Matrix Man

by William C. Dietz

  "Here's where she is," Saxon said, dumping a map and some photos onto the rough wood. Like the rest of the furniture, the dining room table was strictly makeshift. It consisted of some beat-up planks on a couple of sawhorses. The table was sway-backed in the middle and heavier items had a tendency to slide that way.

  Corvan pulled the photos over and took a look. What he saw was a somewhat older apartment house. The kind which had seen better days, when young families had occupied two- and three-bedroom apartments and frolicked in the pool. But the pool was packed with trash now, and the two- and three-bedroom apartments had been sub-divided into studio singles, all of which housed three or four people. A growing trend all over the world.

  "Any sign of surveillance by the police or WPO?" Kim looked over Corvan's shoulder. Ever since their arrival at the safe house she'd been somewhat distant, answering when spoken to, but keeping her interaction to a minimum. It was Saxon who answered:

  "No, there's no sign of surveillance, but that doesn't mean much. Normally they aren't as clumsy as they were last night. There could be a battalion of cops in the surrounding buildings and we wouldn't know. Assuming they searched Kim's editing suite prior to setting it on fire, then it's fair to assume that they saw Neely's disk. If so, they know about Bethany Bryn and might use her as a trap."

  “A comforting thought,” Corvan said dryly. "I trust we'll have some sort of escape route?"

  "Two, actually," Saxon replied, placing two remotes on the plywood and allowing them to slide in Corvan's direction. "Button one brings a fast van to the front door. Button two puts a chopper on the roof. Don't use button two unless you absolutely have to. Choppers aren't cheap, and once we use it for an escape we'll have to destroy it."

  "Understood," Corvan replied, taking a remote for himself and handing the other to Kim. "With any luck at all we'll tape an interview with Ms. Bryn and walk home."

  Saxon laughed. "I wouldn't advise that. We're fairly sure that the WPO has access to everything the chip heads send in. And if you spend a lot of time on the street some of those images are bound to include you. A computer-aided skim would select you for body type, match you for size, and strip away those disguises in a matter of minutes. That's why you won't find any chip heads in the Exodus Underground."

  "Oh goody," Kim commented sarcastically. "I'm dressed up as a mentally disturbed hormone case for no reason at all."

  "They do what?" Corvan demanded. "If what you're saying is true, that's a big story in and of itself!"

  "Sure it is," Saxon agreed calmly. "But still not on a par with secretly assassinating the president of the United States."

  Corvan shook his head in amazement. One more assumption stripped away. Like most reporters, he regarded himself as somewhat sophisticated, wise to the ways of the world, and surprised by nothing. He hated to admit it, but with each passing hour there was more and more evidence that he'd been incredibly naive.

  Two hours later an Underground-controlled electro-cab dropped them a block from Bethany Bryn's apartment complex. It was evening and just getting dark. The streets were packed as usual, but a cool breeze blew in off the bay and made the air momentarily fresh.

  As they walked up the block, street vendors tried to sell them outrageously priced mystery meat, grubby-looking children begged for money, and a couple of scraggly-looking gang members whistled at Kim. Not too surprising, Corvan decided, since Sid had fitted her out with some sort of skin-tight black body stocking and a light cape, neither of which did anything to hide her figure. A fact which he found hard to ignore.

  Corvan had attempted to bridge the gulf between them more than once but with little success. Maybe time would accomplish what words couldn't. He hoped so.

  A Pac Tel van was parked in the middle of the street, this one grubby enough to be authentic, and was surrounded by a barricade of flashing lights.

  A trio of Virgin Marys eyed them suspiciously from the front steps of their commune. As Corvan and Kim walked by, they held up large chromium crosses and muttered the mantras which were supposed to prevent pregnancy. Just one of the many bizarre cults which had their origins in the population explosion.

  Stopping in front of Bethany's apartment house, Corvan checked the address, nodded to Kim, and climbed a short flight of steps. An intercom panel was set into one wall and Corvan pushed the appropriate button.

  There was a long wait before a whispery voice said, "Yes? Who is it?"

  The tiny comscreen located over Bethany's name remained blank, but Corvan knew that she could see him. He smiled and hoped that the electro-goggles wouldn't intimidate her. "Ms. Bryn? My name is Larry Dixon. I'm sorry to bother you, but I represent News Network 56, and we'd like to talk to you about Frank Neely's death. I called, but couldn't get through. There was a fire in a cable vault or something."

  Corvan knew this was true, since an Underground operative had started the fire some eight hours before, putting the entire block out of service. A fact which explained the Pac Tel van in the middle of the street.

  There was silence for a moment and then she said, "Frank Neely's death? When did he die?"

  "Interesting," Corvan thought to himself. Whatever Bethany did with her time, she didn't watch much news. Out loud he said, "A few days ago . . . Could we come in?"

  There was silence for a moment as Bethany thought it over, followed by an audible click as she released the door lock.

  "Thanks," Corvan said, and pushed the door open. Kim was right behind. There was a set of two elevators on the far side of the small lobby. Both were out of order and had been for years. Planks of wood had been nailed over them and spray painted with the words "KEEP OUT!"

  Corvan turned to the stairs and began to climb. The air was stale and thick with the smell of cooked food. Graffiti covered the walls. One piece said "MAKE WAR NOT BABIES" in red letters five feet high. Trash littered the stairwell and got underfoot. They were halfway up when three teenagers came racing down, screaming with laughter, almost bowling them over.

  Bethany was in apartment 221. When Corvan reached the second floor he turned down the dingy hallway and found that hers was the second door on the left.

  Corvan pressed the doorbell and nothing happened. He knocked softly and waited. There was momentary silence, followed by a whispery "Yes? Who's there?"

  "Larry Dixon and my assistant, Linda Lastow."

  "Just a moment."

  Corvan activated his implant and began to record as he heard the sound of three locks being undone, followed by the creak of an unoiled hinge.

  The woman who greeted them was Bethany Bryn all right, but a different person than the one they'd seen on Neely's desk. She was heavier, for one thing, and looked older, as if years instead of months had passed since the session with the VMG.

  "Come on in," she said emotionlessly. "You're wasting your time if you plan to rip me off. I sold everything of any value a month ago."

  Corvan had to admit that she was right. The room boasted a single window with no curtains and looked out onto the street. Outside of a pallet on the floor, some books stacked against one wall, and some filthy clothing, the room was almost bare.

  Over in one corner a tiny sink was flanked by a two-burner hot plate and some empty fast-food containers. To his right the door to a tiny toilet/shower combination stood open, and Corvan saw a picture of himself in a cracked mirror. The blonde crew cut was a shock.

  Bethany turned and made a sweeping gesture. "Welcome to the Ritz. I'd invite you to sit down, but the floor's kind of dirty. Now, what's this about Frank Neely?"

  Corvan told her about the WPO's raid, Neely's death, and the disk. Being unsure of how far he could trust her, Corvan withheld all the information about the president's assassination and the attempt to establish a global government. When he was finished Bethany shrugged and turned toward the window. Stepping up to it, she looked down at the street below.

  "I don't know what you want from me. Frank and I went together for a while. I thought he was kin
da cute, so serious and all, but not somebody for the long run. He was working on some sort of experimental video thing—it had a complicated name, but I forget what it was. Anyway, he hired me to come down and do some exercises in the middle of this weird-looking gridwork. I remember that I had to wear this skintight blue body stocking. Frank said it was for special effects and he wasn't kidding.

  "A few days later we're at his place and he drops a disk into his video player. 'Watch, this,' he says, and I did. Before I know it, I'm watching myself exercising in the nude. A few seconds later I'm fully clothed and playing the lead in that old Southern movie—you know the one, Gone With the Wind. Then I'm making love to the mayor of San Francisco. All sorts of weird stuff."

  Bethany shook her head and turned her back to the window. "I thought it was funny, a turn-on, and when the disk ran out we got naked for real. It's kinda freaky to see yourself doing it with people you never even met."

  "What happened then?" Kim asked. Bethany reminded her of what it was like to be poor, what she'd worked so hard to get away from, and it scared her. This woman had been successful, an actress, if something could pull her down, it could happen to Kim as well. It was the same sort of feeling that makes people want to know why someone was murdered. If it's something strange, like a brother-in-law on dope, you can rule it out.

  Bethany smiled sadly. Tears trickled down her cheeks. "Frank ran into some kind of trouble. One day he gave me some money and just disappeared. That's why I let you in. I miss him."

  "Yes," Kim said gently, "but what about you? What happened to you?"

  "I made a mistake," Bethany replied, and pulled up her right shirt sleeve. A length of black tubing was taped to the inside surface of Bethany's forearm. It disappeared under the surface of her skin just short of the elbow. Originally a bright pink, the auto injector had turned blue-black, signaling that her "snake" was dead. It took five to six thousand dollars to buy a "live" snake on the black market, along with the computer-designed narcotic which it contained, and she didn't have the money.

  Her hollow-looking eyes, puffed-up body, and prematurely aged skin indicated that she'd been hooked for some time now. Without a new snake she would go into massive withdrawal and die. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon.

  Across the street in a cramped hotel room, a man named Howard Johnson smiled as he squinted through a telescopic sight. The disguises didn't fool him for a moment. Not when subjected to computer analysis. The sight was plugged into a phone line which in turn connected the device to a WPO computer. Within 3.5 seconds the computer had processed the visual input, and based on a high degree of similarity between the subjects and the fugitives in question, had indicated a 79.3 percent match. And since Johnson regarded anything over a 75 percent match as worthy of a bullet, his decision was made. There were three traps to choose from and Corvan had chosen to visit his! Given the bounty, plus an unadvertised WPO bonus, this could be a profitable night's work.

  Howard Johnson, better known to his friends as HoJo, thought of himself as a great white hunter. Not of animals, many of which were nearing extinction, but of humans, who needed some thinning out.

  And like hunters of old, HoJo took pride in his work, in the way that he killed, always seeking a certain economy of effort and motion.

  In spite of the breeze which occasionally found its way through the open window, it was hot. Careful to keep his eyes on Bethany's room, HoJo withdrew an immaculate handkerchief from the inside breast pocket of his linen jacket, and dabbed his shaved head. The targets were talking, which meant that he had a moment to consider his options.

  Windows can be tricky, and for reasons known only to her, the Bethany woman kept hers closed. Glass will sometimes deflect even a perfectly aimed bullet, turning an otherwise certain kill into a near miss. Because of that, some snipers preferred to break the glass with the first bullet and hit the target with a second. Nice in theory, but all sorts of things could go wrong. A target with exceptionally fast reflexes might use that intervening second to hit the deck, a bodyguard might return fire—there were all sorts of possibilities.

  The present situation was made even more complicated by the fact that HoJo was faced with three different targets. Ah well, such difficulties were to be expected and must be overcome.

  HoJo blotted his upper lip and returned the handkerchief to its pocket. The laser-sighted Weatherby rested on a shoulder-high tripod. HoJo embraced it like a long-lost friend, allowing his cheek to touch polished wood and his right hand to seek the custom-contoured pistol grip. With the sight on "Optical" he checked to make sure that the cross hairs were centered on Bethany's back and switched to "Laser." HoJo took a deep breath, let it out, and pressed a button with his right thumb. A red dot appeared between Bethany's shoulder blades. HoJo squeezed the trigger.

  Kim was standing to Corvan's left when he saw the wink of red light. "Sniper!" He had Kim in his arms and was already diving toward the floor when his brain registered the sound of breaking glass and the meaty thump of a slug hitting flesh. The sound of the shot followed a fraction of a second later. It was loud, an unsilenced hunting rifle of some kind, and damned close.

  These thoughts came automatically, just as his army instructors wanted them too, the result of a thousand repetitions.

  Bethany fell facedown—dead before she hit the floor. Corvan and Kim landed side by side inches away. "Stay down and roll toward the wall," Corvan yelled, and immediately followed his own advice.

  Bullets began to thump into the walls and floor as HoJo laid down a carefully calculated pattern of lead.

  Suddenly the overhead light went out as Kim hit it with a book.

  "Good shot," Corvan called. "Crawl through the door! You'll be backlit otherwise."

  Kim did as he'd suggested, wiggling across the floor, doing her best to ignore the bullets which whapped into the wall a few feet away.

  As he followed Kim through the door Corvan heard distant sirens and knew time was getting short. He squirmed through the door, rolled right, and scrambled to his feet. Kim was waiting.

  "I called the chopper," she said, holding up her remote. "A few minutes from now the street'll be full of cops."

  Corvan nodded his agreement. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  Together they ran down the hall to the stairwell and started up toward the roof. Startled by their sudden appearance and desperate expressions, a middle-aged woman screamed and ducked into the third-floor hallway.

  Legs working, heart pumping, Corvan took the stairs two at a time. How tall was this building anyway? Ten stories? Twelve? If it was fifteen, he might as well surrender right now. Too many days spent sitting on his can eating good meals had taken the edge off his conditioning.

  Much to his annoyance, Corvan saw that Kim was not only keeping up, she wasn't even breathing hard. She even smiled as she passed him by. News Network 56 had a fully equipped exercise facility for their employees, and she'd been using it every day for the last nine months.

  Nine floors down and one to go. Or so he hoped. Corvan heard a fluttering roar and knew the helicopter was somewhere overhead. What if the pilot saw an empty roof and took off?

  Corvan's legs pumped even harder as he raced up the last flight of stairs, his heart beating like a trip-hammer in his chest, each breath a long, searing slice of pain.

  As he hit the top landing Corvan saw Kim kicking at a closed door. The damned thing was locked! Outside the chopper was a roaring storm of noise. How long would it wait?

  Kim stepped aside as Corvan raised his right leg and kicked with all his might. He visualized his foot hitting the door, wood splintering into a hundred pieces, and light shining through the wreckage. What he got was less dramatic but just as good. The lock broke and the door swung open.

  The chopper was already lifting as they burst through the door and ran toward it. Seeing them, the pilot stopped, hovered as they scrambled through the open door, and pulled up the second they were aboard.

  Just as the power-assi
sted door closed, two large-caliber slugs slammed through the cabin and went out the other side. As luck would have it, they left everything untouched. Down below, HoJo watched the helicopter lift and turn away. He swore softly and turned away from the window. You can't win 'em all. As he removed the rifle from its tripod, HoJo thought about Dietrich and the man called Slovo. Maybe the time had come for a little vacation down Mexico way.

  It was dark outside, and as Corvan and Kim fastened their seat belts, the city lights swung around in a dizzy dance. They put on their headsets. The pilot sounded tense.

  "Welcome aboard. Fasten your seat belts and hang on. This might get a little hairy. You can't see him, but there's a blue bird on our tail, and he ain't the blue bird of happiness either. Let's see if we can lose him in traffic."

  Kim wondered what the pilot meant and looked Corvan's way, but the reop shrugged. He didn't know either. Then the bottom dropped out as the chopper dived down between high-rise buildings and roared through a man-made canyon.

  Buildings whipped by on either side, an endless wall of lighted rectangles, surprised faces looking up as the helicopter roared by.

  Because of the way the chopper was designed, Corvan couldn't see behind. He could look ahead, though, and he didn't like what he saw. A tracery of sky bridges blocked the way: some high, some about halfway up, and none at street level. The chopper went down, just barely scooting under the lowest of the bridges, causing the multitude below to look up.

  The pilot banked right, taking a corner, and Kim saw a huge electronic billboard flash by. It said, "THE WORLD PEACE ORGANIZATION. WE’RE FOR ONE PEOPLE, ONE GOVERNMENT, AND ONE WORLD. WHO NEEDS ANYTHING MORE?" Then it was gone, replaced by another wall of lighted squares. There was a flash of light and something exploded up ahead.

  "Holy shit!" the pilot said. "They're using missiles!"

  As they flashed by the point of impact, Corvan saw that the pilot was correct. A missile had missed them and hit the side of a high-rise condo. It was incredible. The conflict had escalated another notch. Now it was public. Corvan smiled grimly. Horrible though it was, the missile might break the story wide open. You can't do things like mat without offering some sort of explanation, and whatever the government said, the press would question it.