Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

Fog swirled and churned and eddied in countless currents, but the overriding tidal forces in the air pushed it relentlessly toward the dark and serried hills.

Then the breeze abruptly ratcheted up until it became a real wind again, whispering in the tall weeds, soughing through the evergreens. It produced a soft and strangely forlorn thrumming from a nearby road sign.

Though Chrissie knew where the two men had gone to ground, she could not see them. They were well hidden.

31

Fog flew past the patrol car and eastward through the night, driven by a breeze that was swiftly becoming a full wind, and ideas flew through Sam’s mind with the same fluidity. His thoughts were so disturbing that he would have preferred to have sat in mindless stupefaction.

From considerable prior computer experience, he knew that part of a system’s capabilities could be hidden if the program designer simply deleted some choices from the task menus that appeared on the screen. He stared at the primary menu on the car’s display—A, DISPATCHER; B, CENTRAL FILES; C. BULLETIN BOARD; D. OUTSYSTEM MODEM—and he pressed E, though no E task was offered.

Words appeared on the terminal HELLO, OFFICER DORN.

There was an E. He’d entered either a secret data base requiring ritual responses for access or an interactive information system that would respond to questions he typed on the keyboard. If the former was the case, if passwords or phrases were required, and if he typed the wrong response, he was in trouble; the computer would shut him out and sound an alarm in police headquarters to warn them that an impersonator was using Dorn’s number.

Proceeding with caution, he typed HELLO.

MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

Sam decided to proceed as if this was just what it seemed to be—a straightforward, question-and-answer program. He tapped the keyboard MENU.

The screen blanked for a moment, then the same words reappeared MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

He tried again PRIMARY MENU.

MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

MAIN MENU.

MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

Using a system accessed by question and response, with which one was unfamiliar, meant finding the proper commands more or less by trial and error. Sam tried again FIRST MENU.

At last he was rewarded.

CHOOSE ONE A. NEW WAVE PERSONNEL B. PROJECT MOONHAWK C. SHADDACK

He had found a secret connection between New Wave, its founder Thomas Shaddack, and the Moonlight Cove police. But he didn’t know yet what the connection was or what it meant.

He suspected that choice C might link him to Shaddack’s personal computer terminal, allowing him to have a dialogue with Shaddack that would be more private than a conversation conducted on police-band radio. If that was the case, then Shaddack and the local cops were indeed involved in a conspiracy so criminal that it required a very high degree of security. He did not punch C because, if he called up Shaddack’s computer and got Mr. Big himself on the other end, there was no way he could successfully pretend to be Reese Dorn.

Choice A probably would provide him with a roster of New Wave’s executives and department heads, and maybe with codes that would allow him to link up with their personal terminals as well. He didn’t want to talk with any of them either.

Besides, he felt that he was on borrowed time. He surveyed the parking lot again and peered especially hard at the deeper pools of shadow beyond the reach of the sodium-vapor lamps. He’d been in the patrol car for fifteen minutes, and no one had come or gone from the municipal-building lot in that time. He doubted his luck would hold much longer, and he wanted to learn as much as possible in whatever minutes remained before he was interrupted.

PROJECT MOONHAWK was the most mysterious and interesting of the three choices, so he pushed B, and another menu appeared.

CHOOSE ONE: A. CONVERTED B. PENDING CONVERSION C. SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION – LOCAL D. SCHEDULE OF CONVERSION – SECOND STAGE

He punched choice A, and a column of names and addresses appeared on the screen. They were people in Moonlight Cove, and at the head of the column was the notation 1967 NOW CONVERTED.