The Tranquillity Alternative (16 page)

2/16/95 • 2145 GMT

T
HE QUARTERS HE HAD
been assigned were not much larger than the Amtrak sleeper compartment it closely resembled: a narrow metal bed with a thin mattress that folded down from the bulkhead; a small chair, a fold-down desk, a wall phone; a small round porthole in the curved wall. When the lieutenant slid open the door and showed it to him, Dooley’s first impulse had been to ask if anything more spacious was available.

“Not unless you’re the commander, sir.” Lieutenant Hollis was politely amused. “This is one of the VIP cabins … everyone from senators to movie stars has slept here. Come over to the next section, and I’ll show you the bunk I’ve been living in for the last two months.”

“The bunk?”

“Yes, sir. Six and a half feet by two and a half feet, with a locker and a curtain, and it’s all mine.” The lieutenant pointed to the porthole on the far side of the compartment. “Count your blessings, Mr. Dooley. I’d kill to have a window by my bed.”

If Dooley could have given it to him, he would have; as soon as Hollis was gone, he hastily lowered the porthole’s louvered blinds, shutting out the ever-spiraling Earth which threatened to make him spacesick all over again. Then he folded down the bunk, shoved his laptop computer beneath it, took off his sneakers, switched off the overhead light, and did his best to get a little sleep.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to try very hard. It had been nearly twenty hours since he had last slept, and the launch had left him more exhausted than he thought. At some point, he was briefly awakened by Hollis knocking at the cabin door, telling him that it was time for dinner mess. Dooley ignored him, the j.g. went away, and he went back to sleep.

When he finally woke up, he had no idea how much time had passed; with the light switched off and the porthole closed, the cabin was as dark as a tomb. He raised his Timex close to his face and pressed the stud: only five
P.M.
, which confused him until he remembered that he had neglected to reset his watch to Greenwich time. What do you call jet-lag when you’ve been traveling on a spaceship?

The corridor was vacant when he slid open the door and peered out. So far as he could tell, no one else was in the VIP section. It took him another minute to recall the schedule; the ATS reporters were supposed to be doing a live interview with the flight crew at 2200 hours. Naturally, that would be in another part of the Wheel, and since he had already skipped mess, they must have decided that it wasn’t important to wake him up. Just as well; despite almost eight hours of sleep, he was still a little queasy, and he wasn’t quite ready to discover the pleasure of VIP cuisine aboard this tub.

Dooley found towels, a bar of soap, a sponge, a toothbrush, and a small tube of toothpaste in the locker. That was normal enough, but the men’s bathroom just down the corridor was something else altogether. Although its tiny shower stall resembled one in a cheap motel on Earth, there was no shower-head on the plastic-tiled wall; instead, there were a couple of spigots which only allowed water from the waist-level tap to flow when he twisted them and shut off as soon as he let go. A small bubble-meter between the spigots regulated the water supply; just testing the system dipped the meter by almost 10 percent.

A sponge bath for the VIP suites. Of course. Water wasn’t something that was wasted up here; although water tanks lined the station’s inner hull, the liquid they contained was irradiated and unsuitable for either drinking or bathing. The real Dooley would have known this from his training at the Cape and the Von Braun Space Center; once again, the other Dooley was uncomfortably reminded of just how shallow his own preparations had been. His masters had invested countless hours in changing his face and making sure that he looked and talked just like a dead man, but they had neglected to tell him a few simple things, such as that he would likely blow his breakfast within five minutes of leaving Earth or that an evening bath aboard the Wheel amounted to swabbing himself with a wet rubber sponge….

At least the water was warm.

He considered that as he mentally counted the dollars that would soon be deposited in a numbered bank account in Geneva. Gold-plated taps in his bathroom in Argentina: that’s what he would have when it was all over and done with. Gold-plated taps, and a woman to scrub his back for him.

The shower woke him up. He returned to his cabin and zipped into the blue cotton jumpsuit he found in the locker. He was hungry by now, and he briefly considered wandering through the station to find the mess deck, until he realized that dinner was long over by now and the crew chefs probably didn’t keep leftovers for VIP’s who had missed their chance.

So be it. There were more important things that needed to be done.

Examining the wall phone above his desk, he was pleased to see that it had a modem port. The last time the station’s electronic infrastructure had been retrofitted, someone had apparently decided that visitors should be able to plug in laptop computers. After folding the bunk against the wall, he lowered the desk, placed his Tandy/IBM on it, and used a slender cable to hardwire its internal modem to the phone.

A slip of paper concealed inside his right shoe contained the instructions he needed to connect directly with the ATT system. Although it sounded complicated on paper, it was mainly a matter of using the Wheel’s communications system to interface with the Iridium cellular Comsat network, which in turn linked him with Bellcore. The numbers he needed to use to make the connection were already written down; the calls he planned to make would be billed to the real Dooley’s Citibank account.

He picked up the receiver and placed a call to a motel room outside Brunswick, Georgia.

“Hello?” a voice answered.

“First race at nine o’clock,” he said. “Fifty dollars on Jake’s Leg.”

“First race, nine o’clock, fifty bucks on Jake’s Leg,” the voice repeated. “Your name is Good Sex.”

“Good Sex. Got it.” Dooley scribbled the words on a slip of paper. “Thanks.”

The person at the other end of the line hung up without replying. If anyone at Main-Ops had monitored the call, it would seem as if he had placed a bet on a horse race with a bookie in Georgia and, in return, had received a code name by which he could later confirm the bet.

He switched on the laptop computer, typed
LEM
, and waited until the opening image of the Le Matrix communications program appeared on the screen. He then selected the Orlando, Florida, node of the computer network and dialed into it. There was a long pause as Iridium opened a line between the Wheel and Le Matrix; then the net flashed a key-shaped icon on the screen.

Dooley’s Le Matrix password was a vital bit of information that had to be tortured out of him; the imposter hadn’t been able to access it after he’d taken possession of this laptop computer the night before, since it was not stored within the program itself. It was a small but essential detail, since it was the only way his employers could reliably pass key information to him.

GOODSEX
, he typed. How sophomoric …

After a moment the computer responded,
PASSWORD VERIFIED
, and the icon disappeared. So far, so good.

Almost immediately, there was a double beep and the e-mail icon appeared on the screen. Using the trackball, Dooley moved the cursor to the envelope-shaped symbol and toggled it. The system told him that he had two new messages waiting. He selected the first one and double-tapped the track ball. An instant later, a brief message appeared on the screen:

FROM: RaceTrak

TO: Thor200

DATE: 1/16/95 4:00 a.m. EST

Copy code sequences as follows:

1-6-9-5-9-7

3-8-3-9-7-0

GIF attached.

Dooley carefully wrote down the two sets of numbers, then moved the cursor to another icon, this one a paper clip attached to a file folder. He toggled it, then waited while the system decrypted a graphic-image file which had been sent to him.

A few moments later, a scanned photo of his contact was painted on the screen. Dooley smiled; he recognized the face immediately.

He closed the file and the message, then moved to the second message in the e-mail queue and toggled it.

FROM: Mr. Grid

TO: Thor200

DATE: 1/16/95 8:00 a.m. EST

Watched the launch this morning on TV. Looked great!

I’ll be waiting for you tonight in the Castle. :)

“Damn,” he said under his breath. Whoever this Mr. Grid person was, he was beginning to get under Dooley’s skin; first the unfinished conversation last night, then the unsubtle reminder from the taxi pilot that he was expected to call Mr. Grid this evening. As if he didn’t have more important things to worry about right now …

Dooley sighed as he tapped nervously at his teeth with his fingertips. Like it or not, he needed to do everything possible to keep his cover intact, even if that meant talking to some keyboard jockey back on Earth. Otherwise, someone might get suspicious.

But what the hell did Mr. Grid mean by “meeting him in the Castle”? Obviously it was a prearranged rendezvous point somewhere in Le Matrix. He thought hard, trying to remember all that he had been told about Paul Dooley, until he remembered that Dooley’s hobby was collecting comic books.

What the hell. It was worth a shot …

He paged through Le Matrix’s main directory until he located the “Comics” area and entered it. At the bottom of a long list of headings—
DC, TIMELY-ATLAS, DARK HORSE, CONVENTIONS, BUY, SELL & TRADE, MESSAGE BOARD
—he located an icon of a talking face marked “Chat.”

That would be real-time conversations. Dooley toggled it, only to be confronted by another long list. Some of the headings were innocent enough (
COMIX CLUB, WHO KILLED SUPERMAN?, CEREBUS FANS ONLY
), while others hinted at seedier interests (
LONELY HOUSEWIVES, MAN
2
MAN, SWINGERS BAR
). Like any computer network, Le Matrix catered to all tastes, even if some of them gravitated to the sort of thing scrawled above the urinals in a bus station restroom. The imposter had seldom wired into the commercial nets; so far as he was concerned, net surfing was much the same as being addicted to TV, and he had long since learned to parlay his hacking skills into more lucrative pursuits.

There was nothing on the comics board marked “Castle” per se. Dooley was about to give up, when he noticed a set of buttons beside the list, the top one marked “Private Rooms.”

Of course. The Castle would be a secret subroutine within Le Matrix, inaccessible to any user who didn’t know its name. He toggled “Private Rooms” and, at the prompt, typed:
The Castle.

The screen changed, displaying a blank gray slate. For a moment he thought he was alone; only his own logon,
THOR200
, appeared at the top of the screen.

Then another user-name appeared beside his own:
LADYG
.

Hello?
he typed.

There was a pause, then:
Welcome, m’lord. Enter freely and of your own will.

He stared at the screen. What the hell … ?

A second later, another line appeared:
You must be exhausted after your long journey to the north country. Come in, please … rest comfortably by the hearth.

He hesitated, then typed:
Mr. Grid?

A longer pause, then:
((C’mon! ;p You’re not making this any fun! Was the launch *that* rough?))

He was still confused.
Sorry,
he typed.
It’s been a long day. How are you doing?

Waiting with great anticipation for your arrival. (Patting the sofa cushion.) Please, sit down … you must be cold and tired.

Dooley frowned. Obviously, this was Mr. Grid, albeit under another logon; the allusion to the launch attested to that. But what kind of crazy shit was the rest of this?

He typed:
Liftoff was rough. Vomited on the way up. Still feeling a little queasy.

Another pause, then:
I understand, m’lord. They say passage to the north country can be strenuous. Come sit by the fire and relax.

Come sit by the fire? What did that mean? Dooley wondered if he had stumbled into the wrong private room by mistake. He recalled the message that Dr. Z, the taxi pilot, had passed to him. Was it possible that this could be Dr. Z pretending to be Mr. Grid?

He typed:
Mr. Grid, is that really you?

The reply was instantaneous:
((YES, it’s me, stupid! :( Now get your ass over here NOW!))

Before he could react, another line appeared:
M’lord must not be feeling well. Have some nectar … it will soothe your stomach and make you feel better.

And yet another line:
Then come sit beside me, and warm thy feet by the fire.

At a loss, Dooley shrugged.
OK
, it’s you. Sorry. Yes, I’ll have some nectar.

He waited for a reply, which was not forthcoming. This was some sort of role-playing game; he was expected to respond to Mr. Grid’s clues as if they were real-life stimuli.

He typed:
Thanks. That’s good nectar. Feel better. Now I’ll come over and sit down by the fire.

A couple of seconds passed, then:
I’m pleased, m’lord. (Her hand slips to the front of her blouse and opens the first button.) So your journey was long and … trying?

Dooley abruptly realized that, whoever Mr. Grid was, he was not male. Or perhaps he was a male pretending to be a female in cyberspace. The gender switch made him uneasy, but there was no backing out now; he had to play along as best he could.

Yes, milady,
he typed hesitantly.
Long and arduous indeed, but it’s good to linger by the hearth and sip nectar with you.

The reply was immediate:
It’s good to hear this (extending her long legs until her toes almost touch his feet). And you like the nectar?

Nectar’s good.
What the hell was he supposed to say now?
Your feet tickle,
he added.