‘No,’ Cat said. ‘You’re not.’ She reached over and brought up the source of the segment, a Cable station in the Midlands. ‘See, you’re getting picked up—’ She hit a search sequence, showing a tree diagram of the groups and channels that had taken up something Jordan had said or written – an impressive structure, visibly growing at the tips.
‘I don’t get it,’ Jordan said. ‘Nobody’s ever heard of me.’
‘That’s the point.’ Cat sat up on the bench and looked down at him, layers of her dress fluttering in the inadequate draughts from the machinery’s fans. ‘Street-cred. You even look like a refugee from some godawful repressive mini-state.’
Jordan smiled sourly. ‘That’s what I am.’
‘Exactly,’ Cat said. ‘You’ll see. What you got on the politics?’
Jordan stared at the screen, unseeing again. ‘The Left Alliance is churning it out; still nothing from the ANR; space-movement politicos are arguing like, well, you’d expect; Wilde’s made some cryptic remarks that suggest he’s negotiating with the ANR…’
‘That reactionary old bastard?’ Catherin snorted. ‘Moh used to rate him.’
‘Yeah, well so do I.’
‘Might’ve known,’ Catherin said. She gave a not unfriendly smile. ‘Speaking of capitalist bastards, how’s the speculation coming on?’
‘Fine,’ Jordan said. ‘We’re sterling billionaires.’
‘Ha, ha.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s all gold and guns now.’
He reached in and twitched up the FT Ten Thousand Share Index.
The market had peaked, and turned, and was dropping—
And then everything went haywire—
Twisting bands of colour, fragments of news, gabble, snow—
‘Hey, what the fuck!’ Shouts of annoyance came from the others in the room as they jacked out or pulled off glades and stood rubbing their eyes. Jordan just sat and watched it.
‘What’s happening?’
Catherin was looking from the mess on the screens and holos to his face, and back, and seeming more worried by the second.
‘It’s OK,’ Jordan said. ‘It’ll pass. It’s something I’ve seen before.’
Oh, my God, he was thinking. Moh’s done it again!
Donovan watched Bleibtreu-Fèvre stiffly descend the helicopter’s steps and limp across the landing-pad. Unlike everybody else Donovan had ever seen, the Stasis agent did not duck as he walked beneath the still-whirling blades. He ignored the rig’s various crew-members moving about their tasks, but – Donovan noticed – they did not ignore him as he came down the ladder from the helipad, using only the handrail, and walked across the sea-slicked deck with a confidence that might have been due to inexperience. As he approached the doorway Donovan saw to his disgust that the Stasis agent looked exactly the same in the flesh, if that was the word, as he had in the virtual.
‘So you blew it,’ Donovan said by way of greeting. Bleibtreu-Fèvre smiled thinly and followed him inside and down the stairladder.
‘We’ve all made mistakes,’ he acknowledged, lowering himself into a chair by a workbench. The thumping of rotor blades outside became increasingly weary, then stopped. Donovan palmed a sensor as he sat in one of his command seats. Hissing and clanking noises came from a distant corner of the vast clutter.
‘Indeed,’ Donovan said. He was beginning to regret having had anything to do with Bleibtreu-Fèvre. Airlifting him out of the dell had been a risky business, undertaken only because the operative was in trouble with his superiors: Space Defense had made a formal complaint about his incursion into Norlonto, and no doubt both of the rivalrous arms of the US/UN’s security system were investigating the situation right now.
‘My green allies have taken to the trees, ha, ha,’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre said. ‘All I can raise of my usual contact is an answer-fetch. Its answers are far from reassuring. I suspect they are too busy with other plans of their own to spare much real time for this emergency. Unfortunately the security forces are themselves overcommitted and unable to penetrate whatever the barb are about to perpetrate.’
Donovan wondered how true this was and whether the agent could detect evasion from tones and expressions. He decided to be honest.
‘There’s some kind of upsurge coming down the line,’ he said. ‘We may find a lot of separate campaigns thinking globally and acting locally in the next few days. All at the same time, which could be disruptive. I’ve already called my troops out of it, which is all I can do from here. Has that Beulah City woman come up with anything?’
A server whirred across the floor, lurched to a stop by the workbench and slid back its cover to reveal two beakers of coffee, each about two-thirds full, the remainder having slopped out. Donovan gestured and Bleibtreu-Fèvre took his first, wiped the bottom of the beaker with his tie and sipped. He grimaced and put it down on the bench.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Ah, this is a delicate point. Mrs Lawson reports that the increase in net traffic is continuing, but she has just found a sudden increase in system problems.’ He took another sip of coffee. A small but visible shudder followed the liquid down his gullet. ‘Her exact words when I spoke to her a few minutes ago were, no offence, “Oh, and tell that son-of-a-witch Donovan to lay off like he promised.”’
Donovan’s sip turned into a scalding gulp. He slammed the beaker on to the solder-snotted formica and rose to his feet. Supported by one hand on the bench he waved his stick around at the screens all about them.
‘Are you calling me a liar? Can’t you see for yourself, man? What do you see on these screens, eh?’
Bleibtreu-Fèvre’s glance darted about, flicking back and forth from the screens to the lashing, slicing stick.
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘that I can interpret.’
Donovan’s rage subsided and he sank back to his seat.
‘I forgot,’ he whispered. He took a few deep breaths. The red mist faded. ‘I’ve customized the displays so many times, and each time they’re clearer to me and I forget…I stayed awake for over forty hours trapping, leashing, tethering hunter-killer viruses, turning my best against my second-best, generation against generation, and I assure you that they’re almost all in dead cores.’
‘So what is it that Lawson’s finding?’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre asked, as if to himself.
They stared at each other.
‘Oh, shit!’
Bleibtreu-Fèvre looked about. ‘Do you have some interface I can use?’
‘Better do this between us,’ Donovan said.
They hacked and patched the Stasis metrics with some of Donovan’s less toxic software. The disruption was back, even worse than it had been the day the Watchmaker entity had first made its presence felt. It was getting worse by the minute.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Donovan groaned. ‘There’s no way this won’t set off alarms, especially with your lot and Space Defense getting on each other’s nerves.’ He glared at Bleibtreu-Fèvre, who shifted uncomfortably, then suddenly smiled.
‘There is a way to divert their suspicions,’ he said. He leaned forward, his eyes glowing in the gloom. (Just a reflection from the screens, Donovan reassured himself.) ‘Claim it, Donovan! Claim it! Say you did it! Boast about it!’
Donovan shot him a look of respect. ‘That’s an excellent idea,’ he said. He started keying out standard communiqués even as he spoke, flashing releases to news agencies. ‘And meanwhile I can use it to test the countersystems I’ve developed!’ He rose triumphantly to his feet. ‘They might even work first time…God, if we could kill this thing right now…’
He was too wise in the ways of computer systems to really believe it: nothing ever worked the first time. But he wanted, now, to get Bleibtreu-Fèvre involved. He was going to need all the help he could get, and he’d just been impressed with the man’s skills. Already, responses to the CLA’s claim of responsibility were battering against the rig’s systems like heavy seas against the rig itself. Donovan mobilized his crew to deal with that and turned to showing Bleibtreu-Fèvre the results of his past days of work.