The Noise Revealed (24 page)

"Look, let me show you the rec room," he said. There was bound to be somebody around. "You can relax, have a beer or two, and we can take things from there."

"That sounds good to me."

The first person Leyton saw as they entered the room was Joss, sitting on her own, warming down after her timely retrieval flight. Perfect; someone Kyle had already met. Only as he went to leave the two of them together did he register the wounded look Joss gave him and realise that to her Kyle was little more than a direct replacement for Wicksy, a reminder she could doubtless have done without.

Cursing his own preoccupation, Leyton returned to his cabin to wait for Kethi. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. Life could be a bastard at times and you had to learn to roll with the punches. Joss was an integral part of the crew; the quicker she accepted what had happened and moved on, the better, for all their sakes.

Scant moments after he arrived at his quarters there came a double knock at the door.

"Come in. It isn't locked."

Kethi looked stern faced, as if determined not to be apologetic for anything; neither for what she'd done nor for who she was.

"Well," she said, "here I am."

Okay, the direct approach was fine by him. "Your name, it's not really Kethi, is it?" he said. "It's K-E-T-H-I. Kinetic Entity Twinned with Higher Intelligence. I've heard about it - knew the name rang a bell when I first met you, but couldn't quite place it. Now, having seen what you're capable of, I can. Kethi's an experiment, isn't it? One that was abandoned, or at least so I thought."

"Abandoned by ULAW perhaps, but never by us," she replied. "Those involved came to the habitat and have continued their work ever since. Not with universal success, it has to be said. I'm the one that worked, and they're still trying to figure out why.

Her eyes flashed with... what? Defiance, challenge, suppressed anger? Perhaps a little of all of them.

He tried to reconcile what he knew of the KETHI project with the beautiful, vibrant woman before him. KETHI had been an attempt to produce human-AI synergy - much like the Kaufman Industries project, which had resulted in the needle ships that had engaged and defeated
The Noise Within
- but it had approached the problem from the opposite direction. Whereas KI had been intent on linking a human mind with the AI of a ship, the KETHI project had sought to introduce a nascent AI into the brain of a human baby at the embryonic level, where it would grow and develop as the child did. The aim had been to produce a more natural gestalt of the two forms of intelligence. It sounded viable in theory but the problems of rejection and the complications that arose in physical and mental development proved insurmountable. At least so Leyton had always believed. Apparently others had persevered, overcoming the obstacles. No wonder Kethi was so brilliant an analyst. She combined the processing capabilities of an AI with the intuition and leaps of logic that only an organic mind could make.

"Your aunt," he said, "the one who died defending the habitat...?"

"Was lovely," she replied, wistfully. "She was a 'near miss,' no deformity or rejection issues but incomplete meshing of the gestalt. The AI part of her brain didn't develop fully. None of which stopped her from being a wonderful person."

Leyton nodded. "You mention deformity," he said, suddenly making a connection and wondering if it was valid. "Is Simon...?"

Her turn to nod. "Yes. His arm is only the most apparent legacy. He nearly died at birth and had an incredibly difficult childhood. Eventually they had to kill the AI part of his brain entirely, with no guarantee how that would work out, but he came through it. Simon's a lot tougher than he looks. I think that's one of the reasons he's always so cheerful, almost as if he takes every day as a gift that he came close to never enjoying."

"That could have happened to you," he said, wondering how many had suffered worse during the course of the project.

"Yes, but it didn't." She took a step closer, her eyes gazing into his. As she stood before him, beautiful, vulnerable but proud, he struggled to think of her as anything other than fully human.

"I am human," she whispered, guessing his thoughts. Her face had drawn very close now.

"Are you? Prove it." He had no idea why he said that. Yes, he did. It was an invitation, but an ambiguous one; deniable and open to interpretation, which left the onus on her to make the next move. If she wanted to.

Evidently, she did.

As her lips moved towards his, he was reminded of another cabin, another unexpected encounter. Boulton. Yet this was totally different. Kethi's lips felt soft, plump and surprisingly cool. When he thought of Boulton, he remembered a body as rigid as steel; with her it had all been about need and dominance, with no room for anything gentle or loving and certainly nothing as feminine as the feel of Kethi's body against his as she pressed against him, encircled by his arms.

She drew back a little, a twinkle in her eye. "Human enough for you?"

"It'll do." He drew her into another kiss.

After all too brief a time she pulled away, easing out of his grip. "Sorry, I have to go. Still on duty."

He stared at her, not believing she meant it. "Surely they can cope without you for a little while?"

She giggled - a very young, girlish sound which surprised him coming from her. "Don't be so impatient. Aren't I worth waiting for?"

"Yes, but..."

"Shhh." She stepped forward, running a dainty fingertip down his lips and chin. "This is all so... Look, one step at a time, all right?" With a final, coy smile, she turned and left.

After the door had closed behind her, Leyton stood for a few seconds and simply stared at the empty space where she'd been. He shook his head and couldn't help but grin. Yes, that seemed all too human to him. Only then did he realise that she'd said nothing to explain the time-defying speed she'd displayed in dispatching Boulton. Had the kiss been intended as a distraction, to prevent him from pursuing the subject? If so, it worked remarkably well.

Chapter Fourteen

The first set of coordinates Lara provided them with proved to be a dead end, quite literally. It led them to an insignificant corner of Virtuality just off a main thoroughfare, a place that was never destined to be anything more than backdrop, the sort of thing programmers habitually filled in with repetitive bulk standard coding. This time around someone had clearly decided to be creative, and, at the far end of a stunted, brick-lined cul-de-sac, had added a distinctive flourish: a shallow, insignificant little alcove.

"One down..." Tanya murmured.

The second of Lara's 'possibles' looked more promising. The coding was integrated into the back wall of a club.

"I'm sensing a pattern here," Philip said.

"Either that or we're about to encounter another alcove or two," Malcolm added.

"I'm putting my faith in the name."

The place was called Veils and, had he been aware of it, this would have been the first place Philip would have looked even without Lara's recommendation, give the Byrzaens' apparent penchant for flowing lines and floaty things.

"I've never been in here before," Malcolm said, as if to defend his not thinking of the place without Lara's prompting.

That in itself was interesting. Philip had somehow assumed his father was familiar with every part of Virtuality. Evidently not.

Veils lived up to its name. The first thing that struck Philip was how different the whole vibe of the place was from Bubbles. The rhythmic thud of bass that underpinned everything might have been much the same, but here it was a little less frenetic. That was symptomatic of the difference, he realised. Bubbles had been all about high energy cranked up to the nth degree; the very atmosphere had crackled with anticipation. Here, while energy was still encouraged by the music and the drink, everything seemed less urgent, as if the designers had quite deliberately aimed for a more chilled and laidback ambience.

Then, of course, there were the veils.

Soft furnishings - padded sofas and curved corner units, chairs, bean bags, water seats, and even a few hover mats - were artfully scattered at the fringes of the dance floor in a manner that looked almost haphazard but which cleverly utilized the available space to its maximum. Around, above and within these seat arrangements were the veils. Floating, hanging, draping and wafting in the air currents created by the movement of patrons and the club's air conditioning, they were in a multitude of colours, though violets, blues and greens predominated.

Even the dance floor complied with the theme. Although clearly solid - at least to judge by the number of people confidently gyrating and quick-toeing their way around it - the surface looked to be anything but. Instead it seemed to consist of nothing more than a mass of swirling veils, twisting serpents of silken cloth which changed colour and definition constantly as lights beneath the flooring pulsed and transformed in time with the music.

Nor was this effect confined to the veils on the dance floor; many of those throughout the club pulsed in varying colours and brightness with perfect synchronicity.

Philip found his attention transfixed by one veil in particular, which hung immediately before him and dropped from somewhere high above, reaching almost to the floor. The veil writhed sinuously, despite there being no apparent breeze in this part of the club to stimulate it, and the purple, green and black patterning seemed to ripple and run up and down the material's length. It was as if the veil performed solely for him, and the way it swayed put him in mind of a woman - a wiggle of the hips and sway of the pelvis - dancing privately, just for him.

He reached out and grasped the veil by an edge, running the material through his hand. It felt silky and warm to the touch, almost as if it were alive. He let go, allowing the material to drop back into its undulating rhythm.

It was like walking through some surreal woodland - the club-goers their fellow explorers, sharing the discovery of this sacred realm. The further they went from the dance floor the more subdued the music, the accumulated mass of the veils acting as a baffle, muffling the sound.

"I don't get it," Tanya said as they continued. "Shouldn't we have hit the wall by now?"

"Definitely," Philip replied. Yet the forest of veils stretched on into the distance.

"This doesn't make sense," Malcolm murmured. "I looked at the coding myself before we set out, just moments ago, and there was nothing like this."

The music had faded to mere background, the number of people around them growing fewer and fewer.

"What does it mean?" Tanya asked, her voice as subdued as Malcolm's. Philip could understand why; somehow it felt wrong to speak loudly here, in what had developed into a tranquil, almost mystic place.

"It means that wherever we now are doesn't exist in Home's Virtuality, that somehow we've gone somewhere else," he said.

"Bollocks," she exclaimed, evidently unimpressed by any sense of mysticism. "Things around you two just keep getting weirder by the minute."

"You could always go back," Philip offered, not sure whether he wanted her to or not.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I've got my reputation to think of."

"Of course you have. Wouldn't want to put a blemish on your CV now, would we?"

"Cut it out, you two," Malcolm interrupted. "Save the bickering for later."

He had a point; it wasn't as if there was any shortage of things to claim their attention. The veils were changing, slowly and subtly; a gradual shift from what they had been to something less substantial. The sense of being in a vast forest was more pronounced than ever, but the solid trunks of the 'trees' were becoming ethereal phantoms, as if the three of them had somehow stepped across into the realm of faeries.

Philip was absorbed by the changing veils, watching them intently to try and see the actual shift of form, but it was too subtle. The effect was undeniable, however. "They're becoming pure energy," he murmured.

Curtains of light now stretched around them, where previously delicate cloth had hung. Pillars of coruscating energy had replaced the tumbles of vibrant cloth they'd been walking between mere moments before. Nor was that the only change.

"Listen," Malcolm said. "Can you hear that?"

The music was now barely audible, but a new sound had begun to supplant it. Indistinct, yet somehow comforting, a distant murmuring, as if they were approaching a large gathering, an auditorium in which a vast crowd had gathered, conversation bubbling throughout as they settled in anticipation of a performance. The sound was too indistinct, too quiet, almost buried beneath the lingering music from the club, yet it was enough to have Philip straining to hear, striving to sieve meaning from the garble.

"Where the hell are we?"

It was a while since they'd seen anyone else. Tanya's question was little more than a whisper.

"I think," Philip began, "that this is a link..."

"A bridge," Malcolm interjected.

"...between our Virtuality on Home..."

"...and the Byrzaens," Malcolm finished for him.

"You're kidding me," Tanya said. Then, when neither laughed, "You're not, are you?"

"Wish I was."

"But how is that possible?"

"Absolutely no idea," Philip conceded.

Without any discernable leap, just incremental drift, they found themselves somewhere that was undeniably alien. They were now tiptoeing through a landscape dominated by curtains of light that rippled and ran and receded and darted. Bright colours ran through the translucent veils like veins, pulsing, thickening and dwindling. As with the veil he'd held earlier, Philip couldn't shake the feeling that these shifting films of energy were organic in some way, that they might almost be alive, but he couldn't have offered any explanation for that impression.

The music had disappeared completely, only the faint hum as of distant conversation remained, though it had grown no clearer and it remained impossible to discern anything as intelligible as words.