It frightened her; and she would not leave him here alone. “Tell me I’ll die if I stay,” Rowan said. He looked up. “And don’t lie to a steerswoman.”
“Rowan, there’s no time to—”
“Then don’t explain. Will, whatever you need to do, just do it, and explain later.” A small panel opened itself on the top of the desk, but Will had expected it, was already reaching for it. He pulled out a length of cord, attached it to his construction, tapped the lap board. There was a brief hum overhead, and a creak, and a rattle, then silence. He ignored the sounds.
“Rowan—”
“There’s no time,” she pointed out: twenty-six minutes remained. “just do it. Whatever it is. I’ll be right here.”
At this he flashed her one glance, a glance she could not read; then he turned back to his work. “You mustn’t speak,” he said, his hands continuing their quick work. “No matter what happens, not a word. Don’t make any noise at all, none. Try not to move, breathe quietly—I have to trust you to do all that.”
She did not reply. She composed herself for both silence and stillness.
And above all, calm.
The final component of Willam’s device was a short rod. He attached it. Immediately, it glowed at the tip: a tiny red star.
At this, he stopped. He sat gazing at the little star, seeming to wait.
Presently, the star turned green.
Willam drew a breath, released it, sent Rowan one bleak glance. Then he closed his eyes, as if to clear his thoughts, as if to steady himself, as if to dismiss from his mind all thoughts of the steerswoman’s presence.
He opened his eyes. He spoke to the small green star.
Willam said: “Corvus—I’m in.”
19
The paper cone spoke. “I trust this isn’t trivial.” The voice resembled that of the wizard Corvus. “You were only to contact me if—”
Willam interrupted: “Sir, the information we need is at Farside.”
A pause. “That can’t be right.” The voice was thin, distant, with a continuous hiss behind it, like an ocean wave endlessly breaking.
“It is. I’m sure.” Willam spoke quickly. “Kieran was accessing Gee-Three a lot—as near as I can tell, at least once almost every night. But there was one night where he was using it for hours on end. Half the night. Until just before dawn—”
“The night Gee-Three came down?” the cone asked.
“No. No, that was later, that was Slado, Kieran was already dead.” Willam became urgent. “Sir, the updates are almost done, there’s no time to explain how I know this. The Guidestar falling—that was just what happened. This is why.” The paper cone remained silent but for the quiet, unending hiss. “I found fragments here, with pointers, addresses for files, but the addresses are too high. There’s just not that much storage here. They’re even wrong for Central.”
Still no reply. The young man waited, sitting alone in the near-dark, watching the small green star. All about him, and above, the ranks of letters of pure light stood, written on the air. Strange servants: simple, tireless, still innocently following Willam’s last orders.
Willam said, helplessly, “Sir—tell me how to talk to Farside.”
“You can’t,” the cone said. “Farside was locked on Gee-Three. Gee-Three is gone.”
“Can’t we use one of the other Guidestars?”
“No. The updates are running. The Guidestars are accepting only emergency calls.”
“If—” Will seemed to cast about. “I don’t know—if I could disguise my signal, somehow—”
“It wouldn’t help. Farside was directly under Gee-Three. Gee-Two and Gee-Four don’t overlap.”
Silence again, but for the hiss from the cone: the sound of the sea, of darkness, the sound of the absence of pattern.
A minute passed. Then Willam said: “There has to be another way.”
“No. You’ve done what you can. Erase your tracks, close up—”
“But sir, I’m talking to you.’’ The wizard did not respond. “And I’m not using any Guidestar. When Farside lost Gee-Three, wouldn’t the automatics try to get help? If they couldn’t reach a Guidestar, wouldn’t they try something else? Everything else, every way they knew about?”
“After more than forty years . . .” The wizard’s voice was thoughtful.
“ ‘They don’t get tired,’ ” Willam said, as if quoting. “ ‘They don’t get bored, and they don’t get distracted.’ And,” he added, in apparently his own words, “they don’t have hope—so they can’t ever lose hope, can they?”
A pause, during which the unseen ocean briefly crested. The wizard’s words emerged as the noise receded again. “—omething like a caretaker process—”
“That’s what I mean,” Will said immediately, eagerly.
“Perhaps . . . Stand by.”
Hissing silence. Willam’s neglected searchers were nearly all red now. Willam noticed, scanned their ranks, hesitated. He selected two and brought them close. Red flickered in his copper eyes as he studied them.
He glanced up, at the dragon-eye lattice.
Above the grid, the numbers showed seventeen minutes remaining.
Willam looked about, then down, reached under one of the wood slabs. There came a quiet sound, mundane, almost shocking in its familiarity: the sound of a drawer opening.
Willam pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. He wrote rapidly, glancing at the two searchers before him, and at the several that he had previously set apart, high above.
“Will.”
“Here, sir.” Willam stopped short, pushed pencil and paper aside.
“Look for something called ‘broadcast’ or ‘receiver.’ ”
Willam glanced among the nearby searchers, settled on one, used his lap board. The searcher emptied of symbols, and new words appeared, arranged in short lines, like a list. Will shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Try ‘R-F’ or ‘short wave.’ ”
Result was immediate. “I’ve got it.” Willam’s hands moved, quick, graceful. “Do I need to shift the dish?”
“Stand by.” A pause, then a thoughtful, dissatisfied sound from the wizard. “This is all new to me . . . No, it looks like you’ll keep using the antenna . . . I haven’t found yet how much power you’ll need . . .”
“Maybe it will tell me itself.”
Out of sheer nothingness, two objects appeared on Jannik’s desk, lit by a spill of light from no source: a flat wooden box, with glass insets on its upper face; and something like a silver candlestick, with a squat mesh bulb in place of the candle. The glass insets seemed to contain simple graphs.
Will gave the objects a single glance of scorn and impatience, and caused them to vanish again. He muttered, “I can’t even guess what that was supposed to be . . .”
“A problem?”
“No, sir. Just the interface construct. I’m behind it now.” He pulled opposite corners of the transparent page, expanding it to four times its previous size. He studied it, occasionally tapping his lap board with one finger; the letters of light altered in rhythm, the entire block at once, flashing. “No . . .”
“Forget power for the moment; you’ll start by listening . . . here’s something. How high is the rod right now?”
“Fifteen meters. . .”
“Send it up as far as you can.”
Willam nodded, worked; and from somewhere inside the house, a hum, which continued for a full minute, and ended with a faint rattle and creak. “Where should I listen?”
“I have no idea . . . Start at the bottom, work your way up . . .” Rapidly, Willam created a translucent square, and inside it a simple graph displaying a sine function. But the curving line lived, flailed, seemed to fight its confinement.
Calmly, Willam watched it.
Quiet, but for sound from the cone: the distant, endless ocean wave, as if time itself had frozen in the moment of its breaking.
Willam checked the time remaining: fourteen minutes. He closed his eyes, took seve
ral deep breaths, opened them; and then calmly, methodically, caused his searchers to vanish, one by one.
Red light diminished incrementally, flick and flick, until only those searchers Willam had set high above remained. The living light of the world’s image on Willam’s right began to dominate: cool, gentle, lovely.
“Anything?” Corvus asked.
Motion, to one side. Willam glanced left, froze.
Within the lattice of dragon eyes, more than a dozen little squares showed movement, shifting light.
“Will?”
“Stand by,” spoken quietly, as if the distant creatures could hear him.
The shutters came down. Offline.
Will did not relax. “Jannik is starting to get good at finding the jammers.”
“Then he’s cleverer than we thought.”
“Or we were not so clever as we thought. . .”
“And we’re running out of time. No signal yet?”
“I’m still running through the frequencies . . .” Will hesitated, then picked up his pencil and wrote again, reading the high red letters intently.
Quiet, for a space; then the wizard spoke, a trace of amusement in his voice. “By the way, I had an interesting conversation with Abremio the other day.”
Will glanced at the cone, continued to write. “Yes, sir?”
“He mentioned that he had located my lost pet in Donner, and did I want it back? I told him not to bother.” Corvus became serious. “But you should be on the alert, Will. Someone, one of Abremio’s people, is in Donner, and has spotted you.”
Willam’s eyes grew dark; but he spoke with careful nonchalance. “Two people, sir,” he said. “And they’re dead.”
The wizard made a satisfied sound. “Good. Good work.”
Willam did not reply. The graph writhed; the cone hissed.
Willam stopped writing, and set down the pencil. He gazed at the last red searchers above him, each in turn, his expression unreadable. Then he banished them.
All that remained were the world, on his right; the dragon eyes, angled off on his left; and the glowing graph before him. Its yellow line continued to move, weirdly alive, snake-like.
The snake froze.
“I’ve got something,” Willam said. “The wavelength is ten meters.” Moving quickly, he created a new square, outlined in blue. It remained empty. “But it’s just a signal. It’s not saying anything.”
“A carrier wave. Ping it. Use all the power you have.”
Will worked: a flurry of light taps.
The empty square grew blue letters, one by one.
Willam stopped short, reading; then he released a pent breath and collapsed back in Jannik’s chair. “I’ve got it,” he said weakly. “It’s Farside.”
“Good work!” The wizard sounded amazed, and very pleased indeed. “Now, getting past its security is going to be difficult. I’ll try to walk you through it—”
But Will was already sitting up again, his hands were already moving, with uncanny speed. “Stand by.”
“Will—”
“Stand by.” He was scanning the penciled symbols on the simple sheet of paper as he worked.
“—Will, don’t be rash, if you don’t do this right—”
“I’m in.”
A pause. “What?”
“I’m in. Stand by, it’s asking me for everything, and trying to tell me all its problems, all at once . . . there.” Will leaned back. “I sent a total override.” He sighed, seemed to gather himself. “Right. Let’s see about those addresses . . .” He began again; the blue letters and numbers vanished, and new ones appeared, flowing onto the magic page.
“Will,” Corvus said, “how did you get past the security?”
Willam replied distractedly. “Worked around it.”
“I’m impressed.” And, by the sound of the wizard’s voice, faintly disturbed.
Will seemed not to notice. “Thank you, sir. The addresses match. It’s retrieving . . . Here we go.”
Symbols, in pure, blue light, began accumulating in the air, within the abstract boundaries of an insubstantial, transparent page. “This is slow . . .”
“You don’t have much bandwidth.”
The dragon-eye lattice came alive.
Will was a moment noticing, another moment waiting, wide-eyed.
The movements in the lattice continued.
Willam slowly lifted his hands from the lap board. His copper eyes showed white all around.
“Willam?”
Willam did not move. He spoke quietly. “I think I’m dead, sir. The jammers are down, all of them. Jannik has contact.”
Corvus said, quickly, “You’re not dead yet. He may not have noticed you.”
“The house knows I’m here!”
“Yes, and it thinks you’re Jannik.”
Sudden realization. “I can lock him out completely—” Willam made to address his lap board.
“No!” Will stopped. “If you do that,” Corvus went on, “Jannik will know someone is there. Will, stay calm; we still might get through this without giving you away.”
“But—”
“The house system is sophisticated, but not that sophisticated. It’s a very stupid creature, like all of its kind. As far as the house is concerned, Jannik is perfectly able to give a command from his desk, instantly transport himself miles away, and give another command remotely. The house doesn’t know any better.”
Willam began to recover, cautiously. “What is Jannik doing right now?” Corvus asked.
Within the lattice, a sequence was occurring: a white outline appeared around one square, then moved to the next, and the next.
“Will?”
“It looks like some sort of status check for each dragon.”
“That’s all? He hasn’t asked the house for its own current status?”
“No . . .”
“Good. Fix it so that if he does, the house will tell him that all is well.” Willam did not reply. “Will, you just broke into Farside. This is simple by comparison. You’re just panicking.” The wizard’s voice became steady, patient: the voice of a teacher. “I have every confidence in you. You can do this. Stay calm, stay focused. Ask for the house status yourself. See what it says.”
Will lowered his hands cautiously, tapped hesitantly; a page appeared, with words scattered across its face. Willam blinked, then seemed to take in their meaning, and grew more certain. “It’s saying that the desk is active, the antenna is deployed, and signals being broadcast and received.” He worked, with a growing confidence. “And now . . . and now it’s saying that they’re not. And it will keep saying that, if Jannik asks . . .” He slumped back in the chair. “But only if he asks for an overall status. If he asks for some specific subsystem, and it’s something I’m using, that will show up.”
“I doubt he’ll do that. Taking care of the dragons is about the limit of Jannik’s abilities. Do you have any progress with that file ?”
The page had filled; the lines of symbols were now shifting upward, as more were added at the bottom edge.
Only two symbols, repeating endlessly. Willam slowly grew disbelieving. “No . . .” A quiet, plaintive sound.
“A problem?”
Willam spoke to himself, under his breath. “No, no . . . it can’t be empty . . .” He leaned closer.
“Willam?”
He seemed to remember the wizard’s presence, glanced at the paper cone as if glancing at a person’s face. “It looks blank.”
“Erased?”
“No . . . it’s a file, it’s marked as one, it’s in Farside’s own index as a file . . . but. . .” He spread his hands. “There’s nothing in it.”
“How many addresses did you recover?”
“Forty or so. But Farside has . . .” Willam tapped. “. . . more than ten thousand marked as Kieran’s.” The page emptied; blue light vanished from Willam’s face, his eyes. “I’m trying another one.”
The symbols began again: a handful of lines of
apparently random numbers and letters, then: two symbols, repeating.
Will did not wait for the page to fill. “The same.” He vanished the letters. “I’m trying another. They can’t all be like that, not now, not after all this—”
“Willam, the updates complete in less than five minutes.”
Will made a sound through his teeth; he fisted one hand. The blue letters, oblivious, continued placidly to collect themselves on the page. “This is too slow!”
“We can’t make the files come across any faster.”
“I can’t tell if they’re empty until I get them here!” He stopped short. “But Farside has them all—right now!” He worked quickly. “I’m setting up a searcher at Farside itself, to give me a list of any of Kieran’s records that are not empty.” A last tap, which had to it an air of finality. Will waited, unblinking, utterly still.
“It’s one thing to pull out information already stored,” the voice of Corvus said, “but to get Farside to—”
“All of them,” Willam said.
A pause. “What?”
Will leaned forward, brows knit. “All the files have something in them.” The wizard said nothing. “Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough. Maybe only the beginnings are empty. Farside says something’s in there!”
“Will, we’re running out of time. Three minutes left. If you’re going to give up, you should break off the contact now.”
For the space of some thirty seconds, Willam stared, wide-eyed, completely still, through the pages of light and color, past the walls of Jannik’s office.
Then: “Sir . . . how sure is it, that I would be spotted?”
The wizard spoke quickly. “By the Guidestars? Absolutely certain. Will they care, of themselves? I don’t know. But they’ll make records. I can erase the records. But not instantly. Do you want to go on?”
“How fast is ‘not instantly’?”
“I can’t stop the Guidestars from seeing you. But I can get into short-term storage, feed it a worm. The worm will eat the record. One minute left. Do you want to go on?”
“But if someone is watching, themselves, through the Guidestars, in real time—”
“They’ll see you. If they look in R-F. Which they probably won’t. But there’s no way to tell. I can’t risk being connected with this, Willam. If you do this, you can’t come home. Do you want to go on?”
The Language of Power Page 31