Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [183]
“You know but can’t act.”
“Yeah that’s right.”
“But you did this. So I’ll see what I can do, sure. There must be an activation code tucked in the normal voting technology. There’s any number of ways to do that. So . . . maybe it could be tweaked, to disable it. I do have a friend at NSF who does encryption, now that I think of it, and he worked at DARPA. He’s a mathematician, he might be able to help. Does your futures market list him? Edgardo Alfonso?”
“I don’t know. I’ll look.”
“What about anyone else at NSF?”
“Yeah sure. Lots of NSF people. Diane Chang’s stock is pretty high right now, for that matter.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” She watched him think it over.
Finally he shrugged. “Maybe saving the world is profitable.”
“Or maybe it’s unprofitable.”
“Hmmmmm. Listen, if you could get me a list of everyone listed in my market, that would be great. If Edgardo isn’t on the list, all the better.”
“I’ll check. He would be discreet?”
“Yes. He’s a friend, I trust him. And to tell the truth, he would greatly enjoy hearing about this.”
She laughed, surprised. “He likes bad news?”
“Very much.”
“He must be a happy guy these days.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. But don’t tell too many people about this. Please.”
“No. And the ones I tell won’t need to know how I’ve gotten this, either.”
“Good.”
“But they may need to be able to get back in to this program.”
“Sure, I know. I’ve been thinking about that. It’ll be hard to do without anyone knowing it’s been done.” She scowled. “In fact I can’t think of a good way. I might have to do it. You know. At home.”
“Listen, Caroline,” he said, spooked by the look on her face. “I hope you aren’t taking any chances here!”
She frowned. “What do you think this is? I told you. He’s strange.”
“Shit.” He hugged her hard.
After a while she shrugged in his grasp. “Let’s just do this and see what we see. I’m as clean as I can be. I don’t think he has any idea what I’ve been up to. I’ve made it look like I’m chipped twenty-four seven and that I’m not doing anything. I can only really get offline at night, when he expects me to be sleeping. I leave the whole kit in the bed and then I can do what I need to. Otherwise if I dropped the kit it would show something was wrong. So, you know. So far so good.”
“No one suspects you of anything?”
“Not of anything more than marital alienation. There are some friends who know about that, sure. But that’s been going on for years. No. People have no idea.”
“Even if they’re in the business of having that kind of idea?”
“No. They think they know it all. They think I’m just . . . But it’s gone so far past what they can know. Don’t you understand—the technical capacity has expanded so fast, no one’s really grasped the full potential of it yet.”
“Maybe they have. You seem to have.”
“But no one’s listening to me.”
“But there could be others like you.”
“True. That may be happening too. There are superblacks now that are essentially flying free. But hopefully we won’t run into anyone like that trying to stop us on this. Hopefully they think they’re completely superblack still.”
“Hmmm.” Counterintelligence, wasn’t that what it was called? Surely that would be standard. Unless you thought you were an innermost sanctum, the smallest and newest box in the nesting boxes, with no one aware even of your existence. If her husband was in something like that, and thought his secrets were entirely safe from an estranged wife who did nothing more than sullenly perform her midlevel tech job. . . .
They sat side by side in an uneasy silence. Around them the city pulsed and whirred in its dreams. Such a diurnal species; here they were, surrounded by three million people, but all of them conked like zombies, leaving them in the night alone.
She nudged into his shoulder. “I should go.”
“Okay.”
They kissed briefly. Frank felt a wave of desire, then fear. “You’ll call?”
“I’ll call. I’ll call your Khembali embassy.”
“Okay good. Don’t be too long.”
“I won’t. I never have.”
“That’s true.” Although not quite.
They got up and hugged. He watched