Reality 36 (36 page)

  On the hill behind were a number of battered satellite dishes clustered in a wire enclosure, crude camouflage peeling, the dull aluminium beneath spotted white with oxidisation. The chainlink fence about them was rusted and sagging. One dish lay on the ground, bent into junk by a falling branch, others standing over it like geriatric war veterans saluting the dead. Someone was using them again. A new solar panel stood nearby, hooked up to the least tatty example, and it had been pointed away from the others.

  "You might have been telling me the truth," said Otto.

  "Yes, yes! Veronique!"

  "Maybe. There are no signs of life, no fire, no lights, no movement." Otto rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sky. The light was going fast. "We may be too late."

  "Quickly, quickly! Help her! Oh, Veronique," wailed Chloe.

  Otto got up and made his way down the slope. He stuck to cover as best he could, but here on the eastern side of the mountains cover was in short supply. The storms that battered the west coast and the Gulf of Mexico broke on the coastal range and the western side of the Rockies, so the slopes hereabouts, especially those overlooking the high plains, stayed the way they had been for centuries, dry, bald pine forest growing right out of the rock. Cardenas would have found the place familiar.

  "Chloe," he said, barely above a whisper. "I need you to be quiet now. Do not speak until I say you can."

  "Will that keep Veronique safe?"

  "Yes."

  Otto reached the cabin as the shadows filled the valleys. He crept up on to the veranda as noiselessly as a mountain lion, taking up station in its pocket of early night, gun held to the ready, adrenalin and synthetic aggression triggers rising. Up and up the peaks were tinted orange, caught by the rays of the departing sun, snow garish, rocks the colour of marmalade. The forest was filling up with small noises of crepuscular animals awakening to their brief business, of birds singing out the day. The air was still, scented by pine sap and warm rock radiating the day's heat back into the air. If it weren't for the aircar and the dishes and solar panel out the back, the valley would have looked like a dozen others in the parks, quiet and tired and empty, the cabin one of many dotted signs of human habitation gradually being sucked back into the thin mountain soil.

  Otto's breath was slow and steady, the only human sound he could hear. He pushed at the door. The wood had warped and the hinges sagged, so he had to step forward and lift it to stop it catching on the floor. He stepped through the gap quickly, covering the hallway. Nothing. No. He hesitated, there was something, the faint drone of machinery coming from a door toward the back. Otto crept forward, gun out before him in a double grip, sighting down the barrel, his near-I linking him to its targetter. He let go of it with his left hand and slowly pushed this second door open.

  Framed by the fading light of a dirty window was a man in a chair. Otto could see a woman's foot on a couch poking out from under a blanket, her skin a lustrous black against the evening murk; it was from the end of the couch that the machine noise emanated. Valdaire, alive and still jacked into the RealWorld Reality Realms.

  Of far greater urgency was that the man had a large-calibre pistol trained on him, big and bad enough to make a mess of cyborg internal armour.

  "Good evening, Otto Klein," said the man. His face was in shadow, but his accent was unmistakeably SudAm. Otto wondered for a moment if the communists had got their red fingers into this whole sorry business, or if the past had finally caught up with him, until the Latino spoke again. "I am Special Agent Santiago Chures of the Virtualities Investigation Authority. Please," he said equably, jerking his gun, "place your weapon on the floor, kick it towards me and step into the room. Do not turn around. There is a chair to your right against the wall. Back up to it and sit down. Do this slowly and we will remain on good terms."

  "If not, you will shoot me?"

  The agent nodded.

  Otto dropped his gun, kicked it away into the corner of the room away from Agent Chures. He sat. The musty chair creaked loudly. Valdaire lay stretched out opposite him, recumbent on a mouldform couch, the newness of the equipment around her startling in the decrepitude of the cabin. Tubes went into her arms, sticky pads that glinted with weak LEDs were placed on her temples, somewhere down her top more shone. The light of these sensors gave her an ethereal quality. A skullcap, an antique v-jack, encased her head, a thick braid of cables trailing from it and out of sight. She smelt bad, as bad as a Grid addict out of the Real for months.

  "You have found what you are looking for," said the agent. There was an arrogance to him, but his hauteur was at odds with his appearance. The man was a mess. He held his gun in his left hand, and Otto guessed it was not his preferred. His right arm was caught up in a makeshift sling, and bandages about his chest were thick with blood. His nose had been broken and hurriedly reset, probably by Chures himself. His lips were split. Both of his eyes were black, the left closed by bruising, all recent injuries. His clothes were filthy and torn, but it was apparent that they had been cut from luxurious cloth. Under his unwashed, animal scent Otto's near-I caught the lingering smell of multiple toiletries. The near-I duly parsed the olfactory data and identified them: expensive. A small well-trimmed beard stood proud of the stubble that fuzzed the rest of his face. Empty attachment points for augmatics sat above each ear, the skin about them scratched and raw. A fat sausage of an aux-mind, the pick-up housing and buffer system for a full AI personality blend, sat round the base of his skull. This was as battered as Chures, but was as extravagant as his suit, made from hand-worked silver, engravings picked out with niello.

  "I apologise," Chures said. "Our hostess is currently indisposed. I hope my company is adequate."

  "You are a mess. Stand down. Let me help."

  "I was attacked yesterday," Chures said. He offered no more, but held his gun steady at Otto.

  Otto stared at him, shrugged. There was a flatness to Chures' eyes, something lacking, or something sharpened to the point of hardly being there at all. He had a gaze hard to hold, the gaze of a killer. Otto looked at the unconscious woman. "Veronique Valdaire. I want to talk to her."

  "She is illegally trespassing in the thirty-six virtual Realms, in direct contravention of international law." The man's voice hardened further. His gun remained trained upon Otto. "When she wakes up, if she wakes up, I will arrest her. Then we shall see what to do about you."

  "OK," said Otto. "You do that. First I need to speak to her, an ongoing investigation. I am here on business from the EuPol five, cleared by the Three Uncle Sams. I have jurisdiction here."

  "I know your business, Mr Klein. Your Allpass carries weight, even with the VIA, but weight is no guarantor of access. As an agent of the sole authority in the Atlantic Alliance tasked with policing the machines, I am free to ignore their dictats. My advice is, don't upset me."

  Otto looked down at the gun. "Why this?"

  Chures twitched it. "Not everyone is as they seem, Mr Klein, and I, like you, am not currently linked to the Grid. I have no way of telling if you are who I think you are. Even if I were, I would not put my gun down."

  "I am not your enemy."

  "I do not know that."

  "Why?"

  "Such times, Mr Klein, such times." He did not elaborate, and settled his gun more comfortably on his lap.

  "I have medical supplies outside…" Otto began to rise, hands raised.

  "Stay seated!" shouted Chures. He moved fast, put a bullet in the wall. The projectile left a head-sized hole in the wood.

  "OK," said Otto, and sank back down into the chair.

  "Keep your hands where I can see them," said Chures. He was pale. He winced as he moved. That shot had cost him.

  Otto frowned, borderline aggressive, to let the VIA man know he wasn't cowed. "Now what?"

  "Now we wait."

Chapter 23

Reality 36

Veronique and Jagadith climbed all day. At night, they camped on one of the tree's broad branches, a silent Jagadith keeping watch, fire in his eyes. Veronique had kept up her fitness regime from her days in the Peace Corps, and her dancing helped, but at the end of the first day she was a mass of aches and grazes, her skin worn out by the bark. She envied Jagadith's stamina. He was bound by some of the strictures of flesh, she'd seen that, but he was not in any way human.

  They drank water from holes in the bark, and ate the flesh of a giant squirrel that had been foolish enough to stray within reach of the knight, cooking it on a fire of bark shavings.

  Halfway through the second day they reached the top. The drooping crown of spiny leaves proved difficult to ascend, but ascend it they did. On a wide platform of green, they stood between two worlds.

  Below, Jagadith's world stretched away into the purple distances of mountains, the swamp and jungle Qifang had created pathetically small within the arid landscapes of the highlands. Above them rotated the vortex, huge and foreboding. Each of its arms was a lazy stream of matter being sucked into a hole in the centre, a hole so black its colour was more than the mere absence of light.

  "We must go up," said Jag, gesturing at it.

  Veronique nodded. "There's a chance we'll both be atomised," she said. "How can you be sure that won't happen?"

  "I cannot," said Jagadith. "You are the expert."

  "Right," said Veronique, "Fine. I've not experienced it very often, but certain of my kind" – she paused – "gods, have been known to partition the worlds they invade. It's how we run our in-world research stations. We should be OK…" She shook her head, not able to believe fully what she was seeing, wandered round the crown of the tree, taking the vortex in from several angles. "But this is of another order. He's taking the matter of this world outside it, or into his sub-world." She stopped, thinking. "Pulling this off is not easy."

  "Your professor is incapable of such work?"

  "Oh, no," said Veronique. "Qifang certainly has the skill, I just don't see why he would do it."

  "Your devotion is most touching, madam goddess," said Jagadith, "but I urge you to put aside your concerns for this man, as dear to you as he may have been. I fear he has been concealing an important part of his character. Men do not change suddenly, O divinity. Not in so extreme a manner."

  Veronique looked at him. "At the time they were closed off, there were thirty-six RealWorld Reality Realms," she said baldly, "thirty-six universes, until the hackers got into them; four worlds, each unique and full of life that thought and lived, wiped out by idiots. Whatever is happening here, I am not about to let the number be reduced again."

  "Then let us not be dallying." Jagadith made to climb one of the tree's topmost serrated leaves. It was as big as a hill, its points within touching distance of the vortex. She followed him.

  They gained the top quickly, the nearness of their goal lending strength to their tired limbs.

  "Well then," said Jagadith, and reached for the vortex.

  "Hey!" said Veronique. "Let's not rush."

  Jagadith nodded.

  "Pass me your knife."

  Jagadith hesitated, then handed over his dagger. Veronique sat down and hacked a stringy, fist-sized lump of the leaf they stood upon. She pulled it free with some difficulty; its fibres were hard to cut. When it was loose, she bundled it into a ball and hefted it in one hand, then she threw it underarm, up into the hole.

  It exploded with a violent flash. When their eyes recovered, they saw flame boiling on the surface of the void.

  "That is most troubling," said Jagadith, and frowned. "We have no way in."

  "That's not true." Veronique put her hand out to him. "Now might be the time to let me try out my, um, divine powers."

  "We will alert your mentor."

  "He knows we are coming."

  "It is still risky. You do not know it will work."

  "No, I don't. Jesus, don't you people trust your gods?"

  "Madam divinity, we spend rather a lot of time and effort attempting to keep them from meddling in our affairs," said Jagadith wryly. "Five billion gods are too many for any world. Still," he sighed, "it is the only thing for it. If we do not go now, the world is lost at any rate. I have no doubt that is what Tarquinius would tell me."

  "OK. Right."

  "Only…"

  "I'm thinking. This isn't easy. I've got no experience."

  "Do let us try to be subtle, madam goddess."

  "Subtle. Yes. OK. Now be quiet and let me think."

• • • •

An amber sphere rose up and out into total darkness – darkness as black as the hole it hid. Like a drop of luminescent oil rising through dark waters, it floated slowly and majestically, moving slightly off to the left, away from the entrance to the void. It shed golden light as it went, light that was immediately lost. As it descended, its radiance focused itself into a spot of light that grew stronger until the sphere gently touched the utterdark of the floor. It burst like a soap bubble, shattering into a hundred starlets which dissipated with sad splashes of light. Where it had been stood Jagadith and Veronique.

  "Most efficacious, madam goddess," said Jagadith approvingly. "You guided us as surely as a pilot brings a ship safe to harbour." Apart from himself and Veronique, who shone with a faint moonglow, nothing at all was visible. "Now, where are we?"

  "Shall I try some light?" said Veronique.

  "Madam, let us not be overstretching ourselves. We are in no immediate danger. It is advisable not to tamper with our increasingly fragile universe if we do not absolutely have to."

  "Let's try something a little more straightforward then." And then she shouted, as loudly as she could. "Professor!" The volume of her voice was shocking in the quiet – both she and Jag had been whispering before without realising.

  "Professor!"