Rosemary Kirstein - Steerswoman 04 (41 page)

“You can’t,” the cone said. “Farside was locked on
Gee-Three. Gee-Three is gone.”

“Can’t we use one of the other Guidestars ?”

“No. The updates are running. The Guidestars are accepting
only emergency calls.”

“If—” Will seemed to cast about. “I don’t know—if I could
disguise my signal, somehow—”

“It wouldn’t help. Farside was directly under Gee-Three.
Gee-Two and Gee-Four don’t overlap.”

Silence again, but for the hiss from the cone: the sound of
the sea, of darkness, the sound of the absence of pattern.

A minute passed. Then Willam said: “There has to be another
way.”

“No. You’ve done what you can. Erase your tracks, close up—”

“But sir, I’m talking to
you.”
The wizard did not
respond. “And I’m not using any Guidestar. When Farside lost Gee-Three,
wouldn’t the automatics try to get help? If they couldn’t reach a Guidestar,
wouldn’t they try something else? Everything else, every way they knew about?”

“After more than forty years …” The wizard’s voice was
thoughtful.

“‘They don’t get tired,’” Willam said, as if quoting. “‘They
don’t get bored, and they don’t get distracted.’ And,” he added, in apparently
his own words, “they don’t have hope—so they can’t ever lose hope, can they?”

A pause, during which the unseen ocean briefly crested. The
wizard’s words emerged as the noise receded again. “—omething like a caretaker
process—”

“That’s what I mean,” Will said immediately, eagerly.

“Perhaps … Stand by.”

Hissing silence. Willam’s neglected searchers were nearly
all red now. Willam noticed, scanned their ranks, hesitated. He selected two
and brought them close. Red flickered in his copper eyes as he studied them.

He glanced up, at the dragon-eye lattice.

Above the grid, the numbers showed seventeen minutes remaining.

Willam looked about, then down, reached under one of the
wood slabs. There came a quiet sound, mundane, almost shocking in its
familiarity: the sound of a drawer opening.

Willam pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. He wrote rapidly,
glancing at the two searchers before him, and at the several that he had
previously set apart, high above.

“Will.”

“Here, sir.” Willam stopped short, pushed pencil and paper
aside.

“Look for something called ‘broadcast’ or ‘receiver.’”

Willam glanced among the nearby searchers, settled on one,
used his lap board. The searcher emptied of symbols, and new words appeared,
arranged in short lines, like a list. Will shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Try ‘R-F’ or ‘short wave.’”

Result was immediate. “I’ve got it.” Willam’s hands moved,
quick, graceful. “Do I need to shift the dish?”

“Stand by.” A pause, then a thoughtful, dissatisfied sound
from the wizard. “This is all new to me … No, it looks like you’ll keep using
the antenna … I haven’t found yet how much power you’ll need …”

“Maybe it will tell me itself.”

Out of sheer nothingness, two objects appeared on Jannik’s
desk, lit by a spill of light from no source: a flat wooden box, with glass
insets on its upper face; and something like a silver candlestick, with a squat
mesh bulb in place of the candle. The glass insets seemed to contain simple
graphs.

Will gave the objects a single glance of scorn and
impatience, and caused them to vanish again. He muttered, “I can’t even guess
what that was supposed to be …”

“A problem?”

“No, sir. Just the interface construct. I’m behind it now.”
He pulled opposite corners of the transparent page, expanding it to four times
its previous size. He studied it, occasionally tapping his lap board with one
finger; the letters of light altered in rhythm, the entire block at once,
flashing. “No …”

“Forget power for the moment; you’ll start by listening …
here’s something. How high is the rod right now?”

“Fifteen meters …”

“Send it up as far as you can.”

Willam nodded, worked; and from somewhere inside the house,
a hum, which continued for a full minute, and ended with a faint rattle and
creak. “Where should I listen?”

“I have no idea … Start at the bottom, work your way up
…” Rapidly, Willam created a translucent square, and inside it a simple graph
displaying a sine function. But the curving line lived, flailed, seemed to
fight its confinement.

Calmly, Willam watched it.

Quiet, but for sound from the cone: the distant, endless
ocean wave, as if time itself had frozen in the moment of its breaking.

Willam checked the time remaining: fourteen minutes. He
closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, opened them; and then calmly,
methodically, caused his searchers to vanish, one by one.

Red light diminished incrementally, flick and flick, until only
those searchers Willam had set high above remained. The living light of the
world’s image on Willam’s right began to dominate: cool, gentle, lovely.

“Anything?” Corvus asked.

Motion, to one side. Willam glanced left, froze.

Within the lattice of dragon eyes, more than a dozen little
squares showed movement, shifting light.

“Will?”

“Stand by,” spoken quietly, as if the distant creatures
could hear him.

The shutters came down.
OFFLINE.

Will did not relax. “Jannik is starting to get good at
finding the jammers.”

“Then he’s cleverer than we thought.”

“Or we were not so clever as we thought …”

“And we’re running out of time. No signal yet?”

“I’m still running through the frequencies …” Will
hesitated, then picked up his pencil and wrote again, reading the high red letters
intently.

Quiet, for a space; then the wizard spoke, a trace of
amusement in his voice. “By the way, I had an interesting conversation with
Abremio the other day.”

Will glanced at the cone, continued to write. “Yes, sir?”

“He mentioned that he had located my lost pet in Donner, and
did I want it back? I told him not to bother.” Corvus be—

came serious. “But you should be on the alert, Will. Someone,
one of Abremio’s people, is in Donner, and has spotted you.” Willam’s eyes grew
dark; but he spoke with careful noncha—

lance. “Two people, sir,” he said. “And they’re dead.”

The wizard made a satisfied sound. “Good. Good work.” Willam
did not reply. The graph writhed; the cone hissed. Willam stopped writing, and
set down the pencil. He gazed at the last red searchers above him, each in
turn, his expression unreadable. Then he banished them.

All that remained were the world, on his right; the dragon
eyes, angled off on his left; and the glowing graph before him. Its yellow line
continued to move, weirdly alive, snakelike.

The snake froze.

“I’ve got something,” Willam said. “The wavelength is ten
meters.” Moving quickly, he created a new square, outlined in blue. It remained
empty. “But it’s just a signal. It’s not saying anything.”

“A carrier wave. Ping it. Use all the power you have.” Will
worked: a flurry of light taps.

The empty square grew blue letters, one by one.

Willam stopped short, reading; then he released a pent
breath and collapsed back in Jannik’s chair. “I’ve got it,” he said weakly.
“It’s Farside.”

“Good work!” The wizard sounded amazed, and very pleased
indeed. “Now, getting past its security is going to be difficult. I’ll try to
walk you through it—”

But Will was already sitting up again, his hands were
already moving, with uncanny speed. “Stand by.”

“Will—”

“Stand by.” He was scanning the penciled symbols on the simple
sheet of paper as he worked.

“—Will, don’t be rash, if you don’t do this right—”

“I’m in.”

A pause.
“What?”

“I’m in. Stand by, it’s asking me for everything, and trying
to tell me all its problems, all at once … there.” Will leaned back. “I sent
a total override.” He sighed, seemed to gather himself. “Right. Let’s see about
those addresses …” He began again; the blue letters and numbers vanished, and
new ones appeared, flowing onto the magic page.

“Will,” Corvus said, “how did you get past the security?” Wiliam
replied distractedly. “Worked around it.”

“I’m impressed.” And, by the sound of the wizard’s voice,
faintly disturbed.

Will seemed not to notice. “Thank you, sir. The addresses
match. It’s retrieving … Here we go.”

Symbols, in pure, blue light, began accumulating in the air,
within the abstract boundaries of an insubstantial, transparent page. “This is
slow …”

“You don’t have much bandwidth.”

The dragon-eye lattice came alive.

Will was a moment noticing, another moment waiting,
wide-eyed.

The movements in the lattice continued.

Wiliam slowly lifted his hands from the lap board. His
copper eyes showed white all around.

“Wiliam?”

Wiliam did not move. He spoke quietly. “I think I’m dead,
sir. The jammers are down, all of them. Jannik has contact.”

Corvus said, quickly, “You’re not dead yet. He may not have
noticed you.”

“The
house
knows I’m here!”

“Yes, and it thinks you’re Jannik.”

Sudden realization. “I can lock him out completely—” Wiliam
made to address his lap board.

“No!” Will stopped. “If you do that,” Corvus went on,
“Jannik will know someone is there. Will, stay calm; we still might get through
this without giving you away.”

“But—”

“The house system is sophisticated, but not that
sophisticated. It’s a very stupid creature, like all of its kind. As far as the
house is concerned, Jannik is perfectly able to give a command from his desk,
instantly transport himself miles away, and give another command remotely. The
house doesn’t know any better.”

Willam began to recover, cautiously. “What is Jannik doing
right now?” Corvus asked.

Within the lattice, a sequence was occurring: a white
outline appeared around one square, then moved to the next, and the next.

“Will?”

“It looks like some sort of status check for each dragon.”

“That’s all? He hasn’t asked the house for its own current
status?”

“No …”

“Good. Fix it so that if he does, the house will tell him that
all is well.” Willam did not reply. “Will, you just broke into Farside. This
is simple by comparison. You’re just panicking.” The wizard’s voice became
steady, patient: the voice of a teacher. “I have every confidence in you. You
can do this. Stay calm, stay focused. Ask for the house status yourself. See
what it says.”

Will lowered his hands cautiously, tapped hesitantly; a page
appeared, with words scattered across its face. Willam blinked, then seemed to
take in their meaning, and grew more certain. “It’s saying that the desk is
active, the antenna is deployed, and signals being broadcast and received.” He
worked, with a growing confidence. “And now … and now it’s saying that
they’re not. And it will keep saying that, if Jannik asks …” He slumped back
in the chair. “But only if he asks for an overall status. If he asks for some
specific subsystem, and it’s something I’m using, that will show up.”

“I doubt he’ll do that. Taking care of the dragons is about
the limit of Jannik’s abilities. Do you have any progress with that file?”

The page had filled; the lines of symbols were now shifting
upward, as more were added at the bottom edge.

Only two symbols, repeating endlessly. Willam slowly grew
disbelieving. “No …” A quiet, plaintive sound.

“A problem?”

Willam spoke to himself, under his breath. “No, no … it
can’t be empty …” He leaned closer.

“Wiliam?”

He seemed to remember the wizard’s presence, glanced at the
paper cone as if glancing at a person’s face. “It looks
blank.”

“
Erased?”

“No … it’s a file, it’s marked as one, it’s in Farside’s
own index as a file … but …” He spread his hands. “There’s nothing in it.”

“How many addresses did you recover?”

“Forty or so. But Farside has …” Willam tapped. “… more
than ten thousand marked as Kieran’s.” The page emptied; blue light vanished
from Willam’s face, his eyes. “I’m trying another one.”

The symbols began again: a handful of lines of apparently
random numbers and letters, then: two symbols, repeating.

Will did not wait for the page to fill. “The same.” He
vanished the letters. “I’m trying another. They can’t all be like that, not
now, not after all this—”

“Willam, the updates complete in less than five minutes.”

Will made a sound through his teeth; he fisted one hand. The
blue letters, oblivious, continued placidly to collect themselves on the page.
“This is too slow!”

“We can’t make the files come across any faster.”

“I can’t
tell
if they’re empty until I get them
here!” He stopped short. “But Farside has them all—right now!” He worked quickly.
“I’m setting up a searcher at Farside itself, to give me a list of any of
Kieran’s records that are not empty.” A last tap, which had to it an air of
finality. Will waited, unblinking, utterly still.

“It’s one thing to pull out information already stored,” the
voice of Corvus said, “but to get Farside to—”

“All of them,” Willam said.

A pause. “What?”

Will leaned forward, brows knit.
“All
the files have
something
in them.” The wizard said nothing. “Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough.
Maybe only the beginnings are empty. Farside says
something’s
in
there!”

“Will, we’re running out of time. Three minutes left. If
you’re going to give up, you should break off the contact now.”

For the space of some thirty seconds, Willam stared,
wide-eyed, completely still, through the pages of light and color, past the
walls of Jannik’s office.

Then: “Sir … how sure
is
it, that I would be
spotted?”