“You have a choice, Flynn. You can be quiet and do as you’re told, or else you can run off with your tail between your legs and go play ball with the technocrats,” Tauber said in an icy near-whisper. “Makes no difference to me. We can pull this off with you or without you. But you better decide if you’re one of us or one of them.”
Wraggon smiled at Flynn’s discomfort—a reaction Tauber noticed and tucked away in the mental file he automatically kept on the strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities of everyone who crossed his path.
“All right, now,” Tauber said, “everybody got it straight? This is Phase One. Anybody wants out of this operation, better do it now.” Tauber gazed directly at Flynn. “After tonight, we’re committed. We’re at war. We’re going to bring down this whole weak-sister regime we’ve been stuck with for so long and get back to the natural order of things, with the strong in charge.”
Flynn’s eyes narrowed, and he glared at Tauber, but he said nothing as the others nodded.
It was just past 2 a.m., and the streets were as deserted as those big, old-fashioned shopping centers became after retailers started emphasizing instant-delivery home sales. The group’s destination—about half a block away—was housed in a simple, unadorned structure built in the utilitarian architectural style that was so popular around the turn of the century.
The five of them made up an odd-looking bunch, Tauber mused. Wraggon, sporting an incipient beard, swaggered instead of merely walking, as if intoxicated by the scent of power. To Tauber, he just looked like a little boy playing soldier. Barnard could have been sent by a holovision casting director to play the hulking, not-too-bright sidekick. Flynn, still hot over their earlier clash, seemed more concerned about who gave the orders than about any outside interference with their immediate objectives. And Thompson strolled along as if they were merely out for a middle-of-the-night constitutional. Only Tauber himself exhibited the mix of competence, confidence, and caution that the circumstances warranted.
“Okay, Flynn,” Tauber said as they stopped before a door marked:
LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY, CENTRAL BRANCH
“Open it.”
Flynn scowled for a split second, then tried the door.
“Locked,” he grunted
“When’d they start locking the library doors?” Barnard complained. “I thought they always kept ’em open.”
“Yeah, well, with all the vandalism lately, maybe they’re starting to smarten up,” said Thompson.
Tauber jerked his head toward the door.
“Open it,” he repeated, handing Flynn a set of lock picks.
Flynn ran thick fingers through his dirty russet hair, then took the packet from Tauber.
“What’s the matter?” Wraggon taunted as Flynn studied the picks uncertainly. “Aren’t you the guy who told us all last week how you didn’t need Tauber or anyone else to teach you how to open some goddamn door? Maybe you need a little more motivation. Just think, Flynn. Now that people are locking their doors again, you’ll probably have to use one of those to get into your latest whore’s pants!”
Flynn flushed with anger and took a step toward Wraggon, only to feel Barnard’s huge, restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Come on, Casey. You don’t really want to do anything like that, do you?”
Tauber gave Flynn a few seconds to regain control of himself, then turned to Wraggon.
“I don’t want that to happen again, Wraggon,” he said firmly. “So far, we’ve only got 23 men, including us, to change a world that right now doesn’t even know it needs changing. As long as Flynn’s with us, he’s part of the team. We don’t take pot shots at each other!”
Wraggon glared at Tauber. “I was just....”
Tauber’s hard look cut Wraggon short.
“The door,” Tauber said, turning to Flynn.
Flynn took a deep breath, selected a pick and inserted it in the lock. After a few seconds, the lock gave way.
“Thompson, you stay out here, and keep watch. I don’t think anyone’s going to show up, but we’d better play it safe. Here, take this.” Tauber removed a silver flask from a satchel slung over his left shoulder. “Anybody comes snooping around, you start playing drunk. Loud drunk.”
Thompson nodded and took the flask as Tauber directed the other three men through the wide library doorway.
Once inside, Tauber removed a low-intensity glow lamp and a focus-beam flashlight. He set the lamp in the middle of the room and switched it on.
“Close the door, Wraggon,” he said, turning his head to survey the scene.
The soft light of the glow lamp revealed two rows of public-access computer terminals on the main floor, as well as racks filled with what at first appeared to be books.
“Hey, Tauber,” Barnard asked with a wave of his arm. “What is all this stuff?”
“Yeah, Tauber,” Flynn added. “I thought you said they don’t keep books in libraries anymore.”
“Wait a minute,” Wraggon chimed in, removing a “book” from one of the lower shelves. “These aren’t books.”
Tauber looked at the three others and shook his head.
“No, they’re not books. They haven’t kept real books in libraries for at least 20 years. Those are disk modules.” He pointed to the open end of the three-sided container in Wraggon’s hands. “Each module holds up to 10 optical disks. The open end faces the read/select circuitry behind the racks. When you want some sort of information, you punch up the library on your terminal at home. The library’s supercomputer uses high-speed molecular switching circuits to locate the right place on the right disk, access the data and send it to you.”
Wraggon swiveled his head slowly, studying the racks.
“The central L.A. library holds more information than you could find in all the libraries in Southern California combined a hundred years ago,” Tauber added. “That’s why we’re here. Not only does this library have a lot of information, but it also acts as a link with other local libraries. Haven’t any of you ever heard of the Consolidated Data Network?”
Barnard wrinkled his brow in concentration, then suddenly smiled in recognition. “Sure,” he said. “The CDN. I just never figured that had anything to do with libraries. Always thought libraries were places you punched up if you wanted to read something.” He turned to Wraggon. “I never did like to read much,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
Wraggon looked around him. Disk modules lined all four walls of the library, extending from the ground to the ceiling three stories above them. A stairway to the left of the main desk and an elevator to the right provided access to the balcony-like upper floors.
“I feel like I’m standing at the bottom of some kind of deep hole,” Wraggon said as he gazed upward. “Shit! I never realized how much information they keep in these places,” he said.
“Oh, this is really nothing. You should see the regional libraries. Then there are the archives, where they store the master disks with all the information they’ve transferred to computer storage over the years. And the originals. They’ve got warehouses of the stuff—real books and paper records, too. Backups for backups. We don’t have nearly enough manpower to destroy all the records, but we can do a good job of screwing things up if we handle this right.”
“How’d you get to be so smart?” Flynn snarled.
Tauber ignored the sarcasm.
“Before I left Fleet, I made damn sure I learned everything I could—anything I figured might be useful later on. Fleet was very cooperative. After my big run-in with the brass, they grounded me. Guess they figured they could keep me in line by giving me some sort of desk job. Their mistake. Hank Tauber’s nobody’s sheep. Anyhow, they gave me all sorts of training on the Fleet computer system—which meant learning a helluva lot about CDN, not to mention a few other things that are going to come in very handy for us.”
“What now?” asked Flynn.
“Now we start putting our plan into operation. Like I’ve been saying for weeks, the whole world depends on information and energy these days. Take those away, and what you’ve got is a nice, juicy apple, ripe for the picking.
“We’ve got an information-exchange node coming up in about—” Tauber paused to look at his wristwatch “—25 minutes. First thing we’ve got to do is tap into the data burst. Then we use the library’s master computer to analyze the burst and isolate the transmission codes.”
Barnard scratched his head, a puzzled expression on his face. “What transmission codes?” he finally asked.
Tauber sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Come on, Barnard,” he almost pleaded. “We’ve been over this 20 times. You’re a merchanter, for God’s sake! Didn’t you learn anything about how the CDN system on Earth ties in with the one in the colonies?”
“Well, yeah, sure I did,” Barnard answered somewhat defensively. “But I still don’t see what that has to do with—”
“You explain it to him, Wraggon,” said an exasperated Tauber. “Do me a favor, and translate it into this guy’s language!”
Tauber shook his head and snorted derisively as Barnard’s Fleet-issue merchanter boots suddenly caught his eye. Now, what kind of idiot wears merchanter boots when he’s on leave? With a quick mental shrug, Tauber shifted his attention to more immediate concerns.
“Flynn, you go scout the upper floors. Better take the flashlight. See if you can find the supply room, just in case we need anything. And make sure the main office and the receiving station are unlocked.”
Tauber watched Flynn walk deliberately to the stairway, then bound up the steps two at a time.
“Look, Barnard, it’s real simple,” Wraggon was saying. “The colonies are too far away for us to use the same database. Communicating back and forth over that distance takes too long. Slows the computers down too much. So instead of having just one network, we really got two of ’em—one on Earth, and one out in the colonies.”
“Yeah, Charlie, I know that much already. What’s that have to do with what Hank was saying about data bursts and transmission codes?”
“Well, think about it for a minute. When you use the CDN, you’re supposed to be able to get whatever information you need, no matter if you’re in Los Angeles or somewheres on Ceres. Right? But that means the colonies’ network and the Earth’s network both gotta have the same information. You got to update both networks. You know—like, Earth’s network gets a copy of the latest stuff the colonial network has, and vice versa.”
“Oh, yeah,” Barnard said, his eyes brightening. “That’s what those information-exchange nodes are…. Aren’t they?”
Wraggon nodded. “They take all the information they need to send to the colonies and put it in some fancy electronic package, then send it out in a high-speed radio burst. The colonies do the same thing with the stuff they need to send us. They make an exchange like that about every couple weeks.”
“Right,” Tauber broke in. “And in order to make the exchange as fast as possible, they time it for when Earth and the colonial transmitting station are in their closest positions to one another for the two-week period. Which in this case happens to be in about—” he checked his watch once more “—17 minutes.”
Barnard nodded, apparently satisfied, and Tauber lifted his eyes toward the upper floors, searching for Flynn. Suddenly, Barnard caught Tauber’s arm.
“But what does any of that have to do with transmission codes?” he said. “You said something about transmission codes.”
Tauber closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Oh, for Chrissake!” Wraggon erupted, suddenly out of patience. “We’re gonna steal the transmission codes so we can fake messages from the colonies! Were you on the sauce during the briefings?”
The pale yellow light of the glow lamp emphasized the woebegone look on Barnard’s face.
“I ain’t had a drink since we started this thing,” he said, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height.
Wraggon studied the big man for a moment, then smiled and clapped him on the back.
“Yeah, I know, Vince. Sorry. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Just let Hank and me do the thinking for you.”
Tauber grunted. He’d have to watch Wraggon carefully. He was crucial to this plan—and Wraggon knew it. But Tauber didn’t want the man getting any ideas about who was in the pilot’s seat.
“Hey, Tauber,” came a voice from above. “We’re all set up here. Top floor.”
Quickly, Tauber headed for the stairs. “Grab my satchel and follow me,” he told the others. “Bring the lamp, too!”
Flynn met them at the landing.
“Kinda out of shape, aren’t ya?” Flynn scoffed as Wraggon huffed and puffed his way up the last few steps carrying the glow lamp.
“Never mind that,” Tauber exclaimed before Wraggon had a chance to respond. “Where’s the office?”
“Over there,” Flynn said with stab of his thumb, proceeding to lead the way.
“Who’s the cripple?” Wraggon asked as he followed the others into a small room containing the library’s central computer and communication equipment.
Tauber, already seated at the main computer terminal, busied himself hunting through his satchel.
“I said, does anyone know who the crip is?” Wraggon persisted, tilting his head in the direction of a large framed photograph depicting a gray-haired woman
seated in a wheelchair.
Quickly, Tauber glanced up, then returned his attention to the satchel, from which he had now removed an auxiliary dual disk-drive unit and a disk case.
“Oh, her. That’s Althea Milgrom.”
Wraggon gazed intently at the photograph as Tauber began inspecting the expansion hookup connectors on the terminal.
“That’s Althea Milgrom? The head of the whole Consolidated Data Network?”
“That’s her,” Tauber said without much interest.
“Jesus Christ! It’s bad enough having a woman in charge of one of the most important agencies in the world, but a cripple, too?” Wraggon shook his head. “This is just what we’re fighting against. You take away the computers and the robbies, and this dame is nothing. But the way things are, she has all kinds of power. She makes decisions every day that can affect all our lives. She controls the world’s information, and that means she can control us.”
Tauber continued to study the terminal connectors as he answered.
“She may have the power to control us,” he said evenly, “but being a softie like the rest of the soft-heads who run this world, she won’t use her power. That’s why we won’t have any trouble taking it away from her.…
“Shit!”
The others looked at one another in stunned silence. It was the first real burst of emotion any of them had heard from Tauber.
“What’s wrong?” asked Wraggon.
“It’s the expansion connectors,” Tauber answered tonelessly, making a studied effort to reclaim control of the situation while projecting an image of cool self-confidence under pressure. “Looks like the connectors were never used. Either they were bad when they were put in, or else they were damaged somehow and nobody ever noticed.”
“So what do we do about it?”
Tauber thought fast. “Flynn,” he said, “did you see some kind of tool box in the supply room?” Flynn nodded. “Then go get it. And move! We’ve only got about 10 minutes before the node!”
Tauber’s eyes darted desperately about the room. They were so close! He couldn’t let it all slip away now because of some quality-control glitch on a computer assembly line! But the photocouplers were missing from the connectors, and without those couplers, there was no way to link the fiber-optic transmission lines of the auxiliary drive unit to those of the terminal—in short, no way to tap into the library’s computer. For want of a coupler, the world was lost, Tauber reflected bitterly. All he needed were two little blobs of creatinum. But how in space was he going to find a useable source of creatinum at almost half past two in the morning in the middle of the L.A. public library?
Suddenly, he brightened.
“Barnard,” he ordered, “give me one of your boots!”
“Huh?” the big man responded.
“Listen,” Tauber said, rising and shoving Barnard into a vacant chair. “I don’t have time to explain now. Give me a boot!”
Without waiting for Barnard to react, Tauber grabbed the merchanter’s right boot and released the clasp. Then, slipping the boot off Barnard’s size-12 foot, he returned to the terminal.
“Here it is,” Flynn announced, brushing through the office door and setting a small tool box on the floor beside Tauber. “What’re you gonna do?”
Tauber checked his watch. Seven minutes to go. He might just make it.
Good old Fleet, he mused as he rummaged through the tool box until he found a standard Ronex five-in-one. First developed by Fleet for use in the colonies, the Ronex multiple-function tool had proved so valuable for Earthbound uses that it had become a staple of tool kits everywhere. And thanks to Fleet’s belief in dual-purpose equipment, the clasps on standard-issue merchanter boots were made of creatinum. The creatinum not only made a sturdy, virtually unbreakable clasp, but it also provided a ready supply of the substance for emergency repairs.
Despite the cool, dry air in the library office, beads of sweat began to dot Tauber’s face as he used the Ronex to cut two small pieces of creatinum from Barnard’s boot. After a quick adjustment to the Ronex, he used the tool’s setter extension to carefully position the creatinum chips inside the two recessed connectors on the terminal.
“Gimme the flashlight,” he said to no one in particular, holding out his left hand but keeping his eyes focused on the connectors.
He glanced at his watch—four minutes left—then moved the flashlight beam control to “narrowest” and switched the emission indicator from “normal” to “stimulated.” He swallowed hard, then aimed the flashlight into the first of the two connectors. A ruby beam of laser light fused the creatinum to the end of the connector, and Tauber allowed himself a tentative sigh of relief. Now the second one. This would be trickier. It was hard to find the right angle on this one, and if he was off line, he could wind up frying the terminal itself. He inhaled deeply, then held his breath as he fired another beam toward the terminal.
“I think that’ll do it,” he breathed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and checking his watch again. “Two minutes to go.”
Quickly, he hooked the auxiliary drive into the terminal. He removed a disk from his own disk case and inserted it into one of the unit’s drives. Then, after quickly inspecting a shelf above the terminal, he selected a disk from another case and placed it in the auxiliary unit’s second drive. He took a slow deep breath, then looked up.
“Okay,” he said, “it’s all set up now. When the burst comes through in...let’s see, 50 seconds...when it comes through, the computer here’ll do its normal thing. With this auxiliary unit plugged into the standard connectors, nobody’ll be able to tell that anything unusual’s going on. But the disk I put in Drive A will record the burst for us. Then after the transmission, we use the disk in Drive B to analyze the burst and give us the access and special identity codes the colonies use for transmissions to Earth. The same program’ll give us the codes for Earth-to-colony transmissions, too.”
Tauber permitted himself a tight smile.
“Here it comes!” he said, gesturing toward the terminal screen, which was flashing the words “DATA-EXCHANGE TRANSMISSION IN PROGRESS.” The whrrrr of the disk drive was sweet music to Tauber, who, despite his efforts to appear confident, hadn’t been at all certain that the modified connectors would work.
They all watched the screen, Tauber seated at the terminal and the others standing in a semicircle behind him. Moments later, the message changed: “DATA-EXCHANGE TRANSMISSION COMPLETE,” it read. Tauber pounded his right fist into his left palm.
“Is that it?” Flynn challenged. “That’s what all this crap about exchange nodes and data bursts amounted to? Seems like we went to a lot of trouble just to watch a few blinking words on a screen!”
Tauber was too relieved by the success of his last-minute repair job to be particularly annoyed by Flynn’s words.
“Like I said before the transmission, Flynn, the disk in Drive A records the data burst. And now...” he leaned forward and tapped a sequence of keys at the terminal “...we let the Network’s own data-analysis program isolate the codes we need...” he tapped some more keys “...and we send the result back to our disk in Drive A, to be saved along with the data burst.” He tilted back in his chair, once more enjoying the soft whrrr of the drives as the computer did his bidding.
Flynn, Wraggon and Barnard looked at each other uncertainly.
“One more thing,” Tauber added after the drives had fallen silent. He began punching in a long sequence of numbers and letters that had appeared on the screen in response to his previous directions.
“Yeah?” Flynn muttered, leaning closer to get a better look at what Tauber was doing. “What’re you up to now?”
“I’m using the access codes to get into the colonies’ Network and make some changes in the Network’s basic programming…. There!” he said, lifting his hands from the keyboard with the well-rehearsed flourish of a nightclub pianist. “Done! Amazing how much a few little changes can mean—if you know just where to make the changes. With these new instructions, we’ll be able to direct some of the colonies’ computer and robot operations without leaving any trace of what we’re doing. And now that we have the access codes, we can get back into their Network anytime we want to, and from any terminal on Earth.”
“Looks like you have everything all figured out. So what did you need us for?” Wraggon asked, a sharp edge to his voice.
“Don’t look so glum,” Tauber said slyly. “I’m saving the best part for last.”
The others waited expectantly as Tauber carefully removed the disk from Drive A, placed it in its case and returned the case to his satchel. Then, with contrasting abandon, he disconnected the auxiliary drive unit from the terminal and ripped the library’s data-analysis disk from Drive B.
“It’s party time,” Tauber laughed, throwing the data-analysis disk to the floor and grinding his heel into it. “Now.... Let’s wreck the hell out of this damn place!”