Deathworld nfe-13

by Tom Clancy

  They went out into the corridor. Nick, following her and Spite, was finding it hard to understand how he felt. Spite was a silent lowering presence in this darkness, but there was no feeling of threat about him, only pain, and Khasm, her eyes downcast, seemed to have gotten control of herself again, but that was even worse for Nick, in a way, than the sound of her fighting with her tears had been.

  "Look," he said. "If there's anything else I can do-"

  Khasm shook her head. "This," she said, holding up the closed hand that no longer had an eighth note in it, "this meant a lot. Uh… thanks."

  She went off down the corridor, and Spile started to go after her. Nick astonished himself by putting a hand on that huge arm. Spile stopped and stared at him.

  "I mean it," he said.

  Spite looked at him in a kind of lowering silence, then said, "Yeah. Thanks. I-"

  "Nick Melchior," Nick said. "I'm in the login lists."

  "Okay," said Spite. "I- Maybe we'll get in touch."

  He went after Khasm. Nick stood there, watching them go, and then headed out into the corridor himself, in the opposite direction, slowly making his way back toward where he had been when they'd found him.

  It had never occurred to him that there might have been something odd about those suicides. But Khasm and Spite had been absolutely certain. And now Nick found himself remembering that Charlie had been a little concerned about Deathworld, himself, and all the time Nick was spending there.

  Was he thinking about the suicides, too?

  There was no telling. But he had certainly mentioned them once… and Nick had brushed him off. And then Charlie had asked him for that walk-through.

  Nick had been delighted about this earlier: the idea of ranging around Deathworld with Charlie in tow would have been fun. Part of that was that Charlie was so smart about a lot of stuff. Nick didn't grudge him that. His buddy had been through hell in his time, a real hell as opposed to this rather entertaining fake one. But this would have been one place where, for once, Nick was just a little smarter than Charlie… and he didn't think Charlie would grudge him that, either.

  Now, though, the concept had acquired an entirely different slant, and Nick wasn't sure he liked it at all. There was something about these suicides and Deathworld that was bothering him, all of a sudden… something fishy. And now Charlie was going to be wandering around down there, new to the place, not knowing the ropes. Anybody could come along and tell him anything… possibly get him in some kind of trouble.

  Oh, come on, said the "sensible" part of Nick's brain. It's not like the environment's dangerous, or anything. If it were, Net Force would come in and shut it down. And Charlie's not dumb! Far from it.

  But all the same… these suicides…

  All of a sudden they gave him the creeps.

  I've got to go see Charlie, he thought. As soon as I finish here today…

  Nick headed off into the darkness.

  Charlie had been up late again, the night before, sitting sideways on the lowest of the benches in his workspace with his feet up, studying the Deathworld walkthrough. It was complex, but not as bad as some environments he'd played in at one time or another. A lot of the business of getting through the upper circles seemed to involve talking to the Damned. That, by itself, was interesting for Charlie. Later on, once you got down to Eight, it started to be about talking to other gameplayers. It's as if the game designers are trying to teach people to talk to each other, Charlie thought. Easing them into it gradually. It starts out as sort of an entertainment, 'look at all the bad people getting what's coming to them. _. ' Then it changes focus.

  Charlie wasn't quite sure what to make of that. Is this the work of some benign behind-the-scenes environment designer? Or could this be something that Bane wanted put in?

  He paused for a little while to scan through the various virtclips and text interviews with Bane that he had gathered together. In none of them did Joey Bane say much about his actual input into the environment's design. If anything, he seemed to avoid the topic, or to try to suggest (in one or two of the interviews) that he was a nontechie who didn't know much about computers or the Net.

  That Charlie found hard to believe, especially in the light of the way the professional music business was these days. It had become inextricably interwoven with the Net in terms of music distribution and marketing over the last twenty years, and if there was anything Charlie was certain of as far as Joey Bane was concerned, it was that the man was expert, even inspired, in terms of marketing. He suspected that Bane was as involved in this as in anything else to which his name might be attached. But proving

  Then again, there wasn't any reason to worry much about that right now. The environment itself was going to present its own challenges. Because after Eight, after you find the way into the Maze and down into the Ninth level. _. no details. Even the walk-throughs, which were theoretically slightly illegal and usually went out of their way to reveal such details, suddenly went dry. It's as if it all stops there… or some really powerful influence is keeping people from discussing what they find there. Weird.

  The threat of lawsuits, maybe?

  But then you would think that was enough to keep people from talking about the first eight levels, too. And it's not.

  Charlie brooded over that for a while. What influence was powerful enough to keep something so secret?

  If I get down there, I may find out.

  Meanwhile- He swung up and walked around his little gallery of exhibits again. Charlie had folded away all the autopsy results, and now was left with the kids themselves, sitting on front steps, lying on beaches, hitting a softball again and again… Jaime and Richard. Jeannine and Malcolm. Renee and Mitch. They could have been anybody from Bradford, Charlie thought. Or from any school around here. They look perfectly normal. Except that they had all committed suicide. That was the problem, of course. A suicide looks like anybody else, until the crucial moment hits during which taking one more breath becomes just too painful.

  And then there are cases like these, Charlie thought, when there's something else going on.

  … and only one way to find out what.

  He sighed, glancing up at the windows. It was fully dark in London now, but it was still afternoon on the East Coast. He and headed off toward the doorway that led to Mark Gridley's workspace, opened it, and put his head through.

  The heat and humidity hit him like a blow. Well, it's Florida, isn't it, Charlie thought, and stepped into the hot sunlight and close still air inside the VAB. But you can have a little too much reality. Mark can be such a perfectionist sometimes… "Mark," Charlie shouted as he walked across the concrete, "you in here?"

  "Yeah," Mark said, from somewhere right across that huge space, though out of sight. "Be with you in a minute."

  Charlie made his way across to where the hardwood desk had been sitting last time. It was gone. There was one of the new Rolls-Skoda cars there, the sleek new armored number that everyone was talking about. Its hood was up, and Mark was peering in at the engine.

  Charlie came up beside him after a couple of minutes and looked in, too. The engine was clean enough to eat off, a complex welter of shining tubes and piping and a massive engine block which had probably been carved in one piece out of a solid cube of steel. "Considering a purchase?" Charlie said. "Or is your dad worried about somebody's security?"

  "Huh?" Mark straightened up, dusted his hands off. "No, it's just a sim," he said. "Somebody I know let me borrow it. They're having trouble with the way it runs. Keeps going nonphysical at bad moments."

  Charlie thought rather ruefully of his steam engine. "I've been having spong troubles myself," he said. "But that's not what I came over for."

  "So tell me." Mark put the Rolls's hood down and boosted himself up to sit on it. "And what happened with all those files?"

  "A lot," Charlie said. "But, Mark, would you for cripesake turn on the air-conditioning? It's like a sauna in here."

  "Nope," Mark
said. "I'm waiting for something." He glanced up. Charlie followed his glance, but didn't see anything but the pygmy buzzards, way up high by the huge slot in the ceiling, circling near it. "So tell me what's up."

  Charlie shook his head in mild exasperation, but went ahead to briefly describe what he had found in going through the autopsy files. "There's something going on about all these deaths that just doesn't feel right," he said. "And there's no way to look into it except from the inside."

  Mark gave him a thoughtful look. "Looking into death from the inside," he said, "would seem to preclude you doing much of anything else."

  "Not that far inside," Charlie said, with only a little annoyance. "Mark, I need you to wire me."

  Charlie had expected to have to explain to Mark what he meant. To his surprise, he didn't. But he was also surprised to see Mark sit down on one of his folding chairs and blow out his cheeks like someone with a big problem. "Don't need much, do you," Mark said.

  "You can do it, can't you?" Charlie said.

  "Will I do it? Yeah, you know I'll do whatever you need done. Is it going to be easy? No, not like raiding those systems the other night."

  Mark pulled his feet up under him to sit cross-legged on the Rolls's hood. "That was stealing-from-the-cookiejar stuff compared to this," he said. "Deathworld's probably got more copy protection schemes built into it than any environment I can think of. Bane's really sensitive to having his stuff ripped off… and half his technical staff keep busy inventing new and interesting ways to stop people from piping information directly out. A whole lot of stuff to have to defeat, second by second. And naturally you don't want anybody noticing what you're doing."

  "Uh, no."

  Mark sat there and brooded for a little. "By the way, what happened to your fishing trip?" Charlie said after a moment. "I didn't think I'd find you here."

  Mark snickered. "Oh, I would have won. Dad has to stay home and do some classified thing." He shrugged. "Maybe it's just as well. He'll be out of my way for the rest of the weekend, and maybe longer… which is going to be good, since this is gonna need a lot of concentration… "

  The two of them sat there quietly for a few moments more. Then Mark said, "Talk to me later tonight. I'll let you know if it can be done."

  "Okay," Charlie said, getting up. "Mark-thanks." "Yeah, yeah…" But then Mark looked up, blinking. "You hear something?"

  Charlie looked around. "Uh, no."

  "I did, though-" Mark slid down off the hood of the Rolls, and looked up. "Hey…"

  Charlie followed his glance. The buzzards were suddenly crowding off to one side of the VAB's upper reaches, and all looking hurriedly for high spots on which to perch, as if on the top of a cliff. Charlie looked up and saw…

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, for he didn't know how to describe what he was seeing. His first thought was The air is thickening. The idea seemed silly. But that was exactly what it was doing-thickening, like steam, like a thick fog, thicker, like smoke-though through it the sun poured from above, untroubled. Charlie shook his head, astounded. Clouds were forming above them, right there inside the VAB, and as Charlie watched, what looked like a thin silvery smoke seemed to start drifting down from them. He walked out into the middle of that space, not hurrying too much, for that silvery drift was taking a little time to come down, and finally he stopped, with Mark behind him, and felt, on his upturned face, the first fine drops of rain.

  "Will you look at that," Mark said, triumphant. "It does this sometimes, the real one. I knew that if I'd really got this simulation down right, sooner or later it would happen." He pounded Charlie on the back and laughed. "Congratulations, Charlie, you've witnessed history!"

  "Yeah," Charlie said, "and it's wet… " He brushed the rain off his shoulders and made for the door, smiling slightly… but still thinking about that gallery of smiling faces sitting inside his own workspace, and intent on finding out what had happened to them…

  … without becoming one more smile.

  Chapter 7

  Nick exited Deathworld into the bare white space of his public-access area. He looked around at those white walls with a faint feeling of guilt. Even if they did eventually look better, when he got his decorating done, it wasn't going to be the same as his own space on the family's server. He felt annoyed at himself for not having been more careful with his time, and was starting to be annoyed at himself for getting his mom and dad so angry. He was beginning, much to his annoyance, to be able to see their point.

  Pretty soon I'm going to be starting to think I should go apologize to them some more, Nick thought, rebellious.

  But would that be such a bad idea? It might do something to change the fact that his life seemed to be completely screwed up at the moment.

  You're just freaked because of this stuff Khasm and Spile told you about…

  He swallowed. That was true.

  And Charlie…

  "Charlie Davis's space," he said to the white walls around him.

  Nick was feeling a little ashamed of himself. He should have stopped by days ago. But he'd been busy… "Trying that workspace for you now."

  That busyness had been shaken out of him, now, by his conversation with Khasm and Spile. Until now Nick had assumed that the suicides were genuine, just people who somehow couldn't cope. It had never occurred to him that something else might be going on… and he still wasn't sure what, but the idea gave him the creeps.

  "The space you require is accessible," said his public space's management program.

  Nick got up out of the virtual version of the implant chair and went over to the air, pulling on the doorknob sticking out of it. The door opened, and he looked through into the big, circular, wood-paneled space with its portraits of doctors in frock coats and wigs, the stadium benches, and the steam engine down in the low part in the middle.

  The steam engine wasn't there, though. What was there was a group of 2-D and 3-D images of people… kids Nick didn't know. He walked down the stairs between two sets of bleachers, looking at them. There was no sign of Charlie. Either he was out in the real world somewhere, or working on something else…

  Or he's in Deathworld someplace.

  Nick thought about that, then went back up the stairs and stepped back into his workspace, shutting the access to Charlie's space behind him. Then he opened the doorway he usually used to access Deathworld. Burning red, the copyright information hung there in front of him. "Yeah, yeah, get on with it," Nick said. "Front-door access, please."

  The long copyright warning notice hung there a few moments more, and then showed him the great front gates. Nick walked in and said, "Deathworld utilities, please…"

  In front of him appeared a huge dark-green onyx desk, piled high with ledgers, and behind the desk, a clerk-demon wearing a green eyeshade, and sleeve garters and a bow tie (though no shirt). It looked up at him with a blunt, only slightly wicked face, like that of a cartoon bulldog with the demise of some cartoon cat on its mind. "Yeah? Oh, it's you, Nick."

  "Hi, Scorchtrap," Nick said, strolling over to the desk. "How's the union thing going?"

  "Aah, the usual," said the demon. "Management says they can't budge on the last offer, we say fine, we'll strike, they say okay, they'll bring in cheaper labor… " The demon leaned to one side and spat brimstone into an ornately carved spittoon by the desk. Sulfurous smoke rose from it. "Scabs, that's what they mean. It stinks more than usual, Nick. Our problem is, we got no rights."

  "Well, just hang in there," Nick said. "You guys have personality… they'd be nuts to get rid of you."

  "From your mouth to the Boss's ear," said Scorchtrap. "Cheapskate that he is. He promised us that this bargaining round, he'd give us a decent profit-sharing agreement. Now he won't even give us the time of day. It's enough to make you lose your faith in market forces." The demon grimaced. "But enough of my problems. What can I do for you?"

  "Looking for a friend of mine," Nick said. "Charlie Davis."

  The demon pulled
up a thick scroll from behind this desk. This unrolled out across the floor and into the distance, where it vanished, like railroad tracks converging at the horizon. Scorchtrap made a disgusted face, tossing the scroll to the desk. "Retrotech," he said, and reached into the air, grabbing a little cord that hadn't been there a second before, and pulling down a text window. "This guy come in here recently?"

  "The past day or so, I think."

  Scorchtrap studied the text that was scrolling through the window too fast for Nick to read, and finally came to the end of it. "Nobody by that name."

  "He might be using a `nym.' "

  'Yeah, but if he is, we can't disclose it," Scorchtrap said, pulling on the cord again. The window rolled itself up like an old-fashioned window blind, with the same flapping noise, and vanished. "Privacy legislation, you know how it is, Nick… gotta keep the nosey-bodies at bay. Even when it's in a good cause."

  "Yeah, I guess." Nick let out a long breath. "Listen, do this for me. Let me have a look at the login records for the last couple of days."

  Scorchtrap raised his eyebrows. "You kidding?" he said. "You must feel like curling up by the fire with a good book. You know how many people we get in here every day?"

  "Just the newbies, Scorchtrap. There can't be that many of them."

  "You wanna bet?" The demon shook his head, and reached up to pull that cord. The window came down again. "Been busy around here the last week or so, Nick. Lotta trouble upstairs… you know what about."

  "I know," Nick said, somber, and leaned on his elbows on the desk, looking at the window.

  Scorchtrap hadn't been kidding. Deathworld had experienced between five and ten thousand new user logins per hour from all over the planet during the period in which Nick was interested. Even though Nick waded through it as best he could, there was no telling what `nym' Charlie might have chosen… for he was not one of the dim types who pick an anagram of their name, or their mother's maiden name, for a pseudonym.