The Genius Wars (25 page)

But Cadel wasn’t interested in food. ‘What about Com’s laptop? Have they got anything off that yet?’ he demanded.

‘Dunno.’

‘Have they found his car?’

Gazo shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I only turned up when your dad was leaving. He didn’t tell me much.’

‘He’s taken my computer. Did you know about that?’

Squirming slightly beneath Cadel’s unblinking blue stare, Gazo said quickly, ‘He told me he wouldn’t be long. Maybe he’ll bring it back wiv ’im. He’s probably getting it checked out.’

‘Listen.’ Cadel stood up. ‘Come in here, will you? There’s something I want you to see.’

He led the way to his bedroom, where he subjected Gazo to a barrage of low-pitched questions.

‘Did you drive over?’

‘Uh – yeah …’

‘So you got your car back?’

‘No.’ Gazo sounded apologetic. ‘It’s still at Thi’s place, and I’ve still got ’is –’

‘What about Thi’s laptop? The one I was using? Is it still in there?’

‘Yeah. But I stuck it in the boot, don’t worry.’

‘I need it.’

Gazo blinked.

‘What you have to do is go out and buy me a stack of
newspapers,’ Cadel continued, very quietly. ‘Big, thick newspapers. Once you’ve done that, you can slip the laptop into them and smuggle it inside.’

‘But –’

‘It’ll work, I promise. No one’s going to wonder why I’m asking for newspapers. It’s not like I can surf the Net, or anything.’ Seeing Gazo glance uneasily over his shoulder, Cadel took a deep breath. ‘I need that computer, Gazo. If you don’t get it for me, I’ll have to find one somewhere else.’

‘But your dad –’

‘Isn’t thinking straight,’ Cadel finished. He could feel himself slipping into an old and familiar pattern – into the detached, calculating mode that had dominated his early childhood. He knew he was talking to his friend as if they were both still at the Axis Institute, yet he couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

‘Listen,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on Gazo’s troubled face. ‘Saul’s had me locked in a box, and it isn’t working. People are getting hurt. First Sonja, now Hamish. What if you’re next? I have to do something about it. I have to get online. You can see that, can’t you?’

A grunt was the only response. Gazo was staring at his feet, in a state of acute discomfort. So Cadel resumed his attack.

‘Did Saul actually
tell
you not to bring me a computer?’ he pressed.

‘Well … no …’

‘Then you’re not breaking any promises, are you?’

‘He said I should try to keep you safe,’ Gazo mumbled.

‘Which you will be. If you get me that laptop.’ Aware that his friend wasn’t entirely won over, Cadel sighed. ‘I can break out of here, you know. It wouldn’t be so hard. You can tell him I threatened to do it, if I didn’t get what I wanted.’

Something about Cadel’s tone made Gazo look up suddenly. The two of them gazed at each other for a few seconds. Then slowly Gazo’s expression changed.

‘You reckon it’s that bad?’ he said at last.

‘Don’t you?’

‘I guess …’

‘It’s a war. With casualties. And I can’t fight it on my own.’

Three minutes later, Gazo was heading out of the house to buy newspapers. When he returned shortly afterwards, he found Cadel fully dressed, with clean teeth and brushed hair. Pounding rap music filled the silver-walled bedroom, but Cadel wasn’t dancing to this urgent beat. He sat quietly on his bed, waiting.

I don’t want anyone to hear me on the keyboard
, he’d written, in ballpoint pen on a scrap of paper. He waved the scrap at Gazo, who nodded.

‘You should return Thi’s car,’ Cadel said aloud, as he plugged the laptop into his modem. ‘Especially since Snezana doesn’t have hers. You should go now.’

‘Really?’ Gazo was surprised. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ Cadel didn’t want Gazo hanging around. Two people holed up in a bedroom with a bunch of newspapers would be much less convincing than one person holed up in a bedroom with a bunch of newspapers. And Cadel needed to concentrate; Gazo’s aimless presence would be a terrible distraction. ‘Thi will want his car. Especially since Snezana doesn’t have one any more.’

‘Well … okay.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you want me to come back?’

Cadel felt a twinge of guilt. Glancing up, he saw that Gazo wore the same lost, glum, bewildered look that had been permanently plastered on his face at the Axis Institute.

‘It’s up to you,’ Cadel replied loudly, with an eye on the door. ‘I’d like it if you could visit Sonja, though, since I can’t do it myself. In fact …’ He reached again for the paper and the ballpoint pen, ‘… you can give her this from me.’

And he scribbled a message in the old periodic table code that he and Sonja had devised so long ago, based on atomic weights and numbers:
27-258-8-158.93-8-232. 04-2-167.26-53-14. 01-8-91.22-9-16. 00-45-126.90-42-14. 01-10-180.95-60-32. 06-6-210-16-55. 85-18-259-2 2-39.1-7-16.00-74-1. 00-8-183.85-59-16. 00-16-140.91-90-126. 90-7-39.1-16-4-74-16. 00-7-127.60-23-167. 26-32-180.95-7-88. 91-5-16.00-66-16. 00-
7-232.04-53-32. 06-52-243-87-16. 00-25-16. 00-74-16.00-7.

(
Com, Dot both heer in Oz for him on Net and SCATS. Fear not – I know how Prospr thinks. He won’t ever get anybody on this team from now on
.)

Then he passed the paper to Gazo, who slipped it into his pocket.

‘If you could stay with her for a while, it would be even better,’ Cadel added. ‘She needs you more than I do, right now. I mean, this place is like Fort Knox, and I’ve never trusted hospitals.’

Gazo gave a nod. He seemed to have cheered up a little. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Okay.’ And he took his leave, carefully closing the bedroom door behind him.

Cadel immediately plunged into cyberspace the way he would have plunged into a heated pool. He struck out for SCATS, where Com’s partner in crime (Dot? Vee?) would almost certainly have left some kind of back trail. Though the music blaring from his CD player was loud enough to make the walls vibrate, Cadel didn’t even notice how noisy it was. He was used to shutting out the real world while he went online. As the hours passed, and the same songs kept playing over and over again, he became utterly immersed in what he was doing. He forgot to rattle the sheets of newsprint scattered around him. He forgot to lock the door. He forgot that he was a human being, and began to think like a computer program.

In the end, he found what he was looking for. Com’s partner hadn’t been able to cover his (or her) tracks – not completely. Traffic lights had been tampered with from Dulwich Hill to Burwood, but the process had stopped abruptly at around five p.m. the previous evening.
Com left the car at Burwood
, Cadel thought.
He got out and took some other form of transport
. Taxi? Perhaps. Train? Unlikely, if there were CCTV cameras at Burwood railway station – though these, of course, might have been tampered with. Cadel wondered just how sophisticated Prosper’s CCTV malware actually was. Maybe, as well as inserting figures, it could remove them. Maybe there was a program
somewhere designed to erase any footage of Com from all the online surveillance networks in Sydney.

‘Cadel? What are you doing?’

It was Saul’s voice. Cadel jumped; when he turned, he saw the detective.

Though it might have disguised the tell-tale
clickety-click
of keystrokes, Cadel’s rap music had also smothered the sound of Saul’s footsteps. Cadel didn’t stand a chance. Saul was on top of him before anything could be done to hide Thi’s computer.

For a long, tense moment no one said a word. Then Saul reached over to switch off the stereo system.

Their gazes locked as silence fell.

‘Com left his car at Burwood,’ Cadel said at last. ‘You’ll find it somewhere near the shopping centre.’

Saul processed this news without making a sound. He shifted his attention from Cadel’s face to the laptop screen.

‘Either someone picked him up at Burwood, or he took a cab from there. I doubt he would have caught a train. Not unless the station cameras were interfered with.’ Cadel couldn’t stop a note of defiance creeping into his report, though he tried hard to suppress it. ‘I’m going to see if I can track down the source of that traffic-light bug. If it’s Vee’s program, I’ll probably find another chatroom, but I might get lucky.’

Still the detective didn’t speak. He was studying Cadel again, his dark eyes sombre, his jaw set.

‘Sonja and Hamish are my
friends
!’ Cadel blurted out. ‘And I’m going to do whatever I can to stop anyone
else
from getting hurt!’

‘So I see.’

‘You shouldn’t have taken my computer. Not without asking.’

‘I didn’t.’ Saul pointed. ‘It’s just out there, in the gun safe.’

‘In the
safe
?’

‘I think it should stay there, when it’s not being used. Especially now that some of Com’s programs will be on it.’

Cadel gasped.

‘What – what do you mean?’ he stammered.

‘Sid and Steve worked on Com’s laptop the whole night,’ Saul revealed. ‘What they could save, they’re giving to you.’ He removed a USB flash drive from inside his jacket. ‘There isn’t much, I’m afraid.’

‘What?’ Cadel could feel the blood rising in his cheeks. ‘Why not?’

‘Well …’

‘It erased its own files, didn’t it?’ Without waiting for an answer, Cadel drummed his fists on his knees. ‘I
knew
it would! I
told
you it would! You should have let me have a go!’

Saul shook his head. ‘Not an option,’ he said flatly.

‘I bet I would have got more out of it!’

‘I bet you would too. But it still wasn’t an option.’ Saul laid the USB drive on Cadel’s desk. ‘Sid wants you to have a look at this.’

Cadel snorted.

‘What,
now
?’ he snapped. ‘Bit late, don’t you think?’

‘He’s not sure if some of it is corrupted or just encrypted,’ the detective continued. Cadel, however, was still smarting.

He folded his arms, his expression sour, and said, ‘You should ask Sonja for help. Or Lexi. They’re the real code-breakers.’

‘You know perfectly well that the Wieneke twins have gone to ground,’ Saul calmly replied. ‘As for Sonja – don’t you think she’s got enough on her plate?’ When Cadel failed to respond with anything but a frosty blue glower, the detective heaved a sigh. ‘There is one bit of good news,’ he added. ‘Sid found that digital-double program. So Com is definitely on Prosper’s payroll.’

This news hit Cadel with so much force that his jaw dropped. A look of sheer wonder banished the resentment from his face.

‘Are you saying …’ he began, then stopped to clear his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was several decibels higher. ‘Are you telling me that
Com
was running the computer-graphic bug? Off his own laptop?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Saul had to admit. ‘I know the program was
on
there –’

‘All of it? Nothing was damaged?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘But that’s great!’ Cadel was surprised to see no answering excitement in Saul’s steady regard. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘Uh …’

‘It means we can turn the tables on them! It means I can go anywhere!’

Still the detective didn’t seem to understand. He frowned as he watched and waited. So Cadel spelled it out.

‘All we have to do is get a scan of me,’ he said, ‘and then use the program to stick me in lots of different places. If I start popping up everywhere, it’ll be hard to tell where I
really
am.’

Frowning, Saul pondered this suggestion as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears.

‘Are you sure you could do that?’ he finally asked, in a doubtful tone.

‘Well … I’m not
sure
. Not until I look at the program.’

A grunt.

‘I mean – I don’t know much about scans, or anything,’ Cadel went on. ‘We’d have to talk to that guy in Newtown. We’d have to find out how much it would cost, and how long it would take.’ He reached for the USB flash drive. ‘I’d need to look at what’s here, first.’

‘And then we’d have to make sure the whole process was legal.’

Cadel glanced up from the little cache of precious information in his hand.

‘You can’t just start interfering with surveillance networks that belong to someone else,’ Saul gravely pointed out. ‘Any more than you should start poking around a government-run traffic management system without official clearance.’ Seeing Cadel narrow his eyes, Saul did the same. ‘What you’ve been doing here – it’s an offence, Cadel. You could get charged.’

‘Not if it’s police work.’

‘Since when did you become a police officer?’

‘Since now?’ Cadel proposed, gesturing at Thi’s laptop. ‘Since you worked something out with somebody, so I can do this? I just told you where the Camry has to be. Isn’t there some kind of state-wide trace on that car?’

Once again, the detective sighed. He sat down on the bed, his hands hanging loose. His suit looked crumpled. His shoulders were hunched.

‘This is crazy,’ he murmured. ‘All of it. Whenever Prosper English shows up, it’s like he comes from another dimension. Suddenly we’re in the middle of a comic strip. Nothing makes sense. Everything’s bent out of shape.’

Cadel said nothing. He was keen to start downloading Com’s files, and felt that Saul was simply stating the obvious. Of course nothing made sense. Of course everything was bent out of shape. Cadel had grown up in a hall of mirrors; didn’t the detective realise that?

After a long, uncomfortable silence, Saul pulled himself together.

‘Just hold off on hacking into any government databases until I can speak to the right people,’ he begged. ‘Can you promise me that? Please? There’s plenty for you to do in the meantime.’

‘I guess so.’ Cadel was willing to concede that Com’s files would probably contain more ammunition than SCATS. ‘I might need help with this program, though. I might need to talk to a visual effects person.’

‘Fine.’ Saul rose, rather stiffly. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘And you should send someone to Burwood,’ Cadel finished, tossing off the suggestion in a careless sort of way. ‘Maybe do some doorknocking … talk to some taxi drivers …’