After dialing in, he issued the WHO command to see whether Sarkar was also online — Peter wanted to send him an E-mail hello. He was indeed. Peter then issued WHAT to see what sort of activity Sarkar was doing; if it was a background task, he probably wasn’t actually sitting at the terminal, and so the E-mail would be a waste of time.
WHAT reported the following:
Node | User | Logged in at | Task
002 | Sarkar | 08:14:22 | text search
Well, a text search could be either background or foreground. Peter had high-level supervisory privileges on Sarkar’s systems. He called for an echoing of the task at node 002 on his own monitor. The screen filled with a list of search terms, and a constantly updated tally of hits. Some, such as Toronto, had hundreds of hits so far, but others…
Christ, thought Peter. Look at that…
Sarkar was searching for “Hobson” and “Pete*” and “Cath*” and…
Peter tapped out an E-mail message: “Nosy, aren’t we?” He was about to send it when he noticed the full search parameters in the status line: “Search all systems; within each system, search all online and offline storage and all working memory.”
A search like that could take hours. Sarkar would never order something like that — he was too well organized not to have at least some idea how to narrow the search.
Peter glanced at the other search terms.
Oh, shit.
“Larsen,” “Hans,” “adultery,” “affair.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. No way Sarkar would be doing a search like that. Someone else was inside the system.
Node 002 was the AI lab at Mirror Image. Peter swung his chair to face his phone and hit the speed-dialer key for there.
The phone rang in the AI lab. “May I get that?” asked Sarkar.
Sandra nodded. She was watching the screen intently. Lots of hits on the common words — “affair” had over four hundred so far — but none on Hobson or Larsen.
Sarkar moved across the room to the videophone and hit the ANSWER key.
The Bell Canada logo backflipped away. Peter saw Sarkar’s face, looking worried.
“What’s — ” said Peter, but that’s all he said. In the background, over Sarkar’s shoulder, he saw a profile of Sandra Philo. Peter broke the connection at once.
Philo there, at Mirror Image.
A raid. A goddamned raid.
Peter looked at his screen, slaved to node 002. Still no hits on “Hobson.”
He thought for a second, then began tapping keys. Peter spun off a second session under Sarkar’s login name, using the password he’d heard Sarkar use before. He then accessed the diagnostic-tools subdirectory and called up a file listing. There were hundreds of programs, including one called TEXTREP. That sounded promising. He called up help on it.
Good. Exactly what he needed. Syntax: search-term, replacement-term, search parameters.
Peter typed “TEXTREP / Hobson / Roddenberry / AI7-AI10” — meaning change all occurrences of “Hobson” to “Roddenberry” on artificial-intelligence systems seven through ten.
The program set to work. It was a much smaller search — only one term — and a much narrower area to search — only four computers instead of the hundred or more that Philo was currently examining. With luck, it would make all the substitutions before it was too late…
The console beeped, signaling its task was complete. Jorgenson was back, having found nothing of interest in the scanning room. He looked at the screen, then at Sandra. Thirteen hits for Hobson. Sandra pointed at the tally. “Display them in context,” she said.
Two appearances of the word in an online dictionary entry for “Hobson’s choice.”
A user-ID file, equating “fobson” with Peter G. Hobson.
A computerized Rolodex with home and business addresses for Peter Hobson.
And nine more references, mostly within copyright notices, to Hobson Monitoring Ltd. as parts of various pieces of scanning software.
“Nada,” said Jorgenson.
“He’s got an account here,” said Sandra, turning to Sarkar.
“Who does?” he said.
“Peter Hobson.”
“Oh, yes. We use some programs made by his company.”
“Nothing more?”
“Well, he’s a friend of mine, too. That’s why I have his home address in my Rolodex.” Sarkar looked innocent. “What were you expecting to find?”
CHAPTER 41
Cathy Hobson was exhausted. It had been a long day at the office, slogging away at the Tourism Ontario account. She’d stopped at Miracle Food Mart on the way home, but the idiot in front of her had decided to unload all his change on the cashier. Some people, Cathy thought, should be forced to use debit cards.
When she finally arrived at home, she pressed her thumb against the FILE scanner, leaning on it as if it were the only thing keeping her from collapsing to the ground. The green LED atop the scanner winked at her, the dead bolt sprang back, and the heavy door slid aside. She entered her house. The door closed behind her and the lock snicked back into place.
“Lights,” she said.
Nothing happened. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Lights.”
Still nothing. She sighed, set down her shopping bags, and groped for the manual switch. She found it, but still the lights did not go on.
Cathy made her way up into the living room. She could see the glowing LEDs on the VCR, so it wasn’t a power failure; the entryway bulb was probably just burnt out. She said “lights” once more, but the three ceramic table lamps — lamps that Cathy herself had made — remained dark.
Cathy shook her head. Peter was constantly fiddling with the house controls, and it always took a while to get things working properly again.
She lowered herself to the couch, spreading her aching feet out in front of her. Such a long day. She closed her eyes, enjoying the darkness. After a moment, remembering her groceries, she hauled herself up and headed down to the entryway. She tried both the light switch and saying the word “lights” again. Still nothing. She was about to bend over and pick up the bags when she noticed the phone sitting on the little table in the hall. The large red light adjacent to its keypad was on. She moved closer. The visual display said “Line in use.” The phone hadn’t rung.
And Peter wouldn’t be home for hours yet; he had a board meeting tonight at North York General.
Unless … “Peter!” Her shout echoed slightly in the corridor. “Peter, are you home?”
No reply. She picked up the handset and heard a high-pitched whine. A modem.
She looked at the visual display again. “Private caller” — an incoming call, but whoever was using the modem had requested suppression of Call Display.
Jesus Christ, she thought. A sim.
She slammed the handset down, then picked it up again, jiggling the hook switch rapidly, trying to make enough line noise to sever the connection.
It didn’t do any good. Peter, of course, had the finest in error-correcting modems, and the sim apparently had equally good hardware.
She moved quickly to the front door and pressed the UNLOCK button next to it. Nothing happened. She grabbed the manual handle. The door refused to budge. She hit the “In Case of Fire” override. The door was still jammed. She slid open the hall closet — it, at least, had no locking mechanism — and looked at the door control panel. An LED was glowing like a drop of blood next to the phrase “thwarting break-in.” Normally the doors would instantly unlock in case of a fire, but the smoke detectors denied that there was a fire, and some other detector said someone was trying to break in from outside. Cathy left the closet and looked through the peephole in the front door. No one was there. Of course.