The hacker and the ants

TWELVE

I left Roger’s house on foot just before noon on Sunday, May 31. I’d half-expected to find, the factory burned to the ground outside Roger’s shuttered windows, but the acetone seemed to have burned itself out without managing to set the Swiss concrete building on fire, not that I looked inside. The main thing was that no alarms seemed to have gone off, and everything looked fairly normal. I splashed down to Saint-Cergue, where I found a cafe crowded with peasants drinking vile Swiss beer.

Without anyone taking much notice of me, I phoned for a taxi, which took me to the Geneva airport. Customs didn’t look in my satchel, which could have been luck or could have been something else. I couldn’t tell anymore.

Monday morning I was back in San Jose, just in time for the next part of my trial. I buttonholed Stu in the hall outside the courtroom. He was kind of surprised to see me.

“You’re still here, Jerzy?”

“Yes. I want to win this trial. Let me ask you something point-blank. Do you really want me to lose, or have you just been dogging it because West West stopped paying you?”

“Of course I want you to win. You’re my client. And I think it’s somewhat inaccurate to say that I’ve been dogging it. The problem is that you haven’t given me a defense to work with. And of course I am operating on somewhat limited funds.”

“I’ve come into some money and some new information over the weekend, Stu. It was Roger Coolidge who made Studly put the ants on the Fibernet. He was driving Studly over a remote cyberspace link. Get hold of Coolidge’s phone bill and we can prove it.”

“Use a cryp?”

“Use whatever it takes. And get the same guy who made the prosecutor’s demo to make a cyberspace demo for us. A better demo. Coolidge was on the phone to a transponder in the back of a truck driven by a guy called Vinh Vo.”

“Is he related to the Vo family you were visiting? None of them were willing to talk.”

“Vinh’s the oldest son. I’ve already had dealings with him and I’m sure I can get him to testify for us. Vinh is very money-oriented. The one thing is that our story can’t make Vinh look bad. If Vinh were to turn against me, he could open up information about-never mind what about.” If Vinh and Bety and Vanna and Riscky kept mum, the authorities need never find out that I was the Sandy Schrandt who’d been visiting Roger Coolidge when he died.

“If this Vinh will really testify that Coolidge paid him to run a transponder near Studly, that could break the case wide open,” said Stu.

“I’d like to bring him over to your office this afternoon,” I said. “So we can work on his story with him. Can you get the judge to postpone the rest of the trial for a couple of days?”

“This will all mean a lot of additional legal expenses,” said Stu tentatively.

“Let’s say I’m good for twenty thousand more dollars, max.”

“That works for me!”

As soon as court went into session, Stu approached the bench and asked the judge for a two-day continuance. The D.A. called it frivolous, but the judge said okay.

I found Vinh Vo at Pho Train that afternoon. He too was surprised to see me. I got him to walk through the SJSU campus toward Stu’s office with me. On the way I talked to him.

“Vinh, I know that you had a transponder in the back of your truck that night that Studly put the ants on the Fibernet. Roger Coolidge was running Studly through the device in your truck. We’re going to have to bring that out for my trial defense.”

Vinh angrily screwed up his face around the fuming cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you talk to the cops about me, Mr. Yuppie. I know Eastside Virus boys who’d knife you for fifty dollars.” The Eastside Virus was a notorious Vietnamese street gang.

“Now, Vinh, that’s not being very cooperative. Anyway I’ve already told my lawyer all about you.”

“My boys can kill your lawyer, too.” It was another day of brilliant California sun, and the shadowed creases in Vinh’s face looked hard and dark.

“Calm down,” I urged him. “All you have to do is say that you ran the transponder for Roger Coolidge. You didn’t know why. It’s not a crime. You’ll just be a witness. Coolidge has to take the fall for this, and you have to help me set him up. If you testify in court, I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”

“You think Coolidge will take this lying down? He’s a billionaire. He’ll come back at you with everything he’s got.”

“Coolidge is dead, Vinh.”

Vinh’s customary lack of expression briefly gave way to surprise. His mouth opened and his eyebrows shot up before he regained control.

“You kill him?”

“No, I didn’t. His robots killed him. But nobody ever finds out about Sandy Schrandt, see?”

“That’s a big secret to keep, Rugby. I want five thousand dollars.”

“I’ll give you two. And you tell Bety Byte and Vanna to purge their records and take a long vacation.”

“That’s got to make it four thousand.”

“Okay,” I said. “Who wants to haggle on such a nice, sunny day.”

We went to Stu’s office and ironed out our courtroom strategy. Vinh left, and then Stu and I talked a little more. He’d already crypped Roger’s relevant phone records, and he’d scheduled a guy to rush-job our cyberspace demo for tomorrow, which was Tuesday. The trial was due to start back up on Wednesday.

“But don’t forget,” Stu reminded me. “Your bail runs out at noon tomorrow. You have to show up at the jail and turn yourself in.”

“You damn well better win this trial for me, Stu.”

“Here’s hoping!”

That evening I went back to Queue’s. Keith and I were sitting on the porch smoking a joint when Riscky Pharbeque came bouncing up the path-with none other than Susan Poker in tow.

“Yo, bro,” said Riscky. “I brought my friend Sue. She’s the movie agent I was telling you about.” Susan Poker had replaced her hard-shell Realtor garb with black jeans and a Mexican blouse embroidered with cyberspace interface icons. She wore pale lipstick, and had washed the stiffener out of her hair to pull it back into a loose ponytail. She looked arty, in an LA kind of way.

“Hi, there!” she sang. “I’m looking forward to representing you. Riscky won’t tell me what he did to convince you.” She gave Riscky a kittenish slap.

I was on my feet staring down over the railing. “Since when are you a movie agent, Poker?” I demanded.

“What you don’t know about me would fill a book, Rugby,” she fired back. “But don’t you think it’s time we got on a first-name basis?”

They sat on the porch and smoked with us for a bit, and then I took Riscky upstairs alone with me.

“I hope to God you don’t tell that flap-mouth about-” I broke off, remembering that my room was probably bugged. Riscky laid a finger on his long sharp nose and looked kindly confidential. He drew a cloth sack out of his pocket and held it up inquiringly. I pointed to my black satchel. He reached into it with the sack and invisibly bagged his RAM chip and the dormant winged plastic ants. I was glad to see them go. I was dead sick of ants.

Back downstairs, Susan Poker said, “We can’t stay long, Jerzy, but I’ve got these papers for you to sign.”

“What?”

“It’s my standard agency contract. I incorporated on Friday-when Riscky told me he’d get you. The networks already know I’m going to represent you, and ABC and TNT are definitely interested.”

I went ahead and signed the papers. What the hey, “Sue” was only asking for fifteen percent. And it wasn’t like, if she got the deal, I would actually have to do anything more than give them my blessing and take a couple of meetings. “The Jerzy Rugby Story,” yeah, I kind of liked it. Or maybe call it “The Hacker And The Ants”? It would be something on TV worth seeing for once-especially if I won my trials and gave it a happy ending.

“Let me just ask you one thing,” I said, handing back the papers. “Was it a woman called Kay Coolidge who got you onto my case in the first place?”

“Go ask Gretchen,” grinned Susan Poker. “She told me she wants you to come see her tonight.”

I drove down to Gretchen’s. She was home alone in her condo, sitting on the couch watching television.

“Where were you all weekend, Jerzy?” she asked petulantly. “I couldn’t find you.”

“Never mind. Look, is it true that Roger Coolidge’s wife Kay hired you and Susan Poker to watch me?”

Gretchen tossed her bell-shaped hairdo. “Okay, yes, that’s true. But right away I started being really fond of you, Jerzy.” She smiled prettily.

“You weren’t too fond of me to give Riscky Pharbeque my cyberspace access code. You watched me typing it in that time right after our first fuck. I just remembered that on the drive over here.”

“Come on and sit down, Jerzy,” said Gretchen, patting the sofa cushion next to her. “Tell me how your trial’s going. Calm down and give me a kiss.”

The phone rang. Gretchen answered. “Yes. Uh-huh. No, I’m still not sure where he was over the weekend. But I know where he is now. Yes, he’s right here. Oh, he already knows. Talk to him? I guess so.” She giggled and held out the receiver. “Here, Jerzy. It’s Kay Coolidge.”

Reluctantly I took the phone. “Hello?”

It was an older woman’s plummy voice, strained with grief. “Mr. Rugby, this is Kay Coolidge in San Francisco. I’ve just gotten word that my husband Roger is dead. Do you know how it happened?”

“Roger framed me for the GoMotion ant release, and you’ve been helping him spy on me for over a month. Why would I suddenly want to help you?”

“Look, Mr. Rugby, Roger told me on Saturday that you were coming to visit him. You’re such an unworldly dreamer that it would be perfectly easy to frame you again, if that’s what you want to call it, you fool. But if you’ll just tell me the truth, I might let you go. Even if you did kill him.”

I took a deep breath. Would this ever be over? “I’m certainly not going to say I was there-” I began.

“Go on.”

“But I might speculate that Roger was killed by some new four-armed robots and some little robots that look like plastic ants. That’s what he was experimenting with, I understand. From having worked with Roger in the past, I can tell you that he could be quite reckless about new forms of artificial life.”

“I see,” said Kay Coolidge quietly. “But the coroner said something about a fire.”

“This would still be pure speculation on my part, but it may be that someone was trying to kill the four-armed robots along with the plastic ants that were crawling on… on Roger’s body.”

“Oh how horrible.” She started sobbing.

“Will you and your people leave me alone now?” I grated.

There was a hiccuping pause while Kay Coolidge composed herself. “Yes, we’ll leave you alone,” she said finally.

“So good-bye. And I’m sorry about Roger. You don’t need to say anything else to Gretchen, do you?”

“No need.” Her voice was shakily calm. “Tell Miss Bell that her final check will come this week. Goodbye.”

I-hung up the phone.

“What was that all about?” asked Gretchen.

“You’re out of that job,” I told her.

“I’m glad, Jerzy. Susan and I have felt terrible about tattling on you.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I said. But I spent the night with her anyway. What with having to turn myself in to the sheriff the next day, who knew when I’d get another chance to sleep with a woman. And, face it, I was still in love with Gretchen, even if she did have the morals of a Realtor.

The story about Roger Coolidge being killed by his robots broke in the media the next morning. I went downtown at noon and spent the next six days in jail and the courtroom.

On Wednesday morning, Stu presented Vinh’s testimony. There were records of Roger calling Vinh, and of Roger calling the number of Vinh’s transponder. Vinh said he hadn’t known why Roger had wanted him to drive the transponder over to his family’s house; he said he’d thought it was just a divorce case or a matter of industrial espionage. Wednesday afternoon, after Vinh’s testimony, Stu showed a kick-ass cyberspace demo that made the story really hang together.

For his summation on Thursday, Stu got permission from the judge to bring in the fact that Roger had recently been killed by robots, and that all the GoMotion ants seemed to have disappeared from cyberspace with Roger’s death. By the time Stu was through, nobody doubted anymore that Roger had been the sole and supreme master of the GoMotion ants.

The jury came in with a not guilty verdict on Friday, and on Monday, June 8, the federal prosecutor dropped all charges against me. I walked out of jail a free man with a dynamite story. I spent the rest of that day hanging out with my kids. I saw Carol too, of course, and she told me that she was planning to marry Hiroshi in the fall. I was so happy about getting out of jail that I congratulated her.

Tuesday, Susan Poker got me a contract with Fox for “seven figures,” as she happily put it. Riscky was with her when she told me. He was really excited about his Sue’s deal. Studly was to be equipped with fresh chips and given a starring role. It almost felt like Riscky had made this whole adventure happen to me just so Susan Poker would have a miniseries to sell. But that was a paranoid thought, and I was sick of being paranoid.

While they were talking to me, Riscky started hinting around that he might want to try and find a hacker to help him develop some miniature flying robots with “certain new technology I’ve got ahold of,” meaning the winged plastic ants. “ Not me,” I told him. “ No more ants for me.”

On Wednesday, Stu filed a seven-figure lawsuit against GoMotion for having framed me. Given Kay Coolidge’s promise not to pull any more dirty tricks on me, it seemed like we had a good chance of winning. Stu lined up two other lawyers to help him, all of them working on a contingency basis.

On Thursday, Otto Gyorgyi phoned to offer me my job back at West West, and I had the joy of telling him to get fucked, royally. I still had most of the eighty thousand I’d gotten from Roger, and before long the miniseries bucks would be rolling in. I didn’t need West West’s money. And-“Great Work” or no, I was as sick of robots as I was of ants. The Veep and the Adze robots were out in the world and doing fine. I’d done enough for the robots.

The summer wore on happily. I kept seeing a lot of Sorrel, Tom, and Ida. They were proud of how much they’d helped me in my battle with the ants.

Gretchen sometimes talked about her and me getting a place together, but I’d grown attached to the freedom and privacy of my rented aerie at Queue’s. Plus, as long as I wasn’t actually living with Gretchen, I could still occasionally date other women, specifically Nga Vo.

Vinh had enjoyed being on the winning end of a trial so much that he’d told his family to let me resume my relationship with Nga. Nga’s parents started letting Nga spend Tuesdays with me-though evening dates were still out of the question. I got the idea of trying to take up surfing, and bought’wet suits and boards for the two of us, along with surfing lessons. Nga bragged that she was the only boat-people surfer in Santa Cruz. She had an eccentric sense of humor, and a weird take on things American. And, of course, kissing her was heaven, though kissing was still as far as it went. I tried bringing Nga back to my room a couple of times, but alert landlady Queue would always notice, and find a way to thwart my evil plans.

In August, Sorrel, Tom, and Ida went backpacking in Yosemite with me, which was wonderful. I had kind of a vision in Yosemite, a moment of enlightenment, just like in the old days. I’d always realized that animals and plants and the web of nature are as alive and cosmically conscious as me. But I’d never before realized that rocks are alive.

The rocks in Yosemite are what’s really unusual about the place-the rocks are plutonic granite, which has square or parallelopiped-shaped chunks of quartz in it. Looking at them in my moment of enlightenment, I could see that, yes, even rocks are alive.

So who needs smart machines?