Hung Out by Margaret Weis & Don Perrin

Author:Margaret Weis & Don Perrin [Weis, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451456182
Publisher: Roc
Published: 1998-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

You know my methods, Watson.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Crooked Man

Petronella knew the moment she walked into her apartment that someone had been there, someone had searched it. The place was just too neat.

The dwelling of a Talisian appears chaotic to most non-Talisians. Why bother to pick up articles and put them away when a whirlwind could strike at any moment? Whoever had searched her apartment and riffled through her drawers had left most of her things in standard Talisian disorder. The mags were still strewn about the floor of the living room. The teakettle was upended in a corner of the kitchen. But the lamp shade had been straightened, her bed made. Her underwear was in a drawer, not shoved under her bed, where it usually resided. A few pieces had even been neatly folded.

Petronella hurried to check her computer. Piles of papers littered her desk, along with a three months' assortment of sticky notes, game manuals, books, wadded-up Kleenex, half-full coffee cups, and warranty cards she was always going to fill out and send in. Someone had been here, spent time examining everything on her desk. Her apparently disordered piles had actually been in a sort of order—to her, at least. The recent stuff was on the top while the stuff that she'd meant to do three months ago was on the bottom. Now the three months stuff was on top and the immediate stuff, like a recent bank statement, was on the bottom.

Of course. They had been searching through her personal things for some key to her password, to break into her files.

Did they really think she was that incompetent? Did they actually believe she'd be stupid enough to write it down, leave it lying around?

The insult angered her almost as much as the violation of her apartment.

At least her files were safe, she thought, until she saw the cable neatly coiled beside the lamp.

The searchers hadn't been able to break into her files, and so they had simply copied them onto another computer and carried them off, to break into them at their leisure. They had made a complete electromagnetic copy. Analyzing it would provide them with all the data in the computer. All they needed was the encryption code. That would take time, but they'd crack it. They always did. She knew; she'd done it herself.

"Why?" she asked the computer.

"Hello, Petronella," the computer said brightly, activating at the sound of her voice and reciting its customary message."Welcome back!"

"The computer was a lame-brained model, but it was all she had been able to afford after graduating from college. Her salary was such that she could afford better now, but she'd grown rather attached to this one, which suited her needs and, unlike some models she'd seen, didn't try to be her friend.

Right now, however, she could have wished for a computer that took a more active interest in her life.

"Computer," she began, knowing this was hopeless but forcing herself to try, "I need to know if anyone other than myself had access to my files.

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