City of Golden Shadow, Page 36

  "Glory Hands," noted Fredericks. "I saw 'em in this shop in Lambda. Give you power over the dead, I think. What are you gonna do, Orlando? He's not here."

  "I knew he wasn't here when the gryphon didn't bring him out. But this guy sent me down that hole and something weird happened to me there. I want answers." He reached into his pocket and brought out a small black circle the size of a poker chip. "And I'm gonna get 'em."

  "What's that?"

  "Wizards aren't the only people who can do magic." Orlando dropped the circle onto the floor, then crouched and pulled at its edges until it looked like a manhole the size of a dinner plate. "Beezle! Come here!"

  The shambling something with too many legs clambered up out of the black circle. "Keep your shirt on, boss," it growled, "I'm here already."

  "What are you doing?" Fredericks was so shocked that Orlando almost laughed—his friend sounded like an old lady. "You can't hack that thing in here! No unregistered agents allowed in the Middle Country!"

  "I can do anything if I can make the gear work."

  "But you'll be banned forever! Not just Thargor—you!"

  "Only if somebody tells. And who would do that?" He fixed Fredericks with a stern look. "Now do you see why I'm not going to register that kill?"

  "But what if someone checks the record?"

  Orlando sighed for the second time in fifteen minutes. These arguments with Fredericks could go on for days. "Beezle, pull this node apart. Get me every piece of local information you can, but concentrate on communications in and out."

  "Will do." The cartoon bug dropped back down into the hole, and immediately the air filled with a ruckus of chainsaws and clawhammers.

  Orlando turned back to his friend. "No one's going to check the record unless Senbar-Flay asks them to, and he won't do that if he's got something to hide."

  "And if he doesn't have anything to hide?"

  "Then I'll have to apologize, won't I? Or at least buy him a new gryphon."

  Orlando pulled opened the data window until it blocked his view of Fredericks' frowning face. He opaqued the background, just to make sure no disapproval leaked through, and studied the glowing characters Beezle was pumping out.

  "His name's Sasha Diller. Never heard of him. You?"

  "No." Fredericks sounded distinctly sullen, perhaps thinking of the potential damage to his own Middle Country franchise if this affair came to the attention of the Table of Judgment.

  "Registered in Palm Beach Inner. Huh. I would've thought a rich kid would do better than this—everything except the watch-gryphon is strictly House of Gear." He let his eyes rove down the window. "Twelfth Level—like I couldn't guess. Calls in and out? Hardly any. A couple of codes here I don't recognize. Hmmm. He hasn't been around much lately." Orlando pointed at a section of the window, which reconfigured. He grunted in surprise.

  "What?"

  "He's been around exactly twice in the last six months. Two days in a row. The second was the one where he gave me the commission."

  "That's weird." Fredericks looked down at Senbar-Flay's uninhabited body. "Why don't you just pump out the data you want? We should get out of here."

  Orlando smiled. He knew his sim wasn't showing much of it—Thargor didn't smile very well. "Some thief you are. Is this how you act when you're on one of your little jobs? Like a kid sneaking down to rattle his Christmas presents?"

  "Pithlit doesn't break the rules of the Middle Country." Fredericks' dignity was wounded. "He's not scared of anything, much—but I'm worried about getting banned for life."

  "Okay. It's gonna be a long time before this guy comes back anyway, by the looks of it" Orlando began to close the window, then stopped, arrested by something he'd seen, and enlarged it again. He stared for a long while, long enough to make his friend start to shuffle nervously, then shut it and sent the information to his home system.

  "What? What was it?"

  "Nothing." Orlando looked down at the hole. "Beezle? You done?"

  As if to be contrary, the agent appeared from the general area of the ceiling, dangling on a very cartoony-looking rope that Orlando knew was not part of the wizard's tower decor. "Depends what you mean by done, boss. How fine you want the information sifted? You got all the big stuff already."

  Long years of interaction had taught Orlando to translate Beezle's seeming informality. He was probably now tracing the provenance of every piece of snap-on software in the place.

  "The big stuff will do. Do a backgrounder on the gryphon, though. A good one."

  Beezle spun at the end of his rope for a moment. "Done."

  "Then let's get out of here. Hit that rope and start climbing down, Frederico."

  "Climbing? Why don't we just go?"

  "Because I'm not leaving the way you are. You go the long way. Keep an eye open and make sure we didn't leave any obvious traces—you know, club keys from the Thieves' Quarter Lounge, stuff like that."

  "Very funny. What are you going to do?"

  "Trust me—you don't want to know."

  Orlando gave Fredericks a decent head start. Then, when he felt sure his friend should be shinnying down the rope—Fredericks had spent lots of points on rope-shinnying ability, so Orlando figured he wouldn't be at it too long—he summoned Beezle back.

  "What now, boss? We goin' somewhere interesting?"

  "Only home. But first I want you to do something. Can we leave a little data bomb behind?"

  A grinning mouth appeared in the inky mop of legs. "We are having fun today. Whatcha wanna do, exactly?"

  "I can't do anything to the central record, and I certainly can't make a seamless edit like someone did to me, even in this guy's house file—but I can make sure that whoever comes in here next won't know who was here or what happened, not unless they've got Table of Judgment authority."

  "Your call, boss. But I can scorch it good, yeah. Complete scramble."

  Orlando hesitated. He was taking a big risk—bigger even than Fredericks knew. This had become so important to him so quickly, and he was basing it all on one look at Beezle's data. But he hadn't become Thargor, scourge of the Middle Country, by being afraid to go for broke.

  "Scorch it"

  "You did what?"

  "Pulled it down. Not from the outside—no one will be able to tell unless they actually get into the place." Fredericks, back in one of his bodybuilder sims, leaped out of his chair so quickly that he flew into the air and caromed off the cottage wall. Orlando adjusted the gravity and his friend floated down and bumped to rest beside the pyramid of display cases. "Are you scanned utterly?" Fredericks shouted. "That's not just the Middle Country death penalty, and maybe thrown off the whole net—that's criminal prosecution, too! You destroyed someone's property!"

  "Don't get your fenfen in an uproar. That's why I sent you out first. You're in the clear."

  Fredericks raised his chunky fists, his sim face (slightly less realistic than Pithlit's, which probably indicated something profound, although Orlando couldn't say what exactly) screwed up in fury. "I don't care about me! Well, that's not true—but what the hell is going on with you, Gardiner? Just because Thargor's dead, you're trying to get yourself thrown off the net. What are you, some kind of martyr?"

  Orlando settled back into his virtual couch, smiling. "You sound like my mother."

  His friend's cold anger was fierce and surprising. "Don't say that. Don't you dare say that."

  "Sorry. Just . . . just spanking you. Look, I'll let you in on something. Beezle! Run that information out for me again, will you?"

  The window appeared and hung gleaming in midair like an angelic visitation.

  "Now, orb this." Orlando boxed and expanded a small section. "Go on, read it."

  Fredericks squinted. "It's . . . it's a shutdown order." He straightened up, a little relief evident in his voice. "Senbar-Flay's tower is gonna be taken down? Then . . . but it still doesn't make sense, Gardiner, what you did. If they're going to drezz it anyway. . . ."

  "You di
dn't finish reading. Look at who told the Middle Country gaming board to shut it down."

  "Some judge in . . . Palm Beach County, Florida?"

  "And the date—six months ago. And it's only been used twice since that time."

  Fredericks shook his head. "I don't get it."

  "This guy Diller's dead! Or in jail, or something. Anyway, he ceased to be the operator, pretty much, six months ago. But for some reason it hasn't been drezzed. And, more importantly, someone's used it—used Diller's sim, even! Used it to hire me!"

  "Wow. Barking. Are you sure?"

  "I'm not sure of anything. But Beezle's checking for me. You got anything yet, Beezle?"

  The agent popped out of a crack in the wall beside the picture window. "Got the Diller stuff. Still working on the watch-gryphon."

  "Give me what you've got so far. Just tell me."

  "Diller, Seth Emmanuel—you want dates and everything?"

  "Just summarize. I'll stop you if I want more data."

  "He's a coma case—date of shutdown coincides with the date of a trustee being named for his estate. Thirteen years old at last birthday. Parents dead, grandmother applied for legal aid—she's started a lawsuit against Middle Country, plus the hardware manufacturers, primarily Krittapong Electronic and subsidiaries."

  Orlando pondered, "So he had enough money to have good equipment, but the grandmother doesn't have enough money to sue?"

  Beezle waved his legs for a moment "All the hardware and gear named in the lawsuit's at least four years old, some much older. You want me to get the grandmother's finances? Diller, Judith Ruskin."

  "Nah." He turned to Fredericks, who was sitting forward, beginning to believe. "This guy's in a coma, as good as dead, His estate wants his online stuff shut down—probably to save money. And his grandma's suing the Middle Country, too. But it doesn't shut down. And someone else uses it, at least two times. His equipment was nice once, but it's old now and his grandmother doesn't have any money. But there's a top-of-the-line, utterly scorching Red Gryphon on the site to keep people out. How much you want to bet it was purchased after this Diller kid checked out?"

  "I'm working on the gryphon, boss," said Beezle. "But it ain't easy."

  "Keep trying." He put his feet up on nothing. "What do you think now, Frederico?"

  His friend, who had seemed quite excited only a few moments ago, now grew strangely still, as though he had left his sim entirely. "I don't know," he said at last. "This is getting weird, Orlando. Really scanbark. How could someone keep a node open in the Middle Country when the people who run it wanted it shut down?"

  "I'll bet that somebody fiddled the central records. We only know because the shutdown order was registered on the node itself when the judge made her decision. But if someone went in and adjusted the central records, the automatic drezz would never happen. You know the system's too big for anyone to notice, at least until the case comes to court and the whole thing gets dragged out again."

  "But that's what I mean! You're talking about someone hacking the Middle Country central records!"

  Orlando made a noise of annoyance. "Fredericks! We already knew they could do that. Look at what happened to me down in that tomb. They just took the whole sequence out and then sewed it back up again. Like they were surgeons."

  "But why?"

  "Don't know." Orlando turned to examine his MBC window. Watching the constructor robots patiently excavating the red Martian soil was soothing, like watching cows in a field. He needed to slow his excited thoughts. "I just know I'm right"

  Fredericks got up, a little more carefully this time, and walked to the center of the room. "But, Orlando, this is . . . it isn't Morpher or Dieter. This isn't just someone trying to get over on us. These people are, like . . . criminals. And why are they messing with things, taking all these risks—just to show you some city? It doesn't make sense."

  "Not much."

  Sifting, digging, then sifting some more, the constructor robots went on about their tasks. They were just on the other side of an imaginary window, and simultaneously millions of miles away. Orlando tried to remember the time lag of the transmission, but couldn't. Not that what they were doing at this exact moment probably looked any different from this delayed version he was looking at. And the mindless things would continue, working and working, dying off and being replaced from their own self-created factory. In another few years the project would end. A tiny blister of plastic would hug the Martian surface, a place where a few hundred humans could shelter against the harshness of an alien world.

  "Orlando?" His friend's voice tugged him back to the equally alien world of his virtual house. Fredericks' broad-shouldered sim had crossed its arms as though to hold something inside its barrel-like chest "Gardino, old man? This scares me."

  Orlando sat up, pillows bunched behind him, his blanket wrapped around his thin legs as tightly as a cold beggar's robe, and listened to Nothing.

  He knew from books that houses had not always been like this. He suspected that most houses in other parts of the world, and even lots of them here in America, were not like this even now. He knew that in many places boards creaked, and upstairs neighbors thumped, and people talked on the other side of walls. He had visited a friend from the medical center once, a boy named Tim whose parents lived in a house on a street with nothing separating them from the rest of the city. Even during the day you could hear cars moaning past on the freeway half a mile distant.

  On nights like this, when his father had stopped snoring for a bit, Orlando couldn't hear anything at all. His mother always slept like a dead person. The Gardiners had no pets except for a few dozen exotic fish, but fish were quiet animals and all the systems that supported life in their tank were noiselessly chemical. The building's human residents were cared for no less discreetly. Machinery in the house's walls adjusted temperatures, monitored air quality, random-tested the circuitry on lights and alarm systems, but all in silence. Outside, an army might be trooping past beyond the heavy walls and insulated windows of their house, but as long as no one stepped in front of a sensor beam, Orlando would never know.

  There was something to be said for the kind of safety and security money could buy. Orlando's mother and father could go shopping, attend the theater, walk the dog—if they'd had one—all without leaving the vast security estate that was Crown Heights. His mother claimed they had only done it for Orlando's sake. A child like him should not be subjected to the dangers of city life, they had decided, but equally clearly should not be raised in some rural place, a long car- or helicopter-ride away from modern conveniences. But since most of his parents' friends also lived either in Crown Heights or in similar fortified mid-city security townships (they were called exclusive communities in the ads), and didn't have his parents' excuse for it, he wondered if she was telling him the truth. Sometimes he wondered if she even knew the truth herself.

  The house was silent. Orlando was lonely and a little unsettled.

  His fingers found the link cable by his bedside. He thought for a moment about going to the net, but he knew what would happen if his mother got up to pee or something while he was oblivious and saw him plugged in. She was on an anti-net campaign as it was, although what else she expected him to do she'd never made clear. If she caught him, he might lose the "privilege," as she termed it, for weeks. He didn't dare risk it just now. Not with all the things that were happening.

  "Beezle?" There was no response. He had spoken too softly, apparently. He crawled to the foot of the bed and leaned over. "Beezle?" Voice activation was a bitch when you were worried about waking up your parents.

  A minute hum wafted out of the darkness. A small, dim light brightened, then seven more tiny red lights blinked on in circular sequence until he could see a small scarlet ring gleaming in the shadows near his closet door.

  "Yes, boss?"

  "Quieter. Like me."

  Beezle matched his volume level. "Yes, boss?"

  "Anything to tell me?"
<
br />   "A few things. Some of them strange. I was going to wait until morning."

  The conversation was still making Orlando nervous. His mother had been on a bulk scorch lately about not sleeping, and sometimes the woman had ears as sharp as a bat's, even in her sleep. He was sure it was some kind of mother thing, a latent genetic abnormality that only emerged after giving birth and lasted until you'd driven your children out of the house.

  He briefly considered doing the whole thing silently onscreen, but at least if his mother woke up and heard him talking, he could pretend it had been in his sleep. If she caught him with a glowing screen, it would be harder to explain away. Besides, he was lonely, and having someone to talk to was still the best cure for that. "Bug. Come over here so we don't nave to talk so loud."

  A couple of near-silent clicks indicated that Beezle was detaching his robot body from the power outlet, where it had been quietly sucking nourishment like a flea on a dog's back. The ring of red lights slid down the wall and then came across the carpet at about shoetop height. Orlando scrambled back to his pillows and got under the blankets again so he could enjoy the ticklishly amusing sensation of Beezle clambering up the bedclothes. He enjoyed it mostly because he was not so grownup as to have forgotten the slightly creepy way it had felt when he was a little boy.

  Beezle approached the pillow, humming and clicking as faintly as a cricket wrapped in a yard of cotton. He crawled onto Orlando's shoulder and adjusted for stability, rubber-tipped feet scrabbling to get a satisfactory grip. Orlando wondered if someday Beezles, or things like Beezle, would be able to move as freely in RL as they did in the virtual world. He had already seen news stories about agents with robotic bodies going feral because of bad programming or aging software, escaping their owners to live like woodlice in the infrastructures of buildings. What would such things want out of life? Did they run away on purpose, or just lose the ability to follow their original programming and wander off into freedom? Did they retain vestiges of their original artificial personality?