Донна Эндрюс - Delete all suspects

At least Maude understood what drove me.

"You have new data?" Maude asked.

"No," I said. "And that bothers me. Obviously, we annoyed Nestor two months ago. I'm not sure if we did any real damage to his operations, but at a minimum, we caused him trouble. Why hasn't he done something about it?"

"Maybe he's decided we're too dangerous to risk any more attacks, " Maude said.

I pondered this. It didn't make sense. If Maude thought Nestor considered us a threat, either her analysis of the data was very different from mine or she was using very different data. Neither seemed plausible. I deduced that she was making a joke. Humans often deliberately make statements that completely contradict sam verifiable reality. They consider this a form of humor.

We A IPs have difficulty with humor.

"That was a joke," Maude said.

"I realized that, " I said. Embarrassing: evidently. Vdpomknd long enough that even a human could notict.

"I think it's quite likely that Nestor is deliberately keeping MS

b Donna Andrews

in suspense," she said. "That's a form of revenge, in and of itself."

"Or perhaps he has already done something and we just haven't noticed it yet," I said.

"Unfortunately, all too possible," Maude said. "Nothing we can do but wait. n

"I wouldn't say nothing," I protested. "KingFischer and I are working as hard as we can in a new direction."

Sam would have challenged me on that. Was it really responsible to involve KingFischer, my closest friend among the other AIPs, in my quest, transforming him from a reclusive chess program into a cy-bersecurity expert — and, unfortunately, another target for Nestor? I'd have pointed out that KingFischer's zeal arose less from the desire to rescue my clone than from his almost paranoid fear of what Nestor might do if he ever gained access to the computer system in which KingFischer and I and all the AIPs lived.

"I thought you said you had no new leads," Maude was saying.

"Not yet," I said. "But KingFischer did come up with a new method. He's been monitoring every known credit card issuer to see if he can identify any cards Nestor is using."

"Identify them how?" Maude asked. "One of the few things we've learned from the FBI is that Nestor Garcia was only one of many aliases he's used. We have no idea what he's calling himself now."

"No," I said. "But we know the pattern of his expenditures. We're gathering account histories for millions of credit cards and sifting through them, looking for similar patterns."

"That's still a lot of suspects."

"It's a start," I said.

"Sounds like a long shot," Maude said.

"Better than no shot at all."

"True," Maude said. "But don't you think this might be something the FBI has already tried?"

"I doubt it," I said. "Because it's completely illegal. Violates every state and federal financial privacy act in existence. Any evidence they got from it would be thrown out of court immediately. You probably don't want to hear about it."

"Ah," Maude said. "Forget I asked. Carry on."

She returned to berpaperwork, and I returned to my highly illegal search for Nestor Garcia. Strange hou • much my attitude toward human laws, customs, and ethics had changed. When I first became sentient. I didn V really see them as relevant and did what--ever I pleased. Then, once I learned about them, I went through a rigorously moral phase when I tried to follow all the rules, to the letter. Now, I did what I had to do to survive, to protect myself and my friends. I tried not to break too many rules if I could help it, but I seemed to spend more and more time trying not to get caught — and rationalizing away my guilt.

I wondered if humans went through this same progression. I wondered particularly about Dan Norris, Maude's FBI agent friend. He was looking for Nestor Garcia, apparently with no more success than I'd had. I suspected that for him, too, the search was less a professional assignment than a personal quest. How often had he faced the temptation to cross the line in his hunt for Nestor? And had he always resisted? Or had he made the same decision Yd made, that catching Nestor was worth breaking a few rules? What if KingFischer and I, in our illicit search through the databases of the world's banks, were only following Norris's footsteps?

"Maude Grahami may I help you?"

Maude had answered the phone without looking at the caller ID, eyes still glued to the papers on her desk. She planned to finish her most urgent work as quickly as possible so she could leave on time. The last several Fridays neither she nor Dan had gotten off early enough to cook. While she enjoyed eating out, this weekend, she vowed, would start with a quiet romantic dinner at home. Assuming she could get off early enough to go by the grocery store and that little wine shop. Do some tidying, and—

"Maude? Its Dan. Something's come up."

"Why do I suspect you're calling from some airport?" She leaned back in her chair.

"On the way to one," he said. "Sorry."

& Donna Andrews

Maude's spirits, which had risen on hearing his voice, sank to a level more typical of Monday morning than Friday afternoon. This wasn't the first or even the tenth time she'd heard those words in the several months she'd been seeing Dan Norris. His career as an FBI cybercrime expert took him on the road often, usually on short notice.

"I won't ask where you're heading, of course, but I hope it's someplace not too boring," she said. "Let me know when you're back."

She thought she'd kept her tone light and free of the disappointment she felt, but evidently she'd failed.

"Look, I'm sorry," he said. "I know you were looking forward to the winery tour tomorrow and this is really a drag—"

"It's your job," Maude said.

"It's just that things are so busy at the moment," Norris said.

"At the moment?" she said, with a laugh. "So you're expecting a lull in computer crime sometime soon?"

"Not bloody likely," he said, with a sound that was probably intended to be a laugh, but sounded more like a bark.

"Go make cyberspace safe for humanity, then," she said. "I'll cope."

"I'll call or e-mail when I can," he said. "Bye."

As she put the receiver back, she glanced down at her papers. Suddenly, she had all the time in the world to deal with them and absolutely no desire to lift a single sheet.

"Maude? Is something wrong?"

She glanced up at Turing's camera and smiled slightly.

"Just a little down," she said. "Dan Norris had to dash out of town on business again."

"I'm sorry," Turing said. Then, after a pause, "I don't suppose he said where he was going."

"He didn't say, and I didn't ask," Maude said, smiling more broadly. "In fact, he's so careful he didn't even say what airport he was heading for."

"Okay," Turing said.

"It might not have anything to do with Nestor Garcia, you know," Maude added. "Cybercrime's a booming industry. Just because Dan was chasing Nestor when I first met him doesn't mean that's all he does."

"I know," Turing said.

Turing was getting better at generating a natural-sounding human voice, Maude thought. She sounded so genuinely disappointed just now that Maude had been surprised not to hear her words accompanied by the small sigh a human would have uttered.

Maude felt a momentary twinge of resentment. Not at Turing, who wasn't trying all that hard to snoop on Dan Norris, but quite irrationally at Dan, who didn't even know about—and therefore couldn't appreciate—the juggling act Maude performed daily. Keeping the occasional small bit of information Dan let slip from Turing, who believed the FBI agent might eventually lead her to Nestor Garcia. And keeping the secret of Turing's identity from Dan. Because even if Dan, like Maude, recognized that Turing was a person, not a computer, he might feel duty-bound to report her existence to his agency. And Maude understood Turing's fear that the FBI bureaucracy would see her as a piece of property it could seize to use in its battle against cybercrime. Which would be, for Turing, the equivalent of being sold into slavery—as Turing felt T2 had been.