The Genius Wars

  (Com, Dot both heer in Oz for him on Net and SCATS. Fear not – I know how Prospr thinks. He won’t ever get anybody on this team from now on.)

  Then he passed the paper to Gazo, who slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘If you could stay with her for a while, it would be even better,’ Cadel added. ‘She needs you more than I do, right now. I mean, this place is like Fort Knox, and I’ve never trusted hospitals.’

  Gazo gave a nod. He seemed to have cheered up a little. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Okay.’ And he took his leave, carefully closing the bedroom door behind him.

  Cadel immediately plunged into cyberspace the way he would have plunged into a heated pool. He struck out for SCATS, where Com’s partner in crime (Dot? Vee?) would almost certainly have left some kind of back trail. Though the music blaring from his CD player was loud enough to make the walls vibrate, Cadel didn’t even notice how noisy it was. He was used to shutting out the real world while he went online. As the hours passed, and the same songs kept playing over and over again, he became utterly immersed in what he was doing. He forgot to rattle the sheets of newsprint scattered around him. He forgot to lock the door. He forgot that he was a human being, and began to think like a computer program.

  In the end, he found what he was looking for. Com’s partner hadn’t been able to cover his (or her) tracks – not completely. Traffic lights had been tampered with from Dulwich Hill to Burwood, but the process had stopped abruptly at around five p.m. the previous evening. Com left the car at Burwood, Cadel thought. He got out and took some other form of transport. Taxi? Perhaps. Train? Unlikely, if there were CCTV cameras at Burwood railway station – though these, of course, might have been tampered with. Cadel wondered just how sophisticated Prosper’s CCTV malware actually was. Maybe, as well as inserting figures, it could remove them. Maybe there was a program somewhere designed to erase any footage of Com from all the online surveillance networks in Sydney.

  ‘Cadel? What are you doing?’

  It was Saul’s voice. Cadel jumped; when he turned, he saw the detective.

  Though it might have disguised the tell-tale clickety-click of keystrokes, Cadel’s rap music had also smothered the sound of Saul’s footsteps. Cadel didn’t stand a chance. Saul was on top of him before anything could be done to hide Thi’s computer.

  For a long, tense moment no one said a word. Then Saul reached over to switch off the stereo system.

  Their gazes locked as silence fell.

  ‘Com left his car at Burwood,’ Cadel said at last. ‘You’ll find it somewhere near the shopping centre.’

  Saul processed this news without making a sound. He shifted his attention from Cadel’s face to the laptop screen.

  ‘Either someone picked him up at Burwood, or he took a cab from there. I doubt he would have caught a train. Not unless the station cameras were interfered with.’ Cadel couldn’t stop a note of defiance creeping into his report, though he tried hard to suppress it. ‘I’m going to see if I can track down the source of that traffic-light bug. If it’s Vee’s program, I’ll probably find another chatroom, but I might get lucky.’

  Still the detective didn’t speak. He was studying Cadel again, his dark eyes sombre, his jaw set.

  ‘Sonja and Hamish are my friends!’ Cadel blurted out. ‘And I’m going to do whatever I can to stop anyone else from getting hurt!’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken my computer. Not without asking.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Saul pointed. ‘It’s just out there, in the gun safe.’

  ‘In the safe?’

  ‘I think it should stay there, when it’s not being used. Especially now that some of Com’s programs will be on it.’

  Cadel gasped.

  ‘What – what do you mean?’ he stammered.

  ‘Sid and Steve worked on Com’s laptop the whole night,’ Saul revealed. ‘What they could save, they’re giving to you.’ He removed a USB flash drive from inside his jacket. ‘There isn’t much, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What?’ Cadel could feel the blood rising in his cheeks. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It erased its own files, didn’t it?’ Without waiting for an answer, Cadel drummed his fists on his knees. ‘I knew it would! I told you it would! You should have let me have a go!’

  Saul shook his head. ‘Not an option,’ he said flatly.

  ‘I bet I would have got more out of it!’

  ‘I bet you would too. But it still wasn’t an option.’ Saul laid the USB drive on Cadel’s desk. ‘Sid wants you to have a look at this.’

  Cadel snorted.

  ‘What, now?’ he snapped. ‘Bit late, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s not sure if some of it is corrupted or just encrypted,’ the detective continued. Cadel, however, was still smarting.

  He folded his arms, his expression sour, and said, ‘You should ask Sonja for help. Or Lexi. They’re the real code-breakers.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that the Wieneke twins have gone to ground,’ Saul calmly replied. ‘As for Sonja – don’t you think she’s got enough on her plate?’ When Cadel failed to respond with anything but a frosty blue glower, the detective heaved a sigh. ‘There is one bit of good news,’ he added. ‘Sid found that digital-double program. So Com is definitely on Prosper’s payroll.’

  This news hit Cadel with so much force that his jaw dropped. A look of sheer wonder banished the resentment from his face.

  ‘Are you saying …’ he began, then stopped to clear his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was several decibels higher. ‘Are you telling me that Com was running the computer-graphic bug? Off his own laptop?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Saul had to admit. ‘I know the program was on there –’

  ‘All of it? Nothing was damaged?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But that’s great!’ Cadel was surprised to see no answering excitement in Saul’s steady regard. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘Uh …’

  ‘It means we can turn the tables on them! It means I can go anywhere!’

  Still the detective didn’t seem to understand. He frowned as he watched and waited. So Cadel spelled it out.

  ‘All we have to do is get a scan of me,’ he said, ‘and then use the program to stick me in lots of different places. If I start popping up everywhere, it’ll be hard to tell where I really am.’

  Frowning, Saul pondered this suggestion as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears.

  ‘Are you sure you could do that?’ he finally asked, in a doubtful tone.

  ‘Well … I’m not sure. Not until I look at the program.’

  A grunt.

  ‘I mean – I don’t know much about scans, or anything,’ Cadel went on. ‘We’d have to talk to that guy in Newtown. We’d have to find out how much it would cost, and how long it would take.’ He reached for the USB flash drive. ‘I’d need to look at what’s here, first.’

  ‘And then we’d have to make sure the whole process was legal.’

  Cadel glanced up from the little cache of precious information in his hand.

  ‘You can’t just start interfering with surveillance networks that belong to someone else,’ Saul gravely pointed out. ‘Any more than you should start poking around a government-run traffic management system without official clearance.’ Seeing Cadel narrow his eyes, Saul did the same. ‘What you’ve been doing here – it’s an offence, Cadel. You could get charged.’

  ‘Not if it’s police work.’

  ‘Since when did you become a police officer?’

  ‘Since now?’ Cadel proposed, gesturing at Thi’s laptop. ‘Since you worked something out with somebody, so I can do this? I just told you where the Camry has to be. Isn’t there some kind of state-wide trace on that car?’

  Once again, the detective sighed. He sat down on the bed, his hands hanging loose. His suit looked crumpled. His shoulders were hunched.

&nbs
p; ‘This is crazy,’ he murmured. ‘All of it. Whenever Prosper English shows up, it’s like he comes from another dimension. Suddenly we’re in the middle of a comic strip. Nothing makes sense. Everything’s bent out of shape.’

  Cadel said nothing. He was keen to start downloading Com’s files, and felt that Saul was simply stating the obvious. Of course nothing made sense. Of course everything was bent out of shape. Cadel had grown up in a hall of mirrors; didn’t the detective realise that?

  After a long, uncomfortable silence, Saul pulled himself together.

  ‘Just hold off on hacking into any government databases until I can speak to the right people,’ he begged. ‘Can you promise me that? Please? There’s plenty for you to do in the meantime.’

  ‘I guess so.’ Cadel was willing to concede that Com’s files would probably contain more ammunition than SCATS. ‘I might need help with this program, though. I might need to talk to a visual effects person.’

  ‘Fine.’ Saul rose, rather stiffly. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘And you should send someone to Burwood,’ Cadel finished, tossing off the suggestion in a careless sort of way. ‘Maybe do some doorknocking … talk to some taxi drivers …’

  ‘Cadel.’ There was an edge to Saul’s voice. ‘I’ve been a cop for more than twenty years. I know what I’m doing, okay?’

  When he walked out of the room, he slammed the door behind him.

  NINETEEN

  By seven o’clock that night, there were eight people in the house.

  Three of them actually lived there. Three had been formally invited to attend what Cadel described as ‘a council of war’. But the other two were bored-looking men with guns, whose presence Fiona found unendurable. She was already upset about the blazing floodlights in the garden, and the temperamental alarm system that now protected every door and window. Men with guns were the last straw.

  ‘They can have their dinner elsewhere,’ she’d hissed at her husband, ‘because we won’t be cooking for them!’

  ‘There’s no question of that,’ Saul had promised. But despite all the scented candles she’d lit and ambient music she’d played since arriving home from work, Fiona remained edgy and unsettled. Even a warm bath (in a locked bathroom) hadn’t calmed her down.

  Her reaction to Gazo’s reappearance, at about half past five, had been so abrupt – so uncharacteristically tense and distracted – that he’d quietly asked Cadel if it was all right to stay.

  ‘You have to stay,’ Cadel had replied. ‘I want to hear about Sonja.’

  ‘But I don’t fink your mum really wants me ’ere.’

  ‘It’s not you. It’s everyone. This is a pretty small house.’

  ‘Is it because of what I done?’ Gazo had lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I mean – wiv Thi’s laptop, an’ all?’

  ‘No one knows what you did, except me. Now what did Sonja say?’

  It turned out that Sonja hadn’t said very much. Although Judith had been trying to track down a neurological interface device like the damaged one on Sonja’s wheelchair, such an advanced speech synthesiser wasn’t freely available in Australia. And because Sonja’s new Dynavox was no more efficient than her old one, she’d been forced to spell out every word, letter by letter, during her conversation with Gazo.

  The result had been a long, slow, stumbling exchange, spread over several hours.

  ‘But she’s doing real good,’ Gazo had been able to report. ‘She’ll be out soon. Day after tomorrow, they reckon.’

  ‘Did she say anything about me?’ Cadel had inquired, eliciting a snort from Gazo.

  ‘Are you kidding? You’re all she does talk about.’

  ‘Did you tell her about Com? And his car?’

  ‘Sorta. I didn’t know about the car, back then. I mean, I didn’t know they’d found it.’

  ‘Had she heard about the encrypted stuff on his laptop?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘How could I? You only just told me about it.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. I forgot.’

  Cadel was missing Sonja more and more acutely, and not just because she was such a brilliant code-breaker. Whenever Sonja was around, it seemed easier to make the right choices. She had a stronger sense than he did of what should and shouldn’t be done.

  ‘Well … Judith’s coming over tonight, so I can tell her all the news, and she can pass it on to Sonja,’ he’d finally observed, at the conclusion of his quiet talk with Gazo. Judith had been asked to join them because she was feeling left out – and because she had lots of money. No one was quite sure how much a fullbody scan would cost, but it was bound to be too much for the overstretched police budget. Judith, on the other hand, might consider footing such a monstrous bill – especially if she decided to commission a scan of herself, or Sonja. Everyone agreed that Cadel probably wasn’t the only one under surveillance; that was why Saul had been forced to don the chador, and Gazo the fake nose. So if Cadel wanted to avoid detection by scattering his image all over Sydney’s CCTV networks, his friends would have to do the same. Otherwise they would be advertising his whereabouts every time they went near him.

  Unless, of course, they continued to wear ridiculous disguises.

  Judith’s disguise that evening was a great big Dryzabone oilskin coat. She also wore a feather boa wrapped around her neck, and a flowery wedding hat pulled so low across her forehead that she could barely see out from under its wide, floppy brim. She had arrived laden down with cakes and fruit, which Fiona had accepted gratefully; the two women had discussed food for a while as everyone waited for Andrew Hellen to show up. Andrew had promised to drop in on his way home from work. He was needed, not only because he might have some idea of what a scan would cost, but because he knew things that Cadel didn’t.

  Cadel was out of his depth. Even after pulling apart the computer-graphic malware, he still couldn’t quite understand how its scan component operated. You could insert a scan; Prosper’s image wasn’t an integral part of the program. But his visual data had been manipulated, somehow, and Cadel wasn’t skilled enough to identify exactly what had been done.

  He was satisfied, however, that Dr Vee must have designed the bug – with a little help from someone else. Vee was an infiltration expert. He couldn’t have put together a visual-effects virus all on his own. Like Cadel, he had his limitations. Like Cadel, he would have required the assistance of a highly trained professional.

  Unfortunately, there was no telling who that highly trained professional might be.

  Andrew Hellen was unable to suggest any more names. Even after examining Com’s malware, he could only shrug when asked if Raimo Zapp might be responsible for it. ‘Maybe,’ was all that he could say on the subject. But he did request a copy of the program, to show to some of his colleagues. And he did remark that it might be possible to flush out the mystery programmer, simply because the work itself was so ground-breaking.

  ‘If he hasn’t got a patent on it, and he’s been doing it secretly, then anyone can put up a hand and say it’s theirs,’ Andrew reasoned. ‘They’ll start making a lot of money off it, and your guy might not like that.’

  ‘You mean he might try something?’ Cadel hazarded, causing Andrew to nod. Then Saul jerked his chin at the USB flash drive that Andrew was holding.

  ‘So you think that program is worth a lot of money?’ the detective asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Andrew nodded again. ‘Millions.’

  ‘Which means that Prosper English must be rolling in dough,’ Judith declared. ‘Either that or he’s blackmailing the guy who invented this program.’

  ‘If it is a guy,’ Fiona weighed in.

  By this time they were all sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea and sampling Judith’s cakes. Even Fiona had dragged herself away from the stove, where various pots were steaming and bubbling. The whole room smelled of bolognaise sauce. Yet despite the cosy atmosphere, Andrew was looking slightly uncomfortable – perhaps
because there were two armed men hovering in the shadows. Or perhaps he was alarmed by the fact that certain people were expecting him to do impossible things. Cadel had already asked him to identify the mystery programmer. Now, as the conversation veered towards the program itself, Fiona wanted to know if Andrew could scan Cadel immediately. ‘Just in case we decide to go ahead with this whole digital-double thing,’ she said.

  Andrew was forced to explain that he couldn’t scan anyone. A specialist would have to be booked and paid for; the price would almost certainly be a five-figure sum. ‘I can’t tell you exactly how much,’ he confessed, ‘but it’ll be a lot. And then there’ll be other costs on top of that …’

  ‘What other costs?’ Judith said sharply.

  Andrew took a deep breath – but it was Cadel who answered. Having already discussed the whole process with Andrew, he understood how difficult and complicated it would be to insert his own digital double into Com’s malware. ‘The scan is just raw data,’ Cadel explained. ‘You have to use it as the basis for a computer model, and then that model has to be rendered –’

  ‘Doesn’t the program do it all for you?’ Saul interposed.

  Cadel shook his head.

  ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘There isn’t enough room. You have to use something that’s got a fair degree of finish to it.’ He glanced at Andrew. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Andrew.

  ‘And how long would this refining process actually take?’ Fiona wanted to know.

  It was a question that Cadel hadn’t yet asked; he awaited the answer with as much interest as everyone else did. But Andrew seemed reluctant to commit himself.

  ‘It depends on how many scans you’re talking about,’ he murmured.

  ‘Well – let’s just say one to start with. One scan.’ Saul took over the interrogation. ‘If we manage to get that done tomorrow, how long will it take before Cadel has something he can stick online?’