Lagging behind, came the LINK'S response: MESSAGE, recorded 4:59 pm EST, source unknown.
"Some help you are," I groused to the LINK. Smiling, in spite of myself, I added, "Anyway, I know who it is. Hi, Danny."
The image of Daniel was frozen in space, waiting for a go-ahead command. I shook my head. Only a social miscreant like Daniel would program a message to appear without the usual warnings and then bother to have the politeness to wait for a response.
Go ahead, I sent, then added out loud, "You old fox. You've only gotten trickier with age."
Sorry for the crudeness of this message, but I needed to get your attention, he said, his eyes apologetic. Friends of mine tell me you're back on the LINK. I'd like to know how you've managed that, Dee. Maybe you could hustle me a reconnect after things settle down? I'm jouncing bad.
I looked at the image of Daniel with renewed interest – he was hardwiring this? Not possible, I told myself, he wouldn't have the time, and, besides, he could hardly run with a board and key-in at the same time. This was someone else's LINK connection, then.
Anyway, the image continued, I hope the rumor is true; otherwise, I have no idea when you'll get this message ... It's being transmitted through a friend's access, and I don't know how long he can keep it bouncing around. The image shrugged, sending the image of the body into a sizzling chaos. If you haven't already heard – I'm out. We need to meet, to put our heads together, like the old days. I've got some crazy ideas about Letourneau I need to bounce off your superior brain, old friend. Danny threw me a wink. Contact me any way you can. My friend will be listening for you.
The three-dimensional image became flat. The pixels separated, raining down to disappear into the floor.
"With a performance like that, you should've been a wire-wizard, Danny," I told the empty room. Daniel must have had the message bouncing around the LINK waiting for me to surface again. When I plugged into the uniform's LINK connection, I broadcast my location, giving the message an in.
Shutting the holographic armor down, I pulled the LINK filament from my head. The uniform still hummed with power, and all of its other defenses would remain functional as long as I wore it. Putting the helmet under an arm, I stepped out into the hallway. Rebeckah leaned against the wall waiting for me, her arms crossed in front of her chest. When she saw me, she smiled. "I started to think you'd given up on the idea of chasing after Daniel, and all this foolishness!"
"Yeah. Well, no luck. I got a message from Daniel." I tapped the helmet. "I just hope I wasn't LINKed long enough for anyone else to get the drop on our location."
Rebeckah's smile broadened, as she used a booted foot to push off from the wall. "I'm going to make a Malach Nikamah out of you yet. I appreciate your concern, Dee, but we're covered. All the uniforms' LINK connection have been modified to bounce through random LINK nodes. If the cops are watching for your frequency right now they think you've hopped a plane to Tokyo or Paris or God knows where."
I let out the breath I was holding. "Of course," I muttered, embarrassed I hadn't thought of that. "Otherwise you could never use the LINK without the cops finding your hideout. I should've figured."
"Forget about it." Rebeckah indicated the direction we should walk with a jerk of her head. "What did Daniel have to say?"
"You were right. He wants to meet."
"I still say it's crazy." Her lips tightened to a thin smile, then she let out a breath in a snort. "But, there's no stopping you, is there?"
"He says he has information about Letourneau."
"I'm already in for a pound, Dee, you don't have to entice me." Rebeckah turned a corner down another dimly lit corridor.
"What do you mean?"
Rebeckah said nothing, staring grimly ahead.
"No, Rebeckah," I protested, "you've done enough for me. Like you said, it's a fool's errand. I can't ask you to come along..."
"I didn't hear anybody asking." Rebeckah stopped suddenly and turned to face me. "And, I'm not taking any argument. We're backing you up, Deidre McMannus. You're going to owe us, big-time, but you're not traipsing off to your little rendezvous without our firepower covering your fugitive ass. You can just forget any ideas of Lone Ranger heroics. We're going in with you. End of discussion."
It was. My mouth hung open, and I couldn't formulate any coherent or rational objection.
"Good." She pivoted and headed down the hallway. "I've got my people working out a location for the meeting," Rebeckah continued, her voice matter-of-fact. "We need something defendable, out of the way, and not too close to the glass city. I want to have a safe place to retreat to if something goes wrong." She looked over her shoulder to make sure I was following both her and the conversation. "You, get in touch with Mouse. Sharron is capable of running the LINK end of things, but I'd rather keep her sig file off this operation. I'm supporting you as a friend, not as part of the cause. You understand?" I nodded. "When you call Mouse, make it quick. Even with the armor's built-in loop, I don't want to give the authorities any trail they could follow."
"Agreed," I said, because there wasn't much else to say when Rebeckah was in command mode. Absently, I groped for the filament in the hood. "I'll meet you in the dining room in – what? An hour?"
"Give us two."
By way of agreement, I stopped moving. Rebeckah's powerful strides carried her off, moving deeper into the apartment complex until her blue uniform was swallowed by the cavernous darkness. I turned back in the direction of the stairwell, intending to make my way upstairs to the mess hall.
My fingers found the thin connection wire. Still moist, the pad stuck easily to my receiver. I jacked in. This time, I carefully monitored the routing patterns scrolling past my vision: through Detroit to the Vancouver node, from there to Juneau. The signal never stayed with any one node for longer than a microsecond. Satisfied with the process, I reached for Mouse's address.
The page appeared in the uniform's LINK window at the upper right corner of my vision. The image assumed receptionist mode, being little more than a headshot and sporting an old-fashioned telephone headset. Mouse's house, Mouse speaking.
Hey, 'home,' I recited, and smiled to myself, never failing to find our old joke funny even after all this time.
Solid handshake, Dee. Sweet system. I see we jettisoned the bucket of rust. Good call. The page smiled broadly. The eager smile made him look even younger than usual. Man, you move fast. Yesterday it was a slow surf on a mundane phone line, then you blow the top off the LINK, and now you've got me chasing you through sophisticated LINK hops. You never cease to impress, girl.
Thanks, Mouse, but before you get all excited, the hardware is on loan. Listen, I'm sorry but I can't hang long. Reaching the stairwell, I began to pull myself up toward the mess hall. I nodded politely to two Gorgons who were galloping down the steps. Where's your alter ego? I thought he had a line dedicated to me.
We do, but he's on a plane, marooned in real time. Eight hours, poor guy. But, don't diss me, Deidre. With a shake of his head, the receptionist headgear disappeared, winking out of virtual existence. The page metamorphed his shirt and tie into a more streetwise costume of a leather jacket and black tee shirt. The change of clothes made the page look remarkably more like his real-time alter ego. I've got full authority to run all the operations until he can get back on. Only thing I can't do for you is hardware work.
Mouse is on a plane? Where's he going?
Somewhere eight hours away. How should I know? I don't care where the body goes.
Mouse ... I said, while stopping on a landing to catch my breath. Though ten times more comfortable and more maneuverable than Eion's vestments, the armored uniform weighed twice as much.
Deidre. No. I'm not trailing my own credit line just to tell you where the body has run off to. That's like spying on myself. Anyway, it's nothing to flake out about. We've been off-lining a lot lately, on business trips. I figure it's best not to know what the left hand is up to, you know?
Despit
e his breezy manner, the space between the page's eyebrows creased. It was strange to see an unconscious, human gesture on a construct, even an AI as sophisticated as Mouse's page.
A passing soldier frowned at my apparent inability to walk and LINK, so I started up the stairs again. Listen, I can't stay out here much longer. Do you have any secure place we could go?
Why are you so worried about time? Your system's loops are hard for me to keep up with. I doubt the cops are running anything more sophisticated than mouse.net.
I smiled at Mouse's bravado. Though I'd never seen the hardware mouse.net ran on, Mouse had always impressed me as the cobbled system in the basement of Mom's place type.
Right, I sent. You Uberphreeking on mey boy?
Mouse frowned at my jibe. You'd be surprised at the tech we can pull off. Speaking of, and since you're so wigged about tails, why don't you follow me to our main address.
I'm honored, I said, and this time I meant it. The hub of mousenet, like Xanadu or Camelot, was a place out of legend. Theories about it raged in the LINK-cop community. Most doubted its very existence. How many jumps away is it?
The page shook his head, as if disappointed that I hadn't guessed his secret. Close, but so far away. One, Dee. It's only ever one jump away.
One? The LINK, though in practice more like radio waves, used power nodes to boost the bioware's ability to store and send information. I'd always assumed that Mouse's closest power center was Cairo, and that was at least twenty jumps from New York's central address. Where is it?
Well, it's not exactly a where. Getting you there is going to take a change in mind-set, girl. Maybe you should sit down – literally.
Okay. I'd reached the party suite. I spied an empty seat on a couch at the far wall.
Ready? The page asked. It's going to blow your mind.
I plopped down on the couch. In preparation; I squeezed my eyes shut. Hit it.
Despite Mouse's warning, I still expected to be raced along a series of connections in electronic space at the speed of thought. Instead, I felt something far more disturbing. Following his lead, my LINK consciousness expanded in all directions at once.
My real-time stomach dropped, giving me a phantom feeling of falling through the floor. Tightening my grip on the arms of the couch, I tried to remind my body that I was safely sitting in the mess hall.
The sensation of moving all at once like that, like the blast ring of a Medusa bomb, had my internal processors struggling to make sense of the shifting waves of information. Thousands of images flipped through my mind as I extended farther out. Unable to completely abandon linear thought, my mind groped to make sense of snippets and pieces and parts. Twenty percent chance of rain tonight ... Il ya une I, ..." Holo-visuals of the entertainment frequency flashed through personal conversations and meshed with Traffic Control. Coordinates: 55 degrees latitude, by ... Oh, Trent, I can't live without you ... Wei. Joe sun! ... your very own, buy now! The jumble of voices and images threatened to overwhelm me. ¿Quien sabe? ... first level ... oh yeah? ... set alarm for ... I felt my real-time stomach tighten at the prospect of becoming indistinct within the greater universe of the LINK.
Soon the distinct voices became an unintelligible hum, and I merged with the LINK. Images blurred together into a blinding white light. Though sightless and soundless, I could sense the LINK as it pulsed and breathed, enveloping me in its living warmth. I could have pooled there forever in the information flow, but Mouse pulled me farther down, past the buzzing chatter of commerce and pleasure to something deeper, more basic.
Next to me, I felt him manipulate a password and trigger a response somewhere in the bowels of the beast. We snapped, with an almost palatable sound, into focus.
The LINK glittered like the stars above. My consciousness felt anchored in something solid now. A definite here, yet its base was enormous, like a giant whose feet straddled the Earth.
My God, where are we?
MOUSE.SYS. The page's voice was flat and emotionless. Mouse hadn't programmed any company manners into his secret base to impress visitors. No doubt he'd never anticipated having any guests in his hub.
I can't stand talking to a disembodied voice, Mouse. This is disorienting enough as it is, I said, tapping my foot to test the virtual landscape. My construct relayed no messages to my senses, and, although I saw a horizon, I felt disconnected, floating.
Humph. For my benefit, the white light of the page solidified into a construct. Long colorful robes billowed in an imaginary wind. The only part of his skin that was exposed were his hands and deep, black eyes. Gesturing wide with his hands, the page asked, Better?
Much, I said, grateful to have something besides the unending plane on which to focus. The page's costume reminded me of the Muslim women in New York. Red satiny material draped across his face and down his shoulders, mingling with a wild assortment of colors and patterns of turquoise, gold, and orange. It was not the kind of outfit I could see the real-time Mouse adopting, so I asked, Page, is there another name you would prefer to be called ... besides Mouse?
The nebulous light of the space intensified for a moment, reflecting twin silver disks in the page's eye.
Mouse is fine ... but thank you for asking. Sometimes Mouse calls me Mickey, but, honestly, I'm not fond of that.
'Mickey Mouse.' I can see why not. I stared out into the endless horizon. What is this place? I mean, real-time.
Everywhere. We're in the directory of every hard drive in existence. The world's databases are still stored on hardware, every old PC has a mouse or mouse-pen, mouse-drivers, and mouse directories. We spread the mouse.nest virus via the LINK and took up residence. That's where we are. Nowhere. Everywhere.
No wonder we could never find you, my subvoice translated oddly, sounding tinny on my electronic ears. The atmosphere of the directory felt at once both expansive and close, as though we were adrift in a monotonous ocean of black and white surrounded by a fine fog. To think, you were right below our feet. Now I understand how you could perform such seamless hacks. I always said every one of your info boosts smelled like an inside job. I can't believe I never saw the mouse/Mouse connection before.
Well, we count on people not getting it. Don't kick yourself. The billowing robes shrugged delicately.
Cut off from the LINK operating functions, I wondered how much time passed. Even here in the secret hub of mouse.net, I felt unsafe.
Page, I called you because I need your help again. I have to set up a real-time meeting with Daniel.
Daniel? The page's eyes were round. Mouse warned me that he was out.
Warned you? Why?
The page's colorful robes flapped in a warm breeze. The endless landscape rippled, like wind over dunes in a desert. Daniel is a liability, the page said finally. A loose cannon.
I nodded, wondering what Daniel could possibly know that would make Mouse nervous. How about I barter what Mouse wanted last time ... your help for what happened the night before the Pope was murdered.
There was a long pause. The flat, gray, opaque directory surrounded me, oppressive in its endlessness. I glanced up at the sparkle of the LINK above, waiting.
Deal, the page said finally. But this sucks, you know? I have no idea if other-Mouse still wants this information. His flippant tone seemed incongruent with the traditional clothing he had chosen. I might get my code in big trouble for agreeing to this.
Far away, I could feel a smile form on my face. Thanks, Mouse.
Yeah, well, before you get carried away with gratitude, maybe you'd better explain to me how you figure I can help. Mouse gestured for me to follow him. As we walked I felt as though we were passing through thin curtains as directories flipped past. Every syscop in virtual space is after you or Danny. Even my genius has its limits.
I doubt it. I conjured up an electronic laugh, which bounced hollowly in the expansive space. I just need you to provide a distraction. I'll do the real work.
Oh, I get it. I put my tail on the line and
do some outrageous hack, so when the heat is elsewhere, you slip through to Daniel. Nice. If your info isn't really hot, real-time Mouse is going to be pissed when he on-lines, girl, and not just with me.
It is. Satisfied that the deal was struck, I readied myself for off-lining.
Hold on, dear heart. His words were like a hand on my arm, holding me in place, We struck a barter. Half now, half on delivery.
The page's voice hung in the space a moment longer than was necessary, insistent. I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. I hadn't counted on having to tell my tale, even part of it, right away. Steeling myself, I took a long, slow breath real-time.
You're stalling, Mouse noted. Spill or the deal is off. You can find some other LINK-rodent to risk his code for you.
Not wanting to lose him, I started. Fine. But, only half now, got it?
Mouse nodded. Taking a deep breath, I launched into my tale.
Daniel and I were at Kick's, at our table in the back, talking shop. I remembered the crowd was thin for a Friday night, but Danny was in good spirits. He thrived on the intensity of a challenging case. The one we had in front of us was a doozie. "What I can't figure is how the hacker got through the city's defense grid." Daniel's voice still rang in my ear. "The syscops said they didn't have a log-on all night."
So focused on imagining the perfect crime, Daniel blindly lifted the Guinness he'd been nursing all night to his lips and half of the sip splashed his shirt.
I laughed, handing him a napkin. "I swear, Fitzpatrick, the way you get into a good hack, you'd think you were a LINK criminal in a past life."
"I must have some heavy karma to work off, if I'm a cop now." He daubed at his shirt halfheartedly.
"That I don't doubt."
He feigned protest. "What are you saying about me, McMannus?"
"I'm saying you're a rogue, Danny boy."
"Well," he admitted, with a half smile he knew made him look devilish, "true enough." After a more careful sip of his drink, he tipped the glass in my direction. "Have you worked out our problem yet?" Tapping his watch, he noted, "It's been half a minute already. I'm surprised at you."
Archangel Protocol Page 18