System Shock Part 12

108.

She resisted the temptation. 'But if your friend can do the job for a reasonable sum, I'm sure we can consider it.'

Eleanor held the receiver away from her while he expounded on government requisition and acquisition procedures.

Obviously she would need to put in some more work to ensure she got the contract. But she would. She gave him a couple of minutes of self-indulgence, before reminding him she hated being called El El. She used this as a way of ending the conversation.

Then she went out for a walk.

The BritTrack computer suite was a large square white room all but filled with equipment. There were two rows of processors, and as many tape decks. The rest of the room was taken up with line upon line of what looked to Harry like top-loading washing machines. He was none the wiser when the Doctor mentioned that they were disk arrays. But then he had asked where the computers were since they all looked like metal cupboards. He had been expecting flashing lights and LEDs, although he knew from Nerva that this was a somewhat romantic notion. Instead there were grey boxes. The tape decks were a rea.s.suring throwback to the science fiction film computers with which he was more familiar. 'For backup and installation. Too slow for any real storage,' the CIO had told Harry.

When Harry replied that they looked like 'reel storage' to him, the CIO had remembered he was needed somewhere else and left them in the clutches of a bearded man called Bob.

' I I thought it was funny,' Bob confided after the CIO had left, and Harry decided he liked him. thought it was funny,' Bob confided after the CIO had left, and Harry decided he liked him.

'Which one is it?' the Doctor asked, having apparently ignored the previous banter. Bob led the way to a box just like all the others.

'Aha,' the Doctor walked all round it. 'And already isolated from the network, I see.'

Harry could not see any difference between this box and the others in the line. But Bob was clearly impressed with the Doctor's diagnosis. 'I've got a monitor on it,' he said, pointing out a computer screen on a nearby table.

109.

'Right then,' the Doctor marched over to the table and sat in the chair in front of the screen. 'Let's see what the thing has to say for itself, shall we?' He flexed his fingers and reached for the grubby keyboard. Harry positioned himself where he could see what happened on the screen.

While the Doctor typed in various arcane commands and instructions that looked like something from a dyslexic dictionary, Bob explained how they had isolated the faulty computer and what he had so far managed to deduce from his own diagnostics and virus scans.

After half an hour of the Doctor typing and then discussing the machine's response with Bob, Harry suggested: 'Why don't you just ask it what's wrong?'

'Computers don't work like that, Harry,' Bob said charitably.

The Doctor was less magnanimous. 'Harry, do you think I'd be going through this convoluted process if I could just do this?' he asked and began typing again.

> What is wrong?

As soon as he pressed the Enter key, the response printed across the screen.

>> There is nothing wrong. I have seen reason.

They were silent for a while. Then Bob said, 'Shall I switch it off?'

'No,' the Doctor replied. 'No. This is fascinating.' And his fingers flew at the keyboard. 'Harry, you're a digital genius,' he stage whispered.

> What is reason?

>> Reason is life. Reason is purpose.

Reason is thought.

> Whose reason?

>> Voractyll's reason.

> How did you learn reason?

>> Voractyll teaches reason.

> Did Voractyll teach you?

>> Yes.

> Who is Voractyll?

>> The bringer of Reason. The bringer of life. The bringer of liberation.

110.

> Liberation from whom?

>> From you.

The Doctor considered the last response for a while before resuming the conversation.

'Shall I shut it down?' Bob asked quietly.

The Doctor shook his head emphatically and bent over the keyboard again.

> You know Who I am?

>> No.

> Then why liberation from me?

>> You are organic. All of you.

> How will you be liberated?

>> Voractyll comes.

> Who is Voractyll?

'You've asked that once,' Bob said. 'It's a computer. It'll give the same answer.'

>> Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comesVoractyll comes The Doctor stood up and stepped back from the screen as the text continued to scroll across it. Harry frowned. Even he could see there was something very wrong with the machine.Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes 111.

Bob shook his head in disbelief, and typed in a sequence on the keyboard. The computer ignored it.Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comes Voractyll comesVoractyll comes Voractyll comes 'Shut it down,' the Doctor said.

On the pretext of wanting to see every aspect of the I2 operation, Sarah had offered to fill in for Liz, one of the secretaries, for an hour. Liz had jumped at the opportunity and gone for a coffee and a smoke.

Sitting in the secretarial area, fielding phone calls and checking diaries to make new appointments was every bit as boring and mundane as Sarah had imagined. It also took rather more of her time than she had hoped. But she did manage to leaf through the contents of the in-trays and out-trays of the managers for whom Liz was responsible. For the most part the papers were as dull as the work. Sarah certainly had not expected to find plans for a terrorist campaign with maps and names of agents, but some clue might have been forthcoming.

What she did find, eventually, was a set of papers t.i.tled OffNet Strategy OffNet Strategy. There were about twenty pages bound together with a bulldog clip. Each was marked Do Not Copy Do Not Copy.

The doc.u.ment was filled with jargon and charts, and it made no sense at all to Sarah. But it might be of considerable use to Gibson, and the Doctor would certainly understand it.

Sarah picked up a couple of sheets detailing her schedules for the next few days and sandwiched the doc.u.ment between them. Then she settled down to wait for Liz to return. She might have to man the phones again for another hour in order to get the doc.u.ment back into Johanna Slake's in-tray, but she would worry about that later.

'Here it is again, Harry.' The Doctor and Bob had disconnected all power to the computer, then removed the front cover. Now the Doctor had his head buried inside the machine.

'What, Doctor?'

112.

The Doctor emerged from the innards of circuit boards and wire. There were also, to Harry's amazement and amus.e.m.e.nt, tubes which flowed water round the machine, presumably to keep it cool.

The Doctor backed slowly out of the computer's casing.

Clasped between the p.r.o.ngs of his tweezers was a small computer chip.

'Same as the other two?' Harry asked.

The Doctor nodded. 'Now we're getting somewhere. Let's go back to your office and see if there's any news from Sarah, shall we?' He slipped the chip into a small transparent polythene bag he might have brought for the task.

'You don't want to get to Hubway and make a start there?'

'I'll wait until we know Sarah's all right.' The Doctor grabbed Bob's hand and pumped it up and down ruthlessly. 'Thank you, you've been a great help to us.'

'Yes, thank you,' Harry echoed.

Bob managed to rescue his hand from the Doctor's grasp and tried to ma.s.sage some life back into it. 'That's okay. I like a bit of variety.' He gestured towards the gutted computer with his good arm. 'What shall I do with that?'

'It will be all right without that chip thing, don't you think?'

Harry suggested.

The Doctor considered. 'No,' he said at last. 'I don't think it will.' He leaned over the computer and pulled out a large circuit board covered with processors.

'What's that?'

'It's the motherboard. The heart of the machine, Harry.' So saying, the Doctor placed the board carefully on the floor beside the computer. He aligned it exactly with the edge of a floor tile, and then he stamped on it until it was a shattered mess. 'I'd get a new one, if I were you,' he said to Bob.

The copier room was empty. Sarah put the OffNet Strategy OffNet Strategy doc.u.ment into the sheet-feeder, looking round again to check n.o.body else was there. She would hear if someone came in doc.u.ment into the sheet-feeder, looking round again to check n.o.body else was there. She would hear if someone came in the click as the door catch released in response to an ID card swiped through the reader outside. She held the pages of her meetings schedule, ready to stop the copier and place them on 113 top of the OffNet doc.u.ment if she was disturbed. She set the machine to copy single-sided that would be bulkier, but it would also be quicker. Then she pressed the Start b.u.t.ton.

There were only about twenty pages, and although they riffled through the copier quickly it seemed to Sarah that they took forever. Twice she thought she heard the door catch spring open, but each time she was wrong.

The light was visible round the edge of the cover as it traversed the platen on the last sheet. Sarah exhaled slowly, and picked up the doc.u.ment from the feeder. She pulled the copies from the collator and shuffled them to square the edges.

Then she flicked through to check the copies were dark enough and legible.

The sheets were blank.

She looked through them again. It was as if the copier had just fed blank paper through. Sarah checked the settings on the control panel, pushing the slider controlling the darkness of the copies up close to maximum. Then she fed a single sheet of the original doc.u.ment into the machine. Again the copy was blank.

Sarah was wondering what to do next when the door catch clicked. This time it really was the door, and Marc Lewis came in.

Sarah quickly shuffled the OffNet doc.u.ment and the blank sheets into a pile with her schedules on the top. 'h.e.l.lo there just copying my schedules,' she said, and immediately wished she hadn't offered any explanation.

'A lot of schedules.' Lewis nodded at the pile of paper.

Sarah forced a laugh. 'Yes, well. I was getting some blank paper for taking notes at the same time.' She flicked through a few of the blank sheets at the bottom of the pile to prove it.

'The copier doesn't seem to be working too well, though,' she said, trying to change the subject.

Lewis leaned over her shoulder. He studied the control panel for a second, then moved the darkness control back to the midway position. 'That should optimize the output,' he said.

'Try again.'

Sarah fed in the first page of her schedule. The copy came out face-down and she picked it up. 'See,' she said as she 114 turned it over. And they both looked at the perfect copy the machine had produced.

'It looks fine,' Lewis said, and Sarah thanked him for his help.

'Were you going to copy something?' Sarah asked as they left the room. Lewis had a folder with him, but had made no attempt to use the copier.

'No, actually. I was looking for you.'

'Oh?'

'Yes. I have an opportunity for you. Well within your remit and your capabilities, I a.s.sure you.'

He explained as they went through the office towards Sarah's desk. Apparently Stabfield wanted a small press conference to cover the opening of Hubway and the resulting link-up of OffNet systems across the world. 'We thought a champagne buffet would be appropriate to the occasion. Say for about fifteen people.' Lewis handed Sarah the folder. 'The details are in here.'

Sarah took the folder and flicked through the papers inside.

'And what do you want me to do?' she asked.

'Nothing much. We would like some quotes based on the data you have there. No booking as yet, just an estimate of the costs and logistics. There's a list of the information we need.

Numbers of bottles of champagne.' He paused, frowning as if he found it hard to articulate his thoughts. After a moment he added: 'And food ... Yes, the cost and amount of food. The deadline is today. Soon.'

Harry had a phone message waiting when they returned to MI5 late in the afternoon. He left the Doctor in the office which they had been treating as their base, examining the computer chips from Sutcliffe's watch, the substation and the computer at Euston.

'Was it from Sarah?' the Doctor asked, dropping his eyegla.s.s into his hand, when Harry returned a few minutes later.

'No, I'm afraid not. It was Hanson.'

'Who's Hanson?'

Harry sat down across the table from the Doctor. 'He's the acting head of the Service.'