Carla smiled at Corwin’s streeter slang. She knew he’d grown up in Rosemount Beach, an upper-class suburb of Bellevue. The affected speech was as much a part of his image as his synthleather T-shirt, high-top sneakers, and torn denims. Normally she’d tease him about it. But today she couldn’t be bothered.
“I want you to do a run for me, Corwin,” she told him. “Wiz.” The ork nodded his head eagerly. “Jus’ name your node.”
“It’s a tough one. Corporate research files. There’ll definitely be ice. Maybe even black ice.”
“Yeah? So?” He gave her a lazy, cocksure look. “What’s the scan?”
Carla pulled up a chair beside the Formfit couch on which Corwin was sprawled. “Mitsuhama Corporation’s magical research lab,” she said. “It could be dangerous.” She hoped Corwin was up to it. She didn’t relish facing Greer with the news that one of his pet deckers had burned out station equipment on an unauthorized data snoop. The producer would chew her head off, then demote her to the sports-entertainment beat and make her cover the urban brawl matches, just to watch her squirm.
Corwin let out a long, slow whistle. “Mitsuhama you say? Sure, it’s a tough system. But I’m rezzed for it. What’s the scan?”
“I’m looking for information on a high-level research project Mitsuhama’s been working on,” Carla explained. “I want you to deck into the project files, searching for anything connected to the words light, spirit, or the name Farazad Samji. The project was a current one, so hopefully you won’t have to spend too long scanning through old records.”
“Mitsuhama Computer Technologies, huh? This story you’re working on got anything to do with their new deck hardware or ASIST interfaces? I heard from a decker in Kobe that MCT’s developing a new co-processor that will exponentially boost the response time of a MPCP chip.” Corwin had slipped out of street speech in his excitement.
“As far as I know, the research project has nothing to do with computers,” Carla said, shaking her head. “If anything, it’s probably connected with Mitsuhama’s defense contracts.”
“Oh” Corwin’s hand hovered above the toggle that would power up the deck. “Black ice for sure, then. Well, it may scope out to be a high-rez jolt jump just the same. See you in a few millisecs.”
“Wait.” Carla laid a hand on Corwin’s thick arm. “I’m coming along.”
“Uh-uh,” Corwin shook his head. “This cowboy rides alone.”
Carla slotted one end of a datacord into the hitcher jack on Corwin’s deck and twirled the other end in her hand. “Not if he wants this run authorized by a reporter, he doesn’t.”
“Black ice doesn’t scare you?” Corwin asked. “It can fry your brain, you know.”
Carla smiled. “It doesn’t scare me. How about you? Are you sure you’re not looking for an excuse not to make this run?”
Corwin gave her along, level look. Then he returned smile. “O.K., cowgirl. Jack in.”
Carla jacked the other end of the cord into her temple and closed her eyes. The next instant she was inside a brilliant landscape of flickering neon colors, intricate grids, and floating, three-dimensional icons. Corwin’s icon in the Matrix seemed to hover a meter away from her. It was a gray and white cartoon rabbit with white doves, big floppy ears, and a mischievous expression. It turned and winked at Carla. “Wus’up. Doc?”
Carla could only see portions of her own “body” as It appeared in the Matrix. When she held out a hand, it was a glowing, slightly blocky imitation of a human one. Her legs were tapering cylinders that ended in rounded stumps. Obviously Corwin hadn’t put as much work into designing a persona program for his hitchers. Carla tried to speak, but found she didn’t have a mouth. She would be an observer, only, on this run.
“Heeeere we go!” Corwin gleefully quipped.
His rabbit icon stretched out a hand along one of the bars of neon blue light that made up the grid that surounded them. The arm lengthened like a rubber band, then snapped back to its original size. As it contracted, Carla found herself rushing through space, pulled along behind the rabbit like a balloon tied to a string. Grid patterns whizzed overhead impossibly fast as they raced through a landscape of shifting geometric forms, they changed direction several times as Corwin routed them through a confusing combination of local and regional telecommunications grids. It was a standard decker’s tactic, designed to hide their point of origin.
They paused for a moment at the end of one of the tubelike lines, as the rabbit stabbed a finger at an icon shaped like a silver coin. Again they rushed through space, this time through a red field punctuated with a spangling of what looked like three-dimensional corporate logos that hung in the distance like stars. Ahead loomed a huge pagoda surrounded by halos of glowing light, apparently made out of coiled fiber-optic cables that bristled with datajacks. The stuff looked like barbed wire. They rushed toward the pagoda, then stopped abruptly at its base. The rabbit paused, brought its palms together in front of its chest, and did an elegant swan dive that carried it between two strands of wire.
Carla’s perspective suddenly did a flip-flop. Now they were inside what looked like a reception area, Walls, floor, and ceiling were made of chrome. Behind a desk made of a slab of frosted glass, a robotic head hung in mid-air. Its eyes were whirling kaleidoscopes, its mouth a dark oval. Words scrolled across the front of the desk: YOU HAVE ENTERED THE MITSUHAMA COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES SYSTEM PLEASE ENTER IDENTIFICATION CODE.
The rabbit pulled a key out of its pocket and tossed it at the robotic head. The key slotted neatly into its mouth, turned, and the head dissolved in a sparkle of green light.
IDENTIFICATION CODE ACCEPTED, PROCEED.
The background changed color, becoming a soft green. The sound of rippling water surrounded them. and streaks of darker green seemed to be streaming past. It was as if they stood inside a vertical tube of gently flowing water. Around them, floating in a circle about waist-height, was a ring of icons. The rabbit considered for a millisecond, then reached out and firmly grasped one shaped like a microscope. The icon shimmered.
Suddenly, Carla couldn’t focus properly. Everything around her began breaking apart, dissolving into a soft fuzz of broken squares. Back in the real world, she felt her fingertips start to tingle. And that frightened her. Black ice was designed to attack the decker himself, as well as his hardware. It would also attack his hitchers. But she’d been confident in Corwin’s ability to avoid any intrusion countermeasures they encountered, It seemed she’d made a mistake-possibly a fatal one.
Slowly-too slowly-Carla felt her real-world hand start to drift up toward her head. It moved at a painfully sluggish rate, a millimeter at a time, while her mind was whirling. She had to jack out, had to…
The world refocused. The rabbit was holding up a forefinger. On its tip, a child’s top spun furiously. It seemed to be creating a whirlpool in space that was gradually drawing together the polygons that had earlier been flying apart. At last it stopped. “Nasty,” the rabbit commented to itself. Then it pulled another icon from the pocket at its hip. This one looked like a cluster of numbers, tangled together, each a different primary color. The rabbit threw it at the microscope.
The numbers danced for a moment in the air, then three of them settled onto the microscope icon, sticking to its sides. The other numbers dissolved. At the same instant, Carla had the perception that she was shrinking, moving with great speed. The eyepiece of he microscope loomed in front of her like a huge, round portal-and then they were through.
They floated in a velvety black space. Around them, bobbing gently, were a series of rectangular off-white squares. These were standard file icons-modeled after he old-fashioned pieces of folded cardboard once used to manually store hardcopy. The top of each was marked with a small color bar.