Cyber Way

CHAPTER 16

Swallowing their exhaustion, they followed close on the heels of the heavily armed infiltration team as it violated the integrity of Gaggii’s house four hours later. Procedural caution was misplaced. The owner had long since fled.

The converted garage back of the main house yielded as impressive an array of electronics as Moody had ever encountered outside a university lab or Greater Tampa Operations HQ, all of it state-of-the-art and expensive. Every square inch of wall was boarded with storage flats, zenats, Fordmatsu holomagers, spinner jacks, and 1-2 Septimus sequencers, all of it sandwiched around a Cribm mollysphere big enough to store the annotated Library of Congress, more storage than even a modest-sized company would need.

Buried somewhere within that rare earth-doped fiber-optic mass were the answers to his questions. Somehow he doubted it would be safe to plug in his spinner and try calling them up. Gaggii had warned them that the merest kiss of an unauthorized probe would unravel his molly. Moody didn’t delude himself into thinking he was weaver enough to braid between the seams. They needed an orber here; the best in the country.

Ooljee had reached the same conclusion. “We go back to Ganado and make out a report that includes the details I didn’t have time to phone in. An APB goes out on Yistin Gaggii. We particularly want to alert regional dealers in heavy-duty mollys and spinners. We do not want him reassembling anything like this in a rented house somewhere in Hope or Page Springs. He can only do so much with that wrist unit.”

“What about a little preventative medicine?” Moody asked tersely.

“I have already had the power to the house shut off.” Ooljee gestured at the overhead lights. “Our own equipment is running off a truck generator. Same for the phone, so he can’t access by radio link, and the roof dish, so he cannot use an orbital relay. This house is now isolated, my friend. There is no way he can reach his database. He’s isolated, too, wherever he is.

“The next time we run into him it will go better. Let him try to call up snakes without a molly.”

“Unless he’s got a backup stashed out in the woods someplace.” Ooljee eyed him sharply. “Another building, an apartment somewhere: we don’t know one way or the other. If he did lay in a backup, it’s probably not this elaborate. But it’s liable to be enough to let him get on with his work.”

The sergeant nodded slowly. “It depends how vulnerable he thought himself, despite what he told us.”

“From what we saw of him, he struck me as a pretty careful sort of guy. I’d be surprised if he didn’t have something to fall back on.”

“In the end it will not matter.” Ooljee was optimistic. “His features are distinctive. We will find him quickly.”

“Hope so.” Forensics personnel bustled around the garage while men wearing puzzled expressions and heavy sidearms griped about the lateness of the hour. “W’hat do y’all think he’ll do now?”

Ooljee considered. “If he is as dedicated as he seemed, he will continue with his work. Otherwise he will try to lice the country.”

“That’s the way I figure it. I imagine he’s trying to get deeper into the web. Wonder what else he can call up besides serpentine-shaped electromagnetic fields? What other cute li’l critters do you find in sandpaintings? No, never mind: I don’t want to know. I’ve had enough of your mutaphysics for one night. Let’s get some rest. Somebody else can scan reports for a while.”

“Rest, yes,” agreed Ooljee readily, “and some help. Specialist help.”

Ooljee’s lieutenant spent five minutes listening to their story before he cut them off and passed them up to the assistant chief, who escorted them to the Chief’s office and departed in haste. Chief Yazzie tolerated their story of weaver hatathlis and alien webs and thousand-year-old databases of unknown dimensions. Being a sensible, reasonable man with thirty years police experience, he bought little if any of it.

On the other hand, he was compelled by the reality of two people murdered by mysterious means in Florida, a house in the woods filled with more equipment than your average forward-listening military outpost, and most damn-ingly, one half-melted departmental pickup truck. He was willing to allow that something odd was going on within his jurisdiction, something illegal and dangerous if not immediately explicable. That much he was willing to acknowledge. Endless Snake he was not.

All in all, he decided, it would be a good thing to accept the recommendations of the two earnest officers that they find one Yistin Gaggii as quickly as possible and subject him to some serious questioning.

Of that much sought-after individual there was as yet no report, but Yazzie was as confident as his men that they would find him. He had not had sufficient time to get far, and controls had been placed on all roads and forms of public transportation. The Arizona Department of Public Safety was cooperating fully with Reservation forces. Mobile radar units would ensure that no off-road vehicle exited Reservation boundaries without first being challenged. Tonight Gaggii’s face would appear on one of the vid’s most popular criminal-cache programs. After that there would not be a place in the country where he could go without a chance of being recognized.

The department had moved fast. There was a good chance they could restrict their quarry to the Rez, the Four Comers area at worst. With every law-enforcement agency in the region giving him top priority, Yistin Gaggii was going to have a hard time buying breakfast without being spotted.

Samantha Grayhills agreed. It was she who took the form, if not the shape, of the help Ooljee had requested.

Moody found himself being introduced to a short, voluptuous, dark-haired woman with a broad smile and trenchant gaze. She didn’t eye him like a cop.

She smiled even when she talked, no matter how serious the subject matter. Her skin was the color of oiled oak. She had a man’s handshake, not some flighty caress-and-pass like a pair of railroad cars uncoupling. He wondered if she lifted weights, though he could detect no evidence of any unusual musculature beneath her clothing.

Her hair clip was traditional silver and turquoise, her attire anything but. The pleated beige jumpsuit boasted enough zippers and pockets to equip a closet full of uniforms. The pockets bulged with mysterious lumps and knots which distorted more familiar curves.

Unlike most of the other Navaho women he’s seen, she wore no jewelry save for the hair clip. Not that she was either poor or unfashionable; he guessed that she didn’t wear a lot of metal because it might affect the readings of some of the instruments she carried with her.

“What agency are you with?” Moody asked her.

That unwavering smile illumined the room where they had gathered. “I am not with an agency, Mr. Moody.”

“Vernon. Not with an agency?”

She sounded sympathetic. “I am the principal orber for Noronco International. That will have to do for credentials. Perhaps you have seen one of our commercials?”

Moody turned on his partner. “What the hell is this?”

“The department pulled some strings.” Ooljee tried to allay his friend’s discomfort. “Flew her up from Phoenix just a little while ago. I have barely had time to brief her.”

“I still don’t see why—”

“Because you apparently need my services, detective. Noronco is a Thai-American combine whose North American operations are based in Phoenix. We specialize in the manufacture of mollyspheres; everything from kids’ games to military molly ware. My particular area of expertise happens to be syndetic security. I would not be surprised if you used one or two of my inserts in your own office.”

“Oh.” Moody looked at her differently.

“When the department put in for assistance,” Ooljee explained helpfully, “they requested the most qualified individual in the area. The request did not go out with occupational restrictions.”

“From what I was told on the way up from the airport,” Grayhills said, “you two are either candidates for therapy or else you’ve stumbled across one of the secrets of the ages. The story is so fantastic, I find myself hoping there is something to it.”

“That’s funny,” Moody told her, “because we keep hoping there isn’t.”

“I know that you’re looking for a murderer. That’s not my department. Show me something impossible.”

So they did, back at Ooljee’s apartment, well away from the prying eyes of the press and possible leaks. She looked on silently as the sergeant accessed the sandpainting and the enlightened darkness beyond.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in all my work.” She was enthralled by the image in the zenat. “This exceeds the boundaries of theory.”

“There is more to it than meets the eye,” Ooljee informed her. “Go and dip your hand in it.”

She eyed him sharply. “Into it?” He nodded.

Moody was standing next to the screen, waiting. Her smile was as thin as it got. “Is this dangerous?” she asked.

“I’ve done it. Paul’s done it. We’re still here. But this is all new. We can’t make any promises.”

“I see.” She gazed into the swirling, sparkling depths of the zenat. Then she reached out. In contrast to the rest of her, Moody noted, her fingers were slim and delicate. As Ooljee would say, a fine woman.

He heard her intake of breath as her hand passed beyond the monitor’s surface and into the warm, tingling otherness beyond. She rotated her hand from side to side, slowly, before withdrawing it.

“How deep does it go?”

“We were hoping y’all might be able to tell us. Paul kind of pushed the limits until I pulled him back. For all we know, you can jump in and go swimming or running around, or whatever, until you’re out of sight. There might be gravity in there, or there might not. There might be up or only down.” He turned to study the mesmerizing view. “We kinda thought all-out experimentation on the physical level might be a tad premature.”

“Good thought.” The experience left her breathing faster. “I think I’d do a lot of long-term study before bodily committing myself to a place whose physical reality has yet to be defined.”

“Kinda like marriage,” he ventured. That brought back the full smile.

Utilizing the procedure they had developed earlier, Ooljee shut down the web. He poured tea and coffee as they took seats at the table. Every so often, Grayhills would glance

uneasily at the flat gray rectangle of the zenat.

“How do you get it to answer questions? I hardly had a chance to skim the written report, and it wasn’t overflowing with detail.”

“Plain language; verbal queries.” Ooljee dumped sugar in his cup. “It responds readily in Navaho and English. It would probably do so in Urdu if requested.”

She nodded. “First time I ever entered a database bodily—if it is a database and not some other state of matter we don’t have a name for. But until we learn otherwise, that’s how I’m going to treat it.” She turned to Ooljee. “I don’t know shit about sandpaintings, but I can unstick a gummed-up ten-molly parallel processing web inside twenty-four hours. My family traditions don’t originate on the Rez. They’re the six years I spent at Tucson Polytechnic and Caltech.”

“Understanding this can come later.” Moody struggled with his impatience. “What we need right now is to find this Yistin Gaggii again before he can do any real damage.”

“What makes you think he wants to do damage? Maybe he’s just an eclectic seeker after knowledge?”

“Call it a gut instinct based on two decades of police work.” He spoke more sharply than he intended. “That and the fact that he’s already committed two murders.”

“Besides which, you hate him because he made you look bad. I read the report.”

Moody was taken aback. “He’s just a suspect we want back. I don’t have any feelings about the guy one way or the other.”

“I do not believe you. I think you have developed a personal dislike for him.”

“Get off my case, lady. I never let my emotions interfere with my work.”

Sure you don’t, he told himself. Truth to tell, he’d taken an instant dislike to the guy. Gaggii’s attitude of superiority was one that a poor fat kid from the backwoods of Mississippi had been forced to deal with much of his life. He’d encountered plenty of it in high school and lots more in college, even though he’d slimmed down enough to make his size something of an athletic advantage. But people still made fun of his back-country manners and cultural rusticity. What was natural and charming back home city kids found cloddish and laughable. His innate good nature had enabled him to hide the hurt, but not to eliminate it.

Not until he’d been promoted to sergeant in Tampa had people stopped making fun of him. That was understandable within a police department, where the individual you gibed at one day might be guarding your back the next.

“All right,” he admitted grudgingly, “so I don’t like the guy. So what? It doesn’t affect my judgment.”

“I did not mean to imply that it did.” He had a good nature, and she had that smile, he mused.

“Look, this guy’s no hobbyist, and he’s no cracker trying to steal a few corporate secrets for resale on the open market. He’s got something a lot stronger in mind and we’d damn well better get to him before he can put it into effect.”

“For example?” she asked him. Moody noticed that his partner was looking at him, too.

“Well, he’s already figured out how to use it to kill people who don’t cooperate with him, by accessing something unpleasant within the database. Since he made it clear to us that that wasn’t enough to satisfy his curiosity, I imagine he’ll try to access something more. I wouldn’t care to lay odds on its being of a benign nature.” He glanced at his partner.

Paul Ooljee drained the last of his coffee. “There are worse entities in the old stories than Big Thunder and Endless Snake.”

“I understand that you’ve isolated the facilities he was using. Does he have access to any others?”

“We do not know.” Ooljee fidgeted with his cup. “He’d built himself a city-sized web in his home. It is hard to imagine him mustering the resources to duplicate i( else where.”

“He wouldn’t need to replicate all the analytical hardware.” She sipped hot tea. “All he’d need is a tight molly and a fast transfer program. Or he may have transferred everything as he learned it, if only to make sure of a quality backup. Depriving him of his hardware, though, may keep him from making any new discoveries, which would mean we would only have to deal with what he already knows.” She looked at the zenat again. “I’m still having a hard time accepting all this.”

“Any time you find yourself feeling particularly doubtful,” Moody told her, “all you have to do is access that little sucker and stick your hand into it. Kind of removes it from the realm of the abstract right quick.”

Yistin Gaggii pulled off the dirt track and parked near the edge of the little mesa. A broad, flat plain spotted with low scrub stretched out below him, rising abruptly and with the uncanny precision of geometric geologic forces to a much larger mesa beyond. To the north a gigantic dormant volcano stood sentinel over this part of the sacred land, its summit sugared with snow. The sky here was big and bright enough to swallow a man’s worst fears. It was the blue roof of the world. He began removing equipment from the motor home, his boots kicking up dirt and gravel. Dust flowered briefly around his legs before settling softly back to the ground. It was red and clinging, for this was the land where the earth rusted.

The nearest paved road did not have a pickup guide embedded in its surface. Few people came this way for the simple reason that there was nothing here. The porous rocks held no water for wells, the barren ramparts no cliff dwellings for study or pillage. There were not enough weeds and scrub on the surrounding acres to support half a dozen steers. Even the creatures that eked out a miserable living here

resented the niche to which ecology had condemned them.

He would have chosen an even more remote spot save for the fact that even a four-by-four had its limits and his motor home was not designed for extended off-road travel. It was top-heavy and unwieldy; not the vehicle of choice for bounding through washes and up steep grades. But it had carried him comfortably clear of prying eyes, both human and electronic, and had allowed him to make his way westward in peace.

It also held a great deal of expensive equipment, some of which he was now piecing together beneath a fold-down sunshade on the vehicle’s port side. As long as he did not exceed the capacity of the portable generator, he would be able to continue his work.

After the first frantic half-hour’s driving he had stopped worrying about pursuit. Worry was a waste of time anyway. It broke down proteins in the body. Once he was able to leave the highway and go off-road he felt relatively secure. His motor home was indistinguishable from a thousand similar tourist vehicles in the Four Comers area and was not registered in his name. There was no reason for a passing police vehicle to challenge it.

They had no idea which way he’d gone. The last place they would look for him was here, in the middle of the Reservation. No doubt they expected him to rush to Kla-getoh in hopes of fleeing via plane, or to drive like mad for Mexico. He had no intention of doing any such thing. He had been readying the next stage of his research when the two policemen had surprised him. All they had done was hurry his planned embarkation. He regretted the loss of his house and all it contained, but he could manage with field equipment. Improvisation had been important from the start.

Time was important now. The police could not be allowed to interfere. He had come too far, drawn too close. If he succeeded, it would not matter what they or anyone else tried to do.

He adjusted the contrast on the zenat attached to the exterior wall of the motor home, then carefully checked Ihe cables that connected it to his spinner and to the molly inside. At home he used infrared and UHF, but cables were more secure when working outside. They were shielded and would not broadcast his activities to potential eavesdroppers. Depending upon the nature of the job, a pick and shovel might be more practical than a mechanical excavator.

Hard driving had brought him to this place. He was pleased with it. High overhead the sky was filling up with wild cirrus clouds, spray kicked up by the bow of an advancing high-pressure system. Soon he could begin. He needed information and help, and planned to call for both simultaneously.

By now the ceremony was as familiar to him as a mother’s lullaby, the chant and fine-tuning second nature. He could have built an audio-visual macro and installed it in his wrist transmitter, but there was an aesthetic to accessing the web manually which he deeply enjoyed.

The activated zenat revealed a dimension formulated by Einstein, with decor by Lewis Carroll. As always he did nothing for long moments but savor the image of writhing rainbows and darting, glowing shapes. Then he recited the new program.

Actually it was not new; it was very old. It simply had not been thought of as anything other than one of many hundreds of chants. Without access to the web it was useful only as an aid in the performance of traditional medicine ceremonies. When access to the alien web was added, it became something very different.

The words were symbolic and descriptive rather than overtly active in the web matrix. They helped the singer to remember the correct phrasing, the proper tones. It was the pitch that mattered, the duration of each vowel, the aural vibrations which actually reacted with the web. Not the words themselves. The chant functioned as a weaver’s chiastic mnemonic.

Gaggii patiently repeated the chant time and again, singing tirelessly, striving to better his rendition with each successive repetition. The words came from the Creation Chant, but were active in a way no modem Navaho had ever dreamed of. It had been composed, or adapted from unimaginable sources, by some ancient Anasazi hatathli, passed on down to his descendants, and thence to the Navaho who had inherited this land in their turn. The words and music had endured. Only the original purpose had been forgotten.

Like anyone else who had ever taken time to contemplate the mystery of their disappearance, Yistin Gaggii wondered where the Anasazi had gone. They had simply disappeared, leaving behind the beginnings of a culture that in time might have rivaled that of the Maya or Inca. Instead they had vanished, leaving behind only their marvelous cliff dwellings to show that they had ever been.

Had they made the jump into the web? Or had they been removed elsewhere by its makers? Or had bad weather and failed crops simply forced them to disperse throughout the Southwest? Was their abrupt disappearance the result of natural causes, or unnatural ones? One day he would have the answer to that question, as he would have the answer to everything else.

Each time he repeated the chant the sky grew a little darker around him, as though a bubble of evening had begun to grow atop the mesa, enveloping chanter and motor home, boulders and brush. Seen through the dry fog of that unnatural darkness, the sky shone dull purple. Nor were these the only visible changes in his immediate environment.

As he chanted, a few of the migrating sparks and points of light within the zenat began to dilate—twisting and flaring. They began to move not in the lazy, meandering fashion of the rainbow threads but with direction and purpose, breaking free of the fractal patterns in which they had heretofore been embedded. They expanded steadily, tumescent with energy, until they filled the screen from edge to edge.

Then they emerged, drifting out of the zenat into the soft false night which had engulfed the mesa top, hovering above the dry red soil and wild grasses.

Gaggii kept chanting until he was surrounded by a half circle of bobbing, corposant shapes, each yellow or red-orange, each an individually expressive nimbus. Despite the fact that it was chilly, even cold atop the mesa, he was sweating profusely. When he felt the time was just right he shifted from the Creation Chant to the web shutdown sequence. Instantly the zenat became again only a blank sheet of photoluminescent composite hanging on the wall of the motor home.

Immediately, several of the cold, refulgent orbs darted toward it. They bumped up against the monitor, curled around its edges, tested it like moths tempting a lamp. They gave off no heat.

Finally they retreated and resumed their places in the semicircle surrounding Gaggii. He picked up the chant again, singing slower and softer now, soothing them to Earth.

The dancing spheres began to extrude projections, expanding riotously as they searched for definition. Heads emerged, followed by legs and tails, smiling jaws, and fine sharp teeth. When the last of the emancipated energy had become mah-ih, one of them sat back on its newly acquired haunches and cocked its head quizzically to one side as it studied the chanter.

“You Who Reach: why do you strand us?”

“I have need of you.” Knowing what he was dealing with, Gaggii tried to watch all of them at once. His fingers did not stray from the controls of his spinner. If they tried to sneak around behind him, he might yet be able to do something. For now, their curiosity outweighed their discontent. But that could change.

Another stopped licking itself long enough to speak. “This is not our place. Let us go back. Though familiar to us from memory, these shapes are uncomfortable. Reopen for us what you have closed.”

Gaggii relaxed just a little. “Are you Holy People?” Several of them exchanged glances, enjoying the novelty of eyes. One laughed softly.

“We hate the ones you call Holy People. To them we are less than nothing.”

“We exist because of what they have defined,” said another. “Without their definitions we have no existence.” Gaggii nodded to himself. The ants might aspire to utilization of the garbage, but the fleas could never do more than exist in it.

“Why do you take these shapes?”

“In this place these are the shapes that fit,” explained the first speaker, as if restating the unavoidably obvious. “The place within a place,” said another.

“No,” interjected a third, “a place without a place.” Quite unexpectedly they fell to arguing among themselves, emanating loud, disturbing, immature noises.

“This shape is less uncongenial than others,” declared the second speaker. “It was the first shape we encountered in this place.”

“In and out,” chanted another, “in and out.”

“Why assume it now?” Gaggii inquired.

“A shape once assumed is a shape learned. Make us an opening.”

“In time.” Templates, Gaggii mused. So much of this is about templates. These shapes they take are no more than that. Are we no less? What else is my DNA but a template?

“I will tell you what I intend.”

They listened silently to him; some with apparent indifference, others with casual interest, though he suspected that all heard.

“Is it dangerous?” he asked when he’d finished.

“The concept is meaningless. Only existence has meaning.”

“Good. Then you have no reason not to help me. If you refuse, I won’t make an opening for you. This I know you cannot do for yourselves, or you would have done it already instead of sitting and listening to me.”

“We could hurt you,” one insisted in a flat, emotionless voice.

“You cannot hurt me enough to make me do what you want, and if you hurt me too much then I will die and leave you trapped here forever in these forms. If you help me, I will make a good opening for you.”

Again several of them exchanged glances. “You have (old us what you intend. Can you imagine what it involves?”

“I have studied it and have some idea.” Gaggii tried not to seem overly eager. “I suspect I will need to make use of Hasjesh-jin’s fire. Do you still have it?”

All of them laughed then, an eerie yet familiar collective amusement that echoed across the mesa and down into the side canyons.

“You pass on long memories,” one finally declared.

“Then you no longer have it?” Gaggii was crestfallen.

“No,” said another, “but something akin is near here. You are right to say that you will need to make use of it to do what you intend.”

“Can you help me make use of it?”

“Once before we stole it,” announced a member of the semicircle. “Why should we not steal it again?”

“This could be of interest,” said the one next in line. Gaggii looked at it. “You told me only existence has meaning. Why should you care about this?”

“As your words say, we are frivolous. This is a fortunate thing for you.” The first speaker smiled at him, showing many teeth. “We will help you steal Hasjesh-jin’s fire, though this time not from Hasjesh-jin. Be aware that though danger is meaningless to us, it is not to you. This thing you intend could threaten your existence, which is far more transitory than ours.”

“My existence is my concern. You simply exist. I, on the other hand, have purpose. I exist to learn. I believe that knowledge can transform existence.”

“Knowledge is camouflage,” he was told. “It merely disguises what lies beneath.”

“I want what lies beneath,” Gaggii declared flatly.

“As you say, that is your concern.” The first speaker shifted his position on the hard ground. “Ours is an opening.”

“Where will we find Hasjesh-jin’s fire?”

One of them turned and pointed. “That way, not far.”

“By whose standards?” Gaggii gazed through the harlequin twilight toward the far horizon.

“Not far, by your standards.”

Gaggii frowned as he considered what lay in the indicated direction. Then he understood, and was able to smile. “We will lead you,” said the speaker, turning to leave. “No. This is a place we cannot go to all together. I will meet you slightly to the north of it. I will describe the exact spot where we can gather.”

“This is a strange reality,” one of them murmured ;is In-gazed at the dark sky and shadowy mesas. “I will he glad to leave it.”

Gaggii wound cable as he spoke, still careful to keep his spinner close at hand. Around such as these one could never relax vigilance.

“I want to move quickly. I have reasons.” He stowed the last of his equipment and climbed into the motor home. Making sure it was still in all-wheel drive, he flicked on the engine, backed up, and began to edge down the dirt track that cut into the flank of the mesa like a brand on an old horse.

Behind him the coyotes dispersed, each taking a different route but all inclining northwest. There were almost a hundred of them. They were coyote from their wet black noses to the tips of their bushy tails, but they were not of pure coyote lineage. This was not their plane of existence. An ancient template imprisoned them in their present form. They would remain thus until Gaggii made them an opening and allowed them to return to the place where they existed.

They remembered only a little of where they were, but they had correctly sensed the nearest source of Hasjesh-jin’s lire. Playfully they moved toward it, anxious to do whatever was necessary to flee a reality they found unpleasantly constricting.