Chapter 7
The thrumming background noises in Rodney Quick’s apartment barely penetrated his concentration. He didn’t hear the heat exchanger working against the damp night air, or the tickings from the pipes, the clock, the appliances. The soundproof walls kept the city noises out and trapped the silence in.
Rodney stared at the dead surface of his Net terminal. Behind the thin glass, behind the phosphors ready to merge and regroup to spell out messages from the terminal, lay the maw—the gateway to the Net.
Everything was on the Net—if you knew where to look.
Rodney cracked his knuckles and tentatively reached toward the terminal keyboard, but he abruptly got up instead and went about the apartment, switching off the lights one by one until he had blanketed the entire living area in protective, comforting shadow. In the dimness he made his way back to the terminal, moving carefully around the sometimes cushioned, sometimes hard corners of furniture. It was his own apartment, but he often felt like it turned into a stranger on him when all the lights were out.
It was irrational to think that anyone would see him now. But what he was about to do seemed better done in secret, in the darkness.
The terminal always remained powered on, and now the faint glow of backlit phosphors seeped through the murky black background, waiting for the touch of the cathode rays. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen the cursor throbbed slowly, hypnotically. Rodney reached forward again and found the keypad. His fingertips instinctively went to their familiar positions.
Upon returning home, he had procrastinated for a long time. He had flicked glances over his shoulder at the terminal, wanting to log on, to begin the search, to get it over with.
But first Rodney moved toward the shower chamber, pulling off his clothes and dropping them on the floor wherever they fell. He wanted to stand under the hot needles of water to blast away the cold sweat and the musty stink of fear to purge the day from his system.
After the shower Rodney walked back into the main living area, naked. He looked at the terminal again and impulsively decided to wear one of his old robes made from Sri Lankan vat-grown silk fibers. He had not worn the robe in so long, he wasn’t sure he could find it at first. Rodney wasted time looking for it. Eventually he pulled the limp wad of glistening fabric—sleek and black with a garish dragon laser-etched onto the back—out of his low-priority storage bins, watching all the wrinkles slither into nothingness as he shook out the robe. He slipped it over his shoulders, feeling its slick, cool touch against his still-wet skin. Rodney tied the sash tight across his waist, then went to the terminal.
Before he could begin to think again, he let his fingers race over the keypad, logging on. He didn’t dare use a voice-recognition logon—not today. Rodney had never learned how to type, but countless hours of practice had taught him to use four fingers and a thumb with lightning speed.
A few beads of sweat appeared of their own accord on his forehead. Rodney entered his sixth-level Net password, two steps above the fourth-level passwords most adults had. He had worked his way up, sharpening his computer finesse and using it to advance himself. Net passwords were one of the only things in the world that were still truly earned. You had to earn each upgrade yourself, through your own merit and skill.
At the prompt, Rodney selected Information Services, then cracked his knuckles as he lifted his hands away from the keypad. Steepling his fingers, he blew on them and half-closed his eyes, trying to think of the best way to attack the problem, to ask his question.
A sudden shudder whipped up and down his spine. His eyes flew open again.
Supervisor was an Interface. She could tap into what he was doing—even in his own home—if she wanted to—
He had come home this evening in a sweat, trembling, barely seeing anything around him. Supervisor had renewed her attacks today with a greater vigor, finding subtle ways to stretch Rodney’s nerves and snap them one by one.
This morning, before starting the workday routine, Rodney had inspected the roster and the banks of frozen pre-Servants. Various Servants milled around, monitoring temperatures in the vats, cleaning up, keying in data as they stared at the display panels in front of each tank. Rodney logged on to the Net, using his work account and password, and skimmed down the day’s schedule.
He found his own name on the list of bodies scheduled to be resurrected.
Too astonished even to consider the coincidence of someone else having his name, Rodney called up the file. It contained only one line of text.
"We are almost on schedule with you, Mr. Quick.”
His skin felt cold and he went white enough with fearful anger that he looked like a corpse already. Rodney tried to delete the file, but found that it had been password-protected.
The feelings of persecution and rage grew strong enough for a moment to drive down his terror, and he stormed about the room, shouting at Servants, who obediently moved out of his way. One male seemed so intent on his tasks that he almost walked into the raging tech. “Go screw yourself!” Rodney snapped, and the Servant looked down at his crotch in total bewilderment.
On one of the vats Supervisor had mounted a plaque with his name on it. “For Rodney Quick.” Rodney’s anger drained away like spilled milk. All that day Supervisor never showed herself.
Rodney couldn’t run away, held in a web of dependence that had damned him. No matter where he went, he would have to use the Net and his password for money, for transportation tickets, for food, for identification. And every time he logged on, he would pinpoint his location, screaming out “Here I am!” to anyone who bothered to look. Supervisor was an Interface—she could find him herself, and she could come to get him if he ran away. Supervisor would do it quietly, at her own speed—but she would do it.
Now, though, if he could find the Cremators, perhaps he could win a small victory.
The Information Services menu spilled out across the screen. He selected “Search database.” Another menu came up, listing the broad categories of information in the database.
“Search for what?” the terminal finally asked.
“Cremators,” Rodney typed, then sat back to wait. A “Search in progress” message instantly appeared in the system line at the bottom of the screen. A second later Rodney scanned the page’s summary paragraphs, but none of them made any mention whatsoever of the group he sought.
Not terribly surprised, Rodney then looked for other ways to approach the problem. He wound his way deeper into the mind of the Net, tunneling through menu after menu after menu. His peripheral vision vanished, and the rest of the world faded away as he rose to the challenge and devoted himself entirely to finding what he needed to know.
He tried anagrams of the word; he accessed the foreign-language dictionary databases and asked the computer to search for the key word in nineteen different languages. He followed every possible line of cross-referencing in an electronic wild-goose chase that led him through the labyrinths of the Net. He rose through the menus again and plunged in along an alternate route, asking different but related questions. He performed Boolean searches, using various combinations of words and phrases. Sometimes he received answers, but nothing helped much.
Rodney had honed and developed his own Net finesse during his teenage years, while his friends played Net simulation-adventure games and spent their time blasting graphic aliens or exploring complex glowing mazes online. But Rodney had learned how to run the tightrope of the computer network, skipping through directories and opening files no one else had even thought to look for.
Some of his age group smugly went into professions that would always be honored and safe: banking, politics, administration, engineering. All fine and good if you happened to be particularly bright, but Rodney knew he didn’t have the brainpower to break into those fields. He didn’t really care, though, so long as he found something other than the walking death of the wandering blues.
Rodney knew that he might have hope, if he worked hard enough—the good old work ethic from times gone by. The Net itself was the biggest employer in the Bay Area Metroplex, requiring a vast number of operators, technicians, programmers, debuggers, hacker-security officers, database assistants, maintenance specialists, hardware engineers, and systems administrators, not to mention hordes of accountants, secretaries, administrators, and other electronic paper pushers.
Right now, though, the supposedly infinite resources of the Net seemed unable to find a scrap of information about the Cremators.
Feeling a growing desperation and helplessness, Rodney pounded his fist on the side of the console.
He shuddered to think how Francois Nathans would react if he knew what his own technician was trying to do. For a moment a twinge of guilt made Rodney stop another search for cross-references to Viking funerals. Nathans had been good to him—but Nathans had declared war on the mysterious Cremators. And if a man like Nathans could not unearth a single detail about the group, what chance did Rodney have of finding them?
After the Servant Danal had been released and escorted off to his destination, Rodney had not expected to see any more of Nathans. Nathans was too important a man to bother with a mere technician, and Rodney had suspected with some chagrin that Nathans’s first visit was just to emphasize how important the Servant was, not necessarily to commend any special work Rodney Quick had performed.
But Nathans had come once more, when Supervisor wasn’t around. “Rodney, I’ve checked into your background, and I am indeed impressed at what you have made of yourself.” Nathans folded his hands and smiled. “Nothing angers me more than to see a man waste himself on useless, monotonous work, letting his brain turn to jelly. By caring about your future, by working to learn, you’ve made yourself an important part of what I firmly believe to be the most crucial corporation in the evolution of mankind.”
Dazed and somewhat baffled, Rodney nodded and mumbled something that expressed his deep gratitude. He hoped Supervisor was eavesdropping.
“If you ever have any problems, don’t hesitate to come see me directly. Keep up the good work, Rodney.” Nathans shook his hand. The other man’s grip was dry but firm, not a mere token gesture.
Rodney had not dared to take him up on the offer, not even after the most serious of Supervisor’s threats. Maybe this was an even bigger trap, a net within a net. And Supervisor had specifically warned him—forcing him back against one of the warm, bubbling resurrection vats and holding him there without even moving a finger—that if he ever went to tell Nathans about anything, she would destroy him before he could say a word.
His imagination churned away, surrounding him with horrifying possibilities: as an Interface, she could probably use the Net to make an elevator crash, to cause a control panel overload, to turn any of the numerous appliances in his own living quarters into a weapon....
He had to find the Cremators. He didn’t want to come back as a Servant. Even then, Supervisor would probably keep him as her private toy. He had to find the Cremators. Even if he alienated Francois Nathans in the process. His situation had gotten too serious to leave any other alternatives.
“No matches,” the Net answered.
In disgust and frustration, almost to the point of tears, Rodney gave up. He logged off, and the screen went blank, leaving him in darkness.
* * *
The wake-up alarm brought him out of the murky depths of nightmares. The sound drove an icy nail of fear into him as he realized that morning had come. His eyes opened wide, and he knew they would probably be bloodshot when he went to look in the mirror. It was almost time to go to work again, to confront another day.
Before even bothering to shower, Rodney went slowly into the kitchen area and powered up the coffee dispenser, letting the synthesizers and heaters begin to manufacture the one and a half cups he drank every morning.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the message light blinking on his Net terminal.
Suddenly awake now, Rodney went carefully over to the screen, moving with a tension that made him seem to be stalking the terminal.
Probably just an updated Net entertainment schedule.
Rodney logged on and chose the Communications option from the first-level menu.
It could be an advertisement. Rodney had developed a program for his own Net account that would scan all such messages to see if they were electronically generated and sent to large user groups. Then he could set his system to ignore all of them, or throw them into a file for low-priority reading. But he hadn’t had a chance to debug the routine yet. Yes, it was probably just an advertisement message.
He chose email from the Communications menu. One message.
Or maybe it was a survey. “Rodney Quick, we have selected you at random ...”
He displayed the full message on the screen.
"A representative will meet you at exactly 11:33 a.m. We think you will be extremely interested in our fine maps and demographic projections--Mercator, Limited."
To his amazement, the words vanished as he read them, as if the sensors on the Net terminal could scan his eye movements. The screen suddenly drew a map of the vicinity around Resurrection, Inc., highlighting one area. Then the screen went blank.
Frantically he tried to read the message again, but it had been purged. He dug deeper and found that the Net had no record of the message at all. No electronic address had appeared on the header to the message, no source-slugline.
Wide-awake now, Rodney chewed his lip, smelling the freshly processed coffee from the kitchen area. Maps? A Mercator projection was a type of map that made the world look like it was squashed flat on a piece of paper.
But “mercator” was also one of the anagrams he had used the night before.
* * *