The Hacker and the Ants (31 page)

“About six hundred dollars.”

I drew out the smaller envelope of hundred-dollar bills and took out six of them for Sorrel.

“This is for you, and you give the rest of the money in this envelope to Ma. And here,” I handed her my keys as well. “Tell Ma she can have the Animata, too.”

Sorrel messily stuffed the money and keys into the glove compartment.

“Oh, one other thing,” I said. “There's a cyberspace deck with glove and headset in the trunk of the Animata. You tap three-one-four-one on the right side of the headset to turn it on or off. But it's a phreak deck, it's not registered, so you probably shouldn't use it.”

“Tom and Ida are sure to grub and fiddle with it,” said Sorrel loftily. She drew back her chin for “geek face,” and spittily lisped, “Thyberthpayth!”

“Cyberspace is important, Sorrel! Tell Tom not to let the police find the deck. It might be better to throw the deck away. Ida, Tom, and Carol will have to decide.”

Sorrel drove me the short distance to Swiss. I hugged her and kissed each of her nice soft cheeks. That had been one of the first things I noticed about her when she was a baby: her cheeks.

“Good luck, Da,” said Sorrel. “Take care.”

“Thanks, Sorrel. I love you.”

Before buying a ticket, I cruised the souvenir shop for travel gear. I got a small black leatherette satchel, a toothbrush, and—some business sweats.

These days a lot of businessmen were wearing sweat suits all the time. In principle, you could jog or work out in these cotton and polyester outfits, but business sweats were not normally used for exercise. Business sweats were for display purposes; they were meant to say, “I'm fit and I'm rich.”

I snagged a pompous gray XL outfit for $300. It had shiny gold stripes down the pant legs, and a sewn-in burgundy sash angling diagonally across the chest. The sash had a gold medal embossed on it.

In the men' s room I changed into the sweats and stuffed my shorts and sport shirt into the satchel. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like the Swedish ambassador, man—except for my sandals.

Out in the lobby I sat down for a minute to arrange my junk. I positioned my passport and my money in the satchel's outside zipper pocket, and then I folded my shirt and shorts. The plastic packet of chips was still in my shorts pocket. Was it worth trying to take the chips through customs?

I took out the packet and opened it. Inside were four square chips snugged into plastic pin protectors. The backs of the chips read
National Semiconductor Y9707-EX.
I hadn't seen the “
-EX
” suffix before, but I assumed it meant that these chips had been made a little faster and smarter than the last batch. Chip makers were always upgrading to longer product names.

I closed the chip packet and put it in my satchel under my shirt and shorts. Nobody was going to care about four standard production chips. If anyone asked me, the chips were my own property, to be used solely for demonstration purposes. I, Sandy Schrandt, was thinking about designing some custom applications for the Y9707-EX chip in the Swiss industrial market, yes.

So that was that, except for one thing: I hadn't said
good-bye to Gretchen. I'd been so excited about seeing Sorrel, and about my escape, that I hadn't thought of Gretchen since leaving her apartment this morning. But I couldn't very well phone Gretchen now because—it had finally occurred to me—Gretchen might be a spy paid to watch me. So, yeah, that was that.

I walked up to the Swiss counter and bought a ticket with no trouble, though all they had left was business-class. To look less suspicious, I made it a round-trip ticket. At the baggage X-ray station, I handed the guard my chips; he sleepily glanced at them and passed the package through the machine. Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in the plane. Business-class was luxurious, with widely spaced seats, instant free cocktails, and lobster.

After supper, the stewardess told us that in Swiss business-class, the in-flight entertainment was cyberspace, with the fees to be charged to your credit number. When she got to me, I told her I had no credit number, and she let me buy a hundred dollars worth of prepaid credit. She told me that was generally enough for three hours.

The steward behind her issued me a bottom-of-the-line headset/gloves kit that plugged into a socket on the top of the seat in front of me.

When I put on the headset, I was in an Alpine meadow with three guys off to one side blowing long Alpine horns. There was a crossing of two trails nearby. An Alpine guide strolled up to me; he was a software daemon like Kwirkey Debug. “Hello, Mr. Schrandt,” said the daemon. “My name is Karl. I will be your guide for this session. There is an urgent e-mail message for you. Do you want to view it?”

It seemed Sandy Schrandt was quite the up-to-date engineer. But I had no desire to look at his e-mail—it
would probably turn out to be a video of some dweeb holding up a circuit diagram and talking about it.

“No messages now, thanks.”

I walked over to the signpost at the trail crossing and looked at it. Some of the little signboards read:

I decided to try some exercise first. As I started down the trail in the indicated direction, my guide caught up with me and told me that when I pressed a certain button on the arm of my seat, bicycle handlebars and pedals would pop out from the floor. He said that I should take off my headset, push the button, get myself positioned on the pedals, and then put the headset back on so we could continue.

“Where will we go?”

“We'll mountain-bike up the Matterhorn,” the guide replied. He had cheery, twinkling, pale blue eyes. He pointed up to the left, and there was the Matterhorn itself: huge, rocky and snowcapped. Its crag castles made wondrous silhouettes against the blue sky. A gauzy puff of cloud trailed from the downwind side of the mountain's crooked peak.

I slipped off my headset and pushed the special button on my seat. The floor opened up and a heavy-duty pair of bicycle pedals appeared, with a sturdy pair of handlebars sticking out over them. I leaned back, put my feet on the pedals, and grabbed the handlebars. The setup felt more like a pedal boat than a bicycle—but it worked for me. I
put on my headset.

“You can adjust the drag with the left hand grip and the motion-speed with the right,” virtual Karl told me. “Let's start by heading for the Hörnli Hutte—it's a mountaineers' hut up on that ridge.”

I pedaled along, watching the lovely mountain scenery go by. No matter how fast or slow I went, the guide always stayed in front of me, pointing out the path I should take. When I ran over big rocks it didn't matter—they'd flatten out under me. It was fun. At the top of the Matterhorn I finally caught up with the guide.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked me. “Ride back down?”

I felt good and aerobic. “That's enough exercise. Let me retract the pedals.” I slid my headset up and pushed the button to fold the pedals back down. All the other passengers were asleep or in their headsets. I returned to the pristine summit of the Matterhorn.

“What would you like to do next?” repeated the guide daemon, eager to spend my money.

“Can I find out the address of somebody in Switzerland?”

“I can try for you. If the person has a telephone they will be in the telephone directory, as there are no unlisted phones in Switzerland. What is the name?”

“Roger R. Coolidge.”

“Yes, we have a Roger Reaumur Coolidge in Saint-Cergue,” responded the guide in a flash.

“Can you show me where Saint-Cergue is on a map?”

“Hold my hand,” said the guide. “We'll fly.” I took his hand, and then he leapt up into the air. It was a fabulous feeling to fly straight up from the top of the Matterhorn. Soon we were at such an altitude that our virtual Switzerland had become its own map.