"Carter, Raphael - The Fortunate Fall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Carter Raphael)

"We invented a false purpose, and deliberately failed in that, yes. This was to conceal our true purpose."
"Which was?" I prompted.
"To build a network of back doors into the computers that we infected. We knew that when they decrypted the data, after such a short time, they would not bother to check that what they recovered was the same as what they had before--especially since they had intercepted several copies of the virus, and made sure that their only function was to encrypt. We had only to hope they would not find the few copies of the virus that were subtly different from the others; and they did not. So the programs they restored had points of entry that had not been there before."
"These back doors--wouldn't they have found them eventually?"
"Certainly. But they remained in place only a few weeks. They were only meant to provide us access to the lowest levels of the system, a toe in the door. From there we could strip away the root passwords, letter by letter and bit by bit. And once we had root access, we could create all the back doors we dared. In that way, and by not doing anything that would alarm the Weavers unduly, we've managed to keep one step ahead of them ever since. The descendants of those original back doors are still being maintained. That's how we're able to create the bubbles."
"Who do you mean when you say 'we'? The people involved in this virus project?"
"Their current equivalents. All the members of that team have long since been disappeared, and those that followed them, and those that followed the ones that followed. You can evade the Postcops a long time, and the Weavers a short time; but in the end, they always catch you."
Keishi, crack the surveillance camera and give me a direct shot of his face, I subvocalized. I wanted to see his reaction to my next question. When the window opened up in the lower left-hand quadrant of my field of vision, I asked him: "You say a person can only evade the authorities a few years, yet you've apparently been doing it for decades. Why have you survived where so many others were caught?"
In the window he raised his eyebrows. "Why, skill, of course." Then he laughed: "All right, then, good wiring." And then the window closed and he said, "Off the record? A combination of abject cowardice and pure luck. But don't let it get around."
The window opened again on a face without expression, save perhaps a hint of mischief at the corners of the mouth.
Can he hear everything I say to you?
"Absolutely not," she said. "He didn't hear you ask me for that crack, he saw the crack. Your thoughts are cabled to me on quanta; if he looks at it, he changes it and I can tell. He can't break that unless he can revoke the laws of physics. The very first leg of the trip is by radio, and that he could hack in theory, but it's coded with megabit primes and not even he could break that. Besides, I'm keeping close tabs on what goes on inside that crummy little cranium, and if he tried to crack us open, I'd see it in a second. Believe me, Maya, he's good, but I'm a whole lot better. And when I say we're tight, we're tight."
When she was finished I said, exhaustedly, Keishi?
"Yes?"
Next time I ask you a yes or no question, give me a yes or no answer, OK?
"OK. Umm, I mean yes."
Thank you.
Keishi's lecture had forced an awkward pause in my conversation with Voskresenye. To end it I asked why he hadn't tried scrubbing the data, instead of encoding it.
"Because by that time I had realized that destroying data wouldn't have weakened their grip. I needed a bigger bomb."
"What kind of bomb?"
"It has not been set off yet. Perhaps it does not exist. --Here we are; this is our bubble."
"Where?"
"Right in front of you."
We had come to a little open-air cafe on Nevsky itself, crammed with customers and visible to hundreds of passers-by. Overlooking it were two surveillance cameras mounted on lampposts. The cameras were at least twenty years out of date, since we could see them; but that didn't make them any less effective.
"You must be kidding," I said. "I'm not going to sit here and discuss your career as a terrorist where a thousand wired people can see us. Not to mention those cameras. I thought you were taking me someplace unsurveilled."
"At the moment, this is the most secure spot in the Russian Historical Nation. If you will kindly refrain from looking in my direction for a moment, I will demonstrate."
I was a little edgy about turning my back on him, but I would have felt foolish saying so, so I averted my eyes.
"Thank you. Now, dearest elephant, can you tell me how many fingers I am holding up?"
My face went numb, and for a moment I thought he'd done it. But it was Keishi's voice that came from my mouth: "There's no need for games. As long as you're in the bubble, I can't see you unless she looks at you. You're secure."
Don't ever do that again, I subvocalized, gasping for air as the sensation in my face returned.
"I'm sorry. But he did ask, and I can't get at any other speakers--"
I am not a speaker. Keep your mind to yourself.
"I said I was sorry."
Later! I don't want to hear another word from you until this interview is over.
"Why don't you just send me to my room?"
I imagined myself filling out a repartnering form, and she responded with silence.
"Trouble controlling the elephant?" Voskresenye said. "In the circus they use hooks, I think."
"I'll have to look into that," I said.
"Are you now confident that we can safely talk here?"
"I believe we're safe from cameras," I said. "But what if someone overhears us? The Postcops may not be able to pick that up, but Weavers can."
"A legitimate worry. I will be keeping tabs on the minds in our vicinity; however, you might wish to have your screener double-check. It can't hurt, and it would surely take most of her brainpower, so it might keep her quiet."
"Tell him I could watch everyone in Leningrad and never miss the bandwidth!"
I pictured myself thumbing the form and handing it in. Keep an eye on them, but don't say a word unless you see something. I mean it.
We found a table in the shade. As he sat across from me, I noticed that he was sweating under his out-of-season overcoat. When water and menus had been brought, I said, "Why don't you start by telling me why you're dressed for snow in this weather?"
"I will explain; but first I suggest you have your screener alter my features. The events I will retell may be safely Netcast, but my face may be familiar to the Post police."
"Go ahead, Keishi," I said, and then subvoked: Don't tell me how you're doing it, just do it.
His face morphed through a series of subtle changes that, collectively, left it unrecognizable.
"Maybe you should take out the sockets, too," I said. "They're pretty distinctive."
"I'm afraid they are essential to the story," Voskresenye put in. "However, there are others still alive who are socketed much as I am, so it should not matter."
"All right then. Now, about that overcoat."