But still he could not breach the last barrier.
The universe had stopped being clear-cut and understandable for him, and everything held its own facet of the cosmic mystery. For the benefit of the Wakers in general, he helped with the Cremators’ activities. As Laina and Gregor had both predicted, Danal now considered himself one of the Wakers. But none of it really mattered to him. He lived from day to day, in no particular hurry to make major decisions.
He spent many hours reviewing his old memories, dwelling—not morbidly, but with a different kind of fascination—on Death, the events leading up to his own death; how he had sacrificed his dying father; how he had reflexively killed Nathans in the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc.; how Nathans had murdered Julia—and that, in turn, brought him back to thinking about his own death again.
He viewed his former life as Vincent Van Ryman with greater and greater detachment, as if it were someone else—and indeed it was someone else, since that person had been on the other side of death. Vincent’s problems were no longer Danal’s problems….
The Servant picked up the gift-wrapped box and strolled casually down the pedestrian walk. He would wander around for an hour or two just to make sure no one was watching. Besides, he felt like taking a long walk. He had used extra care to apply his disguise, and he enjoyed the freedom a normal appearance gave him. When he grew tired, Danal would find one of the other access openings to down below.
He didn’t mind killing time. He enjoyed every moment of everything now that all existence seemed basically the same.
As he passed an unoccupied public Net booth, Danal suddenly felt an amused fascination for his old identity as Vincent Van Ryman, a wave of nostalgia. Earlier, he had stared at the looming Van Ryman mansion for long moments before moving on. The Intruder Defense Systems effectively kept him away, even if he had wanted to approach it.
Now, as he stared at the empty booth, Danal realized that The Net still thought Vincent Van Ryman was alive, since the imposter had stolen his entire identity. And Danal still remembered his old password.
Curiosity tugged at him, and he stepped inside the booth, propping the gift-wrapped box up against the wall and closing the privacy screen. He entered “VINCENT VAN RYMAN” at the prompt and punched in his tenth-level password. The Net willingly accepted the logon and waited.
He stared at the upper menu and, after a slight pause, went into his own electronic mail for a glimpse at the imposter’s activities. Still only mildly interested, Danal ignored most of the mundane business messages and neo-Satanist concerns.
But then he saw one message that made him stop cold. It was passworded, but Danal easily remembered his own receive-mail passwords. According to the status line, the message had been sent by Francois Nathans only two days before….
Nathans turned to show his face and smiled thinly at Danal. “Welcome, Sacrificial Lamb.” He made the neo-Satanist sign of the broken cross.
Danal entered his mail password and read the message.
Nathans lay on his face in a puddle of blood—
Francois Nathans must be dead. Danal had killed him.
A long scarlet smear emblazoned the gray Servant jumpsuit.
Just who was the victim after all?
Danal scanned the message as his eyes widened. One of the false eyelashes flaked off.
“We have disposed of my surrogate. Danal killed him cleanly, and we’re leaving no other ties to this whole mess. But now that Danal is GONE, we should decide whether to find another test subject or drop the idea altogether. Without Vincent himself COMING BACK, the effect won’t be as dramatic.”
Danal stared at the message and read it over again. Nathans’s surrogate? Who had Danal really murdered? Surrogate?
Remembering his old skills, Danal quickly checked the Net periodicals and the news databases for the day he had supposedly committed the murder. The death of someone like Francois Nathans would certainly have appeared in all the current-events listings.
But he searched and found mention of Nathans only in reference to Resurrection, Inc., where the riot had taken place. In growing amazement and disbelief Danal checked Nathans’s Net activity, and found that the man had used the system every day for the past two weeks.
Nathans was not dead.
Danal had been tricked. Once again.
As it all came crashing down upon him, he fell abruptly back into his own existence. Like nails being hammered into a coffin: trusting Nathans as a philosophical brother, having grand schemes for bettering the world; Julia, who had tempered his zealous obsession with love and perspective, losing it all when the trapdoor of treachery made everything drop out from under his feet.
It woke him up like a slap in the face, and Danal gripped the gift-wrapped box tightly enough to wrinkle the colored paper. His jaws ached from clenched teeth. Part of his determination for revenge returned, but it clashed with his newfound empathy of life and death. Wasn’t all this behind him now? But what Nathans had done—The conflicting emotions forced his goal sideways and changed it.
Danal thought of his ordeal, his death, his life, his love, and with a bright fire of determination he reached a firm decision.
Yes, he would find Julia again.
31
Net conduits like twisted metal straws stretched upward into the main city. Using stolen alloy-chewers, the Wakers had breached the conduit coverings and tapped in their own wires, sending jury-rigged connections down to a row of mismatched terminals, some taken from decommissioned public Net booths, others from standard home units. The glow from the screens penetrated the shadows: amber, green, and gray.
Two Wakers sat at the keyboards. Rolf, who had masqueraded as an Enforcer, stared glassy-eyed and motionless, gripping the sides of the terminal as if wrestling with something. The other was the young freckle-faced Waker whose pale, translucent skin now looked splotched with darker marks of discoloration.
As Danal came up to them, the boy stared at him with awe. Danal regarded the boy for a moment, then smiled. “I’m Danal,” he said, leaving the end of his sentence hanging, like a question.
“I know,” the freckle-faced Waker said, then remembered to add, “My name’s Rikki.”
Rikki looked to have been about twelve or thirteen at his death, but lines of concentration around his eyes made him look much older. He had been through death and back and would never be a boy again, no matter how many of his memories returned.
“Gregor said I could come here to see what you’re doing,” Danal offered. He had something more important in mind, but he would approach that delicately.
Rikki snapped out of his amazement and blinked. “Of course! Well, here are… our terminals, and Rolf is in guardian mode right now. My shift is about to begin. These other terminals are for doing the usual Net stuff, if you need to.”
Rolf didn’t flinch, not even as Rikki said his name. “Guardian mode?” Danal asked.
“He’s linked up to The Net, watching all the input and output channels. See, we have to divert queries, keep track of anyone who seems too interested in the Cremators or the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches, anything that might get us into trouble.” Rikki stopped himself and seemed flustered. “I’m not telling this all in the right order.