Cruel & Unusual Read online

  “My computer analyst is the only super user.”

  “That may be true. But there may be a number of users who have root privileges, users you don't even know about that came with the software. We can check that easily, but first tell me about the strange file. What's it called and what's in it?”

  “It's called t-t-y-oh-seven and there's a sentence in it that reads: 'I can't find it.'

  “I heard keys clicking.

  “What are you doing?”

  I asked.

  “Making notes as we talk. Okay. Let's start with the obvious. A big clue is the file's name, t-t-y-oh-seven. That's a device. In other words, t-t-y-oh-seven is probably somebody's terminal in your office. It's possible it could be a printer, but my guess is that whoever was in your directory decided to send a note to the device called t-t-y-oh-seven. But this person screwed up and instead of sending a note, he created a file.”

  “When you write a note, aren't you creating a file?” I puzzled.

  “Not if you're just sending keystrokes.”

  “How?”

  “Easy. Are you in UNIX now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Type cat redirect t-t-y-q -” “Wait a minute.”

  “And don't worry about the slash-dev ' “Lucy, slow down.”

  “We're deliberately leaving out the dev directory, which is what I'm betting this person did.”

  “What comes after cat?”

  “Okay. Cat redirect and the device “

  “Please slow down.”

  “You should have a four-eighty-six chip in that thing, Aunt Kay. Why's it so slow?”

  “It's not the damn chip that's slow!”

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” Lucy said sincerely. “I forgot.”

  Forgot what? “Back to the problem,” she went on. “I'm assuming you don't have a device called t-t-y-q, by the way. Where are you?”

  “I'm still on cat,” I said, frustrated. “Then it's redirect . . . Damn. That's the caret pointing right?”

  “Yes. Now hit return and your cursor will be bumped down to the next line, which is blank. Then you type the message you want echoed to t-t-y-q's screen.”

  “See Spot run,” I typed.

  “Hit return and then do a control C,” Lucy said. “Now you can do an ls minus one and pipe it to p-g and you'll see your file.”

  I simply typed -Is- and caught a flash of something flying by.

  “Here's what I think happened,” Lucy resumed. “Someone was in your directory - and we'll get to that in a minute. Maybe they were looking for something in your files and couldn't find whatever it was. So this person sent a message, or tried to, to the device called t-t-y-oh-seven. Only he was in a hurry, and instead of typing cat redirect slash d-e-v slash t-t-y-oh-seven, he left out the dev directory and typed cat redirect t-t-y-oh-seven. So the keystrokes weren't echoed on t-t-y-oh-seven's screen at all. In other words, instead of sending a message to t-t-y-oh-seven, this person unwittingly created a file called t-t-y-oh-seven.”

  “If the person had typed in the proper command and sent the keystrokes, would the message have been saved? “ I asked.

  “No. The keystrokes would have appeared on t-t-yo-h-seven's screen, and would have stayed there until the user cleared it. But you would have seen no evidence of this in your directory or anywhere else. There wouldn't be a file.”

  “Meaning, we don't know how many times somebody might have sent a message from my directory, saying it was-done correctly.”

  “That's right.”

  “How could someone have been able to read anything in my directory?” I went back to that basic question.

  “You're sure no one else might have your password?”

  “No one but Margaret.”

  “She's your computer analyst?”

  “That's right.”

  “She wouldn't have given it to anyone?”

  “I can't imagine that she would,” I said.

  “Okay. You could get in without the password if you have root privileges,” Lucy said. “That's the next thing we'll check. Change to the etc directory and vi the file called Group and look for root group - that's r-o-o-t-g-r-p. See which users are listed after it.”

  I began to type.

  “What do you see?”

  “I'm not there yet,” I said, unable to keep the impatience out of my voice.

  She repeated her instructions slowly.

  “I see three log-in names in the root group,” I said.

  “Good. Write them down. Then colon, q, bang, and you're out of Group.”

  “Bang?”

  I asked, mystified.

  “An exclamation point. Now you've got to vi the password file - that's p-a-s-s-w-d - and see if any of those log-ins with root privileges maybe don't have a password.”

  “Lucy.” I took my hands off the keyboard.

  “It's easy to tell because in the second field you'll see the encrypted form of the user's password, if he has a password. If there's nothing in the second field except two colons, then he's got no password.”

  “Lucy.”

  “I'm sorry, Aunt Kay. Am I going too fast again?”

  “I'm not a UNDO programmer. You might as well be speaking Swahili.”

  “You could learn. UNIX is really fun.”

  “Thank you, but my problem is I don't have time to learn right now. Someone broke into my directory. I keep very confidential documents and data reports in there. Not to mention, if someone is reading my private files, what else is he looking at and who is doing it and why?”

  “The who part is easy unless the violator is dialing in by modem from the outside.”

  “But the note was sent to someone in my office - to a device in my office.”

  “That doesn't mean that an insider didn't get someone from the outside to break in, Aunt Kay. Maybe the person snooping doesn't know anything about UNIX and needed help to break into your directory, so they got a programmer from the outside.”

  “This is serious,” I said.

  “It could be. If nothing else, it sounds to me like your system isn't very secure.”

  “When's your term paper due?” I asked.

  “After the holidays.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Almost.”

  “When does Christmas vacation start?”

  “It starts Monday.”

  “How would you like to come up here for a few days and help me out with this?” I asked.

  “You're kidding.”

  “I'm very serious. But don't expect much. I generally don't bother with much in the way of decorations. A few poinsettias and candles in the windows. Now, I will cook.”

  “No tree?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “I guess not. Is it snowing?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “I've never seen snow. Not in person.”

  “You'd better let me talk to your mother,” I said.

  Dorothy, my only sibling, was overly solicitous when she got on the phone several minutes later.

  “Are you still working so hard? Kay. You work harder than anyone I've ever met. People are so impressed when I tell them we're sisters. What's the weather like in Richmond?”

  “There's a good chance we'll have a white Christmas.”

  “How special. Lucy ought to see a white Christmas at least once in her life. I've never seen one. Well, I take that back. There was the Christmas I went skiing out west with Bradley.”

  I could not remember who Bradley was. My younger sister's boyfriends and husbands were an endless parade I had stopped watching years ago.

  “I'd very much like Lucy to spend Christmas with me,” I said. “Would that be possible?”

  “You can't come to Miami?”

  “No, Dorothy. Not this year. I'm in the middle of several very difficult cases and have court scheduled virtually up to Christmas Eve.”

  “I can't imagine a Christmas without Lucy,” she said with great reluctance.

>   “You've had Christmas without her before. When you went skiing out west with Bradley, for example.”

  “True. But it was hard,” she said, nonplussed. “And every time we've spent a holiday apart, I've vowed to never do it again.”

  “I understand. Maybe another time,” I said, sick to death of my sister's games. I knew she couldn't get Lucy out the door fast enough “Actually, I'm on deadline for this newest book and will be spending most of the holiday in front of my computer anyway,” she reconsidered quickly. “Maybe Lucy would be better off with you. I won't be much fun. Did I tell you that I now have a Hollywood agent? He's fantastic and knows everybody who's somebody out there. He's negotiating a contract with Disney.”

  “That's great. I'm sure your books will make terrific movies.”

  Dorothy wrote excellent children's books and had won several prestigious awards. She was simply a failure as a human being.

  “Mother's here,” my sister said. “She wants to have a word with you. Now listen, it was so good to talk to you. We just don't do it enough. Make sure Lucy eats something besides salads, and I warn you that she'll exercise until it drives you mad. I worry that she's going to start looking masculine.”

  Before I could say anything; my mother was on the line.

  “Why can't you come down here, Katie? It's sunny and you should see the grapefruit.”

  “I can't do it, Mother. I'm really sorry.”

  “And now Lucy won't be here, either? Is that what I heard? What am I supposed to do, eat a turkey by myself?”

  “Dorothy will be there.”

  “What? Are you kidding? She'll be with Fred. I can't stand him.”

  Dorothy had gotten divorced again last summer. I didn't ask who Fred was.

  “I think he's Iranian or something. He'll squeeze a penny until it screams and has hair in his ears. I know he's not Catholic, and Dorothy never takes Lucy to church these days. You ask me, that child's going to hell in a hand basket.”

  “Mother, they can hear you.”

  “No they can't. I'm in the kitchen by myself staring at a sink full of dirty dishes that I just know Dorothy expects me to do while I'm here. It's just like when she comes to my house, because she hasn't done a thing about dinner and is hoping I'll cook. Does she ever offer to bring anything? Does she care that I'm an old woman and practically a cripple? Maybe you can talk some sense into Lucy.”

  “In what way is Lucy lacking sense?” I asked.

  “She doesn't have any friends except this one girl you have to wonder about. You should see Lucy's bedroom. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie with all these computers and printers and pieces and parts. It's not normal for a teenage girl to live inside her brain all the time like that and not get out with kids her own age. I worry about her just like I used to worry about you.”

  “I turned out all right,” I said.

  “Well, you spent far too much time with science books, Katie. You saw what it did to your marriage.”

  “Mother, I'd like Lucy to fly here tomorrow, if possible. I'll make the reservations from my end and take care of the ticket. Make sure she packs her warmest clothes.

  Anything she doesn't have, such as a winter coat, we can find here.”

  “She could probably borrow your clothes. When was the last time you saw her? Last Christmas?”

  “I guess it was that long ago.”

  “Well, let me tell you. She's gotten bosoms since then. And the way she dresses? And did she bother to ask her grandmother's advice before cutting off her beautiful hair? No. Why should she bother telling me that-”

  “I've got to call the airlines.”

  “I wish you were coming here. We could all be together.”

  Her voice was getting funny. My mother was about to cry.

  “I wish I could, too,” I said.

  Late Sunday morning I drove to the airport along dark, wet roads running through a dazzling world of glass. Ice loosened by the sun slipped from telephone lines, roofs, and trees, shattering to the ground like crystal missiles dropped from the sky. The weather report called for another storm, and I was deeply pleased, despite the inconvenience. I wanted quiet time in front of, the fire with my niece. Lucy was growing up.

  It did not seem so long ago that she was born. I would never forget her wide, unblinking eyes following my every move in her mother's house, or her bewildering fits of petulance and grief when I failed her in some small way. Lucy's open adoration touched my heart as profoundly as it frightened me. She had caused me to experience a depth of feeling I had not known before. Talking my way past Security, I waited at the gate, eagerly searching passengers emerging from the boarding bridge. I was looking for a pudgy teenager with long, irk red hair and braces when a striking young woman met my eyes and grinned.

  “Lucy, “ I exclaimed, hugging her. “My God. I almost didn't recognize you.”

  Her hair was short and deliberately messy, accentuating dear green eyes and good bones I did not know she had. There was not so much as a hint of metal in her mouth, and her thick glasses had been replaced by weightless tortoise-shell frames that gave her the look of a seriously pretty Harvard scholar. But it was the change in her body that astonished me most, for since I had seen - her last she had been transformed from a chunky adolescent into a lean, leggy athlete dressed in snug, faded jeans several inches too short, a white blouse, a woven red leather belt, loafers, and no socks. She carried a book satchel, and I caught the sparkle of a delicate gold ankle bracelet. I was fairly certain she was wearing neither makeup nor bra.

  “Where's your coat?” I asked as we headed to Baggage.

  “It was eighty degrees when I left Miami this morning,” “You'll freeze walking out to the car.”

  “It's physically impossible for me to freeze while walking to your car unless you're parked in Chicago.”

  “Perhaps you have a sweater in your suitcase?”

  “You ever notice that you talk to me the same way Grans talks to you? By the way, she thinks I look like a 'pet rocker.' That's her malapropism for the month. It's what you get when you cross a pet rock with a punk rocker.”

  “I've got a couple of ski jackets, corduroys, hats, gloves. You can borrow anything you wish.”

  She slipped her arm in mine and staffed my hair. “You're still not smoking.”

  “I'm still not smoking and I hate being reminded that I'm still not smoking because then I think about smoking.”

  “You look better and don't stink like cigarettes. And you haven't gotten fat. Geez, this is a dinky airport,” said Lucy, whose computer brain had formatting errors in the diplomacy sectors. “Why do they call it Richmond International?”

  “Because it has flights to Miami.”

  “Why doesn't Grans ever come see you?”

  “She doesn't like to travel and refuses to fly.”

  “It's safer than driving. Her hip is really getting bad, Aunt Kay.”

  “I know. I'm going to leave you to get your bags so I can pull the car in front,” I said when we got to Baggage. “But first let's see which carousel it is.”

  “There are only three carousels. I bet I can figure it out.”

  I left her for the bright, cold air, grateful for a moment alone to think. The changes in my niece had thrown me off guard and I was suddenly more unsure than ever how to treat her. Lucy had never been easy. From day one she had been a prodigious adult intellect ruled by infantile emotions, a volatility accidentally given form when her mother had married Armando. My only advantage had been size and age. Now Lucy was as tall as I was and spoke with the low, calm voice of an equal. She was not going to run to her room and slam the door. She would no longer end a disagreement by screaming that she hated me or was glad I was not her mother. I imagined moods I could not anticipate and arguments I could not win. I had visions of her coolly leaving the house and driving off in my car.

  We talked little during the drive, for Lucy seemed fascinated by the winter weather. The world wa
s melting like an ice sculpture as another cold front appeared on the horizon in an ominous band of gray. When we turned into the neighborhood where I had moved since she had visited last, she stared out at expensive homes and lawns, at colonial Christmas decorations and brick sidewalks. A man dressed like an Eskimo was out walking his old, overweight dog, and a black Jaguar gray with road salt sprayed water as it slowly floated past.