Isabelle shook her head. "Sorry, I didn't quite follow that, You're going to have to explain that again."

Sol had thrown on jeans and an oversized sweatshirt, and was sitting in the armchair, leaning forward to address Beth and Isabelle, sat on the futon. As always happened in this sort of situation, Beth had made tea, and they were all nursing warm, cooling mugs.

Beth sat back, and looked at Sol through narrowed eyes. "Let me see if I'm getting this right. You're saying that the information sources that feed WorldPulse are being manipulated deliberately?"

Sol nodded.

"By who? Why would anyone want to do that?"

Sol shrugged. "'Who', I don't know. 'Why' is a question I can begin to answer. All of the changes were done to achieve a specific end result. Someone is tampering with the inputs in order to change what goes into the reports."

"Sounds like it would be difficult." suggested Isabelle.

"Difficult?" Sol laughed, "It would be impossible."

"Nevertheless," said Beth, "someone is doing it?" She thought for a second. "Would it have to be someone at Jupiter?"

"Not necessarily," said Sol, "In fact, it probably isn't someone internal. Given how difficult..."

"Impossible," Isabelle reminded him.

"Yes, impossible doing this is, it would seem that someone who had privileged access to Jupiter would have far easier ways to achieve the same result."

"But why would the be going to all this effort?" asked Isabelle, "Changing a report or two isn't going to take over the world, is it? I mean," she glanced at Beth, "It doesn't even sound important enough to come haring round here at one in the morning for."

"Not going to take over the world? I told you what they changed, didn't I?"

"No." said Beth and Isabelle simultaneously.

"Oh." Sol looked a little sheepish. "Well, the first thing they did, as far as I can tell, was to affect the assessment of the political situation in a little republic called Bravikstahn."

"Doesn't sound like the end of the world." opined Beth.

Sol was starting to get irritated, and it was showing in his voice.

"Most of the WorldPulse subscribers had substantial investment there - factories and stuff, mostly. That's not a coincidence, by the way. They all read positive assessments of the region in Jupiter reports. In fact," he laughed dryly, then had a mouthful of tea, "that was one of the reasons for introducing WorldPulse. Personalised reports were meant to reduce the incidence of concerted action like that.

"Anyway," he continued, "When they read the modified reports, that suggested that the country was on the brink of revolution, they all pulled out. This started off a mass exodus of foreign money from the region, everyone lost their jobs, and - Bam! - revolution."

"Oh yeah," said Isabelle, "We saw that on the news. Hang on, didn't you say they were the ones with the..."

"Nuclear weapons." Sol finished. He sat upright and looked from Isabelle to Beth. He was pretty sure he had their attention now.

"So," said Beth, speaking slowly and levelly, "I'll try again. Someone's manipulating the inputs to WorldPulse, and they're doing that to get their hands on nuclear weapons?" Sol nodded.

"Well," she said, levelly, "That's the sort of news that it's worth getting out of bed for."

"Hang on," said Isabelle, "We don't know that they can get the weapons. All they've done is destablise the region. The weapons could go anywhere."

Sol hadn't thought of this. "Good point."

"These are people who've managed to overthrow an entire, bona fide, government. I think we can assume they've thought it through." Beth pointed out, then turned to Sol. "Have they done anything else?"

Sol jumped; he'd been in a world of his own, trying to imagine what would happen to the dozen or so inter-continental ballistic missiles, complete with high-yield warheads, that Bravikstahn was thought to possess. "What? Oh, yes. They've been manipulating the sources - and it's not all the same ones - for quite a while. I've not been able to work out what they're aiming for, yet, though. I'd only just worked out about Bravikstahn when I called you."

The three of them sat in silence, momentarily cowed by the enormity of Sol's discovery. Eventually, Beth quietly voiced the question that they had all asked, but individually failed to answer.

"What do we do about it?"

"Could we go to the police?" asked Isabelle.

"And tell them what?" replied Sol, "That our fortune telling computer told us that person of persons unknown is subtly manipulating information passing through out company, in order to obtain nuclear weapons?"

"We don't need to mention Crystal," interjected Beth, "You're an expert on WorldPulse; we can just say that you'd done the analysis..."

Sol cut her off. "And then they'd ask any of the other WorldPulse experts, or any other holistic analyst for that matter, and they's confirm without hesitation that I was stark, staring mad. Anyway, even if we could convince the authorities that this is going on, which seems highly unlikely, then what could they do? What crime have they committed?"

"Obtaining nuclear weapons via deception must be against some law or other."

"But they've not done that yet. All they've done is make some incredibly innocuous changes to a handful of data streams. It's only my word - and Crystals - that they're going for nukes, or anything else. As far as the authorities are concerned, they might as well be vandalizing things, trying to scupper the reports. Come to think of it, they've probably set it up so that, if anyone calls them on it, they can claim it's an accident - noise on the line, or something."

Sol finished his rant and looked at the others. Nobody said anything.

Beth was the first to break the silence. "We have to do something."

"We don't even know who they are. It could be anyone doing this." Sol said in despairing tones.

"We know a little. We know it's someone who knows a hell of a lot about this sort of thing. And, like you said, we're fairly sure it's not someone from Jupiter."

"Actually," Isabelle piped up, "It might be. Maybe their trying to cover their tracks. Doing things this way would be a lot less obvious than bribing a couple of people and changing the reports directly, right?"

Beth and Sol looked at her.

"Yes," said Sol, caught by this new idea. "I mean, it was practically undetectable. Ted and I only found out about it when we were running extra tests because of crystal. Even then, it's lucky that I noticed it; I could've missed it entirely."

Sol got up, and paced excitedly, heading towards the kitchen, then turned back towards them (they had to twist round and look at him over the back of the futon).

"In fact, that makes a lot of sense; I was trying to work out how they could get access to all of the sources they need to. If they were internal, it would be easy to do, and fairly easy to hide the evidence that you'd done it."

Beth and Isabelle just watched him as his train of thought careened along, externalized in the form of wild gestures and quick words that almost fell over each other as he spoke them.

"Yes, it's got to be an insider. Who could do it though? Loads of people had access to the computer systems, but it would have to be someone who also understood a hell of a lot about analysis."

"Who would that be?" asked Beth, as he pause momentarily.

"In Jupiter? There's Sanj and Meera in Bombay, and Doug, Yanis and Sophie in Toronto. They all do holistic analysis, but I'm not sure any of them are anywhere near smart enough to pull this off. Yanis and Sophie are just out of college, they can barely work out WorldPulse forecasts, so it's not either of them. Doug is quite smart - he did a PhD in H.A., but it was mostly theoretical stuff. Sanj is good enough, but I don't think he has the imagination. Meera," he paused, "Meera is probably the best out of all of us. She was the one that helped with the development of the WorldPulse prediction engine. I say helped, she had most of the good ideas." He stopped, and relaxed visibly.

"So," summarized Beth, "It's probably either Doug or Meera."

"Not necessarily," said Sol, apparently getting a second wind. "It doesn't have to be someone in Jupiter working alone, does it? I mean, it could be someone else, who knows how to manipulate the data, conspiring with someone who had access to the Jupiter computers."

"I guess so." said Beth, "So, where does that leave us?"

Sol began to say something, but stopped, and deflated. "I don't know" he said, without a trace of the excitement that had been infecting his voice. "I do know that we've got to do something, though."

"Well," asked Isabelle, "Lets start at the top. How many people in the world would know how to do what's been done?"

Sol laughed. "In the entire world? That's asking." He paused. "It's hard to say. Remember, by all conventional wisdom, doing what we're talking about is impossible."

"So is predicting the future." Isabelle pointed out.

Sol snapped his head around and looked at her. "Say that again!"

"So's predicting the future."

Sol stared at her.

"What? What did I say?"

Pitr straightened his tie. He was dressed up in the one suit he owned because he was about to meet with the new President. Technically, of course, he was still the President Elect. The inauguration ceremony wasn't for a few days, and it had been a rush to get it that early. This didn't have any bearing on the importance of the meeting, though. The last time Pitr had seen him was along with every other New Revolutionary, when he stood on the balcony overlooking the courtyard in the parliament building, and mde his hesitant speech. Pitr smiled at the recollection. He had made a faltering declaration that, with the death of the former President, the old regime had ended, and the new era had begun. The people massing in the courtyard had whooped and screamed, and their new leader had looked on in bemusement. It was plainly obvious that he did not want a position of power, and it was equally obvious that, given their recent problems and their attitude to politicians, that this was exactly the attitude the people wanted in their president.

One of the tall men in dark, expensively cut yet ill-fitting suits turned around as someone opened the door a crack and whispered though it. Pitr eyed them suspiciously; he was sure they were Mafioso thugs, or at the very least had been at some point. The President would have to be careful, or his presidency would be short and troublesome.

"The President Elect will see you now." The besuited heavy informed him, opened the door for Pitr to walk through.

The President looked up from behind his desk as his visitor walked in past his secretary, seated at her own desk. "Ah, Pitr, my friend." he said warmly, "It is good to see a familiar face."

Nikolay stood up and offered his good hand for Pitr to shake. His other arm was still in a sling to support his injured shoulder, but instead of the makeshift one that Pitr had fashioned, it was a tidy affair of black silk and hidden pins. It almost looked like part of his suit.

"Power is treating you well," Pitr said, taking Nikolay's good hand with both of his and shaking it vigorously. "You look every inch the President. How is your shoulder coming along?"

"Luckily, the bullet remained almost intact. The doctors were able to remove it." Nikolay winced at the thought. "I will recover, though I will never have much strength in that arm again."

Pitr laughed. "I don't think you need to worry yourself about that. Your days of heavy lifting are over." He gestured at their surroundings with both hands. "From now on, you work in the best office in the country, no?"

"It is not all it's made out to be. I have been meeting all day with people who think that the revolution was for their cause and their cause alone. Everyone knows that things will be better under the new President, but nobody has considered how. They need a real leader, not someone like me."

"Nonsense. What the people need is a good man to lead them, and you, Nikolay, are a good man."

Nikolay looked him bleakly in the eye. "So was the previous President."