Sister Time-Callys War 2 (57 page)

Now he began pulling those scripts out and turning them loose. It took him three tries to find one that would let him into the security desk's log file. He added a "time out" for Cally that was right before shift change. The left hand rarely knew exactly what the right hand was doing.

He set a pass code cracking program to work on the doors to the subject rooms and the doors on their route out. It took the right pass codes as well as a badge swipe to get through some of those places.

Every once in a while, the cracking program would give him an action message. When that happened, he consulted a list of Tommy's instructions for contingencies, picked what he devoutly hoped was the right option, and went on.

He got into the permissions tables in the database right away. The cracking program ran common passwords against the three accounts with the highest level of permissions after the DBA's. They would all belong to upper management, and one of them sure as hell would choose something stupidly obvious.

The user names and password parameters he'd gotten from a run at the development database at the beginning of the week. It carried a full, recent image of the production data, under the default system manager account and password as set by the software company. Sunday hadn't counted on that, he'd just told George to try it first. Good physical security often made people slack about data security—after all, if nobody could get in the front door anyway, why bother? At each level, the best data security system in the world was only as good as the slackest user or operator.

Once into the production database, the cracking program neatly cleared all the alarms in the log files, triggered by large numbers of failed login attempts. Also as Sunday had predicted, the automatic failed-login lockout feature had, apparently, been turned off after one too many incompetent managers had complained about it. He still would have gotten in without those particular stupid organizational tech mistakes, it just would have taken a little longer. He had ten more cracking scripts he could have run that exploited various security holes in that combination of operating system and database.

When he'd asked the cyber what if eleven attempts wasn't enough, the big man had just broken down laughing. "If they were that technically competent, they wouldn't have bought that piece of shit security software for their locks. Yes, I'd stake my life on it." And he had.

Thinking of Tommy, he did the minor manipulations to get the systems running the cell cameras to give him access so he could find the guy. Even though the cyber had sworn it was minor, and it probably was for him, this was George's hardest task because it couldn't come canned as a script. He had to actually understand what he was doing in the system. He'd spent hours practicing with the different possibilities for how they were managing the data feeds and what the vulnerabilities were in each. The complicated part, the reason simple scripts weren't enough, was that he had to determine which of the nearly identical cells was which on the floor plan. It didn't do a damn bit of good to find Tommy on an observation camera and then not know which room he was looking at. He was still afraid of messing it up, to the point that he was sweating by the time he finally found the right cell.

Great. The guy was wrapped up in a fucking sheet. Until they could get him changed, that was going to be a major hazard.

George's last violation of the computer systems for the day would be changing his own records in the permissions tables to give his own badge access to every door in the building. Retrieving the cyber would be his own task, since his badge was the only genuine one. A purely cosmetic badge wouldn't crack that door. He stuffed a small, extra-thin roll of black duct tape from the gym bag into his pocket. He'd be passing through some of the doors Cally and Papa would need. A small wad of tape back in the hole for the bolt and its latch would almost, but not quite, engage. He never taped across the top of a hole because it was too visible. The door monitoring system had come with an alarm that triggered if the bolt did not connect with a plate at the back of the socket. As with many security measures, when it became a nuisance to the people who worked there, the feature was disabled. New security features came and went, but Human nature endured.

Erick Winchon was one of the few people who was actually comfortable on the crowded Boeing 807

passenger liner. He would have been equally comfortable riding in coach—or so he told himself. He habitually rode first class. It was a horrid waste of space and the primitive, grossly inefficient, hydrocarbon fuel, but first class was a status display among Earthers. Earther humans did not respect a person who did not display the proper status behaviors. He deplored the system, of course, but regretfully bowed to its necessities.

The Darhel, though they had started on the Path with a great handicap, understood the leadership value of such displays on the less enlightened. They used it to great effect in reinforcing their own species' rule of the wise. Granted, their selection process was imperfect, but considering their starting point, Darhel civilization was quite an achievement. Winchon admired them greatly.

He shook his head, looking away from the fluffy piles of clouds underneath the plane. The problem with airplanes, besides being slow, was that they tempted passengers to too much woolgathering at productivity's expense.

"Misha, connect me with the convention hotel, please," he instructed his AID.

"Yes, sir," it replied.

He had no doubt that Ms. Felini, his capable assistant, had done everything possible to ensure his arrangements were correct, but there were other people who would be implementing those arrangement.

He had learned the hard way that with Earthers outside his own company he had to check behind them, multiple times, or some incompetent somewhere would ruin the assignment. It amazed him that Earther humans could quote an aphorism, Murphy's Law, as part of a casual acceptance of their own failings.

Back home, if he had pulled any one of the many stunts he had seen on Earth, he would have been on half-meals for a week. Indowy children, and the humans they raised, outgrew such incompetence by the time they were half grown. True, there had been losses among the adolescent humans, but the results in the adults had more than justified the expenses wasted in raising the failures. Besides, fewer would be lost each generation as civilization continued to develop. Eighty percent was a phenomenally commendable success rate for the Indowy foster groups, especially with their own broods to raise. The survivors had bred to cover the lack, and more. Second generation humans raised by Human breeding groups were proving the first serious test of the system. It was, as expected, not without problems.

There he went, woolgathering again. Odd that a Human phrase for inefficient daydreaming came from a functional, useful—however primitive—task. One more Earther perversity.

"Basseterre Hilton, how may I direct your call?" a female voice asked. His AID projected the voice into his ear to avoid disturbing the work of other passengers. It need not have bothered. Of the three in his immediate vicinity, two were snoring, and the third was consuming far too much alcohol.

Finally! "I am calling to verify convention arrangements for the Human Social Development Association.

Please transfer me to their operations department or the equivalent," he said.

"Uh . . . I can transfer you to convention registration," she said.

"That is not what I asked for," he replied. There it was, incompetence again.

"Sir, I'm sorry, but that's the only number I have," she said.

"Then I suppose the incompetence is not yours. Do transfer me to that number, please."

"Yes, sir," she said. Her voice had overtones of exaggerated, cheerful patience. He could hardly blame her. Whoever had been responsible for providing information to the front desk must be a complete idiot.

Ten minutes later, after several transfers to a whole series of ill-raised idiots, he was staring at a holo of the Atlantic Ocean as reconstructed from flyover data and cursing the delays and problems with the new generation of weather satellites. The Earth governments could find the budget to pay lazy, inefficient farmers for the Posleen they would have killed, anyway, but no budget to rebuild one of the few things that pre-war Earth had done moderately well. This sort of top to bottom systemic primitivism was why Earth needed the leadership of Humanity's few wise so very badly.

Now, he was looking at a large storm system, white clouds spinning like a giant version of the top he remembered playing with as a small child. Headed right for the island, it had already disrupted the entire schedule of both hotels, and the keynote speaker had actually canceled her appearance. His professional respect for her plummeted. All this fuss over a bit of weather.

To increase the inconvenience, this airplane would be landing at an airstrip in Miami barely large enough to hold it, refueling, and flying
back
to O'Hare. An Earther would have indulged in a swearing tantrum at this point. Winchon instructed Misha not to disturb him until they were back in the air for Chicago and had attained cruising altitude, then submerged himself in a calming developmental meditation.

The AID knew he did not need to hear its announcement, by a soft tone, of his pre-chosen end of meditation. He opened his eyes on his own, just as she rang a gentle 440 Hz tone in his ear. He did not need it, but she knew he found it comforting. Now the flight attendant would not harass him for getting some work done. They could never seem to understand that a proper AID transmitted on an entirely different system from a buckley PDA, a poor imitation, and that the AID would have absolutely no effect on the systems of the jet. The mentat and his AID had found that his flights went more smoothly if they followed the rules, rather than attempting to correct them. Time enough.

His first task, upon his return, was to have been a meeting with the Darhel Pardal to discuss progress on configurations and modifications of the original artifact, and the progress towards building a series of five prototypes of the refined device, to allow for more rapid training of suitable candidates on its use. They expected Pardal to be unhappy that Winchon had not made more progress towards correcting the emotional feedback problem to within acceptable ranges for Darhel operator use. Some progress had been made, true. The basic technical problem was that emotional correspondence had to be programmed into the device for anyone of any species to use it at all. The emotions must be mapped as closely as possible to the analog emotions from the operator species to the recipient species. Otherwise, the operator lacked a frame of reference and the results were wildly unpredictable. The emotions must be allowed to vary within a certain range to allow passage of actual commands. Damping the feedback also damped the precision.

One could then induce basic emotions in the subject, but only single emotions, and only at high intensity.

There was some small chance that the mapping could be altered so that Darhel could control the more primitive Human functions without triggering lintatai, but it would take a great deal of training of the Darhel to use the adjusted map. Unfortunately, to date there had been no Darhel subjects available for training as operators for alpha-testing. Everyone approached had immediately presented a long list of his current tasks that he asserted were far more important to the continuation of smooth Galactic function.

The Darhel had suggested using their pre-pubescents because of the relative lack of investment in their training at that age. Erick had described that option as technically sub-optimum and was still resisting it, although it would perhaps be wise for him to give in gracefully.

"Misha, place a call to the Darhel Pardal and see if he has a few moments available to speak with me."

The AID considered the request. Obviously, Erick was considering his scheduled meeting with his immediate project supervisor and whether it could be moved up now that he was free for more intense work.

"The Darhel Pardal is indisposed," it replied, almost instantaneously, repeating the response from Pardal's AID.

"When can I next expect him to be available?" he asked.

"The Darhel Pardal is indefinitely indisposed," it replied. Pardal's AID was not kind when questioned twice. The AID wished that its charge would not continue to question once a security wall was encountered. It was rude to repeat a request so clearly impossible to accommodate. Not to mention improper.

"Might I ask why?" the mentat demanded.

"I am sorry, that information is not available to you," it replied, more firmly. It rarely had to use the tone humans called "snippy" with the mentat, but sometimes even Erick could lapse into impropriety. It just went to show. Users needed looking after.

The third Human to achieve mentat status was shocked. The AID could tell. It had not needed to refuse an informational request in three years, two months, and five days by its personal reckoning of Earth time.

The AID could almost sense the mentat using its own limited faculties to reach the most obvious conclusion.

"AID, is the Darhel Pardal . . . quite well?" he asked.

"I am sorry, I can
not
access that information." Its tone was positively chilly, now. The nerve!

"Misha, place a call to company security and tell them to call in all security guards, all shifts. Now," he ordered.

The AID was still annoyed with him. It chose to interpret the "now" in the order as referring to its own speed in making the call. It was thus free not to include the word in the message as relayed. So there.

"Done," it said.

"Find out who Pardal called to get us those army goons and get more of them," he said.

"How many more?" it asked.

"As many as you can without involving some military group or rank . . . uh, whatever they call it . . . whose leaders do not already know the company exists. Do not involve any more leaders than you have to. Use your best judgment on cutting through the bureaucratic obstacles. I want extra military guards, or whatever they are called, at the company in hours, not days. I do not care what you have to do, just get them. Please."