The Blood Artists
- Автор: Хоган Чак
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-688-15622-0
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Blood Artists». Краткое содержание книги:
“Are you asking about Blue files?”
She had a sultry voice that did not match her appearance. Her face was broad and her drooping eyes thick-lidded.
“I’m asking about any sensitive documents loaded into Stephen Pearse’s tablet.”
“Blue files are any reports or internal memoranda generated by any government agency,” she said. “Blue files crash if tapped into illegally. If an unauthorized user attempts to dupe them to an unauthorized server, the Blue worm encryption fouls the offending drive and disables its microprocessor, but not before instructing the modern to dial the FBI.”
“So there is no way someone could duplicate those files.”
“We-ell.” She turned smiling in his general direction. “The National Security Agency instituted Blue to protect sensitive documents from prying eyes and sticky fingers — White House internals, CIA, DOD. But here at the BDC, prying eyes don’t pose much of a threat. Here, the opposite is true: Access and preservation is vital to operation. So, no, you cannot copy files off a tablet. Nor can you print them. But — you can back them up.”
Maryk understood. “By archiving the entire system.”
“Exactly. I have loaded here a working clone of Director Pearse’s tablet, as you recovered it.” She indicated the monitor displaying a list of file names. “If there were any Blue programs, they would have deleted themselves out within fifteen days, as they are self-timed to do. But...” She called up an index card graphic. “A full backup was performed the day before you recovered the tablet.”
Maryk stared at the screen. “So anyone who copied the drive,” he said, “could walk away with an exact replica stored in their own tablet.”
“And someone did,” She whispered a command into her microphone and slid her hand over the Braille pad and Maryk heard a soft male voice whisper into Suzy Lumen’s ear. Numbers appeared on screen. “Full backup creates a register recording the time, date, and chip address of the receiving system.”
“So you’ve got the internal code of the second tablet.”
“That’s it right there. But I already checked. Hailing has been disabled. This tablet is not on the air.”
“Then what about this: Can whoever owns the clone of Pearse’s tablet still access the BDC?”
“Not coded files. There’s a safeguard built in to the director’s tablet to prevent the skeleton key from being duped. But the Genetech still can be dialed into. In fact, it has.”
She muttered commands and massaged the pad and smiled at the wall as the machine murmured into her ear. Maryk knew from his mother that the smile of the blind indicated achievement at least as often as pleasure.
Words appeared on screen. “Your personnel file,” she said.
Maryk glared.
“Accessed and downloaded six days ago,” she said.
“Could it have anything to do with this?” She switched back to Stephen’s tablet and opened a file. “ ‘Investigation-dot-Maryk,’ ” she hand-read. “Emptied, and irretrievable. All the files were typed over before they were dumped.”
“Personnel files aren’t coded?”
“Not at the BDC. No need. Viruses don’t use computers.”
Stephen was right. Someone had archived his tablet while he was in Amagansett. And later that same someone had dialed into the BDC computers looking specifically for information on Maryk. Whoever it was then knew about his immunological strength.
“Can you bring up Pearse’s bank account?” Maryk said.
She did. The last debit transaction was dated the day before Maryk brought Stephen back to the BDC.
“Fuel,” she said curiously.
Maryk read the register. A tankful had been purchased at a Texaco in Trenton, New Jersey, the day before Maryk froze Stephen’s bank accounts. “But how could someone other than Stephen Pearse sign for a thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise on this tablet?”
Suzy Lumen smiled and scrolled to another file and Stephen’s arched signature appeared on screen. Maryk watched her plump fingertips trace it on her read pad. “Signature imprint,” she said. “For generating prescriptions, signing documents. They had Director Pearse’s tablet sign for them.”
Maryk nodded. “What are my options, then?” he said.
“I could cancel the director’s tablet for you right now. That way, if anyone tried to use the duped code to access the Genetech, they would be refused.”
Maryk deliberated. “What if I wanted to preserve my link to this person?”
“Then I can put a sentinel on the Genetech. That would split the signal and trick the user out to me if he tries to come on-line.”
Maryk nodded and stood. “Keep a trace on that tablet,” he told her. “I want to know the minute it taps back in.”
The Human Component
It had been four meals since she’d seen Maryk. Night and day passed uneventfully with her sulking in front of the TV in her room, waiting for him to come, like a vampire, for her blood. Pasco, her shadow from Boston, appeared three times a day to escort her to the Emory college cafeterias for meals. Being held on a college campus seemed to her like poetic justice. Finals had ended and the campus population was dwindling, though she sensed movement around her wherever she went. She was convinced that Maryk had people everywhere, watching her. Inside the cafeteria, the same red-haired custodian mopped a different section of floor at every meal.
Her boundless appetite had returned. She sat that afternoon before a cheeseburger and a plate of chicken-fried steak, starting instead with a thick wedge of apple cobbler. Pasco sat at the next table over, eating and diligently working on something on his tablet. He was intent on what he was reading, gnawing on a sesame breadstick as though it were a pencil.
It bothered her that she hadn’t seen Maryk. She knew he needed her blood, and had expected him to have taken it by now. Later that second day she asked Pasco to take her to see Dr. Pearse, and to her surprise, he did.
A nurse led her through most of the preliminary rooms, then left her, shutting the steel door on the dark shower room before the lab. The walls creaked until the air flow reached a kind of equilibrium and seemed to rush away from her at all points, yet allowed her to breathe. Warnings glowed fluorescently on the door. She wore a mask, goggles, and gloves, but they had not required her to wear one of the body-condom suits. She nodded to herself and struck the switch and the door popped open, sucking forward the swirling air.
Dr. Pearse was right there. He was standing now and leaning on a metal hospital cane. He was walking. Melanie was stunned. His movement was much improved, though he looked no better. In fact he looked worse.
“Hello again,” he said, taking a few mindful steps toward her with his cane. His red eyes bothered her even more now, as they moved more naturally within his head, making him appear all the more unnatural. She caught herself looking for further signs of corrosion, and stopped. She willed herself not to stare, but to relax, relax.
Two men worked behind him in the submarine-type room, both sealed inside blue air suits. Melanie remembered at once what it was to be so feared, to be the object of such passive disgust. It was as though Dr. Pearse were a glowing rock that could only be handled with tongs.
He was so genuinely pleased to see her, she was scared. Seeing Dr. Pearse that way, a dying man up and walking around in front of her, made her think about the wonder blood coursing through her own skinny veins.
She stammeringly asked him how he was, which was brilliant. Next she’d ask a drowning man if the water temperature was okay. But he was enthusiastic, and suddenly she was the one who felt like dying.