"Allison Sinclair - Assassin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sinclair Allison)

Assassin
a short story
by Alison Sinclair




"I think I've got an assassin," Glad greeted me when I arrived at the precinct
that Wednesday morning. I was tempted to say not before it got me, but I didn't.

Glad was pleased with herself: The mood beads in her crinkled black hair pulsed
yellow and green. I leaned over her shoulder and murmured, "Is that avaricious
yellow, I see." She gave me her wide-mouthed grin. The beads sparkled with the
swirling blue and white of amusement overlaid with friendship, overlaid with a
shimmer of lust.
"Keep your mind on your work, and off your layover," I advised.
"Shit," said Glad, and reached up beneath her hair and popped the connection
between sensors and microprocessor. The beads faded to dull lilac but her blush
glowed. I pretended not to notice. "What have you got?"
What she had was a stub of code with enough path info to tell her which
neuronode was being addressed. "Moodnode," she said.
"Source?"
"A PC."
"Bootleg," I said. "Downloaded from one of the Joynets. Let their security
handle it."
"Coroner's office sent it over," Glad said quietly. "Woman took a header off a
balcony. Not much left of her headware, so they checked out her PC. Last week
it'd have been suicide; this week they've got cadets--"
"Don't remind me." One of ours had locked up our system twice already.
"And some bright pixel thought this was suspicious. Strangely enough he's right.
This wasn't chewed up by the user's endonucleases; ends aren't right."
"I take your word for it."
She sighed profoundly. One of the things I like about Glad is she doesn't rely
on beads to communicate for her.
"This isn't any one of the user's--she had nine."
"Nine ... paranoia rules."
"Even paranoids have enemies ... And it isn't a Thrillnet one; I've got the
system checking the other nets she accessed--she was heavily into it,
FantasyNets, ThrillNets, JoyNets, LoveNets--those I can get any info on. We've
got to do something about those bastards."
"They won't admit their security isn't perfect. Lose customer confidence."
"On the ThrillNets? They're not into safety; I'd be hard put to tell the
difference between a virus and some legit ThrillWare."
Ouch, I thought. "I still don't see why you think it's an assassin and not just
an odd bit of bootleg code."
"Because--" then she sighed. "Just a gut feeling. One, it's addressed to the
mood circuits. Two, it isn't the fragment you'd expect for a legit program
chewed up by the perscom programs or the nets. Three, it's off a suicide. I've
sent out for records from other suicides--"
"Kiss off your social life for the next century."