From Potter`s Field

'I thought that was the point of artificial intelligence,' I said.

'Not quite,' said my niece, who had a genius IQ. 'These are not normal messages.'

'Can you give me an example?'

'Okay. Yesterday, the British Transport Police entered a case in their VICAP terminal. It was a rape that occurred in Central London in one of the subways. CAIN processed the information, ran details against its database and called back the terminal where the case had been entered. The investigating officer in London got the message that further information was requested on the description of the assailant. Specifically, CAIN wanted to know the color of the assailant's pubic hair and if the victim had had an orgasm.'

'You aren't serious,' I said.

'CAIN has never been programmed to ask anything remotely similar to that. Obviously, it's not part of VICAP's protocol. The officer in London was upset and reported what had happened to an assistant chief constable, who called the director at Quantico, who then called Benton Wesley.'

'Benton called you?' I asked.

'Well, he actually had someone from ERF call me. He's heading back to Quantico tomorrow, too.'

'I see.' My voice was steady and I did not show I cared that Wesley was leaving tomorrow or anytime without having told me first. 'Are we certain that the officer in London was telling the truth - that maybe he didn't make up something like this as a joke?'

'A printout was faxed, and according to ERF the message looks authentic. Only a programmer intimately familiar with CAIN could have gotten in and faked a transmission like that. And again, from what I've been told, there is no evidence in the audit log that anyone has tampered with anything.'

Lucy went on to explain again that CAIN was run on a UNIX platform with Local Area Networks connected to Greater Area Networks. She talked about gateways and ports and passwords that automatically changed every sixty days. Only the three superusers, of which she was one, could really tamper with the brains of the system. Users at remote sites, like the officer in London, could do nothing beyond entering their data on a dumb terminal or PC connected to the twenty-gigabyte server that resided at Quantico.

'CAIN is probably the most secure system I've ever heard of,' Lucy added. 'Keeping it airtight is our top priority.' But it wasn't always airtight. Last fall ERF had been broken into, and we had reason to believe Gault was involved. I did not need to remind Lucy of this. She had been interning there at the time and now was responsible for undoing the damage.

'Look, Aunt Kay,' she said, reading my mind. 'I have turned CAIN inside out. I've been through every program and rewritten major portions of some to ensure there's no threat.'

'No threat from whom?' I asked. 'CAIN or Gault?' 'No one will get in,' she said flatly. 'No one will.

No one can.' Then I told her about my American Express card, and her silence was chilling. 'Oh no,' she said. 'It never even entered my mind.' 'You remember I gave it to you last fall when you started your internship at ERF,' I reminded her. 'I said you could use it for train and plane tickets.'

'But I never needed it because you ended up letting me use your car. Then the wreck happened and I didn't go anywhere for a while.'

'Where did you keep the card? In your billfold?' 'No.' She confirmed my fears. 'At ERF, in my desk drawer in a letter from you. I figured that was as safe as any place.'

'And that's where it was when the break-in occurred?' 'Yes. It's gone, Aunt Kay. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure. I would have seen it since then,' she stammered. 'I would have come across it while digging in the drawer. I'll check when I get back, but I know it's not going to be there.'

'That's what I thought,' I said.

'I'm really sorry. Has someone rung up a lot of charges on it?'

'I don't think so.' I did not tell her who that someone was.

'You've canceled it by now, right?'

'It's being taken care of,' I said. 'Tell your mother I will be down to see Grans as soon as I can.'

'As soon as you can is never soon,' my niece said.

'I know. I'm a terrible daughter and a rotten aunt.'

'You're not always a rotten aunt.'

'Thank you very much,' I said.

7

Commander Frances Penn's private residence was on the west side of Manhattan where I could see the lights of New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River. She lived fifteen floors up in a dingy building in a dirty part of the city that was instantly forgotten when she opened her white front door.

Her apartment was filled with light and art and the fragrances of fine foods. Walls were whitewashed and arranged with pen-and-ink drawings and abstracts in watercolor and pastel. A scan of books on shelves and tables told me that she loved Ayn Rand and Annie Leibovitz and read numerous biographies and histories, including Shelby Foote's magnificent volumes on that terrible, tragic war.

'Let me take your coat,' she said.

I relinquished it, gloves and a black cashmere scarf I was fond of because it had been a gift from Lucy.

'You know, I didn't think to ask if there's anything you can't eat,' she said from the hall closet near the front door. 'Can you eat shellfish? Because if you can't, I have chicken.'

'Shellfish would be wonderful,' I said.

'Good.' She showed me into the living room, which offered a magnificent view of the George Washington Bridge spanning the river like a necklace of bright jewels caught in space. 'I understand you drink Scotch.'

'Something lighter would be better,' I said, sitting on a soft leather couch the color of honey.

'Wine?'

I said that would be fine, and she disappeared into the kitchen long enough to pour two glasses of a crisp chardonnay. Commander Penn was dressed in black jeans and a gray wool sweater with sleeves shoved up. I saw for the first time that her forearms were horribly scarred.

'From my younger, more reckless days.' She caught me looking. 'I was on the back of a motorcycle and ended up leaving quite a lot of my hide on the road.'

'Donorcycles, as we call them,' I said.

'It was my boyfriend's. I was seventeen and he was twenty.'

'What happened to him?'

'He slid into oncoming traffic and was killed,' she said with the matter-of-factness of someone who has freely talked about a loss for a long time. 'That was when I got interested in police work.' She sipped her wine. 'Don't ask me the connection because I'm not sure I know.'

'Sometimes when one is touched by tragedy he becomes its student.'

'Is that your explanation?' She watched me closely with eyes that missed little and revealed less.

'My father died when I was twelve,' I simply said.

'Where was this?'

'Miami. He owned a small grocery store, which my mother eventually ran because he was sick many years before he died.'

'If your mother ran the store, so to speak, then who ran your household while your father lingered?'

'I suppose I did.'

'I thought as much. I probably could have told you that before you said a word. And my guess is you are the oldest child, have no brothers, and have always been an overachiever who cannot accept failure.'

I listened.

'Therefore, personal relationships are your nemesis because you can't have a good one by overachieving. You can't earn a happy love affair or be promoted into a happy marriage. And if someone you care about has a problem, you think you should have prevented it and most certainly should fix it.'

'Why are you dissecting me?' I asked directly but without defensiveness. Mostly, I was fascinated.

'Your story is my story. There are many women like us. Yet we never seem to get together, have you ever noticed that?'

'I notice it all the time,' I said.

'Well' - she set down her wine - 'I really didn't invite you over to interview you. But I would be less than honest if I told you that I didn't want an opportunity for us to get better acquainted.'