by Jim Wurst
“Pardon, sir. Is Washington necessary?”
“You don’t want a transfer?
“It’s not that, sir, but won’t too many changes spark someone’s interests?”
“Very good, that’s how you need to think. In one sense, you are right, that’s why we’re making as few overt moves as possible. But for our plan to work, you have to be in Washington.”
“And that plan is?” Peter asked.
“Strictly need to know, for the moment. I won’t keep you in suspense long. Have either of you heard of Zhidoi? Industrial city in the Chinese interior.”
“No, sir.” The two spoke in unison.
“You will.”
CHAPTER 40
Ron was in his tin can when he spotted something unusual. “Bridge, I see something approaching at heading 1212. It’s quite large. If it’s debris, we’re going to need boosters.”
“Roger that. Unidentified object is EuroNet vessel on scheduled rendezvous with us. No action required.”
“Roger that, Bridge.” Muting the radio, he marveled to himself. “Space tourists. Still can’t get used to that. Still, would be nice to get Mom and Dad up here someday.”
The EuroNet ship had cut its engines and drifted towards the docking arm. The arm caught the ship and gently swung it into position near the airlock. Once the ship attached to the station and the arm released before the docking protocol began. Since all spaceships designed for re-entry had tapered noses, by necessity the Universal Docking Ports had to be placed near the rear. For a ship like EuroNet’s, designed for durability not speed, or distance, this was not a problem. Most of the fuselage was large enough to stand in, so once the two vessels were attached it was a matter of walking from one to the other. A space version of a gangplank. Smaller ships such as the Moon-to-Station shuttle crafts and the so-called sports cars had narrower bodies, so the UDPs took up a larger proportion of the ship, which meant people practically had to crawl to move between the vessels.
An ensign was waiting for McBride and his team outside the airlock.
“Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen. Ever been on a space station before?”
“We’ve just come from the Francesco Uno.”
“Of course, you did. I mean, before this trip. I’ve checked your programs and didn’t see anything from space for a while.”
“That’s right. It’s been well over five years. Still not especially safe, as you guys well know. But with the technology making such tremendous gains and the Mars mission gearing up, we thought we focus more on space. Of course, that’s a pretty expensive operation, so we have to make the most of what we get.”
“That would have taken some nerve back then.”
“Wasn’t me. Don’t think I would have been able to risk it. They didn’t come in their own ship, came up with one of the cargo rockets, better chance of surviving a hit. And it worked fine.”
“The Roosevelt itself took quite a hit in ’41. Lost a docking port.”
“I remember. Say, could we talk to one of the cleaners? It’s not glamorous, of course, we want to talk to the commanders of the station and the candidates for the Mars mission, but how about one cleaner? Nose to the grindstone and all that. Their work is making space safe for space travel like ours.”
“Sure, fine idea. Let me run it by the captain.”
CHAPTER 41
The next morning, Theo and Raj escorted the EuroNet crew around Katsina. It wasn’t even close to noon, but the heat was already creeping into their pores. They were wearing loose, white garments made of a blend specially designed for this climate. Even though they were well-fed and hydrated, the desert heat had grabbed them by the ankles and was pulling them into the sand. “What must it be like to live here?” Sam thought.
Katsina had not been a thriving city for centuries. But the last few decades had driven it down even more. The visitors and their hosts stood in front of the Gobarau Mosque just as the muezzin calls the Adhan call to prayer from inside the Mosque. A few people come out to pray, but not many.
It was obvious to Sam right away that this wasn’t a vibrant city, but the lack of men surprised him. “Does this mean a lack of the faithful?” he asked.
“It means an abundance of heat. Most people are inside this time of day. It still counts. You should come back after sunset. The evening prayer is much more public.”
Sam felt ashamed for judging them when he had just told himself he could never handle this heat. He was already glancing around for some shade. Then he stared at the prostrate men and wondered if they would ever get up.
Theo’s phone rang. He listened silently.
“We have to go back to the station. An urgent message is coming in from Lagos.”
He turned and headed out with no further consideration of the rest. They had no choice but to follow.
CHAPTER 42
They returned to the conference room, but instead of a projection of plants and pipelines, the screen showed an elderly, worn man wearing crumpled white clothes. He was sitting at a plain desk with the UN and World Health Organization flags behind him.
“Dr. Asanti, how are things in Lagos?” Theo asked, even before he sat down.
“Theo, a pleasure,” although his face showed none. “Excuse me, but who’s that with you?”
“A crew from EuroNet. Is that a problem?”
“I’d prefer our conversation to be private.”
The bluntness startled Sam and the crew, but they silently left the room without waiting for Theo to tell them.
Once the door closed, Theo turned back to the screen. “This sounds ominous.”
“Last week, a community hospital in Ikorodu district reported six cases of a virus. Four died within 24 hours. We’ve isolated the strain, and it’s a mutation on the A3N4 flu…”
“It’s mutated already?”
“Exactly. Which means it’s impossible to develop a vaccine before it spreads too far. The mutation turned up in Mawere yesterday, that’s a neighboring district so that doesn’t mean it’s jumping. But a lot of day laborers live in Mawere so they could be spreading the virus by riding the bus to work. Today, there are reports of illnesses from downtown Lagos, but we don’t know yet if it is the mutation.”
“That’s fast.”
“A city-wide quarantine may be necessary within days if this trend continues. You see why I didn’t want that EuroNet crew around. We need you to come to Lagos with all the air and water purification equipment you have, and vaccinations.”
“We only have capacity for 80 people, a few more when you divert the purifications systems for the trees to humans. That’s nothing compared to your needs.”
“Everything is something. There are US and French navy ships en route, and a private hospital ship. But none will be here for at least three days. You can make it in one day. We can deploy your equipment to one of the neighborhood hospitals. It’s enough for the local hospital in Mushin or Onianu. If we can create a buffer there, that might be enough to slow down the virus in that area. A little may buy us a lot of time. We have to use everything.”
“Then I’m going to have to tell the EuroNet reporter.”
“Why?” He knew Theo well enough to know this wasn’t a whim.
“They have a newer model airship, it’s faster, larger and can reach altitudes our sand-huggers cannot. We need their ship.”
“I suppose. The news would get out shortly.”
“I have to wait until morning. We can’t just pack up the equipment, it would traumatize the plants. We need to leave enough water behind for a skeleton crew and the saplings. We’ll leave at first light.”
“Be careful, there are sandstorms in the forecast.”
“There are always sandstorms in the forecast,” the fatalist said.
CHAPTER 43
“Mr. President, General Hayden is
here.”
“Send him in.”
The Chief was the only person in the Oval Office with Ailes, so it was all very cozy. “Jack, Jack, great to see you again. Everything is going splendidly.”
The President sat in his chair with Hayden next to him with the Chief at a comfortable distance on the couch. “Thank you, Mr. President. I wish I could share your enthusiasm. There are cracks in the system.”
The Chief hid his annoyance that Hayden had got straight to complaining when chit-chat would have been in order. This was supposed to be his election. The Chief thought it was unseemly for Hayden to keep running to the President for help.
Ailes didn’t seem bothered at all and picked up on Hayden’s lead. “Nonsense. Money, media, momentum. You’ve got it all. The Chinese Device is even working in your favor. The only thing they’ve got is that Cranston acts like St. Francis in public and acts like Genghis Khan in private. He’s a ruthless son of a bitch, but he can’t carry this thing alone. McDowell is worse than useless.”
“O’Brien is going to let slip just enough information about the Chinese Device soon; we’ll be ready with just enough information every day for a week. Then day after day, its Chinese device equals McDowell equals Expendable. Who serves whom?”
“What if the Chinese Device is a big nothing?”
“So, what if it is? No one will know for sure until after the election.”
“Are you telling me…”
“No, I’m not telling you anything. No one knows what it is. Don’t worry, we’ve got the deck; they’ve got a deuce and the Suicide King.”
“Still, it would help to get rid of those hackers. I don’t like uncontrolled factors. And what the hell does SID mean, anyway?”
“And that’s brings us to why I asked you here. Don, bring the boys in.”
The Chief went to the door that connected his office to the Oval and motioned a small group of four three men and one woman into the room. They were all slightly nervous and awestruck. They had been working for the President for two months and this was the first time seeing him.
With a well-practiced expansive gesture, the President said, “Please, everyone, sit down.” As one, they headed for the chairs and couch but halted in a panic: sit where? Was there a protocol? Who sat closest to the President? The Chief was standing where he had he been sitting? The Chief settled that by directly each to a seat, placing the team leader in the second chair closest to the President.
“Jack, here is your brain trust.”
“Pardon me, sir?”
“Best 360s in the country. The White House’s best. They are yours for the duration. Tight security in the White House can cut both ways. Nothing unauthorized can get out or in, but sometimes you need a little maneuvering room, you’ll have that at party headquarters. A loan from the White House. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”
The Chief was the only one practiced at this. He stood instantly and said, “Thank you, Mr. President.” The team followed his lead, but Hayden was confused whether this dismissal also referred to him.
The Chief subtly but firmly settled that question. “General, we’ll continue in my office.” The Chief walked the General out as the team followed. Once in his office, the Chief continued, “As the President said, we’ll set up shop at party headquarters. While the General is here, give him the highlights of your research.”
The team sighed a collective sigh of relief that this part of the meeting had been mapped out. The team leader immediately projected a map of the Earth, Moon, and a few key satellites and space stations before turning his attention to the group.
“Bottom line: It’s impossible that it’s one person, it has to be a network of hackers. We are working on the assumption that this is being led by Americans, but it is extremely unlikely that it is only a US operation. Avoiding exposure this long means they have the entire planet to hide in.” He then rotated the screen 45 degrees. It was flashy and meaningless, but he hoped the two old men would be impressed.
“The physical infrastructure cannot be too large there is no one central point. Like a terrorist network, it has no capital city, no headquarters. Such a set-up would be dangerous if found, we could destroy the network in a flash plus unnecessary since six supercomputers linking a near infinite number of personal computers could do everything SID does.”
He closed the screen and concluded. “We’ve done linguistic analysis of all written and verbal communications, looking for clues in syntax, word choice, etc. to narrow down the options. We’re certain they are running all transmissions through computer screening to remove any trace of individuality. The longer communiqués read as though a computer wrote them.”
Hayden had had unpleasant experiences with computers during his career, so he flipped the conversation elsewhere. “I understand the political threat SID poses, how serious is the national security threat?” He meant of course threats to his election.
The Chief jumped in, knowing what Hayden wanted to hear and knowing the techies would not understand the subtext.
“Extensive. SID has been more of a nuisance than a threat. But it has shown a capacity to hack into virtually every computer system on Earth. As you know, there are constant failed attempts to hack government and military systems. They fail and we can’t be sure if SID or some facet of SID is behind any of them. But they do seem to succeed more than they fail. That SID has not, say, forced space stations out of orbit or crashed a large bank is more likely a case of lack of desire than lack of ability. But, as you said, it’s the uncertainty that’s the real danger.”
“Is it Cranston?”
The politician continued. “Highly unlikely, he’s got people who would be very good at this, but so does every important person. The scientific community loves him and McDowell, so there’s a deep well of talent that they could tap. Ethically if you can use that word about Cranston, he is of course capable, but we’re watching too closely. If there was any hint of a connection, we would have picked it up by now. Throwing suspicion on Cranston is good politics, but it doesn’t get us anywhere close to truly solving the problem.”
“Ok, but is there anything SID can do to us?”
Before he could answer, the Chief’s phone emitted a quick three-note signal. Rather than answer his party’s presidential candidate question, he answered his phone. Hayden was shocked but the Chief didn’t notice or apologize. The Chief looked at his phone, scowled and showed the phone to Hayden.
“This a special link exactly 18 people can access it. When that goes off, there is something urgent.” His faced darkened as he read. “SID is at it again. It hacked a game show and every answer on the screen was ‘Zhidoi.’”
“Could be worse.”
“It is. Before SID closed down, the last answer was ‘Ask Ailes about Zhidoi.’”
CHAPTER 44
All the 360s and politicians involved would have been amused to know – and would probably invoke the chaos theory – that Sean and his team were plowing the same field as Ailes’ people at the same time. The senator wasn’t there, so the mood was far less formal and more freewheeling. Plus, they learned long ago that isolating computer geeks to themselves didn’t deliver the best results. While everyone in the room knew their computers, there were also experts on religion, philosophy, history, a whole range of disciplines that allowed them to examine problems from different angles. Still, Sean and Worth were running the show, so discipline was the order of the day.
“SID. Not a person’s name, wants us to think that but clearly playing,” prompted Sean, “So an acronym?” Sean said, throwing something out to get the brains sparking.
“Society? Science, scientists, scholars.” Tamar ran with it.
“Secret,” added Juan.
“Subversion,” continued Tal.
Tamar took it back. “Why does SID have to be English?”
“It doesn’t,”
Tal argued, “Except that all communications have been in English, and SID has an obvious interest in the comings and goings of the United States. Europe, Russia, even China, everything else is incidental.
Worth joined in. “What about religion? What covers the world? Politics, business, science and religion. Catholics. S for Synod? Maybe it’s Latin.”
Juan said, “Protestants use Synod too, the Lutherans for example.”
Tal batted out. “A person’s name? Samuel Isaac Davis. I don’t know.”
Snapping around, Worth asked, “Why did you use those names?”
“I don’t know, first names that came into my head that fit.”
“Samuel, Isaac, David, all key figures in the Old Testament.”
“Maybe the I is God,” said Tamar.
The non-theological among them – meaning all of them – stared.
“What?” asked Sean.
“God. Yahweh in Greek starts with an I, Greek doesn’t have a Y.”
“Now you’re fishing.”
“’I shall make you a fisher of men.’ Peter, Simon Peter. Simon, Simon. No apostles begin with I or D,” Tamar continued.
“Stop it.” Tal was getting bored.
Juan picked it up. “’I’ could be just as simple as ‘in’ or ‘it’…”
“… or ‘I’.”
“So I Did,” suggested Tamar.
“Meaning?” asked Sean.
“Don’t know.”
“Alright, alright, just stop it…”
“Stop it, dude.”
The marine had had enough. “Shut up,” Worth said, “Brainstorming is good, but we are just pissing on our own shoes. We have analyses in front of us. Language analysis shows that the English is letter perfect, meaning it is likely the people run all text through a computer to eliminate linguistic clues…”