The Fugitive

to help her out. Second, Gandalf had root access on Altos, which meant he could give her a new password or account.

Gandalf had established quite a reputation for himself in the computer underground through the hacking group 8lgm – The Eight-Legged Groove Machine, named after a British band. He and his friend, fellow British hacker Pad, had the best four legs in the chorus line. They were a world-class act, and cer- tainly some of the best talent to come out of the British hacking scene. But Gandalf and, to a lesser extent, Pad had also devel- oped a reputation for being arrogant. They rubbed some of the American hackers the wrong way. Not that Pad and Gandalf seemed to care. Their attitude was: We're good. We know it. Bugger off.

Gandalf disabled Theorem's account on Altos. He couldn't very well just change the password and then send the new one through the extended grapevine that Theorem had used to get a message through to him. Clearly, someone had targeted her account specifically. No way was he going to broadcast a new password for her account throughout the underground. But the trouble was that neither Par nor Theorem knew what Gandalf had done.

Meanwhile, Par called Theorem and got an earful. An angry Par vowed to find out just who the hell had been messing with her account.

When the MOD boys told Par they were the culprits, he was a bit surprised because he had always been on good terms with them. Par told them how upset Theorem had been, how she gave him an earful. Then an extraordinary thing happened. Corrupt, the toughest, baddest guy in MOD, the black kid from the roughest part of New York, the hacker who gave shit to everyone because he could, apologised to Par.

The MOD guys never apologised, even when they knew they were in the wrong. Apologies never got anyone very far on a New York City street. It was an attitude thing. 'I'm sorry, man' from Corrupt was the equivalent of a normal person licking the mud from the soles of your shoes.