the train last night, and I made a few wisecracks about this program I have that, uh ... prevents the computer teacher at school from seeing what I'm saying on the school's system. His eyeballs bugged out when I explained it. I wonder why? Ha ... He said he'd give me twenty bucks if he can upload it—which he did successfully at 11:27 this morning, thank you, Dog Leash. It's called Blizzard.
Sucker.
"

The agent tries to interrupt, but Tyler waves his hand to ward off words. "There's a bug in the program. Anytime it's activated, on any site, it will seek out Tim's e-mail address and send him a message with a hyperlink. Not only can you capture all Catalyst's chatter, but you have an automatic tracer to any
new site he's using with his cronies. He'll basically be walking around the Net with neon footprints. I'm
giving
you it." He looks at the agent. "For free. I call it Blizzard Erase"

He holds a third disk out to me, but Miss Susan intercepts it, and I watch it disappear into her jacket pocket with awe. Ping will have done huge, huge favors for American intelligence if the programs will work as he says.

I see the agents trying not to respond with too much shock, but I am shocked as he repeats a line I am quite familiar with. Apparently, it is not as original as I thought: "In the land of computers, men are the children and children are the men."

I feel the agents' anxiety. Tyler's manners are horrendous. And yet, I would not have had the nerve to introduce myself to Catalyst and present a false program concept to his face. I am a good TNT but an inexperienced mole. I wonder how good I would be with this maniac Tyler Ping for the other half of my brain.

"Maybe we could try them and make for certain they work," I tell the agent.

"They work." Tyler folds his arms across his chest. "But suit yourself."

The agent still watches him, very uncomfortably. "Why are you giving us these things? Are you expecting to be paid?"

"Any offer less than three million would be an insult, so maybe it's like I keep saying—maybe I'm just an asshole."

The agent tries to smile but looks befuddled. "How do we know, if you're willing to give them one thing and us a better thing, that you haven't actually given
them
a better
better
thing?"

Tyler smiles. "Well, I guess you don't, do you? You want to take a risk? You want to take a risk to find out who Omar is and
what other tricks he's developing, before a lot of Americans turn into something resembling a smallpox victim with a short-term memory of zero?" Tyler turns to me. "Did you see that chatter last night about
new vinegars
? That ought to get some anus muscles working."

He is vulgar and very much of a "loose cannon," to use one of Hodji's terms.

"I guess we all know where Colony One is, don't we?" He continues to shock me.

I do not know that yet—thanks to this new job. The agent acts as if he
does
know the location of Colony One, which galls me.

"Did you hack into the CDC?" He points a finger at Tyler. "Because that's a very serious federal offense."

"I don't think so. I don't remember. You'll have to ask my attorney. What the CDC doesn't know, that guy Catalyst is probably willing to discuss with his friends. Oh, and he said he would take me to a party with him sometime soon and introduce me to—"

Miss Susan puts her hands in the middle of the table and beats on it once or twice to silence him. "Mr. Ping. We are grateful for anything citizens bring in here, but there is a hell of a big difference between stumbling on information while you're minding your own business, and making our business your business. Your safety comes first. Okay? So, what kind of a deal can we cut so that we don't have teenagers chasing guys like Catalyst around town and trying to sell them software and video games, for god's sake?"

"He took the software, didn't he? The guy loves me. I can make anyone love me—for a few days. Can we just say that for
reasons I cannot state, I owe you? Why don't you just take these programs here, and let me help Hamdani out sometimes? Bet I could be a really, really big help."

"I'm afraid that's impossible," Miss Susan says. "Mr. Hamdani wasn't forthright about his age. We're letting him go."

I suppose Tyler Ping does not see my world falling apart in my eyes, because he only cackles more and says, "You guys found out about that, too? Took you long enough. I'll be eighteen in ten months. I'll be as old as some of those guys being trained to toss grenades in Afghanistan. If they're old enough to toss grenades, I'm old enough to ... what's the term? V-spy?"

He pulls his driver's license out of his wallet, but she does not drop her eyes to look at it. "Mr. Ping, to provide an intelligence service for the Coalition, you have to be efficient in every possible way, because trust is such a key factor. I don't think anyone in USIC could work, even sporadically, with your personality."

She hasn't said it spitefully, but the honest words cut into him. Despite his continued smile I can see the sadness smoke through and completely overtake the harshness in his eyes.

He stands up. "Keep those disks. They're user-friendly. Maybe you'll discover some things by the time Catalyst's buddies come up with, uh,
green
vinegar, or black - and - orange -polka-dot vinegar ... in Colony Five."

My neck snaps at his harsh words, which Miss Susan ignores entirely.

"It's not in my job description to stop you from befriending maniacs, Mr. Ping. Just leave me a phone number, okay? When we find your body hacked into five pieces outside the
Midtown Tunnel, whom do we call to collect you from the morgue?"

I'd have been more worried they would find him toxic and dead from a chemical agent. Tyler pulls on his jacket, blinking into the tabletop, and for the first time, he looks very serious. All he mumbles is "Let me think about that"

And he turns and walks out. I turn my stunned eyes from him to Miss Susan as she reaches and pulls the first disk out of my hand.

"Miss Susan." I stand quickly. "I have been helping my father v-spy since I was ten. I don't think age is a critical factor. You need me!"

"Yes, we do," she says, pulling on her jacket and studying her cell phone messages. "But there is no way in hell we'll keep on a minor. If something happened to you, every mother in America would want to lynch us. We'd be 'irresponsible lunatics' on every news channel in the world. And look at the way this played out. We work with one kid, and within twenty-four hours it's a horrendous mess of big mouths and immature people with dangerous information. It'll never happen again. Tell me, why'd you do it? Come over here and lie? You seemed to be doing great where you were."

Don't I know this?
My first thought is to protect Roger and Hodji. "Having been an FBI subcontractor and not an agent, my father was not entitled to death or medical benefits. I have very bad asthma and need American medicine, which is expensive."

She looks up from her phone, and perhaps I can sense a mother's heart in her softer tone. "Well. You're here. If you give your aunt custody of you, you'll get American medicine from
her insurance at work. You just can't be a v-spy over here. Go to school. Get educated until you're an adult"

She probably means this without insult, but it rings of Uncle Ahmer's "
Act like an adult!
"

"I don't think it is right for you to explain to me how I am and how I am not," I blurt. "You know nothing about me."

But it is in vain, I see, by her unmoved eyes. Americans are very organized. They are moved by policy and forfeit common sense. They would rather be huge and organized than humble and correct, and they are so self-righteous about this tradition that they feel no guilt over their losses.

"Do you want a ride home?" she asks in a sweet voice that I find condescending.

"I do not. And you treat your children like sacred cows"

"We just want them to live to be very old cows," she says, but I am finished listening to her many quick answers, and I leave through the door in which we came, heading into an afternoon fog.

CORA HOLMAN
FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2002
2:00
P.M.

AS SOON AS I could see clearly, I knew that I had not died, and this place was not heaven. There were many tubes and wires pressing on my face and chest, and the constant beeps made my ears want to shut down. I sensed that time had lapsed since I spoke to my father on the phone, and somehow, I had gotten into this other room with all these machines.

A man stood beside the bed looking down at me. He had a kind smile. He was patting my head and talking to me in one of the languages that my mother used to babble in. But it sounded pretty and poetic.
Jeremy?

Our eyes locked, and he stopped speaking suddenly and looked stunned. This time, he spoke in English.

"You see? I woke you up. When people hear the golden poetry of the Orient, it can rouse them from death. That's how pretty it is."

My dad?
The questions poured forth, but I couldn't utter
them. A tube felt like a snake in my throat. I had only a second to decide that I was breathing through it, but that I was also breathing on my own somehow. It slowed when I stopped breathing.

My throat was sore. My hand jerked awkwardly, then flopped onto my chest. A series of tubes pulled and wouldn't let me bring it to my throat, so I pointed one finger shakily.

"You're thirsty, aren't you?" he said.

He brought a bottle of water out of his jacket pocket and put it to his own lips and took several swallows. "You won't be thirsty for long."

I shut my eyes just to rest my eyelids, thinking he would get the nurse and bring her in here. I couldn't understand the meaning of all these tubes, but I sensed I didn't need them. I needed a drink worse.

But when I looked again, he was only licking water off his lips and watching me. "You're very beautiful," he said. "In my country, you would be considered a prize. A porcelain prize."

I would have liked anything kind my father had said, I supposed. But I couldn't remember how to smile.

"I'm glad you have awakened. I have a lot I want to say to you. Unfortunately, I don't have much time. And besides, I personally do not feel it is appropriate for men to talk to women. But I will tell you a couple of lovely things. First, I am sent by Omar. You don't know him, but he knows you well. He made you ill. And now, you are about to be sacrificed. Are you afraid of dying? I hope not."

The syringe he brought out of his pocket sent out a flash of alarm. I wanted to ask, "
Daddy, what are you doing?
" But I was too limp to even thrash my foot.

"I wish this were a fast death," he muttered, reaching over me, behind me it seemed, but I was too dizzy to tell. "I would like to stay and watch you leave us. But my associates, they won't have it. They want you to die melodramatically. They are right, of course. It will leave a better message for those who foster you and your kind."