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calendar assured him it was indeed
Tuesday morning, and he had slept for ten hours. But if the sun wasn't
directly overhead, then it was simply too early for someone to wake
him up with an urgent Confidential Whisper request.
    "What?" groaned the engineer.
    "I believe we owe you an apology," came a timorous voice.
    Horvil bolted upright, capsizing a stack of nitro mugs. "Marulana?"

    "You were right, Horvil," said the creed official, her voice a mixture of fear and chagrin. "Someone has launched a black code attackand they're going straight for the Vault."

    It took Jara almost ten minutes to get anything coherent out of Horvil.
He had shown up at her front door in person, having run halfway
across London with a threadbare pillow clutched under one arm. He
was babbling about Creed Elan and losing his family's trust and what
would happen if the Data Sea came crashing to a halt.
    "All right, slow down," said Jara firmly, clasping his plump chin
in her right hand. "What's happening?"
    The engineer activated a de-stressing program and took a deep
breath. A few seconds of Re/Lax 57b was enough to allow him to cram
the panic back into the mental sideroom where it normally resided.
"The world is coming to an end," he said earnestly.
    Jara rolled her eyes. "Can you be more specific?"
    "A bunch of lunatics are launching attacks on the Vault. Black
code is sprouting like crazy on the Data Sea. The Vault keeps spitting
out messages telling people to check their account balances. Nobody's
heard a thing from the Defense and Wellness Council. Ergo ... the
world is coming to an end."
    "Are you sure you're not just falling for the same dumb rumors we
spread last night, Horvil? That was fantasy, remember?"
    The engineer shook his head vehemently. "Look at this," he said,
and Jara instantly felt the mental click of an incoming message. She
projected the message onto a blank patch of air, where the holographic
letters hovered menacingly like stingrays.
PLEASE PROTECT YOUR HOLDINGS
    The Vault has detected a DNA-assisted decryption attack directed at your
account. Your holdings have not been compromised, but it is advised that
you periodically check the security of your Vault account. This advisory has been automatically routed to the custodian of records for your L-PRACG
and, depending on your L-PRACG's policies, may also be forwarded to the
Defense and Wellness Council.

    "My Aunt Berilla sent me that message," said Horvil glumly.
"Half the women in her creed circle have gotten them by now. This is
just how the last one started. Remember all those warnings from Dr.
Plugenpatch that kept-"
    "Did you tell Natch? What did he say?"
    Horvil nodded. "I finally caught him on ConfidentialWhisper
about ten minutes ago. He just cackled something about those crazy
Pharisees and went off to examine his accounts."
    The two of them sat down in Jara's breakfast nook. She instructed
the building to mix up a tall glass of ChaiQuoke for the engineer,
while he quizzically studied the fetid pillow in his hand and tried to
figure out how it got there. Jara decided to see if her own meager holdings were in order. Within a fraction of a second, Vault statements
were floating before her eyes in stolid financial fonts. All was well:
there were no unusual transactions, and access was still guarded by a
long series of encrypted numbers derived from her DNA. Jara turned
to the fiefcorp accounts next, and was relieved to discover no sign of
mischief there either.
    Horvil slurped down the glass of milky ChaiQuoke that had
emerged from the kitchen access panel. But despite the soothing beverage and the de-stressing program, the engineer was still fidgeting
like a teenager. "You might want to read this too," he said. "This just
came five minutes ago."
    Jara found herself looking at the latest editorial rant by the drudge
Sen Sivv Sor.
THE COUNCIL ASLEEP ON THE JOB-AGAIN

    The reporter's screed appeared in letters the size of her arm. An