DAY 8
Vlad was sitting against the same tree.
Samantha got out of the bag, stood up fully dressed, and stretched. She looked east at the ridge first, then at Vlad. His eyes were open and the tablet was face down on his knee.
“When did you sleep.”
“I slept.”
“When.”
“Saturday.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“I know what day it is.” He turned the tablet over and looked at it. “Four percent.”
Marcus was snoring softly. He was lying on his left arm. Samantha lingered on his face and noticed a trickle of drool.
“We won’t have sun here for a while,” she said. “The ridge is east of us.”
“I know where the ridge is.”
“Then you know you should turn off your tablet.”
Vlad put the tablet inside his jacket. Everything they owned was still damp.
“I did the other thirteen,” he said.
“And.”
“Eleven had normal weeks. One has been down since March for a helium problem.” He worked his jaw. “That is twelve.”
“And.”
“The other one is not on your list.”
Samantha crouched down in front of him.
“I was reading calendars all night. Everybody’s calendar, not only the seventeen.” He got the tablet back out and held it low so the light off it stayed under the trees. “There is a machine at a university in Ohio. Small. Two hundred and something atoms. It is used by undergraduates for a class when it is not being used by a materials group doing research I don’t understand. It has been booked in one-hour blocks for years.”
“Okay.”
“Thursday it has an eight-hour block. One user. Overnight, from ten.”
“Who.”
“E. Voss.”
Samantha put her hand out. Vlad did not move.
“It’s Eleanor,” she said.
“It is a name in a form.”
“Give me the tablet.”
“Anyone can type a name into a form. It takes seven keystrokes.”
“I know that.”
“Then you know why the answer is no.”
Marcus rolled over and got up on one elbow.
“What’s up?”
“Go back to sleep,” Vlad said.
“Eleanor Voss wrote our first check. She is seventy-four years old.” He got the other elbow under him. “Why is she pulling an all-nighter on a machine in Ohio?”
“How big is it again,” Samantha said to Vlad.
“Two hundred and twelve.”
“Then it isn’t bait.” She looked at the screen without touching it. “If you wanted to get me in a room with a machine you’d choose somewhere I’d actually go. You would book the biggest thing you could find and leave the door open. Only someone stupid baits me with a machine that can’t do anything.”
“Or they know that is what you would say.”
“Yes.”
Vlad waited.
“Fuck. That’s true,” she said. “I can’t prove it’s her. Fuck fuck fuck. I do not want to call Eleanor.”
“So we do nothing.”
“I want to know if it’s her or not. If it’s her, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad for us, but I still want to know.”
Marcus sat all the way up and started working his left foot with both hands.
“I gave this up,” he said. “Remember. The two of you agree or it doesn’t happen.”
“Then agree with me,” Samantha said to Vlad.
Nobody said anything. Water dripped over the branches.
“There is a project field on the booking,” Vlad said.
“What does it say.”
He turned the tablet around and held it up for her.
“That is not a project name. It is an address at a small chat server in Iceland that has been running since I was in school.” He turned it back. “Whoever did this is not stupid.”
“Is that a yes. Do you agree with me now?”
“That is me saying they are not stupid.”
The sky over the ridge went from gray to orange. Vlad stood up with a hand on the tree.
“Nine minutes,” he said. “From the second it is up. I do not care what she is saying at minute nine.”
They took the solar panel up out of the timber onto an open bench where they thought the sun would soon land. Marcus carried the pack and swore as he tripped over the rocks. Samantha got the panel flat and angled. She smirked at Marcus as she asked for two rocks to steady the panel.
As the sun came over the ridge, the battery went to five and then to six.
An engine rumbled in the distance. It was a long way down and out of sight in the timber, small and working hard in low gear. Then it quit. Twenty seconds of nothing. Then it started again and worked another fifty yards and quit again.
Marcus was flat on the ground.
“You are hiding from a rancher,” Vlad said.
“I’m resting.”
“Get up,” Samantha said. “It’s a side-by-side and it keeps stopping. That’s a person picking up cows.”
“You’re sure?”
“Nobody looking for us drives fifty yards and turns the motor off.” She was already pulling the rocks off the panel. “But he’ll eventually come up this road.”
“So we’re fine.”
“We’re fine but it’s time to get moving.”
They got back down into the edge of the timber with the panel coiled and the battery at nine percent. Vlad found a rock with sky over it, set the Mini on it with the kickstand out, and squatted in front of it with the tablet across his knees. Marcus stood behind him with the pack still on.
“Six minutes,” Vlad said. “Your cows cost us three of them.”
He brought it up. Then he held the tablet out to Samantha without being asked.
She sat down on the ground. The screen was too bright in the morning sun but she just squinted at it so she didn’t have to waste time adjusting it.
She typed: It’s me.
Nothing came back.
“Back up and give me some space,” she said.
“Sorry.”
Then a response: Say something to me that nobody else would say.
She typed: You told me to stop apologizing at the front of my sentences.
Yes. You still do it.
Samantha let out her breath.
Are you all right, Eleanor wrote. One word.
Yes.
Good. Now listen, because I am going to be blunt and you are going to want to argue.
Go.
Nobody hunting you can do anything with you. There are four hundred people on this and a photograph of you at thirteen. They are not the danger.
Then what is.
Somebody has been running a factoring job for at least a week.
Mine?
No. Cruder, and pointed at one number.
Which number.
The old 2048 root under everything that cannot be updated.
“What,” Marcus said.
“Wait.”
How much of that is still out there, she typed.
Nobody agrees. Somewhere between fifty million and five hundred million devices. But a lot.
Pumps and ECUs and the things in a substation.
Yes. And the boxes every hospital uses.
She sat with her wrists on her knees.
“Sam,” Marcus said.
“The rotation,” she said. “They’re racing the rotation. Everything with a chip in it that nobody can go out and touch trusts a key someone is trying to break. There is no easy update for those. Most of them will have to be updated manually.”
“How long do the people with the screwdrivers need?”
“Years.”
“Four minutes left,” Vlad said.
Who is rotating them, Samantha typed.
I am. So are a few hundred other people. The council I sit on met for eleven hours yesterday. We managed to produce a memo.
What do you want me to do.
I did not reach you to give you an assignment.
Then why.
Because you have spent eight days running from the only people in this who cannot hurt you.
The cursor sat there.
Samantha. When someone finally comes for you it will not be to arrest you.
“Three,” Vlad said.
Samantha typed: Is anybody in charge of this.
The reply took most of a minute.
No.
She read it twice and handed the tablet up to Vlad without looking at him.
“Two more minutes,” he said.
“Take them. Ask her about machines in Colorado.” She got up off the ground and stood there with her hands hanging. “I’m going to go be sick.”