Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“What…what are you going to do to me?”

Greg shoved the Mulekick against the man-black surface of the Hitachi terminal on the table. There was a flat crack as the power tubes discharged. A zillion precious delicate junctions were smelted into worthless cinders. The smell of scorched plastic filled the air.

O’Donal yelped as though he’d received the jolt. “Oh, shit-fire, do you know how much that cost me?” He stared aghast at the ruined Hitachi.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Greg said indifferently. “Now, where’s the money coming from?”

“They give me targets, pay good.”

“They?”

“They, him, her, shit I don’t know. We’ve never met.”

“Got a name, a handle?”

“Wolf.”

“How does Wolf get in touch, through the circuit?”

O’Donal shook his head, eyes bunking rapidly. “No, that’s the sting, man. Wolf calls over the phone. Direct! God, you’ve no idea how bad that trip was the first time. I mean, that’s the whole point of the circuit, right? It protects us as individuals, no hassle, no danger. You pay your dues, and you’re covered. It’s worked that way for twenty goddamn years. Then Wolf comes along and blows it right out of the water. Why me, I mean what did I do?”

“When did Wolf first contact you?” Greg asked patiently.

“Bout ten months ago.”

“But not through the circuit?”

O’Donal glanced from Greg to Gabriel, face screwing up from anger and, strangely, outrage. “It was in a pub! I was having a drink with some mates and the fucking phone goes behind the bar, asking for me by name. Wolf knew who I was, where I was, knew about my burns. That is like the most heavy-duty shit a hotrod can get, y’know.”

Greg whistled, intrigued in spite of himself. It’d take good organization to spring a net like that; money and expertise. And for what? A team of tame hotrods. Who would want that? And more to the point, why? “How does Wolf get in touch now?”

“Call box. I have to check in every three days. Dial a number, just like you do for Gracious Services. If there’s a burn in the offing I get run around town for an hour until Wolf’s happy I’m not pulling a backtrack.”

Gabriel was sitting in the black leather high-back chair behind the table, tenting her fingers and staring up at the pewter-coloured duct, lost in thought. “The method of recruiting interests me,” she said. “This Wolf definitely knew you were an active hacker?”

O’Donal nodded sullenly. “The bastard read out a whole list of my burns.”

“How complete a list?”

“Dunno.” He caught the look Greg gave him. “Yeah, all right. I didn’t spot any missing.”

“Going back for how long?” she asked.

“Couple of years, ever since I plugged into the circuit.”

“Have you ever had a criminal record?”

“What? No.”

“Don’t lie,” Greg said. The guilt had glinted in his mind.

“I’m not,” O’Donal insisted hotly. “No record.” He flushed hard, not looking at Gabriel. “Got pulled once, mind. Pigs said she was underage. Shit, I mean no way, not that size, melon city.”

“When was this?” Gabriel asked keenly.

“Six, seven years back.”

“The police, did they search your home?”

“For sure, tore it apart, bastards. They had to drop the charges after that.” He sniggered at the memory. “My mates went and visited her for me. Straightened her out but good. She didn’t want to talk to no one after that, least of all the pigs.”

“Were you into gear then?”

“Yeah, a bit. Nothing serious though, not then.”

“And where were you living?”

“Steve Biko tower.”

Gabriel smiled acute satisfaction. “Your turn,” she said to Greg, as if it was some kind of channel quiz show.

“I’d like a list of all the burns you’ve done for Wolf,” he said.

O’Donal scowled sourly, but began typing on the Mizzi terminal.

“Carefully,” Gabriel warned. “Make sure the code is the right one. We don’t want any mistakes like a call for help, or anything equally tiresome. And believe me, I’ll know if it isn’t the right one.”

The truth finally dawned. “Shit. You two, you’re psychic, right?”

“Got it in one,” Greg said. “How else did you think we found you?”

O’Donal’s subconscious discharged a heavy rancorous stream of revulsion and dread, contaminating his conscious thoughts.

Greg showed his cybofax to the Mizzi, and O’Donal squirted the list of his burns over.

“How much do you get paid for a burn?” Greg asked.

“Depends, normally around five grand.”

“And for the Event Horizon burn?”

“That was a real big deal, I got fifteen for that.”

“No messing. So which half were you in on?”

“I don’t follow you, man. What halves?”

“The attack was twofold, remember? The priority data-squirt blitz against the core, and the shutdown instructions beamed up to the Merlin. Which were you in on?”

“I don’t know nothing about no Merlin shutdown. All Wolf told me to do was hack into the Event Horizon datanet and fire off a squirt at some bioware cruncher core. Man, you’ve never seen anything like that blitz memox, custom job.” He lifted a glittering black sphere the size of a tennis ball from the table, multi-faceted like an insect eye. “The multiplex compression in this lover is absolute genius. Hell, I can’t even retro the bytes. Sure wish I could. I’d love to be able to write my own like this someday.”

“Did this Wolf tell you what the core was?” Greg asked.

“Sure, it’s some kind of fancy Turing personality responses program they’ve whizzed up to manage the company.”

“Have you ever thought of backtracking the money transfers from Wolf? Find out who he is? Hit back, perhaps.”

“Yeah. Big zero.”

“How come?”

“I ain’t up to that, man,” O’Donal muttered quietly.

“Not up to much, are you, Tentimes?” Greg plucked one of the memox crystals from the shelves, reading the handwritten label. “This a core-code melt virus?”

“Yeah.”

“Wolf supplied it, right? How many of them come from Wolf?”

“Some, “bout half. I write my own, too, man!” O’Donal was stuffed with righteous indignation. “I see what you’re getting at, I’m no cyborg, man. I’ve got my own scene outside that arsehole. I’d have made solo without Wolf. I would!”

“Give me your bank account number, the one your Event Horizon burn money was paid into.”

O’Donal clutched at his hair with both hands, pulling hard. “Shit, no way man, I’ve got everything stashed in there. I only burnt your fucking company once.”

Greg jammed the Mulekick down on O’Donal’s Akai terminal. Blue-white static tapeworms writhed across the heat-dump fins, snapping and popping like arid matchwood.

“All right!” O’Donal shouted. “Jesus.” He looked down hopelessly at the tiny wisp of smoke rising from the back of the Akai.

The restraint of fear was wearing thin, anger was predominating again. Greg knew he’d have to do something about that. Soon.

O’Donal’s fingers trembled softly as he squirted the information from the Mizzi to Greg’s cybofax. “Hey, listen, you ain’t going to like do anything to me, are you? I co-operated man, really I did. You know it all now. God’s honest truth, every last byte.”

“That’s right,” Greg said, and straightarmed O’Donal with the Mulekick, punching the electrode deep into his small flaccid beer gut.

O’Donal’s cheeks inflated, eyes bulging. Alcohol-toxic breath rushed out of him, and he curled up, collapsing backwards on to the terminals. Memox crystals went glissading over the cold brick floor.