Part 26 (1/2)

'Guys?' said Peri.

They looked up again. Now she was holding the modem cord, which she had unplugged from the phone jack. They both looked back down at the screen. 'That's done it,' said Bob.

The Doctor shuffled through the papers and wires and takeout containers on Swan's table until he found a printout of the program. 'Bring a soft copy as well,' he told Bob.

'Already on it,' said the hacker, brandis.h.i.+ng a floppy disk.

'You want me to trash Swan's hard drive? She'll have hidden copies all over.'

'If she's hidden copies in her computer, she'll have hidden them elsewhere as well. We'll never find them all.'

'Point,' said Bob. He stashed the floppy disk in his jacket.

'Now we've got a copy it won't take long to work out how it ticks.'

'The program should tell us something about the Savant as well,' said the Doctor. 'How it thinks, what its ultimate purpose is.'

'Isn't it obvious?' said Bob, as they took off. 'It's the ultimate hacker.'

I was surprised to see Luis sitting next to Swan, squeezed, side by side into one of the diner's red vinyl booths. He didn't look up as I slid into the opposite seat, he just went on staring at the tabletop. 'What've you done to him?' I said.

'The Doctor did this,' snapped Swan. 'When he set off the device which fried the Savant's brain. It almost fried mine as well.'

I looked at Luis. His face was slack, his eyes, unfocussed.

To me he looked as though he ought to be slumped and drooling. But to the other folks in the diner, he just looked bored or tired.

'No,' said Swan. 'You can salve your conscience: the Doctor hasn't destroyed Luis's brain. Instead, he has transformed it.'

I had seen how badly screwed up this Perez had been by his contact with the Savant. It wasn't hard to believe he could be screwed up even worse.

A waitress ambled over. Swan put a hand on Luis's shoulder. 'Look at her,' she murmured. Luis stared at the girl's face while Swan said, 'We'll each have a black coffee and we'll each have a hundred dollars from the till. And I'll have a slice of Dutch apple pie. No ice cream with that.'

'Yes ma'am,' said the waitress. She drifted away again without writing our order down.

I was about to tell Swan that not everyone shared her sense of humour when the waitress returned, carrying a pot of coffee and a stack of small bills. She filled our cups and laid the money neatly out in front of us. 'I'll be back in a moment with your pie, ma'am.'

My mouth was hanging open, my cigarette dangling from my bottom lip. Swan and I sc.r.a.ped the money off the table into our laps. She neatly tucked hers into her handbag. I didn't know what to do with it, I just wanted to get it out of sight. In the end I stuffed it into my coat pocket.

'I can convince anyone to do anything,' Swan told me blissfully 'I've tested it at the supermarket, and at the gas station, and at a toll booth.'

'It's a set-up,' I said weekly. But I had seen the people in Ritchie.

'I could make make you tell me everything you know. Like, where are your t.i.ts, girl? What do you do, bind them?' you tell me everything you know. Like, where are your t.i.ts, girl? What do you do, bind them?'

If you have ever felt totally helpless in your life maybe if you've ever been mugged you know how I felt at that moment. It was like the seat fell out from under me and nothing was holding me up any more. I was more scared than when Swan had the shotgun on me. I would rather have holes blasted in my gizzard than have something reach inside my skull and scramble my eggs. The smell of frying food made my stomach lurch and my bladder felt like a stone.

'Don't faint.' Swan was having way too much fun. 'I'm going to give you a chance to tell me of your own accord.'

'Yeah,' I mumbled.

'Yeah what?'

The back of my neck was burning. 'I bind them.'

Swan slapped her hand on the table. 'Not about that. Tell me about the little yellow guy.'

I took a deep breath. 'I'm gonna tell you what the Doctor told me. Don't blame me for it.'

'Go on,' said Swan. Sweat trickled down the back of my collar.

'He says the Savant, the original creature, was from outer s.p.a.ce. I'm only telling you what they told me, I don't believe it myself. It was supposed to go to another planet, but it came here by mistake. It's part of a computer. So was the other device you found.'

Swan was nodding. 'What do you believe, Mr Peters?'

'There's been talk about biological computers for a long time,' I said quickly. 'I think it was stolen from a lab. Maybe in the States, maybe somewhere else.'

'You know what I think happened?' said Swan. 'I think the Doctor was just too late. I think the Savant was programming Luis's mind all along. To control a human brain, you need another human brain. You need the right hardware to run your program.'

I was trying not to look at Luis. Would that make any difference? 'What are you going to do?' I said.

Swan smiled. 'Anything I like.'

'Take over the Capitol?'

She looked at me blankly 'I'm going to get myself some supercomputers,' she said. 'I've installed the Savant program across the network, so I'll always have access to whatever machines I choose. Access and power, that's what I'm all about.'

'But not political power?'

'I never read even the politics in the paper,' she said. 'I can't remember the last time I voted. Why are you so interested in politics?'

'I can't help it,' I said, in a voice like chalk 'I'm a Was.h.i.+ngton reporter.'

'Oh... you mean, why don't Luis and I take over the world.'

'Uh, I didn't mean to give you ideas.'

'I will have to push the authorities around a little. I'm going to need total access to the phone system, for example.'

She gave a loopy grin. A smile didn't belong on that face.