Matrix Man

by William C. Dietz

  The mechanic straightened up so fast he hit his head on the hood. "Ow! What the hell . . . ?" His words froze in his mouth when he saw Corvan and the lethal-looking automatic weapon. He had a meaty face with a big smear of grease on his left cheek.

  "Will it run?" Corvan asked the question in a conversational tone of voice, much like a prospective buyer sizing up a used electro car.

  The mechanic stuttered, unable to take his eyes off the large black hole from which bullets could emerge with unbelievable speed. "Y-y-yes-s, but I'm—"

  "Shut up. What's the ignition code?"

  "Th-th-the driver's name. S-s-samantha."

  "Good. Close the hood and get off the stepladder."

  The mechanic did as he was told and came down the stepladder with his hands on top of his head.

  "Sit down over there," Corvan instructed, using the machine gun to gesture toward the wall. "Sit on your hands. Stay there and you won't get hurt."

  "Y-y-yes-s, sir." Once again the driver did as he was told. He watched in wide-eyed fascination as Corvan hoisted Kim onto his shoulder, laid her on the bench seat, and went around to the other side. Climbing behind the wheel, he punched the name "Samantha" into the keypad, and smiled when the engine fired up. Good. Something was going right for once. Or so he thought.

  Corvan unplugged the submachine gun and placed it on the seat beside him. Putting the truck into reverse, he backed away from the frightened mechanic and swore when he saw the floor drain and the trail of green coolant he'd left behind. Well, it couldn't be helped. He'd have to keep going.

  As if to emphasize that thought, a bullet hit the side of the van and, unable to punch its way through, flattened itself out into a smear of lead. Damn. He'd hoped to clear the building before they discovered he was gone. Gritting his teeth, Corvan swung the wheel right. As the truck turned, he tapped the brakes, put the transmission in drive, and stomped on the accelerator. The big engine gulped gasohol and roared forward.

  In the distance Corvan saw a ramp marked "EXIT" and headed that way. Lead hammered across the side of the van, but the rig was built like an armored car and it kept on going. Two men and a woman jumped out in front of him and opened up with machine pistols. Corvan ducked as the windshield shattered and safety glass flew in every direction. He felt a soft thump and heard a scream as one of them was sucked underneath the truck.

  Corvan stuck his head back up in time to see the ramp, correct his steering, and brace himself for a collision. Some asshole had lowered a corrugated metal door. Just as the truck hit, Corvan managed to grab Kim's belt and keep her from flying forward. Metal screeched, ripped, and tore. The truck bounced, stalled for a second, and lunged forward.

  Suddenly they were outside on a crowded city street. It was night and a huge government-owned billboard proclaimed that "THIN IS IN."

  People screamed and ran in every direction as the huge truck roared out onto the pavement. Corvan fought the wheel and managed to bring the truck under control. He didn't know where he was and didn't care. He just wanted out. Out from under the government, out from under the Exodus Society, just plain out. And Kim. He wanted Kim. But first he had to find her a doctor. But how?

  A hail of lead hit the rear end of the truck. Corvan glanced outside at the big rearview mirror just before it shattered into a thousand pieces. Damn them! Another delivery truck was right behind him, this one festooned with gun-toting guards, and they were shooting at him.

  Swearing steadily, he took a corner on screeching tires, stood on the gas, and hoped for the best. A street vendor dived out of the way as the right front fender hit his cart and sent it cartwheeling into a crowd. People screamed and scattered every which way. A mother and her two children ran out into the street. The van jumped and bucked as Corvan forced it up and over a curb.

  Spotting a cluster of people up ahead, Corvan swerved back onto the street just as the beeping noise began. Glancing down at the control panel, he saw the word "Coolant" spelled out in large red letters. Just in case he was a complete moron, it flashed on and off with each beep. On top of that the temperature graphic had turned bright red and pegged itself on H. No doubt about it, the engine wasn't going to last much longer, and when it died, so would he.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Corvan saw that the other van was still on his tail. Turning back, he swerved to avoid an oncoming taxi and tried to consider his options. The only problem was that he didn't have any. His transportation was falling apart, there was a truck full of killers on his tail, Kim was wounded, and the police wanted him in the worst possible way.

  Up ahead Corvan saw a high-rise tower with the word "Police" circling endlessly around the third floor. Another hail of bullets hit the rear end of the truck. Corvan shrugged and aimed for the bottom of the tower. If you can't beat them, join 'em.

  Corvan wasn't sure, but it looked as if the truck might just barely fit through the huge double doors, especially if he hit them real hard. Leaning on the horn to scatter the intervening pedestrians, Corvan grabbed Kim's belt, stepped on the gas, and closed his eyes.

  The truck went through the glass and light metal framing with amazing ease but a tremendous amount of noise. Corvan opened his eyes as it skidded to a stop and found himself the center of a frozen tableau. The front end of the truck was taking up most of the cop shop's reception area. All around him cops stood in positions of stupified amazement, struggling to assimilate what had just taken place and finding it hard to do.

  Corvan opened the door, dragged Kim outside, and looked around. He did his best to summon up a grin. "Hi, guys. It looks like you caught us fair and square. Where's your doctor?"

  19

  Numalo cut off the com call with a snap of his fingers and stepped out onto his veranda. He wore a long white robe and simple leather sandals. They made a slapping sound with each step that he took.

  It was nearly one-thirty and the afternoon rain had just begun. An hour, two at the most, and it would stop. As the rain drops hit, they sent up little puffs of dust and quickly vanished into the warm African soil.

  Out beyond the edge of Numalo's veranda some carefully tended veldt stretched off toward a smudge of high-rise buildings. They had once been bastions of white South African rule, unassailable fortresses from which the minority told the majority what to do and grew rich in the process.

  Numalo's grandfather had worked in one of those buildings, back when the city was known as Johannesburg, and black men did as they were told. The city was called Mandela now, and black men did what they wanted to do. Before long it would become the capitol of Unified Africa. Numalo's Africa.

  Numalo allowed his eyes to wander over the land. If you knew what to look for, you could see places where a thin layer of soil clothed old foundations, where a thorn bush grew out of a barely concealed tire, where a tree struggled upward through grass-covered concrete.

  The continent was a far cry from what it had been: a vast wilderness teeming with life, a slate upon which nothing had been written. If Numalo could return Africa to one one-thousandth of its former glory he would be pleased. That, plus the desire to provide himself with an appropriate setting, accounted for Numalo's private veldt.

  A variety of imported animals grazed there, including zebra, antelope, wildebeest, and a giraffe or two. Because of the ongoing food shortages, all of Africa's animals had been hunted to the verge of extinction, and if it weren't for his electrified fences and armed guards, these too would quickly disappear.

  These at least would grow fat on Numalo's artificial plain. A plain which had been fertilized with more than a hundred thousand human bodies and watered with a river of blood. For where the animals now grazed, the shacks of Soweto had once stood, the very heart of the black revolution and the first target of the white men's guns.

  Rejected by the community of nations and teetering on the edge of extinction, the white government had used draconian measures against the rebels, and then plowed the evidence under in hopes that the world would never see what
they had done.

  But tired of living like slaves, the oppressed majority had risen up and rolled over the whites like a tidal wave of black flesh. It had been costly, but for every bullet the white men had, there were three black bodies willing to die.

  Much had followed and not all of it good. The majority was not a majority at all, but a banding together of many tribes with black skin, and it wasn't long before ancient hatreds split the people into warring factions.

  Zulu fought Xhosa, Xhosa fought Sotho, and Sotho fought Tswana and so forth, until hundreds of thousands had died. Eventually the Zulus had won, their superior numbers overwhelming the rest of the tribes, and an uneasy peace had come upon the land. A peace often disturbed by Xhosa separatists and Sotho radicals.

  "And then," Numalo thought to himself with no small amount of satisfaction, "and then I came along."

  And it was true. Numalo had involved himself with the Party for African Unity at just the right moment, and, with help from the WPO, had engineered alliances between fifty-one disparate and often hostile countries. That, plus his mixed blood, his undeniable charisma, and his relentless determination, had placed Numalo in a powerful position.

  Now time had passed, and thanks to the economic interdependence encouraged by the WPO, those alliances were stronger than ever. So strong, in fact, that member nations had very little latitude to act on their own and, taken together, were commonly referred to as Unified Africa. And eventually the day would come when names like Kenya, Chad, and Libya were no longer meaningful, when Africans saw themselves as members of a single nation, a nation headed by Leader for Life Numalo.

  And if Africa, why not Asia too, and the rest of the world? Until the last twenty-four hours or so it had seemed possible—more than that, damn near inevitable.

  It wasn't clear whether Carla had made the treacherous broadcast herself or been misrepresented by unauthorized use of the video matrix generator, but it didn't matter. Traitors and fools deserve the same death. Except Carla had escaped. A fact which caused Numalo to remove Sugar's name and life experiences from the digitized roll of the Immortals, making him twice dead and a source of shame for his family.

  Although the punishment made Numalo feel better, it did nothing to counter the negative impact of Carla's broadcast. By suggesting that he'd "used blackmail, bribery, and murder to position himself for global leadership," Carla—or the people manipulating her electronic image—had placed Numalo on the defensive. Not only that, they'd sent shock waves through out his vast network of interlocking agreements, scaring the weak and tempting the strong.

  And worst of all, the broadcast had brought his activities to the attention of the WPO leadership, something he'd worked hard to avoid. Numalo had used their power to engineer his rapid rise to prominence, their money to buy what he couldn't steal, and their organization to lay the groundwork for world conquest. With infinite skill he'd allowed himself to be used, but always to his ends and always toward his goals. And so careful were his moves, and so subtle his actions, that many of his activities had gone unquestioned. Until the broadcast. That, plus the publicity which went with it, had stimulated a com call.

  The call came from Pierre LaSalle, a member of the WPO's executive board and widely known as their enforcer. Because the Frenchman chose to stay out of the public eye, Numalo had never seen his face, but over the years had learned to respect LaSalle's soft, sibilant voice. During quarterly reviews it was the Frenchman who asked the hardest questions, who turned rocks over to see what clung to the other side, who insisted on good answers.

  The conversation had been short and to the point: "What's this crap about Hawkins nominating you to run the world?" LaSalle demanded. And then, before Numalo could reply, the other man said, "No, don't tell me, I don't want to hear it. What I do want is a nice, clear understanding. We made you and we can destroy you. We are quite happy with the way things are organized. Economic interdependence is good, but political centralization is bad, it hurts the bottom line. Yes, we understand that you'd like to play an even larger role, but be patient. Good things come to those who wait."

  And by implication Numalo knew the reverse was true as well: "Bad things come to those who don't."

  Still, Numalo had no intention of giving up, so the question was simple: Should he back off and try again later? Or throw all caution to the winds and go for it now?

  Without warning the rain stopped and the sun broke out from behind a cloud. It was early. An omen? Numalo decided it was and smiled. He had one card left to play, the same card he'd been dealt, and it was the key to a winning hand.

  20

  Barge Farm 648 was a nursery school compared to life in the Tank. Official documents listed the complex as Short-Term Correctional Facility Number 3. But the D.C. cops called it the Holding Tank, because that's where prisoners were held while awaiting trial. And the guards who worked there called it the Tank, as in "septic tank," and the analogy fit pretty well. If the inmates weren't sewage, they came pretty damn close.

  The Tank had been a factory during a previous incarnation and still felt like one. From the outside it looked like a black brick, a long, low structure, all strength and no beauty.

  Inside, it consisted of a huge open space about three city blocks in length and three hundred feet wide. Wherever Corvan looked, he saw steel girders, concrete walls, metal catwalks, and chunky platforms.

  Outside of two huge video screens, one at each end of the building, there were no recreational facilities. As a matter of fact, there were no cells, no medical facilities, and no mess hall. That's because the Tank had never been intended as anything more than a temporary solution to the capitol's exploding prison population. Unfortunately, a new facility would cost a lot of money, and given the demands on the budget, it was a long ways off.

  So prisoners slept wherever they found space, generally went without medical care, and ate whatever they were given.

  Meals came twice a day and were packaged in bio-degradable white cartons. The prisoners referred to them as "barf in a box." Each one bore red lettering which read, "This meal comes to you with the compliments of the District of Columbia. Have a good day, and remember, be nice to your planet and it will be nice to you."

  The same thing was printed on the other side of the carton in Spanish. The meal paks contained protein paste, some oatmeal, and just enough fruit to prevent scurvy.

  In spite of their somewhat unappetizing contents, meal paks served as the Tank's primary medium of exchange. And even though there didn't seem to be much to buy, the Tank was packed to overflowing with every kind of criminal, deviant, psychopath, and wierdo the human race could produce, and many were quite inventive. As a result there were all sorts of prisoner-invented diversions, games, and activities. Quite a few of them turned Corvan's stomach.

  But the Tank had some good points as well. The unofficial inmate government was a good example. Due to the transient nature of the population the power structure was kept in a constant state of flux. Men like Davy Jones weren't around long enough to create private empires. That had a flip side as well, of course. The lack of leadership led to eternal chaos, but what the hell, you can't have everything.

  Still, there was a pecking order, and Corvan's status as an ex-reop turned merciless killer stood him in good stead. Thanks to television, most of the prisoners had seen Corvan kill Bethany Bryn hundreds of times and they were quite impressed. So much so that they gave him a standing ovation each time it came on. Corvan didn't like the attention, but found it useful. After all, once you've seen someone murder a woman in cold blood, you think twice before stealing his meal pak.

  There were other advantages as well, including the roughly six square feet of personal space the other prisoners granted him, a sizable kingdom by their standards. It was located at the end of the highest catwalk. A position which left him without an emergency exit, but with a corner to put his back into and an unrestricted view of the main floor.

  As always it was a swirling m
ass of walking, talking, sweating men. At the far end of the hall the video screen swirled and a public service announcement came on it. "Do you want air to breathe?" a stern-looking woman asked. "Then grow it!"

  The woman pointed off-camera, and the shot dissolved to a tidy-looking single-family dwelling. The kind which had once been very common but were now increasingly rare. What made this house even more unusual was the carpet of lush green grass which covered the roof. A nice-looking man stood at the very top, watering the grass with a garden hose and admiring the view. The camera zoomed in and the man smiled.

  "Looks nice, doesn't it? Cuts our power bill too, but what's more important is the feeling that we can make a difference. Why don't you make a difference too?"

  Corvan settled in to wait for the next newscast. Maybe it would say something of interest. The railing was hard and cold behind his back, his stomach growled at the short rations, and his skin itched.

  He'd been in the Tank for two days now, two days without any word of Kim, two days without information other man the nearly worthless newscasts.

  The most frustrating moment had come around mid-afternoon the day before. The video screens had one channel, whichever one the guards choose to play, and it subscribed to World Net. The newscast had just begun, and the anchor was just leading into a statement by President Hawkins when the screen went blank. And it had stayed blank for a full five minutes, something which was almost unheard of, and when it finally came back on, there was no explanation, no rerun of me president's comments, in fact, no comment whatsoever. What the hell was going on? There was no way to know.

  Whatever it was, Corvan hoped the police were treating Kim well, giving her the medical treatment they'd promised, and housing her somewhere better than the Tank.

  True to form, the police had shoved him around, called him a lot of names, and encouraged him to confess his many crimes. It was kid's stuff compared to the mock prisoner-of-war camp he'd been through in the army. So Corvan ignored their questions, rolled with the punches, and demanded to see his lawyer.