"It's a blind," I say, then yawn. It must be the adrenaline rush finally subsiding. "Fiore, Yourdon, and the other one. Psywar specialists working on emergent group behavior controls." The blackouts seems to have jostled free some more fragmentary memories, dossiers on"War criminals. Ran the security apparat for the Third People's Glorious Future Sphere. When the vermifuge was released, they went on the run. They've spent the past gigasecs working on a countervermifuge, then on a way to harden Curious Yellow."
I blink. Is this me, talking? Or a different me, using my speech centers to communicate with the rest ofwhoever I am?
"Priority. Exfiltration. Priority. Exfiltration." My hands are moving over the gate control systems even without me willing them. "Shit!" I yelp. But there's no stopping them, they know what they're doing. They seem to be setting up an output program.
"System unavailable," says the gate, its tone of voice flat and unapologetic. "Longjump grid connectivity unavailable."
Whatever my hands are doing, it doesn't seem to work. Something has shaken loose inside my memory, something vast and ugly. "You must escape, Reeve," I hear my own voice telling me. "This program will auto-erase in sixty seconds. Network connectivity to external manifold is not available from this location. You must escape. Auto-erase in fifty-five seconds."
Even though I'm only wearing clothes-liners, I break out in a cold sweat up and down my spine. "Who are you?" I whisper.
"This program will auto-erase in fifty seconds," something inside me replies.
"Okay, I hear you! I'm going, I'm going already!" I'm terrified that when it says this program it means me obviously it's some kind of parasite payload, like the Curious Yellow boot kernel. But where can I escape to? I look up, at the ceiling, and it clicks into place. I need to go up , through the walls of the world. Maybe, just maybe, this polity is interleaved with othersif so, if I can just break into an upper or lower deck, there may be a way to get to a T-gate and rejoin the manifold of the Invisible Republic. "Going up, right?"
"This program will auto-erase in thirty seconds. Escape vector approved. Conversational interface terminated."
It goes very quiet in my head; I stand over the assembler terminal shivering, taking rapid shallow breaths. A shadow seems to have passed from my mind, leaving only a cautious peace behind. The horror I feel is hollow, now, an existential dreadSo they hid zombie code inside me? Whoever they were? but I'm back, I'm still me . I'm not going to suddenly stop existing, to be replaced by a smiling meat puppet wearing my body. It was just an escape package, configured to report home after a preset period or some level of stress if I couldn't figure out what to do. When it couldn't dial out, it issued a callback to me, the conscious cover, and told me what it wanted. Which is fine. If I do what it wants and escape, then I can get any other little passengers dug out of my skull and everything will be great! And I want to escape anyway, don't I? Don't I? Think happy thoughts.
"Fuck, I just killed Fiore," I whisper. "I've got to get out of here! What am I doing ?"
Upstairs, the common room is as steamy as a sauna. Coughing and choking I dial down the heat, grab my damp clothes, and pull them on, then head for the door. Thenthis is the hardest partI pat my hair into order, pick up my bag, and calmly walk across the front lot toward the curb to hail a passing taxi.
"Take me home," I tell the driver, teeth nearly chattering with fear.
Home, the house I've shared with Sam for long enough to make it feel like somewhere I know, is a scant five minutes away by taxi. It feels like it's halfway to the next star system. "Wait here," I tell the driver. I get out and head for the garage. I don't want to see Sam, I really hope he's at workif he sees me, I might not be able to go through with this. Or even worse, he might get dragged in. But he's not around, and I manage to get into the garage and pick up my cordless hammer drill, a bunch of spare bits, and some other handy gadgets I laid aside against a rainy day. I go back to the taxi, and I'm still tightening the belt to hang everything off when it moves away.
We cruise up a residential street, low houses set back from the road behind white picket fences, separated by trees. It's hot outside, loud with the background creaking of arthropods. We drive into a tunnel entrance. I take a deep breath. "New orders. Stop right here and wait sixty seconds. Then drive through the tunnel and keep going. Keep your radio turned off. At each road intersection, pick a direction at random and keep driving. Do not stop, other than to avoid obstructions. Accept one thousand units of credit. Continue driving until my credit expires. Confirm." I bite my lower lip.
"Wait sixty seconds. Drive, turning randomly at each intersection, until credit limit exceeded. Avoid obstacles. Confirm?"
"Do it!" I say, then I open the door and pile out into the tunnel mouth with my kit. I wait tensely as the zombie drives off, then I start walking back into the blackness.
The tunnel darkens as it curves, and I pull the big metal flashlight out. Like everything else here, it's probably not authentic, no electrochemical batteriesthe same infrastellar T-gate that powers cars or starships will suffice to provide a trickle of current to a white diode plate. Right now, that's good news. I shine it at the walls to either side as I walk, until I come to one of the recessed doors. Unlike the last time I came this way, I'm prepared for it. Out comes the hammer drill, and I only spend a few seconds sliding a stone bit into itall that time in the garage has paid off, I guess. The racket it makes as it bites and chews at the concrete next to the door is deafening, but chunks of synrock fall away, and the air fills with acrid dust that bites at my lungs when I inhale. Should have brought a mask , I realize, but it's a bit late now, and anyway, the sound and feel of the drill is changing as the bit skitters across bright metal. "Hah!" I mutter, resisting the frantic itch that keeps prodding me to look over my shoulder.
It takes me a couple of minutes to get enough of the surface of the doorframe exposed to be sure what I'm looking at, but the more I see, the happier I am. The concrete tunnel is a hollow tube, and the door is some kind of inspection hatch near a join. If I'm right, the join isn't a T-gate, it's a physical bulkhead designed to seal segments off in event of a pressure breach, which means this is part of a larger physical structure. This door will lead into the pressure door mechanism, and maybe via an airlock into other adjacent segmentsup and down as well as fore and aft, I hope. The only problem is, the door's locked.
I dig around in my pockets for one of the toys I took from the garage. Chopped-up magnesium from a block the hiking shop sold me, mixed with deliberately rusted iron filings in a candle-wax basea crude thermite charge. I stick a gobbet of the stuff above the lock mechanism (which is annoyingly anchored in the concrete), flick my lighter under it, then jerk my hand back and turn away fast. Even with my eyelids tightly shut the flare is blindingly intense, leaving purple afterimages of the outline of my arm. There's a loud hissing sputter, and I wait for a slow count of thirty before I turn round and push hard on the door. It refuses to budge for a moment, then silently gives way. The lock is a glowing hole in the partially exposed doorframeI hope we don't have a pressure excursion anytime soon.