If I could get this file by
accident, someone else could get it intentionally. I’m not doing this to annoy
you; I’m doing it to defend my country.”
He fumed a bit before relaxing. “You
did the right thing. It could just be an NSA penetration team testing the
security here. I’ll contact my superior, and you keep this to yourself. The
last thing we need here is a bloody media leak. Sandia only agreed to this in
the first place because it needed some decent public relations.”
I thought Sandia was just a
high-tech research division of the phone company. “What do they do there that
they don’t want attention drawn to?”
He looked disgusted. “Where do you
think this nation designs and tests new nuclear devices?”
“Bombs. These guys have access to
atomic bomb plans? Great!” If possible, I was even more paranoid.
“Oh, they have more than that—particle
beams, satellites reflectors, X-ray lasers. They’re an all-purpose weapon
factory.”
This was way out of my league. I
decided to concentrate on something simpler. Trying to sound casual, I asked “By
the way, you wouldn’t happen to know which victim was carrying a Duratech
minivault last night?”
“Inventories are posted in the
judges’ lounge at time of death. Any other problems?” I shook my head.
He washed his hands, and over the
air-drier, he said “I wouldn’t worry too much, they’ve taken the disks with the
sensitive information off the machine altogether. Pretend like none of this
ever happened and continue as normal until we contact you. Every person you
leak to doubles the chance that the people we’re watching will find out that we’re
on to them.”
Chapter 11 – Charges
After he left, I waited in the toilet stall for several
minutes thinking. On my way to the judges’ lounge, I tried to get back into the
racing frame of mind. I wandered around picking up scuttle-butt about the game.
The biggest rumor was that the referees were trying to convene a tribunal to
eject some poor sod from the convention. Someone else told me that ten hours
ago, Paris had been in the middle of some major-league road construction. It
seems that someone arranged the monkey-wrench last night while we were
sleeping. Allegedly there had been several bomb threats, a protest, and a sewer
collapse to complicate the detours. Several teams and the SimCon Consortium had
one-upped each other till no-one had a good map of the maze.
The judge’s lounge was a-buzz with
the sounds of a lynching. There were a dozen players standing around a
conference table. I snuck around the perimeter of the crowd to look at the
post-mortem sheets hanging on the back wall of the room. It took several
minutes, but I found three vehicles carrying Duratech safes, one of which had been
blown into pieces—a middleweight from the Dutch Pensatronics Corporation. While
I was writing down the relevant information, I overheard one of the louder
complainers in the crowd from TSM bellow, “He doesn’t respond to mail, phone
messages, pages, or knocks on his door. I say we try this Hayes character in
absentia.”
“In spite of the irregularities in
his paperwork, and the magnitude of your charges, I cannot bar a contestant
until he or she is present,” said a female judge, around sixty years of age, who
wore her gray hair in a bun and the name tag Gertrude. Her ruling met with
strong rumbles of disapproval. Gertrude, who had obviously dealt with
classrooms of school children before, was not intimidated. She was wearing a
black dress, with tiny flowers hidden in the design that hinted at
non-conformity and creativity I rarely found in people in authority.
Since I wasn’t wearing my badge, I
decided to have a little fun with the mob. I continued writing in my notebook
and asked, “Don’t you mean that you cannot decide the case until you have heard
the defendant’s side, your Honor?”
“I suppose,” she admitted. “But his
absence does speak rather strongly of his
accident, someone else could get it intentionally. I’m not doing this to annoy
you; I’m doing it to defend my country.”
He fumed a bit before relaxing. “You
did the right thing. It could just be an NSA penetration team testing the
security here. I’ll contact my superior, and you keep this to yourself. The
last thing we need here is a bloody media leak. Sandia only agreed to this in
the first place because it needed some decent public relations.”
I thought Sandia was just a
high-tech research division of the phone company. “What do they do there that
they don’t want attention drawn to?”
He looked disgusted. “Where do you
think this nation designs and tests new nuclear devices?”
“Bombs. These guys have access to
atomic bomb plans? Great!” If possible, I was even more paranoid.
“Oh, they have more than that—particle
beams, satellites reflectors, X-ray lasers. They’re an all-purpose weapon
factory.”
This was way out of my league. I
decided to concentrate on something simpler. Trying to sound casual, I asked “By
the way, you wouldn’t happen to know which victim was carrying a Duratech
minivault last night?”
“Inventories are posted in the
judges’ lounge at time of death. Any other problems?” I shook my head.
He washed his hands, and over the
air-drier, he said “I wouldn’t worry too much, they’ve taken the disks with the
sensitive information off the machine altogether. Pretend like none of this
ever happened and continue as normal until we contact you. Every person you
leak to doubles the chance that the people we’re watching will find out that we’re
on to them.”
Chapter 11 – Charges
After he left, I waited in the toilet stall for several
minutes thinking. On my way to the judges’ lounge, I tried to get back into the
racing frame of mind. I wandered around picking up scuttle-butt about the game.
The biggest rumor was that the referees were trying to convene a tribunal to
eject some poor sod from the convention. Someone else told me that ten hours
ago, Paris had been in the middle of some major-league road construction. It
seems that someone arranged the monkey-wrench last night while we were
sleeping. Allegedly there had been several bomb threats, a protest, and a sewer
collapse to complicate the detours. Several teams and the SimCon Consortium had
one-upped each other till no-one had a good map of the maze.
The judge’s lounge was a-buzz with
the sounds of a lynching. There were a dozen players standing around a
conference table. I snuck around the perimeter of the crowd to look at the
post-mortem sheets hanging on the back wall of the room. It took several
minutes, but I found three vehicles carrying Duratech safes, one of which had been
blown into pieces—a middleweight from the Dutch Pensatronics Corporation. While
I was writing down the relevant information, I overheard one of the louder
complainers in the crowd from TSM bellow, “He doesn’t respond to mail, phone
messages, pages, or knocks on his door. I say we try this Hayes character in
absentia.”
“In spite of the irregularities in
his paperwork, and the magnitude of your charges, I cannot bar a contestant
until he or she is present,” said a female judge, around sixty years of age, who
wore her gray hair in a bun and the name tag Gertrude. Her ruling met with
strong rumbles of disapproval. Gertrude, who had obviously dealt with
classrooms of school children before, was not intimidated. She was wearing a
black dress, with tiny flowers hidden in the design that hinted at
non-conformity and creativity I rarely found in people in authority.
Since I wasn’t wearing my badge, I
decided to have a little fun with the mob. I continued writing in my notebook
and asked, “Don’t you mean that you cannot decide the case until you have heard
the defendant’s side, your Honor?”
“I suppose,” she admitted. “But his
absence does speak rather strongly of his
Similar Books
