Wizardry Consulted by Rick Cook

Author:Rick Cook [Cook, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"But can they sever the link?" Moira persisted.

"They may think they have already since they don't know we're tapped into

her line."

"Can they cut it entirely?"

"Yeah, by disconnecting the line. But they probably won't do that. There's

no reason for them to do it." He sighed. "You know there was a time when

government agents were pretty dumb about these things. I understand

they've gotten smarter."

"But they still might cut us off from Wiz?"

"Theoretically," Jerry said. "But don't worry. It would take an absolute

idiot to do something like that."

It was not a good day for Special Agent Pashley. He had spent the morning

interviewing Judith Conally with her lawyer present and he felt he was

further behind than ever. After two hours of questioning and several very

pointed inquiries by Judith's lawyer as to the exact charge, he had turned

her loose. The results from the examination of Judith's computer and

related material hadn't helped any.

"Technicalities," he grumbled into his coffee cup. "Tied in knots by damn

technicalities."

"I told you it was a mailbox," Ray Whipple told him.

"It's a top secret government mailbox and these hackers are breaking into

it!"

"Look," Ray said slowly and carefully, as if explaining something to a

child. "We only know that some messages from that mailbox passed through

her system. The messages we have were addressed to other accounts on that

domain, she says she never got any messages from that account, there's no

sign of any such messages on her system and she doesn't know where to find

the people the messages were sent to."

"Yeah, but someone had to send the message in the first place and that

person had to break into the mailbox."

"But she didn't send mail to herself," the astronomer said patiently. "The

messages weren't for her and she didn't know that address was some sort of

government secret. Hell, she claims she didn't even know those accounts

were on her machine. That makes her as much a victim as the government.

You can't arrest her for that. Especially since the thing's so secret you

can't admit it's a secret in the first place."

"Hah!" Pashley said.

Whipple shrugged. "You can't prove otherwise."

"Technicalities," Pashley repeated. "Picky little technicalities. They're

what's ruining this country."

"Myron, she's innocent."

Pashley snorted. "With a record like hers? She disappears, right out of a

locked hospital ward, and no one knows where she's gone, and she's

innocent?"

"She had a head injury. The hospital screwed up when she came out of the

coma, she wandered around for a while before they found her. The hospital

admitted they were wrong by settling with her, didn't they?"

"For all we know she was kidnapped by aliens for experiments or

something," Pashley retorted.

Actually Pashley was closer to the mark than Whipple, although neither of

them would have believed the real story. Judith had been taken to Wiz's

World as part of the battle against computer criminal magicians at

Caermort. She had been healed there and returned to our world when the

situation was stabilized.

Suddenly Pashley brightened. "A brain probe! Maybe she's jacked into the

net directly through her brain. We can find out with an X-ray or MRI or

something." He stood up and strode out into the main office.

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