Hacker by Malorie Blackman Page B

using it,’ Gib finished.
    ‘But I’m teaching a class.’ Rosa frowned.
    ‘Oh, we won’t make a sound. Will we, Vicky?’
    ‘Not a sound,’ I agreed.
    ‘I don’t know about this …’
    ‘Oh, please,’ Gib pleaded. ‘We won’t make any noise. Honest. ’Cause otherwise we’ll both fail computing this year.’
    Rosa scrutinized us both so carefully that my face began to grow hot. Could you tell someone was lying just by looking at their face? I began to think you could.
    ‘If you’re both sure you’ll not make any noise …’ Rosa began.
    ‘We won’t,’ Gib and I said eagerly.
    ‘And you’ve got to leave when the class is over …’
    ‘We will.’
    ‘All right then,’ Rosa said reluctantly. ‘But mind – no noise now.’ We shook our heads. ‘You can use the table at the back with the two PCs on it.’ Rosa pointed to the table.
    Just then a man in a blue pinstripe suit and a woman in a white dress came into the room. They directed curious glances at us before they sat down.
    Who wears a suit on a Saturday? I thought curiously.
    ‘Come on then, Vicky,’ Gib whispered. We sat down at the indicated table.
    ‘Get cracking before we’re found out,’ Gib hissed in my ear.
    ‘Help then,’ I hissed back. ‘Find out the name of the file that contains the dictionary for the spelling checker. That’s important. Then make sure you can type it out.’
    ‘Why do I have to do that?’
    ‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’
    ‘You’ll have to tell me what to do,’ Gib replied.
    Impatiently, I rummaged through my pockets to find something to write on. I found a piece of clean (I think!) but crumpled tissue and scribbled down the necessary commands. Gib gingerly picked up the tissue and laid it out flat before he started typing.
    ‘I hope you haven’t blown your nose on this!’ he said with disdain.
    I didn’t bother to answer. I watched him type. Talk about ponderous! I started typing myself. Connecting up to the live system was no problem. That was just a question of typing in the right data to Dad’s connect program which was on the memory stick that I’d rescued from being taken by Eric. No, the problem would be logging on to an account on the live system when I didn’t have a password.
    Still, I had an idea about how to do that, but I needed to write a command file to do it for me. It wouldn’t work with me typing directly from the PC. The bank’s network system would suspect something strange was going on and disconnect itself from my PC if I tried to do it all manually rather than via a command file.
    As we typed, two more men entered the room. Curious, they smiled at us. I smiled back. I carried on typing, peering intently at the screen as I did so. I wanted to make sure I got my command file absolutely right.
    ‘I’m ready,’ Gib said quietly after a few minutes.
    I looked at his screen. He’d searched through the hard disc on the server which was set up for use by all the PCs in the school, just as I’d written down. There were a number of error messages until he found the right file. On the rest of his screen I saw:
    > show helpdir: dictlarge
    a
    aardvark
    aardvarks
    aardwolf
    aardwolves
    aba
    abaci
    aback
    abacus
    ‘Why did you want me to check the dictionary?’ Gib whispered.
    ‘I can’t log on again using the TEST account ’cause that’s only on the development system. And as the bank disabled Dad’s account on the live system, I’m going to have to use another account.’
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘Eric, the Systems Manager’s user account. It’s the only account I can use where I know the privileges have been set up to do what I need to do on the bank’s computer.’
    ‘But you don’t know the password,’ Gib pointed out.
    ‘This is the good bit,’ I said softly. ‘I’ve written a command file to make sure we log on to the live machine at Universal. It enters SYSTEM as the user name and then pulls out a word from the dictionary you found, to try as the