Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [24]
He nodded and reached for the phone, but Peri had already picked it up. No-one had deigned to tell her the numbers for the looparound pair, so she’d simply watched Bob dial the number in his study.
The high tone stabbed into her ear. Peri sat down in the chair belonging to whoever worked in the cramped room. It was actually kind of hard to do. In real life, she thought, you’d never just go into someone’s office and sit at their desk. Bob seemed pretty comfortable, running his flashlight along the shelves to check out the collection of computer manuals.
‘Don’t take anything!’ Peri said, alarmed. Bob snapped off the light and sat down on the edge of the desk.
They sat there for a while. The only sound was the squeal-pause-squeal of the phone. ‘Bob,’ whispered Peri, ‘have you ever been in jail?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever been in trouble at all?’
‘Worried about getting caught?’ She wanted to grab him by the hair and shout, ‘Of course I am, you moron!’ but instead she just nodded. ‘Don’t be. What we really have to worry about is what Swan will do if she finds out who we are.’
‘We’re burglars! Can she really do worse things to us than put us in prison?’
‘To the police, we’ve got things like rights and privacy, said Bob. And they don’t have enough manpower to spend all day making our lives hell. Swan’s hobby is picking on people who’ve annoyed her.’
‘Well, how?’
‘Cancelling your driver’s licence,’ said Bob. ‘Killing your phone and your computer. Wrecking your credit rating.
Sending pizzas to your house. Or taxis. Or ambulances.’
‘She can do all of that?’
‘The right computers can do all of it. Get into them, and you can borrow their power for yourself. I’d much rather tangle with the Feds than Sarah Swan.’
Peri looked around the stranger’s office. Tonight they’d be at home with their family. Maybe peeling potatoes for Christmas dinner. She wondered if they would realise someone had been in their space. That would be a creepy feeling. ‘Have you actually ever done this before?’
Bob shook his head, flashing a grin in the near-darkness.
‘Never in my life.’
The phone said, ’Are you there?’
Peri gripped it. ‘We hear you, Doctor.’
‘Good. Since you’re calling, I assume by now you’re somewhere inside the building.’ Peri felt slightly deaf in one ear. She shifted the receiver to the other ear, but the Doctor’s voice was still annoyingly quiet on the other side of the test line. (He was calling from a payphone in the hotel lobby, his computer still connected to Swan’s. )
‘We’re here. What are we supposed to do now?’
‘Swan will be busy for a little while. The item we’re after is in a storeroom in the basement. I had assumed she would keep it close at hand, but apparently she’s locked it away where no-one would think to look for it.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Hackers have one weakness,’ said the Doctor smugly.
‘They always want someone to know what they’re up to. They need an audience.’
‘Uh, right, Doctor.’
‘Now, off you go.’
Peri put down the phone. For a panicked moment she wondered if she’d left fingerprints on it, before she remembered that she was wearing gloves. I could never do this professionally, she thought.
Two floors above them, Sarah Swan was physically disconnecting the computer from the ARPAnet. It was the equivalent of tearing the phone cord out of the wall.
Bob and Peri snuck out of the office that had been their hideaway and went back to the fire-stairs.
Halfway down, Peri grabbed Bob’s arm, rather harder than she’d meant to. They both froze. In the empty building, the sound of footsteps was hard and clear above them.
The only way to go was downwards. They rushed down the stairs, sneakers pattering, hoping to God the firedoor was enough to muffle the sound.
Peri was still holding Bob’s arm. She steered him into a narrow side corridor which led to a bathroom. Bob killed his flashlight as the firedoor opened up above them.
There wasn’t time to squash into the cubicle. Instead they stood stock-still in the lightless corridor, trying to be invisible.
A fluorescent