The screen instantly said: Replace source immediately. Registry files have been overwritten.
I sat and stared at the monitor, indecision sweeping through me. What would happen now, if I switched off or rebooted? Alternatively, what would the software do if I let it continue?
I had been using computers for years and profoundly respected the rule that one should never run unknown or unverified software. This time I had blithely ignored that. The risk of viral infection was real. But then – I had state of the art antivirus software installed, and that worked reliably every day, neutralizing threats and calmly reporting its mysterious effectiveness of transferring malware into quarantine, or permanent oblivion.
I was curious about the software contained in the card – the hotel was a responsibly run business, part of a large chain of hotels, and two or three weeks after my one-night stay I was still wondering about what mistakes I had inadvertently made with this card. Wondering, but not obsessively so.
On the whole, I judged it safer to reboot.
Then the program message changed again. It was an identical warning about registry files, but now the words were displayed in a larger typeface, bright red, flashing urgently. Replace source immediately.
I pushed the card back into the slot. Installation of whatever it was resumed.
Half an hour went by. Messages appeared at intervals, informing or reassuring me that unexplained actions had been successfully completed, that old and obsolete files had been safely removed. It did not say which ones they were.
A narrow green bar at the bottom of the monitor screen was crawling with glacial sloth from left to right. It had a percentage sign above it. It slowly reached 50 per cent.
I went to the kitchen and put on a new pot of coffee. By the time the green bar showed 70 per cent I had finished drinking a second mug of coffee. I went to the toilet. I fretted with papers lying untidily on my desk. I walked around the garden. At 75 per cent it was seeming to slow. I went down to the beach and for a while watched the placid waves breaking against the shingle – the day was at last growing a little cooler. At intervals I returned to my study, hoping to find that it was over, but after the bar passed 85 per cent everything seemed to slow down even more. My hard disc continued to read or accept installation at high speed. Old files were still being deleted.
Finally, 100 per cent was achieved.
The monitor image returned to the pale blue screen, but my hard disc continued to run. I was tempted yet again to eject the card, reboot, hope for the best, but the instancy of the warning messages made me wary.
A new message appeared: Enter your location.
A pulldown menu was alongside, listing, as I quickly discovered, every island group in the Dream Archipelago. I scrolled down, fascinated to see this lexicon of the islands. I was astonished by the number of island groups whose names and therefore locations were unknown to me – I was surprised anyway by the sheer number of them. I press PgDn at least ten times, and I was still looking at island names that began with the letter ‘A’. The list did not even include the many large islands, like Dearth, which stood alone in the sea. (Solus islands had a separate sub-menu, selectable at the top of the list.) The vastness of the Archipelago was something everyone was constantly aware of, but to see this listing of names was daunting and impressive.
I scrolled down to ‘Salay Group’ and clicked on it. The five inhabited Salayean islands were then listed. I clicked on ‘Raba, the fourth’.
What is your specific area of interest on Salay Group: Raba, the fourth?
The choices presented below were, to say the least, numerous. There were several main headings, the first of which, unsurprisingly in view of the principal activity on Raba, was Financial Services. It was pre-checked with a boxed tick.
But there were many more: Tourism, Retail Trade, Air Travel, Police, Arts, Social Services, Waste Disposal, Medicine, Building and Design, Topography, Hotels – dozens more, each of which, after a single click, produced a new list of subsidiary ‘specific areas of interest’.
As an experiment I clicked on Arts, then on Literature and Books, then on Fiction, then on Novels, then on Commercial Novels, then on Writers, then on Detective Thrillers . . . but suddenly some instinct made me pull back. This was going to be about me!
The software was obviously more than a mere database and I was unsure what it was intended to do. The sense of being selected as an individual target, in person, made me distinctly nervous. I was quite possibly the only writer of commercial detective thrillers on Salay Raba, the fourth. I had never heard of another, but I supposed it was possible there would be others. This would be one way of finding out?
But the last thing I wanted was to be personally identified.
I hit the Return to Main Menu option.
The fact was that I was uninterested in all the other options.
If you have spent most of your adult life reading and writing books, and using social media about books, and following book bloggers, and reading literary magazines, and finding emails from people who are interested in the same books as yourself, and if you write the occasional review of other writers’ books, and if you have a circle of friends and colleagues also deeply involved with books in particular, and the arts in general, you end up with a fairly restricted but focused set of interests. It is not a position of superiority over others, but it does give you the point of view of the specialist.
Writers become interested in a hundred other unrelated subjects, but in an incidental, distant, practical way. They find out about things so they can put them in the next book, or at least hint that such knowledge is in the background of that book. Literature remains the centre of gravity.
Some non-writers might consider this to be an élitist attitude, but I think otherwise. It is the life I have always known and have become used to. I have been writing books for nearly twenty years, and for sixteen of those years I have lived contentedly with and worked alongside Jo Delson, herself a specialist of a similar kind.
I could not care less about Building and Design, Social Services, Retail Trade. Least of all about Financial Services, which as far as I was concerned might exist on another planet in another universe, and the people who prospered from it were alien to everything I knew or loved.
I was still mildly irritated by the software, by my running it, by what it seemed to imply.
I clicked on Financial Services.
The monitor showed the pale blue screen again, and the message: Installing Financial Services Protocols for Salay Group: Raba, the fourth. A new green bar began its slow transit across the bottom of the screen.
When it reached 5 per cent I left the study and went to the kitchen to prepare my evening meal. It was showing 32 per cent by the time I had finished eating. I watched the TV news, then a double episode of a crime series: 81 per cent. I used my cellphone to contact Jo, and we had a long conversation: 97 per cent.
At 100 per cent a new message appeared: Mutability safeguards confirmed for Financial Services Salay Group: Raba, the fourth.
Do you require regular updates? [y/n]
I clicked on No, ejected the card, rebooted the computer, read a backlog of emails and messages, dealt with those I thought should be dealt with, switched everything off, pushed the cat off my lap (but gently), and finally went to bed.
In the morning when I turned on the computer I discovered that a new software icon had appeared on my desktop: Mutability Safeguard v.2.4. The icon itself had been cleverly designed to suggest a mountain covered in snow that was trembling.
I selected it, deleted it. The icon disappeared.
When I went to the folder containing the documents of my new novel everything was untouched. The archive copies of my earlier novels were safe. Back copies of emails sent and received were the same as before. All the other work I had looked at recently, including my bank records and publishing contracts, seemed unaffected. I checked several different documents to be sure. I used the antivirus progra
m to deep scan the computer. All was OK.
I went back to work.
19
The Journeying Boat
Towards the end of the week I needed to go into the local town to buy groceries and the other weekly requirements. The supermarket was not crowded and the shelves were as usual well stocked. With Jo away I had decided to try cooking some different dishes. At my last birthday she had given me a new cookbook, and I thought I would practise some of the recipes.
At the checkout I handed over a credit card, but the clerk could not make the electronic till interface read it. He asked if I had another card, so I passed him my bank debit card. This read normally. The clerk said they had been struggling all day with an intermittent hardware fault. Some customers had been obliged to withdraw cash from the ATM outside the building.
I was actually low on cash myself, so after I had put the groceries into my car I used the ATM. A message appeared on the monitor, saying that no cash was available.
I left the car in the parking lot and walked across the road to where there was a branch of a bank I sometimes used. It had a cash machine outside. It accepted my card, but would not read my ID number. I tried several times. I went inside the bank and withdrew cash from the teller behind the counter. She told me a number of customers had reported problems, but the cash machines were not operated by the bank. The company had been informed of the problem, and they had promised to fix it before the next day.
I stopped at a filling station to refuel the car. When I came to pay my credit card was accepted at the first attempt. I drove home.
While I was unpacking the groceries I turned on the small TV on the counter, and discovered a newsflash in progress. A troopship had run into difficulties in shallow waters close to the island of Fellenstel. The ship was aground and had developed a list, but so far there were no reports of casualties. The TV reporter said that there were believed to be more than two thousand young conscript soldiers aboard. Helicopter shots of the ship showed no one moving around on the visible parts of the vessel, and the lifeboats were still held high in station. There were several tugs and a salvage ship in the vicinity. The marine authorities were hoping to refloat the ship on the next high tide, although there were signs that the hull had been damaged. An amount of fuel oil had been spilled. The seigniory of Fellenstel was furiously demanding compensation from the Republic of Glaund, under whose flag the ship was sailing.
The TV channel returned to the programme it had been showing. I switched it off.
The passage of troopships through the shallow waters of the Archipelago was a constant cause of anger and concern among the islands. The mere presence of a military vessel was an outrage against the Covenant of Neutrality, the treaty which declared the whole of the Archipelago a neutral zone. Every inhabited island and island group supported and defended the Covenant.
The two warring countries on the vast northern continent, the Glaund Republic and Faiandland, were no respecters of Archipelagian law. They transported their conscript armies to the south, where the war was being fought out on Sudmaieure, the unpopulated polar continent. Their war had been in progress for more than a century, in cruel and freezing conditions for the troops, with no apparent end in sight. Some of the troops were taken to war by air, but most of the unfortunate young people were crammed into the closed grey ships. The troopships were often too large for many of the channels between the islands.
Ordinary islanders, like me, felt unable to change or influence the situation in any way. For much of the time we lived our lives unaffected by it. Of course, there were protest movements, and I supported a relatively effective group on Raba. Once a year I would take part in a peaceful demonstration in the centre of Raba City. We never seemed to change anything, but it always felt better than doing nothing.
The only way we islanders could have a practical influence on the conduct of the war was in the matter of deserters. This was a subject of deep island pride.
A constant trickle of young people managed to get away from the icy theatres of war. They somehow eluded the military authorities and escaped by boat to the nearest islands in the southern Archipelago. They inevitably landed on one of about twenty islands adjacent to the war zone – the fighting was confined to a particular plateau on the northern coast of the continent, an immense and hellish plain of ice, frozen snow and broken rock.
These islands were in the sea facing the zone. They therefore received most of the deserters, who soon discovered three salient matters. Firstly, that they were not the only ones who had made the dangerous journey, and many others had attempted the escape before them. That the people who lived on all those islands were expert in sheltering and hiding the young conscripts who turned up from the chilly sea. And that well armed escouades of military police were also waiting, ready to capture them and return them to their units. The presence of the escouades on these islands was itself an outrageous breach of the Covenant.
The twenty islands of the south were considered heroic by the rest of the Dream Archipelago, and known informally as the Underground Islands.
The people of the Underground Islands had developed many ways of deceiving and eluding the military police. Most of the deserters were safely smuggled to other islands, further to the north and therefore more beyond the reach of authority. This was a process known as shelteration, a defiant and proud island tradition. Most islands had their own shelterate laws, differing in detail according to the nature of each island, but essentially the same.
Once free to travel, if at constant risk of discovery, some of the young deserters headed for their home countries. Islanders gave all the help possible, but expressed no opinion on this, nor offered advice, because they knew that even if they should reach home the young people would face arrest and imprisonment if and when caught.
The journey home was an unavoidably long and arduous one, crossing from one island to the next, necessarily passing through the unrelenting heat of the tropics. The majority of the deserters eventually lost the homeward urge. Most found an island where they felt particularly at home, settled into the community, began adopting their outlook and relishing the unaggressive ways of the islanders.
All islands had what were known as havenic laws and practices. These gave permanent refuge to the former deserters, with financial and practical help for those who wanted to stay, and who in time became islanders too.
Every troopship incident, and there were several every year, was a subject of immediate and intense local interest. Many outcomes were possible.
This latest accident was little different from most of the others, although the fact that the ship had been damaged and the conscripts were trapped below decks gave it an extra edge of nervy concern.
One general outcome that everyone dreaded was that should this Glaundian ship capsize or sink, or become permanently trapped in the Fellenstel shallows, she would be a major environmental hazard. Fellenstel was blessed with a coast and reefs renowned as nature and marine reserves. The disaster would also precipitate an urgent rescue attempt to save everyone on board. Releasing the young conscripts trapped below decks was a priority. It was why a hospital ship was hastening to Fellenstel, why swarms of Archipelagian rescue helicopters were in the air or on standby, why anti-pollution booms were already being laid around the area of the ship, why more salvage teams were on their way.
It was also why the ugly grey ship, if refloated, would present both a triumph and a failure: the former because lives would be saved, the latter because in everyone’s mind was the need to get those young people off the ship.
I worked through the afternoon, but put on the early evening news programme, to catch up. The stranded troopship was the main story, but there had been no real change in the problem. Salvage crews were still trying to right her.
Later, the programme shifted to the local TV station, for Salayean news. Here the main news was the announcement of unexpectedly poor financial results from Raba’s largest manufacturing and sales
employer, a company trading online as RabaHome.com, a simple name that covered an immense network of factories, retail outlets and internet services. Although it was still for the moment trading normally, Raba Home Supplies had uncovered enormous and unexplained write-offs, creating a problem of insurmountable debt. The value of the shares had collapsed, and there were fears that the company might be taken over, or closed down entirely. Thousands of jobs were at risk.
I switched channels to a TV murder drama series I was following.
Spoder called me on the landline.
‘Sir, there’s a guy called Jackson or Jackerson who is trying to locate you.’
‘Never heard of him. What did you say his name was?’
‘He only said it once and I didn’t really catch it. I think it was Jackson.’
‘Would it be Jeksid?’ I said.
‘That sounds right.’
‘Is he a cop?’
‘He didn’t say. I haven’t met him – all this was on the phone. He didn’t talk like a cop.’
‘Do you know what he was after?’
‘He wants your address,’ Spoder said. ‘Or failing that your landline number, or failing that your cellphone number. Your email would do.’
‘No it would not. You haven’t given him any of those?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Thanks, Spoder. Is he in contact with you now?’
‘He said he would call again tomorrow.’
I had no idea what Serjeant Enver Jeksid would want with me, nor why he had chosen to get to me through Spoder. I was once again preoccupied by the news about the troopship stranded in the shallows off Fellenstel.
The vessel remained in peril. Although the emergency crews had managed to refloat and right her, the ship was being prevented from sailing away. The damage to the hull was being assessed by teams of divers. They reported that some repairs had already been carried out by internal patching, presumably by the crew. No more fuel oil was escaping into the sea. There was no information about the young conscripts still confined below decks.
The Evidence Page 17