Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  "I . . . I don't know. We'll see."

  "Chizz. I'll call you back when I get it. Flyin'." The picture vanished, leaving Calliope with the feeling she had been processed through some kind of machine expressly designed to make her feel old and slow.

  Even the service elevators didn't go above the forty-fifth floor.

  You can't get there from here, Olga thought. Who said that, anyway? It was a joke, the name of an old show, something. Yes, a joke. From a time when things were funny. She took a deep breath to slow her speeding heart, then keyed the floor number.

  When the elevator stopped and swooshed open on what the elevator readout called "45-building security," Olga Pirofsky half-expected to find herself dumped into some kind of airlock, stabbed by bright white beams like a police interrogation from an old netflick. She was not prepared for the small grotto outside the elevator door, the soft splashes of light on the dark walls, the quiet fountain and empty desk with its vase of drooping gardenias.

  Olga stopped briefly to examine the desk, its glossy black top currently screening random scenes of nature. Was this the kind of thing Sellars would have wanted her to find for him, a screen terminal on the security level? Not that it mattered anymore—Sellars wasn't talking to her, and even if the desk were the portal to all J Corporation's secrets, she didn't have the first idea of how to go about discovering them.

  Suddenly mindful that there must be cameras all around her and that she no longer had a secret ally hiding her from surveillance, she took a rag from her coveralls and gave the desk a quick dusting, then continued on to the door set in the wall to one side of the work area. She felt sure there must be an elevator somewhere on this level that would take her up to Jongleur's private penthouse—the information she had seen suggested there was room for at least half a dozen more floors above this security level. She held her breath as she lifted her badge to the reader, half-expecting to be blasted off her feet by some kind of alarm. Instead, the door slid open, revealing the room beyond. When she saw what was there she felt sick.

  The room was large, perhaps fifty meters on each side. The entire perimeter was empty—nothing but carpet. In the middle, taking up almost three quarters of the space, stood a huge cube made of floor-to-ceiling plexiglass so thick that she had no doubt it was bombproof and bulletproof. Inside the plastic cage was an entire office—not a showy garden spot like the reception area, but a working office with desks and machinery and a long bank of wall-screen monitors. The lights were low and streams of data played right on the plexiglass walls, further obscuring her view of the interior. Hologram structural models of the building rotated above two of the desks; at the moment, nothing else seemed to be moving except the neon reflections flicking along the transparent walls. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw that half-a-dozen muscular men in shirtsleeves were scattered around the security office like exhibits in a zoo, all staring at her.

  I can't breathe, Olga realized. She wanted only to run back through the reception area and throw herself into the elevator. I'm caught!

  One of the men stood up and beckoned to her. She could not make her legs move. He frowned in irritation and his amplified voice boomed all around her. "Step forward."

  She forced herself to shuffle toward a heavy plexiglass door built into the transparent wall. Beyond the security men, near the back of the plastic tank, a single wide rectangular shaft of polished black fibramic stretched up to the ceiling. A featureless door was set in the nearest side. The elevator to the top floors, she realized, but without pleasure or even much interest. It might as well have been in another country.

  "Give me your badge," the man said. He was probably half Olga's age, head shaved everywhere except in two stripes above his ears. He spoke mildly, but there was something frighteningly cold in his eyes, and she could not help staring at the large gun he wore in a holster tucked under his arm. "Your badge," he repeated, his voice harsher.

  "Sorry, sorry." She fumbled it off her coveralls and dropped it into a trough that opened up in the door. Her hands were shaking so badly she felt sure they would execute her on that basis alone.

  "What are you doing here?" The man held her badge next to a small box. "You're not cleared for this floor."

  Olga could feel the man's suspicion deepening with every second that passed. His companions were talking among themselves—one was even laughing and gesturing, perhaps telling a funny story—but there was a watchfulness even to their inattention. "I look for . . . for. . . ." She exaggerated her accent, hoping to seem less of a threat, but it didn't really matter. Her brain had frozen up. She couldn't remember the name. She had been off Sellars' leash less than an hour and already she had spoiled everything.

  I don't want to die—not like this, not for such a stupid mistake. I don't want these men to kill me and dump me m the wildlife preserve somewhere, those water flowers growing all over me like on one of those abandoned boats. . . .

  "Jerome!" she said, and wondered if it would do any good. "I look for Jerome."

  "Jerome? Who the hell is Jerome?"

  "He is custodian." She did her best to sound like a hopelessly stupid peasant, one who would be of no interest whatsoever to any self-respecting Cossack. "He is . . . friend of me?"

  The security man looked back to one of his companions, who was telling him something she could not make out.

  "Oh, that's Jerome?" said the man who had been talking to her, and laughed. "That guy, huh?" He turned back to Olga. "And why would you think he would be up here, Ms. Cho. . . ." He squinted at the monitor. "Ms. Chotilo. Why are you looking for him here? He works on the lower floors."

  "Oh, I don't find him there," she said, hoping her fear seemed a reasonable part of her character and situation. "I think, maybe you see him on your cameras, you tell me."

  The young security officer looked at her for a long, hard second, then his face grew a bit milder. "You thought that, did you?" He said something too fast to register over his shoulder to his coworkers, who laughed. "Well, I'll just go see. Is Jerome your boyfriend?"

  Olga tried to look embarrassed. "He is . . . he is a friend, only. We eat lunch together, yes? Sometimes?"

  The man wandered over to one of the monitors, then ambled back. "I just saw him coming out of one of the restrooms on Level A. If you take the elevator back down right now, you should catch up with him." His smile turned cool. "One more thing. You should be pretty careful about wandering around this building. The bosses get real nervous when people aren't where they're supposed to be. Understand?"

  She nodded, backing toward the outer office. "Thank you!" Her gratitude was not feigned.

  In the elevator, Olga squeezed her hands under her arms to stop the trembling. She was angry at herself. What had she thought—that it would be easy? She was very, very lucky she was not in a cell right now.

  But what does it matter? There is no way at all to get past those people. I have failed. I've lost the children forever.

  She wished the elevator would just continue down through the bottom of the building and into the muddy delta earth, burying her in the dark quiet.

  Time, Ramsey thought. We're running out of time here. What have we got left? Less than forty-eight hours until the weekend is over and someone notices Olga isn't with her shift when they come back on—not to mention the fact that the building will be swarming with employees again. . . .

  "Damn!" He sat and stared at his pad, feeling hopeless. Sellars and the boy Cho-Cho were unconscious, maybe dying in the next room, and Catur Ramsey had inherited sole responsibility for the safety of Olga Pirofsky . . . but he couldn't find her telephone number.

  "We can't just be . . . cut off!" He turned imploringly to Sorensen. "We must still be connected to her."

  "Didn't Sellars tell you what to do?" Major Sorensen peered at the readout on Ramsey's pad with the expression of a shade-tree mechanic about to admit he never did know what a ring valve was in the first place.

  "He barely told me anything. He said, I
don't know, that the system was collapsing or something. That he'd call me right back. But he never did." Ramsey put his head in his hands. He hadn't done anything more strenuous in the last four hours than help carry the birdlike, comatose form of Sellars, but he had never felt more exhausted in his life. "He's got the connection to Olga channeled through some weird merry-go-round of repeaters—he told me he did it for security. But I can't find it! I just don't know anything about this stuff. You must have someone back at your military base who can fix this for you, Sorensen."

  From the expression on his face, Michael Sorensen was not having any better a day than Ramsey was. "Haven't you been paying attention? We're goddamn fugitives right now, or might as well be—we can't risk acting any other way. And we don't know how widespread Yacoubian's little private network is inside the base. I know one old boy in my own office I don't trust at all, just for starters. So I'm supposed to call them and ask someone to help me figure out how to restore communications to our spy in the J Corporation tower?"

  "Well, how about the guy who helped us already. Your friend, Parkins?"

  Sorensen laughed sourly. "Ron knows about as much about this kind of information gear as I know about ballet dancing. Not to mention the fact that he already said he doesn't want to be involved."

  "Jesus, we're all involved!" Ramsey put the pad down and went to wash his face in the sink, trying not to look at Sellars and the boy lying side by side on the bed, disaster victims waiting to be identified. He could feel the slipping of time as a physical thing; it made his fingers twitch. Sellers' voice on the wire, the apocalyptic warning about the death of the network, had gotten into Ramsey like a virus.

  "Look, we're not either of us doing any good right now," Sorensen said when Ramsey came back into the main room, face dripping. "I've got one seriously upset wife right now and my little girl is barely holding it together. I'm worried that any minute Kaylene is going to march out of here and head for the nearest police station. I'm going back next door and spend some time with them. If you think of anything, call me."

  Ramsey waved his hand. "Go on, yeah. Tell them . . . tell them I'm sorry."

  "Isn't your fault." Fatigue showed in his failed smile. "Isn't really mine either, but I don't think I could convince Kay of that just now."

  When the major had shut the connecting door, Catur Ramsey went to the minibar and found himself a tiny whiskey in a tiny bottle. He took it into the bathroom, this time shutting his eyes as he passed the bedroom door, emptied the bottle into a drinking glass and filled the glass halfway with water. Back in the main room, he lowered himself into the chair. He was so tired he felt he might fall asleep sitting up, and he knew the alcohol was a bad idea, but sometimes bad ideas were the only ones you had left.

  We helped that poor woman get into that building when she'd probably never have made it on her own, then, just for added value, put a ring on her finger that will make a fine piece of incriminating evidence. Now we've abandoned her. That was what the whiskey was for—to dull the pain of betrayal, of failure. It's like defending someone for jaywalking and they wind up getting a lethal injection. My best legal advice, Olga? Get a different attorney.

  It was a ridiculous thing to get stuck on—a mere problem of sorting through some telecom mumbo-jumbo and reestablishing the connection. There were probably a hundred bright high-school kids living within fifty miles who could do it. The boy Orlando Gardiner could probably have managed it in a matter of minutes. But it was not Catur Ramsey's world, and the need for secrecy was going to make it very difficult to find anyone who could help him, especially in the short time before things got very, very bad.

  So that's your alternative, he asked himself, staring at this still-untasted drink. That's your big solution? Just bring Orlando Gardiner back from the dead?

  Ramsey upended the glass and took a measured swallow, thinking of darkness and death, thinking of empty wires.

  Before the whiskey had finished burning in his stomach, Ramsey remembered someone he could call.

  He had not used the number in what seemed a very long time. When the tone sounded twelve times without an answer, his worst suspicions were confirmed. Then, just as he was about to give up, someone answered.

  "Hello? Who's this?" The screen stayed dark, but the intonation was unforgettable.

  "Catur Ramsey. You remember me, don't you?"

  "I don't recognize the line you're calling on." There was a pause. "In fact, it's a pretty weird connection."

  Sellars' defenses, Ramsey realized. Their outgoing calls from the hotel must be routed all over hell and Kansas, as his dad had been fond of saying. "It's me, I swear. Can't you . . . can't you do voice recognition or something?"

  "Yeah." The speech seemed a little slower than Ramsey remembered. "But I'd have to run it through this police department system that . . . that a friend of mine arranged. It would take a while."

  "I don't have a while. Look, do you still have my old number? Call me on that. But all I'm going to do is say, 'It's me,' then hang up and call you back. Got it?" Surely even if his regular line was tapped, that wouldn't give anyone a chance to do more than notice a strange little exchange, would it?

  Two minutes later, the electronic pas-de-deux successfully completed, Ramsey called back on the shielded line.

  "Satisfied?"

  "I guess," the other growled. "But I may still run you through that recognition gear anyway."

  Ramsey couldn't help a weary smile. So it had come to this, had it? Having to prove your identity to untrusting machines. "How are you, Beezle?"

  "Okay, I guess. No word from Orlando in a long time."

  Even alone in a room, talking to a jumped-up kid's toy, it was impossible to repress a flinch of guilt and sorrow. Beezle didn't know?

  But how would he? It's not like anyone would have remembered to contact Orlando's gear and let it know that its master was dead, now would they? In fact, his parents were trying to find Beetle and shut him down. No wonder he's out of the loop.

  "I need you," he said, sidestepping the issue entirely, but he couldn't help wondering if it was immoral to lie to a machine, more forgivable if it was only by omission. "I'm still trying to get the answers—the things you and I were working on together—but I'm in trouble."

  "I don't know." The cab-driver voice still seemed to lag a bit, as if Beezle had taken the electronic equivalent of a few Saturday afternoon beers and was finding it hard to get started on short notice. "I need to keep my lines clear in case Orlando tries to reach me."

  Ramsey closed his eyes. He was so tired he could barely talk, so worried about Olga Pirofsky he felt sick to his stomach. Only a decade's worth of courtroom training helped him keep his temper and not say anything stupid or irretrievable, but just barely. "I'm sure if he tries to get in touch with you, there's some way for you to know about it. Please, Beezle. This is important. If . . . if what Orlando's gone through means anything, then this is what it's about."

  There was another pause, in all probability while Beezle parsed Ramsey's tortured syntax, but it seemed as if he were considering the pain in Ramsey's voice. "Tell me what you need, boss," the agent said at last. "I'll see if I can help."

  "Thank God," Ramsey breathed. "And thank you, Beezle." He got ready to send everything of Sellars' that he had on his pad, including the records of the last call. He could not help wondering what Beezle had been doing in the dead days since the last time they had spoken. "Where are you, anyway?"

  "Not really anywhere," the raspy voice said. "Just. . . ." It trailed off. Ramsey cursed himself for a clumsy question—after all, what did physical location mean to electronic circuitry? In fact, Ramsey decided, bemused again by the topsy-turvy universe he was currently inhabiting, it wasn't just a clumsy question, it was almost cruel. Like asking an orphan, "Where are your parents?"

  Indeed, when Beezle spoke again, there was a tone of confusion that Ramsey had not heard before. "Where am I? Just . . . waiting. You know. Waiting."

&nbs
p; Saturday afternoon had inched along like a dying animal. It was all Calliope could do not to ring up Kendrick's friend and demand a progress report.

  He's just a kid, Skouros. And he's working for free. Besides, what's your hurry, anyway?

  Elisabetta had not returned her call. In fact, the girl's roommate had been so vague and scatty Calliope had very little faith the message had even been delivered. Bored and unaccountably anxious, she had been thrown back on household chores.

  Mixed results, she could see herself reporting to an imaginary commander. We didn't catch the Merapanui girl's murderer, but I finally scoured my sink and threw away some old clothes in my closet.

  Afternoon crept toward evening. The apartment finally clean, or at least cleaner than it had been in some weeks, she settled down with a flick she had been wanting to watch, some figurativist thing from Belgium that Fenella had been talking about the last time Calliope had seen her. It would be fun just this once, she decided, to know what someone was talking about—even though by the time she saw her again, Fenella would undoubtedly be raving about something new, a museum retrospective or some ballet about the genocide against the Tasmanian Aboriginals.

  Half an hour in and Calliope had completely lost track of the story, or what passed for the story. Instead of sitting wishing she knew an actual Belgian figurativist so she could strangle him, she turned it off and brought up her copy of the Merapanui file. The ghostly images of John Dread mocked her. You think you can find me? they seemed to say. I'm dust, I'm the wind. I'm the darkness in your own shadow.

  She went back over her notes, looking for something she'd missed, anything, as the sun slid down behind the harbor. If John Dread was alive, as she felt so certain he was, why didn't anyone know it? Or did people know, and, they were just too frightened to say? She couldn't help remembering the odd look that had flickered across the face of 3Big Pike. "You cross him, he come back out of the ground and kill you three ways."