Part 16 (1/2)

Susan opened the tracer's status window-a digitalclock much like the one on TRANSLTR; it displayed the hours andminutes her tracer had been running. Susan gazed at the monitorexpecting to see a readout of hours and minutes. But she sawsomething else entirely. What she saw stopped the blood in herveins.

TRACER ABORTED ”Tracer aborted!” she choked aloud.”Why?”

In a sudden panic, Susan scrolled wildly through the data,searching the programming for any commands that might have told thetracer to abort. But her search went in vain.

It appeared hertracer had stopped all by itself. Susan knew this could mean onlyone thing-her tracer had developed a bug.

Susan considered ”bugs” the most maddening a.s.set ofcomputer programming.

Because computers followed a scrupulouslyprecise order of operations, the most minuscule programming errorsoften had crippling effects. Simple syntactical errors- such asa programmer mistakenly inserting a comma instead of aperiod-could bring entire systems to their knees. Susan hadalways thought the term ”bug” had an amusing origin: It came from the world's first computer-the Mark1-a room-size maze of electromechanical circuits built in 1944in a lab at Harvard University. The computer developed a glitch oneday, and no one was able to locate the cause. After hours ofsearching, a lab a.s.sistant finally spotted the problem. It seemed amoth had landed on one of the computer's circuit boards andshorted it out. From that moment on, computer glitches werereferred to as bugs.

”I don't have time for this,” Susan cursed.

Finding a bug in a program was a process that could take days.Thousands of lines of programming needed to be searched to find atiny error-it was like inspecting an encyclopedia for a singletypo.

Susan knew she had only one choice-to send her traceragain. She also knew the tracer was almost guaranteed to hit thesame bug and abort all over again. Debugging the tracer would taketime, time she and the commander didn't have.

But as Susan stared at her tracer, wondering what errorshe'd made, she realized something didn't make sense. Shehad used this exact same tracer last month with no problems at all.Why would it develop a glitch all of a sudden?

As she puzzled, a comment Strathmore made earlier echoed in hermind. Susan, I tried to send the tracer myself, but the data itreturned was nonsensical.

Susan heard the words again. The data it returned . ..

She c.o.c.ked her head. Was it possible? The data it returned?

If Strathmore had received data back from the tracer, then itobviously was working.

His data was nonsensical, Susan a.s.sumed,because he had entered the wrong search strings-butnonetheless, the tracer was working.

Susan immediately realized that there was one other possibleexplanation for why her tracer aborted. Internal programming flawswere not the only reasons programs glitched; sometimes there wereexternal forces-power surges, dust particles on circuitboards, faulty cabling. Because the hardware in Node 3 was so welltuned, she hadn't even considered it.

Susan stood and strode quickly across Node 3 to a largebookshelf of technical manuals. She grabbed a spiral binder markedSYS-OP and thumbed through. She found what she was looking for,carried the manual back to her terminal, and typed a few commands.Then she waited while the computer raced through a list of commands.e.xecuted in the past three hours. She hoped the search would turnup some sort of external interrupt-an abort command generatedby a faulty power supply or defective chip.

Moments later Susan's terminal beeped. Her pulse quickened.She held her breath and studied the screen.

ERROR CODE 22 Susan felt a surge of hope. It was good news. The fact that theinquiry had found an error code meant her tracer was fine. Thetrace had apparently aborted due to an external anomaly that wasunlikely to repeat itself.

error code 22. Susan racked her memory trying to remember whatcode 22 stood for.

Hardware failures were so rare in Node 3 thatshe couldn't remember the numerical codings.

Susan flipped through the SYS-OP manual, scanning the list oferror codes.

19: CORRUPT HARD PARt.i.tION 20: DC SPIKE 21: MEDIA FAILURE When she reached number 22, she stopped and stared a longmoment. Baffled, she double-checked her monitor.

ERROR CODE 22 Susan frowned and returned to the SYS-OP manual. What she sawmade no sense. The explanation simply read: 22: MANUAL ABORT

CHAPTER 35 Becker stared in shock at Rocio. ”You sold thering?”

The woman nodded, her silky red hair falling around hershoulders.

Becker willed it not to be true. ”Pero ... but . ..”

She shrugged and said in Spanish, ”A girl near thepark.”

Becker felt his legs go weak. This can't be!

Rocio smiled coyly and motioned to the German.”el queria que lo guardara. He wanted to keep it,but I told him no. I've got Gitana blood in me, Gypsy blood;we Gitanas, in addition to having red hair, are very superst.i.tious.A ring offered by a dying man is not a good sign.”

”Did you know the girl?” Becker interrogated.

Rocio arched her eyebrows. ”Vaya. You really want thisring, don't you?”

Becker nodded sternly. ”Who did you sell it to?”

The enormous German sat bewildered on the bed. His romanticevening was being ruined, and he apparently had no idea why.”Was pa.s.siert?” he asked nervously.

”What'shappening?”

Becker ignored him.

”I didn't actually sell it,” Rocio said.”I tried to, but she was just a kid and had no money. I endedup giving it to her. Had I known about your generous offer, I wouldhave saved it for you.”

”Why did you leave the park?” Becker demanded.”Somebody had died. Why didn't you wait for the police?And give them the ring?”

”I solicit many things, Mr. Becker, but trouble isnot one of them. Besides, that old man seemed to have things undercontrol.”

”The Canadian?”

”Yes, he called the ambulance. We decided to leave. I sawno reason to involve my date or myself with the police.”

Becker nodded absently. He was still trying to accept this crueltwist of fate. She gave the d.a.m.n thing away!

”I tried to help the dying man,” Rocio explained.”But he didn't seem to want it. He started with thering-kept pus.h.i.+ng it in our faces. He had these three crippledfingers sticking up. He kept pus.h.i.+ng his hand at us-like wewere supposed to take the ring. I didn't want to, but myfriend here finally did. Then the guy died.”

”And you tried CPR?” Becker guessed.

”No. We didn't touch him. My friend got scared.He's big, but he's a wimp.” She smiled seductivelyat Becker. ”Don't worry-he can't speak a wordof Spanish.”

Becker frowned. He was wondering again about the bruises onTankado's chest. ”Did the paramedics give CPR?”

”I have no idea. As I told you, we left before theyarrived.”