Disclosure

"Right."

Fernandez gave a little shrug. "I’m afraid I’m not-"

"Me neither," Sanders said. "I’m not a technical person. I can just read people."

She looked around the room. "Can you read this?"

He sighed. "No."

Fernandez said, "Are they finished?" "I don’t know," he said.

And then he saw it. They were finished. They had to be. Because otherwise the Diagnostics team would be working all night, trying to get ready for the meeting tomorrow. But they had covered the tables up and gone to their professional association meeting because they were finished. The problem was solved. Everybody knew it but him. That was why they had only opened three drives. They didn’t need to open the others. And they had asked for them to be sealed in plastic . . . Because . . . The punctures . . . "Air," he said. "Air?" "They think it’s the air." "What air?" she said. "The air in the plant." "The plant in Malaysia?" "Right."

"This is about air in Malaysia?"

"No. Air in the plant."

He looked again at the notebook on the table. "PPU" followed by a row of figures. PPU stood for "particulates per unit." It was the standard measure of air cleanliness in a plant. And these figures, ranging from two to eleven they were way off. They should be running zero particulates . . . one, at most. These figures were unacceptable.

The air in the plant was bad.

That meant that they would be getting dirt in the split optics, dirt in the drive arms, dirt in the chip joins . . .

He looked at the chips attached to the board.

"Christ," he said.

"What is it?"

"Look."

"I don’t see anything."

"There’s a space between the chips and the boards. The chips aren’t seated."

"It looks okay to me."

"It’s not."

He turned to the stacked drives. He could see at a glance that all the chips were seated differently. Some were tight, some had a gap of a few millimeters, so you could see the metal contacts.

"This isn’t right," Sanders said. "This should never happen." The fact was that the chips were inserted on the line by automated chip pressers. Every board, every chip should look exactly the same coming off the line. But they didn’t. They were all different. Because of that, you could get voltage irregularities, memory allocation problems-all kinds of random stuff. Which was exactly what they were getting.

He looked at the blackboard, the list of the flowchart. One item caught his eye.

D. Σ Mechanical √√

The Diagnostics team had put two checks beside "Mechanical." The problem with the CD-ROM drives was a mechanical problem. Which meant it was a problem in the production line.

And the production line was his responsibility.

He’d designed it, he’d set it up. He’d checked all the specs on that line, from beginning to end.

And now it wasn’t working right.

He was sure that it wasn’t his fault. Something must have happened after he had set up the line. Somehow it had been changed around, and it didn’t work anymore. But what had happened?

To find out, he needed to get onto the databases.

But he was locked out.

There wasn’t any way to get online.

Immediately, he thought of Bosak. Bosak could get him on. So, for that matter, could one of the programmers on Cherry’s teams. These kids were hackers: they would break into a system for a moment of minor amusement the way ordinary people went out for coffee. But there weren’t any programmers in the building now. And he didn’t know when they would be back from their meeting. Those kids were so unreliable. Like the kid that had thrown up all over the walker pad. That was the problem. They were just kids, playing with toys like the walker pad. Bright creative kids, fooling around, no cares at all, and

"Oh,Jesus." He sat forward. "Louise."

"Yes?"

"There’s a way to do this."

"Do what?"

"Get into the database." He turned and hurried out of the room. He was rummaging through his pockets, looking for the second electronic passcard.

Fernandez said, "Are we going somewhere?"

Yes, we are."

"Do you mind telling me where?"

"New York," Sanders said.

The lights flicked on one after another, in long banks. Fernandez stared at the room. "What is this? The exercise room from hell?"

"It’s a virtual reality simulator," Sanders said.

She looked at the round walker pads, and all the wires, the cables hanging from the ceiling. "This is how you’re going to get to New York?"

"That’s right."

Sanders went over to the hardware cabinets. There were large hand-painted signs reading, "Do Not Touch" and "Hands Off, You Little Wonk." He hesitated, looking for the control console.

"I hope you know what you’re doing," Fernandez said. She stood by one of the walker pads, looking at the silver headset. "Because I think somebody could get electrocuted with this."

"Yeah, I know." Sanders lifted covers off monitors and put them back on again, moving quickly. He found the master switch. A moment later, the equipment hummed. One after another, the monitors began to glow. Sanders said, "Get up on the pad."

He came over and helped her stand on the walker pad. Fernandez moved her feet experimentally, feeling the balls roll. Immediately, there was a green flash from the lasers. "What was that?"

"The scanner. Mapping you. Don’t worry about it. Here’s the headset." He brought the headset down from the ceiling and started to place it over her eyes.