She needed to find Andy.
Flick burst out of her office, startling the lone student who sat at one of the machines in the computer lab, then hurried out of the ITC building. Even at a dogtrot it took ten minutes to get across campus to the Vice Chancellor’s building, which sat on a distant hill, hunched inimically against the vibrant energy of the students.
Andy would be at the Vice Chancellor’s cocktail party, celebrating the massive grant that Bellona had brought to the University. Slathering on the charm, basking in the glory and the congratulations, and convincing everyone that it was he, and he alone, who’d developed the cutting-edge cyber-war program.
Not that Flick minded, particularly. The Vice Chancellor’s social events were a trial that she avoided at every opportunity. Professor Andy Grey could have the limelight, he was welcome to it. She preferred life behind the scenes.
It was early evening and the cloying heat of the day still hung in the air. Though it was light enough to see, the roar of voices and thud of music that echoed from the Uni bar made Flick wonder if it was later than she’d thought. She dug in her jeans pocket for her phone to check the time and then swore quietly. She’d left it in the computer lab, along with her keys and swipe card. At least she had her wallet. She’d have to borrow someone else’s swipe later.
The security guard, whose main purpose was to keep students away from the Vice Chancellor, watched as she entered the building.
“Evening.” He smiled as she hurried past, and didn’t ask for her ID.
“Hi.” She waved vaguely at him, his face faintly familiar, then took the stairs two at a time, up to the function room where the party was being held. But she slowed as she came to the top, reluctant to face the hubbub of voices.
“Flick.”
Professor Andy Grey appeared out of the crowd and strode towards her, grinning like the idiot he was. Genius idiot. But idiot nonetheless.
“What did you do to Bellona?” She lowered her voice, aware that the security guard at the bottom of the stairs could probably hear them.
His confident grin faltered, and he glanced over his shoulder to the party. “What do you know?”
“What did you do, Andy? There’s a whole section written in a code I’ve never seen. How can a code I’ve never seen run perfectly on my computer? It’s impossible?”
He hesitated then reached up and pulled a pen out of her hair. Then another. “It’s no wonder I can’t find anything to write with.” He tucked them into the top pocket of his suit jacket.
“Stop it —” She stepped back a little and reached up to untangle another pen from her thick auburn hair. He eyed her for a moment and she handed it over. “Tell me what you did?”
“Don’t get your knickers in a knot. It’s just a thing I was working on. It’s meaningless.” His smile was warm, but Flick knew him well enough to hear the hint of insincerity in his voice.
“What I saw was a long way from meaningless.”
His eyes slid away from hers. “Come and talk to the Vice Chancellor, he’ll be so thrilled you’re here.” He reached out and tugged her arm gently.
Flick glanced beyond him to the party. “I want to know what’s going on with Bellona.” She pulled back from his grasp and he let go easily. “It’s too dangerous. We agreed we wouldn’t go there.”
“Yes, okay. I modified it, added a few things I’ve been working on. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“But –”
“Tomorrow. I mean it Flick. Not now.”
His face creased into a stubborn frown, and she gave up. Pushing the subject would only irritate him. The conversation was closed.
“We’ll talk tomorrow then. First thing.” She turned to leave.
“No way.” He stepped into her path, ushering her towards the sound of refined chatter. “There is no escape for you now. Come and have wine.”
“I’m going home.”
“I meant what I said on the phone. The Vice Chancellor will be furious if you don’t show. Anyway, there are some interesting people here.”
Flick knew he was right. The Vice Chancellor, an insecure and occasionally vindictive man, often indulged her introverted ways. But he wouldn’t tolerate her absence if it made him look foolish. “All right. Give me a moment.”
She pulled out her hair tie, which held her hair back in a simple ponytail, and ran her hands through it. Two more pens fell onto the floor.
“Ready? This is the best I can do.”
“God Flick.” Andy watched her with unabashed admiration. “You’re so beautiful.”
She stared at him for a second, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. Then bent quickly, to pick up the pens, as heat flooded up from her chest. Beautiful?
Straightening she gave him a confused look. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Then she hurried away, towards the party. She stopped abruptly at the threshold of the room and took a slow breath. The place seethed with the glitterati of the University. Wealthy sorts, desperate to have buildings, libraries or even toilet blocks named after them, mingled eagerly with the cream of Academia. Who were all equally eager to acquire every cent of sponsorship money for their projects.
The Vice Chancellor spotted her and hurried over; his heavy academic robes embroidered with gold and silver flowed behind him. He sweated heavily in the close humidity.
“Professor Grey, you persuaded our star to be here.” He addressed Andy, who stood quietly behind her. “We were sure you’d be a no-show, like the other times.”
Flick smiled at him, the most charming one in her repertoire. Wasn’t it enough that she was part of a team that had, so far, brought millions of dollars of funding to the University? Why did he insist on parading her about like a prize poodle?
“I’m sorry I’m late. I’d just made a breakthrough on the Titan project and was finishing some things up. It’s such a pleasure to be here.” She lied easily.
“I’ll get you a drink.” Andy’s fingers lightly brushed her forearm. She nodded uncertain thanks at him. A drink would be good.
The evening proceeded at a glacial pace. The Vice Chancellor attached himself to her side, giving her no chance to slink away when no one was looking. He introduced her to person after person, and she made small talk about the late summer heat wave and asked about other people’s holidays. The clashing odours of different perfumes and the thick smell of cheap wine mixed horribly with the fifteen hours she’d spent staring at a screen and began to turn into a headache.
“What is this stuff?” Andy appeared by her side, and she handed him the glass of wine he’d passed to her an hour earlier. “It’s like vinegar.”
“It’s all they’re serving,” he said. “Cost cutting.”
“Is that her?” squawked a woman nearby. Flick felt her searing gaze and glanced towards the door.
“Here drink this.” Andy shoved his glass of orange juice into her hand.
She stared at it dubiously. “What’s in it?”
“Just drink it.”
She downed it in one gulp. Then smiled genuinely as the alcohol hit her system. “Vodka. Thank you.”
He jutted his chin towards the Vice Chancellor who was flapping around like an overdressed vulture. “Speech time. Try to look friendly.”
“I was trying last time,” she whispered, as the room quieted. “That was my friendly smile.”
“Smile like when you finish writing the perfect algorithm. Smile like that. It’s my favourite one.”
She glanced at his face, trying to read his expression. This banter had never been part of their friendship. “What is with you tonight?”
He shrugged, a faint self-conscious smile on his lips. “Heatstroke?”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The speeches and congratulations stopped any further conversation.
Mortification flared inside Flick when the Vice Chancellor mentioned she had one of the highest IQs in the country. Humiliation squirmed and burned when
he started on about her ‘under-privileged’ background and how she’d been discovered by the University and nurtured by one of their scholarships.
Sure her parents didn’t have much money, but there had been love and laughter and enough, just enough, of everything. They’d uncovered her unnatural abilities with numbers and spatial reasoning at an early age and there were abundant scholarships for gifted children.
The University of Sydney had no right to claim her. They had no right to advertise her IQ in some crass effort at boasting, or humiliate the people she loved the most with talk of poverty and need. It happened every time and now she avoided these social events, afraid one day her bitterness would bubble over and she would, as her first year students so charmingly put it, lose her shit.
She kept smiling. She acknowledged the thanks and congratulations. Made sure they understood that Bellona was as much Andy Grey’s work as hers. She said the right things and never once, for a single moment, showed her resentment.
Then it was over. The guests and dignitaries swarmed to the bar to make the most of the crappy wine and she crept towards the exit.
“Very good, very good.” The Vice Chancellor beamed, catching her on the cusp of escape. “Let me introduce you to some people. David Darkthorne is here. The CEO of Darkthorne Industries — he came just to meet you.”
Flick’s heart jumped. The CEO of the premier weapons development company in the world. Here? She glanced around for Andy. This could not be a coincidence. Apprehension crept over her. What was going on?
“Professor Smith.” David Darkthorne clasped her hand in a damp handshake. “Congratulations on the Bellona project. We’ve been watching you with some interest.”
“It was a lot of fun.”
He was a small, slight man; his skin pale and his hair so uniformly black she wondered if he dyed it.
“We’ve got a few projects coming up that you might like to take a look at.” He smiled, though it looked like it was an unpractised expression and took some effort to maintain.
“That would be great.” She spoke with genuine enthusiasm. Darkthorne Industries was the world leader in weapons research and involved with almost all American military technology. Great was actually an understatement.
He handed her his card and she glanced at it. “Thank you Mr Darkthorne.”
“Just Darkthorne, please. I prefer it. Bellona has a lot of potential, you know. Cyber-war is the new military frontier. We’ve been working on something similar, but you’ve gone at it from a whole new direction, in a way my engineers hadn’t even thought of.” He looked a little piqued.
“Now Darkthorne, you’re not stealing this girl from me.” The Vice Chancellor barked a laugh, even though they all knew Darkthorne Industries could pay her triple what the University did.
Darkthorne ignored the Vice Chancellor. “How close is Bellona to being an actual working model?” His cold dark eyes watched Flick with an unsettling intensity.
“It works in controlled experiments. We shut down the Wagga RAAF base in eighteen seconds, after spending three months adapting it to the computer network there. But real world?” She shook her head. “It’s not viable.”
“How unusual, that you’re negative about your own project. Most would try to sell it to me.” Darkthorne watched her, amused speculation in his expression. “I wonder why?”
Flick hesitated, and wondered if he’d talked to Andy. Did he have detailed knowledge about Bellona? Or was he fishing for information?
“You can buy it if you want. But you’d have to spend months adapting it to the target system. Then you’d have to find someone to manually upload the program. A virus, trojan or logic bomb would be quicker and easier.”
Darkthorne nodded in agreement. “I do wonder where Bellona might take us, if modified.”
Flick thought of Andy’s weird code, dread niggling at her. What had he done? What had he added?
“Bellona is just a fun project. Professor Grey and I thought it might be useful in the gaming industry.” She sought to de-rail Darkthorne’s questions, to distract him.
“The gaming industry?” His eyebrows shot up in disbelief.
“Yes.” Everyone wanted in on the gaming industry, with its money and prestige. “The whole idea of cyber-war is about as realistic as the world being taken over by self-replicating nano-bots.”
“Are you aware of what the Russians did in Estonia and Georgia?” Scorn edged his voice.
“They were just crude denial-of-service attacks. Bellona does not have those capabilities.” She wilfully misunderstood his comment, and ignored the contempt that tinged his frown.
He tilted his head on one side and smiled slightly. “Well then, that is a great shame. A great shame indeed.” Sarcasm tinged his words.
Flick stepped back, sure Andy had been bragging at best, and trying to sell Bellona at worst. The egotistical idiot. The dread bunched in the pit of her stomach, and she glanced around, looking for him. He’d disappeared, which was odd; usually he was the last man standing.
“Call me, Felicity, when you are ready.” Darkthorne tilted his head and gave her a thin grimace. Then walked away.
Reluctant to get cornered again, Flick slipped from the room, and hurried to the stairs.
“Night Professor Smith,” said the security guard, as she passed the front desk. He watched her as if he knew her, but they’d never met.
“Night.” Her skin prickled.
She stepped out into the darkness. Even though the intense heat of the day had barely lessened, she shuddered.
The roar of the Uni bar drew her down the hill towards the main campus. The Engineering boys would be up there, lusting after pretty first-years and would, no doubt, be thrilled at the prospect of her company.
She took the stairs up to the bar two at a time, grinning as the noise surrounded her. She was anonymous amongst these faces. Nobody cared about her IQ, or her working-class parents. Not a soul.
She headed for the pool tables. Time to dish out some humiliation to foolish boys who thought girls couldn’t play.
Drawing Closer Page 6