The MaddAddam Trilogy (121 page)

But she was there that Thursday. All Zeb saw at first was a small, black-and-grey-haired older woman playing chess with Glenn, over on the sidelines. It was an odd combo – almost-old lady, uppity young kid – and odd combos intrigued him.

He sauntered up casually and loomed over Glenn’s shoulder. He watched the game for a while, trying not to kibbitz. Neither side had an obvious advantage. The old dame played relatively quickly, though without fluster, while Glenn pondered. She was making him work.

“Queen to h5,” Zeb said at last. Glenn was playing Black this time. Zeb wondered if he’d chosen it out of bravado or whether they’d flipped for White.

“Don’t think so,” said Glenn without looking up while moving his knight to block – Zeb now saw – a possible check. The older woman smiled at Zeb, one of those wrinkly-eyed brown-skinned gnome-in-the-woods smiles that could mean anything from
I like you
to
Watch out
.

“Who is your friend?” she said to Glenn.

Glenn frowned at Zeb, which meant he felt insecure about the game. “This is Seth,” he said. “This is Pilar. Your move.”

“Hey,” said Zeb, nodding.

“A pleasure,” said Pilar. “Good save,” she said to Glenn.

“Catch you later,” Zeb said to Glenn. He wandered off to eat some NevRBled Shish-K-Buddies – he was getting fond of them, despite their ersatz texture – topped off with a SoYummie cone, quasiraspberry flavour.

He sucked on the cone while looking over the field and ranking all the women he could see. It was a harmless pastime. The scale was one to ten. There were no tens (In a Minute!), a couple of eights (With Mild Reservations), a clutch of fives (If Nothing Else Available), some definite threes (You’d Have to Pay Me), and an unfortunate two (Pay Me a Lot!) – when he felt a touch on his arm.

“Don’t act surprised, Seth,” said a low voice. He looked down: it was tiny, walnut-faced Pilar. Was she making a move on him? Surely not, but if so it could be a delicate moment, politeness-wise: how to say no in an acceptable manner?

“Your shoelaces are untied,” she said.

Zeb stared at her. His shoes didn’t have laces. They were slip-ons.

“Welcome to MaddAddam, Zeb,” she said, smiling.

Zeb coughed out a chunk of SoYummie cone. “Fuck!” he said, but he had the presence of mind to say it softly. Adam and his idiot
shoelaces
password. Who could have remembered?

“It’s all right,” said Pilar. “I know your brother. I helped bring you here. Look bored, as if we’re making small talk.” She smiled at him again. “I’ll see you at the next Thursday barbecue. We should arrange
to play a game of chess.” Then she wafted serenely away towards the croquet game. She had excellent posture: Zeb sensed a yoga aficionado. Posture like that made him feel personally sloppy.

He longed to go online, zigzag into the Extinctathon MaddAddam chatroom, and ask Adam about this woman, but he knew that wouldn’t be prudent. The least said the better online, even if you thought your space was secure. The net had always been just that – a net, full of holes, all the better to trap you with; and it still was, despite the fixes they claimed to be adding constantly, with the impenetrable algorithms and the passwords and thumb scans.

But what else did they expect? With code serfs like him in charge of the security keys, of course the thing was going to leak. The pay was too low, so the temptation to pilfer, snoop, snitch, and sell for high rewards was great. But the penalties were getting more extreme, which was a counterbalance of sorts. Online thieves were increasingly professional, like the outfits he’d worked with in Rio. Few were hacking for the pure lulz of it any more, or even to register protests, as they had in the golden years of legend that middle-aged guys wearing retro Anonymous masks got all nostalgic about in the dim, cobwebby, irrelevant corners of the web.

What good would registering a protest do you any more? The Corps were moving to set up their own private secret-service outfits and seize control of the artillery; not a month passed without the arrival of some new weapons law pretending to safeguard the public. Old-style demonstration politics were dead. You could get back at individual targets such as the Rev using underhanded means, but any kind of public action involving crowds and sign-waving and then storefront smashing would be shot off at the knees. Increasingly, everyone knew that.

He finished his SoYummie cone, fended off snub-nosed Marjorie, who wanted him to join a game of croquet and acted hurt when he said he was awkward with wooden balls, then meandered over to where Glenn was still sitting, staring at the chessboard. He’d set it up again and was playing against himself. “Who won?” Zeb asked.

“I almost did,” said Glenn. “She pulled a Grob’s Attack on me. It caught me off-guard.”

“What exactly does she do here?” Zeb asked. “Is she in charge of something?”

Glenn smiled. He liked knowing things Zeb didn’t know. “Mushrooms. Funguses. Mould. Want to play me?”

“Tomorrow,” said Zeb. “Ate too much, it’s dulling my brain.”

Glenn grinned up at him. “Chickenshit,” he said.

“Maybe just lazy. How come you know her?” said Zeb.

Glenn looked at him a little too long, a little too hard: green cat eyes. “I already said. She works with my dad. He’s on her team. Anyway, she’s in the chess club. Been playing her since I was five. She’s not too stupid.”

Which, in the high-praise area, was about as far as he went.

At the next Thursday barbecue, Glenn wasn’t there. Nor had he been in evidence for a couple of days. He hadn’t been mooching around the cafeteria, or asking Zeb to show him a few more hack moves on the computer. He’d become invisible.

Was he sick? Had he run away? Those were the only two possibilities that Zeb could think of, and he ruled out running away: the kid was surely too young for that, and it was too difficult to get out of HelthWyzer West without a pass. Though with Glenn’s newfound robinhooding cryptic skills he could probably fake one.

There was another possibility: the little smartass had been colouring outside the digital lines. He’d broken into some sacrosanct Corps database or other and helped himself, just for the heck of it, because he couldn’t possibly be into shady trading with the Chinese grey market, or worse – the Albanians, they were incandescent at the moment – and he’d got himself caught. In which case he’d be in a debriefing room somewhere having his brain pumped out. A person could come out of such affairs with nothing but a year-old dishrag north of the eyes. Would they do such a thing to a mere child? Yes. They would.

He really hoped it wasn’t that: if it was, he himself would feel very guilty, because it would mean he’d been a bad teacher. “Rule Number One,” he’d emphasized. “Don’t get caught.” But that was sometimes easier said than done. Had he been sloppy about the coding fretwork? Had he shown the kid a past-sell-by-date shortcut? Had he missed a few Detour signs, a few spoor marks that meant that he and Glenn were not the only ones on what he’d thought was his very own self-created poacher’s jungle trail?

Though he was more than concerned, Zeb didn’t want to start asking the teachers or even Glenn’s lax and neglectful parents about him. He needed to keep his profile low, not draw attention.

Zeb scanned the barbecue crowd again. Still no Glenn. But Pilar was there, over to the side, under a tree. She was sitting in front of a chessboard, which she appeared to be studying. He assumed his casual saunter and made his way over there, hoping he looked random.

“Up for a game?” he said.

Pilar glanced up. “Certainly,” she said with a smile. Zeb sat down.

“We’ll toss for White,” said Pilar.

“I like to play Black,” said Zeb.

“So I’ve been told,” said Pilar. “Very well.”

She opened with a standard queen’s pawn, and Zeb decided to opt for a queen’s Indian defence. “Where’s Glenn?” he asked.

“Things are not good,” she answered. “Concentrate on the game. Glenn’s father is dead. Glenn is naturally upset. The CorpSeCorps officers told him it was a suicide.”

“No shit,” said Zeb. “When did that happen?”

“Two days ago,” said Pilar, moving her queen’s knight. Zeb moved his bishop, pinning it down. Now she’d have a job developing her centre. “It’s not when, however, it’s how. He was pushed off an overpass.”

“By his wife?” Zeb asked, remembering Rhoda’s tit pressing against his back, and also the earlet concealed in her bedside lamp. It was a jokey kind of question – he should have been ashamed of himself. Sometimes that kind of thing shot out of his mouth like popcorn. But it was a serious question, as well: Glenn’s dad could have found out about Rhoda’s lunchtime interludes, they could have gone for a walk to discuss it, outside the walls of HelthWyzer for more privacy, and decided to stroll along the overpass, for the view of the oncoming traffic, and then they could have had a fight, and Glenn’s mother could have upended his dad over the railing, a move he’d been unable to defend himself against …

Pilar was looking at him. Waiting for him to come to his senses, most likely.

“Okay, I take it back,” he said. “It wasn’t her.”

“He found out something they’re doing, inside HelthWyzer,” said
Pilar. “He felt this practice was not only unethical but dangerous to public health, and therefore immoral. He threatened to make this knowledge public; or, well, not public as such, since the press probably wouldn’t have touched it. But if he’d gone to a rival Corp, especially one outside the country, they’d have made damaging use of the information.”

“He was on your research team, wasn’t he?” said Zeb. He was trying to follow what she was saying, thus losing control of his game.

“Affiliated,” said Pilar, dispatching one of his pawns. “He confided in me. And now I’m confiding in you.”

“Why?” said Zeb.

“I’m being reassigned,” said Pilar. “To the HelthWyzer headquarters, out east. Or that’s where I hope I’m going, though it may be worse. They may think I’m lacking in enthusiasm, or suspect my loyalty. You’ll have to leave here. I can’t keep you safe once I’ve been transferred. Take my bishop with your knight.”

“That’s a bad move,” said Zeb. “It opens the way to …”

“Just take it,” she said calmly. “Then keep it in your hand. I have another one, I’ll replace it in the box. No one will know there’s a bishop missing.”

Zeb palmed the bishop. He’d learned how to do that from Slaight of Hand, back in his Floating World days. Deftly he slid it up his sleeve.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” he said. With Pilar gone, he’d be isolated.

“Just deliver it,” she said. “I’ll fake you a day pass, with a cover story attached; they’ll want to know your business in the pleeblands. Once you’re outside the HelthWyzer West Compound, there’ll be a new identity waiting. Take the bishop with you. There’s a sex club franchise called Scales and Tails, you can look it up on the net. Go to the nearest branch. The password is
oleaginous
. They’ll let you in. You’ll be leaving the bishop there. It’s a container, they’ll know how to open it.”

“Deliver it to who?” said Zeb. “What’s in it, anyway? Who’s
they
?”

“Vectors,” said Pilar.

“In what sense?” said Zeb. “Like, math vectors?”

“Let’s say biological. Vectors for bioforms. And these vectors are inside some other vectors that look like vitamin pills: three kinds, white, red, and black. And the pills are inside another vector, the bishop. Which will be carried by another vector, you.”

“What’s the thing inside the pills?” Zeb asked. “Brain candy? Code chips?”

“Definitely not. Best not to ask,” said Pilar. “But whatever you do, don’t eat any of them. If you think anyone’s following you, shove the bishop down a drain.”

“What about Glenn?” said Zeb.

“Check and mate,” said Pilar, toppling his king. She stood up, smiling. “Glenn will make his way,” she said. “He doesn’t know they killed his father. He doesn’t know yet. Or not directly. But he’s very bright.”

“You mean he’ll figure it out,” said Zeb.

“Not too soon, I hope,” said Pilar. “He’s too young for that kind of bad news. He might not be able to pretend ignorance, unlike you.”

“Some of mine’s real,” said Zeb. “Like, right now, where do I switch identities? And how do I get the pass?”

“Go into the MaddAddam chatroom, there’s a full package waiting for you. Then scramble your present gateway. You can’t afford to leave your footprints on these computers.”

“Does any of this involve different facial hair?” Zeb asked, to lighten things up. “For my new identity? And dorky pants?”

Pilar smiled. “I’ve had my beeper switched off all this time,” she said. “We’re allowed to do that on barbecue days, as long as we’re in full view. I’m turning it back on now. Don’t say anything you don’t want overheard. Journey well.”

Zeb retrieved his thumbdrive from the desk drawer where he’d hidden it, removed the cough drops that were stuck to it like barnacles, activated Intestinal Parasites on his computer, then slipped through the voracious maw of the blind nightmare worm and thence by lilypad into the chatroom of MaddAddam. Sure enough, there was a how-to pack waiting for him, though no clue as to who had left it. He opened it, assimilated the contents, and scuttled backwards, whisking away his trail as he went. Then he ground the thumbdrive underfoot – or, more accurately, he placed it under one of his bed legs and then jumped on the bed, several times – and flushed the bits down several toilets. They wouldn’t have gone down easily by themselves, being metal and plastic, but if you embed …

“It’s okay,” says Toby. “I get the picture.”

Zeb’s new name was Hector. Hector the Vector, was what he figured. Someone had a reasonably foul sense of humour, but he didn’t think it was Pilar: she was not so much the humorous type.

But of course he’d only activate his new Hector identity once he was outside the walls and away from the security cameras of HelthWyzer West. Until then he was still Seth, a minor code-slave chained in the galleyship of data entry, in his geekwear with the brown corduroy pants. If anything, he was betting his change of identity would score him better pants. There was said to be an outfit waiting for him in the pleeblands, stashed in a dumpster he hoped no tramps or crazy people or sacked middle managers would be picking through before he could get to it.