This Alien Shore (62 page)

R
ed sector was far, far away, but they took a flyway across the inside of the ring for much of the trip and had a spectacular view to distract them. Phoenix watched as Jamisia drank in each new sight as though hungry for the sensation of it all. Golden rings swept overhead, lit by docking lights in a variety of surreal patterns, all against a backdrop of stars that was richer here than in most other nodes. She'd never seen anything like it on Earth, of course; the motherworld was much farther out in the galaxy than most of the populated nodes, and its sky was sparse and dreary compared to this display. And of course, the sheer artificiality of it must disturb her. Here there was no planet. There was no sun. There were a lot of artificial things that orbited or swooped or just hung in the darkness, but except for a few fake moons that orbited the tourist ring, none of it looked even remotely like anything from a natural environment. That was the price of the ainniq, which had offered humankind the freedom of the stars at the cost of its native soil.

He wondered if Jamisia would miss the feel of a planet beneath her feet, and the pull of gravity coming from pure mass, instead of a generator. The sensation was said to be quite different, though the degree to which it kept your feet on the ground was pretty much the same. He knew that in the early generations of the second stellar age humans had gotten terribly homesick for the dirtworlds, which seemed to him nothing short of incredible. Even if you figured that 99% of the popular viddies that focused on dirtworld disasters were exaggerated, that still left an awful lot of nasty stuff going on. Floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, droughts, dust storms ... shit, how did humans have any time to get any work done, in the midst of all that? And of course you couldn't adjust the atmosphere at all, or control oxygen content, or do much of anything that civilized life required. It was amazing humankind had developed the technology needed to get to the stars, in such an environment.

Red sector was a posh stretch on the inner tourist ring, and the Waterfall was a state-of-the-art hotel awash in gimmicks. The main entrance was through a vast tube of spinning water, kept aloft by air flow and a grav net and God alone knew what else. It looked rather like pictures he'd seen of the inside of a hurricane's eye, walls of water spinning about him in a frothing cylinder. In another time and place he might have been impressed by it, but here and now he could think of nothing but Masada and the virus. Jamisia seemed taken by it, and he offered to let her stay in the lobby and look around while he had his meeting... but that clearly wasn't going to fly with her. “You're going to be lost in this,” he warned her. “It's all tech stuff.” She insisted she'd be okay. She just wanted to be there with him, she said.

He wished something better than fear was the motivator.

When they got to the room at last, he hesitated. He felt strangely nervous about putting his hand to the door, as though somehow it might decide that his prints were unworthy.
Ah, come on, Phoenix, don't be an ass. He's just a human being, you know that.
He touched the lock plate and a mechanical voice chirped for him to give his name. He hesitated, then said, very quietly, “Phoenix.” And it opened.

Inside was a spacious suite already filled with stacks of paper, racks of chips, and what looked to be the most expensive portable computer setup he'd ever seen. Jealousy nipped at his heart for a moment, then was forgotten as a figure at the back of the room stood up and approached.

He was like and unlike his pictures. Darker skinned than Phoenix had pictured, and not quite as tall. The kaja pattern on his face was fierce, made up mostly of angular lines that gave his visage a markedly threatening quality. He sensed rather than saw Jamisia step back a few inches as he approached; no doubt this was the first time she'd been up close with a Gueran. The faces took some getting used to, that was for sure.

“Dr. Masada?” He hesitated, then offered his hand. The man was close enough to take it but he didn't, which resulted in a remarkably uncomfortable moment. “I, um ... that is, I...”

“I've been expecting you,” the professor said. His eyes alighted on Jamisia then and Phoenix quickly said, “She's with me. It's okay.”

Dark eyes glanced at him, assessed him, and judged. “It's not ‘okay,' given our business, but for the moment I'll accept it. You speak for her security?”

He wasn't quite sure exactly what that meant, but he nodded.

“Very well, then. For now.”

He gestured for them to come over to the conference table that was across the room. Jamisia shot a questioning look at Phoenix which he didn't know how to interpret, but she came up with an answer on her own and went off in another direction, to settle on a small couch by the bedroom door. Still present but discreetly out of immediate sensory range; it was a good move, and for the first time since Nuke had dropped his bombshell, Phoenix found himself relaxing a bit.

He took a seat opposite Masada, studying the man, drinking him in. It was not a move that was reciprocated; the professor's eyes rarely fixed on him, or on Jamisia either. The lack of eye contact was disconcerting.

“I'm glad you could come,” Masada said, without warmth or smile. “I'll make this short and as productive as I can. I'm hunting Lucifer. Those who employ me mean for its creator—”

“Lucifer?”

Masada blinked heavily, as though having trouble processing the interruption. At last he said, “The name of the virus is Lucifer.”

“Ah. I see.” He smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I'm sorry. I didn't know it had a real name. In my crowd it's just
that evil son of a bitch.
Or maybe sometimes
motherfucker,
just for short.”

A flicker of a smile ghosted across Masada's face. It was a reassuringly human expression. “Apt names, I agree. At any rate, let me continue.” He paused for a second, as if consulting some internal log. “I hunt for Lucifer. Those who employ me mean for its creator to be discovered, arrested, and punished on a scale suitable for internodal terrorism.” He looked directly at Phoenix. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Was he asking him as a hacker? Shit, the thing was killing hackers. “Sounds good to me.”
Real good.

“I've had several incidents lately in which I've been tracking one data trail or another, only to discover your signature along the line. Very dangerous, Phoenix. Another man might mistake it for a sign that you were involved with Lucifer yourself.”

He could feel the anger rise up in him like bile, could taste it in his voice. “Look, this thing has killed my friends. If you think I'm involved with it somehow, then you can just—” And then something else hit him, stopping him cold. “You found my signature? Where? I erased every trail except for that one time at Northstar.”

“Yes,” Masada said. “I know you think that.”

That's when it hit him just who he was talking to. That's when he remembered that this man wasn't just some net theorist with a PhD, but a guy whose brain was running on a whole different standard than the rest of the outworlds. A guy most moddies would kill to be sitting across the table from, and never mind that they were discussing the most advanced piece of viral programming ever seen in the outworlds.

Anger gave way to awe, and to speechlessness.

“It is my impression,” Masada said quietly, “or perhaps simply my guess, that you and your people have been tracking this thing as well.”

“Been trying to,” he managed to get out.

“It is my guess that, given the nature of your investigative network, you may well have uncovered information my lone efforts would not.”

A smile spread slowly across his face. “You're saying... you want my data.”

Masada said nothing.

“And for me?”

“Name your price.”

“You know my price.”

Masada stared at him. Just that, for an awfully long time. God alone knew what was going on inside that Variant head of his, but Phoenix could bet it involved issues of confidentiality and trust. Moddies weren't known for keeping secrets from one another. He wanted to start to say something like,
to get back at this bastard I'd hold to any conditions,
but it sounded lame, like something out of a bad spy viddie. And he wasn't all that sure that Masada would believe him.

Masada looked at the girl. She took the hint without a word and moved into the bedroom; the door hissed shut between them. Then the Professor looked at him and said, “The Guild wants this done.”

Phoenix felt his heart skip a beat. Between those five words there was a whole contract assumed, and his name was already on the dotted line. “Why?” he dared.

Masada shook his head. “No. That can't be shared.”

“Ever?”

The dark eyes fixed on him. “No. Not that.”

Bottom line. Take it or leave it.

He offered, “I'm part of this now.”

The dark eyes fixed on him for a moment, then moved quickly away. “As much as any outsider can be.”

From another man he wouldn't have accepted such a condition. But from Kio Masada ... he felt a rush of elation as the full scope of that agreement hit home, the fact that he was going to work with this man, not to mention handle sensitive data—maybe—and get his revenge for the deaths of Chaos and Torch. “Okay, then. All right. What do you want to know?”

“Where you've found this thing. Who else is working with it. I don't need your code analysis—I've done my own—but I want all the rest. The things that come through the moddie network.”

“That's a lot of data.”

Masada said nothing.

“Okay. Okay. I can give that to you.”

“For now the high points will do. Where has it been active the longest?”

“That one's easy. Prosperity Node. Moddies there found something almost four years back, didn't know what it was then, but now they're saying it looks a lot like this—like Lucifer. Just a fragment of replication programming, apparently sent out on a test run. They forgot all about it until I started sending samples around.”

“Does it have the same programming chart?”

Phoenix blinked. “Huh?”

For a moment Masada just stared at him. At last he said, “You've never charted it.”

He felt somehow like he had just been discovered doing something dirty. “Well, I... no.”

Masada reached to the sideboard behind him for the nearest stack of papers. The one he wanted was at the bottom; he withdrew it from the pile and slid it across the table. Phoenix picked it up and looked at it.

“Holy shit. This is its programming chart?”

“That's right.”

“This is... wow.”

A double helix. The symbol of life.

He shook his head. “Man, this guy is crazy.”

A faint smile touched the professor's lips. “Not a word we use often on Guera. But perhaps it would apply here.”

He wanted to ask why the guy had done it, what he'd hoped to accomplish with this virus. He knew it was searching for information, but information on what? But those were all forbidden questions. For now. He had no doubt that he could win Masada over in time and be privy to all his secrets, but it wasn't going to happen fast and it wasn't going to happen easy.

He couldn't brag about it either. That was going to be a
real
bitch.

Masada had questions, many of them. Phoenix did his best to answer them. They weren't programming questions, more like things that the moddies had gossiped about. He couldn't begin to judge what data would be useful to him, so he just told him everything he could. Masada was particularly interested in the moddie deaths; they seemed to really surprise him. “Lucifer wasn't designed to kill outsiders,” he mused aloud.
Outsiders?
Phoenix started to ask what he meant, but Masada's expression warned him that he was once more treading on ground where no one could be trusted, not even him. But what could that mean, other than the Guild? This thing was designed to kill Guild people? He stared at Masada in astonishment, but didn't even attempt to voice the words. There was no way in hell Masada was going to confirm something like that, even if it was utterly true.

“Possibly it could not predict how late-life brainware modifications would affect the basic program,” Masada said. “Maybe something triggered it into thinking...” he subsided into silence then, thoughtful and deep. You could almost hear the data churning in his head. But no more secrets were forthcoming.

“Very well,” he said at last. “You have been most helpful ... as I suspected you would be. I would like to speak to your colleagues in Prosperity. Is that possible?”

He bit his lower lip, considering. “Maybe.”
For you, anything is possible.
“They're pretty paranoid. You'd have to go there.”

“That goes without saying. None of this is ever to be 'netted, by Guild orders.” A faint smile touched the comers of his mouth. “I seem to be traveling a lot recently.”

“I'm surprised you left Guera,” he dared.

“No more than I.” He stood, an official end to their meeting. “I'll be in touch. In the meantime, if you need to reach me again, it will be through Guild headquarters on this station.”

Awkwardly Phoenix rose to his feet. It was hard to know exactly how to say good-bye. It was a good bet Masada still wouldn't shake hands, and the weird way he never quite met your eyes made you feel like some part of him had already left the meeting. “It's been... an honor.” Stilted words, but what did you say to the one man all moddies idolized? “I really mean it.”