“Dean, come and take a look at this,” Danny said softly. Dean stopped poring over the console of a terminal, trying to get into the programming, and hurried over to the writing desk, where Danny had a pile of books and papers that he had taken from the filing cabinets, and which may or may not relate to the electronics in the room.
Dean looked over Danny’s shoulder at the myriad of paper, covered with figures, sentences that looked almost incomprehensible in their complexity, and colorful drawings of the comps along with diagrams of their schematics.
“It’s all here,” Danny said, not without a note of awe in his voice, “but the trouble is working out which bit belongs to which. I wasn’t old enough then to really get a grip on any of the theory, but it strikes me now that although the boxes and circuits are working, it’s the stuff that makes it all work—software, wasn’t it?—that’s the problem. Sometimes, you can’t immediately tell what each comp has running it, and how to connect them to each other.”
Dean nodded. “I know what you mean. The problem is that not all the software recognizes each other, so you have to find ways of doing it. I was taught something about that… networking, Mr. Brody called it. He had a few old comp books.”
“Did it work?” Danny looked at him with eyes glittering intently. The young man had forgotten about the world of Charity and the Deathlands outside the room, forgotten about their companions in the recce party, forgotten about any dangers that may be facing them. All that mattered to him now was that he may be close to cracking the secrets of the comps, and making them slaves rather than adversaries.
“Yeah, not that we had much in the way of equipment,” Dean replied, catching the mood. “Listen, if we can find a couple of cables, I could show you quickly, and we could mebbe find out a little more about what Baron Al’s got here.”
“Okay. What sort of cables do we need?” Danny asked, but Dean was already rooting around the hardware, emerging with a couple of connecting cables.
“These,” he said. Then, indicating two of the comps, he added, “We’ll take those two. You connect that one.” He pointed to the one nearest Danny.
“Sure,” the youngster replied enthusiastically, taking the cable. “How do you actually connect these things?”
“You look for the right socket on the back,” Dean replied. “You put the male lead into the female port.”
“What?”
Dean smiled. “You never heard that? The triple stupes who invented these things had male and female ends to them. The male is the one with prongs, and the female—”
“Is the one with the hole,” Danny finished, shaking his head. “Shit, with jokes like that, no wonder they tried to blow up the fucking world.”
With the two comps connected, the young men hunched over them, each keeping an eye on his terminal while Dean tapped in commands to try to identify the software on each, and get them to communicate.
“This may not work,” he said to Danny. “We really need more time for this. We should wait until we get back to the redoubt,” he continued, beginning to feel the pressure of being stuck in enemy territory.
“Best to find out as much as possible now, and take as much of the paperwork,” Danny said firmly.
“Why?”
“Because…” Danny began, then stopped. He looked at Dean in a completely different manner from any way he’d looked at him before, as though he were assessing how much he could tell him. Finally, he decided. “Because I don’t trust Papa Joe, that’s why. See, he’s spent so long with nothing to do except dwell on revenge that I figure he’ll go over the top when he gets his hands on Baron Al. If it don’t chill him, or everyone else, in the attempt, then he’ll torch the ville, and all this’ll be lost. And this is the future. But he’s spent so long brooding over revenge that I reckon he may just be a little loco by now.”
Dean nodded briefly. “I figure most of us feel the same. Trouble is, we’ve got to go through with it because he outnumbers us…if you’re with us on this.”