Nosferatu

by Carl Sargent

  And this was just at the entrance to the system? What else did these cobbers have in here? He allowed his persona to change, accepting the slight disorientation that would bring. Now appearing in the form of a tall, spear-bearing Zulu, he strode forward to the bridge, and switched to bod mode. In a system like this, any specialized mode of operation left too many relative weaknesses for his liking.

  He took a chance on a smoke program, needing to quickly defeat the defenses of this first node. That would penalize him too, but Michael had enough confidence in his own skills not to worry overmuch. A swarm of noisy parrots filled the scene just as the lioness awoke and opened her throat to growl. Frag it, he thought, I took her for killer IC. but it’s another detection program. Surely?

  Michael quit the attack program and engaged a sleaze instead. Instead of the infinitely unfolding plastic wallet of passes and permits and wads of bills, which was the program’s usual image, his spear became a tribal charm, an intricate gold and silver design wholly unfamiliar to him. The lioness looked at it and yawned, a rippling growl coming from deep in her throat. Sweating a little, he edged past her toward the bridge.

  That bridge has got to be barrier IC, he thought. And he had the horrible feeling that it was probably pretty active most of the time. Try to cross that bridge and he’d find himself surrounded by killer giraffes or something. He brought the hawk to him to check it out.

  The bird set one foot uncertainly on the bridge. Now that he knew it was barrier, Michael engaged the sleaze program again to get past it undetected. Neatly, the spear changed again into a snake, undulating its way across the bridge, its body touching only alternate wooden planks. Carefully taking the same route, the warrior icon followed it.

  The jungle clearing beyond was standard fare, as were the tunnel-like pathways cut through the thick vegetation beyond that. This was the SPU, and down those pathways were the dataline junctions, he figured. The hawk told him there was nothing in the SPU itself; the clearing was empty.

  He called up Tracey and sent her down one dataline while he trod carefully along another. He was risking sensor mode now, needing to check the databanks at the end of the passages for information on missing persons. There was, of course, a fair chance that what he was after would be much further along in the system, but it was a chance he had to take. It depended on how the system was organized. The worst case was that the sensitive entries had been deleted entirely from the missing persons file and relocated elsewhere in far more heavily defended databases. No matter. His analyze programs could detect any trace of a deletion from way back, and if that was how they’d arranged things, taking lessons from the Israelis, he’d know about it.

  He got lucky. The oranges in the citrus grove were what he was after. He recalled the frame and switched back to bod mode again, minimizing the risk. There, wallowing peacefully in a pool beside the orange trees was a very, very large hippo.

  What the frag is that? he wondered. Tracey, appearing as a warrior like himself, opened her bag and released the browser program. The octopus-like creature floated happily in mid-air and began testing fruits with its avalanche of tentacles, picking off what it needed and flinging them into the bag.

  A split-second before it happened Michael knew something was wrong. Watching the hippo had been a mistake; it was only a decoy. The ground behind him turned into a swamp as a tar pit program activated; in the meantime a multitude of thin black serpents sped toward him at an unbelievable rate through the swaying grass.

  His reaction speed hit Mach 2. Black mambas, huh. Fastest thing without legs and poisonous as hell. Black IC. If he jacked out now, he’d lose everything and would never get back in. He’d faced this one before. That was why he’d slapped those monitors onto his body.

  Adrenaline never raced through him like it did on these rare occasions. Michael knew he didn’t have long before he would be automatically disconnected by his own deck. He whirled his spear around in a circle just above ground level, hanging tough. There were hundreds of the fraggers and he could feel his core body temperature spiking as his heart began to pound wildly. The frame was already executing a sensor-triggered withdrawal when the shock hammered through him and he was flung bodily across the room, the ripped-out wires quivering over the side of the table. Michael twitched in delicate spasms for a moment, then lay still.

  * * *

  “Hey, Manoj, you got to do this for me. I nearly got boxed down there, chummer. There were skollies all over the streets. You sent me into a bad place, man. That number is only to make a call to a fax, whatever that is!”

  She’d done her job and it was nearly closing time at the shop. Manoj was tired and irritable after a hard day getting a lot less joy out of his trade than usual. He just wanted to get the frag out and sit down to some pickled fish and rice. This stupid slitch was a pain in the butt, and he said so.

  “Ain't got no fax machine,” he yelled at her.

  “Yes you have. I heard you tell Nasrah last week,” Kristen said triumphantly. “You told him about it like you’d just jazzed the prettiest girl in Sisulu!”

  "Yeah, well that sure ain’t you!” he grumbled, throwing a fake slap at her. She ducked the deliberately mis-aimed swipe. “Look, don’t you go telling nobody. If the wrong people hear, it gets stolen. I can’t afford another bust-in.”

  His key ring chinked as he attended to a padlock beneath the counter. Pulling out a heavy paneled drawer, he bent over to switch on the fax. Lights glowed on the console.

  “Now, what you want to say?” he growled. “Keep it short. And I’m charging you, mind. Costs you by the second.”

  “Just say, um, Dear Sir—”

  She tried to parrot something from formal letters she had read aloud. Like the one that informed her the City Council was discontinuing her social security payments because she’d been caught begging and hawking. That one had been a real hoser.

  “Quit the fancying around. Every word costs money. Keep it short, like I said.”

  “Okay. Say, ‘I seen your name in a list from a computer of a slag got killed. Two other people on the list are already dead.’ ”

  “What?” he said sharply.

  “Look, zip it. I know it’s only one dead, but this way he might listen to me. Besides, it could be two by now, for all we know. Hell, it could be all of them!” Manoj didn’t even bother to point out that they didn’t know that anyone had been killed at all; the name he’d recognized was that of a kidnap victim. But time was short and the girl was determined. He knew the look.

  “All right. I’m typing that in,” he said needlessly as his fingers flew across the keyboard. “Now what?”

  “Please call me on—what’s your number, Manoj?”

  “No you don’t,” he said firmly. “This is nothing to do with me. No way.”

  “Please!”

  “Frag off. I said no.”

  She hissed and spat at him, but he wouldn’t be budged. He’d got himself a machine with a re-route function, making it hard to trace anything back to him, and he wasn’t going to give that away by giving out his code.

  “Look, Kristen, why don’t you just say you’ll call him again this time tomorrow and give him a number then? That gives you time to find a public phone or something. Best thing to do.”

  “All right,” she agreed weakly. What did she know about his drek? She could just about handle a telecom, tapping in numbers whose position on the console keys she’d learned by heart. But typing in letters? That would be impossible.

  He finished the message and pressed the Send button. A few seconds later, the machine let him know the fax had been safely received.

  “There, it’s done. Go and make me some kaf and then you’re out,” he said grumpily.

  “I can’t sleep here tonight?” she said miserably. “Slot, I’m so tired. And I’ve been running your number all day. Come on, chummer.”

  “All right,” he sighed, locking the drawer again, looking at her suspiciously. “Just don’t try foolin
g with this, hear? No trying to pick the lock and fragging it up.”

  “Me? Pick locks?”

  Manoj hadn’t been sure whether she could or not, but that wide-eyed innocent look she was giving him was a dead giveaway. If it didn’t have to do with something she’d already done, then it was something she was thinking of doing.

  “Why are you doing this, girl?” he asked her as they sipped their soykaf, the front door locked and the shutters pulled down. “This slag in Seattle. What’s it to you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

  “Is it a bit like, you girls get a crush on a rocker sometimes? See posters spread all around and fall in love with him? Or those girls thinking that some song has the words written specially for them?”

  “Maybe it’s a bit like that,” she mused. She hadn’t really thought it through. Thinking through her feelings wasn’t one of Kristen’s sharper skills.

  It was at that moment that the first sledgehammer smashed through the back door. Manoj hadn’t yet pulled the metal bars down: it was always the last thing he did before leaving the shop. Instantly, he dropped to his knees and pulled at something covered in sacking at the very base of the counter. Kristen saw him drag out the antiquated shotgun even as she was pulling the knife from her bag.

  The door splintered off its hinges. Two of the gang almost fought their way through it, but Manoj caught them both with the first barrel. One slumped forward, the left side of his body streaming blood. The other one fell screaming back into the darkness.

  “You fraggin’ scum. You want the other barrel?” Manoj shrieked. There were still figures out there in the street that was dark as pitch. They must have knocked out the street lights before hitting the shop.

  The butterfly knife whirled in from the darkness to hit him in the side of the throat. Kristen screamed as Manoj staggered backward, blood dappling the trinkets and brooches, the angular face of the ribboned Xhosa mask on the wall almost comically bisected with a thick red line. She knew Manoj was mortally wounded when he fired the second barrel, something he would do only if he had nothing left to lose. She bolted for the stairs, with just enough time to grab her little bag, wrap a cloth around her hand, and smash the single small window in the room.

  The street was five meters below, but just as Kristen was struggling to force her way through the groaning frame, she felt rough, hard hands gripping her legs. With a mighty effort of will, she just managed to draw one knee forward and then kick backward with every bit of her strength. The kick hit hard, followed by the sound of a pleasing groan, but she overbalanced and toppled downward even as the hands released her. Rushing up to meet her was the pale stone of the street.

  10

  The old monastery nestling amid the conifers was truly beautiful. Even in the summer, misty haze swam around it from the ferns and grass, saturated by mid-afternoon rain and now gleaming in the evening sunlight. The Rolls-Royce purred along the gravel drive, throwing up a splatter of stones. As the car came to a halt outside the building’s arched rear doors, two men in blue suits stepped out of the shadows almost in synchrony. One of them, darker and smaller than the other, entered the monastery as the door opened before him. His fellow joined the peak-capped chauffeur busily making preparations to deal with the occupant of the auto’s customized rear seat.

  “His Grace will see you now,” the butler said to the dark-haired man, who ignored him and stepped up to the library doors, where he knocked and waited for the familiar voice from within. The summons soon followed.

  He entered and went over to stand before the figure seated at a desk in front of huge arched windows completely covered with heavy drapes. Luther sat browsing through a dusty tome in the candlelight he always favored here. His entirely bald head lifted almost imperceptibly. He stared at his returning servitor, as if silently bidding him make his report.

  “It is done, Your Grace. Lothar will be making the preparations now. Everything went perfectly, sir.”

  “Good, Martin.” Even just those two words betrayed the strangeness of his voice. The inflection of the name was subtly wrong, somehow, but any listener would have had difficulty pinpointing exactly how. The words came as if from some voicesynth that fell just short of perfect only because its maker had deliberately not completed the final adjustments.

  “I have missed you,” Luther said, letting the book slip from his hands.

  Martin Matthaus felt a wave of relief ripple through his body. In more than a century of serving this great man, these words were the closest to anything resembling sentiment he’d ever heard him utter. It was more than he deserved.

  “There is much work to be done,” Luther said simply. He stood up, running his hands with their crooked fingers back across his brow and pointed ears, smoothing his sleek skull. “You must take care of the downloading from the Nongoma field trials. I need the last of the data tomorrow. It is regrettable that I was forced to take such drastic measures.”

  Panic began to well up in Martin. As yet, Luther had not punished anyone for the bungled kidnapping. He must be biding his time. Martin hadn’t been part of that, but he knew perfectly well that once Luther’s icy rage had built to the point of physical action, he would delight in adding caprice to his sadism. And, after Heidelberg, Luther’s anger would be growing. Two serious failures in a month would call for a victim, maybe more than one. The crucial moment would come when Luther had fed, when his energies were high and he burned. But then, surely, Martin would be at one with the computers and databases and Luther would not come looking for him.

  “When you’re done, return here,” Luther said forbiddingly, his tone momentarily increasing Martin’s anxiety. Fortunately, his next words allayed those fears.

  “I think we shall have to monitor the Americans,” Luther went on. “I doubt they will do anything out in the open yet. But they may well send some kind of spy. Most likely, they’ll try to deck into our matrix systems. I wish to review the security with you.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Martin replied gratefully. It would mean more work, but it would also keep him safe, not least because he would be able to lock himself into the computer laboratory and justify his seclusion on security grounds. The locks wouldn’t stop Luther, of course, but if he came after Martin in fury they might slow him down enough to cool his rage. Martin knew all the signs of a frenzy building in Luther, and he could see a mighty one coming over him this night.

  “Will that be all for now, Your Grace?” he said hopefully. Luther dismissed him with a wave of a hand. Martin bowed as he left, then scuttled away down to the old crypts.

  Luther coughed drily, smoothed his suit and adjusted his black tie. He had a funeral to go to, after all.

  * * *

  Michael came around, trolls hammering on the anvil that was his head, just as the door opened. Serrin and Tom found him on his knees, still trying to get to his feet. His eyes were bloodshot and his pallor deathly. Tom raced to help him, hauling the limp body up under the arms, lifting him with ridiculous ease.

  “Don’t make a song and dance about it, old boy,” Michael joked weakly. He felt the healing hands of the shaman gripping him, power flowing through the troll. The weakness faded, and the pain in his head dulled to a throb rather than the violent pulsing with which he’d awakened. He took a deep breath and shook his head to clear his senses.

  “I’m all right. My software for automatically taking me out of the circuit has to be the best on the planet,” he said. “Crikey, but that system was running some serious IC. There must be something they really didn’t want me to find. Now let’s see what that is.”

  “Wait a minute,” Serrin said. “Take a rest. You’ve only just come around. Get some coffee down you first.”

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t need to deck in again.

  All I have to do is use Norman through the I/O and download it.” Serrin and Tom smiled at each other.

  “Don’t you think that giving names to your frames is a bit, um, ecce
ntric?” Serrin chuckled. “It’s not as if they were real people, you know.”

  “They’ve got more personality than some allegedly real ones I know,” Michael snorted. “Especially in New York. Of course it’s eccentric. I’m bloody English, after all. I’m supposed to be eccentric; it’s in my contract.” Sitting himself down, he began tapping in his instructions through an ordinary console, the wires from the Fairlights now unattached and dangling.

  Printouts churned from the array of machinery as Serrin made his choice between Kenyan and Costa Rican. The African blend seemed more appropriate somehow. By the time he carried the tray into the room, Michael had generated yards of facts and figures. As he scanned through them eagerly, his face became more and more perplexed.

  “I don’t understand this. Half this drek is irrelevant. They beat my browse program! All I managed to collect was a pile of junk. Oh great, some Umfolozi schoolkid reported missing by concerned parents. What is this drek? And why would anyone want to go to such trouble to coat it in IC?”

  He sat back, eyes cast up toward the ceiling. Serrin could almost see the neurons firing.

  “There has to be a buried codesort in this. No way would a database lump all this stuff together. There has to be some limbo coding or something,” he muttered.

  Tom shot Serrin a puzzled look by way of a question. Serrin gave him his best “I don’t know what the frag he’s talking about” look by way of a reply.

  They couldn’t stop the Englishman from jacking back in, distrusting his smart frames now, after their initial failure. Five minutes later, he jacked out with a big smile on his face. The printout churned out just three entries.

  “Cunning little code. Uses a recursive—” Seeing the looks on their faces, he stopped short. “Ah, sorry. Let’s just say it’s cute, as you seps would put it.”