The Labyrinth Key

by Howard V. Hendrix

  Barakian laughed and applauded.

  “Gods all the way down!” he said. “If true, the plenum is a labyrinth both horizontally and vertically.”

  “What do you mean?” Karuna asked.

  “‘Horizontal’ in the playing out of different parallel scenarios, ‘vertical’ in the sense of simulations within simulations. The mind boggles.”

  “But why?” Don asked M-I. “What particular question were you trying to answer when I interrupted your work in Crash Village?”

  “I was only making my first run at it,” M-I said. “The question was whether or not humanity becomes extinct because non-human ‘gods’ terminate the human simulation—at just the point that humans are about to become fully posthuman.”

  “Why would they want to do that?” Karuna asked. From the height of a Keyhole satellite, but with that satellite’s spectacular image resolution, she and Don watched as people began to exit the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.

  “The computational cost of simulating even one posthuman civilization might be prohibitively expensive, in terms of the energy and information that would be required,” M-I speculated. “Kwok’s holo-cast, with its talk of ‘busting the sim,’ suggests just that.”

  “That would explain why QC devices ‘wink out.’ And our universe might be at risk of doing the same!” Barakian ventured. “Maybe the displacement from ‘real’ to ‘virtual’ occurs because the perpetrators have violated some sort of cosmic censorship principle. Or something even deeper.”

  “Like what?” Karuna asked.

  “What if, in seeking the lesser Tetragrammaton—the ‘better angel’—Vang and his people were to achieve the greater Tetragrammaton, the ‘Word That Ends The World’?”

  “Bring your heads down out of the clouds a minute,” Don said. “Something’s happening at the Memorial Hall. The guy on the stretcher there—can we identify him? M-I, you’re in contact.”

  The images fuzzed, then focused on the man on the stretcher. For a moment more he remained pixel-faced, but then that cleared.

  “Ben Cho!” Barakian said. “We’ve found him.”

  At that moment, however, something jerked Cho out of the frame. At Barakian’s command, the image pulled back from the close-up.

  Fighting had broken out. Smoke of gunshots, people falling—all were obvious, even from space.

  Then the Memorial Hall itself exploded in flame, smoke, dust, and debris, and the man on the stretcher disappeared into that maelstrom.

  “Oh, God,” Karuna said.

  “Actually,” a voice said, “just a different sort of angel.”

  On bent air and flashbar, Jaron Kwok appeared before them, naked to the waist, a ghostly figure with flashing—albeit rather small—wings. In holographic projection he stood pounding out what looked like a copper mirror on an anvil next to an old backyard forge.

  “Good to see you again, Don. Kari,” Jaron said. “Thanks to all of you, for the help—including your machine-intelligent friend there.”

  “What help?” Don asked, feeling more than a little odd talking to a ghost.

  M-I had grown strangely silent and subdued—as if neutralized.

  “For helping me make this,” the wraith said, holding up the glittering mirror. “My version of the Manchu shaman’s panaptu, his soul-mirror. Through it he sees the whole world—including the mirror through which he sees the whole world. Infinite regress, that. Endless Möbius loop. The halting problem. Which is why our machine-intelligent friends can’t look into it. Thanks for providing the materials I needed to make it.”

  “What ‘materials’?” Karuna asked, finding her voice at last.

  “The Besterbox linkage, the worldwide computershare. Thanks especially to your machine friend there for all these gridputer addresses—so many doors to knock on, and so many keys to open them with. You’ve helped me, but now someone else needs my help.”

  “So much for M-I’s ghost catching,” Don muttered. Jaron Kwok smiled.

  “Adieu!”

  Kwok disappeared as abruptly as he had flashed into existence.

  On the satellite monitors, Ben Cho was still nowhere to be seen.

  FOR THE BIG SHOW

  CRYPTO CITY

  Brescoll had just received word that Ben Cho might be among the hostages in China when things began to break almost faster than the deputy director could keep up with.

  “We’ve got something here,” Maria Suarez said to Jim Brescoll, Phil Sotiropolis, and Bree Lingenfelter. They gathered around her display. “Security flags on the main Besterbox servers. Someone or something has hacked in. They’re moving addresses and links. Maybe control and access codes, too.”

  “I see it,” Sotiropolis said. “They’re streaming it through a maze of anonymous remailers, Potemkin addresses, cell phone numbers. Whew! Fast, too! This thing’s got to be automated—program running on a big cruncher, or a machine-intelligence of some sort.”

  “Don’t waste time trying to follow the routes,” Lingenfelter suggested. “Besterbox expansion is one of the things the Cybernesian couple sold to Kwok.”

  “So?” Phil asked.

  Brescoll tumbled to Bree’s idea.

  “So we know Don Markham is holed up in that power station,” he said. “Maybe the woman is, too. Take a shortcut.”

  “What shortcut?” Suarez asked.

  “That ex-Cybernesian machine-intelligence,” Brescoll said. “It’s the ‘source’ the director’s connections cut a deal with, right? Our window into the California station. My bet is the same M-I is doing this.”

  Suarez looked at Sotiropolis. He nodded.

  Together they linked up with the machine-intelligence—the same M-I with whose help they had built the California station simulacrum.

  Via the satellite monitors Brescoll and Lingenfelter watched people exiting the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, some with their hands over their heads. They turned away from the goings-on in China when their colleagues indicated they had found the results.

  “On target, sir,” Suarez said. “The Besterbox data is being manipulated by the M-I. But someone or something else is funneling the data into an expansion simulation—there.”

  “And they’re not doing anything with it,” Lingenfelter said, puzzled. “Just sitting on it.”

  A flash burst from the China monitor, and their attention was snatched away by the sight of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall being blown to smithereens.

  Brescoll shot a quick glance around the NSOC facility. Activity instantly ratcheted up throughout the place. The deputy director’s secure cell phone jangled.

  “Are you seeing what’s happening at the Memorial Hall?” Director Rollwagen asked on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, ma’am. I see it.”

  “We got tentative identification on one of the hostages. We’re fairly sure it’s Ben Cho.”

  Hearing that, Brescoll peered at the screen, trying to pierce the pillar of dust and smoke rising from the unseen ruins.

  “He was already out of the building?”

  “Yes. On a stretcher. There’s something else, Jim. Steve Wang has been taken into custody by the Chinese.”

  “What? Why now?”

  “We’re not sure. They’re blaming our operatives for the same sort of satellite hijacking and data snatching we’ve been hit with, as we guessed they might. The CIA’s connections with the New Teachings Warriors—and Baldwin Beech, too—those probably haven’t helped matters.”

  Brescoll shook his head.

  “The Chinese have gone to high military alert.”

  “What are we doing in response?” he asked.

  “Wait a minute,” the director said. “Message coming in. Now our tech people are reporting a breach. Someone’s been eavesdropping on our quantum-encoded secure channels, including the line from the president to the Pentagon. DOD is upping Defcon status.”

  As the implications of that news sank in, Jim Brescoll’s head spun with flashcut images of scrambling fighter jets,
of submarines disappearing beneath the waves, and soldiers jumping aboard troop transports.

  “Director, when we talked about why Ben Cho might be taking over the satellites, you suggested he might be after something much more than just revenge. What did you mean?”

  “Maybe I should have said much worse.”

  “Worse than a nuclear war?”

  “Much worse. What if he decided to give Tetra what it wanted—with a twist? Use the power of controlled cryptastrophe to scrape the planet clean of the abomination of humanity and all its works, then start over.”

  “Or just blot out the universe, and be done with it?”

  “The mad-god option, writ large,” the director said, nodding. “Let’s hope it never gets anywhere near that level of crazy. If we’ve correctly placed him at the Memorial Hall, and if he’s still alive, then the Chinese government will likely have him in custody very soon, at any rate. Guoanbu and the People’s Army are the ones behind this ‘hostage rescue.’ I hope they’re not the ones who blew the place up.”

  “And that’s why we’re upping Defcon status?”

  “No. I’ve just confirmed that four of our surveillance drones off the coast of China have been blown out of the sky. Three of our ELINT and SIGINT airborne listening posts also have been attacked. Just early reports, but it appears two have been lost, and one forced to land. Several of the folks aboard those are NSA people, Jim. The damned media have picked it up—just check the news channels. The Chinese are claiming it’s justified, in response to someone, presumably us, attacking their SCADA systems in a big way.

  “Wait a minute. More messages coming in.”

  Brescoll waited impatiently as the director played spider at the center of a very large web.

  “Damnation!” she said at last. “Reports from our oil and power industries—anomalies in their control and data-acquisition systems. Alerts from the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State. The Chinese have traced the transfer of their snatched data to a site in California, and are demanding action. They’re apparently loading up troopships to invade Taiwan, out of ‘self-defense.’”

  “California?” the deputy director asked, amazed. “How could they have traced that so fast? We just found it ourselves! Unless—”

  “Unless the M-I is playing both ends against the middle,” Director Rollwagen said, in a weary voice. “Any suggestions?”

  Jim Brescoll brought his hand to his head. Think! he told himself.

  “Advise the Secretary to inform the Chinese that we have located and identified the thieves,” he said at last. “They’re…California secessionists. Domestic cyberterrorists, working in league with…Cybernesians in Tri-Border, say—and with a rogue machine-intelligence. Assure them we are not launching the SCADA attacks. Tell them we’re experiencing the same thing. Suggest that the cyberterrorists are responsible for all the attacks, and that we will take immediate police and military action against the perpetrators. We’ll see to it that the stolen information is returned to the rightful owners, and the system controls restored to the rightful operators, with all confidentiality duly respected.”

  “That’s promising a lot. In exchange for—?”

  “Release and return of all Americans taken into their custody during the course of this misunderstanding. Persons returned, and bodies, too.”

  “Including Ben Cho?”

  “Especially Ben Cho.”

  The director paused again. The silence on her end meant she might have already been speaking with the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State, but Jim doubted it. He could almost see and hear the wheels turning in her head.

  “I’ll bounce all that off the Secretary, first. It might work, Jim. I like the Tri-Border angle. We’ve needed to clean out that electronic rat’s nest for years—CIA assets be damned. It just might work. Then we’ll push it to the National Security Advisor and the head of Homeland Security. They’re the ones who’ll have to move police and military forces against the California site.”

  “Might not be so easy to get at them,” Jim said, “given they’re holed up inside a mountain.”

  “No doubt it’ll provide colorful footage for the news networks—and for whatever satellites the Chinese still have available for surveillance.”

  “The power company’s not going to like it.”

  “The utility has insurance. Besides, I’m sure Homeland Security can figure out some way to take the facility and capture the cyberterrorists without causing major damage. At least action in Tri-Border will be less of a public relations concern.”

  Brescoll nodded. The ideas might have been his, but the director was spinning them her own way for the Big Show: how it would play to domestic opinion, the Chinese government, the international viewing audience. Surface bombing the mountain in California would be an expensive special effect, but worth it.

  “We need to keep this line open, Jim. No telling what we’ll lose if the Chinese don’t accept our offer. It’s not Miller time, yet.”

  The deputy director nodded. He was probably one of the few people in this room old enough to remember the meaning of that phrase.

  Glancing around him now, he thought the NSOC looked more like a War Room than ever. He hoped its looks would prove deceiving—that, with a little luck, they might just get Ben Cho back, avoid a nuclear confrontation, and stop the stars from winking out.

  INTIMATE DISMEMBERMENTS REMEMBERED

  GUANGZHOU—AND ELSEWHERE

  The explosion that obliterated the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall left Ben alive, if not exactly intact.

  Cherise LeMoyne and Robert Beckwith, the US Consular official, were making their way toward him through the dust and smoke. He wondered if he was really seeing this. It didn’t make sense.

  What happened next made him doubt even more what his senses seemed to be telling him. Cherise and Beckwith lifted him onto his stretcher, then Detective Lu, bloodied and looking wobbly on her feet, appeared and ordered them to freeze. Cherise and Beckwith shouted at her that she was going after the wrong people, but Marilyn didn’t appear to believe them. Suddenly, in something out of one of his more bellatricious fantasies, Cherise attacked Marilyn with a series of punches and kicks, disarming her with a flying armbar and wristlock combination. Wrestling the detective to the ground, Cherise slid from the armbar to a triangle choke that left Lu unconscious.

  Then Cherise and Beckwith lifted his stretcher and, bent over nearly double, ran with him through the debris and toward a white panel truck parked on a side street. They slid him onto the floor inside and climbed in, Cherise kneeling beside him. Within moments Ike Carlson had brought in Hon and Beech, each of them bloodied, their hands bound behind their backs. Hon was unconscious, and Beech barely better off.

  In the cab, somewhere in front of them, someone started up the truck and they hurried away.

  “Glad you could join us, Lord Marflow,” Beckwith said to Beech, who was rousing himself from his stupor.

  “Azriel,” Beech replied, through obvious pain, “why are we zip-tied? What’s the meaning of this?”

  “Word’s come down from on high,” Beckwith replied. “From the CIA director and Doctor Vang himself. Your project is making too many waves—it’s out of control. You need to show some restraint—though you won’t have to suffer the indignity of physical restraints very long, I assure you. Just until you’ve been…debriefed.”

  Beech stared at Carlson, and at Cherise, then scowled.

  “You betrayed us, Ike.”

  “Just following orders, sir,” the goatee-sporting operative said with a shrug. Beech huffed in disgust, then turned his attention back to Cherise.

  “What’s she doing here? She’s switched sides more times than I’ve changed channels. She’s not been cleared for this.”

  “I have now,” Cherise said, from beside Ben. “I was the tech who installed Kwok and Cho’s implants, back when their wisdom teeth were removed. Maybe you’d forgotten.”

  “She wa
s working for us, then,” Beckwith said, arching an eyebrow. “Married Kwok, too—something we didn’t anticipate. She’s more deeply involved in this than we ever knew.”

  “Or than I knew,” admitted Cherise flatly.

  “Ms. LeMoyne was herself implanted,” Beckwith said with a nod. “Unbeknownst to her.”

  “To what purpose?” Beech asked.

  “To serve as unconscious fail-safe. That’s part of the reason she appears in the Kwok holo-cast the way she does. She was part of a screen-tranced Doomsday protocol—the human placed in the loop to initiate a hunter-killer program that would shut Kwok down if things got out of hand.”

  Cherise, however, was peering closely at her lost husband’s dark twin, concern on her face.

  “You’re going to be okay, Ben. Your guardian angels have arrived.”

  “One person’s guardian angel,” Beech said, disdain thick in his voice, “is another person’s stalker.”

  Cherise tried to remove Ben’s AR glasses, but couldn’t, for the gray-pink growths around them stopped her.

  “What have you done to him? What’s this stuff growing on his head? He’s acting as if he’s in a coma.”

  “Figure it out for yourself, little tech,” Beech growled, “since you’re suddenly so important.”

  Sirens began to sound. Whoever was behind the wheel of the truck sped up and began to drive much more erratically. Beckwith spoke, apparently trying to reassure Cherise—and perhaps himself, as well.

  “Not far to the new consulate compound, now. We’re almost there.”

  A moment later Ben felt the truck lurch hard as they swung around and skidded to a stop. Outside, the sirens that had been coming from everywhere and growing ever closer seemed instead to be concentrating their numbers and piling up, off to one side.

  “We’re in,” Beckwith said. “Let’s hope diplomatic immunity holds them off for a while.”

  Ben felt himself being lifted and carried forward into what looked to him like a spartan concrete building. Cherise and Ike Carlson walked alongside as other hands carried him to an elevator. They didn’t set him down as it descended. When the doors opened they carried him down a fluorescent-lit corridor and into a vaultlike room.