Deathworld

by Tom Clancy

  “Like to see it really happening,” said Manta softly.

  “How much more real does it have to get?” said Shade. She gave him a thoughtful look. “Or is there somebody you’d particularly like to see it happening to?” Her voice was almost playful.

  “Wouldn’t be much point in that,” Manta said. “It wouldn’t make any difference.” He shuffled his feet in the ash. “Nothing will, really.”

  He turned. “Look, forget it. I gotta go.”

  “Manta, wait,” Shade said, walking around in front of him. “Look, you can’t just turn away from people when they’re trying to help you.”

  “Watch me,” Manta said, his voice bitter. “I’m not worth helping. Let me alone for long enough, and it won’t be an issue.”

  Shade gave him a look. “You know,” she said, “if you weren’t such a Banie, you’d be a waste of time. Look, how’d you ever get down this far with an attitude like that?”

  “When you hear it from all the people around you all the time,” Manta said, “you learn to get things done anyway. But I’m tired of it now.” He turned and looked at Mount Glede again. “I just want to do this one thing … and then it’s going to be all over with. I’m going to cut the strings… .”

  Shade looked at him in silence for a moment. “That’s not something to joke about,” she said.

  “You think I’m joking, too, huh?” Manta said, giving her a cold look. “Get your laughing done now, then. A week or so and you won’t have another chance to do it while I’m around.”

  The look Shade gave him was odd. “Manta,” she said, “you wouldn’t really-”

  “I see what happened to the earlier ones,” Manta said, sitting down on a rock and looking at Mount Glede. “Whatever else their families thought, down here they have some honor, anyway. They’re the Angels of the Pit. Maybe people down here are a little crazy … but at least someone notices whether they’re here or not. Not like others-” He broke off.

  “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you… .” Shade said.

  “I don’t have any friends,” Manta said. “And I don’t want any. They just pretend to care about what’s happening to you, and then they dump you when they realize what you’re really like. I don’t need any more of that-” He choked off, as if holding back tears.

  “It’s not like that,” Shade said. “We’re Banies. We have to look after each other, because no one else will… . I want you to meet someone I know… . He’s felt the same way you have.”

  “If you think you’re going to talk me out of how I feel,” Manta said, “you’re wasting your time.”

  Shade glowered at him. “It’s my time. I can waste it if I like. Right now, though, I want you to give me a virtmail address for you, so we can meet down here again, and you can talk to my friend Kalki. He’s a Banie, too. In fact, he’s a more serious Banie than almost anyone else you’re likely to run into down here. He’s got the biggest `lift’ collection I’ve ever seen. Thing is, he was about ready to cut the strings once, too. But it’s a mistake to do that while there’s still music in them, Manta. He was there. He knows. You need to talk to him.”

  Manta studied the ash falling around them, and into the nearest crevasse. After several long moments he said, “I don’t see why not. It’s not going to make any difference.” He raised his head and gave Shade a long, cool look. “If I do decide to cut the strings … there’s nothing you can do to stop me. You, or anyone else.”

  “Of course not,” Shade said. “But you have to be sure, first … otherwise Joey wouldn’t like it.”

  “Like he’d care.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Shade said. “Manta … give yourself a break.”

  “Nobody else has,” he said. But he watched her as he said it.

  Shade shook her head and held out her hand. “I’m not everybody else,” she said. “Let me have an address for you, and later on, in a day or two maybe, you can talk to Kalki.”

  Manta looked at her doubtfully. But at last he held out his hand to her, and there was a little white envelope in it, the icon for a virtmail address. Shade reached out and took it from him, and tucked it away in one of the pockets of her coat.

  “Meantime,” she said, “let’s see if we can’t at least get you in the front door of the Keep. Come on!” Shade looked right and left. “It’s narrower over there,” she said. She held out a hand.

  Manta hesitated … then took it. Together they made their way down along the length of the crevasse, stepped across it, and vanished into the darkness.

  Some hours later, just after six the next morning, Charlie blinked his implant off and got up, stiffly, to walk around the den. His muscles ached more than usual, and once more he resolved to have a look at the implant chair’s muscle management routines. They weren’t as effective as usual. Or I’m spending a lot more time in “the great never-never” than usual. .. .

  Probably the latter. Charlie stretched, then wandered downstairs to the kitchen. He glanced around and saw nothing of his mother’s on the table. She was already on her way to work, possibly having another in-service today and so having to do her change-of-shift report with the night nurses on her floor earlier than usual. Charlie sighed and rooted around in the fridge for the milk, poured himself a glass, and downed it. Then he poured another and glugged that straight down, too.

  His father came in and headed for the coffeepot. “Morning,” Charlie said as he went by

  “Thank you for not saying ‘good,” ” his father muttered. He was already in his whites. He got busy pouring himself a cup of coffee the size of a small birdbath in a big brown cup Charlie’s mother had brought back from a nursing conference in Germany.

  “Early seminar this morning?” Charlie said.

  “Yup. Backbones again,” said his father, and slurped the coffee. “Ow, hot …” He took the milk carton that Charlie handed him and poured milk into his coffee until it turned a very unassertive shade of beige. “Better… . It’s just today and tomorrow, anyway, then life goes more or less back to normal.” His father sighed. “Though I wish the school wouldn’t run all these fellowship-program events at the same time that the accreditation team comes through.”

  “Maybe they do it on purpose. To show how a good teaching hospital runs under pressure.”

  His father looked at him with resignation over the cup. “That thought’s crossed my mind. Nasty idea. In any case, there’s nothing I can do about it. Meanwhile, you were up late again. I passed you when I came in. Third night in a row now.”

  “I’m doing research for a project,” Charlie said. Let him think it’s for school. . _ _

  “What on?”

  “Suicide.”

  His father sighed. “Still thinking about those kids, huh? Your mother mentioned. Sad situation.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “It’s pretty depressing.”

  His father chugged the much-milked coffee straight down. “Tell me about it. Well, ask your Mom if you need any more help… . I’ve gotta get out of here.” He rinsed out the coffee cup, upended it by the sink, and headed for the door, pausing only to hug Charlie in passing. “I feel guilty,” he said. “The absentee parent.”

  “It’s not a problem, Dad.”

  “I want a rematch on that chess game. You promised me best two out of three.”

  “You tell me when,” Charlie said. “Gonna stomp you.” “Don’t be so sure. See you later… .”

  The front door shut. Charlie stood looking out into the back garden, where the first rays of sun were beginning to fall. I have been spending too much time “down there,” he thought. Good old normal sunlight is beginning to look strange.

  But it was in a good cause, and Charlie thought he was beginning to make some headway. Shade … There was definitely something odd about her, a sense of her watching him closely for some reaction. Just hope the one I’ve found is the right one… .

  He slowly made his way upstairs with one more glass of milk. The information which Nick had
given him was turning out to be very useful, both the ‘walk-through’ and the other info, the stuff about the kids he’d run into, Khasm and Spile. The rumor, confirmed to the two most recent suicides’ parents, that drugs had been involved-and the information that this news was possibly being suppressed-all fit in very neatly with Charlie’s suspicions. Especially the idea that they weren’t genuinely suicidal. Someone met them, probably in Deathworld, managed to get close enough to them, physically, to get sco-bro into them and then set up their suicides… .

  Now all Charlie needed was to re-create the initial part of the setup, without becoming a statistic himself.

  To this end, the walk-through which Nick had given him had been extremely comprehensive, not as error-ridden as Nick had feared, and Nick himself had also appended some material to it as notes which Charlie had found very useful. He sat down on the sofa across from the implant chair in the den, finishing his glass of milk, and thinking about his next moves, the ones he would begin tonight after school. Charlie had been able to get down to Eight in fairly short order. I wonder if the system notices things like that… . Charlie thought. But then lots of people must tell their friends how to get through- it quickly, how to meet them places… . It probably all averages out in the end.

  Either way, I have to follow up this contact with Shade, and keep looking to see whatever else turns up. No way I’m going to sit around and let this happen to someone else. It’s still May. …

  Charlie sighed, put the milk glass aside, and sat down in the implant chair-he still had about half an hour before he had to leave for school, and this was the best time to catch people. He closed his eyes, triggered his implant on again, and glanced around the lowest level of his workspace, where the 3-D and 4-D images still stood. “Workspace management,” he said.

  “Here, Charlie.”

  “Is Nick Melchior available?”

  “Checking that for you now. But this time does not match his usual online times for the past two weeks. Not available.”

  “Okay, what about Mark?”

  “Mark’s workspace is available as usual, and he is in residence.”

  “Good.” Charlie went over to the usual access door, opened it. The VAB’s lights were on. It was early enough at the Cape that not much light was getting in. Charlie wandered across the floor, where he could see the RollsSkoda, its hood still up, and a pair of legs still visible.

  “That thing giving you trouble?”

  “Please,” said Mark, sounding tired. “If you see the man who invented technology, send him up. I have something for him.” He stood up from under the hood and made an eloquent fist. “I just can’t get this thing’s armor to stay solid when it should.” He sighed, straightened up. “There’s always the possibility that I’ve found a bug in the programming language itself … but I really don’t want to believe that. It would be big trouble… .”

  The desk wasn’t too far away, and Charlie saw the Magic Jacket lying over it as he had left it much earlier. “Is it okay?” he said.

  “It was fine,” Mark said. “I ‘looked’ in on you five or six times, just to check on it. No problems.” He looked at Charlie, with a rather challenging expression. “Except with you. You didn’t seem terribly comfortable down there.”

  “I hate it, the whole fake-seeming business,” Charlie said. “Skulking and acting … I don’t like not being me. Being me is hard enough, without having to fake being someone else as well.” He let out a long breath. “But I guess this is in a good cause.”

  “You’d better believe it is,” Mark said, “because you’ve had a trip.”

  Charlie swallowed. “What? Already? When?”

  “Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, actually. Someone unauthorized was trying to get into your space. I tried to get hold of you, but you were offline.”

  “Whew,” Charlie said. “I wasn’t expecting anything that fast.” He thought for a moment. “Mark, that means that whoever tripped the ‘wire’ has definitely been reading the message boards in Deathworld. I didn’t actually talk to anybody until this morning, real early, before school.”

  “How many people have you talked to?”

  “Uh, six or seven. A couple have seemed interested in me … but I’m not entirely sure yet that it’s more than casual. I should get a better idea later.”

  “Okay. Well, you’re recording everything… .”

  “I never take off the magic jacket … no matter how much it itches.”

  “It doesn’t itch!”

  “It does. It fizzes. I feel like I’m wearing a can of soda.” “Must be feedback through the implant,” Mark said, thoughtful.

  “Can’t you do something about it?”

  “Not while you’re wearing it,” Mark said. “Let me play with it today if I have some time. I’ll leave it in your space when I’m done with it.”

  “Yeah, fine. But Mark, who tripped the wire?!” “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? I thought you put a trace on the trip wire routine!”

  “I did,” Mark said, sounding extremely annoyed now, “but unfortunately, your pigeon was using an anonymizer to conceal the server of origin. They’re perfectly legal. I thought the routine I had running would beat it … but this `anonner’ is a new one, just opened up. Among the identification routines it’s been built to defeat is the one I was using. Dammit.”

  “But can’t you use something … you know … from Net Force?”

  Mark’s voice got, if possible, even more annoyed. “The `industrial strength’ identification routines at Net Force are locked down tight, Charlie … to get permission to use the ‘Drano’ utilities, you have to have a court order and ID as a senior Net Force supervisor. Which I am not … yet. And I can’t exactly ask any of them, either. So I’m winging it, using routines that have a lot less oomph. If I want to upgrade one of those to industrial strength I’m going to have to do that myself. In fact that’s what I’ll have to do after school today go check out this new anonymizer, find out which protocols it’s using, figure out how to defeat them. Probably take me a day or so. You better sit the next couple dances out until I can sensitize the ‘trip wire’ to backtrack the next hit correctly.”

  Charlie was fuming. “You don’t know anything about where the ‘trip’ came from?”

  “Not a thing,” Mark said, sounding just as annoyed. “Could have been next door to you, or in Ulan Bator.”

  Charlie sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Let me know when you get the new routine up again.”

  “I will. But look, Charlie, just give it all a rest for the moment. A day or so won’t make any difference.”

  “Yeah …” Charlie headed out of the VAB and back to his own space, beginning now to be actively nervous. A day or so … But no matter what Mark said, Charlie couldn’t get rid of the idea that it could matter. It most definitely could… .

  Chapter 8

  Nick looked for Charlie at school that day but missed him at lunch again, and wasn’t able to track him down between classes. He had things on his mind, and he really wanted to talk to Charlie about them.

  His last-period class had been canceled, so Nick stopped by the wing of the school where he knew Charlie sometimes had a late upper-level biology class. But it had been relocated or rescheduled-the room was locked and empty. Nick let out an exasperated breath and started to walk home.

  His path took him by the NetAccess center as usual, and there Nick paused by the door and took out the last commcard he had left, the one he had fished out of his bottom drawer in his bedroom several days earlier, having forgotten that it was there in the first place. Nick looked at the card and sighed. He was woefully short of cash, now there wouldn’t be any more allowance money until Friday, and this was only Tuesday. Yet at the same time he wanted to give Charlie the opportunity to walk through Deathworld with a friend at his side, not only for enjoyment, but now, after his conversation with Khasm and Spile, for security as well.

  And there were other matters on his m
ind. A random thought, something about the various lifts he had brought back from Deathworld with him, had been obsessing Nick for the past couple of days. The Eighth Circle was proving difficult to crack-and it’s gonna be impossible, without some more money to spend some more time there, Nick thought. But he was noticing that the hints and whispers he had been expecting from “plants” in the Circle had been very few. He had been wandering around in those stony tunnels and up and down the Escheresque stairways for days now and had come up against-he smiled wryly at the expression-a stone wall.

  Yet there had been more lifts available than usual, so many that his pocket lift carrier couldn’t handle them all anymore, and Nick had to load them in and out of the storage area in his public server. Most of them were different versions of songs Nick already had lifts of. Only a collector, an aficionado, or a raving completist would feel the need to have them all. But Nick certainly fitted into the last category, at least, and it was while he was listening to some of the “alternate” versions in bed a few nights ago that he had noticed some of the lifts were alternates in other ways as well. They had lyrics that other versions of the songs didn’t have-

  He shook his head and went into the access center. “Hey, Nick,” the guy behind the front counter said. “Early today-”

  “Yeah, well, you might not see me for a few days,” Nick said. “Running out of green …” He slapped the commcard up onto the reader plate.

  “You’re okay,” said Dilish, the guy behind the counter. “Got a couple of hours left on that one.”

  “That much? Super! My usual one open?”

  “No, there’s someone in there, take Eight … I’ll reroute your server info over there.”

  Nick went back to the booth and closed himself in, locking the sliding door and sitting down in the implant chair. A moment later he was standing in the usual white space, and he got up and reached into his pocket, coming up with the key that “remembered” his location from the last visit.

  “Deathworld access,” Nick said. The door in the air opened, a black rectangle in all that whiteness, and the copyright notice began rolling by. Is it an illusion, he wondered, or does that thing actually get longer every time? Finally it vanished, and Nick went through into the dimness of the Dark Artificer’s Keep, entering into the dark stone corridor where he had been standing when he last exited.