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indeed, they began to retreat nicely, the wall before them growing dimmer,
until Jim began to relax again. It couldn't be much longer till they were out
of the CIA data space and relatively safe.
"Morninglory, I need a hand here," came Chip's soft, tense voice.
"Zapper's got hold of me, and it's starting to bite."
Just as he was trying to figure out what that meant, Orn's vision vanished,
and he found himself drifting helpless and cut off, alone again in the blank
and the black.
he alarms had been sounding for some time now, both on
Wolfbane and, via faster-than-light super luminal connectors, on distant Earth
itself.
To repel the attack was, in general, work for machines, or least the software
that ran on them. Things moved too quickly a human response to be of any
help--which might have strange, given that the security breach was caused by
effort. The difference was simple--the attackers had the advantage. They
knew what they were after, but the defenders did and so had to make their
defense on all fronts. A brute force of thing, and far better done by killer
software programs like brain bombs, the neural zappers.
It is in the nature of cybernetic attack and defense that sides must, to some
extent, expose their vulnerable parts: defenders, of course, reveal that which
they defend--their of secret data. But the attackers, in order to use
cyberspace at must mentally enter into it, that is, open their minds to the
ings of the computer nets. And it is axiomatic--the way in is the way out or,
more simply, buddy, that's a two-way street. Neural zappers went the other
way.
And one had rolled right down the self-built throughway Chip and
Morninglory had built, crashed through all the barriers, and barreled right
into Chip's brain, where it was what it had been designed to do:
erase data.
The human mind is as much a computer as any machine and, given that most
computers were now grown than built, it was not even physically that much
different in structure, if a great deal more complex. But the zappers didn't
about complexity--a barbarian may destroy the work
Archimedes as easily as some peasant's kitchen pots. is always easy.
Chip screamed.
The sound was so loud it broke through the Morninglory had built around
Jim's perceptions, in order to him while he fought for all of their lives.
But Chip's agony, as chunks of his memory literally grated before the zapper's
brutal attack, shattered those walls and dumped "Jim unceremoniously into the
chaos of mutual struggle.
It was an awesome, and awesomely confusing, sight.
The first thing Jim saw when the darkness vanished was appeared to be an
endless stream of multicolored ribbons, twirling and snaking around two
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figures who already appeared mummified. One was screaming; the other was
fighting back, bolts of lightning flickering within the building cloud of the
ribbons, blasting great
holes in their mindless, choking structure. But even Jim could tell the
battle was doomed. No matter how much destruction the bolts accomplished,
more twisting ribbons skated in, slick and evil, to bandage the wounds and
further smother the thrower of lightning. And
Chip kept on screaming.
The only good thing Jim could imagine was that, for some reason or other, the
CIA's killer ribbons weren't attacking him. He presumed that Morninglory's
attempt to mask his presence was responsible, but he couldn't depend on the
effect lasting, now that he could see the zappers himself. If he could see
them, probably they could see him.
For the moment, though, he was free. And he knew exactly what to do.
He closed his eyes, envisioned his own real body, reached up, and jerked the
cyberjack from its socket in his skull. A shower of white sparks exploded
behind his eyes. For a moment he saw a hazy vision of
Cat's face, concerned, floating in front of him, and then the pseudo epileptic
seizures that always accompanied an unplanned virtual connection break wrapped
him in bands of iron and dragged him down to darkness.
iim!l Jim, wake up!"
Something slammed into him hard, and he tried to roll away. No use. It
slammed him again, rocked him. Heavy blows. Something flickered, distant, a
moment of light.
Wham! Another blow, but somehow refreshing. It knocked away that weird
stasis that had gripped him. Now the light began to grow, muzzy gray, fuzzy
cotton, brighter "Ca"
She'd drawn back her hand to smack him again, and only barely stayed the blow.
"What? What's wrong?. What's going on?" she demanded.
But he was already scrambling across her, to where both
Morninglory and Chip reclined quietly, their skins pale, their lids twitching
slightly. As he lunged for them both Frick and moved to stop him.
"Wait!" Frick said.
"You can't do that!" Frack chimed in.
But he burst through them like a linebacker shrugging downfield blockers and
threw himself across Chip's slight body.: was but a moment's work to rip the
connections from his Immediately the boy began to convulse. Frack screamed,
Frick unlimbered a small stun gun from underneath her swung it around. Jim
got his hands on Morninglory's just as the st unbolt buried itself in his skin
and turned him like a cheap lightbulb.
It's got something to do with the Plebs," Morninglory said. Cat bent over him
and touched his forehead. Frack, still holding vigil, stirred at the
movement. Cat glanced up. "I won't hurt him," she said.
"Where's the kid, that Jim guy?." Morninglory asked.
"He's resting up. Frack zapped him when he was pulling the jacks out of your
skull. He'd already done Chip by then."
Morninglory looked even more haggard than before. Large purple bruises
disfigured his forehead and the part of his skull that wasn't covered with
bandages. His golden skin had faded, and his eyes now looked like bloody egg
yolks. He shivered.
"Kid saved our lives, you know. Neural zapper had both me and Chip for good
and square. We couldn't have broken it. He did the right thing, the only
thing."
Cat shook her head. "I'll get to him later. How did they get to you?
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I thought you were the best."
Morninglory grimaced up at her. "I--let's say I'm one of the best, and leave
it at that. See, I tried to use Jim's stuff as a key, and it worked. Worked
too damned well, because it set off alarms from here all the way to Terra.
That wasn't any ordinary piece of killer software came after me and Chip. It
was mind slaver stuff, manufactured on Earth, and shipped out here by super
luminal inter face."
Cat stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"
He shook his head.
She went on. "Morningl'ory, are you telling me somebody operating real-time
hacker-killer programs on a faster-than-light connection from
Earth? My God, you could rent a full day on fl combined Wolfbane mega
processor for that kind of money. He you could buy the processor itself, as
far as it goes." "I know," he said. "What's going on, then?"
"Jim. It's him. He's wired into something big. Bigger than thought."
"You said it has to do with the Plebs. And mind slaver
Can we handle it?"
He shrugged. "Maybe..."
She looked down on him. "He's a nice kid, you know?. I think going to hate
myself for this."
Morninglory turned his jaundiced gaze on her. His lips moved and for a moment
she saw his grin peep through. "You're just kid, too, Cat." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]