Part 5 (1/2)

Still, she thought as she headed down the dimly lit hall to the vending machine, it was an unpleasant coincidence after yesterday. She'd have to keep an eye on things over the next few days.

By the time Swan returned to her chair with a plastic cup of coffee, the intruder was back.

The Doctor was not what I'd been expecting. He was staying in a pricey hotel in downtown Was.h.i.+ngton, all freshly cleaned carpets and bright lighting. I tapped on the door of his room.

No answer. I double checked: this was the right place. I knocked again. Still nothing. It took me a minute with a credit card to persuade the door to open.

The room was pristine, as though it had just been made up.

For a moment I thought I'd been played for a sucker n.o.body had been staying here at all. But then I saw there were clothes hanging in the closet, and a computer sitting on the table next to the free stationery and the Gideon's.

The cupboard contained one ordinary-looking black suit and one extraordinary coat, a patchwork of colours that made me think of the Pied Piper ”with a gipsy coat of red and yellow”. It wasn't a clown's coat, all ragged patchwork, but a garment of substance, well-made and hefty, a gentleman's coat that just happened to be a kaleidoscope of hippie hues. It would have kept out the worst of the DC cold, but must have stood out like a stained-gla.s.s window in the snow. I dipped a hand into the nearest pocket of the coat, hoping for some ID, and instead fished out a dog-eared Roget's Thesaurus Roget's Thesaurus.

The computer was an Apple II Plus. It looked like a big, flattened plastic typewriter with a miniature television set sitting on top of it. Two chunky metal boxes were stacked next to it, one on top of the other: twin drives for five-and-a-half-inch floppy disks. A flat blue cord connected the internal modem through a fist-sized black box to the phone socket.

'You were expecting something more advanced.'

I jerked sideways, violently, at the unexpected voice, and fell over the bed. I found myself looking up at a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early forties, with an explosion of blonde curls like William Katt in The Greatest American The Greatest American Hero Hero. He loomed, scrutinising me with blue eyes that managed to convey suspicion, humour and weariness all at once.

'Mr Peters, I presume,' he said.

I hauled myself to my feet with some dignity still intact.

'Guilty as charged.'

I'd had a mental picture of a cross between an Oxford professor and Sherlock Holmes, delicately sipping tea while he lounged in a tweed jacket. This guy looked more like a boxer or a film noir film noir gangster in his tailored black snit. How the h.e.l.l had he got into the room without making any noise? He wore a rainbow-coloured tie printed with dozens of little cats, interlocked like figures in an Escher picture. gangster in his tailored black snit. How the h.e.l.l had he got into the room without making any noise? He wore a rainbow-coloured tie printed with dozens of little cats, interlocked like figures in an Escher picture.

The Doctor bent slightly so our eyes were almost level.

'Now, Mr Peters,' he said, looking down his long nose at me.

'It was your decision to involve yourself in our doings, rather than the other way around. I would rather not have my concentration disturbed by a scribbler asking a lot of questions.' He spoke in a crisp English accent, with relish, as though just p.r.o.nouncing words was a pleasure in itself.

'I think I've got enough computer know-how under my belt to follow what you're doing.'

He gave me a curt nod and sat down at the writing desk.

'Observe.' With a flourish, the Doctor typed 'Sphinx of Black Quartz, Judge my Vow'. The letters popped up on the screen, white on black. When I didn't seem impressed, he explained,

'You oughtn't to be able to do that. Strictly upper-case only on this model.' He flipped open the lid of the machine. 'But with a few jumper wires here, run to the 80-column card there, a replacement ROM chip courtesy of my friends at the Apple Pi users group... hey presto, eighty columns of mixed case!'

'So,' I said. 'Now it can do everything my typewriter can.'

'Unlike your typewriter, Mr Peters,' said the Doctor dryly, 'this is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Just look at this: 64K total address s.p.a.ce for the processor chip. A mere sc.r.a.p by the standards of those new-fangled IBM machines. How could this overmatched museum piece ever hope to compete?

'But the makers knew. They set aside a few locations in the address s.p.a.ce, and constructed it so that accessing those memory locations directly affected the hardware. Read from this address here and zap! you swap your ROM s.p.a.ce for an extra 12K of RAM. Read from this one over here, and zap! swap in a different 4K block. Read here, and zap!

you've swapped in another bank and turned your 40-column display into an 80-column one. And fiddle with these locations, and you swap the whole blessed memory s.p.a.ce, all those banks and sub-banks, and double your available RAM.

One hundred twenty-eight kilobytes of memory for the taking.'

OK, this I was familiar with: the hacker's love songs for their machines. 'It sounds like a lot of trouble to go to.'

'Oh, it's hideously overcomplicated, compared to getting a 16-bit processor and just having vast acres of memory there at your command. But that's what makes it such a triumph.

Anyone can do incredible things if they've got incredible resources. It takes an artist to make poetry out of bits of string and paper clips. Now; if only this heap of junk could connect at faster than 1200 baud.'

'While we're waiting for it, can I ask you a few questions?'

'You can ask,' p.r.o.nounced the Doctor, without taking his eyes off the screen. I hesitated. 'That's a little joke.'

'How long have you known Miss Smith?'

'Peri and I stumbled into one another's company some time ago,' he said absently. 'Some months, at a guess. Though at times it definitely seems longer.'

The Doctor spread his hands on the beige plastic that flanked the keyboard, as though gathering his thoughts. Then he typed a short, sharp series of commands into the Apple, sat back, and hit 'return'.

I heard the modem swing into action. But instead of connecting to another machine, it hung up after maybe six rings, and immediately started dialling again. 'So exactly what are we up to here, Doc?' I said.

'What I I am attempting to do, he said, 'is to dial into the mainframe at the TLA building. My computer will continue to dial phone numbers until one of their computers answers' He paused for emphasis. 'Oh, and it's Doc. am attempting to do, he said, 'is to dial into the mainframe at the TLA building. My computer will continue to dial phone numbers until one of their computers answers' He paused for emphasis. 'Oh, and it's Doc. Tor Tor. The second syllable is as precious as the first'

We sat there for maybe a quarter of an hour, listening to the modem dial and dial again and again. The Doctor explained that his program was set up to call numbers that he knew were allocated to TLA's headquarters. Presumably he'd poked around in Ma Bell's computers for a few hints, although he might have guessed the range of numbers from their phone book listing.

At last the modem emitted a squeal of static, the sound of two computers shaking hands.

The Doctor's hands landed on the keyboard at a run. 'I'm going to try a series of account names,' he said, 'typically left behind by programmers as back doors into the system for testing.' He could type almost as fast as the modem could send data, so I was able to watch his attempts to break and enter as they piled up on the screen. Each time, he just hit 'enter'