The Eyes of the Rigger

by Unknown

  The bob was already on the track. Was speeding into the glittering ice, into the shimmering tube, was being sucked in, squeezed through and spat out at the other end.

  There he was now. A decker by the name of Pandur in the matrix. He was... Somehow he was home, he felt. Nothing had changed. The good old matrix. Two years hadn't altered it. Two years had only changed Thor Walez. Had turned him into Pandur. And now Pandur was strolling around in the matrix with the memories of Thor Walez.

  Yes, he was home, and had forgotten nothing. Outside, in the other world, his fingers were whirring over the cyberdeck's keys, loading utilities, loading his persona. The inconspicuous white pyramid, which represented his ego in this cosmos, became an old Amerindian. An Indian with a robe displaying a shining recumbent figure eight. An Indian who had a second face, the mask of a robot.

  Yes, Walez-Pandur, that's you. You suspected years ago that you harbored two personae in your breast. Accept it. Accept yourself. You've got no choice anyway.

  Pandur sensed a deep quietude spreading through him. There were people who exuded peace, because they are at peace with themselves and convey this to others. Here it was the other way round. He had the feeling that he was surrounded by a cosmos that was at peace with itself and was transmitting this to him. He was aware that this impression was fleeting. As fleeting as in the world outside the indolent dozing of the lion - before it prepared to leap. He wasn't in a paradise. He was hunter and hunted. Later. Perhaps very soon. But not now, not at this moment. He had been fooling himself. Had all he could take - no way. Oh, yes, he had missed the matrix. Not the shadows, but the matrix. Good thing the one was indisolubly linked to the other. He took delight in the matrix, took delight in himself. The lust for adventure, fun, romanticism? It was all here. Mostly buried, but sometimes it broke through. He was relieved. Only now did he comprehend that he had been afraid to go back into the network. And he understood what he had been afraid of. Afraid of fear itself. Afraid of waiting as if mesmerized for the moment when Roberti's face would turn up. Afraid of losing consciousness in the matrix again. Afraid of coming out and slipping in a slimy puddle that had once been Rose. He knew all that, or at least something similar, could happen to him again. But it had become an abstract threat that was sometimes called Aids, sometimes cancer, or Alzheimer's, or lung rot, or brain maggots, or nerve burn. You lived with it. As long as it didn't have you on the hook, it didn't stop you from living. And if you could push the shit far enough away into some corner, the rest sometimes was real fun.

  Then he plunged into the labyrinth of electrical circuits and nodes, dived into the dazzling, multi-colored data streams. He left the luminous-red honeycomb of the SPU behind him and raced towards the distant suns.

  He ignored the giant CPU sun. Pandur was assuming he was already in the computer system of the screened tract of the building. This CPU was only one of AG Chemie's several central units, each of which were screened from each other by separate System Access Nodes. Despite this, he still believed the megacon's logistics computers were more powerful than the central processing unit that managed the current data pool of this segment. The basement levels contained too many offices, too many sararimen working with computers. These people had been security-screened from head to toe. But the megacon's execs wouldn't permit them to have direct access to the computers storing secret data. They would guard these computers with Ice that only they could override with passcodes.

  He let himself be carried into several SPU honeycombs in turn, following the broadest datastreams in each case. The honeycombs proved to be unprotected. Pandur had known from the outset that he would find the data he was seeking here. Even so, he took his time checking the data memories to make sure. As expected, he found only the administration's low-level files.

  He changed his tactics. The megacon's logistics computers were bound to be particularly powerful, but not necessarily units that showed a high data transfer. The bulk of the incoming data to be stored related to the special purpose of this department. Production, sales and administration were presumably handled in other systems. Maybe the submerged basement tract mainly dealt with research, with the formulae for the pill pressing that went on elsewhere. But Pandur wasn't here to pinch secret little preparations for sweaty feet or hemorrhoids from AG Chemie. He wanted the little preparations that concerned secret global strategy, as well as finished plans and the plans already implemented. Access to this data was the preserve of the execs and played no large part in AG Chemie's data transfers. So he should be following not the broad streams, but the small ones, and of these the special ones. Pandur considered. If an exec needed secret data, he presumably called it up with a powerful unit, but this didn't produce a prolonged transfer of data. He could rule out small but steady data streams. They concerned subordinate SPUs handling local controlling tasks and effecting a transfer of data at a constant level. His SPU had to be the departure or arrival point of data streams that suddenly swelled and then just as suddenly receded.

  His new strategy produced results straight away. In one of the rainbow-colored data tunnels, he noticed a pulsating pale-blue artery that swelled up from one moment to the next and then rushed towards one of the distant SPUs like a flash flood in a dry creekbed.

  Pandur let himself fall into the pulsating stream and be carried to the data's destination. Before the stream entered the target SPU, Pandur leapt out to inspect the honeycomb. The data flow dried up. The honeycomb lay before him shimmering red-yellow, abandoned, deceptively inactive.

  Pandur loaded a mask utility. He chose his best stealth utility. His icon disappeared to be replaced by a man dressed in black and wearing a mask covering his entire head. Only the eyes were visible. A playful conceit like the Indian icon. Only other deckers in the system could see and appreciate it. If the stealth utility fulfilled its purpose, the access Ice wouldn't perceive him as a man in black, but simply wouldn't detect him at all.

  He drifted with the narrow data streams, which emanated from routine alignments with other units in the system, into the node. AG Chemie hadn't troubled to deck it out very imaginatively for virtual reality. It presented itself as a sober six-sided chamber with thousands of energy flashes scampering along walls, ceiling and floor and slithering away through segments of electrical circuits.

  They had gone to more trouble with the Ice.

  In the middle of the chamber hung a spider's web in shimmering white. White Ice. Hundreds of spiders hurried busily around the web, seeming to investigate every movement, goggling with giant, alert eyes at the data streams. Grey Ice. If the web were touched at any point or the spiders' attention were aroused in any other way, the alarm would be triggered.

  The mesh of the web was large enough to let the data streams through, but too fine for the black thief. Pandur, though, hadn't exhausted his box of tricks quite yet. He modified his creeper. The thief turned into a black spear, or rather a needle in whose head the eyes were located. The needle moved effortlessly through one of the gaps, guided by Pandur in such a way that at no point did it come into contact with the sticky web.

  One of the spiders shot towards him and eyed him just as he had put the head through the web. It seemed to be interested in his eyes. Pandur's fingers raced over the keys. Smoke draped itself round his eyes. He couldn't see the spider anymore, but neither could the spider be intrigued by his eyes. When the smoke dissipated and Pandur regained vision, he had passed the web. The spider moved to another part of it to gaze at quantities of data radiating a particularly intense light.

  Pandur had just enough time to breathe a sigh of relief. Then, from out of nowhere, a swarm of transparent molluscs, not unlike ciliates, sped towards him and enveloped him. He hadn't seen anything like it before. It seemed to be neither White nor Grey Ice. Black Ice didn't come into it. But what the devil did these molluscs represent? They were whirring around him without touching him. There were thousand Pandur was confused and didn't know what to do next. Suddenly he found that the single-c
ell creatures were beginning to change. Every single one of them was transforming itself into a needle with eyes.

  The molluscs were copying him!

  The swarm must be a special tracker program. But it didn't behave like one. As there was no immediate danger, Pandur decided against loading combat utilities to destroy the swarm. It would only expose him to the Black Ice that was lurking somewhere. Nor could he carry a giant target around with him.

  The swarm itself relieved him of the work that one of his combat utilities couldn't have performed better; it burst apart as if a torpedo had penetrated it and exploded in its midst. Thousands of molluscs were scattered in as many directions. Most were swallowed up by the flashes of light on the walls of the chamber, many got stuck in the spider's web and were recovered and dragged away at lightning speed by the spiders that came rushing over to them. Others zoomed through gaps in the web and then out of the node.

  Pandur noted that no Barrier Ice descended and no alarm was set off. Carrying away the molluscs in the shape of small black needles seemed to be routine work for the spiders, which were the incarnation of Grey Ice. Nervous fingers on the keys that activated Pandur's combat utilities relaxed.

  No cause to panic! Nothing's happened.

  But something had happened. Pandur tried to understand the sense of this encounter, to think the images of virtual reality, which the BTL chips of his cyberdeck projected into his mind, back into a data-processing operation. The system now possessed thousands of copies of an intruder that wasn't seen as an adversary by the Ice, but had excited the curiosity of this new program element. The foreign body had been copied and so stored. For what purpose? Systems analysts would come across the recordings after the run and be able to put together a picture of the intruder. But what help was a black needle with eyes? They weren't Pandur's eyes. An enlargement of the retina would reveal nothing more than evenly spaced matrix dots without any special characteristics.

  So what was the purpose?

  Then it occurred to Pandur what statement the black needle with the eyes could make. A very obvious statement. It pointed to a very special, custom-built stealth program that belonged to Thor Walez alone. In the normal run of things, after realizing this, Pandur would have turned to more important matters since the only person who knew Thor Walez had such a program was Thor Walez. Other people were unable to trace this special creeper back to him. But after everything that he himself had gone through in the matrix two years ago, doubts came to him. He had no guarantee the he alone knew what his deck contained. It had been through other hands. Axa had tampered with him when he was in the matrix. What had he known about his cyberdeck? But Axa was dead. One other person was still alive. The mad mage, who had addicted him to dumpy and forced him to do the run on Renraku. He had had Pandur's things fetched from the hideout at Pjatras's, the cyberdeck among them. He and his specialists had had time to familiarize themselves with it.

  Pandur had wanted to return to the matrix as a new, virginal decker. As Pandur, not as Thor Walez. He had to get used to the idea that the intruder could be identified as Thor Walez if the right people were questioned. He would ordinarily have categorized the mad mage as an AG Chemie adversary, who wouldn't share his information with the megacon. But the chase that had followed the Renraku run and the many strange events of those days had made him uncertain. He couldn't see any clear battle lines anymore.

  He wasn't pleased with the idea that his identity had become so transparent. Tupamaro, Druse, the unknown pursuers on the yacht, Freda, now perhaps AG Chemie - they all knew who to look for if they wanted Thor Walez: a decker by the name of Pandur. He had envisioned things differently.

  Then he saw the giant black eagle circling at the exit from the node. Black Ice! As was to be expected.

  And the Black IC had already discovered him. The eagle flew towards him and it didn't look as if it wanted to have its neck stroked.

  This time Pandur's mask utilities wouldn't be worth a bean. But Thor Walez hadn't acquired his reputation with mask utilities. He possessed just about the best combat facilities available, additionally modified for his special requirements by cyberware experts he was friends with. This was supplemented by first-class, electronic reaction intensification. The Black Ice was dangerous and fast, but Pandur was faster and deadlier. At lightning speed he downloaded the mask utilities from the on-board memory and rammed the knight with the laser sword out of the memory bank into the on-board memory. When the eagle hurtled down at him with spread talons, the knight swung the sword up at lightning speed and sliced the Black Ice cleanly in two. There was a flash and then the eagle's remains went up in smoke.

  Pandur didn't look around for more opponents, but there had obviously been only this one Black IC. Pandur felt something very much like contempt. The eagle hadn't really set him much of a test. AG Chemie seemed very sure that no one could get into their secret basement and had installed Black Ice halfheartedly. Maybe the megacon's deckers used it as quarry when they felt like testing their reflexes.

  The wish to take revenge on AG Chemie had been suppressed deep within him by practical requirements. But now he felt a slight regret that they hadn't sent him a powerful, bizarre Black Ice. He would have hewn it into a thousand pieces with delight.

  Pandur banished the thought as quickly as it had surfaced.

  He swapped the combat utilities for his Indian icon; the time for masks was over, the alarm had been raised. He had to hurry. Unlike at Jacobi's, the triggering of the alarm was no faux pas. His clients had reckoned with it, the runners too. They were sitting in a nest of alarmed termites. The added alarm could do no more than had already been set in motion by the overall security situation; megacon guardsmen and security men were on the move, combing floors, individual rooms. The runners would collide with the drekheads. Or not. Chilehaus was big. They needed a bit of luck. A little more would be better.

  Whether the aim of the run could be accomplished, however, would be decided immediately. If Pandur didn't find the computer with the secret files, there wouldn't be enough time for another go at it. Though he couldn't imagine that an insignificant node would be fitted with White, Grey and Black Ice, as well as these copy-mad trackers.

  He leapt into data memory, uploading his sensor utilities. With a browser program he checked the data blocks, casually fighting off Spoiler Ice with a decoding program before it could render the data unusable. Everything he was looking for was there. Including material on affiliations, company structure, risk financing, tied-up capital. Ideally suited to his new field of interest. He ran random checks on the material before copying it. Intriguing material! He had to stop himself from getting too immersed. He committed more to memory than he had ever done before on a run.

  Then he stumbled on something that electrified him. Material on the activities of an AG Chemie subsidiary in Central Africa. What he read was monstrous! He knew at once that this data was dynamite. The public didn't have the slightest inkling of these matters.

  Pandur was aware that this data actually had no business at all being in a large computer. It was something that shouldn't even have appeared in execs' notebooks at Level One. This was the sort of information you carried around in your head, even in this electronic era, or, if it was unavoidable, as handwritten memos in sealed attache cases that were under supervision day and night. He had no idea what he would do with this information. It was probably too hot for the media. Pandur didn't think it could be sold. But one thing he knew: possession of it was more than unhealthy. It was deadly.

  In spite of all this, he still couldn't make up his mind to ignore the data block. As soon as AG Chemie noticed that someone had been in the logistics system, the megacon would do everything in its power to find the uninvited guest. They wouldn't waste time with conjecture. The mere possibility that he had held the data, or even just read it, made him a danger. AG Chemie would want to eliminate this danger. Would have to eliminate it.

  He copied the data block and jacked out.


  Pandur looked up dazed, registered himself as a decker sitting at a computer, who had just pulled the lead out of the forehead jack. He pulled the cyberdeck's second lead out of the jack of the I/O port, stashed cables and cyberdeck in the case and slung it around him. Then he stood up.

  "What did you find?" Festus asked him, stepping nearer. " The data we wanted," Pandur replied. "We've got what Schmidt's paying us for."

  "Chummer," said Festus deliberately, "you might just have picked up that Schmidt isn't paying me one solitary Ecu, because I don't want any money. D'you have anything for me?"

  Pandur had of course only been able to carry out random checks of the data streams. But he knew enough to give Festus an answer.

  "Sorry, chummer," he said. "If AG Chemie has anything to do with your killer viruses, then the data isn't in their logistics computer."

  Festus didn't attempt to hide his disappointment. "Anything else?" he asked finally.

  Pandur knew what he was getting at. He tried to put on an indifferent face. "Not a thing, chummer," he replied, turning away.

  The indifference was only a mask. He hoped the Rigger hadn't noticed. Pandur had lied to him. Not only as regarded the Africa block. That was none of the rigger's business. He had also copied data that would interest Festus. But he didn't think it was a good idea to make it available to him. At least not here, and not now.

  "If we want to go, we can," he said drily to Jessica. "For your information, in case you didn't notice, I ran into Black Ice and set off the alarm."

  "Then we should get a move on," her answer came calmly. "The drekheads seem to be still buzzing around in the south wing. We ought to make good use of their blindness."

  Pandur picked up his Walther Secura, which he had put down in front of the console.

  Festus leveled his Combat Gun menacingly at the couple, who had so far stayed calm. "If you don't stay real, real quiet in the next few minutes, I'm gonna come back and make sure you're quiet," he threatened grimly in good old samurai fashion. He left no doubt as to how that was to be taken.