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  The boy slipped away on hoverblades. Bellow watched the window facets carefully, as if searching for any response. The skyscraper remained impassive. It was only a shell. What he had come for was inside.

  —

  "You must be Will,” the impeccably dressed building manager said. He introduced himself as Harry Crowther. He was wearing a navy smart suit complete with white handkerchief and gold cuffs, and he looked suitably middle-aged and recently combed and styled, although the grooming looked hastily done. Maybe he'd been interrupted from a nap.

  "I was expecting someone...” He couldn't seem to come up with an appropriate qualifier. “You know how it is these days. Surfing at five, programming worldwide at fifteen. Burned out at twenty-one. Or retired.” He smiled.

  Something about his face looked familiar. Bellow volunteered nothing of his former life and what had landed him there; Crowther probably knew most of it anyway. Bellow knew what he looked like: a decade older than he was with wrinkles around the edges of his eyes and lips, hair gone slightly gray at the temples, a dinosaur in the age of limitless beauty and eternal life—at least for the wealthy. Perversely, the women liked him better for it.

  "I was pleased to hear you were coming to visit us,” the manager said. “I'd thought you would simply jack in from outside."

  "I like to get a feel for a place. The people who take care of it. You can learn a lot from the amount of dust on a floor."

  "I suppose that's true,” Crowther said, as if he had a good idea of what Bellow meant. “We're only so good as our cleaning crew, isn't that right? Attention to detail, in this day and age, is a necessity, isn't it? We're all so busy, life is so crowded, the division of labor becomes all the more important. And one must take responsibility for his area of expertise. There is no time or consideration for a lack of effort."

  They walked through the lobby and past the sentry bot. Bellow felt the brief warmth of a retina scan as the squat and spiderlike sentry paused, touched his corneal implants, and then moved on. He blinked into the web and probed gently against the gelatinous Tower firewalls, just enough to gather a list of names. He was already flagged in the security database, and while the news did not really surprise him, it was irritating. He never liked them to know he was coming.

  He blinked out, into another hallway. They passed by several large workspaces with crowded holographic terminals and what seemed like hundreds of padded design cubicles full of kids in hotsuits and headgear. The boy from the street flashed him a brief smile and wink as he walked by, as if they shared some private joke.

  "Ninety-seven floors,” Crowther rattled on. “Medical implants, gene therapy, nanotech, quantum design; we do it all here. Then, of course, the owner-occupied suites on the upper, er, levels. And we are a fully functional programming and broadcasting center. Entertainment and shopping, mostly, but we also run a few business sites. Attendance at our seminars is up twenty percent—I'm sorry, am I boring you? I do go on. It's more than my business, it's my passion. Which is why I'm so concerned about the recent trouble."

  "I'd like to see the main server."

  "It's in the sub-basement. Access is restricted. I'll have to make a call. Excuse me a moment.” He removed a slender holo-screen from his pocket and spoke a few words into it. A stream of dialogue followed from a floating female hologram.

  "We're cleared to go,” Crowther said.

  They took the express to the lower levels. As the doors slid silently open, the sentry bots were there in force, more insistent this time, scanning body crevices and taking DNA samples from a puff of skin cells. They waited while a bot analyzed Bellow's DNA results and scanned for organic explosives and designer drugs, then passed through steel doors and into a giant vibrating cylinder along a polymer-reinforced catwalk that circled the walls. The server hung suspended and humming beneath them like some monstrous sleeping child, capable of a hundred billion functions per millisecond, able to reveal worlds and then destroy them in the blink of an eye, her countless arms of magnetic layered quantum chips and alpha waves reaching out and linking virtual fingers with anyone who paid the subscribers’ fee.

  Ignoring the manager's surprised shout, Bellow leaned over the rail and placed both palms gently against the vibrating surface.

  He slipped beneath the circular room and the smells of hot grease and electric current, or rather deep within it. There was a certain pitch that carried a voice and a presence only he could hear. The language was foreign but soothingly familiar, as if he were a fetus listening in the womb to his mother's muffled conversation. He became a part of the machinery, inserting himself into the hot coils and slippery chips, all the while probing ever deeper, ever closer to that something he sought.

  There. Bellow imagined a tremor so slight it was not mechanical but magnetic. Then Crowther's slender, manicured hands were pulling him away from the machine, and he was once again on the catwalk with the manager's yapping, nervous face peering into his own as if searching for signs of mania.

  "Are you insane? That's a two hundred foot drop!"

  "Take your hands off me."

  "I didn't mean any harm.” The manager stepped back quickly and sputtered, red-faced, his calm façade cracked wide open. “You surprised me, that's all. I'd heard you were eccentric, had unusual methods, but this is a restricted area with sensitive equipment, you understand. Imagine introducing your child to me, and I slap my hands down on it without so much as a word. It's rather barbaric."

  Christ, Bellow thought. He's offended. You had to be careful with these people; they operated within a very rigid social order, and they were fragile. But there was something funny about this man struggling to keep his emotions in check. As if a manager's blind-eyed professionalism would keep the entire vast expanse up and running.

  On the way back to the upper levels, Bellow pretended to study his datapad, giving the building manager time to recover himself.

  "You're aware that we've had some ... incidents,” Crowther said as they walked past the sentry clones. “Assuming our Board of Directors agrees, I'll brief you in full and open access to our files after you accept our binding security documents. These incidents are extremely sensitive, and we trust you won't speak of them to anyone. For now, you only need to know what the newsclips have reported to understand why you have been brought in here."

  "A bug in the system. I felt it back there."

  The manager looked at him blankly. “I'm sure that's impossible. The, er, bug is simply an electronic glitch."

  "Your glitch has killed three people."

  "The fact of the matter is that we service millions every day. A scant few of our users have received injuries from an unknown source. I'm not prepared to concede that it's even from our system."

  Bellow shrugged. Three New London users had received roughly fifty thousand volts through the brain, according to his information, the last of them just yesterday. But who was he to argue?

  They entered the elevator and the pneumatic doors whooshed shut. “There's the matter of my payment."

  "I've been authorized to offer you up to two hundred thousand credits. Half up front, half upon completion of the job. You will be put up in our best suite, of course."

  "I'd rather stay downtown. Helps me think."

  "We'd prefer you keep a low profile. I'd have to authorize it—"

  "I don't give a damn what you have to do,” Bellow said. “This is what I want: three hundred thousand credits, one hundred thousand up front; money for traveling expenses; and freedom to operate without someone looking over my shoulder every five minutes."

  "Is there something I've done to offend you?"

  "I don't like building managers. The last one I knew tried to have me lobotomized."

  The manager looked offended again and said he would have to make another call. They'll do it, Bellow thought, simply because they had no choice. Murder was not a game, and he was still the best, no matter how long it had been.

  He was also the only one desperat
e or stupid enough to take the job.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  -3-

  The New London board was a group of ten perfectly manipulated humans: every genetic flaw excised, every mole or sign of age erased. One of them had the pink, freshly scrubbed look of a recent micropore flush, as millions of nano-machines finished their programmed duties and returned in a dust-mote swarm to a shirt-pocketed vial.

  They looked like cartoon characters, Bellow thought. He was seated in silence at a Bubinga wood conference table with Dunami massaging chairs, placed before a wall of polished glass with the tray ceiling at least twenty feet overhead. Personally, he'd take a slightly crooked nose and a little fat around the middle, and the hell with living forever. Too much re-sculpting and the edges started to blend together. Pretty soon you've lost sight of the original.

  Someone expressed the possibility that the attacks were the work of a member of the religious right. The Church of Transformations’ explosive growth threatened the conservatives, and it made them much more aggressive as increasing numbers of people left them and joined Gutenberg's disciples. Such people might be inside New London—or might have hacked in.

  Another board member suggested the underground resistance, the “antisprawl” movement. These people were, for all intents and purposes, radical environmentalists who would use any means necessary to take down corporations. As the board droned on, Bellow stared at a stone sculpture of what he supposed was the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, her many legs reaching out to caress or destroy. He didn't give a damn who was behind the attacks, as long as the source left itself open to him. It had been a long time. Right now he was itching to go, and he found the familiar focus reassuring—the way everything else just seemed to fade away from his peripheral vision. Another bug chaser he'd known a long time ago, when they were both young and hungry, had meditated just before a hunt. He'd described the feeling as finding the scratch on the head of a pin.

  "I'll need complete access,” Bellow interrupted, finally. “I know you've all got your own security issues and you won't want to give that up. But I want top-level clearance or I can't do my job."

  There was silence. “Is that agreeable to everyone?” Crowther said. He looked frantic, concerned that Bellow might say something even more outrageous.

  They all looked blankly at him. A woman who may or may not have been over the age of forty said, “That simply isn't possible."

  "There can't be any corners for it to hide in. If it has access, it will find the highest levels of security and hibernate."

  "I don't understand,” said the man with the pink, newborn face. “If this is a virus of some sort, it will have left corrupted files in its wake, and you can track it. But you talk like it's some kind of adaptable living thing."

  "I believe it is capable of some independent thought. It may even be a human being. The fact is, we don't know what it looks like inside, or where it comes from, or why it's acting this way. Anyone who has witnessed this thing is dead."

  "We've been able to trace some movement,” Crowther said. “Three surges moving at a high rate of speed, attacking the main server in very sophisticated ways before flaming out. Won't that help?"

  "That's like saying a program runs from code."

  "Mr. Bellow,” Pink-face said, “you're aware that New London is one of the largest, most diversified companies in the world. We have our hands in everything, from setting markets to silicone to consumer goods to space travel. We designed and built the city you're standing in, for God's sake, so you understand why we must be very careful. Ours is a fragile ecosystem, Mr. Bellow, one that exists because we built and control it, but one that is finely balanced because the consumers—our customers—trust the New London brand. Our influences to that effect are subtle, and therefore transparent enough for the customers to be, for the most part, unaware of their existence. We simply cannot allow this illusion to break down. At the same time, we must also be very careful who we share our most top-level information with, for the same reasons."

  "You've checked my references. You know I can be trusted, or I wouldn't be here."

  Pink-face sighed. “There was some difference of opinion on that front. You've been out of the game for some time, haven't you? There are those of us who are worried it's been too long. But you received the majority vote, so here you are."

  "I think what Mr. Au is trying to say,” Crowther said, “is that we're concerned. We're all concerned, and rightly so. We simply cannot have any more of these incidents. The first two of them, because of the nature of the business, happened when the users were alone. This latest one was particularly ... problematic because there was a witness."

  "I want to talk to this person."

  "I don't know if she's available,” Crowther said. He looked around the table helplessly. “She's been detained."

  "By your security, I'm sure,” Bellow said. “So set up a meeting. Look, someone—or something—is murdering your customers. I can probably stop it. But I can't do my job unless I have full access. No exceptions."

  There was a long silence at the table. Beyond the glass wall, a Carrier swooped down from the black sky, its floodbeams flashing across the window and cutting off the city lights. “All right,” the first woman said. “We'll give you access—if you sign the proper paperwork. Remember, we hold your body as collateral."

  "How could I possibly forget? Now I'd like to ask you something."

  "Go right ahead."

  "Who created this system?"

  The room fell into silence. The board members looked at each other. Pink-face cleared his throat. “That's none of your concern."

  "I need to get an idea of the mind that built it. That will make it easier for me to sense anything unusual. Without laying the groundwork, I can't guarantee I'll be able to do what you ask."

  "We're paying you a lot of money,” the woman said. “You're supposed to be an expert."

  "Is there a problem with meeting the programmer?"

  "There are hundreds of programmers,” she said. “We run a full-service facility here."

  "But there must be someone in charge."

  Pink-face frowned. “There is,” he said, “but he values his privacy. It's rather unusual, actually. We ourselves don't even know his name. And he's terribly busy."

  "All right, fine. At least give me access to saved versions of the early files."

  "Why?"

  "I want to feel this place being built."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  -4-

  Checked into a New London Hilton cubicle downtown with his one bag of personal belongings stowed in the locker under the bed, Bellow slipped back out in search of information.

  The streets of New London were hot and wet. A sulfur-laced fog had rolled in over the sea, making his eyes water and his stomach churn. He couldn't handle the humidity the way he did when he was young, when sweat was sweet and cleansing rather than something to shower off as quickly as possible.

  On a nearby street corner, a small crowd had gathered. Someone was projecting a holographic signature into the fog, The Transformation is coming, along with the circle and arrow sign of the Church. The people were chanting something unintelligible. Above them rose a giant OLED billboard playing a clip of New London's latest virtual vacation, along with a voiceover speaking excitedly about the opportunities the New London Network offered those who were planning to get away for a while. “Bring your whole family,” the soft female voice said. “Be transformed by all the comforts of a five star hotel and beach resort or a trip to the Venus moons for a spectacular sunset, all without leaving home."

  Neon holographics painted the sky shades of red and green, and the New London virals flew at him with pinpoint precision, more seductive stories that showed him what he could purchase if he wanted to be just like the latest holovid star. Underneath, he could feel the subtler waveforms pushing at his brain, trying to find their way in and alter his alphas. He'd always been able to feel them, unl
ike most of the general population, who didn't know when a thought in their heads was original and when it had been put there by someone else. Bellow supposed that was part of his talent, if one could call it that. To him, the whispering voices when he passed through a waveform zone were akin to sudden onset schizophrenia, and he wished to God the technology had never been invented.

  The Carriers were quiet, their floodbeams off against the fog and guidance systems steering them low and fast around the tallest skyscrapers. Dogs slinked in and out of the shadows like ghosts, most of them strays with ribcages showing through patchwork skin.

  He consulted with a web navigation system to get his bearings and then blinked out again. The arcades were unusually empty. Bellow passed them without more than a glance, unable to face the flashing lights from game rooms, the kids with wires in their heads getting juiced like a bunch of goddamned lab experiments. Bellow knew what they said about him in the chat rooms: that he'd never really needed the hotsuit or corneal implants, that he was a natural net-sensitive. His abilities had made him legendary in some circles, but he had never seen himself the way others did. He didn't want to be anybody special. He just wanted to do his job and be left alone.

  He took a right through Chinatown and reached a row of old-style English clubs complete with cobblestone streets. Inside the first was a band of Aerosmith clones. Projected above the heads of the crowd was a newsclip from the MSNetwork; the logo for New London Tower flashed and spun. A plump woman's ruined face blinked into view. Her hair had been nearly burned off, and the heat had made her flesh run liquid.

  The latest victim, Stephie Vaille: now the shit would hit the fan, Bellow thought. It would make what he had to do that much more difficult. He knew something about Vaille already from a records search, but wondered about the witness. Was it an employee, or someone who had been with her? His money was on a companion, since they had her locked down and the story had already broken on the news. An employee might have been kept completely quiet, but with a witness, they would have to release some information, no matter how bad it would get. Or was it possible that the press had managed to reach her already? If so, Bellow's job would be damn near impossible.