"c271" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)

2:59 P.M., Thursday, February 24, 2000
Halifax, Nova Scotia

"I don't understand why you can't get through! What about telegraphs? Do they still exist? Satellite phones? Carrier pigeons?" Morgan asked the fifth base operator he'd reached. "C'mon, someone's got to be able to contact New Zealand in a hurry." Telephones were out, as were Federal Express, Western Union, the Internet (or at least the base's connection to it, and possibly the server Desiree would check for e-mail, or the path to it), and the post office didn't seem to be getting mail across the Pacific, though they happily took one's mail away. Yes, several admitted, the military had radio channels, but no, he couldn't make use of them for personal business. Even life and death. There wasn't enough bandwidth available (human, not radio, they explained) for military matters, so they'd been strictly forbidden to allow personal chatter. Or so they heard, since they didn't do the work themselves. And no, they wouldn't tell him who on the base did, or where. "Try ham radio," Ellen the operator said, the second to suggest it. "But don't ask me where you can find one." "Then how am I supposed to find one?" He could fairly hear her shrug. Littlefield walked over as Morgan was about to call for yet another base operator (though he thought he might have exhausted the supply). "Hyland, what's up?" Morgan gave him a sour face and reached for the '0' button again. Littlefield put his finger on the disconnect hook. "Look, Hyland. I like you. Your buddy, I don't like. He's a bozo. But you, you're ok. So why don't you call it quits for the day. Take a nap or have a beer—have one on me." He held out a beer ration coupon. Morgan suspected Littlefield felt his unit was breaking up; or he was trying to drive a wedge between Nate and himself. Well, what the hell; he wouldn't accomplish that, but a beer ration's a beer ration. "Thanks," he said, and took the ticket. Maybe he'd walk around the base to find the communications center. Stopping first at his bunk, he found Nate's note. And decided to ignore it. Nobody was in the barracks, so he placed it up on Nate's bunk. It wasn't particularly addressed to Morgan. Somebody else could find it tomorrow. The delay would give Nate more of a head start. "I didn't really look at his bunk and see a note, no sir," he practiced saying. The guy had guts, he had to hand it to him. Going AWOL again. Morgan wished he had the balls to do that. Hop a plane back to New Zealand and find Desiree himself. Go reprogram the damn laptop. Maybe all he needed to do was go Mitnick for a while, get to a phone off the base. The phones did work in New Zealand. He'd used them. Or maybe it was just a temporary problem on the base, not worth getting locked up for. Lots of things were working only intermittently. He promised God he'd work hard at this stupid job if God would save his baby. Morgan wandered around the base, his nose and ears freezing, but he couldn't find the communications center. He went to ask Sam for leave to hunt down a ham radio operator in Halifax. He had to get it approved now, before they discovered Nate missing. With him gone again, there was no way they'd let Morgan go. Sam sat back in his cubby-hole office sucking on an unlit pipe. The rich aroma of unsmoked tobacco nonetheless filled the room. "After that stunt you pulled, you think I could get you real leave? I thought your buddy was the nutty one." "Like I thought smoking wasn't legal in offices." "I'm not smoking," Sam said. "Never lit this." "Maybe I'm not asking for real leave, either..." Sam laughed. "There's no way on God's green earth that I could get you leave granted. You know that." And even less snowball's chance in hell tomorrow. "I don't mean leave leave, I mean... something. Some errand. Any excuse to get me off base for a while." But the answer was no, no, and hell no. Morgan could sense Sam was getting irritated, and broke off his attack. "Morgan, I know what you're going through. I understand. Tell you what. I'll poke around. Maybe I can find an 'errand' in town. Give me a couple days." Morgan gritted his teeth. A couple days could mean the difference between... But what choice did he really have? "Sooner would be better than later," he said. "Ain't that the truth. That's the whole plan underlying the CyberCorps. Don't you doubt it, I hear that phrase echoed in every order I get. And that's partly why I can't risk you running off again like you did. Next time you'd be up you know what creek without a paddle. That'd put me in a heckuva mess, since—and I didn't tell you this, right?—since next week we're starting to fix all that software you've been looking at. They're reactivating the T1 lines so we can connect into the host sites directly." "I thought there were teams on-site fixing all these, after we identified which to fix. You mean nobody's been fixing anything?" "You didn't hear it from me, but that's right." "Why the hell not?" "Same reason you're here in Halifax and not some Army base in Alabama." "Well, I was supposed to be in Boston. But I thought that was because they had power up here, and not there. That's what they told us." Sam half nodded. "Partly true. Partly because they don't know where to stuff a million programmers. But the big datacenters have power, or mostly do. The real reason, which you never heard me say, is because of hackers. They started out housing the data processing guys on site, the ones that volunteered initially and the ones they hired from the bond drive. They hacked the systems. What I heard was that the military was damn pissed off, and said they're rather be down for ten years than have uncleared programmers touch their code. They hacked the civilian systems too, doing more harm than good, so they went to this paper and pencil method. Hid us computer people away where we can't do any harm, like this place, which as I understand it, has very little military importance." He sucked on his pipe. "So why the change? They've run security clearance checks on us all or something?" "For what good that would do. Truth, Morgan, is I don't know. I just got orders that said we'll be wired up to fix the software and to start next week. I think they finally realized the folly of what 'down for ten years' meant. Lesser of two evils. We're also going to be driven hard. They figure if they keep us so busy with impossible deadlines then you brainy guys won't have time for hacking. But it's my neck on the line with those deadlines, which is why I can't let you scamper off. At least it's what you guys said you wanted. Meaningful work." Morgan felt the responsibility pressing on his shoulders. It squeezed out any thoughts he had of going Mitnick; especially with Nate's fix to the beef inspection program, and no Nate, now he'd truly be needed here. Damn Nate for running away. Morgan thought about telling Sam, right now; perhaps they could still catch Nate. Except they'd just lock him up. Lord, he thought, please give them power back in New Zealand so they don't need that damn laptop. Or, and I know this is a little more selfish request, get Jeremy to breathe without the ventilator. He drew in a ragged breath. Maybe the phones would work on Monday, when they reconnected the T1 lines to let the base's computers talk to the outside world. Maybe Middlemore Hospital no longer used the generator. Maybe they'd fixed the generator to not need the laptop. Desiree, honey, I hope I'm doing the right thing. Morgan knew he would stay put. But he also knew what came from wishing problems away.

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Chapter 27.1

2:59 P.M., Thursday, February 24, 2000
Halifax, Nova Scotia

"I don't understand why you can't get through! What about telegraphs? Do they still exist? Satellite phones? Carrier pigeons?" Morgan asked the fifth base operator he'd reached. "C'mon, someone's got to be able to contact New Zealand in a hurry." Telephones were out, as were Federal Express, Western Union, the Internet (or at least the base's connection to it, and possibly the server Desiree would check for e-mail, or the path to it), and the post office didn't seem to be getting mail across the Pacific, though they happily took one's mail away. Yes, several admitted, the military had radio channels, but no, he couldn't make use of them for personal business. Even life and death. There wasn't enough bandwidth available (human, not radio, they explained) for military matters, so they'd been strictly forbidden to allow personal chatter. Or so they heard, since they didn't do the work themselves. And no, they wouldn't tell him who on the base did, or where. "Try ham radio," Ellen the operator said, the second to suggest it. "But don't ask me where you can find one." "Then how am I supposed to find one?" He could fairly hear her shrug. Littlefield walked over as Morgan was about to call for yet another base operator (though he thought he might have exhausted the supply). "Hyland, what's up?" Morgan gave him a sour face and reached for the '0' button again. Littlefield put his finger on the disconnect hook. "Look, Hyland. I like you. Your buddy, I don't like. He's a bozo. But you, you're ok. So why don't you call it quits for the day. Take a nap or have a beer—have one on me." He held out a beer ration coupon. Morgan suspected Littlefield felt his unit was breaking up; or he was trying to drive a wedge between Nate and himself. Well, what the hell; he wouldn't accomplish that, but a beer ration's a beer ration. "Thanks," he said, and took the ticket. Maybe he'd walk around the base to find the communications center. Stopping first at his bunk, he found Nate's note. And decided to ignore it. Nobody was in the barracks, so he placed it up on Nate's bunk. It wasn't particularly addressed to Morgan. Somebody else could find it tomorrow. The delay would give Nate more of a head start. "I didn't really look at his bunk and see a note, no sir," he practiced saying. The guy had guts, he had to hand it to him. Going AWOL again. Morgan wished he had the balls to do that. Hop a plane back to New Zealand and find Desiree himself. Go reprogram the damn laptop. Maybe all he needed to do was go Mitnick for a while, get to a phone off the base. The phones did work in New Zealand. He'd used them. Or maybe it was just a temporary problem on the base, not worth getting locked up for. Lots of things were working only intermittently. He promised God he'd work hard at this stupid job if God would save his baby. Morgan wandered around the base, his nose and ears freezing, but he couldn't find the communications center. He went to ask Sam for leave to hunt down a ham radio operator in Halifax. He had to get it approved now, before they discovered Nate missing. With him gone again, there was no way they'd let Morgan go. Sam sat back in his cubby-hole office sucking on an unlit pipe. The rich aroma of unsmoked tobacco nonetheless filled the room. "After that stunt you pulled, you think I could get you real leave? I thought your buddy was the nutty one." "Like I thought smoking wasn't legal in offices." "I'm not smoking," Sam said. "Never lit this." "Maybe I'm not asking for real leave, either..." Sam laughed. "There's no way on God's green earth that I could get you leave granted. You know that." And even less snowball's chance in hell tomorrow. "I don't mean leave leave, I mean... something. Some errand. Any excuse to get me off base for a while." But the answer was no, no, and hell no. Morgan could sense Sam was getting irritated, and broke off his attack. "Morgan, I know what you're going through. I understand. Tell you what. I'll poke around. Maybe I can find an 'errand' in town. Give me a couple days." Morgan gritted his teeth. A couple days could mean the difference between... But what choice did he really have? "Sooner would be better than later," he said. "Ain't that the truth. That's the whole plan underlying the CyberCorps. Don't you doubt it, I hear that phrase echoed in every order I get. And that's partly why I can't risk you running off again like you did. Next time you'd be up you know what creek without a paddle. That'd put me in a heckuva mess, since—and I didn't tell you this, right?—since next week we're starting to fix all that software you've been looking at. They're reactivating the T1 lines so we can connect into the host sites directly." "I thought there were teams on-site fixing all these, after we identified which to fix. You mean nobody's been fixing anything?" "You didn't hear it from me, but that's right." "Why the hell not?" "Same reason you're here in Halifax and not some Army base in Alabama." "Well, I was supposed to be in Boston. But I thought that was because they had power up here, and not there. That's what they told us." Sam half nodded. "Partly true. Partly because they don't know where to stuff a million programmers. But the big datacenters have power, or mostly do. The real reason, which you never heard me say, is because of hackers. They started out housing the data processing guys on site, the ones that volunteered initially and the ones they hired from the bond drive. They hacked the systems. What I heard was that the military was damn pissed off, and said they're rather be down for ten years than have uncleared programmers touch their code. They hacked the civilian systems too, doing more harm than good, so they went to this paper and pencil method. Hid us computer people away where we can't do any harm, like this place, which as I understand it, has very little military importance." He sucked on his pipe. "So why the change? They've run security clearance checks on us all or something?" "For what good that would do. Truth, Morgan, is I don't know. I just got orders that said we'll be wired up to fix the software and to start next week. I think they finally realized the folly of what 'down for ten years' meant. Lesser of two evils. We're also going to be driven hard. They figure if they keep us so busy with impossible deadlines then you brainy guys won't have time for hacking. But it's my neck on the line with those deadlines, which is why I can't let you scamper off. At least it's what you guys said you wanted. Meaningful work." Morgan felt the responsibility pressing on his shoulders. It squeezed out any thoughts he had of going Mitnick; especially with Nate's fix to the beef inspection program, and no Nate, now he'd truly be needed here. Damn Nate for running away. Morgan thought about telling Sam, right now; perhaps they could still catch Nate. Except they'd just lock him up. Lord, he thought, please give them power back in New Zealand so they don't need that damn laptop. Or, and I know this is a little more selfish request, get Jeremy to breathe without the ventilator. He drew in a ragged breath. Maybe the phones would work on Monday, when they reconnected the T1 lines to let the base's computers talk to the outside world. Maybe Middlemore Hospital no longer used the generator. Maybe they'd fixed the generator to not need the laptop. Desiree, honey, I hope I'm doing the right thing. Morgan knew he would stay put. But he also knew what came from wishing problems away.


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