“Exactly. So the Greens deposited a mix of operatives and amnesty-bribed thugs on board the Blossom instead. The operatives went as replacement crew, the thugs masqueraded as legitimate passengers. The captain suspected as much, of course, but could do nothing. The infiltrators had impeccable false identities and credentials, supplied by Greens who control the necessary personal record databases.”
Lee saw how these circumstances had led to what he had discovered on the Blossom. “So the infiltrators waited until the liner was in deep space, took her, interrogated both the crew and passengers in an attempt to locate the Case Red file, and failing that, eliminated them and continued the search on their own. And it's entirely possible that Coordinator Mann deflected us from investigating more deeply because he is an agent for the Green conspirators. In fact, he might be the one who set the hijacking to begin with.”
“There is no way to be certain, but he had the opportunity and authority to do so.”
Lee stared around at the books. “Now, about your own secret file—the one the scanner was carrying as test images: what the hell is it?”
Perlenmann folded his hands. “The images are graphical copies of a computer code—a code too important and sensitive to be transmitted as code. So we have been shuttling it out here to Callisto, piece by piece.”
“And what makes this code so important?”
“Do you know what a backdoor is, Lieutenant?”
“Sure. It's code put into a program—usually an operating system—so that the code writer can access and control the system later on without having to log on or go through any other security protocols.”
“Precisely. Well, we have been recompiling the code of a long-unused backdoor for almost five years.”
“What is it a backdoor to?”
“The market and financial management software used by the Earth Union.”
Lee stared. “How did your agents get access to that kind of code? That should be completely inaccessible.”
“It is. Even to the Greens themselves.”
“Mr. Perlenmann, you're going to have to stop talking in riddles, please.”
“Actually, I'm stating the simple truth. The Greens are no longer aware that this backdoor exists. You see, several decades before the economic collapse of the twenty-first century, the programmers who wrote the financial tracking and exchange software used by the major markets of the world realized that there could come a day when world leaders might need to intervene to forestall an imminent fiscal crash. So they put a backdoor in all their programs.”
“And the security subroutines of those programs never tweaked to it?”
Perlenmann smiled. “That would have been a most difficult task, since the backdoor was nested inside the security subroutines themselves.”
“Oh,” said Lee, who did not feel particularly intelligent at that moment.
“When the markets did collapse a generation later, the backdoor codes were mostly forgotten by the new market managers, and what remained was lost in the chaos.
“That would have been the end of the story if there had not been a collection of nations—mostly in Europe—which, by nationalizing their debts and shifting to an emergency command economy, remained stable enough to continue trading amongst themselves. In time, the global markets—now under Green control—reasserted.
“However, in the technophobic culturescape arising from the collapse, there was no interest in creating new programs to integrate and manage dataflow between the world's markets. So they simply retained the old software and rebuilt the old machines which ran it.”
Lee goggled. “And they're still using that system today? Almost two hundred years later?”
Perlenmann shrugged. “Why not? It works, and to replace it would mean a significant investment, appropriated over the objections of the Neo Luddites, many of whom detest the entire notion of money, anyway. The software has evolved, of course, but its core program is still the same. And the backdoor is still there.”
“And your organization found the code for it? How?”
Perlenmann's smile was sly; Lee pictured him suggesting to Eve that she might enjoy just one tiny bite of that shiny, ripe apple. “It was never entirely lost, although its full potential was not understood. The access code itself was split up shortly after the Greens began their initial rise to power. For generations there was no opportunity, and no pressing reason, to reassemble or use it. Until the recent retrenchments, it was conceivable that, over time, the Greens would relent and humanity would reattain a reasonable balance between eco-consciousness and technological advancement, despite the resistance of the Neo Luddites.
“But then we started getting fragmentary reports of a clandestine Green operation dubbed ‘Case Red.'