Now the members of the security party — Sheldrake, the tousle-headed Dorfman, and two tech specialists, Lawson and Gilmore — had begun fanning out into the chamber, picking their way warily, like children in an unfamiliar forest. Watching, Mauchly felt a stab of vertigo: there was something unnatural about being perched on one wall of this huge tank, itself balanced atop a sixty-story tower. He hurried along the catwalk, descended the ladder, and joined Sheldrake and Dorfman on the chamber floor.
“Any word from Silver?” Sheldrake asked.
Mauchly shook his head.
“I knew Silver had a server farm up here, but I never expected anything like this.” Sheldrake stepped carefully over a thick black cable with the daintiness of a cat.
Mauchly said nothing.
“Maybe we should enter the private quarters anyway.”
“Silver said not to proceed, that he’d contact us.”
“Lash is with him. God knows what that guy is forcing him to do.” Sheldrake glanced at his watch. “It’s been ten minutes since he called. We’ve got to act.”
“Silver’s orders were explicit. We’ll give him five minutes more.” He turned to Dorfman. “Post yourself at the entrance. The backup units should be here any minute. Help them up through the barrier.”
There was an excited burst of chatter from deeper inside. They moved toward the sound, threading between tall racks of servers. Several had clipboards hanging from their flanks, bearing sheets of hastily scribbled notations in Silver’s handwriting. The surrounding computers breathed with such a diversity of fan noise that Mauchly almost imagined himself a trespasser, penetrating some living collective.
Ahead, Sheldrake was now in urgent consultation with Lawson and Gilmore. Gilmore, short and overweight, hunched over his palmtop. “I’m picking up heavy activity along the central data grid, sir,” he was saying.
“On the grid itself?” Mauchly interjected. “Not distributed to the interfaces?”
“Just the grid.”
“Since when?”
“It’s spiked over the last minute. The bandwidth is intense, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What’s the initiator?”
“Command, sir.”
Liza. Mauchly nodded to Sheldrake, who grabbed his radio. “Sheldrake to security central.” He waited. “Sheldrake to central, report.”
The radio crackled and spat, and Sheldrake replaced it with disgust. “It’s that damn baffle.”
“Try your cell.” Mauchly turned back to Gilmore. “How’s the grid holding up?”
“It’s not meant for this kind of stress, sir. Tower integrity’s failing already. If we can’t bleed off some of the load, the—”
As if in answer, there was a loud report from below, followed immediately by another, echoing and reechoing in the hollow space. Then came a rumbling, so deep it was almost below the threshold of audibility. The floor beneath Mauchly began to tremble.
He exchanged a brief, frozen look with Sheldrake. Then he whirled, cupped his hands around his mouth. “Dorfman!” he shouted over the forest of equipment. “Report!”
“It’s the security plates, sir!” the voice came back faintly from the hatchway. It was pitched high, whether from excitement or fear Mauchly could not tell. “They’re closing!”
“Closing! Any sign of backup?”
“No, sir! I’m getting the hell out before—”
“Dorfman, hold your position. You hear me? Hold your position—”
Mauchly’s words were drowned by an enormous boom that shook the heavy equipment around them. The security plates had closed, trapping them atop the Eden tower.
“Sir!” Gilmore cried wildly. “We’ve got a Condition Gamma!”
“Triggered by the overload? Impossible.”
“Don’t know, sir. All I can tell you is the tower’s locked down tight.”
That’s it. Mauchly raised his cell phone, dialed Silver.
No answer.
“Come,” he told Sheldrake. “Let’s get him.” He tucked the phone back into his jacket pocket, pulled out the 9mm.
As he turned toward the ladder leading up to the private quarters, the lights went out abruptly. And when the emergency illumination came on, it drenched the digital city in a uniform fog of crimson.
SIXTY
There was a moment of intense blackness. And then the emergency lighting snapped on.
“What happened?” Lash asked. “Power failure?”
There was no answer. Tara was peering intently at her screen. Silver remained within the Plexiglas cubicle, barely visible in the watery light. Now he raised one hand, tapped out a short command on the keypad. When this had no effect, he tried again. And then he sat up, swung his legs wearily over the edge of the chair, and got to his feet. He plucked the sensors from his forehead, removed the microphone from his collar. His movements were slow, automatic, like a sleepwalker’s.
“What happened?” Lash repeated.
Silver opened the Plexiglas door, came forward on rigid legs. He seemed not to have heard.
Lash put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You all right?”
“Liza won’t respond,” he said.
“Won’t? Or can’t?”
Silver merely shook his head.
“Those ethical routines you programmed—”
“Dr. Silver!” Tara called. “I think you ought to take a look at this.”
Silver walked toward her, still moving slowly. Lash followed. Wordlessly, they bent over the monitor.
“The power’s completely out in both the inner tower and the outer tower,” she said, pointing at the screen. “No backups, nothing.”
“Why aren’t we dark, as well?” Lash asked.
“There’s a massive backup generator in Liza’s computing chamber beneath us. It’s got enough juice to run for weeks. But look: the whole building’s under Condition Gamma. The security plates have closed.”
“Security plates?” Lash echoed.
“They seal the three sections of the building from each other in case of emergency. We’re shut off from the tower below.”
“What caused that? The power loss?”
“Don’t know. But without main power, the security plates can’t be reopened.”
They were interrupted by the shrill ring of a cell phone. Silver pulled it slowly from his pocket. “Yes?”
“Dr. Silver? What’s your condition?” A wind-tunnel howl almost drowned Mauchly’s voice.
“I’m fine.” Silver turned away. “No, he’s here. Everything’s — everything’s under control.” His voice trembled. “I’ll explain later. Can you speak up, I can barely hear you over all that noise. Yes, I know about the security plates. Any word on the cause?” Silver fell silent, listening. Then he straightened. “What? All of them? You sure?” He spoke sharply, any hesitation gone. “I’ll be right down.”
He looked at Tara. “Mauchly’s in the computing chamber directly below. He says that Liza’s spinning up all her electromechanical peripherals. Disk silos, tape readers, line printers, RAID clusters.”
“Everything?”
“Everything with a motor and moving parts.”
Tara turned back to her monitor. “He’s right.” She tapped at the keyboard. “And that’s not all. The devices are being pushed past tolerance. Here, look at this disc array. The firmware’s set to spin at 9600 rpm: you can see in the component detail window. But the controlling software is pushing the array to four times that. That’ll cause mechanical failure.”