Nineteen: Contact

Networking is a vitally important part of the

consultant’s craft. Never lose touch with former clients or colleagues.

The Consultants’ Handbook

Danny swore a particularly sulfurous oath just as Moira walked into the programmers’ workroom.

“I’m sorry, My Lords,” she said and turned to go.

Jerry looked up. “Oh, hi Moira. No, that’s all right. We weren’t swearing at you. We were swearing at the system.”

“More problems?” she asked in the resigned voice Jerry and Danny had come to know all too well since the search for Wiz started.

“I’m afraid so. We’ve been checking the sites on that wacko routing path of Wiz’s and checking them regularly. But now we keep pinging and we keep getting nonsense.”

Danny went over the routing list item by item. Then he stopped dead. “Wait a minute! According to this he’s going through shark.vax.”

“That’s the North Australia Oceanographic Institute. So?”

“So shark.vax is down. They had a typhoon or something. There was a message about it on the net.”

“Let me see that!” Jerry grabbed the tablet from Danny’s hand. He traced down it and frowned. The frown grew deeper as he compared the tablet to the screen.

“Ping shark.vax.” Danny nodded and typed frantically.

“What is it?” Moira demanded, pressing close.

“I think . . .” Jerry began, but Danny cut him off. “See. shark.vax isn’t there. But how is he using it if it’s not there?”

“Magic?” Moira suggested.

Jerry slammed his hand down on the table so hard a pile of manuscripts slid onto the floor. “No, a gimmicked router table! He got into one of those routers and redid the table.”

“Slick. No wonder we couldn’t find him.”

“Does this help?”

“Yes, it helps a lot. All we’ve got to do now is find the router he tricked and see where the entries in the table really lead. With that we can find the switch he’s using and from there we can trace him back to this world.”

“But not quickly?”

Jerry forced a smile. “Oh, it’s not automatic, but we’ll find him. He can’t keep hiding like this for much longer.”