Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [31]
‘As a child he probably played at being Robinson Crusoe.’
‘This isn’t a game,’ said Peri. ‘I’ve had about as much of this as I can take.’
‘An entire world’s safety may depend on our actions over the next few days. You’re part of that work, Peri, and not for the first time.’
‘This isn’t an adventure,’ she retorted. ‘This is more like a nightmare. Like a screwed up version of normal life. I can’t do this much longer. I mean, here we are back home – this is my big chance just to go back to living a normal life.’
‘Peri, said the Doctor softly ‘you’re thinking of leaving?’
‘Yes: she said quietly.
He hesitated. ‘You’re tired,’ he said. ‘We’re all a little fatigued.’ Bob indicated his agreement with a wall-shaking snore. ‘Let’s talk again in the morning.’
Peri said, ‘OK.’ But from where I was lying, it sounded as though her mind was already made up.
We had driven past Swan without even realising. In her navy coat, she would have been an anonymous, dark figure walking in the snow. I don’t think any of us even noticed her.
Swan watched us go. She waited until the police were finished cruising up and down Bob’s street, looking for whoever had been tampering with the bridging box. She waited a little longer in case the telephone company sent someone to check things out. Then she walked up to Bob’s front door and let herself in with the key Mondy had provided.
Inside, she snapped on the lights. She had brought a flashlight just in case, but it would look far more suspicious to the neighbours than a few lights around the house. Inside her mittens she was wearing black cotton gloves. Despite the burglar gear, she wasn’t here to steal anything. Unless you count privacy as something that can be stolen.
Bob’s study was Swan’s first stop. She ran a gloved finger along the spines of the occult books. She had many of the titles at home herself. Magical systems are not unlike computer systems: both are attempts to change the structure of a world through the use of special languages. Hackers jokingly call their more abstruse bits of programming incantations.
Swan was amused that computers ran on ‘hex’ code. And both are attempts to usurp power. The magician harnesses the powers of the elements or the spirits. The hacker borrows the power of the phone system, or the computer network.
Swan wasn’t superstitious; she read number theory and genetics as well as alchemy and astrology, and saw them all as reflections of programming. But a lot of hackers took the occult seriously. They’d try to hack any system if they thought it would bring them a little power, or better, a little kudos.
What was Bob’s attitude?
Swan went through Bob’s filing cabinet and the drawers of his desk, jotting down numbers and details in her little notebook. Soon she had his banking details, his driver’s licence number, his credit card details, and plenty more. She could have got a lot of this through hacking, of course, but the simplest solution is often the best. She had stolen plenty of passwords just by looking over someone’s shoulder as they typed.
Bob’s bedroom was a mattress on the floor, a couple of toolboxes, and a collection of stuffed animals cluttering a chipped dresser. On Bob’s bed she found a scrapbook open to a collection of newspaper cuttings. She sat down on the bed and turned the pages carefully with a gloved finger.
The military computer scandal had been all over the papers at the time. Despite his father’s efforts to shield him, Bob’s name and even his school photo turned up in print, one of a ‘small group of civilians’ who helped stop the navy’s computers being cracked wide open by Xerxes’ program. A foreign hacker named ‘the Doctor’ was mentioned as well, a man twice Bob’s age. Nothing more was known about him, except that he’d been instrumental in uncovering the plot.
Swan had Mondy’s cassette tape from our all too brief session of wiretapping. The Doctor was back, and alert to another danger to the world’s computers. Swan smiled a sour smile.