Matrix Man

by William C. Dietz

  Like most journalists, Corvan had witnessed death in all of its many forms, but nothing worse than this. He felt bile rise in his throat and forced it back down.

  Turning to Jones, Corvan zoomed in, searching the other man's face for some sign of compassion, some vestige of humanity. "Why? Why did you kill them?"

  The PA system clicked on, but Jones waved it into silence. Slowly, step by step, he advanced on Corvan until he was so close to the reop's face that the eye cam lost focus. Then he ran his tongue over his lips and smiled. "Just for the record, Mr. Reporter, we didn't kill them, they committed suicide."

  Jones spun around and held up his arms. "Isn't that right, boys?"

  "That's right!" the inmates shouted back in unison, "They committed suicide!"

  The prisoners were so taken with their leader's joke that it was two or three minutes before they began to quiet down, during which time Corvan realized that he was in deep trouble. And just in case there was any doubt, Jones confirmed it moments later.

  "Now, my friend, we have used some of our valuable time to entertain you, and having done so, we think turnabout's fair play. A few minutes ago you swore an oath making yourself one of my subjects, and even though you didn't take the oath seriously, we did. Isn't that right, boys?"

  "That's right!" the prisoners yelled in unison. "We took the oath seriously!"

  "And given that we took the oath seriously," Davy Jones continued smoothly, "we think it's fair that you undergo the same initiation that each of us enjoyed when we first arrived."

  Corvan looked around, searched for some sort of escape route, and found nothing.

  "And what might that be, you ask?" Jones said mockingly. "Well, in ancient times they called it 'a trial by combat,' but nowadays we refer to it as 'getting the shit kicked out of you by a big man with a crowbar."

  As the convicts broke into gales of laughter, Corvan heard the whine of an electric motor and looked up into bright light. A man was being lowered onto the platform, a man so large that the crowbar shoved through his belt looked like a toy. He had a bullet-shaped head, an iron pumper's body, and an extremely unpleasant expression.

  "We call him El Toro," Davy Jones said with a grin, "but you can call him sir. Kill him and you go free. Fail and you feed the fish."

  Corvan didn't waste any energy begging for mercy or cracking jokes. Neither one would do him the least bit of good. Instead he backed away from the spot where El Toro would land, watching the big convict, looking for a way to kill him.

  Meanwhile Davy Jones returned to his throne, threw one leg over the chair's armrest, and stared off into the distance. The fight was for his followers, and for Warden Waller, who would make sure that he escaped all but symbolic punishment in the aftermath of the riot. For some reason she wanted the reporter dead, and that was fine with Jones. His entertainments lay elsewhere, deep in the darkest recesses of certain cities, far beyond his present reach. He leaned back and allowed his thoughts to carry him there, a smile touching his beautiful lips.

  Unbidden, Corvan's army training came flooding back, and with it some military precepts which his subconscious saw fit to bring up for his consideration. "Find your enemy's weakness" and "Choose your own ground.”

  "Fine," Corvan thought to himself as he circled to the right. "But how do they apply here? As far as I can tell, this guy doesn't have any weaknesses, and we're fighting on his ground."

  There was a cheer as El Toro landed on the platform and pulled the crowbar out of his belt.

  "Well," the distant voice said calmly, "in that case I suppose it's hopeless."

  El Toro growled and started forward.

  "Thanks a lot," Corvan replied as he moved along the outside edge of the platform. "If you can't say something good, don't say anything at all. So this guy's pumped up? So what? Everyone's got a weakness."

  El Toro moved forward with the deliberate steps of a Japanese sumo wrestler. Now they were only ten feet apart.

  Corvan stepped toward the man and continued to circle. "Hi. I understand they call you El Toro. That means 'the bull,' right? Well, the name sure fits. You're lookin' good. Do you pump iron?"

  El Toro grunted impatiently.

  Corvan nodded understandingly. "I understand. Action speaks louder than words. Why talk when you can show me?"

  As Corvan turned, El Toro did likewise. Now the giant had his back to the fish pens and was moving in toward the center of the platform. Corvan grinned, used his implant, and sent the robo cam flying straight at the convict's face.

  El Toro brought his hands up to protect his eyes, took two steps backward, and fell off the platform. He hit die water with a tremendous splash.

  Was the bull a champion swimmer? Corvan didn't think so. The convict was an iron pumper, and iron pumpers don't normally work out in pools, but you never know.

  Hoping for the best, Corvan scooped up a short length of heavy chain, took a deep breath, and jumped into the water. It was cold, terribly cold, and for a moment he thought the water would kill him.

  But wait, it was El Toro's job to kill him, and unless he got his act together pretty soon, that's exactly how things would go. He forced his eyes open. The salt water stung them and he saw that the chain was pulling him downward at a pretty fast clip.

  Hundreds of glittering coho salmon darted toward the far end of the pen to escape the huge form which had just fallen into their world from above. Their backs were silver, and they were small, maybe two pounds apiece. They made a thousand silhouettes against the underwater floodlights mounted at the far end of the pen.

  Looking down, Corvan saw that El Toro was on his way up, hands grabbing big fistfuls of water as though he could pull himself to the surface, legs kicking powerfully.

  Good. The gamble had paid off. The convict was a poor swimmer. Now every second would could. Corvan had a little more air and that, plus his skill in the water, would give him a tiny edge. You don't get to be a Green Beret unless you can fight in almost anything, and that includes the wet stuff.

  The convict saw him and altered course. He was a determined bastard, damned near out of air but still game.

  The moment the two men came together, things changed. El Toro grabbed Corvan around the waist and squeezed.

  For a moment they just hung there as the negative buoyancy of Corvan's chain balanced out the positive buoyancy of their bodies.

  Corvan had lost the initiative and knew it. El Toro was as strong as a bull, and bit by bit he was squeezing oxygen out of Corvan's lungs. A string of bubbles left the reporter's mouth and sailed toward the surface. It was getting hard to think, hard to move, hard to care what happened.

  Suddenly the voice was back—barely a whisper now, as if it too was short on air and close to passing out. "The chain, you idiot! They taught you that everything and anything can be used as a weapon. Use the chain!"

  Corvan wrapped the chain around El Toro's thick neck and pulled it tight. The chain had steel hooks shackled to both ends and Corvan used those as handles.

  The convict ignored the chain at first, hoping he could squeeze Corvan unconscious before being forced to deal with it. But the pressure was too much. El Toro's hands were like claws as they came up to the chain and pulled.

  Fish suddenly swarmed around them, hitting Corvan's face and arms with a hundred soft slaps. Then they swirled and darted away toward the far end of the pen-Ignoring El Toro's groping hands, Corvan glanced around, looking for some way out of the present situation. Then he saw it, only feet away, the side of the pen. Kicking desperately, he forced his way toward the heavy mesh while dragging the convict along behind. Then he was there, struggling to pass the steel hooks through the wire and locking them together.

  Corvan had one last picture of El Toro's huge hands plucking weakly at the hooks behind his head, watching despairingly as the reop pushed himself away, mouthing curses which only served to drown him that much faster.

  As his head broke through the surface, Corvan tried to suck in air and al
most drowned in the process. Fortunately strong arms were there to pull him up out of the water and lie him on the platform.

  At first he just lay there, lungs heaving, stomach upchucking sea water onto cold steel.

  Eventually, however, he recovered enough to take an interest in things around him. What he saw was the most welcome sight in the world: a whole mess of blue Coast Guard uniforms and a strangely unhappy warden. This in spite of the fact that the prisoners were under armed guard and headed back to their cells.

  Using Corvan's arrival on the barge as a diversion, Waller had used helicopters to put an assault team on the helopad. After that it was a simple matter of working their way downward deck by deck. That part of the plan had gone like clockwork. The Corvan part hadn't.

  Waller's eyes glittered, and her mouth was a straight, hard line as she said, "Well, I told you not to come here, didn't I?"

  Corvan struggled to his feet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The robo cam buzzed down from above to land on his shoulder, and suddenly Corvan realized that he had the whole thing in memory, the underwater fight and all. Normally he didn't approve of reporters taking part in the stories they covered, but sometimes it can't be helped, and this was one of those times. He grinned.

  "You sure did, Warden, and I can see why. It seems your prisoners have been allowed to have their own government. I think the good citizens of Washington state will take exception to that."

  Waller's walker hummed and clicked as she took two steps forward. Her eyes were mere pinpoints of light, full of hate and almost lost in wrinkles. "You'll clear the story with me first, Corvan."

  The reop grinned and shook his head. "Nope. You'll see it when everyone else does. Live at five."

  6

  Carla Subido watched as the shot of Rex Corvan faded away and was replaced by a tight shot of Barbara Lansing. Her "I'm really concerned about that story" frown quickly transformed itself into a sparkling smile, and she said, "So there you have it, another News Network 56 exclusive from our Man Cam, Rex Corvan, reporting live from the waters of Puget Sound, where order has been restored to Barge Farm 648. Be sure to tune in at eleven tonight when reporter Susie Dodd talks with the wife of a dead guard."

  Carla Subido touched a button in her armrest and the holo set faded to black. She looked out through the limo's one-way glass and frowned. Outside her silent world of rich leather and perfumed air, people performed a pantomime of rush-hour traffic. Under normal circumstances Carla enjoyed moments like this, delicious seconds during which her life was juxtaposed with that of the common herd. They served to remind her of what she'd accomplished. But not today. Today her mind was on Rex Corvan.

  Although she hadn't out-and-out ordered Dietrich to kill Corvan, she'd assumed that he would, and wondered what the hell he was waiting for.

  The limo went around a corner, and the neighborhood outside took a turn for the worse. First came the older coops, then the squalid rows of public housing, and finally the endless warehouses. Someday that would change. Someday Numalo's dream, her dream, would come true, and everyone would live in nice, clean houses. They would do meaningful work which contributed to the overall good, they would obey the laws which existed for their own welfare, and they would live in a world where war was unknown. A world with one government and one leader. Samuel Numalo.

  Carla's heart beat just a little faster when she thought about Numalo. She was sexually attracted to him, she knew that, and had known it since her days at UCLA. In those days she'd been the impressionable undergrad and he'd been the handsome grad student.

  Initially they were drawn together through the regular meetings required of all WPO-funded students, and later it was by choice, as two similar people went looking for a little companionship. There was an affair, an on-again, off-again relationship which never really blossomed but never went away either.

  Did she love him? Carla wasn't sure. She admired him, respected him, even worshiped him in certain ways. But love? She'd given up a number of promising relationships rather than make a mistake. And mistakes were inconceivable. Mistakes were things other people made. People who let emotion rather than logic guide their lives. People like her father. Hot tempered, emotional, and ultimately flawed. But not her.

  Carla set her mouth in a hard, straight line. No, not since the age of ten when her father had gone to prison, when other children had called her names, when her mother had literally died of shame.

  The limo pulled into a passageway, paused there while the driver activated an electronic password, and started up again as the corrugated door at the far end of the alley began to open.

  Carla checked her make up in a small mirror as the limo bounced over a small lip of concrete and rolled inside the warehouse. As usual, a little ball of fear had formed in the pit of her stomach. What kind of mood was he in? Would he praise or curse her? Carla never knew what to expect. She knew that it was a psychological technique, a way of disrupting the orderly way in which she did things, a way in which he could attack her self-control. In fact, there was only one thing in her life which Carla couldn't control, and that was her relationship with Samuel Numalo.

  The driver opened the door and kept his gaze politely averted as Carla swung her long, slim legs out and stood. He was a black man with shiny skin and quick brown eyes. He had been with her on that sunny day in Africa when she'd murdered the cows, had supervised the cremation of the president's body, and was like an extension of herself.

  He was a member of the Immortals, the one thousand warriors who made up Numalo's personal bodyguard and stood ready to lay down their lives for him. Like the man himself, they were a relatively young organization, but they had already saved Numalo from seventeen assassination attempts, the most recent of which had been backed by the CIA.

  Like a good many other people, President Hawkins had found Ruler for Life Numalo something less than convenient and had taken steps to remove him from the scene. Thanks to Carla Subido, however, the Immortals had been ready and waiting when the attack came.

  Members of Numalo's bodyguard weren't truly immortal, of course, but were equipped with implants which recorded every moment of their lives for the computerized annals of their elite organization. The fact that this digitized immortality also ensured their complete loyalty to Numalo either escaped them or didn't matter. Every day young men came in untold thousands to apply for every vacancy.

  This one was young and slim, and his tribal name meant "sugar," which was what she called him. People sometimes misunderstood that, and when they did, the two of them would laugh. They could never have a sexual relationship. Like all of his brethren, Sugar was a voluntary eunuch.

  The warehouse was huge, stretching away in every direction to darkened corners, empty of everything but a small structure at its very center. The air was damp, still heavy with the scent of the raw lumber which had once been stored there, and full of dust, which danced in the thin streamers of light which came from up above.

  Carla's heels made a sharp clicking noise as she walked toward the small structure. About the size of a small summer cabin, the cube-shaped structure was covered with shiny metal and sat on skids. Carla knew that underneath the cube's metallic skin there were layers of wire mesh, special foil, and electronic jamming wafers which would block every known type of surveillance device. It wouldn't do to have people listen in as the president's chief of staff received her instructions from the head of a foreign government.

  Sugar took up a position by the door, and Carla knew there were other guards as well, heavily armed and carefully positioned in case of trouble.

  The door slid open at her touch and closed softly behind her. It was nearly dark inside the com cube, with only enough light to make her way to the large, luxurious chair and take a seat.

  The light vanished altogether as she did so and was replaced by a full-dimension holo. Unlike the images carried by commercial television, this one was life-sized, and so life like that it never ceased to amaze her.
She knew that Numalo was actually sitting in his office in Mandela, South Africa, but he looked so real that it was hard to tell. You'd never guess that the encrypted signal had been bounced off a satellite, re-scrambled, and fed into the com cube.

  Samuel Numalo was a strikingly handsome man in his late thirties. He still had the body of the Olympic athlete he'd once been and liked to show it off.

  For that reason, and to keep Carla psychologically off balance, Numalo was completely nude. As the holo locked up, Carla saw that two women, one black and one white, were performing oral sex on him. It was the white woman's turn at that particular moment.

  Numalo smiled. "Hello, Carla. I hope this display doesn't offend you. Like everything else, sex is something I schedule, and today's calendar is somewhat crowded. I find it more efficient to accomplish two things at once."

  Carla knew it wasn't true, knew he was playing with her emotions, and felt the pain. She remembered his arms around her, his strength inside her, and wanted to scream. But that would be a mistake and she didn't make mistakes.

  She looked into his eyes and Numalo smiled. A brown contact lens covered one of his otherwise blue eyes, thereby presenting yet another aspect of his well-known duality. That's the way they described him in Time and Newsweek. Part black, part white. Part east, part west. Part human, part god. The man who had taken a continent, abused, despoiled, fragmented, and in a few short years transformed it into a power to be reckoned with. The man who had forged new alliances between ancient tribal enemies, built new bridges between conflicting cultures, and dreamt new dreams for a tired world. The man all of Africa called Father and Ruler for life. Damn him.

  Carla looked at what the two women were doing and forced a smile. "I'm amazed to see that two people can do so much with so little."