New York Nights [Virex 01]

by Eric Brown

  He set his features and pushed through the door.

  Kim was seated at a small table at the back of the restaurant. The room was cold, and she had one hand squeezed between her thighs to keep it warm, the other listlessly twirling a forkful of spaghetti.

  She looked up when he approached, something fearful in her eyes. ‘Hal, what is it? What’s happening?’

  At the sight of her he wanted to bury himself in her embrace, explain what had happened to Barney. He sat down at the table, reached for her glass of red wine and took a long swallow.

  ‘Hal?’

  He looked around the room, nervously, searching for a security camera. Even if the restaurant had a camera, did that necessarily mean that LINx could connect to it?

  He took her hand across the table, its warmth reassuring. ‘I can’t talk now. A case went wrong and . . . and people are looking for me. Don’t worry. It’ll soon be sorted out. Trust me, okay?’

  She gave a minimal nod, her lips compressed to a tight, frightened line. She did not ask what danger she herself was in, and he loved her for that.

  ‘Where are we going, Hal?’

  He shook his head. ‘Some hotel in Manhattan. We’ll lie low for a while. It’ll soon blow over.’ Something in her expression made him stop. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘What case went wrong, Hal?’ she asked in a small voice, staring at him.

  He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter which.’

  ‘Hal,’ she said, ‘if it was the evil spirit case, you know I’ll never forgive you!’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. It wasn’t.’

  ‘If you’re lying, Hal, I swear I’ll leave you. I will!’

  He still had hold of her hand across the table, and as he stared into her wide-open Chinese eyes he knew that she was telling the truth. She could leave him, just like that, despite all they’d shared, the months of intimacy.

  What would his sister have said? That the meaning of intimacy is different for men and women: for men it is physical, and for women emotional. Perhaps she was right.

  ‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ Kim said. She pulled her hand away and reached into the inside pocket of her padded jacket. ‘This arrived at the loft earlier.’

  Halliday stared, watching her as she produced a slim, silver envelope, and his heart gave a kick.

  He took the envelope in silence, turned it over. A row of numerals covered the seal.

  He looked across at Kim, as if for some explanation.

  ‘A taxi driver delivered it,’ she said, ‘He said that it was from Barney. He knocked on the loft door and left it with me.’

  With trembling fingers he tapped the code into the seal, then tipped two small computer needles into his palm.

  ‘What are they, Hal?’ Kim asked. ‘And where’s Barney?’

  At the sight of the needles, he almost lost control. Barney had known he was being followed. He had instructed the driver to deliver the needles, left the cab and continued on foot; in effect, sacrificing himself to get the needles safely delivered. Halliday felt his throat constrict and tears burn his eyes.

  ‘What are they, Hal?’

  ‘Something we need for the case,’ he said, inadequately.

  ‘How come Barney sent them to you? Why didn’t he bring them himself?’

  ‘Because . . . Barney’s tied up at the moment. He’s busy.’ And he hated himself for the lie.

  He had to get to the Cyber-Tech offices in Battery Park. He’d drop Kim off at a hotel on the way.

  ‘Come on. We’ve got to go.’

  She grabbed her glass and finished her wine, leaning forward and gulping like a child, then left a fifty-dollar note on the table. He took her hand and they hurried from the bistro, into the street noisy with crowds and the shrill cries of stall-holders. As they passed into the snow-filled night he felt suddenly conspicuous, as if they had emerged once more into the scrutiny of the enemy.

  They caught a taxi from a rank around the corner. As the cab sped downtown, he clutched the envelope in his pocket. If the program worked, and the Net was scoured of LINx, and if they could trace the human slave of the artificial intelligence, then the world would be a safer place - for the time being. Until, he told himself, the next AI went berserk.

  In Chinatown, he directed the cab to a sidestreet, told the driver to wait, and then hurried Kim around the block to a hotel. The Plaza was a mid-range place off Centre Street. They stood before the building and he dug a fistful of notes from his pocket and pressed them into her hands.

  ‘I won’t be long, a couple of hours. Don’t go out again, okay?’

  ‘Hokay, Hal,’ she said. She smiled, something sad in her expression at being left alone again. ‘I’ll find something to do with myself,’ she said.

  He pulled her to him. ‘See you later.’

  He ran back to the cab, instructed the driver to take him across town to Battery Park.

  His com vibrated.

  It was Wellman. ‘Halliday, where the hell have you been? We’ve been waiting. I’ve been trying to contact Kluger all night.’

  ‘Is this line safe?’ Halliday asked.

  ‘Don’t worry, my techs have secured it.’

  ‘I’ve got the program,’ Halliday said. ‘I’ll be over in five minutes.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Wellman said, relief evident in his tone. ‘Fine, we’ll see you then.’

  It would be an anti-climax, he knew. The scouring of the Net for the evil spirit - the artificial intelligence responsible for so many deaths - would be a process of watching technicians poring over screens, of waiting for these latter-day wizards to signal that they had indeed cast the spell that had slain the dragon.

  He considered the successful end of the case, whenever that might be, and then thought of Barney - clinically dead, the medic had said - and he knew that a future without Barney at the office was impossible to contemplate.

  A minute later the cab halted at the foot of the towering jet obelisk, and Halliday paid the driver and took the elevator to the fortieth floor.

  He was cleared by security and entered the Cyber-Tech office suite. Wellman hurried over to him across the open-plan floorspace, flanked by Ralph and another technician.

  Halliday passed him the silver envelope, and Wellman tipped the silver needles into his palm, passed them to Ralph. He had rearranged his tie and fastened his waistcoat, and he was almost back to his old, dapper self, but for the incongruous burns mitten on his right hand, and a certain emptiness in his eyes.

  The technicians moved back to a bank of computers and a big flatscreen against a far wall.

  Wellman was staring at him. ‘You look terrible, Halliday. Why the delay?’

  He opened his mouth to speak, found it impossible to articulate what had happened; it was as if by telling someone that Barney was dead he would be confirming what until now had remained an abstraction. If he told Wellman, it would become real, and then he would be forced to confront the fact of a future without someone who had been a friend for so long.

  But the fact had ramifications for Wellman and Cyber-Tech. Barney was dead, killed by one of LINx’s slaves, and Wellman had the right to know that.

  ‘Halliday, are you okay?’

  He shook his head. ‘When I went to Connelly’s for the program, Barney wasn’t there. He’d already got the program, like he’d planned.’

  ‘Halliday, what happened?’

  ‘While he was there, someone else came in and asked the barman for the package.’

  Wellman briefly closed his eyes as realisation dawned. ‘My God . . .’

  ‘It was obviously one of LINx’s slaves; I thought you said Reeves was the last?’

  ‘I thought he was. There must have been another, working for a rival company.’

  Halliday shook his head. ‘Barney managed to get away. He took a taxi, then left it. The guy followed and . . .’ And into his head came the memory of finding Barney slumped against the trash can, dying.

  Wellman, in a sh
ow of solicitude Halliday would never have anticipated, took him by the shoulders and eased him into a swivel chair. ‘What happened to Barney?’ he asked, kneeling beside him.

  Halliday shook his head. He steeled himself, forced himself not to break down. ‘The guy shot him, six times, in the chest. I managed to get Barney to St Vincent’s.’ He stopped then, his throat tightening around words that would not come. At last he said, ‘He was declared clinically dead at nine o’clock.’

  Wellman lowered himself onto the floor, supported by one arm. He pulled a bandanna from his breast pocket and mopped the sweat from his face.

  They remained in silence for what seemed like an age, words a redundancy.

  At last Wellman looked up. ‘How did you get the program?’ he asked.

  Halliday explained that Barney had instructed the taxi driver to deliver the package to the office. ‘He must have known he was still being followed,’ he said. ‘So in case he didn’t make it. . .’

  ‘We’ll get it,’ Wellman promised. ‘Joseph’s program will chase down and exterminate the bastard.’

  ‘And then there’ll be the slave,’ Halliday said. ‘Then we need to nail the slave.’

  ‘It’ll be isolated,’ Wellman told him. ‘LINx won’t be able to upload itself back into the Net; the program would chase it down, kill it. LINx will be isolated in the slave, and it will be only a matter of time before we find him.’

  Halliday closed his eyes. The end of the case was like a horizon that seemed never to get any closer, no matter how fast he approached.

  ‘Mr Wellman,’ one of the techs called from the flatscreen. ‘We’re ready to begin the initial insertion.’

  Halliday stood, weary now, and followed Wellman across the office to where half a dozen technicians were huddled around a computer touchpad linked to the big flatscreen. A pot of coffee stood on a nearby table. He poured himself a cup and carried it across to the huddle.

  ‘It’s in two stages,’ Ralph was explaining. ‘Basically speaking, the first stage is a simple search program, and the second is a smart virus, a destroy initiative. It’s encrypted, so LINx won’t be aware of its presence until it’s too late.’

  ‘But if LINx is fragmented around the Net. . .?’ Wellman began.

  Ralph shook his head. ‘That won’t matter. Joe’s taken it into account. The virus can fission and still remain effective.’

  He consulted with another tech, then said, ‘We’ll deploy the search stage now.’ He indicated the flatscreen. ‘The display will indicate when all of LINx’s various components have been located.’

  He nodded to a tech, who slid the needle into a port.

  Halliday drank the coffee, aware that his hand was shaking.

  ‘How long will it take?’ Wellman asked.

  ‘If all goes well, a matter of minutes,’ Ralph replied. ‘Even less for the destroy program.’

  Halliday stared at the flatscreen. The three-dimensional image showed tiny military tanks enter the mouth of an incredibly complex maze, the graphic Joe had written to represent the search. Across the foot of the screen, a blue strip moved along a slide-bar, calibrated in percentages.

  From time to time, the tanks halted at various positions in the maze, and began flashing red. Beside the tank, the image of a scorpion appeared: Joe’s icon for the artificial intelligence he had named LINx.

  The slide-bar reached thirty per cent, and increased as Halliday watched. A minute later the blue strip had filled almost eighty per cent of the slide-bar. Wellman glanced at him, nodded tensely.

  The blue strip seemed to take an age to consume the last twenty per cent of the slide-bar. It edged forward, a millimetre at a time. On the screen, the majority of the tanks were flashing red. Others advanced cautiously.

  Ninety per cent. . . ninety-five . . .

  ‘Can LINx do anything to fight back?’ Halliday asked.

  Ralph looked up. ‘We’ll find that out when we deploy the smart virus. I’m pretty certain it won’t go belly-up without a fight. Thing is, how will it try to defend itself?’

  The blue slide reached one hundred per cent. In the maze, all the tanks were flashing red. LINx had been successfully located.

  Halliday smiled to himself. ‘Typical of Joe; he constructed the killer virus along the lines of some kid’s com-game.’

  Wellman smiled. ‘I wish he was around to see it working,’ he said.

  Ralph held up the second needle. He glanced from Wellman to the rest of the team. ‘Are we ready, gentlemen?’

  Ralph slipped the needle home, and Halliday found himself holding his breath.

  He had expected merely to watch the tanks fire on the scorpion icons that represented LINx, the scorpions exploding as each component of the artificial intelligence was wiped from the Net.

  Instead, the attack was far more graphic.

  The flatscreen blanked for a second, and Halliday thought that something had gone wrong. He looked around at the techs, reassured by their seeming lack of concern.

  Then the screen exploded in a kaleidoscope of flaring colour and Halliday was bombarded by a succession of rapid-fire images.

  Some lasted for two or three seconds; others were subliminal flashes, a pulse of colour and no more. Halliday found himself squinting to make out the details. A series of fraction-of-a-second blips - all blinding splashes of multi-colour - was followed by a scene which extended itself for several seconds. He watched a tank advancing across a greensward, for all the world like some virtual reality site, firing as it went at the figure of a retreating scorpion, which turned from time to time and tried to lash out ineffectually with its poisoned tail.

  Then the image was gone, to be replaced by many more in a three-second burst. As if his vision had been attuned by the image of tank and scorpion, he was able to discern fleeting glimpses of what was happening in other scenes: they all showed the tanks advancing across various landscapes, with the scorpions retreating as the tanks laid down constant fire.

  Across the foot of the screen, another blue strip was eating up the calibrated percentages, though not as fast as had the first strip. The battle was joined, and LINx was not giving up without a fight. The minutes elapsed, and the frantic succession of flickering images slowed. Halliday knew that more and more components of LINx had been eliminated, allowing more time for the graphics to dwell on each individual battle.

  The strip approached ninety-five per cent and Halliday watched a tank pounding away at a metallic, armoured scorpion in a bizarre landscape of coral fractals, and then the scene shifted, and he was watching a tank firing on another scorpion, though this time in a landscape made up of mathematical equations.

  Wellman gripped his arm, indicated the blue strip. Ninety-nine per cent had been reached and passed, and as Halliday watched it seemed that the blue strip had consumed the entire one hundred per cent of the slide-bar.

  The flatscreen relayed just one scene now: the final battle between Joe Kosinski’s program and the monster of his own creation.

  The scene showed the battle from the viewpoint of the tank, as if the camera was looking over the shoulder of the commander. He gestured ahead in cavalier fashion, and the tank surged forward through a desert of shifting, purple-hued sand. From time to time the scorpion could be glimpsed ahead, fleeing over a series of receding dunes. The tank accelerated, loosing off the occasional shell as the scorpion came into sight.

  And then the dunes flattened, became a vast level expanse of sand. Halliday told himself that this was merely a visual representation of what was happening somewhere on the Net, a fight between packets of information somewhere mysteriously out there, but his head could not contain the idea. This, the fight going on before him, was far more real.

  The tank trundled from the last of the dunes and approached the scorpion which turned and faced the tank, all glittering silver carapace and whipping tail. The tank fired and missed, and then the scorpion replied. As Halliday watched, a ruby lance of laser fire shot from its arching tail, hit
ting the tank and rocking it backwards. The tank replied with a barrage of shells, one of which hit the scorpion, sending great silver scales shattering off into the air. The scorpion fired again and missed, and the tank advanced for the coup de grace. The scorpion, LINx, lay on its belly in the purple sand, its ruined tail flapping uselessly, the few legs which still remained scrabbling in the desert.