by Tom Clancy
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 reading 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 instru
ction?"
"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 the 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?"
"I swear," Mark muttered, "once we both get somewhere physical at the same time, I'm going to whack you a good one with something that can't just be deleted. Here, put it on."
He helped Charlie into the jacket, a rather formal-looking one of the kind a gentleman might wear to dinner. To Charlie, it felt completely normal. "Nice material," he said, patting it down.
Mark stood back from him. "It should be," he said, rather sourly, "considering what it would cost you per hour if someone, I should use the word loosely, 'professional' had built this for you."
"I feel like a waiter," Charlie said. "Probably I look like one, too. So where's the switch?"
Mark sat on the Rolls and shook his head. " 'Switch'?" he said. "Please. And if you look like anything, you look like a doctor. And you'll probably make a great one someday, as long as you don't try understanding anything more complicated than a stethoscope, okay?… Look, there aren't any switches. You just wear it into Deathworld. You wear it out again. Make sure you don't take it off-not only because you won't be able to record anything you're perceiving, but because it's set up to work only when it's in circuit with your own virtual account and your own implant. I haven't been able to implement a whole lot of fail-safes, partly because I still don't completely understand how to subvert all their systems. But there's a real good chance that if the jacket comes out of circuit with you, with your implant I mean, every alarm in that place will go off. This would be a bad thing, because immediately afterward, every security op associated with Joey Bane Enterprises, not to mention every lawyer they've got, thousands of them probably, will be chasing you down the labyrinthine ways. You're getting all this?"
"Uh, yes," Charlie said. He was also enjoying it. It was always fun to get Mark annoyed about something. "Had a bad time getting the details worked out?" he asked.
Mark glowered at him. "I spent the better part of five hours analyzing Deathworld's security systems," he said.
"Oh, well, five hours," Charlie said.
"And if you think I enjoyed it, you're-"
Charlie started laughing. He couldn't help it. "Of course you enjoyed it!" he said. "You're a pirate at heart, Gridley. That's why it drives you nuts to be your father's son." He laughed some more, unable to stop.
Mark gave him a crooked smile. "Yeah, yeah, Mr. Psychoanalyst," he said. "Well, you can't help it, I guess, it's your mom's side of the family. Look, never mind that. Just don't let this thing off your back, okay? You can wear a 'seeming' over it-in fact, probably it'd be smart if you did."
"Okay," Charlie said.
"I had to do some jury-rigging," Mark said. "The security systems in Deathworld are really complex, and to keep the flow of information moving out of there and into your space, I had to do spectrum-fission on it, scatter it up and down several different kinds of in-Net communication then reweave it to `singleband' throughput on the outside."
"I hope that wasn't meant to make some kind of sense to me," Charlie said, checking the jacket to see if it had an inside pocket. It did.
"That's data storage, in there," Mark said. "Meanwhile, just think of the outbound signal as white light broken down to a spectrum, then 'welded' back to white again," Mark said. "The important thing is, it worked when I tested it." He raised his eyebrows. "Though the first couple of test cycles were interesting. What matters is that what you see and hear will go back to your site and store themselves there. One thing: When you're done with the jacket, don't leave it in your workspace. Leave it in mine."
"Oh? How come?"
Mark gave him another of those endearing it's-like-thisstupid expressions. "If something goes wrong," he said, "or on the other hand, if something goes right, and in the unlikely event that someone gets cranky afterward about what's been done-you want the Deathworld people to take you to court for theft of intellectual property and copyright violations, thus ruining your not-even-startedyet brilliant medical career for ever after? Or do you want them to come after me for it, and let me take the heat as the Brilliant But Slightly Unstable Genius Son of the Director of Net Force?"
Phrased that way, the answer more or less made itself obvious. "Uh," Charlie said.
"Exactly, `uh,' " said Mark. "So I've left my space open for you, day and night. As soon as you're done with a run, leave the jacket here. Over the desk. When you've done that and left, the logs at my end will wipe, leaving no 'electron trail' to your workspace. That much I managed with no trouble. But the rest of it remains technically a little fragile, so as I said, don't lose that jacket, don't take it off… "
"Right."
"As for the rest of it," Mark said, "per our discussion about what you think's going to start to happen later, I've `trip wired' the outside of your own workspace. I think I can safely say that no one will be able to detect that trip wiring. The minute someone tries to hack into any of your accounts-either yours or your folks' alarms will go
off here in my space, and my system will start a traceback on whoever's trying to get at your files. When that happens, your own space will alert you, if you're in Death-world, through the links I've built into the jacket. For times when you're not virtual, you'll want to install some other alert method, to your home comms or whatever-I've left the 'hot ends' of the alert routines visible for you, in your space. Hook them up whatever wayyou like, then camouflage them. After that, we'll have the information we need to send Net Force after whoever it is. And then you and I will be covered with glory."
Mark grinned. "Assuming," he added, "that they don't pitch eight kinds of fit when they find out what we're doing." He made a pointing-upward gesture that indicated the entire adult world in general, but specifically his father, and his mother, and Charlie's mom and dad, and James Winters. "Because you haven't told them…"
Charlie made an unhappy face. "How did you know?"
"The same way I know that I haven't exactly told my dad about what we're up to," Mark said. "You know you're being careful… I know you're being careful. But they don't understand, do they?"
"I'm not sure they would," Charlie said, "no." The thought of what his father's face would look like, if he told him what he was planning to do, had been haunting him the last day or so. And as for Mom… But haunting him more assiduously were the faces of Renee, and Malcolm, and Jeannine, and the rest of them. No one else was in the position to find out as much about what had happened to them as Charlie was. And more to the point, time was running out. There was only so much of the month left, at which time Charlie was sure that the person who he was sure had been stalking the "suicides," and was somehow complicit in their deaths, might well go dormant again. A year would go by during which media and police attention to the suicides would wane, and then, Charlie was sure, there would be more of them.
No more, he had thought last night, as he'd been going over his plans, and had started putting them into operation while scanning through some of the bleak-sounding messages left in the Deathworld "bulletin board" system. No more deaths. The image of the dim hallway, the peeling paint, a huddled form lying across the room from him, intruded itself again. No more.