Supervisor and the tech looked at him strangely for a moment.
“Servant, Command: Input Mode.” Supervisor’s fingers raced across the tattooed keyboard on her palm.
Danal’s body responded of its own volition, controlled by the microprocessor. His arms and legs snapped to attention, and he opened his mind to receive.
In less than a second The Net scanned Danal’s new identity and confirmed his name and the name of his Master, Vincent Van Ryman. After a short pause, short even for the microprocessor’s view of time, bytes of information filed onto his memory, and his parched mind rapidly absorbed the data.
The Net gave him nuggets of his Master Van Ryman’s history and habits, presumably so Danal could be a better Servant for him. All at once, and without time to sort through the facts and arrange them in any order, Danal learned that Vincent Van Ryman lived a comfortable life from the profits of when his father Stromgaard had sold his share of Resurrection, Inc. to Francois Nathans. Protected by elaborate Intruder Defense Systems, Van Ryman lived alone in an eccentrically antique home.
Not alone.
What about Julia?
Julia? Danal wondered. The thought had come to him from the far reaches of his mind, whispering at the corners of his ears like memories shouting at him through miles of dense fog. The thought came with no explanation, no further details—who was Julia? Other memories, a seething pot of déjà vu boiled far beneath the surface of his brain, out of the microprocessor’s reach.
Another pause in the microprocessor’s slowed-down time—Danal felt The Net picking around in his mind, double-checking, making sure of his identity. Danal kept his thoughts vividly aware, though he didn’t know what to expect, or how he would know if something went wrong. His core-programming penetrated deeper than instinct, molding his life, making him know that he was not to ask questions, not to think, not to feel.
He suspected that he already knew as much as a Servant should know about his Master, but The Net divulged yet another file, this one coded for a much higher-level password.
Vincent Van Ryman was the leader of the neo-Satanists,
not anymore!
a secret society that had adapted ancient Satanism to the context of modern technology. Van Ryman had, however, denounced his connections with the group, and had become one of its strongest opponents—but recently he had returned to the fold again, with a zeal and vehemence that overshadowed even his initial fervor.
impossible!
Danal’s head swam with a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts, ghosts of memory fleeing like shadows when ever he tried to focus on them. He was a Servant. His mind was a clean slate, polished smooth by passage through death and back. He had nothing of his past.
Or, more likely, he was not able to access the memories… but he knew they existed, closeted away somewhere. And these spurious glitches of thought jumping out helter-skelter onto his forebrain—did they flash back to a life that never existed? Who knew what dreams and fantasies a brain could summon and create during the deepest sleep of all?
By the time Danal had assimilated all this, Supervisor’s finger still hadn’t had enough time to lift itself from the keypad on her palm. “Completed,” she said to no one in particular. “Servant: What is your name?”
“My name is Danal.”
“Who is your Master?”
“Vincent Van Ryman.”
“See, I told you he wasn’t brain-damaged,” Rodney interrupted. “I watched him like he was my own baby.”
Supervisor ignored him completely. “What is the square root of 49?”
“Seven.”
“Spell the word ‘Rhinoceros.’”
“R-H-I-N-O-C-E-R-O-S.”
Supervisor tested him with the standard questions, assessing the baggage of knowledge he had managed to carry over from his first life.
“He tests out quite high,” she commented after she had finished. Rodney grinned broadly, as if barely able to control himself from giggling now that the terror and uncertainty had passed.
Danal said nothing. He waited, wishing he had some tool to dig deeper into his memories and bring them into the light—or cauterize them and seal the images below his consciousness forever.
6
Danal stared out the narrow window of the Enforcer’s hovercar as the Metroplex rushed by below. He sat back in the detention/cargo compartment, saying nothing. The Enforcer escort seemed to ignore him.
The elevator had taken Danal up from the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc., leading him to the lobby. Most of the reception area had been decorated with deeply grained clonewood, giving it the rich, somber appearance of an old-time funeral parlor. Danal had stepped out of the lift and, without moving, stared at the carpet, the ornaments, the light-fountain, the receptionist. Only a moment later, one of the Enforcers came and took him to a waiting hovercar, commanding him to wait in back.
They rose over the crowded streets. The monotonous buzzing of the pedestrians seemed to interfere with itself and left an eerie type of silence in the air. Barely heard, smog scrubbers mounted on the sides of taller buildings added their background drone, filtering the air to recover valuable chemical particulates. Apartments and business complexes stretched into the sky, and endless blind eyes of windows gaped at the world.
As they flew, the Metroplex seemed to stretch out, clean and repetitive, like a vast computer chip from the air: street after street, section after section, all arranged in geometric order. The larger industrial centers could be seen in the distance, but all around them lay the spreading shopping zones intermixed with residential areas.
As the hovercar approached its destination, Danal spotted the vast Victorian mansion looming in front of them, an anomaly among the crowded condominium complexes. The gabled house seemed to command the entire area, standing alone at the end of the block, surrounded by a small lawn of carefully groomed green vinyl sod.
Van Ryman’s bizarre home bristled with odd angles, sharp gables, and black and peeling shutters. One of the gutters hung carefully askew, as if it had been mounted purposely off balance to provide a calculated effect, dramatically decrepit. A weathervane driven by a random motor sent the silhouette of a capering demon in drunken pirouettes. Leering gargoyles squatted on the gables, somewhat brighter and more polished than the rest of the structure, as if they were new.
But the gargoyles were removed.
Stricken from the home in disgust.
Why are they back?
Danal stumbled slightly from the throbbing flashback as he tried to keep a placid expression on his face, a Servant’s expression. He grasped at the fleeing thought that had soared outward from his mind’s core, slipping through his mental fingers. Ripples in his memory died away, leaving a blank hole and no more of an answer.
Another bubble had popped deep in his subconscious—the spark of a buried memory from beyond the wall of death, like an outstretched hand from the grave. The first such explosion of unbridled memory still burned bright in his mind from when he had stood, still dripping, newly awakened from the resurrection vat. A name, a concern—Julia—but no face, no other details arose to fill in the gaps….
So many sights, sounds, smells, experiences had poured into his starved sensory organs, and everything fell neatly into the empty pockets of his memory, stocking the shelves, filling in the gaps. Danal felt ready to burst after a scant few minutes, and he rapidly learned how to filter what he experienced, to weed out some of the extraneous detail no matter how much it saddened him to have to ignore any part of his new life.
He wondered if all Servants felt this way.
The Enforcer unsealed the detention/cargo compartment, allowing Danal to step methodically out of the hovercar. The Servant stood next to the Enforcer in front of Vincent Van Ryman’s mansion, waiting. The Enforcer seemed uneasy, jittery. Danal felt himself churning with doubts, curiosity, perhaps even rebellion. Part of him knew what Servants were like and what they were supposed to be like. But something was
wrong. And that frightened him.
The Enforcer finally stepped on the walkway to the porch, in front of a faintly shimmering wall of air: the deadly force field of Van Ryman’s Intruder Defense Systems.
“Vincent Van Ryman!” the Enforcer called, afraid to go any nearer to the house. “I have escorted your Servant Danal.” The Enforcer fidgeted. Danal stood perfectly still, expressionless.
The spangles in the air faded, and Danal sensed that the field had been switched off. But the Enforcer did not seem eager to proceed. He cleared his throat. “You go first, Servant. Command: Walk.”
The Enforcer motioned him ahead, and Danal strode calmly down the walkway to the porch. The sidewalk was poured from black textured concrete and clean, without weeds. Danal kept walking, his legs mechanically moving him forward as the Servant programming forced him to follow the Enforcer’s Command. Uneasiness grew in him, but he didn’t try to smother any new visions rising to the surface, where the microprocessor could grasp them and hold them up for inspection.
Déjà vu. The phrase suddenly clicked into his head, and somehow it felt right.
He mounted the creaking steps of the porch, where the rail appeared splintered and weathered, but when he focused his attention on it for an instant, he realized that it had been painted and textured to appear so. Everything here had the tinge of familiarity to it, and the part of him that wasn’t frightened wanted to see what lay hidden inside Vincent Van Ryman’s home.
Apparently relieved at seeing his charge delivered safely, the Enforcer saluted the unseen monitors in Van Ryman’s house, then turned and walked quickly back to the hovercar. Danal watched him for an instant, puzzled, and then faced the door.
“Your Servant Danal reporting for duty, Master Van Ryman.” He remained on the porch, drinking in the details of the wood, seeing an artificial hornets’ nest carefully mounted under one of the eaves. He stared at the ornate door knob, at the hideous brass gorgon’s head that gripped a door knocker in its fangs.
A voice struck at him from a speaker hidden in the gorgon’s jagged mouth. “Open the door and come in, Danal.”
The interior hall was dimly lit by a hanging chandelier that left the corners in a deep murk. Plush purple carpeting cushioned Danal’s feet as he took another step forward, and stopped. His Master Van Ryman stood in shadows at the end of the hall.
“Welcome, Danal.” His attitude seemed to show an irregular mix of excitement and terror, masked by an effort to seem calm.
Danal voluntarily used the microprocessor to think and examine with greater speed, filing the details in his growing mental database. Van Ryman was almost exactly the same size and build as Danal, but he had dark, lanky hair grown long and square about his shoulders; his face was wide and somewhat rough, but receptive. A rich green robe loosely covered his tight-fitting black clothing. Van Ryman’s forehead was damp and glistening clean, reddened as if he had just scrubbed it vigorously.
They stood frozen, staring at each other, and Danal felt oddly like an animal squared off at a territorial boundary. Van Ryman’s face sparked a strange reaction in the Servant. He seemed familiar, oddly so. Danal wanted to ask a question, but he felt queasy inside, uneasy, even though his synHeart carefully regulated his pulse. Without the subtle control of his facial muscles to show and release his anxiety, the turmoil reflected back into his mind.
To break the frozen moment Danal reflexively turned away to close the heavy clonewood door.
Vincent Van Ryman chuckled to himself and took two steps closer; Danal could hear his quiet sigh of relief like thunder in the muffled silence of the house. Under the better lighting of the chandelier Danal saw his Master’s eyes, and realized that they had struck a lance of disorientation in him, the eyes—somehow wrong. Something didn’t fit, but Danal turned his mind inward and beat down the feelings, uneasily desperate to keep his identity as a Servant.
“Once again, let me welcome you into my home, Danal.” Van Ryman’s gaze was marginally fearful, flicking over Danal’s face, penetrating, as if waiting for some reaction. The Servant fought to keep from staring at his Master, at the man’s familiar features, at his unfamiliar eyes.
Van Ryman surprised him by stepping forward to grasp his gray Servant’s jumpsuit, pulling it open at the chest. With a discernible shudder of excitement or revulsion, Van Ryman touched the lumpy pale scar of Danal’s death wound on his pallid skin. The man smiled to himself, nodding. Incapable of resisting, the Servant stood motionless for the inspection.
In the close light Danal could see nearly invisible red pinpricks clustered behind Van Ryman’s ears and dotted unevenly along his jawbone. They would have been in distinguishable in less dramatic lighting, with less intensive observation. Danal noticed similar pinpricks on the tips of his Master’s fingers.
Van Ryman pursed his lips and placed hands on his hips as he stood quietly, staring at the Servant with a faraway look in his eyes. Then, nonplussed, he straightened Danal’s gray jumpsuit again as if nothing had happened and rubbed the palms of his hands rapidly together with a scouring sound.
“Please, won’t you come into my study? Command: Follow.” He spoke cordially but firmly, with enormous self-confidence. Van Ryman started down the hall, then turned to keep his eyes on Danal, as if uncomfortable at having his back to the Servant. They passed a small control room for the Intruder Defense Systems and a bathroom. Danal followed, wide-eyed again, gulping in the details of the house as he walked.
He felt a sense of skewed antiquity in the dark elegance: many things old and valuable, but with no common focus or period, as if a collector had gathered them simply because they were old, not caring whether they belonged together in the same decor.
Had it always seemed like twilight in this house before?
Danal mentally slapped himself to drive away the buzzing voice in his mind. The flashbacks emerged like the memories of a stranger, someone he had never known, someone vastly different from Danal himself. But he fought against an even greater fear of asking questions.
Van Ryman padded around a corner, and they emerged into the firelit study. Van Ryman turned again, looking at him with a hopeful and desperate expression.
“I’d like to have a long talk with you, Danal. I need some answers.”
7
The thrumming background noises in Rodney Quick’s apartment barely penetrated his concentration. He didn’t hear the heat exchanger working against the damp night air, or the tickings from the pipes, the clock, the appliances. The soundproof walls kept the city noises out and trapped the silence in.
Rodney stared at the dead surface of his Net terminal. Behind the thin glass, behind the phosphors ready to merge and regroup to spell out messages from the terminal, lay the gateway to The Net, the maw of the greatest source of information in the world.
Everything was on The Net—if you knew where to look.
Rodney cracked his knuckles and tentatively reached toward the terminal keyboard, but he abruptly got up instead and went about the apartment, switching off the lights one by one until he had blanketed the entire living area in protective, comforting shadow. In the dimness he made his way back to the terminal, moving carefully around the sometimes cushioned, sometimes hard corners of furniture. It was his own apartment, but often he felt like it turned into a stranger when all the lights were out.
It was irrational to think that anyone would see him now. But what he was about to do seemed better done in secret, in the darkness.
The terminal remained powered on always, and now the faint glow of amber phosphors seeped through the murky black background, waiting for the touch of the cathode rays. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen the rectangular cursor throbbed slowly, hypnotically. Rodney reached forward again and found the keys. His fingertips instinctively went to their familiar positions. In the darkness Rodney could barely see the ghosts of the main Net menu burned into the screen from many previous logons.
Upon returning home, he had procrastinated for
a long time. He flicked glances over his shoulder at the terminal. Wanting to logon, to begin the search, to get it over with.
But first Rodney moved toward the shower chamber as he pulled off his clothes, dropping them on the floor wherever they fell. He wanted to stand under the hot needles of water blasting away the cold sweat and the musty stink of fear, purging the day from his system.
And after the shower Rodney walked back into the main living area, naked. He looked at the terminal again and impulsively decided to wear one of his old robes made from Sri Lankan vat-grown silk fibers. He had not worn the robe in so long, he wasn’t sure he could find it at first. Rodney wasted time looking for it. Eventually he pulled the limp wad of glistening fabric—sleek and black with a garish dragon etched onto the back—out of his low-priority storage bins, watching as all the wrinkles slithered into nothingness as he shook out the robe. He slipped it over his shoulders, feeling the slick, cool touch against his still wet skin. Rodney tied the sash tight across his waist, then went to the terminal.
Before he could begin to think again, he let his fingers race over the keyboard, logging on. Rodney had never learned how to type, but countless hours of practice had taught him to use four fingers and a thumb with lightning speed.
He pushed the Return key, waited for the system to acknowledge.
“WELCOME TO THE BAY AREA METROPLEX NETWORK.”
“USERNAME:”
Rodney typed in his name with spontaneous flicks of his fingertips.
“PASSWORD:”
He hammered in his password. A few beads of sweat appeared of their own accord on his forehead. Rodney had a sixth-level Net password, two steps above the fourth-level passwords most adults had. He had worked his way up, sharpening his computer finesse and using it to advance himself. Net passwords were one of the only things in the world that were still truly earned. You had to earn each upgrade yourself, through your own merit skill.
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