"So the victim will know he's been hacked," David said. "Do we want that?"
"It's the old trade-off-dependability versus subtlety. The electric-blue bundle of wires with a switch in the middle, that's Splice, version 122.5-very good if you're expecting a lot of alarms and stuff." He glanced at David. "Are we?"
"I wish I could say," David sighed. "The Alan we've been introduced to in public-"
"The Dr. Jekyll version," Leif put in.
David nodded. "He probably would just have an easily hacked password. But if he's actually hiding something-a la Mr. Hyde-he's probably got security up the wazoo."
"Tripwires, firewalls, encryption-and alarms," Leif agreed.
David pointed at what he considered the most disturbing of the icons on display. "What's that supposed to be? The sort of off-green amoeba thing." The icon had the sickly phosphorescence of rotting wood and kept changing shape, oozing along the surface of the table.
"That's Amorph," Leif replied.
David gave him a different sort of look. He'd read about Cracker and Splice. But Amorph was a new hacking weapon. "Is it as good as everyone says?"
"I haven't tried it yet," Leif admitted. "Just happened to pick it up recently."
"From what I hear, it sort of slurps around system defenses, infiltrating right into the security programming and opening things up. Sort of a trapdoor program, except it opens the front door for you."
Leif nodded. "All I can say is, it made my security look like Swiss cheese."
"That sounds good enough for me," David said definitely. "Any drawbacks?"
"It can be slow."
David made a "who cares?" gesture. "Hey, we've got an extra hour."
Leif insisted on waiting until it was six o'clock before they began their attack.
"You're sure he's gone?" David teased. "Just our luck, he'd come down with stomach flu and be using his system to watch a holo sitcom."
"Oh, he'll be gone, all right." Leif was grimly confident. "Alan's got a big deal going on tonight. Sergei told me all about it. Besides the fencing class, there's a whole bunch of Latvinia role-players going to the salle tonight, to see how this sword-fighting thing really works. Our pals von Esbach and Vojak — will be in attendance-not to mention P. J. Farris."
"Full house." David laughed.
"And you can be sure Mr. Slaney will be there, right at center stage."
Off in the living room an antique clock chimed the hour. "It's time," Leif said.
A new set of orders to his computer, and they were out of his virtual workspace, bouncing almost at random through the Net. The idea, David knew, was to lay as confusing a trail as possible between this computer and wherever they were going to launch the hacking program. If their attempt to break in was noticed, it should be impossible to trace it back to here.
The images on the display seemed to spin and swoop, making David wish he hadn't been quite so enthusiastic at dinner. At last they stopped in a grayish blank space.
"This used to be long-term storage-coincidentally enough, it's in one of the computers in the building where Alan works," Leif announced with a grin.
"We're lucky he didn't decide to expand Latvinia and erase your little hidey-hole," David shot back.
"Anyway…" Leif gave a few more orders, and the Amorph blob popped into existence in the middle of the dust-gray floor. Looking at a piece of paper, Leif recited a long Net address string. The Amorph icon faded from sight.
"I won't ask how you got that," David said. "Now are you going to burn it, or eat it?"
"Let's leave it for later," Leif said, "when we know whether or not we get in there."
They sat in silence, watching the dead boring image of a drab, empty room. David yawned and stretched. He rocked back and forth in his seat, wondering if there was time for a bathroom break before Amorph opened the way up for them. He glanced over at Leif.
"I told you this program takes its time," Leif defended himself.
"I know," David said. "That's the difference between what you see on the holovids and reality. Now I'm just wondering if we're missing out on any good holo shows while we wait."
At long last a portal of sorts began constructing itself in the inactive storage space. The empty doorway was the same sickly greenish-white as the Amorph amoeba.
"Looks like we're in," Leif announced.
"My turn now," David said. He called up his virtual bag of tricks, and gave the order to proceed. Leif had already programmed his system to respond to David's voice commands. They went through the portal, and found themselves in a disturbingly familiar room. It was the study/library from the palace in Latvinia-just multiplied by about twenty times. There was a ton of stuff filed away in here.
"Good luck," Leif muttered.
David pretended not to hear. He began deploying his weapons-directory crunchers, an internal searchbot program, even a file-viewing utility-and set to work.
After a long while David leaned back, listening to his neck crack. The more he'd wormed his way through Slaney's system, the farther and farther he'd hunched forward. "What's our time look like?"
"You've been grinding away in there for about an hour and a half," Leif replied. "Amorph took about forty-five minutes to get us in. We've still got about two hours. What have you got?"
"Not much," David admitted unhappily. "I've found bits and pieces of the Latvinia program, but he's not running the sim from this system-it just doesn't have the juice."
'That's a good thing, isn't it?" Leif asked. "A simple- minded computer means less stuff to be found."
"Yes-and no," David replied. "I keep coming across archived information files-stuff that's been downloaded from the Net, compressed, and stuck in storage. It may all be garbage-handy tips on how to build your own world."
"We knew he'd been downloading a lot of stuff on that," Leif agreed. "On the other hand, this archived stuff could turn out to be his private journals from the time he was eight."
David nodded. "It just takes time to uncompress files, read 'em, and make a decision about whether or not they're useful for our purposes. We could be pawing around until midnight."
"Or?" Leif asked.
"We could copy it all-download it, and then paw around in your space until midnight."
"Could we fit it in the corporate storage we-um- borrowed?" Leif asked.
David nodded.
"Okay. Let's do that. Then we can both paw."
The download went quickly enough. While that happened, David checked to make sure he'd left no traces of his presence. "We probably should cover our tracks. Otherwise, isn't Slaney going to notice that his security has been neutralized?"
"I'll take care of that," Leif said, "after you leave."
David pulled out, and Leif began issuing commands. The phosphorescent portal collapsed in on itself. "Now Amorph will just disentangle itself," Leif announced. "When it's through, we'll just have that shapeless little icon sitting on my shelf in my home space again." He gave another order, and a duplicate viewing station to the one Leif had set up for himself popped out of the wall. "That side okay for you?" he asked, pointing to it.
"Fine," David said. He plunged into the archives they'd acquired, bursting out one document from every folder. Then he hit one section that caught his interest. David decompressed document after document, growing more and more worried as he read. He was so immersed, he didn't even notice Leif come over and give him a shake. Then he realized his friend had been calling his name.
Leif peered at the holotext. "When I have to go that far to get someone's attention, it's usually because they've discovered a set of naughty image downloads," he teased. "I was just going to tell you that the Amorph icon turned up-we're out clean. But now I wonder what's gotten your attention." He wrinkled his nose. "All I've turned up is recipe files for creating more realistic sims."