Cyber Rogues (27 page)

“You . . . bitch!” he exclaimed. “You conniving, scheming, calculating little . . . bitch! You mean that all that time you just sat there letting me make an ass of myself, getting hot under the collar and preaching all those principles . . . and all the time you . . .” His words trailed away.

Laura grinned and nodded her head saucily. “I needed to see what you’d do about it. I’m not that bad all the time really. I don’t think you think I am either, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

Dyer was still gaping at her indignantly.

“I don’t believe it,” he declared finally. “What you really mean is it’s just started making sense and you won’t admit that your ideas were all screwed up before. So now you’re saying it was always like that. You just don’t like to admit you were wrong.” He thrust out his jaw in a challenge.

“If you insist on believing what you want to believe instead of accepting the facts, that’s up to you,” Laura said sweetly. “But personally I wouldn’t say that was a very scientific attitude. Sounds more to me like ingrained habits of thought starched in prejudice. You really ought to try and be a bit more impartial, you know.”

“Do you know something,” Dyer said, slipping the knapsack onto his shoulder as they stood up. “If there’s one thing I hate in life it’s converts. They argue until they’re blue in the face and then one day something flips and they’ve turned into fanatics. Then they’re all over the place trying to convert everybody else. I hate ’em.”

“I’m not some kind of convert,” Laura insisted. “I’ve always been keen on science. Why else do you think Zeegram gave me that job? Anyhow, you’ve been doing all the preaching so that must make you one.”

“Baloney. I hate converts.”

They had descended about one hundred feet toward the valley floor when a small procession of drones passed by, flying about ten feet off the ground and heading in the opposite direction, presumably off on some maintenance mission. There was a sphere drone, a crab drone, an electric toaster and a couple of others that Dyer didn’t recognize immediately. One of them carried a small parabolic dish mounted on a short pylon projecting from its upper surface. One of the functions performed by this model of drone was to act as a relay of control signals from distant transceivers operated by
Spartacus
; thus the drones could work unimpeded at remote sites.

Dyer and Laura halted and grinned as they watched the bizarre troupe continue on its way. A lens in the sphere drone rotated toward them and the relay drone swung itself around in midair to face them without changing direction. The sight of it, sliding comically sideways while maintaining formation, caused Laura to burst into laughter.

“Good morning,” the relay drone called jovially and with that it extended a claw and tilted its dish to give an uncanny imitation of somebody tipping his hat.

Laura leaned against Dyer’s shoulder and wept; Dyer continued to stand speechless, gazing in openmouthed amazement after the diminishing shapes. He’d thought that he had already seen most of the jokes that the Army programmers had planted in the
Spartacus
system from time to time, but he’d never before come across that one.

“Ray, they’re so cute,” Laura said. “How could anybody imagine they could possibly hurt anybody?”

“Everything here’s okay with
Spartacus
running the way it was designed to,” Dyer replied. “But it’s what happens if
Spartacus
ever gets sick that we need to find out about. Anyhow, tomorrow we’ll be on the way to finding out once and for all. If everything works out okay, I’ll buy you one of those for a pet, They’re no trouble. You can even have your house computer send ’em for walks if you want to.”

One month had been allowed for settling in on Janus. Tomorrow the experiment proper was due to begin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The nerve center from which the Janus experiment would be controlled and directed was designated simply the Operational Command Room. It was situated at the center of a complex of computer galleries, monitoring substations, data-display rooms and communications exchanges that formed the Datasystem Executive Sector of the Downtown Government Center. Chris had dubbed it the Crystal Ball Room because of a raised circular platform, about six feet across and a couple of feet high, that occupied the middle of the floor below the tiers of surrounding operator stations and consoles, and served as a base onto which could be projected a 3D view of any selected part of the interior of Janus.

A fairly spacious area of open floor surrounded the projection base and was approached from the main doorway, twenty feet or so above, by a broad flight of steps that carved a downward swathe through the tiers of control stations. This area was the Command Floor. Large data displays and screens lined its periphery and below these were positioned the work stations of the supervisory crew. A raised dais, in the center of the Command Floor and overlooking the projection base, carried the desk consoles and monitor panels of the directional staff and their assistants.

The whole team, including Cordelle’s group, were present, sitting at their assigned posts or standing about the Command Floor in twos and threes to watch the experiment begin. The scene appeared calm and orderly as the duty crews attended to their well-drilled tasks, but the air was charged with suspense as the moment that had been the goal of more than half a year of hectic planning and preparation finally approached.

Dyer leaned back in his seat on the dais and cast a leisurely eye around him. Kim and Fred Hayes were studying one of the supervisory consoles and discussing last-minute details in lowered tones; a few feet away from them Ron was silently keying command strings into another console at a furious rate. Eric Jassic and Chris began checking out some of the communications links while Frank Wescott stood with a small knot of CIM people watching from one side of the floor. Krantz was seated near Dyer acknowledging the status reports coming in from different parts of the project. General Linsay stood below in the center of a semicircle of aides, waiting for the scientists to announce that the opening shots of the battle had been fired. As Dyer’s gaze shifted around the room it came to rest on Laura, who was sitting at a spare station above the main floor and talking into a viewpad she held close to her mouth. No doubt she was dictating notes on what was going on. She caught Dyer’s eye and he winked instinctively. She returned a quick smile that was all confidence. No problems with last-second misgivings there, he thought to himself.

As part of the testing carried out during the final weeks of commissioning of the
Spartacus
System, various breaks had been introduced into the data and power circuits to verify correct operation of the redundancy and self-correcting functions built in as protection against the malfunctions that always take place sooner or later in real life. There had been a few bugs and teething problems but overall everything had gone smoothly.
Spartacus
was now functioning to specification, just like any other system. The time had now come to activate the programs that would make it unlike any system ever before built in history.

At the side of the Command Floor Kim and Fred exchanged nods over something and Kim leaned forward toward the console. A second later her face appeared on one of the screens on Dyer’s panel.

“Countdown checks are all positive,” she said. “It looks as if we’re all set.”

Dyer half-turned in his seat to glance at Krantz. Krantz would also have heard the announcement via his own console; it had not been directed at Dyer specifically; Krantz looked back at Dyer and nodded.

“Officially it’s your privilege,” he said in response to the unvoiced question. He was close enough for Dyer to hear him without the console. Dyer acknowledged with a slight dip of his head, turned back to direct his words at the grille set high in the center of the panel.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Kim tapped in a single brief command.

“Running,” she announced simply. In that instant
Spartacus
had been transformed. The instinct implanted deep inside the structure of its supervisory programs was now active.
Spartacus
had become a creature with a will to live.

“SYS 2, Level One Monitor,” Dyer addressed Ron via another screen. “What’s the report on the integration checks?”

“BJ two-two to four-zero, positive,” Ron replied. “CJ one-five to three-six, positive. CK is okay. All Zeta-Array vectors are okay. First pass looks good.”

“SYS 3 monitor stations,” Dyer said. “Status on secondary-level sequences is
Go.
Commence tests as scheduled and report as completed.” He glanced at Krantz and signaled an
O
with his thumb and forefinger. Krantz smiled faintly and nodded. It would be some time now before the tests being performed from various stations around the room would tell them whether or not the way was clear to proceed further. There was no need to announce the situation to the room in general. Everybody there knew exactly what it all meant; it was looking good.

A few irksome snags that were uncovered took the rest of the day to track down. Cordelle took over late in the evening and headed activities through the night with the result that they were at last ready to carry on by early the next morning.

The first “target” was to be Super-Primary Node Three, which was located physically on the floor below, in another part of the Datasystem Executive Sector. A command issued from one of the consoles in the Command Room activated a program in SP Three that forced it to shut down. As expected, the rest of
Spartacus
reconfigured itself and initiated backup procedures to take over the work load of the node that had been lost, and within seconds everything on Janus was running normally again, Then SP Three was brought back up, and the system promptly readjusted for full-capacity operation. This procedure had been followed many times during the test phases of installation so the result came as no surprise. The difference this time was that deep within
Spartacus
something had been stirred. The germ of a primitive instinct had reacted to the knowledge that part of the system was vulnerable. It was only the tiniest of pinpricks, but the first flea had bitten.

The shutdown-restore sequence was then allowed to run continuously, cycling at a rate of once every second. With every cycle
Spartacus
’s
reaction was reinforced. The next move would now be up to the machines. Tension mounted around the Command Floor as the wait for a response dragged on. Krantz sat impassively at his post while Dyer paced restlessly about the Command Floor scrutinizing the displays and peering over the shoulders of the console operators. Linsay stood with his huddle of staff officers and marked time by using the Crystal Ball to keep track of events elsewhere on Janus. In the world beyond the confines of the Government Center everything was as it had been for many months. Inside Pittsburgh furnaces spewed jets of liquid fire; mills roared and power forges pounded. The fabrication and assembly lines in Detroit rendered orchestrated robotic symphonies in metal while self-controlled harvesters worked the fields of Sunnyside and silent electronic fingers from the Hub carried the ceaseless dialogue between Janus and the three ISA ships standing fifty miles off in space. The underground shuttles brought shoppers and commuters to the bustling precincts and business districts of Downtown; fliers flexed their nylon wings lazily as they cruised in slow motion above the nearly zero-gravity recreation area at the Hub; some late arrivals were erecting their homes in Paris with the assistance of a mixed squadron of drones while the inhabitants of Berlin were having a field day. It was all exactly what it was supposed to be—a world in miniature.

Suddenly there was a stir among the group watching the screens up on the dais. At the exact instant an undercurrent of muttering ran around the room as the same story was told at a score of monitor points. Dyer leaped up the three shallow steps onto the dais and crossed it to where Krantz and a couple of CIM scientists were gesturing toward one of the displays. The System Status Log was indicating that SP Three was running without interruption. The program that was supposed to be shutting it down and restoring it, which under normal circumstances would have overridden everything else, had somehow been aborted.
Spartacus
had played its first move in response to the scientists’ opening gambit.

Linsay was standing just below and looking up inquiringly.

“You’ve drawn your first counterbattery fire,” Dyer told him.

“Any surprises?” Linsay asked. Dyer shook his head. Linsay nodded and moved away.

The result had been anticipated. Nothing more could happen now until the computer scientists had analyzed exactly how
Spartacus
had achieved its success. Already Frank Wescott, Fred Hayes and Chris were clustering around one of the consoles to collect a preliminary dump of the data that would tell them what had changed within the system. It would probably take hours for the results to be interpreted. It could possibly take days.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dyer was walking through the bar outside the cafeteria on his way back to the DatEx Sector after having lunch with Krantz when he spotted Laura sitting at a table which a couple of the CIM bunch were just leaving. He changed direction abruptly, walked over and sat down.

“Hi,” Laura greeted. “Don’t tell me you’re actually going to talk to one of the minions after sitting up there on that throne all morning. What’s the matter—having a touch of conscience or doing your meet-the-troops thing?”

“Neither. I feel like a drink,” Dyer grinned.

“Oh. For a moment I thought it might be me.”

“Now you come to mention it, I knew there was something else.”

“You know what it is I like about you,” Laura said with a sigh. “It’s this way you have of making a girl feel really great. Know what I mean . . . You must have been born with some kind of knack for it.”

Dyer listened with a serious expression on his face and nodded solemn agreement. “It doesn’t come easy though,” he told her. “You have to work hard at it.”