Infectress
Infectress 
Paradigm International's
headquarters was a long, low building of prefabricated concrete and mirrored glass. It was
typical of high-technology companies that didn't invest their start-up capital in
architectural statements.
Diane Jamison walked into the lobby. She
smiled at the receptionist, asked to see the director and allowed her palm print to be
imaged. Thirty minutes later, the director's secretary escorted Diane to the director's
office, a spacious one with a view of an inner courtyard garden.
The director, Sanders, was a gaunt black
man with a large forehead and shocks of white through his nappy hair. He extended a long,
slender hand to Diane.
"Pleased to see you again, Mrs.
Jamison," he said.
"Yes, I remember now," Diane
said. "We met at the DataWorks Symposium two years ago, when I briefed the Fungal
Priest case."
"Yes, please sit down."
Sanders and Diane sat down facing each
other on the plush chairs in the sitting area. Diane was pleased with her reception.
"I was just rereading the symposium
notes on the Fungal Priest case," Sanders said. "That was brilliant work."
Diane smiled. "Thank you."
"I understand that you're no longer
with the FBI?"
"No, I retired. The Bureau offered me
either a desk job or a disability retirement. Since I wanted to pursue my own interests
without as much . . . guidance as you get working for the government, I took the
retirement. Started my own practice, so to speak. Consulting detective, don't you
know."
"Who are you after now?"
"Infectress."
"Infectress? Is she the one that
crashed JAL 117?"
"JAL 117, four hundred and forty-five
deaths," Diane said in agreement. "With her other bombings and
perversions--"
"Perversions?"
"Perversions of the worst sort, like
disrupting subway control systems. She's killed at least 1,504 people, wounded 3,934. If
we count Leroy, 3,935. By the way, you have my condolences."
"Thank you. Why haven't the police
stopped somebody like this yet?"
"She's brilliant," Diane said.
"And she's not insane."
"How can you say that such a monster
is not insane?"
"My training is in criminal
psychology," Diane said. She took a deep breath. She didn't like to talk about
Infectress at this level, but, to further her pursuit, she forced herself. "A serial
killer, a homicidal maniac, a psychosexual killer can only get away with so many murders.
To kill people at the scale that she does, the murderer needs something more potent than
madness. She needs a political philosophy."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, indeed. Don't think of her as a
serial killer. Think of her as a revolutionary."
"A terrorist."
"A terrorist attempts to influence a
political system through intimidation. Infectress and her type are attempting to destroy
all political systems, destroy the world economy, stop the damage that nine billion people
are causing the planet before it is too late. A hundred years ago, they would have been
called nihilists. But they think of themselves as a force of nature, a breed spawned in
reaction to the imbalance caused by overpopulation, a killer strain of humanity which has
the mission to--"
"Yes, yes, one of those environmental
terrorists. So--what can you do about it?" Sanders asked.
Diane took a deep breath. She forced
herself to speak calmly. She smiled in a self- mocking way. "I can help you and the
police decide whether this was an Infectress crime. If it was, I can help track her down.
Bring her to justice."
Sanders studied Diane's face. He worried
that she seemed slightly unbalanced. Her proposal was worth pursuing, though.
"How much would it cost us?"
Sander asked.
"I'll show you my expenses. If you
agree, then you can pay them. That's all."
Sanders eyebrows furrowed. Then he leaned
forward and said, "Forgive me, but I have to consider your . . . reliability. What
was the cause of your disability retirement?"
"Do you mean, was it physical or
mental?"
"Yes, that's right. I'm afraid I
do."
Diane stood. Her torso was within Sander's
reach. She pulled out her shirttail and lowered her slacks, revealing her hip and her
abdomen under the umbilicus. The golden white skin was crisscrossed with fine scars; there
were patches where even the best cosmetic surgery could not hide massive injury.
"Don't worry, Mr. Sanders," she
said. "Most of the damage was physical. This hip is entirely reconstructed. It's a
good hip, but not good enough to allow me to pass the Special Agent field readiness test.
The charge destroyed some other things, too. Like my uterus."
Diane readjusted her clothing and sat
down.
"I'm very sorry," Sanders said.
"Don't be. I was lucky to live. And
there are plenty of children in the world already. And I can help them."
"You said, a charge?"
"Yes. Clever little thing. Supposed
to cut me in half. Just lucky. Just lucky that there was . . . something blocking the
way."
"Are you sure she did it?"
"Oh, yes. She called me in the
hospital. Made up this amusing voice, using sound bites from about fifteen movies and
television programs. Warned me that if I ever got on her trail again, she'd ram an
explosive charge up my vagina and watch to make sure I was split in half. I was still
heavily sedated. It was a charming conversation."
Sanders sat back. Diane allowed him to
consider. When Sanders leaned forward, he spoke with force. "I want to get whoever
destroyed the mind of my employee. I agree to your terms--"
"Thank you."
"--but I've got to withhold some
proprietary information."
"You can withhold any proprietary
information that Leroy couldn't access."
"Leroy was my data security manager.
He had access to everything."
"I need the same visibility he had. I
need to find out if he helped Infectress steal data."
Sanders launched out of his chair and
paced for a moment before swinging toward Diane and saying, "You think he stole? My
own data security manager?"
"I think he may have," Diane
answered. "Whoever destroyed his mind may have done it to cover her tracks."
"Why not just shoot him?"
Sanders asked.
"Sickness."
"Sickness?"
"Sorry. Zapper slang. Sickness is
doing things the hard, the unexpected, the dangerous way. Showing a lot of sickness helps
builds your myth. Myth, that's another important idea to them. They need to stay covert,
but they want recognition. That's why they have these network war names, like Fungal
Priest or Infectress. Why they like to establish an operating pattern. It builds their
myth."
"Leroy never told me that."
"I'm sure Leroy concentrated on your
most common threats. Sloppiness. Vindictiveness. Disgruntled employees. Electrical and air
conditioning problems. I specialize in computer vandals who are also high-tech terrorists.
It's an exotic field."
"Okay, Mrs. Jamison, you've sold
me," Sanders said. "I'll pay your reasonable expenses. And I'll allow you access
to all data."
Diane smiled. It was the access that she
needed.
Thirty minutes later, Diane sought out the
police detective in charge of the investigation, who was interviewing Paradigm employees
in the wing opposite Sander's office. The smooth- faced Lt. Yarborough made Diane feel
old. She consoled herself that she was still in her late thirties. Young enough to start a
family, if she could find a husband strong enough to help her care for troubled orphans.
"Yes, can I help you?"
Yarborough asked, looking up at Diane.
"I'm Diane Jamison," she said,
extending her hand. Yarborough shook it in a perfunctory manner. "I'm a specialist in
data security. Paradigm has contracted me to help them determine if Leroy or his attacker
stole data from the company."
Yarborough grimaced. "This is a
police matter."
"I know. The first thing I'm doing is
coming to see you. I always cooperate with the official investigation."
"You have experience in these kind of
things?" Yarborough asked, his voice quivering in a callow note that betrayed his
anxiety about investigating a high-technology crime. Feeling an advantage, Diane sketched
her career, stressing her experience in the FBI.
"So I'll tell you everything I
learn," she concluded. "But we have to be careful. The attacker is
sophisticated, dangerous. He or she could monitor the investigation, taint or destroy
evidence we find, or even kill one of us. Kill you. Or kill me."
"Yeah, well, most murder
investigations do involve tracking down a murderer."
Diane smiled mechanically, taken aback by
the young cop's cynicism. Then she said, "That's right. That's why I always ask, as a
protective measure, that you treat me as a citizen cooperating with the investigation, and
give me protection under U.S. Code 1998- 2."
Yarborough looked as if he had just bit
his tongue. He made a note. "Great. More paperwork. I'll refer to you as Citizen L-12
in all correspondence," he said. "Except, of course, for the form I gotta fill
out and file with a judge, which will document your true identity." Yarborough's
sarcastic voice left unsaid, "masked woman."
"That's hard copy, right? Nothing
electronic."
"Hard copy. A form. Sealed. Kept with
the judge."
"Okay. You should assume that the
terrorist is listening in on all communications. I understand you're from homicide."
"Right. Because Leroy is
brain-dead."
"Not brain-dead. He has no capacity
for memory."
Yarborough flipped his notebook closed
with a dismissive gesture. "Well, the captain couldn't figure who else to give it to,
so I got it. Let me know what you find out."
Diane smiled wanly. She hadn't expected
much more cooperation from the police, not at first. She returned to her van and then
carried the attaché case containing her supercomputer into Sander's office.
"That's a standard DXNET NIU over
there, isn't it?" she asked.
"Yes," Sanders said.
"Well, I'm going to start."
Diane jacked her supercomputer into the
DXNET network interface unit. From the attaché case, she pulled out a virtual mask.
"I don't think I've ever seen that
model before," Sanders said.
"It's developmental," Diane
said, as she settled the mask over her face, snugging the phones into her ears and
aligning the display screens with her eyes.
"Whose?"
"Sorry. Proprietary information.
Excuse me while I go virtual." She pulled the lower part of the mask over her mouth,
so that she could speak in privacy.
In the display screens, the image of
Diane's familiar appeared. Her familiar took the form of a very fat Victorian gentleman
named Mycroft. He was seated alone in a small library filled with leather-bound books. He
lowered his newspaper and smiled gently at Diane.
"I control the CPU," Mycroft
said. "I control the network. I control the peripherals. I control the telecomms. I
control the whole system." "What do you think?"
"There were some standard industrial
security traps. The architecture is haphazard. The servers are too busy, but there are
powerful clients that are idle. Excuse me, Ms. Jamison, please let me drop the avatar. I
need the cycles."
"Permission granted, Mycroft."
The image of her familiar disappeared, the
cycles usually used to present the image now being saved for heavy computation. Diane
uncovered her face. She turned to Sanders.
"My system is investigating
yours," she said. "It may take awhile. Do you have any tea?"
Sanders served Diane green tea in a
Japanese porcelain tea service.
"Tell me what you know about Leroy's
personal life," Diane said.
"He was a hetero bachelor. Dated
various women, never anyone from the company. He was married years ago, one of those
easy-come, easy-go civil arrangements, he told me. Seemed like a normal enough young man.
Didn't drink or do drugs, not even the legal ones. I liked that, particularly in my
security manager." Sanders shrugged.
"Do you know that he tested positive
for THC and AMT?"
"No, I didn't. I'm surprised."
"I think that we're going to find
that Leroy dead is more interesting than Leroy alive."
"You're not going to stay on the
computer side of it?"
"Hardware, software, wetware, it's
all just media. I'm interested in data," Diane said. "Obviously, Leroy's
attacker wanted to destroy data that was stored in his wetware."
Diane continued to chat with Sanders about
Paradigm and Leroy. After half an hour, Mycroft demanded her attention.
"I found a lot of problems,"
Mycroft said, "but I can't decide which are important and which aren't. I need your
help."
"Dump them to the working file, and
let me take a look," Diane said, wishing that her familiar were as brilliant as its
namesake, Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes' smarter brother. Sighing, she thought, Mycroft
is the state of the art, but someday there'll be an artificial intelligence system
that will make him as obsolete as calculators.
She studied the files, quickly learning
that Leroy was a lousy security manager. Mycroft had discovered that Paradigm employees
had games and other personal applications on their workstations. There were indications
that about half of them took company work home with them. Diane also saw evidence that
some of the employees read each other's mail, padded their billable hours and charged
personal calls to the company, on and on. Diane shook her head. It was typical. The
telecommunications picture was not pretty, either. There were traces of at least three
intrusions. Diane couldn't figure out yet whether the intrusions were industrial espionage
or just trespassing by random zappers.
One of the most subtle discrepancies
seemed the most intriguing. Mycroft's brute force assault on the data bases had uncovered
some shipping and billing discrepancies underneath a possible act of vandalism. Diane
instructed him to reconstruct the actual events by processing records of component parts
inventory and machine tool production time.
When she saw the results, Diane determined
that Paradigm had built four DNA splicers, but shipped only three to the Chicago Center
for Biomedical Research genetics lab. The fourth DNA splicer had disappeared. Infectress
had stolen a DNA splicer.
And with that piece of top-flight,
restricted technology, Infectress could invent her own life forms.