“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “I almost ran over your black dog on the way in. It just stood in the driveway, looking at the house, not even turning around when I honked the horn. I had to drive around it on the grass.”
Dale shook his head. “Not my black dog. It’s just been hanging around here. A black pooch with pink on its muzzle, right? Real small—maybe ten, twelve inches tall?”
“Black with pink on its snout,” agreed Michelle. “But not that small. It must have been a couple of feet tall. Big chest.”
“Too big to be the black dog that I’ve seen,” said Dale. “Must be its big brother.”
Michelle nodded. “Well, see you on Thanksgiving.” She sounded a bit uncertain now that it had been planned.
Dale smiled. “Talk to you on the phone before then.”
She waved and drove down the lane in the rain. There was no sign of the black dog. Dale went back in to turn up the heat and make some breakfast. He decided to splurge and have some bacon and was draining the grease from the pan, setting out a paper towel to blot the bacon itself, when a loud voice came from his study.
“You’ve got mail!”
TWELVE
>Welcome back, Dale.
Dale stood in the study staring at the screen of his IBM ThinkPad. There was nothing unsettling about receiving an e-mail except for the fact that (a) the modem was not currently connected to a cell phone or to any phone line, (b) the message had not come through his AOL account, and (c) the computer was not even running in Windows. Somehow the computer had exited to DOS and the message had been typed directly after the C prompt.
Then where the hell did the “You’ve got mail” voice come from? It had been the AOL voice. There was no mistake about that.
Dale came closer to the desk and studied the computer. Had he turned it on—or off—the previous evening before going down to the basement and falling asleep while listening to the radio? He couldn’t remember.
The message burned white against the black screen. Without touching the keyboard, Dale checked the serial ports, the PCMCIA slots, and the other connections. He knew that more and more computers and PDAs were operating wirelessly these days, but as far as he knew, his older ThinkPad didn’t have that capability. And even if it did, it would require Windows and his AOL account for him to receive or send mail. He subscribed to no other ISPs and had long ago deleted the other Internet alternatives that had been bundled with his laptop.
Which means that someone typed this directly onto the screen.Dale sat, keeping his fingers away from the keyboard, looking over his shoulder. Did Michelle come in here during her visit? They had gone up the stairs together to look at the plastic sheeting, but Dale could not remember her being out of his sight at any time.
Someone could have come in the house during the night. The door was unlocked this morning.That seemed more probable, but why this silly welcome note? Why not just steal the computer and be done with it? And where the hell did the AOL “you’ve got mail” voice come from? Dale was not terribly techno-savvy, but he’d been writing with and grading on and Internet researching with computers long enough to know that the AOL sounds were stored in wavefile form on the computer itself, so if someone wanted to activate it, all they would have to do would be. . .
But why? What kind of joke is this?
Dale sat staring for several more minutes, waiting for another line of letters to appear. None did.
Sighing, he tapped Enter and typed on the next line,>Thanks. Then he went back to the kitchen to reheat the bacon and make some toast. He had just carried the plate of toast and bacon to the table and was sipping his coffee when he heard, “You’ve got mail!”
This time he walked through the other ground-floor rooms with crowbar in hand before entering the study. Even from six feet away he could read the screen—
>You’re welcome, Dale.
Dale realized that he was breathing shallowly and that his heart was pounding. He took some deep breaths before sitting and typing—
>Who are you?
He sat there another ten minutes, watching the screen and waiting, but no new words appeared. A watched pot, he thought and lifted the crowbar and went back into the kitchen, locking the outside door. His coffee and food were cold, but he ate and drank anyway, listening all the while.
After five minutes or so he peeked into the study. No new words were on the screen.
He had just carried his plate over to the sink and was rinsing it when he heard, “You’ve got mail!”
Dale ran into the study, forgetting the crowbar.
>barguest
Dale laughed out loud. What kind of self-respecting ghost would identify itself as a bar guest? This was the kind of stupid screen name that hackers and technogeeks loved to go by. He typed, >Where are you e-mailing from, Barguest?
This time he waited a stubborn fifteen minutes, wanting to see words appear on the screen, but nothing happened. Finally he lifted the baseball bat out from under the bed and went downstairs to check the basement. He’d just finished looking in all of the dark corners and hidden spaces when he heard the familiar AOL voice upstairs announcing e-mail.
Familiarity may not always breed contempt, but it does lessen fear of the unusual. Dale was more curious than anxious when he walked into the study to see what the uninvited hacker had to say.
>thaere theode thaer men habbath hunda haefod & of thaere eorthan on thaere aeton men hi selfe
Dale felt the flesh above his spine go cold. “Barguest” sounded like some young hacker’s screen name, all right, but how many teenage hackers knew Old English? Dale stared at the words, forcing himself to slip into his English professor mode.
“From the nation where men have the head of a dog and from the country where men devour each other.”Nice. Dale didn’t know where the quote was from—it sounded like a quote to him—but he knew that it wasn’t from Beowulf or any of the other epics he’d taught. “. . . the country where men devour each other.”
Thinking of Beowulf, he looked back at the word “barguest.” It wasn’t in any form of Old English that he recognized, but it had that Germanic feel to it. “Geist” meant spirit or ghost, and “bar” could stand for “bier”—as in “funeral bier.” He flexed his fingers over the keyboard and took a few more deep breaths before typing,>Well, you’re clever, but rude, Barguest. Speaking from ambush isn’t polite. I’ll chat with you if and when you tell me how you’ve hacked into my computer and who you are. Do you prefer modern English or Old English?
This time he did not wait around. He had not quite made it to the kitchen when the voice announced new mail.
>Welcome back, Dale. But be careful. We must find what we have lost. Cerberus der arge/und alle sine warge/die an hem heingem.
Dale exhaled slowly. If he was not mistaken, the last part of the message was Middle High German. Dale didn’t speak or read all that fluently in modern German, much less Middle High German, but he’d been required to do some doctoral research in the language, and at least one of his colleagues had been urging him for years to study and teach certain Middle High German epics as a prelude to Beowulf. He tried to print the page, but his printer would not go on-line unless he was in Windows 98 and he was sure he’d lose the DOS page if he opened Windows, so Dale grabbed a legal pad and pen and copied down everything on the screen. Beneath those notes, he translated the poem.