Philip Evans’s scowling face filled her bedside phone screen. ‘Juliet?’ The scowl faded. ‘For God’s sake, girl, it’s past midnight.’ He looked so terribly fragile, she thought, worse than ever. She kept her roguish smile firmly in place – school discipline, thank heavens. ‘So what are you doing up, then?’ MINDSTAR RISING 25 ‘You bloody well know what I’m doing, girl.’ ‘Yah, me too. Listen, I think I’ve managed to clear security over the monitor programs.’ He leaned in towards the screen, eyes questing. ‘How?’ ‘Well, the top rankers anyway,’ she conceded. ‘We make eighteen different products up at Zanthus, and each of the microgee production modules squirts its data to the control centre in the dormitory. Now the control-centre ‘ware processes the data before it enters the company data net so that the relevant divisions only get the data they need – maintenance requirements to procurement, consumables to logistics, and performance figures to finance. But the security monitoring is actually done up at Zanthus, with the raw data. And that’s where the monitor programs have been circumvented, they haven’t been altered at all.’ ‘Circumvented how?’ ‘By destreaming the data squirts from the microgee modules, lumping them all together. The monitors are programmed to trip when production losses rise above fourteen per cent, anything below that is considered a maintenance problem. At the moment the total loss of our combined orbital production is thirteen point two per cent, so no alarm.’ Julia watched her grandpa run a hand across his brow. ‘Juliet, you’re an angel.’ She said nothing, grinning stupidly into the screen, feeling just great. ‘I mean it,’ he said. Embarrassed in the best possible way, she shrugged. ‘Just a question of programming, all that expensive education you gave me. Anybody else could’ve done it. What will you do flow?’ ‘Do you know who authorized the destreaming?’ ‘No, sorry. It began nine months ago, listed as part of one of our famous simplification/economy drives.’ ‘Can you find out?’ ‘Tricky. However, I checked with personnel, and none of the Zanthus managers have left in the last year, so whoever the culprit is, they’re still with us. Three options. I can try and worm my way into Zanthus’s ‘ware and see if they left 26 PETER F. HAMILTON any traces, like which terminal it was loaded from, whose access card was used, that kind of thing. Or I could go up to Zanthus and freeze their records.’ ‘No way, Juliet,’ he said tenderly. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Thought so. The last resort would be to use our executive code to dump Zanthus’s entire data core into the security division’s storage facility, and run through the records there. The trouble with that is that everyone would know it’s been done.’ ‘And the culprit would do a bunk,’ he concluded for her. ‘Yes. So that leaves us with breaking into Zanthus. Bloody wonderful, cracking my own ‘ware. So tell me why this absolves the top rankers?’ ‘It doesn’t remove them from suspicion altogether, it just means they aren’t the prime suspects any more, now we know the monitor codes weren’t compromised. Whether security personnel are involved or not depends on how good the original vetting system is. Certainly someone intimate with our data-handling procedures is guilty.’ ‘That doesn’t surprise me. There’s always rotten apples, Juliet, remember that. All you can ever do is hope to exclude them from achieving top-rank positions.’ ‘What will you do now?’ The hand massaged his brow again. ‘Tell Walshaw, for a start. If we can’t trust him then we may as well pack up today. After that I’ll bring in an independent, get him to check this mess out for me – security, Zanthus management, the memoxfurnace operators, the whole bloody lot of them.’ ‘What sort of independent?’ He grinned. ‘Work that out for yourself, Juliet. Management exercise.’ ‘How many guesses?’ she shot back, delighted. He was always challenging her like this. Testing. ‘Three.’ ‘Cruel.’ ‘Good night, Juliet. Sweet dreams.’ ‘Love you, Grandee.’ He kissed two fingers, transferring it to the screen. Her MINDSTAR RISING 27
fingers pressed urgently against his, the touch of cold glass, hard. His face faded to slate grey. Julia pulled the sheet over herself, turning off the brass swan wall-lights. She hugged her chest in the warm darkness; elated, far too alert for sleep to claim her. Access Surveillance Camera: West Wing, Guest Suite Seven