The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (8 page)

Riley seemed
surprised at the question.  “She has a GoCom entrance ID.  The minute
she tries to use it, we’ll be waiting for her.”

“Don’t you think
she’s well aware of that?”

Riley
hesitated.  “Well, if she doesn’t intend to use it to get in the building,
why do you think she stole it?”

Holiday
shrugged.  “Here’s another question:  Why do you suppose she’s made
very sure that we all know she has it?”

Riley was always
flustered to begin with.  By now he was particularly flustered. 
“Okay, Giles.  Since you seem to have this all figured out, how about you
just skip to the end and tell me what she’s up to.”

“I’m sure I have
no idea.  And I’m sure you don’t either.”

Riley
grunted.  “We’ll see.”

“We shall
indeed.”  Now Director Holiday didn’t try to suppress his smile at all.

10

IN
a poorer neighborhood a few blocks east of the Aurora Bridge, Jill stood
looking through a rusting chain link fence.  The back yard on the other
side of the fence was small, but still managed to contain a lot of clutter.

She wasn’t
looking at the clutter.  She was looking where she always looked when she
came back to this place, at the boughs of the old tree in the back corner of
the yard.  The tree house she and Jerry had built was still there, still
holding together.  And their initials would still be carved on the wall
inside, though she’d never bothered to check.  They’d promised to stay
soul-mates forever, she and Jerry Grant—Jerry G, as he liked to be
called.  Dreams like that are very believable when you’re only eleven
years old.

But a lot can
change in seven years.  A lot had changed in just one year, actually.

Jill still
thought Jerry G had started drifting away from her before she’d drifted away
from him.  He was good with computers—
really
good with
computers.  Especially old computers and old operating systems that no one
used anymore.  But by the time she was twelve, Jill suspected Jerry was no
longer using his skills for innocent purposes.

Of course by then
Jill wasn’t living such an innocent life herself anymore.  Since then
they’d seen each other once a year or so, only when they were partners in
crime. 
Erranders
could make good use of a solid
hacker now and then, and the other way around.

It seemed
fitting, Jill thought as she hopped the fence, that they should be partners in
her very last crime.

There was a
cement stairwell leading from the back yard to the basement of the Grant
home.  She’d heard his music thumping from outside the fence.  It was
nearly deafening when she opened the door.

Jerry G didn’t
see her at first.  He was at his computer—one of them, that is. 
Computers and parts of computers took up most of the space in the cramped
basement room.  A few glowing monitors were the only source of
light.  His big curly afro was silhouetted against the largest
screen.  The screen was filled with lines and lines of code.  He was
adding more lines as she approached him, and his hair was bobbing gracefully to
the music.

“The Grateful
Dead, isn’t it?” she asked when she stood directly behind him.

He squawked at an
embarrassingly high pitch as he jumped to his feet and whirled around.  In
an instant he’d regained his composure and thrown his gangly arms around
her.  “Jillian!  Don’t scare me like that, girl!”

“Sorry.” 
She smiled at the sight of that scraggly attempt at a beard on his pasty white
face.  The beard was no better than when he’d first tried it at age
thirteen.  “Good to see you, Jerry G.”

He turned down
his music.  “Man, it’s great to see you too, Jillian!  What’s up?”

“I need your
help.”

“Oh.”

She saw a glint
of sadness in his eyes, like maybe he’d hoped that for once she’d come to see
him just to see him, no other reason.  His expression stirred something
inside her.  For a moment she was eleven years old again and believing in
the promise she’d made as she carved a J. B. just below his J. G.

But then the
moment was over and the pretending had to stop.  The sadness mostly fled from
his eyes, and he was all business.  “Sure.  Anything for you, girl.”

“It’s pretty
risky, Jerry.”

“Isn’t everything
we do, nowadays?”

“If we get
caught, we’re in big trouble.”

Jerry G jerked a
thumb at the code on the screen behind him.  “Probably not as much trouble
as I’m in if they find out about that.  Come on, Jillian, it’s me! 
Tell me about it.”

“For starters,
take a look at this.”  She handed him an ID card with Martin P. Daniels’
name and photo on it.

“Hey, that’s a
GoCom ID!  Cool.  Useless, but cool.”

“Not useless.”

“What are you
saying?  You try to use that to get inside GoCom, they’ll be all over you
before you know it.  Especially considering the recent history between you
and that place.  Yeah, I heard all about that.  Nice going, by the way.”

“Thanks.  I
know I can’t use it that way.  But can I reprogram it?”

Jerry G wrinkled
his forehead.  “How would that help?  They’d still catch you, even if
you had another profile on the card.”

“Trust me,
Jerry.  I’ve got a plan.  So can you?”

“Sure, they can
be reprogrammed.  But I don’t have the stuff to do it.  We’d need a
little thing called a Benson-Starr translator.  That’s what GoCom uses to
program the cards in the first place.  It’s a device that attaches to a
computer—the computer being used to access the card.  It allows
information to pass safely between the computer and the card.  Hence the
name.”

“You can’t just
hack the card?”

He shook his
head.  “I’ve tried.  The minute you try to hack it, it
self-destructs.”

“Like, blows up?”

He rolled his
eyes.  “Like erases itself.  It recognizes a rogue signal trying to
infiltrate its contents.  Besides, these IDs use a totally different
information storage system than any I’ve ever seen.  I can’t access them
with my computer, or any computer I know of.”

“So it’s like
trying to talk to someone who speaks another language?”

“Another
type
of language, even.  You don’t know Spanish, but if you read Spanish you’d
at least have a chance of understanding a little.  It uses basically the
same letters as English, and has similar roots.”

“So it would be
like if I tried to read Chinese.”

“More like if you
tried to understand ASL.”

“ASL?”

“Sign
language.  Unlike English, it’s not written or spoken; it’s a totally
different type of communication.  You’d need a translator who knew how to
understand both types of communication.  That’s why the device that passes
info between computers and GoCom IDs is called a translator.  It deals
with two completely separate types of information.”

“What sort of
information storage does the ID use?”

He
shrugged.  “No idea.”

“But if you had
the translator, you could reprogram the card.”

“Sure, but unless
you plan on going to the Home Planet, breaking into Benson-Starr Enterprises in
London, and stealing one—”

“I may know
someone who has one.”

“Yeah?” 
Jerry G looked skeptical.

“I’ll bring it
over when I’ve got it.”

“I doubt
it.  Benson-Starr manufactures them exclusively for GoCom.  But hey,
assuming you
are
able to get your hands on a translator, what exactly do
you want me to do?”

“Why?  Are
you thinking of bailing out on me?”

His eyes
shifted.  “It just seems like you may be in over your head on this one.”

“I already told
you it would be risky.  You didn’t seem to mind.”

“There’s risky,
and there’s risky.  I didn’t realize GoCom was involved.  You want to
just summarize what you’re planning on doing?”

“I’m playing the
biggest prank that’s ever been played on the Anterran government.”

Jerry G’s concern
was helpless against the excitement this explanation brought.  “I don’t
know, Jill.  Okay, I’m in.”

“I figured. 
I’ll be back with the translator.”

He looked into
her eyes a moment—a moment sort of like that other moment when she first got
here.  “Yeah, great, Jillian.  See you then.”

WHILE
the sun came up she waited by the
Northshore
Garage.  Matt was the first to arrive.  He seemed a little too happy
to see her.  She asked him about the translator.

“Sure I’ve got
some of those.  You need some GoCom ID work done?”

“I want the
translators themselves.”

“Well, that’ll
cost you.”

“So you said you
have more than one?”

“Several.  I
know a guy in London.”

“I need three.”

“Must have
something interesting planned, sweetness.  I guess I could spare three of
them.  Did I mention it’ll cost you?”

“You did, but
that was as specific as you got.”

“Try two thousand
credits.”

“Let’s skip the
bantering and hear your final offer.”

The lewd smile
made another appearance.  “What about that date we talked about?”

“We didn’t talk
about a date.”

“How about fifteen
hundred credits, and you and I have dinner someplace nice?”

“How about
thirteen hundred credits, and I don’t kick you in the crotch right now?”

He sniffed. 
“All right, deal.”

“I’ll give you
half up front.  You’ll get the other half when and if they work.”

“Believe me, they
work—unfortunately for you.  Messing with
GoCom’ll
only get you in trouble.”

She winced. 
He was probably dead right on that one.

“I
got
nothin
’ more to say.”  The man who called
himself Mr. Love still had several tattoos showing despite his long-sleeved
prison garb.  He sat at the table in the interrogation room with arms
crossed, frowning exaggeratedly.

Across from him
sat Director Holiday.  “I won’t force you to cooperate,” he said blandly.

“I already
cooperated.  I told you who my clients were.”

“You told us who
some of them were.”

“All of ’
em
!”

Holiday shook his
head.  “All but one.”

Love looked
away.  The guilt was all over his face.

“Come, man, stop
pretending,” Holiday said evenly.  “We have evidence that there’s another
client of yours that you’re refusing to tell us about.  If you don’t want
to name him, fine.  But I recommend that you at least stop lying to us
about him.  That won’t help your case.”  Holiday stood and walked
toward the door.  Before exiting, he paused.  “On the other hand, if
you do tell us more about this particular client, it
will
help your
case—perhaps a great deal.”

Love bit his lip,
darted his eyes around.

“Well?” Holiday
asked.

Love shook his
head.

“Have it your
way,” said the director.  He opened the door.

“I got my
reasons,” Love whispered behind him.

Holiday closed
the door.  “I’m sure you do,” he said to himself.  He gestured for
the guards outside the room to escort Love back to his cell.

The director
smiled on his way back to his office.  Love may not have cooperated yet,
but Holiday’s seasoned instincts could tell he was cracking.  Sooner or
later he was going to tell them everything.

JILL
found Jerry on the couch in his basement.  He had a bedroom upstairs, but
no one remembered the last time he’d slept in his actual bed.  Jerry G
wasn’t used to hitting the sack before three or four in the morning.  He
also wasn’t used to getting up before noon, but it was eight o’clock when Jill
shook him awake.  That made him a little grumpy.

He got over it
when he saw the three devices Jill had brought over.  They were fairly
compact, roughly cubic in shape.  Benson-Starr translators.  He
looked at her in surprise and admiration.  “How?”

“You know better
than to ask.  Can we get to work?”

Jerry G rubbed
his eyes.  “If you explain what sort of work you have in mind.”

“We’d better test
the translators first.”

“Ah, so your
source may not be the most trustworthy fellow?”

Jill didn’t
answer.  She gestured to his main computer.

Jerry sat at it
like a pilot in the cockpit.  “Okay.  I don’t think I mentioned that
we need a specific piece of software to recognize the translator and access the
ID.”

“No, you didn’t,”
Jill sighed.  “So how—?”

“Don’t worry,
I’ve got the software.  It’s not hard to get, really.  They don’t
protect it very thoroughly, considering it’s worthless without the
translator.”  He was unscrewing a panel in one side of the translator.

“What are you
doing?” Jill asked concernedly.

“Just checking it
out.  I’ve never seen one of these, and I’m curious.”

“It was hard to
get, so don’t ruin it, okay?”

He whistled as he
looked at the interior of the device.  “I think it’s acoustic.”

“What?”

“The information
is relayed through sound.  See these tiny parts here?  They realign
to create different pitches—pitches human ears can’t detect, of course. 
Different exact pitches translate into different segments of information.
 That’s what the GoCom IDs use.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Cool,” said
Jill, sounding like she didn’t think it was that cool.  She’d never shared
Jerry G’s fascination for the technical side of things.  She was much more
interested in the practical.  “So are we good to go?”

He plugged the
translator into a jack on his computer.  “I think so.  It should take
the info from the card and turn it into info my computer can interact with.”

“How close do I
have to get for the card to be accessed?”

“You can leave
the card in your pocket and stand up to fifteen feet away if you want. 
The signal reaches at least that far.  Here, I’ve already got Daniels’
info.”

Sure enough,
there it was on the screen: scans of Martin P. Daniels’ photo, birth
certificate, social security card, background check, and pages and pages of
other information.

“Now,” said Jerry
G, turning to look Jill in the eye, “you want to let me know exactly what
you’re planning?”

“Could you delete
the info on the card?”

“Why would we do
that?”

“I don’t want you
to.  I’m just asking if you could.”

“Of course.”

“What if you
weren’t here?”

He gave her a
puzzled look.  “What?”

“Could you make
the computer delete the information of any GoCom ID card that came within range
of the translator, whether you were present or not?”