Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [34]
‘I don’t think it’s gonna happen. The Doctor’s really careful.’
‘So are you, man. Stay careful. Listen, you know you can’t tell me anything now.’
‘You bet I know!’
‘I can’t give away something I don’t know. But she can still find things out, things you wouldn’t believe.’ We both knew what he meant. ‘Try and stay out of it, Chick. Really don’t get involved.’
It was already the middle of the night in Melbourne. If I had actually called my Dad, he would have slammed the phone down before I could contaminate it.
The Doctor and Bob were having a whale of a time The Doctor set up his Apple II in the motel room, plugging the modem into the phone socket. They had a list of email addresses, people Swan had mentioned the Eridani device to.
Judging by the content of the messages, they were fellow collectors, people she was hoping to swap goodies or bits of information with to increase her collection of legal and illegal technology. (What I had seen at her house was only a fraction of that collection.)
So while we were at the airport, the two of them were merrily breaking into email accounts all over the country, reading more and more messages as they put together the same information Swan had. And, quite probably, in the same way she had. Unlike her, of course, the Doctor and Bob were prompted by the purest of motives.
Bob stirred some coffee into his chocolate milk and sucked the muddy result through a straw while he watched the Doctor at work. Every so often the Doctor would ask him a question, checking some technical point. Bob would gush an answer with far more information than the Doctor needed.
They were deep inside a university on the west coast when the messages started to come. As well as sending email anywhere in the network, you can send a short ‘msg’ to someone else on the same system, a sort of internal mail. The Doctor had tiptoed in: he took a snapshot of the computer’s current list of users, then altered its ‘who’ command to show that list instead of actually checking who was online. He was, in short, invisible. So he was suitably surprised to be challenged:
Hellooo! Who have we here?
‘Don’t answer it,’ said Bob, putting down his mocha milk.
‘There’s little point in putting our heads into the ground,’
said the Doctor. ‘They can obviously see us.’
‘Then let’s get out,’ said Bob nervously.
Cat got your tongue?
The Doctor had already typed the who command. There were only four users logged on that Christmas morning: the Doctor, a couple of sysadmins, and zydeco.
The Doctor opened the file he had edited to disguise his entrance to the system. Sure enough, there was no record of zydeco’s login. ‘It’s another hacker,’ he said. ‘And what a coincidence they should happen to be on the same system as we are this merry Michelmas morning.’
Bob gulped. ‘Swan.’
Amused, the Doctor typed:
Good morning. Are you working your way
backwards through the dictionary?
You can run, replied Swan, but you can’t hide.
‘Oh please,’ said the Doctor aloud.
No matter where you go, typed Swan, whenever you pick up a phone or dial into the net, I’ll find you. You may be able to hide from the authorities, but you can’t hide from me.
Speaking of the authorities, replied the Doctor, they could be very interested in your connection to the death of one Charles
Cobb.
‘Who he?’ said Bob.
‘Just one link in the chain of people who brought Swan her little collector’s item.’
Nothing to do with me, said Swan. I’m not threatening you. We should work together.
You won the first round. I respect your skills. Let’s combine our talents and our information. We’ll both benefit.
The Doctor hammered out, You don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re dealing with, do you? What did you think that device was?
Did you run any tests? Take any
precautions?
Tell me what it is.
You’re like a little child who finds a
detonator, said the Doctor. Take my advice: just this once, leash your curiosity before