The Genius Wars Read online

  Two uniformed policemen were murmuring together near a garbage bin.

  ‘Through here,’ Saul prompted. He nudged Cadel towards a side door, which led straight into a small room furnished with a concrete laundry tub and a washing machine. This room opened onto the kitchen, but Cadel wasn’t encouraged to stop and contemplate the fridge or the stove. Instead he was hustled into what may have originally been a dining room, since a serving hatch had been cut into one wall.

  But it wasn’t a dining room any longer. It contained only floor-to-ceiling racks of computer equipment, jammed together like books on a bookshelf. Great swags of cabling spilled from these racks, while powerboards strewn across the floor sprouted untidy clusters of plugs that were carelessly piled up on top of double adapters, clinging together like barnacles or profiteroles.

  Cadel had never seen anything like it before.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he whispered, wide-eyed with astonishment.

  ‘It’s the same everywhere, except in the bathroom,’ Saul revealed. ‘And the kitchen, of course.’ He fell silent, watching as Cadel’s gaze travelled across the web of technology that surrounded them.

  Every screen was dark; every motherboard was silent. That was the first thing Cadel noticed. Nothing was turned on. No heat was being generated at all.

  ‘It was like this when we came in,’ Saul revealed, as if reading Cadel’s mind. ‘No one’s touched it.’

  ‘They’re so old,’ said Cadel, wonderingly. A good half of the machines were older than he was; he could tell because they were so big and chunky. There was a Toshiba T4850/500, a Macintosh Color Classic, a Compaq Portable II …

  Where had Com found all these antiques? In the street? On eBay?

  ‘We’re concerned that it might be some sort of booby-trap,’ Saul continued. ‘The explosives dogs didn’t sniff out anything, but you can see how all the different components seem to be linked up.’

  ‘Do you think they even work?’ asked Cadel, as he drifted into the next room. Here a battered velvet couch, a wide-screen LCD television, and a coffee table covered in food stains and burn marks shared the floor with yet more racks of old computers. Beyond an arched doorway at the other end of the room, Cadel could see another, similar display: an NEC PC 8801 on top of a Hewlett Packard HP-9826 jostling an Amstrad CPC 464.

  He could also see two familiar faces, which turned towards him at the sound of his footsteps. Sid and Steve, the forensic computer technicians, were making hushed, awestruck comments about an old model with a built-in dot matrix printer. Steve wore a bleached goatee, a vintage jacket, and a tie printed with winged toasters. Sid had four earrings in one ear, and three in the other; his tie featured an eye-puzzle of thin, flaring stripes, specially designed to confuse and annoy.

  ‘This place is like a museum,’ Steve remarked, without preamble – though he hadn’t seen Cadel in months. ‘There’s a lot of new stuff here, but … I mean, check this out! An NCR Decision-mate!’

  ‘And not one air-conditioner,’ Sid added. He was shaking his head. ‘You couldn’t turn it all on. I mean, even if everything works – which I doubt – the heat would cook the whole lot in no time.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Cadel agreed. And Saul said, tentatively, ‘Could that be part of the booby-trap? If we turn it all on, will something overheat and explode?’

  Sid and Steve exchanged glances, before fixing their attention once again to the wall of ancient bytes in front of them. Cadel followed their example, marvelling at the work that had gone into the arrangement of so many unwieldy objects. Could they really all be interconnected? Surely there had to be a compatibility problem? Had Com achieved some kind of cascade effect? Or was the entire set-up just a blind?

  ‘Computers don’t normally explode,’ Sid said at last. ‘They have meltdowns, sometimes, but they very rarely explode.’

  ‘I think this guy is trying to mess with our heads,’ Steve speculated. ‘I think maybe he’s trying to slow us down, like … you know. “Let’s devote a hundred billion man-hours to figuring out what we have, here.” Which is nothing.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Sid rejoined, and Steve gave a snort of derision.

  ‘You think this is some kind of super-computer? Come on, man.’ Steve appealed to Cadel, whom he had long ago learned to regard as an equal (despite a twelve-year age gap). ‘There’s nothing to be gained from most of the crap in here. You probably couldn’t squeeze one megabyte out of it. If you ask me, this is a red herring.’

  ‘Or a clever ruse,’ Sid declared. ‘Maybe Com’s real computer is somewhere in this lot. Maybe we can’t see the wood for the trees.’ A dramatic, sweeping gesture underscored the point he was trying to make. ‘Where’s the best place to hide? In a crowd, of course. And maybe we’re looking at the crowd.’

  A lengthy silence greeted this theory. Cadel, for one, could see the sense of it. Checking every computer in the house would take days, if not weeks – though the sensible thing would be to start with more recent models.

  Or would it?

  ‘I dunno,’ Saul muttered. ‘Do you really think this guy would leave without taking his computer?’ He glanced at Cadel. ‘Would you leave without taking your computer?’

  Cadel didn’t reply. He was too busy pondering.

  ‘I’d take it,’ Steve volunteered. ‘But I might not take my backup files. They could still be around.’ A pause. ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Did he take anything else?’ asked Sid. He was addressing the detective. ‘Do we know if he packed a bag?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ The detective shot a quick look over his shoulder, to where someone was banging cupboard doors in the kitchen. ‘He didn’t have much time, from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘But have you checked?’

  ‘Not personally. That’s not my department.’ Saul heaved a sigh as he rubbed his jaw. ‘Let me go and ask.’

  There were dark smudges under his eyes, and though he left the room briskly, it was obvious how tired he was. Perhaps the gloomy surroundings were having an effect on him; there was something about the matted old carpet, smoke-cured walls and grubby art-deco light fittings that would have made anyone feel exhausted.

  When Cadel sat on the sofa, its springs were so worn out that his knees ended up near his chin.

  ‘If he left without a toothbrush or a change of underwear, he’d have left without his back-up files,’ Sid argued, scanning all the mysterious technology with his hands on his hips. ‘Maybe this stuff is here to disguise his back-up files.’

  ‘Or a secret surveillance system,’ Steve proposed doubtfully.

  ‘You think?’ Sid’s face fell. ‘God, I hope not.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start,’ Steve lamented. ‘You could hide a mike in there and never find it again! Not even if you’d put it there yourself!’

  At this point Cadel stopped listening. He’d decided to concentrate on a single important question: had Com actually taken his computer with him? On the one hand, it seemed likely that he had; Com, after all, was a super-geek. He was the sort of person who needed his computer the way he needed his pulmonary system. The thought of leaving his computer may not even have crossed his mind.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t alone. Someone else was working with him – someone who had almost certainly helped to devise his escape plan. And that someone was smart. That someone might have calculated certain probabilities.

  What if Com had been caught? Suppose he’d been in possession of a computer packed with incriminating evidence, and the police had bailed him up? If it had been me, Cadel reflected, I wouldn’t have taken my computer. I would have hidden it away, so no one could ever find it.

  But not in the yellow Camry. That car wasn’t secure enough. With Com in custody, the police would have pulled his vehicle apart to find the missing computer – which was as dangerous to Com as a smoking gun. If Cadel had been the fugitive, he would have hidden his computer somewhere safe but convenient. Somewhere that wouldn’t set off an alarm
on a metal detector. Somewhere so unremarkable that no one would think of looking there, not even to check for termite damage, or repair a pipe, or replace insulation.

  Gnawing his thumbnail, Cadel peered up at the ornate plaster ceiling, which was scattered with patches of mould and wisps of cobweb. Attics were easy to explore, but hard to reach in a hurry. An exhaustive police search would soon uncover a hatch in the wall, or a cavity under the floorboards. Even if the hatch was concealed behind towering stacks of computer equipment, it would eventually be found once the stacks had been disassembled.

  He’d know that he couldn’t come back, Cadel reasoned. Not for a long, long time. Not until the police had stopped watching the house.

  Cadel tried to imagine himself in Com’s place. If there were wardrivers around, and you had to leave in a hurry, would you want to be fiddling with passwords or safe combinations? If the police suddenly pounded on your front door, would you want to start shifting furniture, or digging holes, or setting fire to your computer? No, you wouldn’t.

  You’d want to shove your laptop into its predetermined hiding place, quick smart, no fuss. The hiding place would have to be within easy reach: no ladders or torches would be required. And once the laptop had been concealed in this secret compartment, no one else would ever choose to look for it there.

  ‘Eric says it doesn’t seem like our subject took much with him when he left,’ Saul announced, upon re-entering the room. ‘There’s a lot of clothes in the wardrobe, and only one empty hanger. The toothbrush in the bathroom might be a spare, because it’s in pretty rough shape – but you’ve gotta wonder if a guy who lives like this would change his toothbrush too often. And the toothpaste is new.’ Saul’s weary gaze wandered over to Cadel, even though he was addressing Sid. ‘There’s no indication that anyone else has been staying here, but we’ll have to do a proper search. It would be easy to miss something under all those buttons and wires.’

  ‘It would be easy to miss another room behind this lot,’ agreed Sid, whose long-winded commentary on classifying computer models had been interrupted by the detective’s reappearance. ‘There’s so much of it, but it doesn’t make any sense. If our guy was a collector, his stuff would have to be arranged somehow. Alphabetically, or chronologically.’

  ‘Or by nationality,’ Steve chimed in.

  ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ Steve nodded. ‘And if this whole wall was wired up as one big computer chip, there’d be some kind of system to it as well. The arrangement wouldn’t be random – you’d be able to make out a pattern of some kind. But I can’t see one.’ He raised an eyebrow at Cadel. ‘Can you?’

  It took a moment for Cadel to absorb the question. He’d been sitting on the velvet couch, staring blankly into space. Now he blinked, snapping out of his reverie with a little start.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

  And there was a reason for that, he felt sure. Confusion reigned, but not by accident. The house was bursting with computers, both old and new. A new laptop might temporarily conceal itself among a host of other new laptops. But what were the old machines for? Had they been used because a house full of new computers would have been too expensive? Were they space fillers, designed to distract or mislead?

  Then suddenly, like a flash, it came to him.

  Of course.

  SEVENTEEN

  Cadel stood up. He surveyed the vast collection of chips and circuits in front of him, looking for something very big and very old, with very little computing power.

  The IBS Beta system? Perhaps. The ICL quattro? A definite possibility.

  ‘I don’t believe this stuff has ever been turned on,’ Sid was saying. ‘Not all at once, anyway. The wiring must date back to 1933 – just check out the light switches! You’d blow every fuse on the board.’

  Cadel wandered past him into the hallway, which was lined with more computers. It was like a space-shuttle cockpit, or the business end of a nuclear submarine – except, of course, that a lot of the equipment was much older than any space shuttle. There was even a computer with a wooden cover on its chassis, sitting just below eye level.

  Cadel stopped in front of it.

  It was bigger than a microwave oven.

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ Steve enthused. He had followed Cadel into the hallway. ‘That’s a Northstar Horizon. I’ve never seen one before. I’ve only read about them.’

  Gently Cadel touched the machine’s front panel, which featured two disc-drive slots.

  ‘It’s a 1977 model,’ Steve continued. ‘Sixteen kilobytes of RAM. It was the first floppy-disc-based system for hobbyists.’

  ‘Sixteen kilobytes of RAM,’ Cadel murmured. These days, you could fit sixteen kilobytes into a matchbox, with room to spare. You wouldn’t need more than a tiny fraction of the area enclosed by that walnut-stained casing.

  You could tear out its guts, rewire it with a modern CPU, and have a functioning unit with enough space left over to fit whatever else you might want to hide.

  Like a laptop, for instance.

  ‘Cadel?’ Saul had joined him in the hallway. ‘I don’t know if you should be fiddling with any of this stuff.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Cadel wasn’t worried. He didn’t believe that Com had installed a booby-trap, because booby-traps were so time-consuming. For one thing, it was necessary to arm a booby-trap.

  You’d need an extra ten seconds, at least, Cadel decided. If it were me, I’d rely on camouflage.

  So he kept applying pressure to the most obvious contact points on the Northstar Horizon: the disc-drive buttons, the power switch, the manufacturer’s label …

  Nothing.

  ‘You’re not trying to turn it on, are you?’ Steve protested. At that moment, Cadel realised that the Northstar Horizon was sitting inside its plywood shell like a drawer inside a cabinet. So he hooked his fingers beneath the lower edge of the front panel, where he found a little catch that yielded with a click when he pushed it down. Simultaneously, he gave the panel a firm tug.

  Just like a drawer, it slid open. But he had used too much force. The steel chassis popped right out of its wooden case, disgorging something flat and square that had been sitting snugly inside.

  It was a laptop, and it hit the ground with a bang.

  ‘Christ!’ yelped Steve.

  ‘Get back!’ cried Saul. He grabbed Cadel, who lost his grip on the empty chassis. It was left dangling from a bundle of wires, its front panel almost scraping against the floor.

  The laptop lay nearby, looking perfectly harmless.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s not going to blow up.’ Cadel tried to offer reassurance as he battled Saul’s efforts to drag him into the next room. ‘It’s Com’s laptop – it can’t hurt us.’

  Steve began to laugh. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘Phew! That was a bit of a shock, eh?’ And he regarded Cadel with frank admiration. ‘You’re really something.’

  ‘How on earth did you figure out where it was?’ asked Sid, who was now standing in the hallway, just behind Saul. Cadel shrugged.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he confessed, peeling the detective’s fingers off his arm. ‘I was trying to find the biggest box with the smallest capacity.’

  ‘Which was the Northstar Horizon.’ Sid gave a nod. ‘Good thinking.’

  ‘Now we just have to get into this thing,’ said Steve. He sounded less than thrilled, and Cadel knew why. Taking the laptop out of its hidey-hole had been easy. Penetrating its defences, on the other hand, would be very, very hard. One false step and the machine would probably self-destruct, erasing all of its files and possibly even cooking its own circuits.

  You could cause a meltdown, Cadel thought, if you installed a program that overclocked your CPU.

  ‘I’m almost scared to lift the lid,’ Steve went on, ‘just in case we lose something.’

  ‘We’ve got to be careful,’ Sid agreed. At which point, without warning, the laptop suddenly sprang to life. Its lights began to blink. Its circuitry began to click and purr.

/>   For a moment, everyone stared at it in stunned silence. Then Sid and Steve and Cadel all hurled themselves forward, panic-stricken.

  ‘No!’ yelled Steve.

  ‘The battery!’ cried Sid. ‘Get the battery out!’

  He reached the laptop just ahead of Steve, snatching it up with such urgency that it almost slipped from his fingers. Cadel was jostled aside as Sid uttered a howl of despair.

  ‘The cover’s screwed in!’ he wailed. ‘There’s a screw!’

  ‘Here! Quick!!’ Sid ordered. Having thrust the machine into Steve’s arms, he began to search his pockets. Saul, meanwhile, was hovering in the background, completely lost.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Sid brayed. He had dropped a jangling bunch of miniature tools, and was scrambling to retrieve it. Steve was cursing under his breath.

  So Cadel had to answer Saul’s question.

  ‘The laptop’s booting up,’ Cadel explained.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It was likely, however, that some sort of switch had been thrown when the machine was removed from its hiding place. Cadel suspected that a signal from the Northstar Horizon had been triggered after he’d failed to enter a certain code (or press a particular button) within the correct timeframe.

  I’m such a fool, he said to himself.

  By this time Sid was frantically sorting through his collection of pocket-sized screwdrivers, which hung like keys from an overcrowded keyring. Cadel sidled past him to examine the gutted chassis of the Northstar Horizon.

  Sure enough, there was a tiny contact pad inside.

  ‘Cadel. Don’t touch anything,’ Saul pleaded, as Sid fumbled to unscrew the laptop’s battery cover. It was a fiddly job, because the screw was so small – and because Steve kept shifting anxiously from foot to foot, jolting the machine in his arms.

  ‘Hurry!’ he begged. ‘Or we’ll lose it all!’

  ‘I know that!’ Sid snarled.

  ‘Just pull it off! Give it a yank!’