City of Golden Shadow (68 page)

"That would be great."

"Just don't get into any arguments with the real crazies. At best, it's a waste of time. And don't believe about ninety percent of what you hear. They were never as dangerous and cool as they'll tell you they were."

"Don't go!" Zunni's tinny voice swooped past, "We find fun game instead!"

"But this is what we came for," Orlando explained.

After a few moments of midair colloquy, the Wicked Tribe formed themselves into hovering monkey-letters, clutching each other to spell out the word "B-O-R-R-I-N-G".

"We're sorry. We'll need some help afterward, probably."

"We come find then," said Zunni. "Now-fly and make noise!"

The Tribe contracted into a small yellow cumulonimbus.

"Ruling tribe! Yeeeee! Mejor prime monkeys! Wicked, wicked, wicked!"

Like a swarm of bees, they circled Orlando and the others, then vanished through a gap in TreeHouse's higgle-piggle geometry,

"The clubkids are a lot of fun if you're not trying to concentrate," Starlight said, smiling. "I'll tell you where to go."

"Thank you." Orlando did his best to make his Thargor-face return the smile. "You've been a lot of help."

"I just remember, that's all," she said.

"Do you understand any of this?" Fredericks' sun was frowning, a not particularly subtle creasing like a lump of bread dough being folded in half.

"A little. Proprioception-I've done some work with that stuff in school. That's where all the input-tactors, visual, audio-works together to make you feel like you're really in the place you're supposed to be in. There's a lot of brain science in it"

They were sitting in the highest row of seats, far away from the center of the discussion, although every voice was still perfectly audible. The amphitheater, Orlando guessed, was supposed to be like something from ancient Greece or Rome, all pale stone, attractively weathered. The greater chaos of TreeHouse was not visible here: the amphitheater sat beneath its own bowl of blue sky. A dim reddish sun crouched low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the benches.

The shadows of the discussion's participants were more or less humanoid. The four or five dozen engineers and programmers, like the mystery man who had brought Orlando and Fredericks to TreeHouse in the first place, didn't seem quite as interested in personal adornment as the rest of the place's inhabitants. Most wore very basic sims, no more lifelike than test dummies. Others did not bother to wear sims at all, and were only distinguishable as physically present by small points of light or simple iconic objects indicating their position.

Not all were so boringly functional. A giant gleaming bird made of golden wire, a plaid Eiffel Tower, and three small dogs dressed in Santa Claus suits were among the most vociferous debaters.

Orlando was fascinated by the conversations, although he found them difficult to understand. This was high-level programming as discussed by a highly unorthodox group of hackers, mixed up with TreeHouse security issues and general systems operation for the whole renegade node. It was a little like listening to someone argue existential philosophy in a language you'd only studied in junior high school.

But this is where I belong, he thought. This is what I want to do. He felt a swift stab of mourning that his apprenticeship with Indigo Gear and return visits to TreeHouse were both so unlikely to happen.

"God," Fredericks groaned. "This is like a Student Government meeting. Can't we just ask them some questions and get out of here? Even the flying monkey-midgets were more interesting than this."

"I'm learning things. . . ."

"Yeah, but not about what we need to know. Come on, Gardiner, we only have a couple of hours left and I'm going crazy." Fredericks abruptly stood up and waved one of his sim's stocky arms, as though hailing a cab. "Excuse me! Excuse me!"

The discussion group turned toward the source of the disruption with the uniformity of a flock of swallows banking against the wind. The Eiffel Tower, which had been explaining something controversial about visual information protocols, stopped and glared-inasmuch as a large plaid building could glare. In any case, it did not look like a happy building.

"Okay," Fredericks said. "I got their attention. Go ahead and ask 'em."

Orlando's well-honed Thargor reflexes urged him to brain Fredericks with a heavy object. Instead he rose to his feet, conscious for the first time of how . . . teenage the Thargor body looked, "Ummm . . . I'm sorry my friend interrupted," he said. "We're guests, and our time is running out, and we had some questions we need answered, and . . . and someone sent us to this meeting."

One of the points of light glittered angrily. "Who the hell are you?"

"Just . . . just a couple of guys."

"You're doing great, Gardino," Fredericks offered helpfully.

"Shut up." He took a breath and began again. "We just wanted to find out about some gear-some software. We heard that the people who worked on it hung out here."

There was a low hum of irritation from the group of programmers. "We do not wish to be interrupted," said someone with a distinctly Germanic accent.

One of the more rudimentary sims stood up, extending its hands as though to quiet the crowd. "Just tell us what you want," it said. The voice might have been female.

"Um, well, some gear that eventually wound up in a creature in the Middle Country simworld-the creature was a Red Gryphon, to be specific-is listed on all the InPro databases as being authored by someone called Melchior." There was a brief, but muted reaction, as though the name were familiar. Orlando went on, heartened. "From what we could learn, he or she hangs out here. So we'd like some help finding Melchior."

The basic sim that had quieted the crowd stood motionless for a moment, then lifted a hand and made a gesture. The world suddenly went black.

Orlando could see nothing, hear nothing, as though he had been abruptly flung into the vacuum of starless space. He tried to reach up to see what had blocked his vision, but his sim would not respond to his thoughts.

"You may be a guest here longer than you meant to be," a voice murmured in Orlando's ear-a distinctly menacing voice. "You and your friend have just made a really, really stupid mistake."

Sealed in darkness, Orlando raged. We were so close-so close! With a growing sense of having lost more than an opportunity, he pulled the ripcord and dumped them out of TreeHouse.

CHAPTER 23

NETFEED/BUSINESS: ANVAC Posts Record Profits

(visual: ANVAC corporate headquarters-featureless wall)

VO: ANVAC Security Corporation declared the highest business profit margin in fifty years. Zurich Exchange observers cite the ever-growing worldwide need for individual and corporate security, as well as ANVAC's ground-breaking line of "smart" biological weaponry, as reasons for the soaring profits.

(visual: ANVAC vice-president, face and voice disguised)

VP: "We fill a need. The world is a dangerous place. Overkill? That's easy-would you rather be morally right or alive?"

The Anchorite's 'cot-hacker slang for a virtual home-away-from-home-was the least impressive Renie had ever seen. With all of virtuality's prizes to choose from, he had created a decidedly uninspiring setting: with its tiny bed, poor-resolution wallscreen, and miserable flowers in a plastic jug on an institutional table, it looked very much like an old man's room in a nursing home. It also had the same curious real/unreal quality as the Anchorite's own sim. Renie, tired and frustrated, wondered if this old man could be any help to them at all.

"Do you want to sit down?" Singh asked. "I'll make chairs if you want some. Goddamn, I haven't had anybody in here for a long time." He lowered his sim onto the bed, which creaked convincingly, and Renie suddenly realized why both the old hacker and his room seemed so oddly lifelike. It was all real. He was using an actual real-time video of himself as a sim; the bed he was sitting on, the entire room, was probably real as well, a projection turned into a functional VR environment. She was looking at the Anchorite's actual face and body as they looked at this very moment.

He stared back at her, sneering. "Yeah, you guessed it I used to have the whole fancy kit-good-looking sim, forty-thousand-gallon aquarium for an office, full of sharks and mermaids-but I got tired of it. The only friends I had all knew I was a useless old bastard, so who was I fooling?"

Renie was not particularly interested in Singh's philosophy. "Did Susan Van Bleeck ask you about a golden city? And what did you mean when you told us it was 'too late'?"

"Don't hurry me, girl," the Anchorite said crossly.

"Don't 'girl' me. I need some answers, and soon. This isn't a locked-room murder mystery, this is my life we're talking about-more importantly, my little brother's life."

"I think Mister Singh is willing to speak to us, Renie." Martine's voice, simultaneously coming from everywhere and nowhere, might have been that of some offstage director. Renie did not like being directed.

"Martine, I'm tired of talking to the air. I'm sure this is terribly impolite, but would you put on a damn body so we at least know where you are?"

After a long silent moment, a large flat rectangle appeared in the corner of the room. The painted face wore a famously mysterious half-smile. "Is this acceptable?" asked the Mona Lisa.

Renie nodded. There might be an element of mockery to Martine's choice, but at least now they all had something to look at. She turned back to the old man in the turban. "You said 'too late.' Too late for what?"

The old man cackled. "You're a regular little Napoleon, aren't you? Or perhaps I should say 'a regular little Shaka Zulu'?"

"I'm three-quarters Xhosa. Get on with it. Or are you afraid to talk to us?"

Singh laughed again. "Afraid? I'm too bloody old to be afraid. My kids don't talk to me, and my wife's dead. So what could they do to me except shove me off the mortal coil?"

"They," said Renie. "Who are 'they'?"

"The bastards who killed all my friends." The old man's smile vanished. "And Susan's only the most recent. That's why it's too late-because my friends are all gone. There's only me." He raised his hand and gestured at the unprepossessing room as if it were the last place on earth, and he the world's only survivor,

Perhaps for Singh it was the last place on earth, Renie thought. She felt herself thawing a little, but she still wasn't sure whether she liked the old man or not. "Look, we desperately need information. Was Susan right? Do you know anything about the city?"

"One thing at a time, girl. I'll tell it in my own way." He spread his crooked fingers on the lap of his bathrobe. "It started happening about a year ago. There were only a half-dozen of us left-Melani, Dierstroop, some others-you don't care about names of old hackers, do you? Anyway, there were a half-dozen of us left. We'd all known each other for years-Komo Melani and I both worked on some of the early revisions of TreeHouse, and Fanie Dierstroop and I had been in school together. Felton, Misra, and Sakata all worked at Telemorphix with me. Several of them were TreeHouse regulars, but Dierstroop never joined-he thought we were a bunch of left-wing, New Age idiots-and Sakata gave up her membership over a rules committee disagreement. We all stayed in touch, sort of. We had all lost friends-when you get to be my age, that's a fairly familiar pain-so we were probably a little closer than any of us had been in a while, just because the circle was getting smaller."

"Please," said the Mona Lisa. "A question. You knew these people from different places, non? So, when you say, 'a half-dozen of us,' it is a half-dozen of . . . what?"

Renie nodded. She had been looking for the connecting thread herself.

"Damn it, just hold your water." Singh scowled, but actually seemed to be enjoying the attention. "I'm getting there. See, I didn't realize at the time that there were just six of us, because I didn't see the link. I had other friends, too, you know-I wasn't such a miserable bastard as all that. No, I didn't see or think about the connection. Until they started to die.

"Dierstroop went first. A stroke, as far as anyone knew. I was sad, but I didn't think anything of it. Fanie always drank a lot, and I'd heard he got fat. I figured he'd had a pretty good innings.

"Next Komo Melani died, also a stroke. Then Sakata went-fell down the stairs of her house outside Niigata. It felt a little like a curse, losing three old comrades in a matter of months, but I had no reason to be suspicious. But Sakata had a gardener who took care of her property, and he swore that he saw two men dressed in dark clothes drive out of her front gate somewhere around the time she must have died, so all of a sudden it didn't look quite so much like an old gear consultant having a simple accident. As far as I know, the Japanese authorities still haven't closed her case.

"Rilton died a month later. Keeled over in the London Underground. Heart failure. They had a memorial for him here at Founder's Hill. But I was beginning to wonder. Vijay Misra called me-he'd been wondering too, but unlike me, he'd put two and two together and come up with a nice round number. See, some of the people like Dierstroop I'd known for so long, I'd forgotten that there was only one time when all of us-me and Misra and the four people who'd just died-had worked together. There'd been others working there, too, but we six had been the last ones alive. And as Misra and I talked, we realized that we were the only two left. It wasn't a good feeling."