The Lucifer desk

21

Carla sat at a data display in the KKRU newsroom, scanning the stories that the Scan 'n' Sift program had selected, She'd broadened the scope of her search to include anything to do with Renraku Computer Systems. No telling what the cops had stirred up overnight.

She’d come downtown to the station’s offices. She could have uploaded the information onto her home deck, but she liked the feel of being in the newsroom, even on a slow Saturday, her day off. She found it difficult to work without the hum of the studio’s equipment, the overlapping chatter from the banks of the trideo monitors, and the ebb and flow of reporters’ voices in the background. In the quiet of her apartment it was hard to work up the adrenaline needed to chase down a good story.

And this would be a good story; she had no doubt about it. The system errors and data corruptions had spread, and were hitting different parts of the Matrix all the time. The crashes were increasing in frequency, They were no longer limited to systems that could logically be expected to contain files that included the word Lucifer.

The spirit was infiltrating the Matrix with increasing frequency, and seemed to be drawn to it on some sort of preordained schedule. Judging by the timing of protocol problems, configuration discrepancy problems, and system crashes, it was making its presence known once every hour. According to Aziz, the spirit wouldn’t like being inside the Matrix. In fact, it shouldn’t even be possible for it to enter the Matrix at all. The rigid organization of a computers light-encoding hardware would confine it, would twist it like a four-dimensional pretzel, then spit it out again. But like a moth to the flame, the spirit kept going back. It was in and out again in a mere nanosecond. But in that nanosecond, it could wreak a lot of damage.

So far only Carla, Masaki, and the young decker Corwin knew what the source of the “virus” really was. it wouldn’t be long before other reporters guessed, Carla ached to be first with the story. And to prove that Mitsuhama-the proud purveyor of the latest computer technology-was responsible.

“I said hi, Carla!”

Carla looked up as the voice finally registered as Masaki waving at her from the entrance to the newsroom. He crossed to his work station, still talking. “I didn’t expect to see you in here on a Saturday. I thought you had the weekend off.”

“I do,” she told him. “I just came in here to scan the…”

She bent over the display as a Department of Vital Statistics report flashed across it. She read only a few lines before whooping with delight. “Got it!”

“Got what?” Masaki asked. He rummaged through a cardboard box that he’d rooted out from beneath the of hard copy and datachips that littered his work station.

“Another piece of the puzzle,” Carla answered. “It’s Renraku. It looks like they’re experimenting with spirits and the Matrix too. And not doing too good a job of it, by the look of things.”

Masaki bent over to peer at the monitor. Carla snowed him the file the scanner program had tagged and downloaded. It was an obituary for one Gus Deighton, an employee of Renraku Seattle. He’d died suddenly yesterday evening at work. The obit contradicted itself, at one point noting that Deighton had died in a lab fire, but elsewhere attributing his death to “magical causes.” It wound up with a tribute from us boss, Dr. Vanessa Cliber, and mentioned that Deighton had been employed for seventeen years in the corporation’s Exploratory Sciences Division. He’d been just two months shy of retiring.

“I don’t see the connection,” Masaki said.

Carla gestured toward the graphic that accompanied the obit. It was a head-and-shoulders still of Augustus Deighton-a distinguished-looking elf with a high forehead, intense eyes, and a full head of hair.

“Exploratory Sciences is Renraku’s magical research division,” she explained. “And this woman-Dr. Cliber-is the director of computer operations for the whole of Renraku. Conclusion: the runners who broke into my apartment must have sold Renraku the incomplete spell. And now it’s cost another mage his life.”

Masaki was quicker on the uptake this time. “Does that mean there’s another of these spirits loose in the Matrix?”

“I don’t know,” Carla said. She quickly scanned the rest of the Renraku-keyword files. “Assuming the spirit was conjured within the arcology and that it got away from its handlers, the closest entry point to the Matrix would have been through one of Renraku’s system access nodes. But I haven’t seen a single report of any Renraku system crashes. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything; the corp would hush it up, and fast, if data was getting corrupted or parts of their system were shutting down. The last thing they need is a bunch of deckers storming the infamous black tower through some hole in the system.”

Carla stared at the display, thinking out loud. “Aziz said that most spirits that escape from the mage who conjured them return to their place of origin-they vanish back into astral space. Perhaps one in a hundred remain on the physical plane as free spirits. But if we do have another spirit like ‘Lucifer’ on the loose, the Matrix won’t be able to stand up to it. It’ll he the Crash of 2029 all over again.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Masaki asked. “Air a sensationalistic story that will make everyone in Seattle afraid to touch their trideo sets and computers in case a spirit jumps out and burns them alive?”

“What do you think I am-some tabcast muckraker?”

Masaki gave an embarrassed shrug.

Carla was astonished that Masaki had such a low opinion of her. Yes, she wanted this to be a big story, one that would shake people up. But at the same time, she wanted it to be hard-hitting and accurate, rather than merely sensationalistic, It was the only way to make NABS sit up and take notice of her-and give her that interview they’d promised.

“I want to do a story that will force Mitsuhama to take responsibility for the mess it’s created,” she told Masaki. “A story that will warn Renraku off before one of their wage mages makes the same mistake Farazad did. A story that will prevent a repeat of the Crash of 2029.”

She sat back, arms folded. What she’d just said bad sounded good. She almost believed it herself. But deep down, she was willing to admit that the real rush would come from seeing her sign-off at the end of a really big story and knowing that her name would be a household word for days to come. All over the fragging world.

Masaki grunted, and resumed his rummaging through tile box he held. “Yeah, well, the story is all yours. Carla. It became your story the night those yakuza shot at us.”

“They weren’t shooting at us. They were shooting at the kid.”

“Just leave my byline out of it, O.K.?”

Carla shook her head. “Anything you say, snoop.” She put an ironic emphasis on the last word. “Speaking of the ork girl, did you ever succeed in finding her? Or is she still out scuffing around the streets?”

“I found her,” Masaki said. “In Lone Star’s downtown containment facility. And it’s a good thing I did, too. She was in a tough spot. That story she told you about patrol officers shooting her friends-the one we thought was so far-fetched. I think it’s the truth.”

“What if it is?” Carla asked. “There’s nothing to go on.”

“Yes, there is,” Masaki countered. “She’s got the badge number of one of the chromer cops who did it, plus the name of his partner. The one who pulled the trigger.”

“Really?” Despite herself, Carla was intrigued.

“This could be a hot one. I can hear the lead-in now: ‘The Tarnished Star: Cop by Day, Humanis Policlub Basher by Night.’ ”

Carla could picture it, too. She still had the footage she’d shot of Pita that day she’d first come to the KKRU station. It would look great on trid. If the Mitsuhama story didn’t pan out, Carla could still score a few points by doing the Lone Star piece. She looked at Masaki out of the corner of her eye. “Are you going to pursue the story?”

“I don’t know.” He paused, and Carla thought she saw a guilty look cross his face. “Maybe.”

Drek. She’d have to move on this one as soon as the Mitsuhama piece aired. Otherwise Masaki would scoop it out from under her.

“So where’s the kid now?” she asked. “Still in jail?”

“She’s at my place. I just came down to the studio grab the things she left here.”

“Aziz is awfully keen to talk to her about…” Carla’s eyes widened as she saw what Masaki had fished out of the box. A credstick. And embossed on the side of it, in gold, was a logo. A Mitsuhama Computer Technologies logo.

Carla snatched the credstick out of Masaki’s hands. “Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice rising with excitement.

Masaki shrugged. “It’s Pita’s. While we were shooting her eyewitness take, she kept playing with the stuff in her pockets, making a rattling noise that her body mike picked up. I made her empty her pockets. The credstick was in them. Why? Is it stolen or something?”

Carla showed Masaki the logo, then turned the credstick so that he could see the magnetic keystrip down one side. “This is fragging unbelievable! This has been sitting here in our newsroom all this time, and you didn’t notice. There’s only one place the kid could have picked this credstick up-from Farazad’s body. And there’s only one door it could open. The Samji residence didn’t have a magkey system-just a thumbprint scanner. And you don’t put a corporate logo on a car key. So what’s left?”

Masaki had followed her train of thought. “The place where Farazad worked. The Mitsuhama Research Center.”

“Right.” Carla jiggled the credstick in her hand. “Care to join me in shooting a little unauthorized trid at the Mitsuhama lab?” she asked teasingly. She knew Masaki wouldn’t have the spine for it, but she couldn’t resist. Just as she had expected, his face went pale.

“Are you crazy?” His wheeze was back. “Not only that illegal-it’s dangerous. Mitsuhama’s security guards are rumored to be the toughest in the business, and their magical defenses are layers deep. You’ll be killed!”

Carla tucked the credstick neatly into the pocket of jacket. “Not if I have a good decker and a spirit backing me up,” she answered with a smug smile.

“I think you’re crazy,” Masaki said.

“You’re probably right,” Carla answered. “But if you want to get ahead in this business, you have to be willing to take some chances.”