Evil Genius (13 page)

Cadel sucked in his breath. "Fantastic!" he exclaimed.

Two people were at work in the room, hunched over keyboards. One was the pasty youth from the canteen; he had brought a can of Coke back with him. The other was a fat man in a faded shirt. He had quite a lot of lank, gray hair flopping over his forehead; his face was mottled; there was a sty in one of his little muddy-green eyes; and he smelled strongly of eucalyptus oil. Lined up on the desk in front of him were a box of aloe vera tissues, a bottle of nasal spray, a jar of Vicks VapoRub, and some pills in a plastic card.

He kept sniffing and blinking as Thaddeus introduced him to the Piggotts.

"This is Dr. Vee," Thaddeus informed them. "We're lucky to find him here—he does a lot of consulting work."

"Hello," said Lanna.

"Pleased to meet you," said Stuart.

Dr. Vee shook hands with them, giggling nervously. Then he turned to Cadel.

"Is this the one?" he asked.

"This is the one," said Thaddeus.

Another giggle. Mr. and Mrs. Piggott glanced at each other. Cadel didn't know what to make of this fat, unhealthy-looking man. He had fingers like sausages. Could he really be a computer whiz?

"So you're the baby hacker?" said Dr. Vee, blinking furiously at Cadel. "Thaddeus told me about you."

Cadel didn't know how to reply.

"I do a lot of firewall customization," Dr. Vee went on. "Bet you've never got through one of mine."

"That depends," Cadel retorted, "on which ones they are."

"Oh, I usually concentrate on port and protocol filters. I've done some neat little stateful inspection devices—viruses are my specialty."

"Oh," said Cadel.

"You weren't writing viruses, though, were you?"

"No," Cadel admitted, conscious of Mr. and Mrs. Piggott hovering at the edge of his vision. "Mostly I was doing application back doors, remote log-ins, tracking down personal keys, information gathering. No bombs or anything. No viruses."

"Right. Hmm." Dr. Vee coughed and reached for a tissue. "Interesting thing to study, viruses. That's where the money is. Stuff like denial-of-service attacks—they're all sewn up now. There's hardly a firewall that can't auto-apply blocking. But with viruses, it's a constant battle." Dr. Vee giggled again. "You should try to break the Axis firewall sometime. No one's ever done it. Our file-transfer protocols around here are like Fort Knox."

"Really?" said Cadel.

"Just warning you in advance." Dr. Vee blew his nose. "Take a tip from Richard over there. He tried to design a cookie-hopping application—spent months on it. Waste of time. Work down the drain. Now he's doing something useful, trying to write an encryption technology bug."

Cadel looked with interest at the pasty, chinless, flaxen-haired youth with the can of Coke. Then he focused his attention on Dr. Vee. Somewhere behind that heavy, moist, giggling facade, Cadel sensed, was an intellect of sly and formidable power. He was half repelled, half fascinated by it.

"I had a look at your course outline," he said. "I'm interested in hardware design, but you seem to be concentrating on software."

Dr. Vee blinked at him. "We're very flexible," he answered. "You can concentrate on whatever you like, as long as it's not the Axis firewall."

"You can
help
me with hardware design?"

Dr. Vee's face was suddenly serious. He regarded Cadel with narrowed eyes.

"Depends what you're interested in," he wheezed.

"Molecular electronics. DNA-directed assembly. That kind of thing."

Once more Dr. Vee giggled. "Nanoboy!" he crowed. "Oh, I'll be in on that! Big-time!"

"I'm also trying to develop a predictive software program," Cadel continued, "but it's tricky. Organizing the data—there's so much..."

"You need more flash memory?"

"Maybe."

"We'll take a look at it."

"Assuming Cadel decides in our favor," Thaddeus observed, and Dr. Vee shrugged. Abruptly, almost rudely, he twirled his chair back to face his computer monitor again. His big, fat fingers began to flutter with surprising delicacy over his keyboard.
Click, click, click.

Thaddeus retreated, beckoning to the Piggotts.

"We might duck up to the labs," he said softly when they had exited through the swinging doors. "Then down to ground level, and that's the lot."

"Strange sort of bloke," Stuart remarked, glancing back at Hardware Heaven. "Can't say I took to him."

"Was he sick?" Lanna asked.

"Oh, he's always sick," Thaddeus rejoined, with a wave of his hand. "It's a permanent condition with him. Doesn't affect his work, though."

"I didn't think much of him," said Stuart. "What did you think, Cadel?"

"I think he must be pretty good," Cadel replied. And since no one else wanted to express an opinion, Thaddeus headed for the labs on the second floor. Here the Piggotts were allowed to peer through glass windows at rooms full of steel-topped benches and esoteric equipment. Cadel recognized an atomic-force microscope.

Very few people were about, and most of the rooms shown to Cadel were empty.

"A few graduate students," Thaddeus explained. He grimaced as they hit a very nasty smell, which was hovering around one of the closed doors marked with a
HAZMAT
(hazardous material) sign. Cadel had noticed a lot of closed doors. "Dear me," said Thaddeus. "
Someone's
been busy. I have to admit I don't come up here, as a rule—too many noisome odors."

"So what do they do here?" Lanna asked faintly, flapping her plane ticket in front of her face.

"Microbiology. Some biometrics. A little genetic research. Ah." Rounding a corner, Thaddeus spotted a tall, slim man in a lab coat, who was punching his pass code into a digital lock. "Just the person I was looking for. Terry! Come and introduce yourself! Terry is in charge here," Thaddeus revealed. "He's better placed than I am to explain what goes on."

Terry was quite young. He wore blue jeans under his lab coat, and his long, brown hair hung in a ponytail down his back. He had an olive complexion, and his teeth were very white; when he smiled, his eyes crinkled pleasantly at the corners. Lanna was obviously charmed by him, especially when he addressed her in a rough-edged baritone, and Stuart was pleased when Terry confessed that he had recently read about Stuart's firm in the papers.

Cadel decided that his adoptive parents must have missed the young scientist's hands. They were long and fine-boned, but covered in scratches, nicks, and Band-Aids. There was something dark under two of the fingernails, and a reddish smear on one thumb.

Terry's hands didn't seem to match the rest of him.

"Stuart and Lanna would like to know what goes on here," Thaddeus informed his colleague, who immediately launched into a rambling description of his department's activities, using lots of words like
erythrocytes
and
bacteriorhodopsin.
Naturally, Mr. and Mrs. Piggott were unable to follow him and so stood with glazed expressions, trying to be polite. Cadel couldn't follow Terry, either, but not because he couldn't understand the words being used. The words were perfectly clear to Cadel—they were just being put together in sequences that made no sense.

Catching the scientist's eye, Cadel saw him wink and realized what was happening. Terry didn't want Mr. and Mrs. Piggott to know what was
really
going on in the labs.

"Right," said Thaddeus, after Terry had finally finished. "So would you like to have a quick look at one of the lecture rooms before you leave? Stuart? Lanna?"

"Oh—uh—yes," said Mr. Piggott.

"Thank you
so
much," said his wife, addressing Terry, who flashed a big, white grin at her. Then he saluted Thaddeus, muttered a shy farewell, and loped off down the corridor, his ponytail swinging.

Lanna's gaze lingered on his receding back.

"Nice bloke," Stuart remarked absently, pulling a handkerchief from his front pocket. He used it to mop his sweaty brow. "One more stop, did you say?"

"One more," Thaddeus agreed. Again they all crowded into an elevator and were carried to the ground floor, where Thaddeus showed them a seminar room, a lecture room, and his own office. The seminar room was small and beige, with a stack of plastic chairs. The lecture room had been fitted out at least a hundred years before with rows of wooden benches, an elaborately carved lectern, and huge, dangling lights.

Thaddeus's office was very handsome. Through its Gothic window you could see a stretch of green lawn and a jacaranda tree. On either side of this refreshing view hung heavy velvet curtains. There was a Persian carpet on the floor, and a large, mahogany desk on top of it. Thaddeus sat behind the desk in a leather-upholstered wing chair, while the Piggotts faced him, each perched on a straight-backed chair of English oak. The carvings on these ancient pieces of furniture dug into their backs, making them shift and squirm.

"So." Thaddeus addressed Stuart and Lanna. "You've seen enough now?"

"Oh yes."

"Yes."

"What about you, Cadel?" Thaddeus's eyes were keen under drooping lids. He pressed his fingertips together. "Is there anything else you'd like to ask me?"

"No."

"Where's the money coming from?" Stuart demanded suddenly. "There's obviously a lot of it knocking around."

"We have some private benefactors," said Thaddeus. "They're listed here." He pushed a small pile of literature across his desk. "If you can't find what you want to know in here, you can always give me a call."

Stuart grunted and seized the proffered booklets. Lanna rose. She tapped her gold watch with one crimson fingernail.

"I'm so sorry, Doctor, but my flight leaves in eighty minutes."

"Of course. I understand."

"It was very interesting. Thank you."

"My pleasure."

"Maybe we can call Cadel a taxi? To take him home? Rather than dragging him all the way to the airport."

"An excellent idea," said Thaddeus, lifting the receiver of his telephone. A taxi was summoned. Later, after the Piggotts had left, Thaddeus took Cadel out to the gates of the Axis Institute, where they waited together for Cadel's taxi.

"What do you think?" Thaddeus inquired, laying a hand on Cadel's shoulder. "Can you make use of this place? Dr. Darkkon would like to think so. But it's entirely your choice."

Cadel craned his neck to look back at the towering seminary, with its bristling turrets.

"He's paying for
all
of it? Everything?"

"Everything," Thaddeus replied. "It's part of his plan to undermine the society of morons and procrastinators in which we're presently forced to live. If things go on as they are, Cadel, we're heading for disaster. The entire ecosystem is going to collapse, for one thing. We need a person in charge with a few brains. Someone who can make informed decisions and have them carried out by specially trained cadres of operatives." Thaddeus squeezed Cadel's shoulder. "So what about it?" he inquired. "Do you want to give it a try? You'll find it very invigorating, I guarantee you that. A really thorough preparation for life."

Cadel reflected on what he had seen. In front of him, a traffic jam was inching along; the hot air was laden with exhaust fumes, and horns honked irritably. On the other side of the road was a furniture warehouse, only partially painted, next to a dentist's office with a
FOR SALE
sign in the window.

Behind him, the stately old seminary building stood surrounded by closely cropped lawn. A sprinkler sprayed a glittering arc of water across a bed of glossy azaleas. It was very calm. Very quiet. It was like another world.

It
was
another world.

Cadel peered up at Thaddeus, whose gray hair was swept back from his forehead like a lion's mane.

He was waiting patiently.

"All right," said Cadel. "I'll give it a try."

"Excellent."

"As long as you explain it to me," Cadel went on. "I don't quite understand, you see, what everyone's supposed to be doing."

"All will be explained, Cadel." This time, Thaddeus patted Cadel's shoulder before releasing it. "All will be explained, I assure you."

At his next session with Thaddeus, Cadel found out more about the Axis Institute. Dr. Darkkon was only too pleased to answer all of his son's questions.

"Oh yes. Dr. Vee. We call him the Virus." Dr. Darkkon's spectacles had been confiscated by suspicious warders who had come to realize that he could see perfectly well without them, so he was now speaking into a toilet bowl. This piece of plumbing, which stood stark and gleaming in the corner of his cell, had been modified with a transmitter and a screen of thin plastic that floated on top of the water. Its only drawback lay in the fact that Dr. Darkkon now had to feign illness all the time. "The Virus is extremely talented," he croaked, and pretended to retch before continuing. "It's quite true—he
does
design customized firewalls. On his days off, he also creates methods for breaking through the same firewalls. That's the way he keeps himself in business."

"Then why does he teach at the institute?" Cadel queried.

"Because he can do whatever he likes," Dr. Darkkon explained, "without having thickheads continually snooping and interfering. He likes the challenge, too. He likes the sort of minds we attract. And of course we pay well.
Very
well."

Cadel pondered this. After a while, he said, "What about that Brendan guy? Why is he at the institute?"

"Because no one else will hire him," Dr. Darkkon revealed. "He puts people off, being autistic. People find him hard to deal with. Personally, I don't care
what
he says to the students. It's no skin off my nose."

"Brendan doesn't understand why he can't move numbers around at will," Thaddeus interjected. "For him, tax laws are simply obstacles to be surmounted. He has no comprehension of rules at all. Thinks they're illogical. He just wants to get on with things."

"And Art?" said Cadel. "What does he do?"

Dr. Darkkon coughed into the screen for a few seconds, his shoulders heaving. It wasn't a pretty sight.