by Tom Clancy
She smiled at him, an understanding expression, and Charlie was instantly angry enough to spit, for the look was that of someone humoring a child. He then instantly felt guilty for his anger, for there were thousands of Explorers scattered all over the North American continent, and there was no reason for this woman to believe that he had anything important going on in his life at all. "I'm sorry, but he's not available right now-"
"Then let me leave a message for him," Charlie said. "Please tell him that I have the data he asked me to correlate for him, but if I don't hear from him shortly, the body count may have increased by one. Tell him he can reach me here for the next fifty minutes-" And he rattled off the address of the Net center and of the present workspace. "Thank you! Workspace, new access address, 8846396677336-"
This number he knew well enough from having to input it about thirty times two weeks ago, when his address-filing facility had developed a fault that it took him the better part of an afternoon to put right. Charlie gulped, and then let out a breath of pure relief as the sunlight spilling in through the roof of the VAB appeared all around him, but grayed out, as if through a veil. "You are entering a restricted space," a harsh robotic voice said. "Access is forbidden. Track and trace protocols are in operation."
"Mark, it's me, it's Charlie!"
Thegrayness vanished immediately. He rushed out into the sunlight across the concrete, looked around him. The Rolls-Skoda was sitting in the middle of the floor. High above him, he heard the buzzards softly squeaking and cheeping to one another as they worked the in-building updraft. "Mark?" he shouted, and to his embarrassment his voice broke in mid-word.
"Jeez," Mark said, though Charlie couldn't see from where, "what's up with you? You sound like a chicken."
There were about ten possible answers to that. "Mark, where are you? I'm up the creek!"
Mark appeared immediately in the middle of the floor, over by the Rolls. "Sorry, I was doing some maintenance," he said, heading over to Charlie. "What's up?"
"I'm stuck in a public access near the Square," Charlie said, "and somebody just tried to grab me off the street!"
"I'll call the cops," Mark said.
"Don't!"
Mark looked at him as if he was nuts. Charlie could entirely understand why. "You do that," Charlie said, "the minute they turn up there, whoever tried to grab me will just play it innocent and vanish, and we'll be no better off than we have been-either they'll come after me again later, at a better time, or else some other poor kid's gonna get grabbed instead. And probably killed! We've got to do something now. But we've got to keep whoever's chasing me on the hook, until the Net. Force people can catch up with him, with me-"
"I'll hit the panic button," Mark said. Immediately the whole space filled with an astounding howl of klaxons. He looked around him with intense satisfaction.
"It's not going to help," Charlie said, "Winters isn't available!"
"I bet my dad is, though," said Mark. "He'll call the cavalry." He looked around him, then, with some concern, because nothing but the klaxon seemed to be happening. "Or he would if he was in his office-" he muttered.
"Mark, we have to do something now!"
"That'll go through to his pager," Mark said. "No point in us sitting around waiting."
"The guy chasing me," Charlie said, "it's a fair bet he'll realize what I've done. If he has any brains at all, he'll be in some other Net access place right now, trying to find out where I am online. Then he'll try to trace me-and I'm on limited time, all I had was a valuecard. I only have about forty-five minutes now before the door of my booth opens up-"
"Then we'd better get where you're expected to be," Mark said, "and stall."
Charlie stared at Mark. "You mean Deathworld-"
"Where else? How else is he going to track you if you're in a public access except by your Deathworld ID? And you've got a hot-pursuit situation, haven't you? Well, you don't want to lose the guy, do you? You just said you didn't want him to go to ground! He will, if he loses you." Mark looked at him, a challenging kind of look. "You've got to keep him chasing you until the cavalry comes over the hill, Charlie!"
Charlie gulped.
"But you won't be alone," Mark said. "Come on, Charlie… the game's afoot. And it's us. But we won't be the ones who get caught. Let's go where you're expected to go when you panic."
"My workspace."
"From in here, not direct from your access." Mark picked up the Magic Jacket from where it had been draped over the chair behind his "desk" and threw it at Charlie. "He, she, or they won't expect that. My antitrace protocols outside this space will at least slow them down. And then we'll get into Deathworld. But on the way, you think we might pick up someone else who knows his way around there…?"
Charlie gulped, and began to see how it could go. And slowly he started to smile. It was still dangerous, and he was still scared. But this was exactly what he had been working toward. And he now had someone on his side.
"Nick," he said. "Yeah. It's worth a try. Come on, Mark, let's go…!"
Chapter 9
Charlie came out into the ashy darkness between the Lake. of Tears and the Dark Artificer's Keep, and stood looking around him for a second with Mark. Here and there in the darkness beyond the lake, the Damned ran by, pursued by the usual demons. Banies made their way toward the Keep, or into and out of it. There was no sign of any pursuit, but then he wasn't sure what pursuit would necessarily look like. It could wear a seeming as easily as he could, and didn't have to look like anyone he would recognize at the moment. And is it Kalki? Or Shade? Or someone else they've sent after me?
"One thing you've going for you," Mark said, "they'll be looking for one kid, not two."
"Great. That means they'll either pass me by, or find me and also try to trace and grab whoever's with me," Charlie said. "Why leave witnesses?"
This thought made Mark widen his eyes briefly. Then he grinned. "I don't think so somehow," Mark said. "I don't care who they are. They're not going to get into my workspace from my ID here. It's too well protected for that." He looked around them, though, with some concern. "But I don't think we should just be standing around. Where do we go?"
"For the moment," Charlie said, "safety in numbers. There are more people in the Keep than there are out here. Let's get inside."
They headed in through the front door. There were a fair number of Banies who used this spot as a gateway "access" while working on solving the Eighth Circle, and most of them were heading past Charlie and Mark toward the entryway that led to the Stairways to Nowhere. "We could lose ourselves pretty well in there, from the look of it," Mark said.
"Lose would be the word," Charlie said, nervous. "I don't know my way around in there real well-"
"Doesn't matter. Whoever's chasing you," Mark said, "we've just got to keep them in here, and occupied, until the Net Force people can get in and identify them."
Charlie swallowed. "Will they be able to do that in forty minutes?"
"More like thirty-five now," Mark said, not even having the grace to sound scared. "They'd better."
"But how are they going to find us?"
Mark tugged at the virtual "fabric" of the Magic Jacket's sleeve. "I left full details about this in the message to my dad," he said. "The tracking routine it uses is piping direct into his space. Anything you see or hear, he and Net Force will, too… and it's all archiving, storing virtual locations and addresses second by second. All we can do now is leave the tracking to him and his people, and get ourselves deep inside here… deep enough that anyone who comes after us is plainly doing it on purpose and not just as some kind of accident."
Charlie looked around him, looked at the entry to the stairways. "Okay," he said. "I guess we'd better-" "Manta!"
Charlie jumped. But it wasn't Kalki's voice, or Shade's.
Not that that means anything! He turned, half-furious, half terrified to see Nick hurrying toward them through the great doors. "Ohmygosh," Charlie said, grabbing Nick
by the shoulders as he got close, "I'm gonna kill you! Do you know who I thought you were?"
"I can imagine. But I didn't want to yell your real name in the middle of all this. Who knew what could happen? Hey, nice jacket."
"Never mind the jacket. How did you know my handle?"
"I've been reading the message boards," Nick said. "I put some things together. Your message timings, for example. Look, can this wait? I got the message you left me about the people who're after you. Had to be the hero, didn't you?"
Charlie opened his mouth to make some angry retort, and then stopped himself, for Nick's tone wasn't angry or mocking. It was a compliment. "Uh-"
"Yeah. Well, there's something I've been wanting to try, and we'd better try it now, before somebody grabs us." He looked over at Mark. "Who's your friend?"
"Nick, this is Mark. Mark Winters, Nick Melchior. Mark's a virtwrangler, Nick. He's figured a way to track our progress in here." Charlie displayed the jacket. "Look, we have to give the bad guys a target, but one that's too tough to actually catch. That means we've got to get in deep enough that the people looking for me won't be able to find me. Help's coming, but we've gotta stall."
"Great. Come this way," Nick said, heading off to their right. "Nine be deep enough for you?"
"Nine?" Charlie swallowed. "Nick, one of them, the one who called himself Kalki, he said he'd been through the gates of Nine… "
"He's full of it," Nick said. "No one can come back after they get through the gates of Nine. There's a 'limited resume' in place after that. The designers implemented it to stop all the walk-throughs from blowing the final solution of the environment."
"When did you find that out?"
"Yesterday. From the Gate Guardian."
"You found the way down to Nine?"
Nick nodded. "But I put it off… I didn't want to go through until you were along. So now we'll give it a try."
"You don't know if it works or not?" Mark said, sounding alarmed.
"We're gonna find out real quick," said Nick. "Come on!"
There were nine tall gray doors opening out of the left-hand side of the huge entry hall, genuine old-fashioned doors with lever handles, looking like something out of the seventeenth century, with fancy scrollwork carved around the gray stone doorjambs. "Don't look like we're rushing or anything," Nick said, "just stroll." Charlie found this extremely difficult to do under the circumstances, but he forced himself to slow down and keep pace with Nick.
"A lot of people look at this at one point or another," Nick said softly, "but usually there isn't anything here. There's a trick to it, though… "
He went to the first of the five doors and stood by it, idly, listening. Then he shook his head.
"Nothing," Nick said, "but this is gonna be easier with three of us. Each of you, quick, go up to a door and listen. If you hear anything, open it right away. Don't look obvious about it, though. You don't want anyone noticing if you can help it!"
Mark headed for the next door up, and Charlie took a long breath, trying to calm himself, and went to the door after that. He stood by it… and then his eyes widened. A soft rumor and murmur of voices, like a crowd-
He pulled the door open a crack and peered in.
The sound didn't change, but Charlie looked in and saw that the dimly lit room was completely full of people, pushing, murmuring, moving together. It was in fact a vast dance floor, absolutely crammed with people in every kind of clothes, ancient and modern, and they were dancing hard to Joey Bane's music. Hanging up high from an almost invisible ceiling was, of all things, a mirrored "disco ball," and it shot glitters and spots of light all around the room as it turned, picking out here a jeweled headdress, there a studded white Elvis jacket, over there a slowglass jumpsuit. Charlie looked back around the door, signaled unobtrusively to Nick and Mark. They came over, and as they did, Charlie slipped in through the door. They came after him, and Nick shut the door behind him.
The instant he did, the sound came blasting up to full: the "flap mix" of "Don't Look Back," banging away with its wild 11/4 beat. Mark looked around him with admiration at the dancers. "They may be the Damned," he said, "but they've got rhythm."
"They're not the Damned," Nick said, grinning. "They're us."
Charlie looked at him, bemused. "It's a party," Nick said. "The Party. One of the environment-programmers' jokes. Everybody who ever visited Deathworld wanders in and out of here eventually. Not the real them, of course; just a recording of them, a sim… "
"You mean we're in here somewhere, too?" Mark said, sounding slightly amused. "Someone might find that confusing… "
"Sorry," Nick said, "but I don't think it works that way. The one time your simulacrum can't be found here is when you're genuinely on-site. So the Guardian told me. But other people might see it and not know for sure, for a while anyway, whether it was really you they were interacting with…" He grinned. "There are probably some funny scenes, every now and then, because some people do just come here to dance… "
"Looks like a good place to get lost in, anyway," Charlie said.
"Better than that," said Nick. "This is the Party. And since it is, there's a side door… and a Lady sneaking out of it. We've got to catch her. Come on-"
Nick started to push his way through the crowd. The other two followed him. It was hard going, hot and difficult. The oblivious dancers were packed incredibly tightly together and the music was jarringly loud. Even Nick looked like he was wincing a little at the volume.
Mark was close behind Charlie. "Are you sure your dad's people are gonna get here before our time runs out?" Charlie yelled to Mark, that being the only way he could make himself heard.
Mark was beginning to look uncomfortable. "Look," he shouted back, "I did the best I could. My dad gets busy, too! I told you, I sent a 'most urgent' to his virtpager. He'd never ignore that unless some seriously important government thing-"
"Like happens every day!" Charlie yelled. But there was no point in fighting about it now. Charlie took another deep breath, went plowing through the crowd in Nick's wake.
It got harder as they got closer to the center of things. There's this, anyway, Charlie thought, it's not gonna be easy for anyone to follow us- For that moment he disobeyed the advice of the music, looked over his shoulder.
And saw one of those tall doors behind them open. A second later he got a glimpse of a long black drapecoat, violet skirt, violet hair, as Shade came slipping in
Uh-oh. Fear and loathing both rose in him, and Charlie struggled to deal with the reaction rationally. It wasn't as if she was going to be able to spray him with sco-bro here and now. If she's even directly involved. Had Mark gotten any concrete evidence that she was? Had he even managed to track down exactly who had tripped the "trip wire" around his workspace? And is Shade someone different from Kalki-or is she the same person? For I didn't see them together… Charlie gulped. No time to spend worrying about all this now. Just follow Nick and keep them in here, and pray that Net Force is on the job-
Ahead of him, Nick was maybe two thirds of the way through the crowd, moving faster now, as if it was begin
fling to thin a little in patches near the far edge of the room. He was making his way toward the far left corner. Charlie could just see that the crowd was somewhat sparser there. And also a black blot, a shape, leaning near a door, a normal human-sized door, not like the ones they had come through, a door that was just closing…
Nick came out of the crowd, with Charlie behind him, and Mark bringing up the rear. The black blot-shape, hard to see in the disco-ball dimness, was a tall, potbellied demon, presently standing in front of the newly closed door. He had little stubby black-leather wings, and he was wearing a uniform like the ones movie-theater ushers or hotel-lobby bellboys had worn a century ago, right down to a rather ridiculous looking little pillbox hat pushed over to one side and partly resting on one of his big ears. Nick, coming up to him, paused and looked at him oddly.
"Hey," he shouted over
the music, "you're not Melchgrind! You're Wringscalpel! I remember how you wear that hat."
The demon with the flaming sword blinked at him. "Nick?" it shouted back, squinting at him. "Why, how are you, fella? You back again? I didn't think you were going to linger."
"Change of plans," Nick said loudly. "This isn't your usual patch, either."
"No, we have to rotate through all the 'portal' jobs," Wringscalpel said, sounding resigned. "Sometimes whether we've been briefed on them fine detail or not. If I had a nickel for-"
"Neither of us is gonna be worth a plugged nickel if we don't hurry up here, Wringer! We're in big trouble at the moment. Someone's chasing us, and we really need not to get caught."
"Now, you know I can't let you go through without passing the test… "
"There is no time for that!" Nick yelled. "Wringscalpel, in Joey's own name, will you let us through here before you have a bunch more fake suicides on your hands?!"
"Test?" said Mark. "What test?"
Wringscalpel's eyes went wide. "But I can't. It's not that I wouldn't do it for you, Nick, it's just that the machine's routines won't allow-"
"What test?" Charlie said.
"He's not going to ask you what's your favorite color, if that's what you were thinking," Nick said. "Hurry up and ask the damn questions, then, Wringscalpel! I'm answering for all three of us."
"You two agree to that?" Wringscalpel said.
"Yes," Mark said, and "Yeah, yeah, just do it!" Charlie said, for he could see Shade getting closer to them.
"All right. You understand the rules? If you miss a question, you're all bumped back up to One-" "Fine!"
"And they're not the same questions as yesterday, Nick, they change every hour-"
"Come on!" they yelled at him in unison.
"All right," Wringscalpel said. "What is the purpose of life?"
"He doesn't want anything easy, does he?" Charlie moaned.
"Shaddup, Charlie. Pain, Wringscalpel! And learning how to deal with it."
"What is the dawn of the soul?"