Omega point rak-2

by Guy Haley

  This lay beneath the smothering layer of the complex code Richards tentatively identified as created by k52. He took another look. k52's contained information, but it was unable to express itself. The codes were fighting one another, both attempting to occupy the same space. It was an eerie feeling. Information in the Grid came like currents in a sea, and these were two streams, isolated and competing for resources, fighting like snakes. Behind them, on the edge of his awareness, was the hum of the remaining thirty-one Realms, beyond that faint hints of the Grid, maddeningly unattainable.

  The patchwork world seethed with simple near-Is, all modded, some corrupt, bound to the world they inhabited. As he watched, k52's programmes probed and bit. The older code reacted, in some places holding out, while in others chunks of the world frittered to nothing, scores of lesser digital minds going with it. The complex code was winning, but not in the usual way. Richards could sense no hunter-killers, no phages, nothing used for normal datawipe, but somehow k52's stream was besting the other, even as the other infected it and subverted parts of it.

  Something else caught his attention. Within the modded near-I populations, several true AIs' Gridsigs rang out, obvious as elephants in a field of rabbits. There were many Twos and Ones, a few Fours and a Six, some bound into the fabric of the world, others on top, idents masked and unreadable.

  Three of the sigs he recognised in spite of their camouflage. There was nothing quite like the digital song of a living Class Five, and he knew these well.

  Rolston, Pl'anna and k52. Pl'anna's was fragile and changed, yet true at its heart, Rolston's irregular and inconstant, echoes doubling it up. Both were faint and distorted, similarly modded to the lesser near-Is infesting the fabric of the makeshift Realm, flashing with parts of the world code. k52's had grown black and monstrous, boiling with power.

  As soon as his awareness brushed k52's Gridsig, something pressed hard back, breaking his concentration.

  "Ah, bollocks," said Richards, and tried to snatch himself back.

  "Richards," said a voice in his mind, the pressure of a giant intellect coming with it, and something else — unbounded irritation. "There you are. Goodbye, Richards," said k52.

  Somewhere in the conflicted world codes opened. Richards caught the sense of another presence, angry, looking right at him. Then the connection snapped shut with physical force. Irreality rippled, and Richards was cast across the room, landing in a tangle of limbs and loaves in the middle of the YamaYama harvest festival display.

  "Oh-oh," said Bear.

  The air changed, becoming sharp and electric. Richards pulled himself free from squashed bread and fruit and hurried to where Bear stood. To the east of them, in the darkening sky, a thunderhead was building itself up into an angry mountain.

  The sky rumbled. A gust of wind hurled debris into their faces. The clouds turned black, rushing in like oil on water, casting the distant golden fields into unnerving contrast.

  "Mr Richards…" said Bear slowly. The wind grew, the stalks of wheat tossed and strained, hissing frantically, a trillion serpents trapped in earth by their tails, desperate to flee.

  "Just Richards," breathed Richards.

  The clouds ate the sun. A shroud of darkness was thrown across the land.

  A crack of thunder, and another. The ground trembled. The church swayed. The toy bear and the facsimiled man stumbled out into the street.

  "Uh, Mr Richards!" shouted Bear over the gathering wind, "I think it's high time we got out of here." He pointed. Heading toward the village, a towering vortex of sinister energies, a hurricane of smoke and mercury. Tendrils probed down from the underside of the cloud, malevolent whirlwinds questing for nourishment. The storm moved with unnatural swiftness toward the YamaYama village. Trees, crumbling houses and the mill wheel whipped skyward. When they touched the vortex they shattered, consumed in a shower of cold silver sparks.

  Richards ran for all he was worth. The air rasped in his lungs, burning them. He was choked by dust, and he cursed whoever had given him this body for not making it a fitter one. A storm tendril made landfall behind him and the church exploded, fizzing bits of wood raining down and turning to sparkling nothing as they hit the ground. He stumbled, sharp claws scraped his back, and he was lifted high. He was on Bear's back.

  "Hang on, sunshine!" roared Bear. "I'm going to have to put some effort into this!" And they were away, Bear snorting as he galloped.

  Bear made for a copse illuminated by one last sunbeam. "Let's hope that lasts!" he yelled.

  They were within a paw's swipe as the wind came upon them. It was full of… things. Some of these were of the prosaic kind, grit and twigs and bits of house, but many of them were not. Intangible efreets and harpies rolled in the air, riding the energy of the storm. The wind was braided with cruel laughter, and claws teased Bear's fur as he burst into trees and sunshine and safety. Richards did not follow.

  "Wuh?" said Bear. He turned to see Richards being carried backward by some half-visible devil. Behind them the land was crumbling to nothing.

  "Help!" shouted Richards.

  "Mr Richards!" shouted Bear.

  The toy dug his claws deep into an oak overhanging the nothingness and reached out for Richards. Richards gave up punching the thing carrying him and reached back for Bear, managing to grasp one smooth claw.

  "Hold… on… harder!" yelled Bear above the tornado. "Don't… let… go!"

  "I'm fucking trying!" shouted Richards.

  The pair of them were pulled away from refuge into space. Chunks of clay and soil crumbled from the edge of the island, frittering to bits as they hurtled upwards.

  "I'm slipping!" shouted Richards.

  "Hold on, Mr Richards, hold on!" But it was no use. Bear was slipping. The oak shifted. The ground disappeared beneath his feet. The tree leaned out into the uncanny storm, Bear holding the tree, Richards grasping the bear and the thing in the dark hauling hard at the AI.

  The storm diminished, the vortex and its cargo of nightmare whirling around into ever tighter spirals, until it reached a point of black light and vanished with a shriek. Richards came free. Bear struggled to keep hold of him as he swung toward and under the fragment of earth that remained.

  They hung over the void.

  "Frigging pandas on a bike," gasped Bear. "That was horrible. I've never seen The Terror up close like that, Mr Richards."

  "Just Richards," panted Richards.

  Bear told Richards to climb up onto his belly, then hauled them both onto the island, where they lay on the grass. The tree creaked woefully and fell down into the nothing, disintegrating in a shower of multicoloured subatomic bits.

  "k52, you bastard. Total dissolution," said Richards. "He tried to wipe me. Now I'm mad."

  "Nice friend," said Bear. "Oooh. I think I've pulled the stitches in my arm."

  "Still," said Richards. "He didn't kick me out entirely. I've got a fix on the other Fives, more or less; that's something. If I can find them, things might be a little bit easier for us." He looked at them in his mind. He had a dim awareness of the war taking place in the rush of numbers that made up this construct. He tried to force his way back into the code level, looking out for k52 as he did so, but could not make further progress. Rolston and Pl'anna's signatures remained faint, but offered answers, if he could find them.

  Bear sat and looked out into the infinity of blackness.

  "Geoff…" He hung his head. "It's gone. All of it's gone. Geoff… Geoff's gone." The great animal began to weep, a mournful sound born of damp earth and the regrets of forests. Richards was battered by the misery they contained. Unsure of what to do, he reached his arms around the mighty toy. Bear leaned into him and howled.

  "There, there," Richards said. "There, there."

  Otto was never going to believe this.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kharkov

  Autumn rain rattled hard on the windows as Veronique Valdaire worked on Chloe, attempting to trace Waldo through Kolosev's ripped files. Sh
e was tired and her muscles were stiff from hunching over her equipment, her nerves tense as she checked and rechecked her systems for infiltration by Kaplinski.

  They were in a cheap hotel in Kharkov, five hours east of Kolosev's hideout, posing as tourists. The desk clerk hadn't believed them, but had not said a word. She'd taken one look at Otto and Lehmann and her face said it all. The Ukraine was a part of the European Union, but Russia was close, and altered men like Otto were a common sight, enforcers for exile Chinese clan-gangs, or muscle for Russian oligarchs and resource barons.

  The room smelled of pickled cabbage and heavy bread. There were hairs on the soap and grease stains on the headboard above the bed. There were no modern materials in the room to absorb the signs of human life, no drones to scrub them away. Veronique had not felt clean since she came to the country. It didn't seem to bother Chures, who sat in a corner eating a bowl of borscht bought from a vending machine with a sour look on his face. He raised another spoonful to his lips, changed his mind and put the bowl on the scratched coffee table.

  "Not to your taste?" she said.

  " Sopa de mala," Chures replied. "How is your work coming?"

  Valdaire tapped a few icons on Chloe's screen and sat back. She rubbed her eyes; she'd been staring at screens and holos for three hours and they ached with the glare. "I'm done. Chloe will do the rest. I've constructed a set of algorithms that should get round Kolosev's security — to say he was a hacker, his 'ware is pretty simple, all sequential, once you untangle the cover. If he knew where Waldo was, we'll know soon enough. I've some financial transactions to look at, which he buried deep. I've also got Chloe burrowing into the Russian military datanet, to check out likely locations for Waldo's base of operations should Kolosev's data lead us to a dead end. Their data is patchy, but one way or another we'll find Waldo."

  Chures' face was hard to read. Valdaire couldn't hold his gaze for long; he was too cold and appraising, but spoke relatively warmly now. "Good, you're pretty good. You've been working hard. Want a beer?"

  "It's not much," said Valdaire.

  "You shouldn't be modest," said Chures. He hunted round for a bottle opener in the room's dirty mini-fridge. "Your record is impressive; not many backroom operatives get medals. I don't impress easily."

  "I was only one person on my squad. I don't know why they singled me out." She meant that too. She had a suspicion, planted in her mind by Reardon, her jealous NCO, that she got picked out of all of them because she was the most photogenic, and because she was an immigration success story. That annoyed her, more because she hated to be judged for her looks, though like anyone she enjoyed being thought attractive. That annoyed her too, an annoyance at herself for such paradoxical, typically human, typically female, thinking. And fuck Reardon if he hadn't planted a worm of doubt in her mind over it.

  Chures moved carefully. He was such a precise man, thought Valdaire. "InfoWar is a serious business. You should be proud of the service you gave our country."

  "I don't see it that way," said Valdaire. "Most of the programmes I use are buy-ins."

  "Apart from the illegal ones," said Chures. He found what he was looking for. Bottles clinked as he gripped two in one hand. "What about those? All self-written? You're a skilled programmer."

  "I'd love a beer," said Valdaire.

  A pair of sharp escapes of gas, and Chures handed a beer to Valdaire. "No need to be nervous, senorita," he said.

  "Do you always tell women what to do, Mr Chures?"

  That made him smile, a slight curve on his full lips, barely perceptible. "I am a Latino of a very old-fashioned kind."

  "The patronising kind."

  He shrugged. "I apologise, I am what I am." Chures took a pull of his lager. "These Ukrainians make bad soup, but their beer is not so bad. Where are our German friends?"

  "I made Otto get some rest," said Valdaire. "He was beginning to look twitchy. He's emotionless at the best of times, but he was looking through me as if I wasn't there. I guess five days with no sleep is no good even for cyborgs. No, make that especially for cyborgs."

  "And Lehmann?"

  "Up on the roof, keeping watch. I have Chloe plugged into every piece of surveillance in the area, but he insisted. I think it's hardwired into him. They're worried about this Kaplinski."

  "They should be. Have you read his file?"

  "No."

  "Then don't. You will not sleep for weeks."

  "I can handle it."

  "If you say so."

  "You don't like them much," said Valdaire. It was getting dark early, winter drawing in, the rain showing no sign of letting up.

  "No," said Chures. "No man should become too much like them; like the machines."

  "You used to wear a personality blend. That kind of mind-tomind intimacy made you closer to the numbers than the cyborgs are," said Valdaire.

  Chures rubbed at the scar on his neck where his AI partners' receiver unit had been implanted before it had betrayed him. "It was limited, traffic between him and me, buffered in my favour. I did it so I could understand them better, not because I wanted to be more like them," he countered.

  "We'll never have a world without machines," said Valdaire. "You're swimming against history. Give up. Better to follow the current and hope we wash up somewhere safe."

  "I don't recall saying I wished for a world without machines," said Chures mildly.

  "OK, fine. Do you wish for a world where there are no thinking machines?" said Valdaire baldly.

  "You come from the south," said Chures, and sat back in his chair.

  "You're changing the subject," she said.

  "I'm not. You ask why I wore the blend. I am telling you. Do you remember what it was like, for you, there in…?"

  "Cote D'Ivoire, we came from Cote D'Ivoire. And no, I don't, not much. I was very young."

  "Your file says you were seven, that's not so very young."

  Valdaire let out a ragged breath and put her beer down, although she didn't let it go. Through the glass, the table, to the floor, its touch anchored to the room. "I've blanked most of it. It's all very dark and thankfully a very long time ago. And before you ask, I really don't want to talk about it."

  "You were talking to Klein about it."

  Her hands, around the neck of the beer; across the back of the left, if she looked hard, she could see a thin line, barely visible through the heavy pigmentation of her skin. They could never get rid of all the scars. "No, not really. I was talking to myself, I think. It helps. I don't want to talk about it now."

  Chures took another swallow, fixed her with those cold grey eyes. "Your father was a university man, yes? He got you into Canada, right away. Good points score, straight over the Atlantic wall."

  "The walls had not been finished then," Valdaire said, "but if that's your point, yes, we were lucky."

  "You were. My family was not."

  "You don't know what you're talking about," said Valdaire. A machete blade flashed in her mind, and she closed her eyes. She remembered more than she let on.

  Chures cradled his beer. "I grew up a refugee, a real refugee, no home. We left Colombia; I was seven too, struggling north with thousands of others. Mexico was still in chaos back then, just joined USNA and under martial administration. What we found when we got there was…" He paused for a moment, took another mouthful of beer. "I was in Puerto Penasco. You ever hear of it?"

  "No," said Valdaire.

  Chures pursed his lips. "Why should you? It was one camp among many. But it was there, when I was ten years old, that I killed my first man, Ms Valdaire, a stinking beast who tried to rape my baby sister. There was such trafficking in the young then, such abuse, so easy in the confusion. He thought she was easy prey." He took another sip of his drink. "I used a screwdriver, one of the tools provided by the USNA authorities. It was carbon plastic, supposedly too hard to weaponise. One of the things I discovered in the camps was that there is little that cannot be used as a weapon. I sharpened it and sharpened
it, grinding away at stones until they were worn to sand. Grinding it took me weeks, but eventually it took such an edge I cut my own finger just by touching it. The blood fascinated me, but I never cut myself again. I saw some of the other kids go that way, carving themselves in the night time, trying to secure an illusion of control." His eyes flicked toward her arms, and she hugged herself self-consciously. She wanted to shout that she hadn't done that to herself, she wanted to hit him, she wanted to cry. She did none of these things. "There is no control there, only despair," said Chures. "Despair is the worst emotion of all, it makes men weak, it makes them give up. Whatever happens, Ms Valdaire, never give in to despair."

  Rain clattered harder on the windows. Chures looked at her, his eyes asking her to respond. She said nothing.

  "The man went after my sister, stinking of shit and sweat. He saw me, but he paid me no attention. I was an undersized child — there was little food in the camps. His mistake. I leapt onto his back from a crate." He smiled. "You know, they were 'temporary containment boxes' given to us when we arrived, to use for a few weeks; years later they were all we had for furniture. The screwdriver pierced the man's neck more easily than I thought it would, a slight resistance as it hit the skin, before it stretched and split like a smile and slid into the muscle. The man dropped my sister, stamped about from foot to foot like one of the cheap robot toys that could be bought in the camp for ten cents."

  Chures' cold eyes never left Valdaire's; there was a grim enjoyment now. Is he enjoying reliving this? thought Valdaire. He wants to discomfit me. He wants me to share. He thinks I am pampered, thinks I got off lucky. He knows nothing.