Nosferatu

9

The alert from Tracey surprised him. Most of the frame-decking had been pretty simple, but this time Michael was getting a message that the Zulu Nation system he'd tried to get into was an expert system. That spelled danger. The only reason he'd checked it was because a flight from New Hlobane had arrived in JFK fifteen minutes before Serrin had fled for Frankfurt. Which intrigued him. The schedule for European and Japanese flights was exactly what he'd expected to find, but a direct flight from the Zulu capital into New York's JFK was not. That startling fact stood out like a grain of grit in vaseline. Now the frame was telling him these Zulus had some serious design work in their police systems.

Serrin and Tom were still out, so he rigged himself up with a cardiomonitor and respiratory analyzer and jacked in. Appearing in the virtual reality of the Matrix as a professor, complete with gown and mortar board, he gripped the violin case that carried his machine-gun attack utility and headed out the long route of datalines across the Atlantic.

The frame had already ferreted out the SAN number for the Zulu system, so he knew where to go. What he didn't know was whether there was any system alert; Tracey would have disengaged before finding out. He switched to evasion mode, minimizing his chances of being detected until he could determine whether any alarm programs had been triggered.

The system access node appeared to him as a circle of grassland hemmed in by broad-leaved, thick-barked trees swaying slightly in some unknown breeze. The sleeping lioness wasn't a surprise, though he didn't like her proximity to the rope bridge across the stream in the distance. Even more worrisome was the vulture sitting peacefully in one of the trees. He had no way of even guessing what kind of construct it might be.

Inching forward he felt the familiar tug at his senses. This was a sculpted system, of course, custom-designed and much more difficult to maneuver than a system using standard icon imagery. He assumed that it wouldn't be too difficult to force this system to accept his persona, the icon by which he existed in this illusory electron world, but that vulture seemed ominous. Not because of what it was doing, but precisely because it wasn't doing anything. Scanner program, he guessed, but he wanted to be sure.

What it turned out to be was a lot worse than that.

He let fly the little bird of prey, the hawk that was his analyze program, to circle above the vulture while he stayed where he was, keeping an eye on the lioness. The analyzing hawk came back with some conflicting signals. Trying to make sense of it, he concentrated on seeing through the hawk's eyes.

The wings of the vulture showed a bizarre patterning, each feather with a pattern halfway between a simple spiral and a feathered fractal. Its eyes scanned everything at an impossible speed, not so much flitting around as zooming.

He had to admit it was wiz: an infinite-regress element. It was, of course, a detection program, and was entirely self-referencing. In a sculpted system, the damn thing knew exactly what was allowed in here and what wasn't. If he tried to overcome the reality of this system, it was going to squawk. If he tried to defeat it, it had an infinitely self-checking algorithm that would actually respond to its defeat. And if he tried to defeat the algorithm amp; Michael got dizzy just thinking about the possibilities.

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 1C, 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 1C, 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 1C. 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 ilready 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 fooling 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.