He found the next few months busy and difficult, but very fulfilling.

He was dealing almost exclusively with four people; Pat, Adams, Lucinda and Suzanne, in addition of course to Wendy. The first two were very much in England, whereas the women other than Wendy were only at the end of a modem and a telephone line.

***

Pat had arrived in mid-January and spurning the dreaming spires of Cambridge, had commandeered the spare room in the flat, where he had installed another two computers, so that he could orchestrate the testing in the way, only he knew how.

The rate of the finding of bugs, malfeatures and things that were just plain wrong, started to increase dramatically as Pat combed the software from feature to feature and command to command. Only around the beginning of March, did the outstanding numbers start to decrease and the two men thought that they could see an end to this first phase of their work.

Pat also became the liaison and link to both Medusa and Zyzzx. One day he would be in Cambridge getting some intransigent academically-minded programmers to see the errors in their code and the error of their ways. The next he would be testing and testing again in the flat. At the weekend he would be on his way to a customer abroad or perhaps Las Vegas. He was not going to leave anything to chance.

Pat was also having other affects on his life. The flat was now generally tidy, he was being fed two and sometimes three good and healthily nutritious meals a day and despite his protestations, Pat had curbed his drinking and insisted that they visit the local fitness club at least five times a week. He would even admit he felt better, had lost several pounds in weight and had had to buy some new clothes and at least one new suit to compensate.

***

Perhaps, Derek had been wrong about Adams, but the major shareholder in Medusa was proving to be a strong force for getting the deal through without any hitches and on time. He was also making a very good job of stepping into some of Derek's shoes as the man in charge of Medusa. He would turn up more than he ever had done in the past and when he did it was to help, suggest, cajole and buy the odd enabling drink, rather than hinder or go on about how his money was being wasted.

Was it that now he could see an almost indecent return on his money and had decided that he was prepared to make the odd sacrifice?

That was only partly the case. Adams had been the first to recognise that Derek's vision of adding the analysis software and its charismatic interface to Medusa, had been the catalyst that had set sales alight. It was a case of Medusa's substance and buckets of external style. Although he didn't find the programmer exactly the easiest person to deal with, Adams did now respect him and he was prepared not to begrudge him one penny of the fees and commission of nearly twenty million dollars that would be paid, if all the optimistic targets were met.

He had at last learned that you had to pay a fortune for technology. You couldn't always get it on the cheap, as he had done with Medusa.

But he also knew that very few others had been so lucky.

He was only annoyed with Adams about one thing. And it was a big bone of contention and something he could now do nothing about. Adams had agreed after intense pressure from Russ, that he would spend most of the next three years in Las Vegas. At least, due to the various tax advantages, by spending a few months on Grand Cayman before going, it would mean that he would be several million dollars richer!

***

Much to his regret, Lucinda cancelled her trip.

It was what she didn't say in her messages, that worried him.

She was not using the Zyzzx mail address, but he guessed a personal one from a different Internet-access company, probably from a laptop or computer at her home. Did she fully trust all of her colleagues? There would have been no surprise there, as he didn't trust Russ either! Was she being careful and wanted to say personal things to him? Or was he just being paranoid?

Typical of her messages, was the one in May after she had visited the Bowens in Boston.

He read the message again and again. She was trying to tell him something. But what? Questions in his reply had got no sensible response, so he would have to wait until August. He vowed, that afterwards he would make all the time in the world.

He knew he probably wouldn't.

Pat had a different answer, when he told him of his worries. He would get on a plane tomorrow, take her to The Maquis for the best meal in Las Vegas and then see what she did and said.

He did admit he was tempted. But stubborn that he was and worried about the software, he would wait to see Lucinda until August.

***

Another reason for worry were the messages from Suzanne, who now appeared to be living in a Zyzzx apartment in central Las Vegas, at Russ' beck, call, whim and pleasure.

She had indeed been to Budapest with Russ. He had taken a copy of the original interface to Eastern Europe where programmers are very good, quick, affordable and can hide behind copyright laws, that do not offer the original designer much protection. Russ had used his own money to recruit a large team, that was going to recreate his software.

He was always worried about imitators and had thought that something like this might happen. But not quite this early and backed by Russ!

He had made provision for this and had built extensive protection into the software. He had even gone as far as producing two programs, an interim version based on his original analysis program and a final one, that would be used to merge the companies. Only Pat would get hold of a copy of the latter before August. The code had been scrambled to thwart decompiling and there were redundant features and routines, that would only be removed at the last minute.

But his biggest protection was the simplest. He had been programming for thirty years and had so much experience, that he knew of methods that most had forgotten. In those far-off days of the fifties and sixties, your programming had to be efficient to make anything work at all, but as computers had got bigger and faster, everyone got sloppier, more verbose and slower. But by applying these old methods to the powerful machines of the present day, he got very fast, reliable and efficient programs.

He knew that unless the cloners used similar, well thought out methods, their version of his interface would never have the performance he had achieved. Hopefully, it would be so slow, as to be a complete dog!

***

Suzanne also told how Russ had been to some of the best lawyers and attorneys that money and influence could buy. Not on Zyzzx's behalf, but on his own!

In his words, that were relayed by Suzanne, He was going to screw all those fucking, smart-arsed limeys.

He could not disclose his source of information, but he was not particularly worried, as he had already told Adams that he didn't really trust Russ and thought he might try and get all of their secrets for nothing. He also knew that Adams was no stranger to smart lawyers.

***

Suzanne's first message in May was her most chilling.

The two men spent all of that weekend preparing for the burglary.

Their first thoughts were that as the flat was high in a tower with very efficient security, were that the stealing of the computers might not be possible. Perhaps, after seeing the flat, they would raid Medusa in Cambridge, which would not achieve their objective. But knowing Russ and some of his friends, they decided that they would be the target.

Few computer users back up all they do and store it in a different place. After the message, they copied everything to tapes and these were stored in a secure and alarmed safe in the basement. Other copies went to a bank vault in the City. At least they would not lose all of their work.

All of the hard drives were exchanged for removable ones and these were scrambled and went into a hidden safe, every time they left the flat. Then, they set up new dummy discs for the machines, that contained nothing of any use whatsoever. In fact, they were able to create directories and programs that would pass a cursory inspection from an average programmer, that would make them feel that they had stolen what they wanted.

And of course they then loaded the dummy discs, with all the best and most devious viruses, that the Internet could provide.

Copyright 1999 by Ewart Higgins