If at First by Peter F. Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

ideas, however wild. Some fruiting, some withering. Irrational. Assume the monitors are unbreakable: how would I go about concealing the loss? An inverted problem, outside normal computer logic, its factors too random. Her processor nodes loaded the results into the channel structures.
    The columns of numbers started to flow. She began to inject tracer programs, adding modifications as she went, probing for weak points.
    Some deep level of her brain admitted that the metaphysical matrix frightened her, an eerie sense of trepidation at itsinhuman nature. She feared herself, what she’d become. Was that why people kept their distance? Could they tell she was different somehow? An instinctive phobia.
    She cursed the bioware.
    *
    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?’
    ‘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 now?’
    ‘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 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