Cyber Rogues Read Online Free PDF Page A

methodical kinds of work.
    Betty Thorn, the Unit’s middle-aged, motherly and meticulous administrator, who also doubled as Dyer’s secretary, was making coffee at the small table near her desk by the second door to Dyer’s office. She turned a head of wavy, slightly graying hair to glance back over her shoulder as they entered.
    “Good morning, Ray. Good to see you back, Chris. You’re just in time. Like a cup?”
    “Betty, where would I be without you?” Dyer said with reverence. “Mmm . . . please. Strong.”
    “Sometimes I dread to ask,” she replied with mock seriousness. “Did you get to Florida in the end, Chris?”
    “Thanks. Yes . . . It was quite fun. I’m not sure I’d jump at the idea of making it a second home though.” Chris peeled off his parka and draped it carelessly on the stand inside the door.
    “Did you see the Space Center like I told you?” Betty asked him.
    “We spent a day there, yes. There were four or five launches. That was worth going to see on its own. Bloody noisy though.”
    “The only thing he seems to remember is some guy breaking a leg,” Dyer mumbled absently. He had swiveled the screen on Betty’s desk around on its flexible support arm and was using the touchpad to interrogate the mail.
    “Really!” Betty’s voice took on a note of alarm which failed to conceal her interest. “Who?”
    “Oh, he wasn’t with us,” Chris replied nonchalantly. “Just some body-beautiful twit who fell off his skis.”
    “He wasn’t hurt bad, was he?”
    “No—nothing serious. That’s why it was funny.”
    “That’s good to hear, anyhow,” Betty said, sounding relieved. “Ron. Want a coffee?” She addressed her last words in a raised voice toward the open door of the shambles of an office that Chris shared with Ron Stokes, another of Dyer’s senior people and Chris’s partner on the FISE project. The figure already hard at work inside jerked his head up from the mess of programming manuals and notes littering the desk in front of him.
    “Yeah.” The voice was loud and firm. “Black. Hi guys.” With that, Ron hunched back over the desk and resumed scribbling furiously.
    Dyer continued to scan casually over the items that appeared on the screen, tagging them via the touchpad as he went. Progress report from Ron to be checked . . . he’d do that this morning. Looks good. Departmental cost vs budget statistics . . . file and forget. Letter from Prof. Graulich in Hamburg . . . list of questions about Kim’s work on programmed instinctive motivation . . . résumé of Graulich’s own work . . . references to published papers . . . read closely later. Reminder that Chris is due back today . . . delete. Quote from DEC for voice-channel add-ons to PDP-130 . . . delegate to Ron and Chris. Odds and ends of admin stuff . . . Betty to take care of . . . Behind him Betty was telling Chris all about her daughter and her six-month-old grandson in Florida. Everybody in the unit knew all about Betty’s grandson.
    “Hey, how about this.” Dyer half-turned and gestured toward the screen. “A group in Tokyo reckon they’ve found a way of growing high-density memories from synthetic DNA. They’re saying it’ll be a hundred times cheaper than e-beaming array crystals.” Chris stepped a pace forward and ran a disdainful eye over the message. It was a news item passed on by Frank Wescott, who ran the HESPER lab at CIT.
    “This computer is dangerous. Please do not feed,” Chris remarked in solemn tones. “Could be interesting. Anything else?” Dyer brought up the next item, a note from Laura Fenning saying she would be in later on that morning and would appreciate it if Dr. Dyer could spare some time to comment on the notes she’d prepared. He groaned aloud and his face dropped.
    “What’s she doing coming in today?” he protested. “I thought she wasn’t due in until Wednesday.”
    “Looks like she changed her mind,” Betty said with inarguable logic.
    “Hell!” Dyer