Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

“The stress did him in,” Teece murmured. “Forgive my saying so, Doctor, but what you describe doesn’t sound like a garden-variety nervous breakdown to me.” He glanced down at his open briefcase. “I believe Dr. Burt got his M.D./Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins in five years—half the time it normally takes.”

“Yes,” said Singer. “He was ... is ... a brilliant man.”

“Then, according to the background sheet I was given, Dr. Burt did one of his medical rotations in the emergency room at the Harlem Meer Hospital, 944 East 155th Street. Ever seen that neighborhood?”

“No,” said Singer.

“The police call people who live around there Dixie Cups. A macabre reference to the disposability of life in that neck of the woods. Dr. Burt’s rotation was what interns call a thirty-six special. He was on call in the emergency room thirty-six hours straight, off for twelve, then back on for another thirty-six. Day after day, for three months.”

“I didn’t know that,” Singer said. “He never talked much about his past.”

“Then, during his first two years of residency, Dr. Burt managed to write a four-hundred-page monograph, Metastization . A superb piece of work. At the time he was also involved in a bitter divorce with his first wife.”

Teece paused again, then spoke loudly. “And you’re telling me this man couldn’t handle stress ?” He barked a laugh, but his face had lost its expression of mirth even before the sound of his laughter died.

Nobody spoke. After a moment, the inspector stood. “Well, gentlemen, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time for the present.” He stuffed the cassette recorder and folder into his briefcase. “No doubt we’ll have more to talk about once I’ve met with your staff.” He scratched his peeling nose and grinned sheepishly.

“Some people tan, some burn,” he said. “I guess I’m a burner myself.”

Night had fallen on the white clapboard house that stood at the corner of Church Street and Sycamore Terrace in the Cleveland suburb of River Pointe. A soft May breeze rustled the leaves, and the distant barking of a dog and a lonely train whistle added a sense of mystery to the quiet neighborhood.

The light emanating from the gabled second-story window was not the warm yellow light found in the windows of other houses along the street. It was a subdued blue, similar to the glow of a television but unwavering in color or intensity. A passerby, stopping beneath the open window, could have heard a soft beeping sound, along with the faint slow clicking of computer keys. But no pedestrians were strolling along the quiet lane.

Inside the room sat a small figure. Behind the figure was a bare wall, into which a plain wooden door was set; the other walls were crowded with metal racks. Within the racks, rows of electronic circuit boards rose toward the ceiling with aching regularity. Among the circuit boards could be seen monitors, RAID fixed-disk systems, and equipment that numerous small governments would have liked to acquire: network sniffers, fax interception devices, units for the remote seizure of computer screen images, dedicated password breakers, cellular telephone scanner-interceptors. The room smelled faintly of hot metal and ozone. Thick bundles of cables hung drooping between the racks like jungle snakes.

The figure shifted, causing the wheelchair in which it sat to creak in protest. A withered limb rose toward the custom-made keyboard set along one arm of the wheelchair. A single crooked finger flexed itself in the blue light, then began pressing the soft-touch pads of the keyboard. There was the faint rapid tone of high-speed dialing. In one of the metal racks, a CRT sprang to life. A burst of computer code scrolled across the screen, followed by a small corporate logo.

The finger moved up to a row of oversized, color-coded keys and selected one.

Silent seconds stretched into minutes. The figure in the wheelchair did not believe in breaking into computer systems by methods as crude as brute-force attacks or algorithm reversals. Instead, his program inserted itself at the point where the external Internet traffic entered the corporation’s private network, piggybacking onto the header packets entering at the gate machine and circumventing the password routines completely. Suddenly the screen flashed and a torrent of code began scrolling by. The withered arm raised itself again and began typing first slowly, and then somewhat more rapidly, tapping out chunks of hexadecimal computer code, pausing every so often to wait for a response. The screen turned red, and the words “GeneDyne Online Systems—Maintenance Subsection” appeared, followed by a short list of options.

Once again, he had penetrated the GeneDyne firewall.

The undeveloped arm raised a third time, initiating two programs that would work symbiotically. The first would place a temporary patch on one of the operating system files, masking the movements of the second by making it look like a harmless network maintenance agent. The second, meanwhile, would create a secure channel through the network backbone to the Mount Dragon facility.

The figure in the wheelchair waited patiently as the programs bypassed the network bridges and pipelines. At last came a low beep, then a series of routing messages scrolled across the screen.

The arm reached out to the keyboard again, and the hissing shriek of a modem filled the room. A second screen popped to life and a sentence, rapidly typed by an unseen hand, appeared on it.

You said you’d call an hour ago! It’s not easy, keeping my schedule clear while I wait to hear from you.

The shriveled finger pressed out a response on the padded keyboard: I love it when you get all righteous on me, professor-man. Testify! Write that funky formula for me one time!

It’s too late, he must have left the lab by now.

The finger tapped another message.

O ye of little faith! No doubt Dr. Carson has another computer in his room. We should be able to gain his undivided attention there. Now remember the ground rules.

Right. Let’s go.

The finger pressed a button, and another waiting subroutine began executing, sending an anonymous page across the Mount Dragon WAN to Guy Carson. Based on the previous encounter, Mime decided-to dispense with his standard greeting card; Carson might turn off his-computer if he saw Mime’s introductory logo again. A moment passed; then a response appeared, out of the New Mexico desert:

Guy here. Who’s this?

The finger pressed a single color-coded key, sending a pre-typed message across the network.

What it is! Let me introduce myself again: I am Mime, bearer of tidings. I give you Professor Levine.With the push of another key, the finger patched Levine into the secure channel.

Forget it, came Carson’s response. Get off the system now.

Guy, please, this is Charles Levine. Wait a minute. Let me talk.

No way. I’m rebooting.

Mime pressed another button, and another message flashed on the screen.

Just a dern minute, pardner! This is Mime you’re dealing with. We control the vertical, we control the horizontal. I’ve put a little snare on your network node, and if you cut our connection now you’ll trigger the internal alarms. Then you’d have some fast talking to do to your dear Mr. Scopes. I’m afraid the only way to get rid of the Mime is to hear the good professor out. Now listen, cowboy. At the professor-man’s request, I have set up a means by which you can call him. Should you ever wish to reach him, simply send a chat request to yourself. That’s correct: to yourself. This will initiate a communications daemon I’ve hidden inside the net. The daemon will dial out and connect you with the good professor, as long as his trusty laptop is on-line. I now yield the floor to Professor Levine.