by Tom Clancy
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “and it’s wet… .” He brushed the rain off his shoulders and made for the door, smiling slightly … but still thinking about that gallery of smiling faces sitting inside his own workspace, and intent on finding out what had happened to them …
… without becoming one more smile.
Chapter 7
Nick exited Deathworld into the bare white space of his public-access area. He looked around at those white walls with a faint feeling of guilt. Even if they did eventually look better, when he got his decorating done, it wasn’t going to be the same as his own space on the family’s server. He felt annoyed at himself for not having been more careful with his time, and was starting to be annoyed at himself for getting his mom and dad so angry. He was beginning, much to his annoyance, to be able to see their point.
Pretty soon I’m going to be starting to think I should go apologize to them some more, Nick thought, rebellious.
But would that be such a bad idea? It might do something to change the fact that his life seemed to be completely screwed up at the moment.
You’re just freaked because of this stuff Khasm and Spile told you about… .
He swallowed. That was true.
And Charlie …
“Charlie Davis’s space,” he said to the white walls around him.
Nick was feeling a little ashamed of himself. He should have stopped by days ago. But he’d been busy… . “Trying that workspace for you now.”
That busyness had been shaken out of him, now, by his conversation with Khasm and Spile. Until now Nick had assumed that the suicides were genuine, just people who somehow couldn’t cope. It had never occurred to him that something else might be going on … and he still wasn’t sure what, but the idea gave him the creeps.
“The space you require is accessible,” said his public space’s management program.
Nick got up out of the virtual version of the implant chair and went over to the air, pulling on the doorknob sticking out of it. The door opened, and he looked through into the big, circular, wood-paneled space with its portraits of doctors in frock coats and wigs, the stadium benches, and the steam engine down in the low part in the middle.
The steam engine wasn’t there, though. What was there was a group of 2-D and 3-D images of people … kids Nick didn’t know. He walked down the stairs between two sets of bleachers, looking at them. There was no sign of Charlie. Either he was out in the real world somewhere, or working on something else… .
Or he’s in Deathworld someplace.
Nick thought about that, then went back up the stairs and stepped back into his workspace, shutting the access to Charlie’s space behind him. Then he opened the doorway he usually used to access Deathworld. Burning red, the copyright information hung there in front of him. “Yeah, yeah, get on with it,” Nick said. “Front-door access, please.”
The long copyright warning notice hung there a few moments more, and then showed him the great front gates. Nick walked in and said, “Deathworld utilities, please …”
In front of him appeared a huge dark-green onyx desk, piled high with ledgers, and behind the desk, a clerk-demon wearing a green eyeshade, and sleeve garters and a bow tie (though no shirt). It looked up at him with a blunt, only slightly wicked face, like that of a cartoon bulldog with the demise of some cartoon cat on its mind. “Yeah? Oh, it’s you, Nick.”
“Hi, Scorchtrap,” Nick said, strolling over to the desk. “How’s the union thing going?”
“Aah, the usual,” said the demon. “Management says they can’t budge on the last offer, we say fine, we’ll strike, they say okay, they’ll bring in cheaper labor… .” The demon leaned to one side and spat brimstone into an ornately carved spittoon by the desk. Sulfurous smoke rose from it. “Scabs, that’s what they mean. It stinks more than usual, Nick. Our problem is, we got no rights.”
“Well, just hang in there,” Nick said. “You guys have personality … they’d be nuts to get rid of you.”
“From your mouth to the Boss’s ear,” said Scorchtrap. “Cheapskate that he is. He promised us that this bargaining round, he’d give us a decent profit-sharing agreement. Now he won’t even give us the time of day. It’s enough to make you lose your faith in market forces.” The demon grimaced. “But enough of my problems. What can I do for you?”
“Looking for a friend of mine,” Nick said. “Charlie Davis.”
The demon pulled up a thick scroll from behind this desk. This unrolled out across the floor and into the distance, where it vanished, like railroad tracks converging at the horizon. Scorchtrap made a disgusted face, tossing the scroll to the desk. “Retrotech,” he said, and reached into the air, grabbing a little cord that hadn’t been there a second before, and pulling down a text window. “This guy come in here recently?”
“The past day or so, I think.”
Scorchtrap studied the text that was scrolling through the window too fast for Nick to read, and finally came to the end of it. “Nobody by that name.”
“He might be using a `nym.’ “
‘Yeah, but if he is, we can’t disclose it,” Scorchtrap said, pulling on the cord again. The window rolled itself up like an old-fashioned window blind, with the same flapping noise, and vanished. “Privacy legislation, you know how it is, Nick … gotta keep the nosey-bodies at bay. Even when it’s in a good cause.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Nick let out a long breath. “Listen, do this for me. Let me have a look at the login records for the last couple of days.”
Scorchtrap raised his eyebrows. “You kidding?” he said. “You must feel like curling up by the fire with a good book. You know how many people we get in here every day?”
“Just the newbies, Scorchtrap. There can’t be that many of them.”
“You wanna bet?” The demon shook his head, and reached up to pull that cord. The window came down again. “Been busy around here the last week or so, Nick. Lotta trouble upstairs … you know what about.”
“I know,” Nick said, somber, and leaned on his elbows on the desk, looking at the window.
Scorchtrap hadn’t been kidding. Deathworld had experienced between five and ten thousand new user logins per hour from all over the planet during the period in which Nick was interested. Even though Nick waded through it as best he could, there was no telling what `nym’ Charlie might have chosen … for he was not one of the dim types who pick an anagram of their name, or their mother’s maiden name, for a pseudonym.
Finally he sighed and gave up. Scorchtrap made a sympathetic tsk, tsk noise and rolled the log window up again. “Sorry about that, buddy,” the demon said. “Anything else I can do for you today? Got some new ‘lifts’ being released on Six… .”
“Naafi,” Nick said, “not for me, today. I’ve got business on Eight.” He turned, waving at the demon. “You take it easy,” he said.
“Yeah, you too, Nick… . Hey, wait a minute!” Nick looked back. “Yeah?”
“You check the message boards yet?”
“Uh, no! Not a bad idea. Thanks, Scorchtrap.”
“Any time, kid.” The demon opened a large ledger labeled DAMNED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE and started leafing through it. “And you keep your feet dry down in the Maze! You don’t wanna catch anything down there.”
Nick grinned. The desk, and the demon, vanished. In Nick’s opinion, the Deathworld programmers were using the demons to keep themselves amused, sometimes possibly even playing them “live.” This amused him, too, and he wasn’t above playing the game with them when the opportunity presented itself. It might improve my game stats, he thought, but besides that, why shouldn’t they have fun, too?
He walked through the darkness a little way to where he knew there was a huge archway somewhat reminiscent of the main gate. This one, though, had engraved in the stones of the arch the words MARX WAS WRONG: THE OPIUM OF THE MASSES IS NEWS.
Nick headed in through the archway and found himself in a tremendous room modeled after the Beaux-Arts readi
ng room of the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library, but all done in black and gray, with high, dark windows, where the original had been done in ivory, wood, and gold. He made his way past the pillared “calls” desk, behind which a huge white lion was standing on its hind legs and going through some card-catalog drawers on the desktop, and glanced down the length of the room. There were two lines of huge long dark-topped tables, each table with four shaded lamps down the middle of it.
Nick walked to the nearest of these and sat down in the subdued light of one of the lamps.
Moving and shifting beneath the surface of the table were hundreds and hundreds of text messages, images, and “flat” virtclips, scrolling by, never stopping, all messages from Banies to Banies, talking about Deathworld itself, or the music, or other Banies, or Joey, or any of the myriad other things that Deathworld fans could possibly think of to discuss when they weren’t actually exploring the place. Nick placed a hand flat down on the table and said, “Start a search, pleases… .”
“Whatcha lookin’ for, boss?” said the table in another demon-gruff but friendly voice.
“Uh, any message from Charlie to anybody else?”
The table emitted a sigh. “You know how many Char-lies we got in here, Nick?” it said. “You wanna narrow that search down a little, or don’t you have a life?”
Nick laughed. “Any message from a Charlie to me, or from any Charlie to any Nick.”
“Nothing found on the first search,” the table said. “Nothing on the second. Try something else?”
Nick thought for a moment. If Charlie’s been in here, at least he hasn’t been trying to reach me. That could be a good thing … or might not. “Any public message about suicide,” Nick said after a moment.
“You really don’t have a life, do you,” said the table. “Eighteen thousand messages about that in the last two weeks. And another six thousand went into the bit bucket between then and now. I told them I needed more storage, but do they listen to me, n0000000. .”
“Yeah, right,” Nick said. He leaned his head on one hand for a moment, thinking. “Look,” he said, “show me any message in which the words ‘I want to kill myself’ or ‘I feel like killing myself’ or ‘I want to end it all’ are used.”
“You want me to be a dumb machine and sort just for those phrases,” the table said, sounding slightly affronted, “or can I get a little bit heuristic about this and also look for sentences that mean the same thing?”
“Uh, feel free.”
“Better sample,” the table said. “Still pretty big. Four hundred eighty-six messages.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “Okay, display them.”
“You want something to drink?” the table said. “A cola.”
A glass of it appeared next to Nick on the table. “Statutory regulations require us to inform you that the ingestion of virtual beverages does not provide any hydration, nutrition, or other dietary benefit to your physical body,” said the table in an intensely bored tone of voice. “Then again, there aren’t any calories, either. So drink up, and don’t spill.”
Nick raised an eyebrow, picked up the glass, and drank, while starting to read the messages. Every time he had read enough of one, he tapped on the table and it vanished, to be replaced by another.
Pretty soon his tapping finger was getting tired. A lot of the messages were facetious. A lot of them were deadpan, in terms of composition … but when there was no video to go with the text, as often happened, there was no way to tell how serious the person leaving the message had been, or if they were serious at all. One message Nick came across, which had been left only a few hours before, was typical. WHAT’S THE PoINT? said its subject line.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT PEOPLE ARE YELLING ABOUT. ITS ONLY DEATH. DEATH ISNT SO BAD COMPARED TO SOME OTHER THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU AND WHEN IT JUST HURTS TOO MUCH YOU WANT TO SAY ALL RIGHT LET IT ALL BE OVER WITH. MAYBE JOEY IS RIGHT MAYBE THIS IS THE TIME TO CUT THE STRINGS AND HAVE SOME PEACE AND QUIET. NOBODY WOULD REALLY CARE IF I WASNT HERE AND IN FACT I THINK THEY WOULD PREFER IT, IT WOULD BE LESS TROUBLE FOR EVERYBODY I KNOW, ONE LESS THING TO WORRY ABOUT LIKE MY MOM SAYS. I DON’T KNOW WHAT LIFE IS FOR ANYWAY, THERE’S NOTHING THAT SEEMS TO BE THE THING I’M SUPPOSED TO BE FOR AND EVERYONE ELSE SEEMS TO KNOW, I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE. THE SOONER ALL THIS POINTLESSNESS IS OVER FOR ME THE BETTER I THINK.
There were various replies to this, some sympathetic, some jeering, but no one seemed to be taking it very seriously, or actually dealing with the idea that this person really seemed to want to “end it all.” No one even just came out and said “Don’t!” Because they’re afraid of finding that he or she was kidding around, maybe, and they don’t want to take the chance of looking stupid? … Nick let out a breath and glanced at the sender’s name. “MANTA.” Just another handle, behind which sat a real person in who knew what state of mind. At first glance it would be easy to think it was someone too depressed even to look over the text and correct it where the context filter in the Deathworld voice-to-text system had slipped up. A yell for help? Nick thought, glancing down at the time stamps and other system information, node locations and so forth, saved at the bottom of the message. If it was one, how could you even find the person? This stuff is all coded, it isn’t meant to help you locate them easily. Though he had heard that there were ways to track back an original user to his virtmail account, even to his posting location, from this footer material, if you knew how to read it. By the time you did, though, would the person who’d left the message even still be breathing? … And if you did find them, would they just laugh at you for taking their joke seriously?
Nick shook his head and went back to his reading, but after about twenty minutes more he stopped, exasperated by his inability to be certain about whether the messages weregenuine. “Is there any way to tell which of these people mean it?” he said. “Semantic analysis or something?”
“I’m a computer, not a doctor,” said the table. “That starts getting into diagnosis. You think I want the AMA after me? Life’s tough enough.”
Nick had to laugh. “Okay,” Nick said, “forget it. But listen-” He thought for a moment. “Are there any messages from any of the … you know. The Angels of the Pit …”
“Three remain in the database,” said the table. “But they’ve been locked off, Nick. Confidentiality issues.”
Nick sat back in his seat, thinking a little more. “Okay,” he said. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Anything within reason,” said the table.
“If any messages come for me while I’m in-environment from a Charlie-or never mind that … from anybody-route them to me right away.”
“You’re overriding your previously set no-bother instruction?”
“Yeah.”
“Got it. Let us know if you want it changed back at some point.”
“Right. Thanks, guy.” Nick patted the table, then got up and headed out of the reading room again.
He made his way back to his access door, back into his plain white workspace, and stood there a moment, thinking. Do I want to comm him at home?
Maybe not … it might freak his folks somehow. Or it might freak mine, if he called me back at home and let them know what it was about.
Instead, Nick made his way back into Charlie’s workspace. “Hello …” he said, hoping to wake up the system.
“Hi, Nick,” said the soft woman’s voice that represented Charlie’s “system manager.” “Charlie says, ‘Make yourself at home and use whatever you have to.’ “
“Uh, good. I need to leave him a message.”
“I can record virtual voice, virtual image and voice, or text.
Tell me what you prefer.”
“Virtual image and voice.”
“Go ahead. Stop for five seconds and then say ‘Fin- ished’ when you’re done.”
“Charlie …” Nick said. “I have to tell you about this. I ran into some people in Deathworld … they knew a couple of t
he people who committed suicide. But they think something’s going on, something odd… .”
He went on to lay out everything Khasm and Spile had told him … especially the part about drugs being involved. Then he summed up what he’d found when he searched the message database. Nothing much … but it might make it clear to Charlie why he was feeling a little weird about what was going on.
Finally he trailed off, not knowing what else to add. “Just comm me at home, if you can,” Nick said. “Not too late … Dad’s been working weird hours the past week or so. The studio had to send him to California for something … don’t ask me why he couldn’t just go there virtually.” He tried to think if there was something else he should mention. He had the feeling that he’d forgotten something. “Okay? Comm me. And listen … be careful.”
Nick paused. “Finished,” he said.
“Thank you, Nick,” Charlie’s system said. “I will pass this on to Charlie as soon as he checks in.”
“You have any idea where he is?”
“Not at the moment. I’m sorry.”
Nick nodded. “Thanks …”
He wandered back up the steps again, not without pausing to look back at those images of kids his age, or a little older or a little younger. Wondering, he turned and headed back to his own workspace, trying to figure out what to do next… .
In the VAB, dusk was drawing in, and the big sodium lights hanging from the cross-gantries in the ceiling were turned on, flooding the concrete with a harsh, bright glare. “Okay,” Mark said to Charlie, coming across the floor to him. “Here you are.”
He held up what he carried, white and shimmering in that fierce light. Charlie looked at it in bemusement. “It’s a jacket,” he said.
Mark rolled his eyes. ” ‘It’s a jacket,’ he says. Do you know how much programming there is in this thing? This is not just any jacket!”
“Okay,” Charlie said, “it’s a magic jacket. Do I have to wear a bow tie with it? And does the tie have to be magic, too?”