Big Brother's Little Sister

by Mike Bursell

  Mo had to bow to my logic, though it clearly didn't sit well with him. “I wonder, though,” he said, before lapsing into silence.

  I sighed inwardly. I could tell from his tone that he was going to go into one of his technical forays. At one level, I enjoyed these, because it was great to hear him talking with such enthusiasm – such abandon, almost – about something he cared so much about, and which he knew so well. But on the other hand, I was going to be in for a lecture about something I wouldn't be able to follow after the first five minutes. Seven if I was lucky. I'd actually started timing him to see how long it was before I lost any connection with what he was saying. “Yes...?” I prompted.

  “Canaries,” he announced.

  Of all the things I thought he might have said, this was, well, rather far down my list. “Huh?” I said, betraying my command – or lack of command – of the situation.

  “Canaries,” he repeated, forcefully.

  “I heard you. I just didn't understand you.” This had to be the quickest he'd ever lost me.

  “You know: canaries. For early warning.”

  “Canaries. For early warning of what?” I asked.

  “Well.” He stopped to collect his thoughts, sounding for all the world like a teacher preparing an explanation for a rather slow pupil. “You know how, in the old days, miners used to keep canaries in cages to warn them if there were dangerous gases in the tunnels they were working in?”

  “I think so. We did something about that back in primary school,” I admitted.

  “You did? Cool. Anyway: that. But for systems,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “Floyd. You're going to need to explain. You're just saying words. They don't mean anything. Well, not to me, at least,” I admitted.

  “It's an early warning technique. What you do is prime a system to put a piece of information on another, remote, system if everything is OK. That's the canary.”

  “And if something isn't OK, the canary isn't there?” I asked, trying to make it sound like I understood what he was talking about.

  “Well, it might be,” he explained, “but it will be an old version. You see, you get the first system to update the canary – I don't know – every 12 hours. If the canary isn't on the second system, or it's an old one, then the first system has a problem.”

  “Go on?” I still didn't really get this.

  “I'll set up the school systems to send a canary to another system every 12 hours. I'll check that system from time to time, and if the canary's gone, there's a problem.”

  “Why would the canary be gone?” I queried.

  “Because I'll set up the school systems to wipe themselves if they notice that they're being tampered with. Like I did with the telephone exchange, remember?”

  “You mean you hadn't done that already?” I asked.

  “Nah. Didn't seem necessary. There's no way to trace back from them to me. No easy way, anyway. Oh. You're going to lecture me about that, aren't you? The 'no easy way' thing again?”

  It had occurred to me, but given that he'd worked it out for himself, I decided to let it lie this time. “I'll leave it. Just this once.”

  “OK.” He sounded relieved. “Anyway, for the second server, I'll try to find something innocuous: a system that I might check anyway, or even that you might check. How about the local swimming pool site?”

  “You check the local swimming pool site regularly?”

  “Yeah. Of course. Just to check it's open. They've been doing some work on it, and I don't like to miss sessions. I go for a swim most mornings. Before school.”

  He swims? Regularly? Who knew? “OK, that sounds innocent enough.”

  “Well, if I can get into it, but I would have thought so. It's unlikely to be well protected. And then we'll know if anybody starts poking around the school systems,” he finished, triumphantly.

  “Like Kareem,” I said.

  “Like Kareem. Or anyone else.”

  “OK, go for it,” I agreed, before he could go into any detail about how he was actually going to go about it.

  But it turned out that Mo still wanted to recruit Kareem. He was keen to be doing more, to raise our profile, and he reckoned that with more people, we could do more damage to the Government. "After all," as he pointed out, "if the Government thinks that Floyd is a group - a large group - why don't we capitalise on that, and confirm their fears?"

  At one level I agreed with him. We'd wanted to do some really to attack the Government, but so far all we'd managed to do was annoy them and embarrass them. Maybe with more people we could do something serious - something that would do some actual harm. And I liked the idea of making Floyd into more than just a couple of school pupils: into a movement. But then I caught myself – if there was one thing that I'd learned from me reading about spying and secret movements, it was that more people also meant more risk of discovery. And we had no way to vet Kareem - to find out whether he was safe or not. Expanding at all was just too unsafe: I had to hold firm, and look for other ways to increase the extent of damage we were doing.

  All I could do was convince Mo to keep a low profile and to agree not to talk to Kareem unless we both came around to the same point of view. He was grumpy about it, but gave in: he was beginning to trust me to handle this sort of thing, while I left him to think about the "fun" stuff: actually breaking into systems and doing some damage.

  We had an attack planned for the week afterwards, actually, when the Foreign Secretary was due to travel from the Houses of Parliament to Heathrow Airport to greet the President of the United States. Mo had worked out a plan which I had to admit I really liked: he was going to create traffic jams on the route from Westminster to Heathrow, tracking where the Foreign Secretary's car was by using a tap into his phone's GPS system. Whatever route he took, the traffic lights would turn to red just far enough in front of him that even with police motorcyclists riding ahead, there would be a mass of cars and lorries blocking his way.

  "How are you going to make it clear that it's Floyd?" I asked. Mo was showing a real flair for coming up with ways to show the media when he was behind an attack, and I enjoyed finding out about them. The media seemed to enjoy the game, as well, and I'd only realised after the 3rd or 4th attack that this was working in our favour: there was a humour and playfulness which was being expressed which they found fascinating. The best one so far, most of them agreed, had been when Mo had used the automatic lawn mowers at a football ground where the Minister for Sport and some cronies had been speaking before a match to harass them round the pitch until they had to abandon the speech and leave. Only after the lawn mowers had returned to their storage sheds and the players had come out onto the pitch did anyone notice that the mowers, far from just chasing the politicians around the pitch, had also mown out "Floyd" in huge letters, visible to the supporters and cameras transmitting the game around the country.

  "Just you wait and see," he said, sounding quite smug, so I dropped it, and decided to let him have his fun in due time.

  The Foreign Minister's trip was on Tuesday, and, as usual, we needed to wait until lunchtime to find out how it had gone. The news was full of the story, and it appeared that, even though he'd left the Houses of Parliament around 9.30, he still hadn't made it to Heathrow. There was some question as to why he'd not given up and taken the Underground, instead, but the general view seemed to be that the police officers who were supposed to be protecting him were worried that he wouldn't be safe on the Tube, and had decided to keep trying with the cars. I knew that the attack was due to stop any minute, as Mo and I had agreed that we didn't want to disrupt too many people's lives just to upset the Government.

  As soon as the pupils had realised that there was another attack on, a hush had descended on the dining hall as everyone listened to the news reader. Even the staff were paying attention, I noticed. I glanced over at Mo and saw him looking at his watch. He suddenly looked up at the live coverage of one of the affected road intersections.
As he did so, all of the lights started to flash in sequence. I saw him mouth "yes!", and turn away from the screen. Everyone else kept watching as the reporter on the screen tried to work out what it was. I saw her put her hand to her ear and listen: presumably someone back at the studio was talking to her.

  She relayed what she was hearing: "The lights are all flashing in a sequence which appears to be Morse code. You should be able to see what the message is appearing on the screen below me." Indeed, a banner was scrolling beneath her. It read: "Apologies for any inconvenience to ordinary people. Yours, Floyd." I could see, out of the corner of my eye, Mo looking rather pleased with himself. A spontaneous round of applause arose from the hall, with pretty much all the pupils and even, I realised, most of the staff, joining in. I was careful to make sure that I did, too, and risked a look at Mo, who had had the good sense to follow my lead. But sitting alone, at a table in the corner, clapping quietly, was Kareem, looking directly, and very thoughtfully, at Mo.

  Chapter 21 – You don't seem to have many friends

  I was very careful not to sit too close to Mo at lunch, and avoided him during classes, too. I had a sense of dread that I couldn't shake, but no particular focus to it. I was beginning to come to the conclusion that maybe Kareem was a Y.T. after all when the final bell rang. We packed our bags and headed for the door. I was near the back of the queue for people to get out, but as it opened, I noticed that there, just outside, was Kareem, waiting to speak to someone. I assumed it would be Mo, and watched with baited breath as he approached the doorway. Maybe I should have warned him that I'd seen Kareem watching him. Maybe we should have come up with a plan for if we got caught. What can I do? Fake a faint? Knock over some desks and hope to distract Kareem and get a message to Mo somehow? I realised as these thoughts chased through my head that there was nothing I could do now: it was too late, and anything I tried to do would only draw attention to Mo or both of us.

  Mo got closer and closer to the door, but as he approached it, it became clear that Kareem wasn't going to speak to him after all: he looked past him as he got closer and just stayed where he had been, rather than moving towards him. I let out a sigh of relief and moved forward: I'd been creating a mini-blockage, as I'd held back, waiting to see what would happen. Mo passed through into the hall, and I breathed another sigh. As my part of the line neared Kareem, however, I saw him step towards me.

  "Lena?" I was dumbstruck – how does he even know my name? Worse still, how could he have found out about me? – "Could I have a word, please?" He took another step into the classroom, and went towards the teacher's desk at the front. I had a moment of panic, but then realised that whatever happened, I couldn't avoid this, so stepped out of the queue for the door to follow Kareem. Everybody else just filed out, not looking particularly interested in the interaction.

  He motioned me towards a chair that he had pulled up, and sat down himself. I noticed that he hadn't chosen the teacher's chair, which was odd, as it would have put him in an instant position of authority. I was just mulling this over when I noticed that, rather than looking angry, or calm, or even in control, he was looking distinctly nervous. The door closed behind the last of the class, and he glanced over at it, and then around the room, scanning it to see if there was anybody else still here. There wasn't: we were alone, though the glass window in the door afforded me some safety, assuming that anybody were walking past it. He looked a little uncomfortable sitting alone with me, and it occurred to me some Muslim men might worry about being on their own with a woman who wasn't part of family.

  I put any thoughts that I was in any physical danger aside and forced myself to slow my breathing and look up to meet his eyes. To my intense surprise, he looked down as soon as I did, avoiding my gaze: he was nervous, maybe even scared of me.

  He, too, seemed to collect himself, cleared his throat, and forced himself to look up at me. He cleared his throat, and gathering all my strength, I looked back at him.

  "I know who you are," he said. The bottom dropped out of my world, and my entire body went cold.

  I was too flabbergasted to say anything. How could he possibly have realised? What had given me away? Presumably he was on to Mo, as well - how could I warn him?

  He seemed to take my silence as an invitation to say more. He took a deep breath and continued: "I know that you're one of Them."

  "One of who?" I managed to blurt out.

  Until Ms Martin had done it outside our house that time, I had never believed that people actually did this in real life, but he glanced around to check we were still alone and leaned in closer to me. "A Youth Enforcer. Undercover."

  I nearly laughed with relief. And amazement. Me - a Y.T.? Of all the people in the world! And then caught myself: I had considered it, briefly, with Fliss.

  Again, he took my lack of reply as a sign to continue. "I know you can't say. I ... I'm sure there are rules about not telling people, so I'm not expecting you to say anything. OK?"

  No wonder he was nervous, I thought to myself, if he thinks I'm one of them. "OK," I agreed, quite happy not to say anything at all at this point.

  "I think I may have found ... something you need to know about."

  "Really?" I was trying to keep my voice steady, but it came out as a bit of a squeak. "What's that?"

  "Before I say any more, there's something I need to say." He paused, and looked down at his feet. "I'm not making any demands or anything – I know that would be stupid - but, well, I'm really, really not happy here, and if there's any chance of a posting anywhere nearer home, or just near a mosque..." He glanced up at me.

  He really must be feeling pretty awful if he's trying to bargain with the Enforcers, I thought. How should I react to this? I have to play along. Out loud, I said, "You know that I - we - can't make any promises? About anything at all?" I tried to look stern, but felt immediately guilty for leading him on.

  He half-jumped back into his chair, and I realised that my answer had just convinced him that I really was a Y.E.. Kareem nodded vigorously.

  "What information do you think you have?"

  I could see him weighing up in his head whether he could go any further ask for any more favours, and then decide not to risk it. He gathered himself up and said, all in a hurry, as if, once he'd made his mind up, he was worried that he would change his mind: "I think that Mo Williams, in your year, is a member of Floyd."

  I kept my face absolutely still, desperate not to reveal any of the emotions that were coursing through me. And the questions. How had he worked it out? What had we done wrong? What clues had he picked up on? How could I stop him telling the real Enforcers? What would this mean if they did find out? How would Mo cope in a Child Internment Camp? In the end, I went with the first thing that had occurred to me, and said, "What makes you think that?"

  He seemed relieved that I'd not immediately rejected his suggestion, and I realised that I'd missed an opportunity to put him off the scent, but it was too late to do anything about it now. "It's a number of things." He still seemed keen to convince me, and leant forward on his chair, ticking points off on his fingers as he made them. "The final one was today, during lunch. He was watching the news about the disgraceful treatment of the Foreign Secretary ..." I nodded, as if I agreed that the attack had been entirely inappropriate, "... and when the lights started flashing in Morse code, he immediately reacted as if he was very pleased."

  I remembered Mo's "yes", cursing his over-reaction.

  "That seems rather a jump to believing that he's a member of this group," I countered. "He may just be interested in Morse code." This sounded really weak as soon as I said it, but he nodded along as I said it, deferring to my imagined authority.

  "Maybe," he admitted, "but that's not the only thing. I've noticed that whenever one of these attacks by Floyd is on the television, he's always one of the first in the lunch queue. Usually, he's one of the last." I nodded, inwardly wondering how many other little clues like this we'd left along the way.


  "How many times have you noticed this?" I asked.

  "There have only been three incidents since I arrived, but he's been there for each of them." I tried to look unconvinced, and he rushed on. "There's more! I've been starting to look at the school computer systems ..." Oh no! So my concerns had been justified: he'd tracked Mo from the school systems. "... and although there's nothing specific to link Mo to them ..." I relaxed a little, which must have led him to think I was less convinced, because he spoke more urgently. "... the logs show, each night before one of these incidents, that there's a lot of activity on the network coming from somewhere outside."