Wildcard (12 page)

The Sergeant had given them five meeting
points and made them all memorize them. Meeting point 3 was in
Paris, in the Jardin de Tuilleries, easiest for LuvRay who didn’t
understand the transport system well or the language at all.

The boy Sergeant thought the Mechanic might
lock him out, that it might be a bait and switch. He knew the data
pin was solid, they still needed him to take care of some things
while they raced for the golden ticket. Working together and
battling at the same time. He cut the Mechanic out of the sound
loop, but kept the visuals open.

“Whoa, boss,” Trident said. “You hid
that?

“Yep. Moving fast, no time for
chitchat.”

“Got it.”

“Give me visuals on your position, T.”

Holographic data streams and other movements
of light filled the room, some static, some scrolling, some moving
in irregular patterns. Some were nauseating to look at.

“Where are we, T?”

“We are in Information Space, the zone
around the M-E’s.”

“What is that? The stuff that makes me
nauseous?”

“Active q-code. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you
away from that. Although, when we tube in…”

“Yeah. I know. Is there a human
interpretation for this mess?”

“It’ll cost me heavy processing power to
render it.”

“Do it, anyway. I’ll drive. Give me a
control and transport mechanism.”

A holographic ship without wings appeared
around him, a steer stick in front. A velocity/brake lever appeared
by his left hand.

“Dive: forward, climb: pull back, left,
right as normal,” Trident said. “Rendering is partial. It’s the
best I can do. Visual pattern for the rendering?”

“A gridded cone in front with a red tip at
four thousand meters. Keep a total area scan for our target,
OK?”

“Roger.”

He saw faces and shapes in the data,
horrible, twisted, many-colored, and patchy. Most appeared insane,
talking loudly to themselves and casting spells, marching behind
fortifications, defecating, doing pinwheels and a million other
things. There were hideous looking cages and cells and mazes
everywhere. The light and space twistings went on forever, turning
into flashing and pulsing in the distance.

“What am I seeing?”

“Fractal guardians, data wormholes,
anti-feed tornadoes, mind-blanks; it’s a long list, shall I
continue?”

“No, but is it real?”

“It can kill you.”

“How do I deal?”

“Deal? You mean cope, I believe. Don’t hit
any of it. It is all lethal, especially to me.”

“Why am I driving, T?”

“It was a correct assessment. The guardians
will not perceive you, and I can passively render. There is the
target.”

A three dimensional radar screen popped up
in front of the Sergeant, indicating the target was up 20 degrees
and right 15. He turned, guiding around the impediments, and saw
the Mechanic far ahead. He throttled it fast.

“Boss, you’re exceeding human limits, even
yours.”

The light things were flashing past,
suddenly in his face and he swerved aside. The edge of the cone
touched one and blazed incandescent for an instant. He was blinded
for a few seconds and had to slam the brakes. When he looked again,
he saw the Mechanic had stopped. He moved forward, more slowly.

“Please don’t do that again,” Trident said.
“I was nearly entangled.”

“What would happen?”

“You would be brain dead if your body really
hit one of those things. If you brought the instruments into it, I
would be entangled, and trapped forever. You could get out if it
didn’t touch you, probably, but it would be odd.”

“How?”

“I do not know, but if I am destroyed, stop.
Use your special training and mental focus skills. It is my best
estimate.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. What is
that?!”

“That is the Information Wall, the true
defense.”

“It’s pretty big.”

“You are viewing perhaps one/ten
quadrillionth of it. Probably less.”

“How big is it?”

“It has no size. The question is
meaningless.”

They pulled up by the Mechanic, who hadn’t
bothered to create a ship. He floated in his omni-swivel training
chair with an arrogant grin. In front was a seething white wall,
maddening to be around, nauseating to look at. The Sergeant flipped
the sound on. The wall made a hissing noise like a pit of a million
snakes.

“You ready to rumble?” the Mechanic
said.

“Ready and willing.”

“What did you do to the target?”

“I did it,” Trident said. “I retro-split
Position Seven into Positions Seven and Seven B when I realized you
were ahead.”

“Impressive. But, it could nullify the
entire operation. Let’s go.”

“Commence Position Seven B,” the Sergeant
said.

A depression appeared in the wall in front
of them, wavered in and out, then exploded away into a tunnel
through the wall. It was a second solution to the quantum
encryption problem of Juniper. The Mechanic shot off, the Sergeant
in pursuit.

“Shut off sound to him,” the Sergeant said.
“Cancel human rendering. You drive.”

The tunnel began flying past as streaming
data noise, mostly white light.

“Commence Position Eight,” the Sergeant
said. The MSI. The Binder. He held his Trident arm out, and saw the
Mechanic do something similar ahead, while furiously talking and
working the multi-box with the other hand. He clearly had an MSI
driving.

A crackling beam of blackness shot out of
Trident, psuedo-light speeding down the tunnel ahead. A dual beam
shot away from the Mechanic’s out held device. His beam was bright
red and had an edgeless quality. It didn’t end at any point so much
as fade away. The MSI was not too big, only a few terra-bytes.

A wind and a howling began to kick up,
growing slow and steady in intensity.

“Trident, what is that noise?”

“I don’t know.”

“Open sound to him. Mechanic, what is that
noise?”

“Amateur. It’s called data scream. It’s
going to get worse the further we penetrate.”

“Can you cut it, T?”

“It’s virtually impossible to filter. We
would stop moving if I did so. You could not talk to me, either. It
weaves itself into whatever I feed you. Our velocity enhances the
effect.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” the Mechanic said.
“You can take it.”

“All right,” the Sergeant said. “Forget it.”
It was maddening, like listening to civilization collapse at data
velocity. There was so much and so many different kinds of noise,
pygmy chants, cars honking, bombs screaming in and exploding,
millions of voices and snatches of speech in every language. Most
sounds had no analog in words. Light bursts began attacking them,
Trident weaving sharply to avoid some, driving straight through
others.

“Why are we getting hit, T?”

“They are traps. If you do not go through
the small false attacks, then you hit the true attack, the fractal
guardians. They will pull us out of the tube and into the wall. I
am evading the ones which would destroy me and possibly you.”

“That’s good. Keep it up.” The Sergeant
plugged his fingers into his ears and the sound got louder. It
seemed to be coming through in a different way, he could feel the
data scream in his bones now. He wanted to panic, and beat the
desire down.

His adrenal gland began to
hammer him full of juice, and he lost peripheral vision.
Ride it. Use it if possible.
Fine motor skills decreased and gross motor skills improved.
Too bad there was no heavy lifting to do.

A giant hand chopped down in front of them,
and he had an odd mental sensation of slamming forward without his
body moving.

“Sorry, boss, I had to hit the brakes.” The
hand blocked them.

“What do we do?”

“Say ‘recommence Position Eight.’ It might
clear the block.”

He said it and the hand chopped down and
away. The tube elongated.

“The Mechanic’s MSI is causing it,” Trident
said. “I have a plan.”

The ghost Mechanic turned and looked. He had
a device over one eye, and he looked back intently down the tube at
them. He turned back and worked the multibox madly, speaking at the
same time. Another hand appeared in front of them.

“Hang tight, boss, this will feel very
strange. Lie back.”

The Sergeant snapped the seat adjust and lay
back. He had a sensation of flattening into a piece of paper, the
rocket vehicle squeezing into him as they went two dimensional.
Everything around blurred into a knife line of vision, just a line
of light. He lost the notion of three dimensions. They zipped
between the fingers of the giant hand and it popped back to
normal.

“Nice move,” the Mechanic said. “I wish my
MSI was as smart as yours.”

He slipped his hand around in a circular
motion, then pushed it forward sharply. He shot away, looking like
a deranged magician. The effect was strange, for the Sergeant could
see the details of his actions clearly even though he was quite
distant.

“Dammit. Faster, T. Why can I see him so
clear?”

“I am enhancing. You need the data, I
believe.”

“You bet. Good work.”

“If we go faster, the data scream will
become unbearable.”

“Why can he do it?”

“His psychic-defense is several generations
ahead of ours.”

“Do it anyway.”

They shot ahead, and the screaming began to
bounce like superballs inside the Sergeant’s head. He screamed
back, and watched as the light changed colors.

“Trident, what is the color?”

“It is called blank-shifting, an illusion,
pay no attention to anything. Block everything you can, except the
Mechanic.”

He sat up, and heaved, then cried. Things
were invading his mind, ripping data streams with no purpose,
booming and shouting voices, talking backward. All the noises
seemed to reverse and he heard cars unstarting, trains unwhistling,
and bombs unexploding and unflying back to the launch point. He
gave in, became the thundering light and sound and feeling,
teetering on the brink of consciousness.

“Keep going, T,” he mumbled. He went clear
for an instant. “I need to touch him. Make it me so touch can him.
Understand you did that, Trido?”

“Roger, boss. You need a way to touch
him.”

They slowed finally. Sanity rolled around
and he saw the Mechanic ahead of him, working furiously in his
multi-box and talking at light speed to his MSI. Rods of flashing
electric power slammed around and in front of them, Trident weaving
around them. He looked back at a wall of white, zooming toward
them.

“What’s behind us?” A face appeared, eyes
flashing red, teeth bared, with fangs dripping blood, filling the
tube.

“That is a human rendering of the fractal
guardian now in pursuit of us.”

In front of the Mechanic was a billion white
worms of q-code. Whatever was in front hadn’t noticed them yet. But
it didn’t matter with the chaser squeezing them down.

“I can get you out of here, Chief. It’s a
hard cut, but you should be fine.”

“And you?”

“I would be destroyed, no question.”

“I don’t like that option. Can I touch him,
yet?”

“Yes, give me a warning word and it will
happen.”

“Fuck it. Just hit him from behind. Slam him
into the white ahead and keep going. Can we go one
dimensional?”

“Maybe. Excellent idea, even if I can’t. I
doubt that your mind can take it, though.”

“Turn on the sound, T.”

An instant before they struck, the Mechanic
turned and the Sergeant shouted “SOUTHPAW!” The Mechanic’s left
hand spasmed, trying to operate the multi-box for a brief instant.
He brought control back to the right hand, too late, and they hit
him, driving him forward into the Information Wall. Trident angled
into him, so that he flew forward in a spin, nullifying his motive
power. His hand worked furiously as he spun, then he disappeared in
a flash-out. The hole irised open like the eye of a hurricane and
they slipped through.

“Is he gone?”

“Yes,” Trident said. “But he opened the
final barrier.”

“Parting gift. Nice guy. I guess they wanted
the mission to succeed even if they didn’t get the cookie.”

“Welcome to Juniperspace,” Trident said.
“Why did you call it a cookie?”

It was similar to the Information Wall in
terms of the raw coloration of the data, but it was arranged
different. And it felt very different. White threads of light
poured cleanly around, almost teflon in their slickness, blocks and
ovals of colored data and q-code hovered here and there, and space
was everywhere. The q-code was easy to look away from and not too
bothersome to glance at. The data and the space felt neutral,
almost calming. In the Information Wall it had been all threat and
madness.

“How does it look to you, T?”

“Beautiful, as if looking at the face of
God.”

“God?”

“To say that I believe is-”

“No, T, it was rhetorical. Now, if memory
serves me, we need to find the core. Can we reestablish team coms,
first?”

“It will require a detour and some time, but
we seem to have plenty of that substance.”

An hour and fifteen minutes after Juniper
went silent, the Sergeant came on Karl’s Trident.

“Team, report.”

“What happened? Where did Juniper go?”
Sublime said.

Trident spoke. “Juniper is gone.” He sounded
odd.

“Are you afraid?” asked Karl.

“Not exactly afraid. I cannot feel
fear.”

“I hear you strange, also, servant machine,”
LuvRay said. “Why?”

“Juniper is no more. Juniper was my …
reference as an electronic being. I now must find my way and the
task is disorienting. All I was pointed towards Juniper, since his
creation. I am alone now, as I was before his birth. It is unusual,
that is all.”