Quintessence Sky (51 page)

" It's been two years, Marie. Two years! It's
not healthy. Leave Keith already."

"No, that's not—"

"Listen, if the guy were still alive, you'd
have dropped him ages ago. Relationships don't last that long. If
you ask me, three months is ideal—any less, and you've hardly
gotten to the good parts, but any more, and he starts to feel like
he owns you."

"Pam—"

"Come on, I remember Keith. He wasn't worth
that kind of loyalty even when he was alive."

"Seriously, it's not Keith. I just don't want
to go looking for another guy now."

"It's the kid, isn't it."

"The kid," Marie echoed. Yes, it was the kid.
Sammy had been born three weeks early and had never looked back. He
was quick to walk, quick to talk, quick to form complete sentences.
He’d loved construction vehicles and chocolate candy.

"Come out with me tonight," said Pam.

"I can't."

"Come on. This is a Navy base. They line up
for miles to talk to a pretty woman, which you are. A hundred tasty
slabs of manflesh, just dying to be eaten up. You'll be mobbed
before you take a step."

"Are you looking at the same woman I see in
the mirror?"

Pam cocked her head. "You could use some
sprucing up, I won't deny it. But nothing I can't manage."

"I don't know, Pam. I'll probably work late
tonight. I flagged a data spike on one of the city's rental memory
blocks. Turns out it's a slicer."

"Yeah? What's a slicer?"

"It's a person. Was a person. They slice down
into someone's brain, copying it neuron by neuron into a digital
simulation. The original brain doesn't survive."

"Get out of town. People do that?"

"It started as an immortality technology—you
know, flash your mind into crystal and live forever. But it doesn't
work. The trauma's too much for the mind; it goes insane."

Such a grisly practice appalled Marie, but
also fascinated her. What could ever drive a person to make a
slicer? She assumed a group, one member of whom sacrificed his life
for the endeavor, must create them. Terrorists, maybe, or cultists
of some sort? Marie knew what it was like to wish she were dead,
but she couldn't relate to that kind of commitment to a cause.

"Somehow, the people who create it can
control it," she said. "I'm trying to figure out how."

"Well, finish up, and then come out with me
tonight."

Marie laughed. "We're talking about a slicer,
here, not some teenager's porn virus."

"Like that means anything to me."

"Tell you what. Give me an hour to run some
tests and send it off to a colleague, and I'll come join you."

"One hour. Promise?"

"Promise."

"Don't stand me up, now. I'll hold you to
it."

Half an hour later, Marie thought she had the
answer, though it made her a little sick. The slicer seemed to be
controlled through pleasure and pain. A little module ran
separately from the main simulator, a master process that could
send signals to the pleasure or pain centers of the mind. Since the
slicer wasn't limited by a physical body, those sensations could be
as extreme as the mind could register. It was a revolting concept,
like torturing someone who was mentally handicapped.

She didn't understand the whole process,
though. She needed another opinion. She decided to send the slicer
out to Tommy Dungan, a fellow researcher at the army base at Fort
Bragg. Transporting malicious code could be dangerous, but their
dedicated NAIL satellite used isolated channels, and she trusted
Dungan to keep the slicer secure once it reached his end.

Just as she logged into the NAIL system, she
saw an incoming call on the lab's private channel. She answered it,
but the sender had already disconnected. Wrong number, probably.
Marie sent the slicer to Dungan, logged off for the day, and went
out to meet Pam.

MARK fiddled with the settings on his chute
analyzer, watching for any sudden change in data rate—the online
equivalent of pacing the room. His kevorkian ought to have knocked
down that nazi for good, but what if a sysadmin happened to spot it
and cycled it back up? If the data rate across that chute so much
as
hiccupped
. . .

He looked back at the analyzer just in time.
An enormous surge of data was pouring back across the chute toward
him.

Abort, abort!
He couldn't collapse the
chute until Darin pulled out, or he would hang Darin's session
inside, leaving a wealth of information for sysadmins to find and
track at their leisure.

Abort! Get out of there!

Done. I'm out.

Mark opened his eyes, breathing hard. Darin
tore off his netmask.

"A close one," said Darin.

"We should have been caught. That nazi had
plenty of time to ID us. Plenty of time."

"Cheer up. We made it.” Darin pointed to the
eastern sky. "Let's enjoy the show."

While Praveen made final adjustments to the
camera, Mark overlaid a corner of his vision with a digital
countdown.

"Five," he said. "Four. Three. Two. One."

Several seconds passed.

"Zero," Mark said, belatedly.

The eastern sky remained dark. Darin
grunted.

"What happened?" said Mark.

"Don't ask me. You did the calculations."

"The calculations were correct. We did three
simulations; you know they were."

"But the bird turned! I saw the telemetry
before I jumped out; it was all correct."

"I don't get it," said Mark."You mean you got
it wrong?" said Praveen. "I knew I should not have come. I could
have been working this evening instead of hauling all this gear up
to the rim for nothing. Next time, don't . . ."

A brilliant flash of light leapt at them from
the east. Mark opened his mouth to cheer, then shut it again. There
was no way that light was from the satellite. It was too far north,
and besides, it was too red.

Mark could only say, "Looks like an ex—"
before he was cut off by a deafening boom that echoed off the
hillside. The base of the eastern mountain seemed to be on
fire.

He dialed up his vision to maximum and saw
fire and smoke, and behind it, a torrent of rushing water.

"It's the dam," said Mark, disbelieving.
"Someone blew up the dam."