System Shock Part 14

'Yeah, everything the system can see on the local net. Every night we load it on to a separate resource on the InterNet well, the Highway now. Then on Wednesdays we take tapes off site.'

'Do you really?'

'And today's Wednesday, well, more like Thursday now, I s'pose,' Denny offered helpfully.

124.

'Hmm.' The Doctor was interested, but the question of what was backed up and how hardly helped with his current problem. 'Well, that's fascinating. But can I get on with this now, do you think?' He turned abruptly back to the screen and was at once absorbed in it.

'Sorry,' Denny muttered behind him, and went to the network server machine in the corner of the room.

'Thanks for the suggestion,' the Doctor called as Denny wheeled his trolley out of the room. The screen in front of the Doctor was filled with the numbers 0 to 9 and letters A to E paired off to represent bytes of data.

Sarah had been at her desk from just after seven in the morning. The rest of the office seemed to be deserted.

Stabfield arrived just before seven-thirty and complimented her on her punctuality.

But Sarah hardly noticed. Stabfield was wearing a white jacket over his usual serge suit. In one hand he was carrying a tall chef's hat, which he put down on the desk. In the other hand he held a silver promotional I2 plastic bag. He handed it to Sarah. 'You'll need this.'

Sarah looked in the bag. 'What for?' she asked, confused.

The bag seemed to have clothing in it. A white silk blouse and black skirt and tights. There was also a pair of black shoes with heels higher than she cared for.

'Change into it, then meet me in the car park in ten minutes.'

Sarah was still sitting at her desk, plastic bag in hand and mouth open when she heard the door close behind Stabfield at the other end of the office.

'Oh well,' she said out loud, 'anything for a quiet life.'

In the car park there was a white minibus and a maroon Toyota van. Both had Finesse Catering Finesse Catering painted on the side and the back together with a telephone number. Sarah looked out from the door. There were about twenty people milling around the car park. As she watched, Lewis began to motion them on to the minibus. Sarah recognized most of the people as I2 painted on the side and the back together with a telephone number. Sarah looked out from the door. There were about twenty people milling around the car park. As she watched, Lewis began to motion them on to the minibus. Sarah recognized most of the people as I2 employees, though it took her a moment or two. What was confusing was their clothing. Stabfield and another man were 125 dressed in chef's uniform; Lewis wore a dinner suit perhaps head waiter? and the rest of the men were similarly dressed.

Seeing the women dressed in identical attire to herself, Sarah realized she was costumed to play the part of a waitress. 'What is going on?' she murmured.

n.o.body seemed to have noticed her, so Sarah sneaked across to the van. She eased open the back door, shuddering as it sc.r.a.ped and squeaked. The interior was dark, but as she leaned in, Sarah could make out boxes and crates. Bollinger was stencilled on the side of the nearest crate. She pulled at the lid and was surprised to find it swung upwards easily.

Sarah knew very little about champagne and only slightly more about military hardware, but she could tell the difference between bottles and hand grenades. She gently lowered the lid and stepped away from the van, swinging the door shut.

'Admiring the vol-au-vents?'

Sarah spun round, and found Johanna Slake standing behind her. Johanna was dressed identically to Sarah. But unlike Sarah she had a sub-machine-gun slung over her shoulder. It rested easily against her side, her right arm cradling the stock and her finger stroking the trigger.

'We seem a bit short on food,' Sarah said, making as if to ease her way past Johanna. 'Perhaps I should go for a take-away.'

Johanna grabbed Sarah's arm with her free hand and shoved her past the van towards the minibus. 'I don't think so. Mr Stabfield asked me to keep an eye on you, so if you'll join us in the minibus we can get on.' She gave Sarah another shove, pus.h.i.+ng her hard in the middle of the back so that Sarah almost pitched on to her face as she was encouraged towards the minibus.

'Careful, you don't know your own strength.'

Johanna ignored her. 'You won't be phoning out for anything. We have a tight schedule and a packed agenda. And in any case, your friend's no longer available for dialogue. Or for anything else, come to that.'

Sarah stopped on the step up into the minibus and half turned towards Johanna. 'You mean Gibson?' She was shaking with emotion as well as fear now. 'You killed him?' She almost 126 reached down for Johanna, her hands already clenched into fists, but the dark-haired woman jabbed the gun towards her.

Sarah retreated into the minibus.

'We prefer to call it management-initiated termination,'

Johanna said as she climbed on board after Sarah.

Behind Johanna, Sarah could see Stabfield getting into the van. The driver was already seated, but the sun shone on the windscreen and Sarah could not see his face. Johanna motioned her to a seat, then sat down opposite. The machinegun was still levelled at Sarah.

One of the waiters leaned forward from the row behind, and Sarah thought for a moment he had seen the gun and was going to ask Johanna what was happening. But instead he said: 'The disc showed up on the network again last night.'

'Is it active?' Johanna asked.

'No. Just being read.'

'Does Stabfield know?'

The waiter nodded. 'He got the initial observation report from the tap-in to their local systems.'

'Good.' Johanna sat back and called out to the driver: 'Right, let's make the home run.'

Peterson and Eleanor arrived at Hubway at nine o'clock sharp. Eleanor seemed unusually nervous, which Peterson a.s.sumed was simply because she was in awe of his responsibility and importance. Peterson himself was in his element. He strode through the rooms and corridors of the Queen Anne house making deprecating comments about the decor, the cleanliness and the architecture.

Bill Westwood followed Peterson, nodding occasionally but otherwise uncharacteristically quiet. He knew where the funds for Hubway came from, and while Peterson might not be able to stop them, he could make life very difficult.

'This is another of the workstation areas.' Westwood opened the door to another room and ushered Eleanor in ahead of him.

Peterson pushed through in front of her. 'Who's that?' he asked pointing across at a figure hunched over a keyboard at a desk halfway along the wall.

127.

Westwood had not been expecting to find anyone in the room. He stared for a while at the figure. It was a tall man with a ma.s.s of dark hair curled over his head and a scarf the length of the croquet lawn spiralling from the floor to his neck. A large amorphous hat sat on the desk beside the keyboard and as they watched the man pushed it on to his head and cracked an enormous smile.

'Oh yes,' Westwood's memory cleared and he recalled the MI5 request for computer time and resource. 'This is a visiting expert from the Security Service. We accorded him the equipment to do some research.'

'I thought I specified essential personnel only,' Peterson said.

He waddled across towards the man at the computer, who swivelled in his chair and c.o.c.ked his head on one side to watch him. 'Is this man essential personnel?'

'Well I am to me,' the man said before Westwood could answer. 'How about you?'

Westwood concealed a smile. 'Harold Sullivan at MI5 did say the matter was extremely urgent when he made the request.'

'Did he indeed?' Peterson stopped behind the desk and peered at the screen.

The man at the desk leaned forward and switched it off.

Peterson straightened up. 'I want this man out of here within the hour, Westwood.'

Westwood sighed.

'Er, excuse me do I get a say in this?' the man asked.

'Well?'

'UNIT.'.

'UNIT?' Eleanor asked.

Peterson waved for her to be quiet. 'What do you know about UNIT? Even if you are with MI5 '

'I'm only helping out for MI5. I am the scientific advisor to UNIT.' He scuffled in his jacket pockets. 'Got a pa.s.s here somewhere. I think.' He pulled a tattered paper bag from his pocket. 'Here, hold this,' he said as he dumped it into Westwood's grasp. He then proceeded to pile Westwood's cupped hands with all manner of trinkets and bric-a-brac. After a long while he produced a tatty cardboard pa.s.s complete with 128 bent photograph and handed it to Peterson. Then he recovered his other belongings from Westwood's unsteady grasp and returned them to various pockets.

Peterson examined the pa.s.s dubiously. 'Doctor,' he said at last. 'It just says Doctor Doctor.'

The man's eyes bulged like bull's-eyes. 'Well that's because I'm just called Doctor Doctor.'

'In any case,' Peterson went on, 'this pa.s.s, even if it's genuine, is twenty years old.'

The Doctor s.n.a.t.c.hed it back and stuffed it into another pocket. 'Twenty years less than one swing of Time's pendulum.'

'And how many swings are there in one hour, Doctor?

Because that's how long you have to pack up your gear and get off the premises.' Peterson chuckled, evidently pleased with his riposte. Then he marched from the room with what dignity he could muster.

Westwood shook his head slightly and gestured for the Doctor to stay put. Then he followed Peterson and Eleanor into the corridor outside.

'If you'd like to continue along that way,' Westwood said, 'I'll just make sure he gets out of the room.'

Peterson snorted his approval and led the way down the corridor.

Westwood ducked back inside the room. 'Sorry about that, Doctor, er Doctor.'

'That's quite all right, Mr Westwood it is Westwood, isn't it?' the Doctor said.

'Yes. Yes, that's right. I'm afraid I'll have to throw you out.'

The Doctor leaned forward. 'I have to finish what I'm doing,'

he whispered. 'It's vitally important.'

'I was afraid it might be. Got a map?'

The Doctor produced his floor plan. Westwood took it and drew a circle round a small room on the top floor on the east side of the house.

'There's a network connection in there. It's about all there is, though. You'll have to take everything else you need from here. Sorry about that. But please try to keep out of Peterson's 129 hair, for all our sakes. I'll get someone to bring you a trolley for your gear.'

'Thank you, Mr Westwood.' The Doctor grinned and pocketed the map.

'That's all right. Happy to help you chaps. I don't know civil servants.'

'Aren't you a civil servant?' the Doctor called after him as he left.

'Only as much as you are, Doctor,' he called back.

The Doctor grimaced. Not a happy thought,' he said.

Westwood smiled. Then he was gone, shutting the door behind him.

The room Westwood had suggested was certainly well isolated from the rest of the building. There would be little chance of Peterson, or anyone else, finding the Doctor in the poky attic room in which he was setting up his equipment. He had almost pa.s.sed by the small door, imagining it to be a boot cupboard. But then he reflected on the size of some of the boot cupboards in the TARDIS and looked in anyway. What he had found had probably been one of the servants' rooms. The most junior maid, by the look of it.

There was a network connection cable snaking across the floor, and a desk and chair. Other than that the room was empty. There was a set of power sockets inconveniently placed relative to the network cable. The only light was a single naked bulb hanging from the sloping ceiling. The only window was a small skylight close to the bulb, which meant the light reflected oddly round the magnolia-painted walls of the small room. Through the skylight the Doctor had a good view of a part of the sky, and a lot of the roof as it continued to slope upwards.

The Doctor hummed There's no Place like Home There's no Place like Home as he finished connecting up the computer to its screen and the network. He pushed the trolley into a corner of the room and switched on the power at the socket. Then he rubbed his hands together and turned on the system unit and screen. as he finished connecting up the computer to its screen and the network. He pushed the trolley into a corner of the room and switched on the power at the socket. Then he rubbed his hands together and turned on the system unit and screen.

Within a few minutes the Doctor was completely back into his work. He traced his finger across the screen, trying to find 130 patterns in the numbers. He excluded certain sequences and showed others in different colours. After a while he sat back and stared at the resulting pattern.

He was sure he had seen something similar before. But the context was wrong that was what was throwing him. He had already recognized the same configurations and sequences as he had found the previous night when he plugged in the chips from Sutcliffe's watch and the two malfunctioning computers he and Harry had investigated. Those same patterns had been repeated within the larger program. But they were const.i.tuent parts, elements of the whole rather than the thing itself.

He continued to stare at the screen, scrolling the bit patterns past his eyes until they started to blur. The colours left a winding trail as the numbers snaked past.

The Doctor sat upright, watching intently as the colours spiralled past in a double helix. A double helix ...

'Oh no,' said the Doctor out loud swinging the chair round so he faced into the corner of the room where the ceiling was the lowest and the trolley stood idly waiting for work. 'Oh no surely not.' And he swung back to the screen, his fingers blurring over the keys as he typed.

Gibson was coming round. Harry sat by the hospital bed and watched his colleague as he slowly moved his head from side to side. His eyes were still closed, but Harry could see movement flickering beneath the lids.

'Come along, old man,' Harry muttered encouragingly.

Gibson was more than ten years his junior, he reflected. Funny how he was suddenly aware of how young everyone else was.

Gibson's face was lacerated by the gla.s.s, but now that the blood had been wiped away and the bleeding had stopped it looked much better than Harry had feared. Gibson's hands were bandaged, but the tips of the fingers were left free, scorched and sore but manipulable.

Gibson's eyes flicked open and his eyebrows tightened as he fought to focus. Harry smiled in what he hoped was a rea.s.suring manner, and Gibson sat up suddenly. Harry stopped smiling.

131.

'I say are you all right?' He knew at once it was a stupid question. But Gibson seemed not to realize.

'Sir what are, that is ' He broke off, aware of his bandaged hands. 'My G.o.d. The explosion the phone.'

'The phone?' He was probably delirious, poor fellow. The shock, of course. Harry could remember once in Portsmouth 'Has it started?' Gibson broke into his reminiscence. 'Sarah warned me I was about to call you when when this happened.' He held his hands up in front of his scarred face.

'Has what started, Robert? What did Sarah tell you? What are they up to?'

Gibson took a moment to gather his thoughts. 'Something big. Important. This morning, but she didn't know what. Only that they told her to be ready at seven-thirty. Didn't know what for.'

'This morning?' Harry's brain went into top gear as he thought through potential targets and operations. 'Hubway,' he said at last. 'It's got to be.'