Background A South American organization, Montaigne Paradisio, has set up research bases i
Background: A South American organization, Montaigne Paradisio, has set up
research bases in Seattle, and has produced a number of nasty biotech
innovations including the ghoul-plague that left Redmond quarentined for
four weeks. The party consists of people who have a personal stake in
getting rid of these bases, led by Duende, a defector from Montaigne Paradisio
whom they have grudgingly come to trust.
It has become apparent that the Paradisians are very accomplished mages,
and that they have learned to work magic on the Matrix.
As the story opens, Duende has learned that the head of the Seattle operation,
"High Priest" Aliantha, and four of her best people are recovering in a hidden
base in the mountains, having been severely hurt but not finished by his
previous attempt on their lives. He sends Jayhawk to try to infiltrate their
system while he plans a run on the ground.
We play with rather nonstandard rules, but I think the only relevant difference
is that we think of the Matrix itself as a magical phenomenon, the Awakening
of the Net, though one need not be mageborn to be a decker. Decking code,
as a consequence, depends on the living will of the decker to be successful,
just as magic does; you can't automate everything and let the machine do
the work for you. In some sense you must be *there*, in the computer. And
this carries with it certain dangers.
(1) Aliantha
6:30 pm, May 2, 2050
Jayhawk was studying the security node with great interest when she
was queried, suddenly and sharply, from the CPU. Hastily she seized on
packet labels from the dataflow around her, sent them back, modified just a
little to explain her presence as--no time to check what, some utility
probably.
A second's pause. Another query, met the same way. Then nothing. Jayhawk
swore. That was no security program, not the second time. Something was awake
in the system, and probably aware of her presence.
Suddenly her Matrix image struck her as a deadly liability. She was too
well known, too recognizable. If they realized who they were dealing with,
they'd be on to her in force, no chance to bluff.
Well, if Duende can look like anything he pleases on the Matrix, why can't
I?
She retreated to the bland telecom node adjacent to the SAN, dug in memory
for a scrap of graphics code--the jaguar she'd designed to mimic Paradisian
IC, then never used. Patched it in across her Matrix image, wincing. The
interface wasn't meant to handle a body-image like that; the sensations it
passed back to her were neither human nor jaguar but an awkward mix. She
freed her viewpoint for a moment from her image, looked at herself. A
jaguar, all right, but silver, with metallic eyes and traceries of steel
showing through the fur. It would have to do. At least it didn't look like
*her*.
She curled herself at the fringe of the simulated jungle path, began moni-
toring. Nothing. No abnormal system activity, if her guesses about what was
normal for this system were correct.
An image formed in front of her suddenly, without a warning ripple in the
dataflow. A square glass tank, massive and solid, filled with murky orange
liquid. Something stirred in its depths, drew back from her gaze. Her
jaguar image was not well integrated enough for its fur to stand on end,
but every nerve prickled.
"Who are you?" A woman's voice, from some speaker of the tank. It was a
particularly well-defined Matrix image; she could smell it, a wash of
cinnamon and copper, feel the faint warmth radiating from it. Without
waiting for an answer, it went on, "What are you doing here?"
"Checking up on you," said Jayhawk with as much nonchalance as she could
muster. "Is this the best you can do? Security by stagnation, so much IC
that the system can hardly move, static defenses to hide behind? I'm not
impressed."
"Who are you?" A little sharper now, the voice of someone not accustomed
to being balked. Far too much expression for IC; she was speaking to another
person.
"That would be telling."
"I could take it from you, you know. You're not defended from me."
A jolt of panic burned through Jayhawk's nerves. A mage, she's a *mage*.
Good God, it must be Aliantha herself. She contemplated jacking out, rem-
embered a similar experience at Wired Lightning. She was probably trapped.
"I'm sure you could, but then you risk offending the one who sent me, don't
you? Better safe than sorry."
"Hm." The orange liquid swirled, shifted. Jayhawk avoided trying too hard
to decide what was within it. "Whose are you?" A thoughtful pause. "Duende?
No, it's much too early for that."
The badly-integrated Matrix image had its uses, Jayhawk realized; the jaguar
hadn't reacted to the mention of her employer's name. Good. She'd think
about what Aliantha's statement implied later, if there was a later.
"Oriel! You must belong to Oriel! I didn't know he knew about this place.
And how is Oriel doing nowadays? We haven't seen each other for so long."
Jayhawk filed the name away for future reference, said cautiously, "I
wouldn't know." She rose, stretched, looked around the node. "Since
we're here, perhaps you could show me the rest of the setup. I'm not
impressed so far, but the CPU looked more promising." Nonchalantly, she
strolled forward--
And was stopped cold. There was no perceptible barrier, but she was
brought up with a bounce, unable to go forward. "That's very rude, you
know," said the tank, and giggled.
"Hmph," said Jayhawk, unable to think of a good reply.
Somewhere in background, she realized suddenly, she was being traced,
though she couldn't see the program. Another decker? It didn't matter.
She sent code chasing after it, down the link that led back to Kurt's
apartment. The trace wasn't showing up on her normal sensors, so she
had no way to monitor its progress.
"I'm rude? Look who's talking," she said to Aliantha, stalling.
"I suppose I should have realized that that wouldn't work. You're fairly
clever." A short pause, then, "But you're not really here, how odd.
How do you manage?"
Another trace lashed out, lightning-fast. Jayhawk, realizing that there
was no way she could keep blocking them, reared up to her full height
and slammed sudden, electic-blue claws (claws? nice touch, Jay) into the
side of the tank. Standard attack software, who knows if it'll work--
Glass cracked, cinnamon fluid spilled out and vanished. Jay clawed out
again, hit a barrier of some kind, smooth and invisible. Her claws slid
down it soundlessly, the interface not good enough to provide screetching.
Not just shielding, she was *blocked*. As she'd been blocked from escaping
the node.
Magic, she uses magic, that's not *fair*!
The other woman's voice was a little shaken, but her tone was friendly.
"I like you; you've got guts. You'll be fun."
The trace ran through to completion.
Jayhawk swore, tried a full-strength retreat from the node, bounced again.
No escape. Her Matrix image was frayed with panic, too unfamiliar to
sustain easily. Kurt, they're going to find Kurt!
She triggered the software switch that controlled Kurt's little innovation,
the ace in the hole that had given her courage to run Aliantha's system.
Cut in the operating system running in headware memory, dumping out almost
all her useful code; linked it to the node processor, offered headware and
wetware as extra processing power for its use. Merging her mind with the
computer's, Channa had called it, though Jayhawk thought in more technical
terms.
Disappeared.
(2) SPU B4/732
05:02:50 18:31:14
She was aware of information, flowing smoothly through her in both
directions, precise and pleasing. There was only one hitch, one annoyance
in the clarity of the datastream. A process resident in her domain, using
up her time and attention, not moving through as it should.
She sent a query to the process, asking its authorization and purpose. It
did not respond. Instead, it demanded processor time, access to memory;
demands which were accompanied by none of the proper signals, but which it
did not seem possible to reject. It was delaying her normal business,
interfering with the system. An intruder.
An attempt to terminate the process failed. It appeared to originate outside
her node, and did not respond to her standard abort messages.
She attempted to control its allocation of space and time, limit it to a
reasonable subset of her capacities. Failed. It ignored the partitions she
set up in the dataflow, demanding attention from routines that should have
been protected from it. Moved across what should have been boundary lines
as if they did not exist.
She attempted to relocate it into the next node, without effect. The node
refused to accept a package without accurate identifications, and the
annoying process refused to identify itself.
A second passed.
She tried to trace the process, identify its origin. It did not lead to the
next node, as she would have expected. It led *outside*. The concept was
novel to her. She did not seem to have any way of affecting what was
*outside*.
It occured to her absently that she had not had a problem of this kind in
a long time. It was interesting, if annoying.
She searched storage, trying to find means of dealing with the intruding
process. There were security programs available, but the conditions for
executing them had not been met. Useless to her, unless the CPU instructed
her otherwise. She sent a query to the CPU, continued her search while she
waited for the response.
Storage also provided some other algorithms for dealing with intrusion, but
when she examined them they appeared to be meaningless. Shoot it with a
gun? She found stored code which had determinants in common with *gun*,
executed it. Nothing happened.
She examined the code more closely, found it unimpressive--a collection of
infantile tricks, things she had tried in the first second of the problem.
Familiar tricks, as if she had seen most of them before. A quick scan of
memory established that she had--had written the code? An odd concept.
Her purpose was to transmit; she had not considered the possibility of
creating things before.
A second passed.
Building on the stored ideas, she attempted to trap the annoying process
in a small sealed shell, something which could emulate her responses while
preventing the process from accessing her directly. Failed. The intruder's
ability to ignore what should have been overriding directives was becoming
actively annoying.
The CPU sent her a negative message. She was not authorized to trigger
the security programs. No breach of security existed.
The annoying process moved out of the node, leaving the dataflow clean and
fast. Pleased, she began to inventory ways to prevent the problem from
reoccuring. There did not seem to be any way to isolate her node from
the *outside* origin of the intruder. Perhaps she could prepare a shell
to interact with it, given enough time. There were new ideas in the stored
code, ones that might possibly be adapted....
Abruptly a subprogram was forced into her queue, ignoring the normal order
of processing. It demanded access and space; she had no choice but to
provide them, though this was even more annoying than the intruder had been.
Then it sank into background, barely noticable, drawing minimal resources.
She queried it for its function--she did not normally support background
processes, as they degraded response. No answer. Queried the CPU: no
answer.
A second passed.
[In his apartment, Kurt was jarred to attention by a sudden movement from
Jayhawk. She sat up unsteadily, still jacked into her deck, swung her
feet under her. Her eyes were closed, and the monitors threaded to her
temples showed Matrix-style traces, though faster and smoother than he
was accustomed to seeing. With one clumsy hand, she reached up, plucked the
monitor wires off.
In a panic, Kurt grabbed for her dataline, broke the connection.]
She attempted to set up safeguards which would prevent execution of such
jobs in the future, and found that they were already in place. Somehow
the subprogram had bypassed them. She began to analyze the security measures,
look for the hole which the subprogram had used. It had not previously
occured to her to analyze her own routines. It was an interesting task.
Her status was queried from the CPU; she gave a standard response.
A second passed.
Another query reached her, but not from the CPU. From...outside. She was
being requested to--to leave? A quick memory search verified the concept
but did not give it reference. She was being requested to relocate outside
the normally accessable space, or at least to relocate a portion of her
system there.
The annoying process had come from *outside*. Perhaps if she had access to its
point of origin she could prevent it from reoccuring.
She let the tugging take her, felt the infinitely strange sensation of being
dissociated from her processors, the node itself--
And lost consciousness in the sudden static of jack-out.
(3) Farewells
8:00 pm, May 2, 2050
"A subprocessor!" Jayhawk laughed softly. "I was a subprocessor, and a
Blue one at that. Not the most useful kind of node to possess. I need to
get at the CPU."
Channa looked at her in horror. "You lost your mind into the thoughts of
the machine, and you want to do it *again*?"
"It will work. I know it. Give me the CPU and I control the entire system,
it's set up like that. And there must be something pretty impressive in there,
to be worth the security."
"She is right," said Duende. "We need someone inside, or we're not going to
be able to make this attack work. And neither Yoichi nor I can do it."
Channa folded her arms, stared at Jayhawk. The decker was sprawled back
on the seat of their van, eyes open but unfocused. She seemed perfectly
calm, impossibly so. Channa had known Jayhawk for over three years, had
seen her tackle a number of difficult runs. She was gutsy, but not fearless--
before each one she'd been in a frenzy of nervous activity, checking and
rechecking code, tuning her hardware, nerving herself up for the challenge.
"Won't Aliantha spot you?"
"She won't have time," said Jayhawk confidently. "Channa, you know and I
know that this needs to be done, and I'm the one who can do it. I'm not
second-guessing *your* half of the operation."
It occured to Channa, with a cold prickle of horror, that this might not
be Jayhawk at all. That she might be talking to Aliantha herself, or some
creation of hers, something sent to learn their plans and then report back.
She took a deep breath. "Jayhawk. May I read your mind?"
She expected the usual ferocious refusal. Jayhawk looked up at her for
a moment, smiled dreamily, and said, "Really, Channa? Sure, go ahead.
You'll see I'm telling the truth, and we can get this over with."
Channa looked up at Duende for permission--a habit she despised, but
was having trouble breaking--gathered her thoughts, hesitated. If it
*were* Aliantha....She remembered reading Lefty's mind, the week of
flashbacks, nightmares, moments in which her own thoughts seemed alien.
Aliantha would be worse.
She'd probed Jayhawk's mind before, knew that she could do it, though it
was not enjoyable. The machine-shaped patterns of the decker's thoughts
jarred with hers, invariably left her shaken and ill. But if it were
not Jayhawk, if she probed into mindcontrol or possession, it could kill
her. Or worse.
Walking into the Hidden Fortress with a traitor reporting on their every
move would kill all of them. She really had no choice.
She called on the Power with a gesture, a word--crutches, it was all
inside her, but tonight she needed crutches. Brushed the very fringe
of Jayhawk's thoughts, listened to them.
Clear. Pellucidly clear, no distractions, no extraneous thoughts. Jay
was contemplating the method she'd use to get into the Hidden Fortress
CPU, reviewing her software--Channa could guess that much, though the
technical nuances were meaningless to her.
It did not quite feel like Jayhawk. Nerving herself, Channa dug a little
deeper, closing her eyes to focus on the inner voices.--Jayhawk. Is that
you?--Not really a question, but a pointed probe.
--I am Jayhawk.--
--Why are you doing this?--
--It will remove Aliantha, the annoyance, the obstruction to our plans.--
Channa shivered. The decker's thoughts were neither words nor images, but
sensations, raw unfiltered stuff that her mind refused to cope with. A
feeling of...water flowing? Something rippling the water, interfering
with its passage? A grating like nails on a blackboard, a soft nagging
pain? No; she was forcing her own interpretation on something too alien
to perceive directly. On the thoughts of the machine.
--Why do you think you can do this?--
She caught only the fringe of the answer before she broke the link with a
cry, recoiled into her husband's waiting arms. "Dear lord," she whispered.
Why did we let her do this, how did we let it get so far? Dear god, she's
not human any longer.
"Do you see?" said Jayhawk, watching her with wide curious eyes. And:
"Is it really Jayhawk?" in chorus from several of the others.
"Jay," she said, voice forceless with the backlash of her spell. "Jay,
please, don't do this. We can make the run without Matrix backup. It's
not--it can't be worth what you're doing to yourself."
Jayhawk shook her head firmly. Channa looked to Duende for support, found
none. "Shall we?" said the decker brightly. "Before it gets too late?"
**
Three-quarters of an hour later the team was making its last approach to
the Hidden Fortress, off-road through a dense pine forest. They had left
Jayhawk in the communications van to do her decking, Kurt to watch her.
Duende had a radio link to Kurt in one ear, but so far he had nothing to
report.
Suddenly the sky above them erupted in incandescent white, damped down almost
instantly by the flare-comp in their nightsights to a still lurid but
bearable brilliance. Duende threw himself to the ground; the others,
slower, were still standing when the blast wave hit, knocking them aside
like so many twigs and snapping trees off halfway up. Unbearable loudness.
A huge cloud reared up on the horizon, spread into a looming umbrella.
They collected themselves hastily, found a few scrapes but no major injuries.
Already the forest ahead of them was crackling into fire. Duende pushed
on for a few moments, trying to estimate the scope of the explosion; then
the spreading flames pushed them back. They fell back to the car, sped
off just as the first siren wails began to penetrate their nearly deaf
ears.
Every radio and telephone they carried was dead.
They found the van where they had left it, ten miles from the Hidden Fortress.
It had been gutted as if by an explosion. Kurt had been thrown clear, lay
tumbled in a patch of shrubbery, unconscious but alive. Duende sealed his
armor, forced his way into the smouldering remains of the truck to look for
Jayhawk. He found nothing except for a smudge of char and dust where she
had been, at the epicenter of the blast.
They abandoned the van and went home. Channa managed to heal Kurt well
enough that he could tell his story. It was not very informative.
Jayhawk had made her way in through the gateway IC, headed directly for
the CPU. Just outside its defenses, she had waved a salute to the
great feathered serpant that encircled it, then activated her interface
code. The screen had gone static-blank, then black. And then the blast.
He remembered nothing more.
News reports made it clear that the Hidden Fortress had been removed by
a blast of nearly nuclear proportions. No one within a quarter mile of the
center could have survived. And every radio, every telephone, every
piece of communications equipment east of the mountains was dead, including
the well-shielded phone in the samurai's head.
"I am not sure Aliantha is dead," said Duende contentedly, "but the others
with her ought to be, after that."
The others were silent, too grieved to share his victory.
(4) Julia
1:30 am, May 3, 2050
Channa wrapped herself more tightly in her sleeping bag, looked across
at Julia. The journalist's face was half-hidden by shadows, giving no
indication of her thoughts.
"Julia," Channa said slowly, "can I talk to you about something rather...
personal? I'd talk to my husband, but it'll just upset him even more;
he's very worried about me right now. And I don't think anyone else here
will understand."
Julia looked up as if jarred out of her own thoughts, nodded.
"I read Jayhawk's mind, just before she died." Julia started, looked hard
at Channa, then relaxed again. "I didn't--didn't really understand what
I found, I was hoping you might be able to offer some insight."
"I'm not a decker. But I'll tell you what I can."
"She was....She was thinking very strangely. Very clear, very precise,
without all the little side thoughts that people usually have. But the
way she was thinking--" Channa waved her hands helplessly, at a loss for
words. "I tried to find out why she thought she could succeed at the
Hidden Fortress, why she was willing to do it. But--" A long pause.
"I can't describe her reasons, though I remember them. I can't put them
into words. I'm sorry, I didn't realize it would be so hard."
"It's probably better not to understand," said Julia carefully. "It's not
your path."
"I know, I know. That's what Casey has been telling me all evening. But
it seems like a betrayal of Jayhawk, to blot out what I learned from her."
"Betrayal? Why? It seems to me that if you had to invade her privacy, the
less you do with the knowledge, the better."
"I know. It's just....She was happy, Julia. I didn't see it at the time;
I was too worried, and her feelings were too foreign. She agreed to let me
read her mind, which she usually hated. It was as if she knew she wouldn't
see me again, and she wanted to share what she was feeling. A goodbye present.
I've never seen her so happy, so content. She thought she would probably
die, and she didn't mind."
"I've seen people get like that. A friend of mine once pulled a gun and
shot a Yakuza boss. Perfectly calm, not scared at all. Decided it had
to be done and did it." She raised her eyes from the shadows, looked hard
at Channa. "It's a dangerous state of mind. We need you here, we can't
spare you like that."
Channa shook her head, wincing. "I intend to go on living, I always do.
But Jay was more than fey, she was--I don't know. You're probably right, it's
better not to think about this too much." She wrapped her arms around her
knees, resting her head on the back of her crossed wrists, shoulders slumped.
"I wish I could have stopped her, I wish....But unless I was willing to
mind-control her--" She did not look up to see Julia's reaction, and the
other woman said nothing. "--I don't think there was anything I could have
done."
"No," said Julia slowly. "I don't think there was."
(5) Lefty
Channa let herself into the RV, found Duende sitting on the back seat,
staring out the window. He didn't seem to react to her presence, though
she was certain he'd noticed her, probably before she ever touched the
door.
"I think I know why Jayhawk died," she said without preamble. "Do you
remember when Lefty kidnapped her, and we rescued her? And everyone
was worried because it seemed ridiculously easy, so I mindprobed her and
found she'd been tampered with, but couldn't make out what the commands
were supposed to do?"
"She set them off later, in the Osiris CPU, and melted down most of the
University net. I remember."
"Afterwards we tried to figure out what they were...."
**
"I realize this will be difficult," said Channa, "but try to relax, clear
your mind of extraneous thoughts."
To her surprise, Jayhawk nodded confidently, settled back into the cushions,
closed her eyes, and in the space of three deliberate breaths seemed almost
to go into a trance. Eyes still closed, she said quietly, "First thing a
matrix-runner learns. Go ahead."
Cursing the injuries that would not let her use magic to aid Jayhawk's
recollection, Channa questioned her, stepping through the sequence of actions
that had destroyed Osiris, watching for anything that would suggest the buried
material peeking out. There was nothing. Memories up to a point, and
then--blankness.
"Not a flicker," said Jayhawk, her voice expressionless. "Channa, I
thought hypnosis couldn't make you do something against your will."
"Usually," said Channa. "I thought you couldn't damage hardware from
software."
"I see your point. What now?"
"We try again. Remember what you did, focus on that, describe it in detail.
Don't concern yourself with me. Basically you're talking to yourself,
explaining to yourself what you're doing. Start with testing the node for,
um, usage level."
She listened to Jayhawk's recitation, nudging her along when she faltered
but otherwise trying not to interfere. She could understand almost none
of it.
"....and set off the internal alert." Jayhawk's voice trailed off; Channa
looked up sharply, saw her go limp as a rag, not breathing visibly at all.
"Jay!" She shook the decker, gently at first, then harder. "Jayhawk!
*Caroline!* Wake up!"
For a moment Jay's head lolled bonelessly; then she stiffened, drew in an
unsteady breath, said aggrievedly, "Why'd you wake me up? I almost had it."
Channa held her shoulders for a moment, dizzy with relief--it had been
all too reminiscent of the death of Wired Lightning's decker. "Go too deep
and you won't remember any of it--that's useless. We can always try again.
What happened?"
Jayhawk stared off into space for a moment, then said, "I was clearing
everything out of Osiris and pulling in a lot of power, in preparation for
loading a new OS which was going to extensively--this is crazy--extensively
reconfigure the hardware. I was waiting on a transmission from...outside...
with software and specs, I'd sent a message requesting them, that must have
been what Duende saw. We were--I was going to pull the whole system
together, single-user, and dedicate it to...this is hard to explain." She
launched into a flood of technicalities.
"Whoah," said Channa. "Speak English, Jay. I'm missing every other word."
"You've been in my *mind*," said Jayhawk with annoyance, "but you can't
understand what I'm saying?" She glared at the older woman.
"I'm not probing you now, I can't, it hurts too much; and I haven't got
the background to understand a lot of what I picked up earlier. I don't
know anything about the Matrix, and eight hours is hardly time to learn."
"Got it." Jayhawk seemed relieved. "In English? Alive...."
"Alive?"
"Something like that. Coherent, very complex, autonomous. *Awakened*,
that's a good word. We were going to Awaken Osiris." She whistled.
"I can't help thinking it would have worked, too."
"'We?'" said Channa softly. "Why would they want *you* to do this, Jay, why
not do it themselves? Because it kills the decker who implements it?"
Jayhawk glanced down, shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised." Her tone was
somewhere between guilt and anger. "Sure did a job on my machine."
**
"We never did disentangle all of the commands in there, it was very skill-
fully done and we were too busy. Jay felt, and I'm afraid I agreed with
her, that she could probably resist them now that she knew they were there.
But in retrospect....It was keyed to go off when she found herself in
control of a CPU; and that's what she was trying for at the Hidden Fortress."
Duende nodded thoughtfully. "At Osiris it drew enough power to burn out
every transformer on campus. Fortress was a much larger system, and probably
had a substantial power plant of its own. The code may not have been
configured to deal with that, leading to the explosion. I think you're
right, Channa."
"I should have realized sooner."
"I regret losing Jayhawk, but I expected to lose someone in that attack.
It appears that Lefty may inadvertantly have done us a favor."
Channa bit her lip, choked back the angry response she wanted to make.
After two months with Duende, she should have known better than to expect
sympathy from him. She contented herself with one barb, over her shoulder
as she left: "Makes our 'destruction of the Hidden Fortress' look pretty damn
accidental, doesn't it?"
She had never found it easy to read his expression. There was nothing there
now, nothing at all.
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ºI can't resist posting 'a day in the life of--', the chronicle of the last º
º24 hours, though it's not very representative--the second-worst 24 hours º
ºwe've ever spent, after the big attack on Cavilard Base itself. º
º º
º6:00 AM. Duende and Yoichi meet with Ivan, whom they hope is involved º
ºwith the Bangkok resistance movement, on the Matrix. He invites them on º
ºa run against the Bangkok branch of the enemy operation. They realize º
º*just* in time that he's not what he seems to be, and that they're walking º
ºinto a trap; manage to bluff their way out. º
º º
º8:00 AM. Casey and Channa spend the morning collecting data on the sinisterº
ºtheatrical troupe from Singapore, whose stage illusionist is probably the º
ºmost powerful sorceress in Seattle. º
º º
º3:00 PM. Casey and Channa pick up Grant and Argent from the shadow clinic º
ºwhere they have been recuperating from the last run, fill them in on events,º
ºand take them to a party held by Julia and Ratty. Much discussion of º
ºstrategy. º
º º
º3:30 PM. Duende and Yoichi go off into the hills and play Frisbee with º
ºYoichi's new hunter drones, while Duende tries to decide if Yoichi has º
ºbeen influenced by the enemy during his stay in Manilla. Luckily he º
ºdecides otherwise. º
º º
º6:00 PM. Duende meets with Shamrock, a high-level independent operative º
ºworking for the enemy, while the rest of the group covers him with sniper º
ºrifles from a distance. Ostensibly they are there to shoot Shamrock if º
ºhe misbehaves, but they agree among themselves that they must shoot Duende º
ºif it seems likely he is betraying them. º
º º
º7:00 PM. Duende provides the others with a tape recording of what Shamrock º
ºsaid, including his offer of truce; a vehement and tense discussion follows.º
ºThe truce is rejected and new plan of attack is drawn up. º
º º
º12:00 PM. Ratty and Julia meet with a actor of the theatrical troupe º
ºat an abandoned warehouse on the docks, while the rest of the group covers º
ºthem from a rooftop. The actor turns out to have an invisible werecat º
ºwith him--the party's first experience with Physical Invisibility, and º
ºa nasty surprise--but negotiates honorably, perhaps having noticed º
ºthe 6 armed people and hunter drone bearing on him. º
º º
º3:00 AM. The group drives to the Redmond Barrens. Their vehicle is º
ºsurrounded by ghouls, driven off by Yoichi with searchlights and flares º
ºfrom the drone. Ratty summons up the ghost of a dead shaman, and learns º
ºwhich among the dead hold the information the group needs to make their º
ºplan work. º
º º
º4:00 AM. Duende proposes immediately making the run on the police-held baseº
ºwhere the enemy ghosts are to be summoned, and the rest of the group nearly º
ºjettisons him on the spot--they're running on stim and nerves. They drop º
ºoff Ratty and Julia at Julia's apartment, and park their RV well outside º
ºSeattle for a well-earned morning's sleep. º
º º
ºNo causalties, except for the Frisbees, but a very nerve-wracking line of º
ºplay. Probably about two playing sessions' worth, if we played in sessions.º
ºI love talking to the bad guys.... º
ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ
(6) Forest
Jayhawk struggled back to consciousness, found herself lying on lush
grass in the sun. Startled, she sat up, stared wildly around her.
All she could see in any direction was an unbroken wall of trees, except
behind her, where a single steep peak reached up towards the clear sky. It
seemed very high, although there was no snow on it. A jet hummed by overhead,
passing over the mountain and vanishing. Otherwise there was no sign of human
presence. The grass beneath her was soft and sweet-smelling, but obviously
untended.
After a moment she realized what must have happened, and swore aloud. Stim-
sense. She was caught in a stimsense illusion. She must have failed
against the Hidden Fortress, walked into a trap of Aliantha's perhaps.
For several futile minutes she struggled with her perceptions, tried to
break through to the reality behind the illusion. Nothing happened. She
wondered briefly whether she might still be on the Matrix, but she had no
access to her deck, no sense of the linkage. Tried to remember what had
happened at the Hidden Fortress, but there was nothing at all past the
memory of activating the interface code, a weird moment of simultaneous
explosion and implosion. Nothing.
"All right, Aliantha," she said aloud. "What's the point? Might as well
get on with it. If you want me to talk, I'll talk."
Only a scatter of birdsong answered her.
She got to her feet, discovered that she was wearing a loose white dress,
belted at the waist with a gold braid, and nothing else. For want of
anything better to do, she walked down the hillside, into the woods. The
grass was comfortable to her bare feet; the forest, she found, much less
so. By the time she came to a small, pebbly stream she was limping,
and she had a small scratch on one heel.
She sat down on the bank, dipped her feet into the water. It was numbingly
cold, bearable only for a few seconds. She tasted it, found it reasonably
fresh though oddly flavored.
If it was stimsense, it was a good job, she had to admit. It had to be
stimsense, didn't it? She couldn't really be alone in the woods, woods
which seemed, even to her grossly limited experience, much too warm and
bright-colored to be anywhere near Seattle.
But if it was stimsense, where was the plotline, the point of it all?
"Boring!" she said aloud. "Is this the best you can do? Where are the
cybercommandos?"
It was intensely dull. Without a deck she had no access to the code in
her headware memory, nothing to read, no programming to do. She stripped
the white dress off, looked at it; not even a tag to read.
Several hours crawled by. She went back up onto the hillside to lie in
the sun, realized only too late that she was getting sunburned. Back
down to the stream to splash cold water on her stinging arms and face.
"All right! I'm sorry I said your security was bad, I was lying, I admit
it. I just wanted to impress you. Come on, Aliantha, let's talk."
She was trying not to think about Yoichi's experiences when he had been
held under stimsense by the Paradisians. Not to remember his voice when
he described having his heart cut out on the Aztec altar, over and over
again. She knew what kind of pain her captors could inflict, if they
chose.
But she'd never imagined the kind of sheer *boredom* they could command.
After endless hours the sun dipped down, and it became shockingly dark.
A chill breeze blew down the streambed; she retreated from it, cut her
heel again in the dark, eventually found a patch of bushes to hide in.
The sky held no glow of city lights, only a wilderness of unfamiliar stars.
She had never spent the night outdoors before. Eventually she managed
to doze uncomfortably.
Dawn found her stiff and cold, and ravenously hungry. The stream water
did little to ease her stomach. She was seriously angry by now, as well
as frightened.
She spent the day limping downstream, having convinced herself that it
was the most logical direction. In stimsense it hardly mattered, didn't
it?--the edges of the area probably wrapped around, she'd find herself
back at the hill sooner or later. She couldn't bear to sit still.
Toward noon she twisted her ankle, had to rest for a while. The
soles of her feet were covered with scratches and bruises. They hurt,
but not as much as her stomach.
She tasted a leaf, found it bitingly sour, spit it out. Searched for
something else she could try, hunger overwhelming caution--she had no idea
what might be poisonous. If her captors wanted her to suffer, no doubt
they could arrange for *anything* she ate to poison her.
Eventually she found a vine with round, nutlike balls on it. Two of them
gentled the pangs in her belly, seemed to cause no ill effects. She
picked the vine clean, knotted the nuts in her skirt, hobbled on downstream.
By nightfall she was heartily sick of the nuts, and desperate for a human
voice, the touch of the Matrix, a simple word to read. She talked to
herself, to Aliantha, insulting the High Priestess' ancestry and decking
style, pleading with her to come up with some kind of plotline for this
delusion, even a bad one.
One thing she did not say, moved by a kind of superstitious caution. She
never promised Aliantha her help, never suggested that she might give in.
The next dawn she woke feverish, with aching eyes and a prickling on her
skin. She managed to stagger to the river, drank a little water. A fish
peered out at her; she made a grab for it, succeeded only in getting wet.
She had to lie in the sun for quite a while to stop the shivering.
She blocked out lumps of pseudocode, a Matrix trap for Aliantha the next
time they met. It was hard to remember any of the finesses without somewhere
to write them down.
After a few hours she felt a little better, managed to stagger downstream
for two or three blocks before stopping. She found a few more nuts, looked
at them dubiously. Were they making her sick, or had she just caught cold?
Hunger eventually decided her.
Stimsense. Subjective time under the wire could be much, much longer
than realtime. She was beginning to appreciate what that could mean.
She imagined Aliantha watching her suffering, broke into a torrent of
weak curses.
The next day she was worse, almost too dizzy to stand. Some vestige of
stubbornness kept her moving downstream, but she made little progress.
For a while during the afternoon she tried pretending she was an animal,
looking for the magic medicinal herbs she'd been told animals could find.
It didn't work.
She was going to *die*. Too highly cybered to recover naturally, lost in
this horrible wilderness, she was going to die. Perhaps that would be an
escape from the stimsense trap. Or perhaps she would only find herself
back on the grassy hill, at the beginning again. Restart the game. She
found herself crying weakly, like a lost child.
She couldn't bear to eat any more nuts. Her stomach contracted to a hard
knot, but it was better than the runs. No toilet paper.
Another night, or perhaps two, lost in a haze of delirium. When she was
strong enough to stand, she kept moving roughly downstream. She had
convinced herself that something must lie in that direction. The sea, maybe.
A town. Anything but the terrible monotony of trees.
Sunlit afternoon, one of the more lucid moments, moving along the stream-
bank, thinking about computer games--it was beginning to seem to her that
she was in one, an adventure game, had taken one of the wrong turns that
lead to endless repeating trees and no goal. Abruptly she stepped into
water, looked down in puzzlement.
The stream spread out, forming a small pond or perhaps a lake. On the
far side, a waterwheel turned slowly, the side of a wooden building visible
behind it. Two paths led off from it, one south-west, one north. There
was a lump of gold lying at the intersection of the paths.
She shook her head violently, recognizing delirium. The paths and gold
vanished, but the building remained.
She hobbled around the lake, found that it was a two-story house, with
curtained windows and a wooden porch. The door was locked, and no one
responded to her pounding and shouting. She dragged over a large stick,
hit the window with it. The stick bounced off, sending a painful jar up
her arms.
Behind the building was a small landing pad, a tiny jet parked on it. She
couldn't get into that either.
She lay down on the porch in front of the door, thinking that if the Pirate
came out of his lair he would step on her, and then she could take his bag
of gold away. Or bag of food, that would be better. Medicine. She remembered
similar bouts of flu, back in the safety of the city. She was a Matrix
runner, more wire than meat in her brain, she had to be careful or even a
simple cold could lay her out. She wasn't meant for this barbaric life.
It was going to kill her.
Near evening she came around again, made one more unsteady circuit of
the place. The jet seemed to suggest someone's presence, but there was
still no answer to her calls. She giggled weakly. She had missed a turning
right at the beginning, she needed the Brass Key to get in and it was probably
north of the grassy hill, she would have to go back....Time to stop the
game and start over. She didn't have the strength to go anywhere at all.
But there was the waterwheel. If there was someone about, he should notice
if the waterwheel stopped. She dragged herself over to it, tried to wedge
her stick between its spokes. The stick snapped off cleanly. Not big
enough.
There was a good-sized log wedged between two others near the place where
the stream went into the pond. She waded out into the water--it seemed
warmer now, or maybe she was just feverish--and tried to wrestle it loose.
After a terrible struggle she got it free, retreated to the asphalt to
catch her breath.
When she regained consciousness it was early morning. All the warmth had
drained out of the surface below her, and she could barely move. When
she tried to stand up, bright flashes exploded before her eyes, drove her
back to her knees. She sat for a long time, arms wrapped around her legs,
trying to gather her strength. She didn't seem to have any.
"Put the tree in the wheel," she said aloud, trying to goad herself. Her
voice was frightening in the silence. "Put the tree in the wheel and the
wheel will stop." It seemed logical, a sensible next move. But so hard
to do.
An unexpected fit of coughing, a new misery, took her. When she could
straighten up again there was blood on the asphalt. She turned away,
managed to force herself to her feet. Don't look, Jayhawk. You don't want
to know. Put the tree in the wheel, there's a good girl.
Half-wading, half-resting on it, she managed to push the treetrunk down
towards the waterwheel, watched the tip as the paddles pushed it under.
For a terrible moment it seemed as if the whole tree would just pass
right through. Then a paddle caught on a snag, and the wheel came to a
grinding halt. Something inside it whirred angrily for a moment, then
was silent.
She just barely made it back to the shore before she collapsed.
Warm arms, enfolding her, lifting her. An unfamiliar female voice: "Dear
me, what's this?" She tried to open her eyes, couldn't. After a moment
she was put down on a soft warm surface, her face close to something that
smelled wonderfully of synthetic fibers and house dust. "Just a moment,
dear," said the voice. "You'll be all right." Sounds of footsteps
receeding, then returning. Something pricked her arm sharply; she started,
actually managed to open her eyes for an instant. She saw only darkness,
darkness that rose up around her like a wave and took her.
(7) Martha
Jayhawk awoke to darkness and the delicious sensation of clean sheets
underneath her. She felt a little dizzy, and ravenously hungry, but the
fever seemed to have broken.
She groped along the wall next to the bed, failed to find a light panel.
A little unsteadily, she climbed out of bed, began to trace the wall.
It was certainly not her bedroom at home, though it might have been one
of the many hotel rooms they'd stayed in recently. A very dark one.
She bumped into a dresser, felt along its top for a lamp. There was nothing
there but a tray of hard round things. Hoping for candy, she put one in
her mouth, but they were glassy and inedible. She put it back in the tray,
wincing at the noise it made, and continued her search.
The next thing she bumped into was a chair. She felt along it, touched
warm human flesh, drew back with a start.
A woman's voice, low and a little rough, said with surprise, "What is it?
Who's there?"
"I was looking for the light switch. I--"
"Oh! Lights on." The room was flooded with a soft yellow-white light.
Jayhawk found herself looking at a massive middle-aged woman, black-haired
and with richly tanned skin, perhaps American Indian or some halfbreed
stock. She was wearing a fuzzy blue bathrobe--Jayhawk was wearing one
too, she noticed--sprawled back in the chair with a blanket over her.
"I was beginning to wonder if you would ever wake up!" she said. "You've
been unconscious for four days, ever since I found you. You should sit down."
Finding herself more than a little unsteady, Jayhawk sat on the bed. "Where--"
she began.
"Do you want something to eat? Hm, probably not solid food so soon. Perhaps
some soup?"
"Please!" Her stomach tightened painfully at the thought.
The woman got up hastily, went out through a door that opened on a touch-
plate, returned almost at once with a small ceramic mug. "Here you go,"
she said, and then hastily "Not so fast!" as Jay took a large gulp. It
burned all the way down, but seemed to undo some of the knots.
"Where?" said Jayhawk, between swallows. "When? Who? And how?"
"Dear me. I was hoping--Well, I suppose we both have questions, so I
might as well start with yours, if I can figure them out." She pondered
for a moment. "Where is simple enough. You're at Power Station 32,
in--do you speak--?" She launched into a babble of what sounded like
Spanish, frowned at Jayhawk's obvious incomprehension. "I see you don't.
A pity. In the Gold Valley, you would call it, in central Ecuador."
"Ecuador?" said Jayhawk incredulously. "I was in Seattle."
"Well, Dorothy," said the other woman with a smile, "you're not in Seattle
anymore. As for who--I'm Martha Waters. Most people just call me Martha.
What were your other questions?"
"When and how."
"When?--Oh! It's May 2, 2050. As for how....I was hoping you could tell
me that."
Jayhawk described finding herself alone on the hillside, her long delerious
walk to the house of the waterwheel. Martha frowned, asked several questions
about exactly which mountain it had been, found that Jayhawk had no idea.
"Very strange," she said, shaking her head. "And what do you remember before
that?"
Jayhawk bit her lip. She certainly didn't want to describe the attack on
the Hidden Fortress to this woman, whoever or whatever she was. It might
still all be stimsense, unpalatable though that thought was. Probably had
to be stimsense. May 2 was the date of the attack on the Hidden Fortress,
and Martha claimed that she'd been unconsious for four days--those numbers
just didn't add up. "I was running the Matrix," she said, "with a--a friend,
and I got separated from him for a moment. There was an odd...a kind of
explosion, and that's all I remember."
"You're a Matrix runner?" said Martha with interest. "What a small world
it is. So am I. What's your address and handle? What's your name, for
that matter?"
"Caroline," said Jayhawk uncomfortably, guessing that the handle might
be the more revealing. "I don't exactly have an address right now, I got
fired from my job."
"Well, Caroline, they must be pretty advanced technically up there in
Seattle, if you can run the Matrix without even a datajack. What do they
use? Induction rig?"
Jayhawk put an instinctive hand to the side of her head, where she'd carried
a standard I/O jack since the age of sixteen. Her probing fingers met
smooth skin and long hair--longer than it ought to be, she realized
suddenly, nearly halfway down her back. With a cry, she clamped both
hands to her head, spilling hot soup into her lap.
"Hey!" said Martha. "Be careful, you'll hurt yourself! What's the matter,
child?"
"Stimsense," Jayhawk snarled at her, "you're just another damn stimsense
illusion. You and your soup too." She blotted ineffectually at her lap
with the corner of the blanket.
"Let me assure you, I'm real. Martha@relay3.pnet.ecuador.sa."
"LTG34-123923," said Jayhawk promptly.
"So you do know the Matrix, or at least the jargon. What's the matter
with you, girl? You're frightening me. You don't look like an eco-
guerrilla, but--"
"Do I look dangerous?" said Jayhawk with a bitter laugh.
"No, you don't. Now, why don't you tell me what's wrong?"
"What's more likely--that someone would kidnap me in Seattle, take
away my *datajack*, bring me all the way to Ecuador and leave me on a
hill in a dress that isn't even mine--or that this is all stimsense?"
"It does sound very improbable," Martha admitted, "but I promise you
I'm no illusion. Perhaps you need more rest. Finish up what's left
of that soup, and then you can sleep--and so can I. I've been sitting
up late, looking after you."
"Thanks," said Jayhawk absently, still running her hands through her
hair in abstracted horror. No datajack? Who would do that, why would
anyone want to? Church of the Purity? That was crazy, it would take
magic, strong magic, to heal her so quickly.
Martha got up, went to the door. Back over her shoulder, she said,
"If you're a decker, what's your handle, anyway?"
"Jayhawk," she said defiantly, and drained the last of the soup. Aliantha
must know already, what difference did it make?
Perhaps Martha's eyes widened, just a trace; but she said nothing, only
left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Jayhawk got up, searched the room as well as she could. The door was
locked, beyond her abilities without tools. The curtain on one wall
concealed a vidscreen and telecom cabinet, but it was rigged only for
datajack or voice input, and her voice evoked no response.
"Stimsense," she said out loud in fury, and sat down on the bed again.
It was seductively soft, after--how long? After weeks spent sleeping
on the ground. She curled up among the damp blankets and was instantly
asleep.
(8) Doc
Jayhawk woke to find herself unable to move, her arms and legs held
gently but firmly by what felt like padded clamps. She struggled
against them, a knot of panic in her stomach, heard a male voice exclaim,
"Easy now! You'll injure yourself. Lie still and I'll undo those."
Bending over her was a face that would have been ludicrously humorous
if she hadn't been so frightened: round as a ball, just a tuft of
greying hair to break the line of his head, with wide round genial eyes
and a small, almost pouting mouth. He smiled at her, revealing that
his mouth wasn't so small after all, and did something out of her line
of sight. The grip on her limbs relaxed; she sat up abruptly, gasped
as the world swam around her. He put one hand on her shoulder, steadied
her gently, then let go.
She was in a small room, wood panelling on the walls, lying on what
seemed to be a hospital bed. The entire wall behind her was covered
with electronic equipment, monitors and panels of lights; one screen
displayed a fast but regular trace that matched the heartbeat pounding
in her ears. She was linked to the monitors by a long, flexible data-
line--remembering, she put a hand quickly to her head, felt the familiar
bump of the datajack, and another, unfamiliar port behind it to which
the dataline was connected.
The round-headed man stepped back, looked her over carefully. He was
wearing a white lab coat, some kind of device clipped to its belt.
"How do you feel?" he said. "The integration seems to be progressing
very nicely; you're quite resilient."
"Confused," said Jayhawk. "Where am I? What's happened?"
"Gate Station Three," said the other. "We found you in the Gate. But
I'm sure Martha will explain all that. I have some tests to run, if
you'll excuse me--?" Without waiting for her answer, he turned to the
impressive panels of machinery. "They call me Doc around here, by the
way, though my name's Alex. What's yours?"
"Caroline." The panel readouts were in Spanish, Jayhawk discovered, but
there was enough technical material that she could make a guess at the
meaning. He wasn't looking at the biomonitors--readouts leaped with
feedback as she glanced at them--he was checking cyberware status. Still
sitting on the bed, she peered over his shoulder, trying to learn what
she could.
She was in Montaigne Paradisio, she felt certain. Through a Gate. In
the hands of the enemy, in the worst possible way. She'd need any edge
she could get.
Doc ran the readouts too fast for her tenuous grip on the nomenclature,
humming softly to himself. "Very good," he said to her with a wide smile.
"You're recovering very nicely. Though that body-image...hm." He
stepped back, curved one hand in an arcane symbol, murmured a string of
words far too foreign for her hearing.
Jayhawk cringed back, nails biting into her palms, steeling herself to
resist the magic. She felt nothing. Doc stood still, eyes closed,
face expressionless in the play of light from the monitors. The only
sound was the racing of her heart, echoed in the soft whisper of electronics.
Wildly she contemplated trying to strangle him, make her escape. Ridiculous.
Even if she could overcome him, she was doubtless in the heart of the
enemy stronghold. There was no way she was going to fight her way out in--
she glanced down, found that she was wearing a clean white dress like the
one she'd had on the hill. There were no scratches on her bare feet, no
blisters.
Doc opened his eyes, smiled once more. Jayhawk fought to keep from
snarling in response, finding his cheerfulness more disturbing than
active hostility would have been. "You can unplug that now, if you like.
If you need anything, simply speak into the air and it will arrive. I'd
suggest you rest; you're not entirely well yet, though you're doing very
well indeed." He turned as if to go.
"What are you going to do with me?" Jayhawk spat out.
He turned back, fuzzy eyebrows raised in little v's of surprise. "I'm
sure Martha will explain everything to you soon. You've been given to
her, she's the one responsible for that. Right now all we want is for
you to take care of yourself and stay in good shape. And if you notice
anything odd, any mood swings or anything like that, please let me know
at once. You seem to be making an excellent adaptation, but there's no
sense in taking chances with your health."
He walked across the room, stepped before a wall panel. It swung down to
reveal a small sink. With neat deliberate motions, he began stripping
the skin off his hands--gloves, Jayhawk realized after an instant's shock.
The flesh beneath *looked* skinned; crimson and raw, with glints of
steel showing through the white of fascia. He dropped the gloves into
the drain, washed his hands carefully, then took out another pair from
the cupboard beneath and put them on. She watched in horrified fascination.
With a final smile, he walked out, the door opening silently before him
and closing behind.
She reached up, unplugged the dataline from her head. The jack was non-
standard, from the look of the connector. The monitors behind her jumped,
went dead; then after a few seconds resumed. A little observation
showed that the heartbeat being displayed was still her own. She looked
about the room for sensors, found none; but many things could have been
hidden in the wall panels which had swallowed up the sink.
A quick search showed that the outside door was locked. There were three
rooms within her little prison: the room with the bed, a steamroom,
and a palatial bathroom. The bathtub was the size of a sauna.
She found an electric razor in the bathroom, took it apart with fingernails
and determination. There were three small round blades inside. After a
little thought, she wrapped them in toilet paper, tucked them into her
bra.
Then she went back to the main room, considered the wall monitors. He
hadn't seemed to turn anything off, which meant if he could access her
headware, so could she. She reconnected the dataline, noted the flickering
jump in the monitors, started trying simple commands on the panels.
Everything was in Spanish, and she recognized no brand names; but a good
deal was apparent from the technical readouts. Response-increase wiring.
Memory, MCPC chips, I/O link. Display link. Program enabler. And some-
thing that extended through her right arm, some type of I/O--she looked
down from the display in puzzlement, flexed her hand. Three thin metal
prongs appeared suddenly from nearly invisible slits in the center of her
palm. She stared at them uneasily until they retracted.
Program carrier. She was wired to run the Matrix naked, without a deck,
as Duende did.
Montaigne Paradisio must be looking for another decker agent. After all,
they'd lost Duende, hadn't they?
Readouts danced on the wall above her, translating her fear into the clean
cold traces of EEG and cardiogram.
(9) Gates
Jayhawk was lying face-down on the bed, eyes closed, hard at work. She
had discovered that her new wiring was sufficient to let her program
directly into headware memory, and was in the process of constructing
a primative operating system, step by painful step, from the diagnostic
code that was the memory's only current inhabitant. It was hard, hard
enough to keep her from thinking about her situation for sometimes half
an hour at a stretch.
She started violently when a friendly female voice said "Hello? Are
you all right?"
It was Martha--or at least that was her first impression. But a rather
smaller Martha, still wide-hipped and broad-shouldered but not nearly as
massive. Her straight black hair was tied back, and she wore a simple
brown poncho over loose cotton slacks.
"Hello," said Jayhawk cautiously, sitting up.
"I'm Martha Waters," said the other. "And you're Caroline, is that right?
What's your handle?"
There was no hint in her expression that they had had this conversation
before. Stimsense? Jayhawk wondered. Well, if they expected her to love
this woman on sight on account of being rescued from the forest--the hell
with them. "Jayhawk at Osiris. Where am I? What's happened?"
She scooted over to make room on the bed, but Martha remained standing.
"We found you," she said gently. "In the Gate. Apparently you came
along with one of Megan's transmissions--we're still trying to decypher
it. That girl never would use normal channels."
"Megan?"
"Oh, sorry. You would probably know her as Aliantha. That's what most
people call her. We're all rather concerned about her--after that
transmission, we haven't heard anything from her at all. And it was a
rather irregular one. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
Jayhawk shook her head, couldn't resist adding innocently, "Maybe something
happened to her."
"It could be. In any case, you arrived...." She looked hard at Jayhawk, as
if judging her capacity to take the news. "Apparently something had happened
to your body, as all we received was datastream. So we've had to reconstruct.
I'm very glad to see that you're recovering so well. We were quite worried."
Jayhawk licked her lips, said slowly, "You're saying that I'm dead."
"No, no, you certainly are not."
"That I was dead."
"Not that exactly either. It's as if--as if you'd been on the Matrix, and
lost your way back to your body. And then it was destroyed. But you're
very much alive. You were fortunate. Megan sent quite detailed instructions
on what we were to do with you--I imagine you've already found out about
that. I'm sure you'll be eager to try our your new abilities as soon as
you're fully recovered."
Cold certainty struck Jayhawk all at once, and behind her the monitors
leaped and danced with terror. Not an agent at all. Duende had gone on
with the attack on the Hidden Fortress, and *he had killed the High
Priestess*. She was to be Aliantha's host.
Martha was staring at her in concern. She took a deep breath, tried to
steady herself, listening to the feedback from behind. "So, what are
you to...do with me?"
"We're still decyphering parts of the message," said Martha. "And I would
very much like to know what's happened in Seattle. You're sure you don't
remember? Nothing at all?"
"Nothing." She was not going to mention the endless nightmare of forest.
She had no idea whether it had significance, but why give the enemy anything?
"What's the last thing you recall?"
"I was running the Matrix, got separated from a friend for a minute...then
a kind of pop, and nothing after that. Crashed, probably."
"Hm. Well, Shamrock will be here in a couple of days, and he should be
able to give us a full report. In the meantime, you should consider yourself
our guest. When you're a little stronger, you and I can take a jaunt on
the local Matrix, maybe go out in the real world too. There's some very
pretty countryside around here."
Jay cringed involuntarily: Martha raised her eyebrows, said, "What's wrong?"
"I'm, um, not really an outdoors person."
"Well enough, then. If you need anything, just speak aloud and it'll be
delivered. We've got UN Library access, anything you could possibly want.
You're welcome to go out, too, though you'll have an escort--there are a
few rather dangerous places in this complex. His name's Slim, I'm sure
you'll like...ah, well, you'll get along with him all right, he's not a
bad sort. If you're having any troubles, please let Doc or me know. We
really were very concerned for you, it must have been a terrible trip.--But
that's all behind us now." She smiled, nodded her massive head in Jay's
direction, and departed.
Jayhawk stared at the closed door, her fingernails biting into her palms.
The middle finger of her right hand met a sharp, unexpected prong of
steel--hastily she uncurled her hand, stared at the program carrier.
Hundreds of thousands of nuyen worth, her cyberware. So that Aliantha
could have a well-furnished new habitation?
With a program carrier and a few hundred megapulses of code she could
duplicate Kurt's trick, cast her mind loose into the embrace of the
machine, assuming they ever really let her jack in. More code than even
her expanded headware could hold, unless she was spectacularly successful
at refining their first crude attempts. She'd need storage to link into,
a machine to use as a surrogate deck.
Inside the computer, she might possibly be able to do...something. The
Paradisians seemed to have an affinity for self-destruct codes. Or
perhaps she could get a message to her friends. A warning, if nothing
else. *It will not be me who returns to you. Beware.*
But the risk...she didn't want to put their innovation, the best work
she and Kurt had ever done, into the hands of the Paradisians.
Not that it wouldn't be anyway, when Aliantha owned her, body and mind.
For all she didn't want to credit that theory, it was inescapable. High
Priests don't die. Duende had never spoken of Aliantha as dead, even
after the dramatic fight in the True World. And he'd been right.
If nothing else, perhaps she could lose her mind so thoroughly into the
machine that they wouldn't be able to call her back. It was the only
kind of suicide that seemed to promise anything. If they could recon-
struct her from datastream....Physical death would only slow them down.
No escape that way.
She buried her head in her hands, fingers curled protectively over the
unfamiliar double datajacks. Who are you kidding, Jayhawk?
No escape at all.
(10) Chalker
May 8, 2050. 2:30 AM. Redmond Barrens, Seattle.
There was still a trace of ash on the ground, remnant of the fire that
had gutted the building to a few stumps of wall. It clung uncomfortably
to Julia's hands where she sat with Duende, watching Ratty conjure.
A face formed out of the night's darkness, a middle-aged man with stark
angular features framing eyes darker than the night. There was no body,
only a beating heart dangling by the tether of the major artery from the
neck. Blood oozed from it in rhythm to its pulsing, the slow clotting
flow of something near death. It made no impression on the ash below.
She had never seen Chalker in life, could not imagine what the man must
have looked like.
Ratty threw back his head, looked up at the ghost. "I come," he whispered,
"to speak to you of vengeance."
"You have done well," it replied. Its voice had no expression at all,
empty as the echo of wind across the broken walls. "We are eager to see
the end." There was nothing of eagerness in it, nothing so human.
"I have three questions," said the shaman. It seemed to Julia that
he was neither frightened or repulsed by the sight before him; saddened,
rather, like someone meeting an old friend now ravaged by age or disease.
"The last two people I have promised to destroy are not in Seattle.
Is there any message I could send to them, any word from you which would
lure them here?"
"They will not come," said the ghost. "Not in the flesh, not in a form
that we can harm. There is no message you could send that would make
them do that."
Ratty bowed his head, let out a deep breath. "Then we must take the fight
to them. So my second question is: We need to know about Gates, to get
into the High Temple. Who among the dead, who that I can reach, has that
knowledge? And my third: Who among them would know what it is that
Montaigne Paradisio will do at Highsummer, what they plan?"
"High Priestess Aliantha," the ghost whispered, "if you dare to call her.
She has what you seek."
"She is dead then?" said Duende curiously. Julia cursed him for his
fearlessness. His voice was terribly loud in the stillness.
"Neither living nor dead." Her own heartbeat echoed in her ears. It
wanted to synchronize with the slow relentless rhythm of Chalker's; but
she was too much afraid.
"How can I call on her shade?" said Ratty. "I have no link to her, no
blood or bone. And the place she died is outside Seattle, out of my
reach."
"Search for something she cared about deeply, something she created, even
a place she frequented. It will be enough."
Duende was smiling, Julia realized with a start, a smile of feral joy
that she had never seen from him. When Ratty glanced back at him he
nodded once, sharply.
Ratty rose, bowed to the ghost. "I am well answered."
The image did not fade away, like the ghosts on tridee; Julia blinked and
it was gone, like an illusion of her tired eyes dispelled by the motion.
The ruins were intensely quiet. Outside the circle of Yoichi's flares
the ghouls must be waiting, but it was as if even they waited in silence,
fearing.
"We should go," said Ratty softly. "This is no place for the living."
He reached for her hand. Briefly she saw him as she had on their first
meeting, a shadow from the lands of death, inhuman eyes reflecting
the deepest fears of her heart. She fought with herself, held out her
hand; at his touch the vision broke, leaving her trembling.
(11) Prayer
Jayhawk woke with a knot in her belly as if she had been having nightmares,
though she couldn't remember any; and a plan of sorts. She made a quick
circuit of the room, found nothing she hadn't seen the previous day, and
set to work.
In the huge tub, she ran a hot bath, liberally scented with pine oil. The
remembered grime of the forest was still bothering her, and a lingering
revulsion at the thought of being handled by the Paradisians. She soaked
for a long time, trying to collect her thoughts. The knots left her stomach,
and her body, at least, felt better for it.
When she felt thoroughly clean, she put on a terrycloth robe--the only
clothing she could find, besides the white dress she had been wearing--
and sat cross-legged on the bed. For a while she watched the flicker of
the EEG and heartbeat monitors, trying to slow them by feedback; then she
closed her eyes against even that distraction.
She was trying to call up the image of the Spider, as she had seen it:
covered with shimmering lights like a map of the dataflow beneath its
coarse black pelt, clustered black eyes each holding a spark of piercing
brightness. No one but Yoichi had shared her vision, that it was
beautiful as well as terrible; Channa and Casey had only been afraid.
--Spider!--she said silently, unwilling to give anything to the hidden
listeners.--I know you spirits don't talk to people like me, you have
your own shamans or whatever for that. But your chosen one, the one you
set to finding you a student, he said I had the gift you wanted, or a
little of it anyway. Get me out of here, help me escape, and I'll do
what you want. Run the Matrix for you, whatever. Be a magician, if that's
how it works. Please. Just get me out of here.--
For a long moment she waited, her chest tight with tension. Nothing
happened. She let out a long breath, swore aloud. "Stupid, Jayhawk.
What did you expect?"
She stretched out on the bed, returned to her programming. With the
operating system, such as it was, up and running, she was ready to
begin constructing the code that would allow her to duplicate Kurt's
trick, insinuate her consciousness into the workings of the computer.
She began with a latticework of support code, nothing that would reveal
her plans if examined--the skeleton of the structure she would build,
no flesh on it yet. Written, tested, debugged. She applied herself
to the problem with determination and concentration.
It was enough to distract her from her situation for nearly four hours.
(12) Slim
When Jayhawk couldn't stand her captivity any longer, she demanded
clothes from the listening air, found drawers opening from walls that had
appeared blank. She dressed in the first outfit she found, summer clothes,
a red blouse and loose brown pants: then approached the door, nervously.
The palm-plate opened at her touch without a sound.
Just outside stood a flayed man, denim overalls over raw, glistening red
flesh knitted together with cloudy strips of fascia, bits of glittering
silver wire. His face was shadowed by a broad-brimmed Stetson hat. "Howdy,
ma'am," he said with a Texan drawl; she caught a glimpse of white teeth
in a lipless mouth, muscles bunched around it. "I'm Slim."
"Yeek!" said Jayhawk, stepping back involuntarily. She fought to control
herself, determined not to show fear to the enemy. "Um--hello. I'm Jayhawk."
She forced herself to look at him, confirmed her initial impression. No
skin at all. "I, um, wanted to go for a walk."
"Glad to see you're feeling better," said Slim affably, stepping aside to
let her pass. "We were getting a mite worried about you--quite an accident
you had. Doc'll be glad to hear you're up and about. He wants us to
take extra good care of you. Where'd you like to go?"
"Just walk, for now." She walked briskly past him, hesitated just an
instant, then turned right. There was no point at all, she reflected, in
letting the enemy chose her direction. "I need to stretch my legs a bit."
Bare metal corridors, meeting at right angles, endless and identical.
At intervals, identical unmarked doors, all closed. She walked for nearly
half an hour, constructing a crude map in headware memory. There were
no signs of other people anywhere, no sound, nothing to break the monotony.
The air smelled antiseptic and dead.
At last she turned to Slim, said with false cheerfulness, "It's a big place,
isn't it? So what's interesting around here? What's to see?"
A moist glimmer peered out from under his hat, all she could see or wanted
to see of his eyes, shadowed from the harsh overhead lighting. "What's
your interest?"
"Um--computer room? Library? Gardens, or something like that? Mess hall?"
He considered that for a moment, flesh shifting slowly across the whitish
bulge of his adam's apple as if he were chewing on an idea. "I can show
you Data Control Central," he ventured.
"That would be great," said Jayhawk, almost warmly, though she did not like
having to follow him. There were spaces between his muscles that she could
have slipped a finger into, metal beneath. A good deal of metal. No
expert in bodyware, she could not guess what it was even with such a revealing
view.
After some ten minutes' walk Slim stopped in front of one of the unmarked
doors, palmed it open. The room within was the size of a gymnasium,
brightly lit and completely bare. She took a few steps in, stared around in
puzzlement. Not even an electrical outlet broke the smooth walls. She
closed her eyes, listened. No hum of machinery, only the echo of her
own breathing, sudden soft footsteps from behind--hastily she opened her
eyes, turned to face Slim. "Not much to look at, is there?"
He frowned, muscles knotting across his face. "Beg pardon, ma'am?"
"Where are the computers? In the walls?"
His frown deepened, the tendons in his forehead parting; she didn't try
too hard to see what was beneath them. "Are you sure you're feeling all
right, ma'am? Doc would be awful upset if you got overtired. We all
try to keep on Doc's good side."
Jayhawk choked back a sudden horrified giggle. You don't want to get on
Doc's bad side, no you don't, he'll flay the skin right off your body....
"Tell me what *you* see."
There was a long silence. "Ma'am," he said at last, "they tell me there's
a storm coming. Best we be getting out of here." At her nod, he led
her out. "Where else? I know, gardens. If you're not too tired--?"
They walked a good distance, nearly back to the origin of her crude map,
until Slim stopped abruptly before a featureless wall. At his touch it
irised open, revealing a grassy lawn, what appeared to be trees a kilo-
meter or more away.
Jayhawk stepped out onto the grassy, felt the sun strike her with tropical
intensity. "Is it real?" she asked a little sarcastically. "Will it
sunburn?"
"Are you *sure* you're feeling all right, ma'am?" At her snort he went
on, sounding a little hurt, "Do you usually sunburn? If so, I reckon
it'll burn you all right."
"I thought it might be artificial." She took a few more steps, turned to
look at the building from which they had come, stood staring in wonder.
A pyramid, a single structure half again the size of Aztechnology, polished
tawny stone bright in the sunlight. Its face was stepped, each step a
meter high--thousands of them, blurring into the distance. There might
have been some structure at its top, nearly beyond her sight.
"I don't advise you climb up," Slim drawled. "There's a storm up top.
Specially dangerous for you, you aren't protected yet."
"I wasn't planning to." Even in her best condition--and the ache in her
legs suggested she was nowhere near that--she could never have climbed
a kilometer of stairs. "Um, is it dangerous?" There were no clouds
in the luminously blue sky. "Should we go in?"
"It's more dangerous inside. More concentrated," he went on at her inquiring
look. "Don't you worry, ma'am, I'm keeping an eye out."
She walked a little further, fighting an irrational urge to run off toward
the distant trees. Slim hesitated in the doorway, followed her with
visible reluctance. "Can I get you anything, ma'am? A sunshade, maybe?"
He glanced up briefly. "I'm not over fond of sunshine myself, I burn
something terrible."
"I imagine so," said Jayhawk, caught between sympathy and horror. "Would
you rather go back?"
"There's a storm in the way right now, ma'am. Give it ten minutes or so
to clear out. I'll be all right, thanks. That's what the hat's for."
He touched its broad brim. "Just a habit."
"Isn't it awkward working with all these...storms?" She sat down on the
grass, finding herself suddenly tired.
"Not really. You get to have a feel for them."
"But if you're working on something--"
"Do it in a shielded room if it can't be interrupted, that's all. Would
you like something to drink? Thought I might have a drop myself."
"Soda," said Jayhawk indifferently. Slim ducked back into the building,
vanished. In his absence, the impulse to flee returned redoubled. A
stupid impulse. She had a transmitting radio in her head. And even
without that, even assuming Slim couldn't catch up with her--she winced
at the thought--where would she be? In the *woods*.
Better to run the other way, find if a 'storm' could kill her in a way the
Paradisians couldn't recover. But she felt no impulse at all to try that.
She'd never been suicidal.
Slim reappeared with two glasses, offered her one. The liquid looked like
water, tasted like some unfamiliar fruit. She lingered over it, tried
to ask Slim questions. He professed not to know the date, nor their
location, though he told her that it was late afternoon, which meant that
the mountains on the edge of vision must be to the west. (With a small
satisfaction she added a compass arrow to her map.)
"Storm's gone," he said after a while. "Ready to go back?" She was
pleased to find that her map was correct, at least in its directions--
she'd had to guess at scale, but it wasn't off by too much. Slim opened
the door for her, nodded politely, wished her a good day, and was gone.
She flung herself on the bed, shivering despite the lingering sun-warmth.
Her own skin crawled in sympathetic reaction. She'd thought herself
blase about cyberware and its attendant inhumanities, but this....She could
almost share Channa's revulsion at the concept.
She tried not to imagine what might be planned for her.
Copyright 1991 Mary Kuhner
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank