The microwave said 10:40. Marcus had nothing to do. The biggest thing he would ever be part of was happening somewhere down the canyon, four minutes at a time, at the top of every even hour.
“This sucks,” he muttered to himself.
Samantha was asleep on the floor. He stared at her, trying not to think about what was going on. His mind drifted to college but then snapped back to the present.
He kept thinking about the page. He’d sent it off over two hours ago with his name on the email to the FBI and he still had no idea if it had reached anybody who could do something with it. He’d spent two weeks being the reason they’d almost gotten caught, and now he’d done something useful, maybe, and he didn’t know if and when he’d know.
Seth had been gone for over three hours. If the guard had called Eleanor when Seth got to NIST, he would be fine. If the guard hadn’t, Seth was in a room somewhere explaining himself, and Marcus was the one who’d sent him.
Cooper got up, turned around twice in Doug’s chair, and lay back down facing the other way.
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “Me too.”
Samantha woke up a few minutes before noon, looked at the microwave, and carried the case out to the porch without a word. Marcus got himself up off the couch with a hand on the wall and went after her. She set the dish on its spot on the rail, plugged it in, and they waited for the satellites.
There were two emails.
The first was from Hanne, at 11:52.
Marcus — the person from the government has your page and agrees with it. But they say the companies that run the update servers will not change what they accept on the word of a page with no name on it. They are asking who measured the sigma. They want a person to stand behind it. The window to change the rule is today.
He knew the move. Get him a phone and one name at one of those companies and he’d have had them by two. He wanted to stand behind it. He wanted his name on something, out loud, finally —
But his name was the problem. He’d been on the news for two weeks. A lawyer at one of those companies who got an email signed Marcus Reed would not flip a switch on live traffic. He’d call the FBI.
“They want a source,” he said.
Samantha was watching the timer on the dish. “They don’t need a source. They need to read the log.”
“What will they find in the log?”
“Every update carries a receipt. The receipt points at a line in Ostvik’s log. Open the real log. If the line’s there, it’s real. If it isn’t, it’s theirs. Nobody has to trust anybody. They have to look.”
Marcus started to type. This is Marcus Reed. I was on the founding team at — He stopped and deleted it. Not because she told him to, this time. Because his name would slow it down.
He tried again.
Don’t take anyone’s word for this, including this email. Every update signed with the old key carries a receipt that names a line in the log Ostvik serves. Open the real log and look. If the line isn’t in it, the update is forged, and you can see that immediately without having to trust anyone. The authority to change the rule today is Eleanor Voss, NIST Boulder. Contact her.
He read it over while Samantha read it over his shoulder. Their eyes met and she nodded. He sent it before the window closed.
Samantha pulled the plug and carried the case inside. Marcus lowered himself onto the top step and sat there, staring out into the trees.
He composed another email, this time in his head. It was a good one — two paragraphs, who he was and why they should believe him and how fast this had to go. He’d have sent it a month ago. Back then everything he did had his name on it. That’s how he got things done.
Samantha came back out with a sleeve of crackers and sat on the step below him.
“You didn’t put your name on it,” she said.
“My name’s worth less than nothing right now. It’s negative.”
“First useful thing it’s done.” She held a cracker up over her shoulder until he took it.
At two she set the dish out again. It was slow to come up — a cloud, or the satellites. When it did there was one email, from Hanne, at 1:58.
Three of them turned it on an hour ago. Two more within the hour. Anything signed with the old key is being held and checked against the log before it goes through. The person from the government said to tell whoever measured it that it is catching things.
Marcus read it is catching things and smiled.
He hadn’t talked to anybody. He hadn’t had to close a deal. He’d sent four sentences that told five companies not to trust him and pointed them at a log they could read for themselves. It had moved faster than anything he’d ever sold. He’d built a career on the opposite.
“It’s on at the gateways,” he said.
Samantha nodded. She was watching the road, not the screen. “Then anything of theirs that’s still moving is going to hit it.”
“Is that enough?”
“It’s what we’ve got.”
At four she set it out one more time. Marcus came out with her, faster than he’d managed that morning; his foot still hurt but he wanted to see what she saw.
There was one email, from an address none of them had seen, a NIST address, three lines.
From E. Voss. The gate is signed and out to the companies as of 1:57. Your friend brought me the page and is fine. The author of it is also in my room and says to tell her she was right.
Samantha read it over his shoulder. He felt her go still, and then she sat down on the step without a sound. She’d been scared for Vlad since Sunday and hadn’t said so. Marcus knew the feeling. He’d be scared too.
The timer ran down. She reached over and pulled the plug, coiled the cable, and didn’t get up.
“It’s out,” she said. “Theirs and ours. Both of them, out there now.”
“Are we ahead?”
“There’s no way to know yet.”
Marcus looked down the road, where the truck wasn’t going to come any time soon. There was no one left to call and nothing left to sell.
He didn’t know what someone did with a day where the work was out of their hands. He sat down next to Samantha to wait and find out.