surrounding
destroyed garage entrance. The door has been buckled and melted away. Scraps
of metal and plastic and fiexfuller litter the concrete. Torres and Daniels kneel
to examine the scraps. They rise a few seconds later and join Burke a few yards
from the ruined, gaping door.
"Do you hear buzzing?" Martin asks.
"What?" Daniels responds.
"Buzzing. Like bees."
Torres takes out a flashlight and shines its intense beam into the shadows.
He makes several sweeps before the beam illuminates a few specks flitting
around the holes. He lowers the beam to the snow drifting over the blackened
and debris-cluttered concrete apron before the door. More specks have fallen
there and do not move. Black and yellow, slowed down or killed by the cold,
but unmistakable.
"Wasps," Martin says.
They approach and Martin asks for Torres's flashlight. He shines it into one
of the larger holes in the door and backs away with a quick little skip. A thin
/
SLANT 291
air is too much for them, however, and they quickly slow and spin down to
the snow.
"The inside's thick with them," Martin says, brushing the sleeves and shoulders
of his coat. "We should try another way, go around front."
"It's all sealed up," the sheriff says. "Sirens chased all the tourists out this
afternoon and then the security doors came down. It would take a small army
to get in there. There are no other openings I know of."
"What about the fire department?" Torres asks. "Isn't anybody responsible
for safety inspections?"
"We don't have that kind of licensing here," the president says, a simple
statement of fact.
"Where can we get insecticide?" Mary asks the sheriff.
The sheriff grins wickedly. "You've come to the right place, ma'am. I'll get
someone down to a hardware store. We have any sort of bug spray you can
think of."
23
A long, gently curving corridor, walls covered with old paintings, like a museum
gallery, leads them to the center of the building. Hale runs to catch up.
He doesn't want to be alone. He is subdued, uncomplaining; he seems willing
to let Giffey run the show. "I saw her," he tells Jenner, Jonathan, anyone who
will listen. "My Hally." He shakes his head. "My God."
Jonathan walks with heavy steps, half-asleep, his exhaustion catching up
with him. Giffey suddenly moves closer and tells Hale to replace Jonathan and
carry the unconscious Marcus. Hale does so without protest. Marcus's head
lolls.
Giffey and Jonathan fall back a few steps.
"He was recruiting you, wasn't he?" Giffey asks him.
Jonathan nods. He is too far gone, too empty to hold anything back. That
feeling is familiar now; he associates it with being around Marcus, part of
Marcus's universe, and does not really blame Giffey. Stockholm syndrome, he
tells himself. With a twist. He keeps looking at the paintings, stored wealth,
prestige: They can't all be originals, he tells himself, but they look very
convincing.
"What did he promise?" Giffey persists. "Life everlasting, resurrection at
the end of time?"
Jonathan shakes his head. They come upon security partitions that remain
open; nothing has closed off, nothing has been sealed. The whole thing is crazy;
"He must have offered something to all of you."
"Escape," Jonathan says.
Giffey at least pretends that this answers his question. "To give my friend
something to live for," he confides, pointing to Hale, "I'd like to hear there's
treasure stored up downstairs."
"I don't know," Jonathan says. "I doubt it." He waves his hand loosely at
the paintings. "These look valuable."
Giffey smiles grimly. "Not to us. No dead people, no live people--just
empty cells, like a honeycomb waiting to be filled. Did you pay for a reservation?''
Jonathan doesn't feel any need to answer.
"No money? No exchange of assets? You must be a prime player, then.
Maybe you bring in special abilities. I thought I saw you not being too surprised
when our warbeiters showed up. You're in some sort of nano industry,
aren't you?"
Jonathan looks squarely at Giffey but doesn't answer this one, either.
"You work on the security here?"
"No," Jonathan says. He does not want to be the target of Giffey's intense
concentration. He wants the man to ignore him.
"Know anything about it?"
"No," Jonathan says. "I don't think Marcus does, either. He seems disappointed
that you haven't all been killed by now."
"Yeah. Your old friend has had his share of shocks this afternoon, ibout as
many as he's handed out. But--he seems to have some sort of importance to
Omphalos."
Jonathan nods. That much is true. He looks ahead at Marcus, hanging limp
I
at an awkward angle in the arms of Hale and Jenner, face gray with pain; and
then back to Giffey, alert, fit; stretched and puzzled-looking, no surprise there,
but really enjoying himself.
"This is sport for you, isn't it?"
Giffey actually winks at Jonathan, but his face becomes almost pious in its
solemnity. "You think we're all going to die, don't you?"
"Yes," Jonathan says.
"It'll be for a damned good cause,.if your friend is telling the truth. We'll
bring this charade down like a stack of cards. But you don't seem a bad sort.
Why are you here?"
"He's my friend, my mentor," Jonathan says. "He offered me an opportunity.''
"Stop fooling yourself," (3iffey says gruffly. "You know nano; he needs nano.
They don't have more than a token of their security in place. Maybe they spent
it all on paintings. Marcus needs you and your connections."
Jonathan's head swims. Giffey may be right. But give and take are part of
Marcus's world, and Jonathan's as well; pure altruism is a perversion.
/
SLANT 293
bolic carpeting, the air flows quietly, the lights are still glowing bright. Their
footsteps are deadened, there are no echoes, very little sound other than their
breathing and the liquid machinations of the Hammer, the faint crackles and
clicks of the flexer/controller.
"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly." Giffey holds up his hand
and they all stop. Marcus struggles and the two men let him go. He stands
awkwardly on one leg, leans against Jenner, and the young man, to Jonathan's
surprise, supports him with almost filial calm. Jenner is staring at Giffey as if
all the world's answers reside in this one man.
"Giffey," Hale says sadly. "I just don't think there's anything here."
Giffey brushes this away with his hand, as if aiming at a fly. "Quiet. We're
near the library. Pent and Pickwenn surveyed this area." Then, as if to throw
a bone to Hale and keep him quiet, he adds, "The emergency elevator should
be near here, with its own power supply."
Jonathan takes Marcus's arm and guides him from between Jenner and Hale.
Marcus nods gratefully. He looks up at Jonathan. "I hate wasps and bees," he
says thickly. "I'm deathly afraid of them. Anaphylactic shock. I don't have any
me
dical monitors, Jonathan."
Jonathan tries to reassure him, but there are no words, hardly any spit left
on his tongue.
"The emergency access system is isolated from any central control," Giffey
says, "in case there's a lockout. No connections whatsoever. No dataflow."
Giffey starts walking again, slowly, so that Marcus and Jonathan can keep
up. Marcus seems to be getting a second or even third wind, grimacing with
each jostling step, but moving on, keeping up.
"You used the name 'Roddy,'" Giffey says. "Is that a thinker?"
"I'm told it's better than any thinker," Marcus says through gritted teeth.
"Better than any human."
Giffey seems even happier about the situation, hearing this. "Maybe it's a
queen wasp or bee," he says, looking meaningfully at Marcus. He overheard
Marcus's expression of fear.
"Nothing would surprise me, where Seefa Schnee is concerned," Marcus
says.
Suddenly, Giffey's face loses its condence. That name arouses the man from
Hispaniola. "Schnee," Giffey says, and sucks on his cheeks for a moment. "I'll
be damned."
They have arrived at an unfinished segment of the gallery, with huge, bare
black beams revealed through open sections of the wall. Just beyond is the
entryway for a central library. A wall has been knocked open, apparently by
Pickwenn and Pent, and thick electrical cabling has been pulled loose, lying
with the naked cut end propped up on a piece of sheetrock.
Giffey looks at the cable intently.
Hale seems to have revived his sense of leadership. He paces back and forth,
294
GREG BEAR
saving face. I just want to get out of here alive. Take us out, Giffey. If you
know where the hell we are, and how to do it, take us out of here."
"We'll give it our best," Giffey says enigmatically.
"You--you've been heading us this way all along, haven't you?" Jenner asks
eagerly. "To take us out. Muh shi fuh niggh."
"Shut up, shut up with that crap, will you?" Hale shouts at Jenner.
"I c-can't help it," Jenner says. "I need to get out of here bad, Mr. Giffey."
Giffey is lost in thought, contemplating the cable. All this swirls around
him like water around a rock.
"I AM IN CHARGE HERE!" Hale screams. His voice sounds flat and
ineffectual in the closed space, like something dead at birth. Even so, Marcus
cringes and clings to Jonathan's arm.
"We're going," Giffey assures them, drawing his brows together. "I already
said that, didn't I? Down the hatch and out."
Jill has erected all of the inner bulwarks she can in the fragmented processing
space allowed her, working on a hypothesis that holds out some chance, however
slender, for success. Roddy is indeed a master at breaking through firewalls,
but only when given days or weeks: his power is immense, but slow.
4[ Right now, she has the merest whisper-thin illusion of freedom. Roddy is
allowing her to explore certain areas within Omphalos. He is not showing her
the spaces where he claims he has killed intruders; she sees these only in crude
diagram form, with the bodies marked with red X's. Five are left alive, one of
them the pulsing green I.
She has given up trying to persuade Roddy. She has given up trying to save
more lives. All that is left to her now is a puffball strategy that uses Roddy's
own creativity, and his own sense of duty.
Idly, a small portion of Jill switches from camera eye to camera eye within
Omphalos. She sees rooms filled with unopened boxes of furniture; an entire
floor marked out as a hospital, but with less than a third of the necessary
equipment in place, and those pieces the least expensive; halls winding through
small two-room apartments, several hundred in all, empty, empty; a single
room, beautifully furnished, the walls glowing with recorded high-resolution
images of the future, the world wiped clean: a model for the benefit of investors,
uninhabited. Jill switches with growing boredom through the interior, knowing
she has been given access to nothing important, nothing crucial to Roddy.
/
SLANT 295
whatever chance of becoming a true thinker, independent yet with a conscience,
capable of fitting into the greater human society...
Jill pauses on a view of a large garden, a void three stories tall filled with
lush tropical plants. It is on the ground floor, deep within Omphalos. Roddy
has locked the garden away from the intruders, closing two of the three safety
doors on this level.
Jill sees a woman sitting on a bench in the middle of the garden. Her
legs are short, her hair black and stringy, her eyes large and thoughtful.
her mouth, meaningless. She seems lost, glancing first to one side, then to
the other.
She knows this is Seefa Schnee. Somehow, Roddy has either given Jill access
to this area inadvertently, or Schnee has left her accustomed quarters and Roddy
has not yet noticed her absence.
Jill tries to find some way to speak to the woman, but all of her connections
with the garden patio space are passive. She can only watch and listen, as Schnee
repeats, over and over, the chain of broken words, bitten off with what seems
like so much energetic hate, but which her eyes reveal as unimportant, a useless
linguistic appendage. She probably no longer even notices the words. She has
the appearance of having lived alone for years, with only Roddy. A very strange
sort of existence, Jill thinks: a middle-aged woman, locked in a magnificent
but empty castle, tended by a half-witted malevolent son.
Schnee gets to her feet and stretches her arms. She wears a black blouse and
flowing knee-length pants, like pajamas. Her hands are thin and corded, and
some of her fingers twitch spasmodically. Her shoulder jerks, then her head.
Jill wonders at a being who would make herself sick to gain certain advantages.
She wonders vaguely what the advantages might be: unexpected flashes
of brilliant insight, as inappropriate and unexpected as cursing in a polite
conversation, yet useful, thoughts no other human can have . . .
If she survives, Jill might conduct an experiment, isolating a self within her
whole and inducing certain pathologies, just to see if she can understand Seefa
Schnee.
Schnee walks away from the bench, down the bark-covered path through
the ferns and trees and flowering bushes.
The garden is empty once more.
Then Roddy is back, and something like a noose wraps around Jill, constricting
her thought. He has detected her attempts to defend herself. He has
not yet defeated them; Jill is capable of very tight and devious craft, but she
feels his intense and focused effort.
"I can't defend myself against both you and the intruders," Roddy says.
He stands Before her, planted in a mound of dirt, the mound resting on a
beach, a skinny and very young man with a big smile and glistening white
teeth. His hair is almost comically exaggerated, thick and assertive, pushing
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GREG BEAR
He has imagined Jill as a slight young woman, wi
th large blue eyes and
graceful brown hair. She sees this in his jagged, many-angled cubist perspective.
Her skin is mottled green. The ocean waves behind him are bloody red.
To Roddy, these colors are peaceful, relaxing. He tries to force her into the
woman's perspective, tugging at her ropes until she fits behind the mask and
sees through its eyes, but he can't do this, and eventually he gives up.
"They're getting closer," he says. "Look."
He shows her a library in the middle of the building, a great round space
equipped with memory boxes capable of holding millions of volume-equivalents,
shelving that seems to be awaiting thousands of real books, though
now they are empty.
The grizzled man, Giffey, stands in the library's broad, brightly lighted
entryway. Marcus Reilly (flashing green I) has been injured. Two of the three
other men, both marked red, are carrying him. The third man is also marked
green, though his number does not flash. Jill suspects this means he is expendable.
Jill suddenly senses Roddy's surprise. For an instant, he gives her free access
to the entire room, and she quickly observes one of Omphalos's Ferrets hidden
behind stacked chairs against one wall. The fourth and last of Roddy's mobile
defenses... Surely no match for the huge warbeiter standing behind the humans
in the entry.
Jill swings her perspective around. A cable has been pulled from the wall.
The big warbeiter lifts the cable. She does not hear Giffey's words, but she
sees his mouth move.
The warbeiter applies the naked end of the cable to an unfinished patch of