The Nexus (10 page)

He got to the bottom of the stairs and peeked around the corner.  The window was broken all right.  Nothing was left but jagged teeth of glass around the frame.

The interesting thing was that the window had been broken from the inside.  The shards of glass were in the back yard instead of on the living room carpet.

The police always arrived quickly in Palm Hills Estates.  They searched the house thoroughly and determined that there was no intruder there.  Mrs. Daniels then searched the house thoroughly herself, and determined that nothing was missing.

“So why would an intruder break in silently, steal nothing, and then leave by breaking the window?” Martin P. Daniels thought out loud.

“Maybe to make sure you got this,” said a cop.  He was gesturing to a note tacked just below the broken window.  Daniels hadn’t seen it before.  He read the note, then tossed it aside in disgust.

“What does it say?” Mrs. Daniels asked.  When her husband didn’t answer she read the note herself.  All it said was:  “Thanks for the lift.”

It wasn’t until the next morning that Martin P. Daniels realized the intruder had taken something after all:  His GoCom identification card.

THE man sitting across from Director Holiday was very tall and very bald.  Those who knew him had a suspicion he was also very old.  But with those tight facial features, and probably a plastic surgery or two, who could know for sure?  People called him Riley.  It was probably his last name.  If he also had a first name no one knew that either.

Riley was one of the few who knew Holiday’s department even existed.  His official title was Chief Home Planet Liaison.  Basically he kept in contact with Earth—specifically with the United Space Programs who had built MS9.  He made sure they were up to date on all the excitement going on in the Anterran government, let them know his complaints, and so on.  He probably had a lot of those.  Complaints were one of Riley’s specialties.  Holiday was reminded of this each time Riley paid him a visit.

Today was no exception.

“You want the bad news, or the bad news?” Riley asked.  Most conversations with Riley started roughly this way.

“I’ve heard both already,” said Holiday.  “A GoCom ID was stolen, and it was probably stolen by Jillian Branch.”

“Not probably.  Definitely.”

Holiday didn’t seem to think the bad news was quite as bad as Riley thought it was.  He was trying to keep from smiling, which meant he was smirking as usual.

“I understand you dared this Jillian Branch to find her way back here to your headquarters, is that so?”  Riley crossed his long arms as he asked the question.

“It was an invitation, not a dare.”

“Provided she could get here by her own means.”

“Correct.”

“Director Holiday, I hate to question your methods—”

“We both know you’re only too happy to question my methods.  Go on.”

Riley sputtered, continued:  “Have you thought this through?  Is this girl really what you’re looking for to staff your department?”

“Whether or not you like the members of my staff is your opinion, Riley.  But what my staff has accomplished is not a matter of opinion.  Our success is a well-documented fact.  I’ll thank you to let me do my job the way I see fit, and recruit the sort of help I want, so long as we’re getting results, which we most certainly are.”

“Results such as letting a girl escape from the GoCom jail?”

Holiday looked amused.  “A girl who would never have been in jail in the first place if not for my people.”

Riley sputtered again.  “I’ll concede the point.  But you won’t be the one to catch her again.  That’s up to the other GoCom departments—you know, the ones that hire qualified professionals and don’t have to operate secretly?  Don’t make us keep doing your job for you.”

Holiday raised an eyebrow.  “It’s none of my business, of course, but exactly how do you plan on catching Miss Branch?”

Riley seemed surprised at the question.  “She has a GoCom entrance ID.  The minute she tries to use it, we’ll be waiting for her.”

“Don’t you think she’s well aware of that?”

Riley hesitated.  “Well if she doesn’t intend to use it to get in the building, why do you think she stole it?”

Holiday shrugged.  “Here’s another question:  Why do you suppose she’s made very sure that we all know she has it?”

Riley was always flustered to begin with.  By now he was particularly flustered.  “Okay, Holiday.  Since you seem to have this all figured out, how about you just skip to the end and tell me what she’s up to.”

“I’m sure I have no idea.  And I’m sure you don’t either.”

Riley grunted.  “We’ll see.”

“We shall indeed.”  Now Director Holiday didn’t try to suppress his smile at all.

IN a poorer neighborhood a few blocks east of the Aurora Bridge, Jill stood looking through a rusting chain link fence.  The back yard on the other side of the fence was small, but still managed to contain a lot of clutter.

She wasn’t looking at the clutter.  She was looking where she always looked when she came back to this place:  at the boughs of the old tree in the back corner of the yard.  The tree house she and Jerry had built was still there, still holding together.  Their initials were probably still carved on the wall inside, though she’d never bother to check.  They’d promised to stay soul-mates forever, she and Jerry Grant—Jerry G, as he liked to be called.  Dreams like that are very believable when you’re only eleven years old.

But a lot can change in seven years.  A lot had changed in just one year, actually.

Jill still thought Jerry G had started drifting away from her before she’d drifted away from him.  He was good with computers—
really
good with computers.  Especially old computers and old operating systems that no one used anymore.  But by the time she was twelve Jill suspected he was no longer using his skills for innocent purposes.

Of course by then Jill wasn’t living such an innocent life herself anymore.  Since then they’d seen each other once a year or so...only when they were partners in crime.  Erranders could make good use of a solid hacker now and then, and the other way around.

It seemed fitting, Jill thought to herself as she hopped the fence, that they should be partners in her very last crime.

There was a cement stairwell leading from the back yard to the basement of the Grant home.  She’d heard his music thumping from outside the fence.  It was nearly deafening when she opened the door.

Jerry G didn’t see her at first.  He was at his computer—one of them, that is.  Computers and parts of computers took up most of the space in the cramped basement room.  A few glowing monitors were the only light.  His big curly afro was silhouetted against the largest screen.  The screen was filled with lines and lines of code.  He was adding more and more lines as she approached him, and his hair was bobbing gracefully to the music.

“The Grateful Dead, isn’t it?” she asked when she stood directly behind him.

He squawked at an embarrassingly high pitch as he jumped to his feet and whirled around.  In an instant he’d regained his composure and thrown his gangly arms around her.  “Jillian!  Don’t scare me like that, girl!”

“Sorry.”  She smiled at the sight of that scraggly attempt at a beard on his pasty white face.  The beard was no better than when he’d first tried it at age thirteen.  “Good to see you, Jerry G.”

He turned down his music.  “Man, it’s great to see you too, Jillian!  What’s up?”

“I need your help.”

“Oh.”

She saw a glint of sadness in his eyes, like maybe he’d hoped that for once she’d come to see him just to see him, no other reason.  His expression stirred something inside her.  For a moment she was eleven years old again and believing in the promise she’d made as she carved a J. B. just below his J. G.

But then the moment was over and the pretending had to stop.  The sadness mostly fled from his eyes, and he was all business.  “Sure.  Anything for you, girl.”

“It’s pretty risky, Jerry.”

“Isn’t everything we do nowadays?”

“If we get caught we’re in big trouble.”

Jerry G jerked a thumb at the code on the screen behind him.  “Probably not as much trouble as I’m in if they find out about that.  Come on, Jillian, it’s me!  Tell me about it.”

“For starters, take a look at this.”  She handed him an ID card with Martin P. Daniels’ name and photo on it.

“Hey, that’s a GoCom ID!  Cool.  Useless, but cool.”

“Not useless.”

“What are you saying?  You try to use that to get inside GoCom, they’ll be all over you before you know it.  Especially considering the recent history between you and that place.  Yeah, I heard all about that.  Nice going, by the way.”

“Thanks.  I know I can’t use it that way.  But can I reprogram it?”

Jerry G wrinkled his forehead.  “How would that help?  They’d still catch you, even if you had another profile on the card.”

“Trust me, Jerry.  I’ve got a plan.  So can you?”

“Sure, they can be reprogrammed.  But I don’t have the stuff to do it.  We’d need a little thing called a Benson-Starr translator.  That’s what GoCom uses to program the cards in the first place.  It’s a device that attaches to a computer—the computer being used to access the card.  It allows information to pass safely between the computer and the card.  Hence the name.”

“You can’t just hack the card?”

He shook his head.  “I’ve tried.  The minute you try to hack it, it self-destructs.”

“Like, blows up?”

He rolled his eyes.  “Like erases itself.  It recognizes a rogue signal trying to infiltrate its contents.  Besides, these IDs use a totally different information storage system than any I’ve ever seen.  I can’t access them with my computer, or any computer I know of.”

“So it’s like trying to talk to someone who speaks another language?”

“Another
type
of language, even.  You don’t know Spanish, but if you read Spanish you’d at least have a chance of understanding a little.  It uses basically the same letters as English, and has similar roots.”

“So it would be like if I tried to read Chinese.”

“More like if you tried to understand ASL.”

“ASL?”

“Sign language.  Unlike English, it’s not written or spoken; it’s a totally different type of communication.  You’d need a translator who knew how to understand both types of communication.  That’s why the device that passes info between computer and GoCom IDs is called a translator; it deals with two completely separate types of information.”

“What sort of information storage does the ID use?”

He shrugged.  “No idea.”

“But if you had the translator, you could reprogram the card.”

“Sure, but unless you plan on going to the Home Planet, breaking into Benson-Starr Enterprises in London, and stealing one...”

“I may know someone who has one.”

“Yeah?”  Jerry G looked skeptical.

“I’ll bring it over when I’ve got it.”

“I doubt it.  Benson-Starr manufactures them exclusively for GoCom.  But hey, assuming you
are
able to get your hands on a translator, what exactly do you want me to do?”

“Why?  Are you thinking of bailing out on me?”

His eyes shifted.  “It just seems like you may be in over your head on this one.”

“I already told you it would be risky.  You didn’t seem to mind.”

“There’s risky, and there’s risky.  I didn’t realize GoCom was involved.  You want to just summarize what you’re planning on doing?”

“I’m playing the biggest prank that’s ever been played on the Anterran government.”

Jerry G’s concern was helpless against the excitement this explanation brought.  “I don’t know, Jill.  Okay, I’m in.”

“I figured.  I’ll be back with the translator.”

He looked into her eyes a moment—a moment sort of like that other moment when she’d first got here.  “Yeah, great, Jillian.  See you then.”

WHILE the sun came up she waited by the Northshore Garage.  Matt was the first to arrive.  He seemed a little too happy to see her.  She asked him about the translator.

“Sure I’ve got some of those.  You need some GoCom ID work done?”

“I want the translators themselves.”

“Well, that’ll cost you.”

“So you said you have more than one?”

“Several.  I know a guy in London.”

“I need three.”

“Must have something interesting planned, sweetness!  I guess I could spare three of them.  Did I mention it’ll cost you?”

“You did, but that was as specific as you got.”

“Try two thousand credits.”

“Let’s skip the bantering and hear your final offer.”

The lewd smile made another appearance.  “What about that date we talked about?”

“We didn’t talk about a date.”

“How about fifteen hundred credits, and you and I have dinner someplace nice?”