Games of State - Tom Clancy [143]
When the machine stopped, Stop tore off the paper and handed it up to Ballon. The Colonel studied it in the light of a small flashlight. The others moved closer.
Hood's spirits plummeted. On the strength of this they'd be going nowhere very soon.
"What is this?" Ballon asked. "It looks like a swimming pool."
Stoll's knees popped as he rose. He looked at the image. "It's a picture of wall which is a lot thicker than six inches," he said. He studied beam-back data on the bottom of the paper. "It got 6.27 inches through the wall, then stopped. Which means it's either thicker than you thought or there's something on the other side."
Hood looked at Nancy, who was frowning. Then he looked at the five-story-tall edifice. There were windows, but they were shuttered. He was sure there would be radio-reflective materials on the other side.
Ballon threw the paper down angrily. "This is what we came here for?"
"Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances," Stoll said. He was obviously relieved. "I guess we should've known it wouldn't be as easy as hacking into government computers."
Even as he said it, Stoll obviously knew he'd made a mistake. Ballon turned the flashlight on him. Hood regarded the computer whiz.
"Can you break into computers?" Ballon asked.
Stoll looked at Hood. "Yes. I mean, I have. But that's highly illegal, especially--"
"We tried to get into Demain's computers," Ballon said, "but Dominique wasn't on-line anywhere we could find. I had some of our best people working on the problem."
Nancy said, "That's because you probably didn't know what you were, looking for. Did you find any of his games?"
"Of course," said Ballon.
"Then they were probably in there. Hidden inside MUDs. Multi-User Dungeons."
"Hey," said Stoll. "I was fooling around with one on the plane."
"I know," Nancy said. "I saw the commands you were typing. Also, the other message you sent."
Hood grew warm with embarrassment.
"It's like reading lips," Nancy said. "With enough experience you can read keyboards. Anyway, when we program games we always put in secret doorways to other games. I hid a game of Tetris inside Ironjaw, a game I wrote for Demain."
"That was yours?" Stoll asked. "That was awesome!"
"It was mine," she said. "No one ever reads the credits at the end. But if you did, you'd have found Tetris. All you had to do was highlight the correct letters sequentially in the fictitious names Ted Roberts and Trish Fallo."
Hood said, "How the hell would anyone ever think to do that?"
"They wouldn't," Nancy smiled. "That's what makes it so much fun. We leak the information through fan magazines and on-line bulletin boards."
Hood said, "But no one would ever think of looking for an activation code in an innocent adventure game."
"Right," said Nancy. "But that's exactly what it takes. A simple activation code. A program in somebody's computer in Jerkwater Township, U.S.A., could unleash a hate game across the entire Internet."
"Why didn't you say anything about this?" Hood asked.
"Frankly, it didn't occur to me until now," she snapped., "I didn't think of somebody sneaking hate games into the world through role-playing programs. Why didn't Matt think of it? He's your computer maven!"
"She's right," Stoll said. "I should've. Like the old joke says, you go hunting for elephant, sometimes you forget to look in the refrigerator."
Hood didn't remember the old joke, and didn't care right now. He said; "So the hate games are hidden. Where do we look for them?"
"And even if we find them," Hausen asked, "can we trace them back to Demain?"
"It's tough to say where to look for them," Stoll said. "He could have had the program passed around like a football-- The Scorpion Strikes to The Phoenix from Space to Claws of the Tiger-Man."
"Would the hate game program have to come to rest in a Demain game?" Hood asked.
"No," said Stoll. "Once it was planted, it's