System Shock Part 23

He had an uncomfortable feeling that Clark would need all the help and information he could get.

Robert Gibson was bored out of his mind. He was still not allowed to leave his room, and had only recently been permitted even to sit up in the hospital bed. So far as he was concerned, he was practically better.

But the doctors clucked their tongues and made pessimistic comments about concussion and shock and bedrest. They confused him with medical jargon and he wished Harry Sullivan were there to translate.

205.

Gibson's only source of amus.e.m.e.nt was the television. At least it offered a full service of interactive channels. If he had a mind to, and saw any point, Gibson could do his shopping from his hospital bed. He could watch the very latest films, devise his own plots for popular soap operas, or tune in to a chosen blast from the past. He had watched a wobbly series of Nightshade Nightshade from what seemed like centuries ago and found the plot less implausible than he remembered; he had introduced new characters based on known terrorists to from what seemed like centuries ago and found the plot less implausible than he remembered; he had introduced new characters based on known terrorists to Coronation Street Coronation Street and found it livened up the storylines no end; he had managed to destroy the guns of Navarone twice. and found it livened up the storylines no end; he had managed to destroy the guns of Navarone twice.

But he was still bored.

He flicked from channel to channel hoping to find something vaguely interesting and wondered how long his sentence was going to be.

Westwood could stand it no longer. It was the sitting around that got to him. If there was something he could do to occupy himself, anything at all, it would help. But as it was, he had to sit helplessly while the aliens ran riot at Hubway. Ran riot in his his project. project.

The other hostages seemed content to let them do as they pleased. A few guns round the place and they were as meek as lambs. 'Don't worry,' they said. 'You'll get your chance,' they hinted. 'We have to sit it out,' they admitted. Old women, the lot of them.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Glas...o...b..ry smiled rea.s.suringly at him, and he scowled back. She was a peeress of the realm, or something.

She should know better, should set an example. And if she was not up to it, then let her stand aside for someone who was. And that someone would be Bill Westwood. He had stood for enough had been treated like dirt, hounded from room to room, held prisoner outside his own office.

He looked closely at the sub-machine-gun held by the Voracian standing over him. The barrel of the gun was pointing at the floor, angled away from Westwood in the alien's casual grasp. Out of instinct as much as determination, Westwood saw his chance and grabbed for the gun.

206.

He was a big man, and his twice-weekly workouts at the gym meant he was strong with it. Given the element of surprise as well, Westwood managed to rip the gun away from the alien, pulling the creature down to the floor beside him. The whole thing was over in seconds, a blur of motion and Westwood had the gun, was kneeling over the alien with the weapon trained on its supine figure.

He was not quite sure what to do next. The other hostages were watching amazed, though he could see glimmers of encouragement and hope in their eyes. Maybe they could use the alien he had overpowered as a hostage of their own.

But Westwood had hesitated too long. Already the alien was rolling aside, away from the line of the gun. Westwood followed its movement, realigning the weapon, sighting along it. And out of the edge of his eye saw the Voracian across the room bringing its own gun to bear.

The only gun Westwood had ever fired before was a .22 rifle on the school range. The strength of the recoil from the Heckler and Koch surprised him, rocked him backwards. His arms moved up with the force and a line of bullet holes drilled high into the wall of the room. The hostages dived for what cover they could, protecting faces with hands. The Voracian on the floor seized its chance and kicked Westwood's legs from under him.

Westwood stared up at the ceiling, felt the machinegun pulled from his hands, saw Lewis stand over him and raise a gun, heard the alien's short rasp of laughter.

The Doctor was opening the door into the further of the two main outbuildings. His trip through the new block had been relatively uneventful the systems there seemed not to be primed to kill him. The most hazardous part of the journey through the block and out into the grounds had been the dash across the foyer and through the main doors. There were two Voracians in the security control room, incongruously dressed as waitresses despite their alien faces. The Doctor had summoned his courage and his energy, then sprinted across to the main exit and been away without them seeming to notice.

207.

As the door to the outbuilding unlatched and clicked open, a sound carried to the Doctor from the main house. It was a sudden, staccato rattle the sound of machinegun fire. The Doctor paused for a moment on the threshold as he listened, but all was silent again now. Then he slammed his fist into the doorframe in anger, and pushed into the building.

The burst of gunfire carried also to the people a.s.sembled round the main entrance. Harry broke off for a moment from his conversation with Inspector Ashby; police marksmen pressed their eyes closer into their nightsights; officers monitoring the output from the directional microphones now trained on the house windows exchanged glances.

Colonel Clark was sitting in the back of his Range-rover. He was going through the blueprints again with the concentration and precision of a machine, formulating and discarding a.s.sault plans in his head and deciding how best to present the available data to the BattleNet systems when they arrived. As the familiar sound echoed in the night air, he lifted his head from the maps and drawings and sat back in his chair. Then he shook his head slowly, sadly, and reached for the telephone.

208.

10.

Intelligent Systems

The Doctor had spent a long time connecting and reconnecting network cables to one of the server machines in the outbuilding. Now he was sitting in front of the main operator's console checking that the link-ups were established. His next task was to provide a user interface a front-end screen to allow people to access the data stream he was now providing.

The single huge room filled the entire windowless building.

The building itself had been a coachhouse. Now it housed the interactive television servers and transmission routers. The floor was littered with computer equipment, while the whole of one wall was taken up with a bank of televisions, each tuned to a different channel. They were a mixture of standard television monitors and the latest flat-panel liquid crystal displays. A swivel chair sat empty and alone in front of the couch potato's dream.

Each day each hour even new subscribers were added to the interactive television systems which were already at over fifty per cent capacity. A mult.i.tude of viewers getting their daily exercise by clicking b.u.t.tons to change channel, to download films of their choice, to determine the next major event in their favourite soap opera or game show.

The Doctor shook his head as he thought about it, millions of people relying on remote control to get a life. Still, it might be his one chance of getting a message to Harry. He added a few final flourishes to the screen full of graphics he had prepared, and compiled it into a channel listing on the main servers.

209.

The Voracians had set an artificial intelligence to monitor the television channels. It was a variation of a standard agent agent program designed to watch for mention of specified words or phrases. Typically it was used by brokers to check for mention of specific shares and companies on the financial channels. program designed to watch for mention of specified words or phrases. Typically it was used by brokers to check for mention of specific shares and companies on the financial channels.

The brokers would set the agent to record the relevant information and route it to a broker's terminal. Stabfield had set his program to monitor for any mention of Hubway, I2 or himself. Once triggered, the agent would switch the relevant channel to a particular computer display in the main suite.

Stabfield was interested in any news coverage of their operations.

The way the program worked was to scan each channel in turn, take a sound bite and teletext sample, then move on.

Another thread of the program then checked the sound and the text to see if it matched the criteria the program was watching for. The speed of the software was such that the gap between each sample was less than a fiftieth of a second, so very little data was lost while it scanned other channels.

Gibson was still surfing the channels. He was on the point of giving up and trying to get yet more sleep when something odd caught his attention.

He had flicked finally to the contents listing a complete index of the available channels on the system. He scanned down the screen, snorting in frustration as he read through the uninspiring options. As he reached the last entry on the page, he clicked the page down b.u.t.ton on the remote. One entry caught his eye just as the image changed to the next logical page in the sequence.

Gibson almost dismissed it as hallucination, imagination, or lunacy. But he paged back up just to check. And there it was.

In amongst the other entries on the page, sitting innocently between Surfing General Surfing General and and Suricate Lifecycle and Suricate Lifecycle and Mating Practices Mating Practices was was Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan The Films of his Choice.

He had to shake his head and look again. But the entry was still there. Gibson had not known Sullivan until he was well past the rank of Lieutenant, but it had to be the same Harry.

210.

With not a little apprehension, he selected the entry, and was presented with a list of fifty-six channels. They were labelled, imaginatively, 1 to 56. Being fundamentally organized and logical at heart, Gibson started with channel 1.

The picture was not good. Not only was it rather fuzzy and out of focus, it was also in black and white. It showed a grainy, angled view of a corridor. Gibson frowned at it for a while. He tried squinting at the television, and turning his head to one side. But it made little difference, so he tried channel 2. It was a similar view, this time of an empty room. The room seemed to be an office of some sort, computer equipment scattered around desks, telephones sprinkled liberally.

It was not until channel 19 that Gibson found anything interesting. He stared at the image for a few seconds, then reached for the phone. He almost knocked his jug of juice to the floor, he was so intent on the television as he felt for the receiver.

The television showed a grainy, black and white picture of a group of people sitting round on the floor of a large room.

Amongst them, Gibson recognized Sarah Jane Smith, the d.u.c.h.ess of Glas...o...b..ry, and the American Amba.s.sador. He could also see what looked like a body, but before he could be sure it was dragged out of view. Standing guard over the group on the floor were several people with sub-machine-guns. From the fuzzy image it looked as if they were wearing masks.

Masks that were part reptile, part robot.

Harry had no doubt who had organized the television pictures. He could think of only one person who would have the technical expertise and the cheek to broadcast the Hubway security camera images on national television.

Clark, Ashby, and the senior police officers gathered round a television set hastily positioned in the police operations van as Harry went through the channels. COBRA was also linked in, although it had taken a few minutes for Harry to persuade the Home Secretary she should be watching television.

There was silence as Harry flicked through each channel in turn. The police watched in amazement as the images flicked past. Clark seemed to take it all in his stride, making notes on a 211 floorplan of the Hubway buildings as he jotted down possible matches between marked camera positions and channel numbers.

'Go back to 19,' Clark said when Harry reached the end.

They all stared at the picture of the hostages, gunmen standing over them. On the adjacent video monitor, Harry could see COBRA sitting round their table, watching a similar screen.

'Are they wearing masks?' asked one of the policemen eventually.

'We were wondering the same thing,' the Home Secretary's voice said from a speaker off to the left.

Harry took a deep breath. 'Not exactly,' he said. 'There is something that you should know. Something important.

Something that you may find rather difficult to accept.'

Stabfield leafed through the papers in the Phase Five Phase Five folder. folder.

Johanna Slake watched over his shoulder. So far the security forces were acting according to prediction.

'But that does not mean we can rest on our laurels,' Stabfield pointed out as he leafed through the fan-folded printout. 'It's not all taped-out yet.'

'Agreed.'

Stabfield glanced up sharply at Johanna. But she did not seem to notice. He waited a moment to let his admonition hit home. 'There is a twelve per cent chance they will risk an exploratory incursion in the next three hours. Make sure that the ground floor entry opportunities in particular are patrolled and a.n.a.lysed regularly.'

'Yes, director.'

Stabfield nodded. That was better. 'I would also suggest random patrols of the exterior-facing rooms. These sweeps may also pick up the Doctor if he is foolish enough to remain in the area.' Stabfield pulled another sheet of paper from the folder. 'This is a timetable and set of routes for random patrols.' He handed it to Johanna. 'I would like your team to instigate them without delay.'

As Johanna took the sheet of laser-printed paper from Stabfield, her attention wandered slightly. Stabfield turned, 212 annoyed as Johanna's gloved hand closed, missing the paper by an inch. He followed her line of sight to a screen sitting on a desk in the far corner of the room. The screen was showing a black and white video image. As Stabfield watched, the picture changed to another, similar image. A line of text ran underneath each picture.

It took him a moment to work out what the images were. A third picture replaced the second and Stabfield saw himself and Johanna watching a screen in the corner of the room. The viewpoint for the picture was above and behind them, and Stabfield and Johanna both turned to see the source of the image.

The small security camera mounted on a bracket above the main door stared back at them.

'Who switched the security systems through here?'

The Voracian technician establishing the network connections turned from his monitor. He stared at the pictures for a while. Then he went over to the monitor and started typing instructions on the attached keyboard.

'Well?' Stabfield prompted.

'It's not the security systems.' The Voracian finished typing and turned back to face Stabfield.

'Then what is it?' Johanna asked.

'It's the current broadcasts from fifty-six cable and satellite channels. The agent software is switching between them. It picked up on the teletext, which mentions Hubway in the standard camera ident accompanying each picture.'

Stabfield went over to the screen. He watched as the image changed again, to show a deserted corridor. The text beneath the picture read: Hubway 1/99/05 Main House Interior 21:17 Hubway 1/99/05 Main House Interior 21:17 'How is it possible that the security images are being broadcast?' he asked quietly.

The Voracian technician said nothing.

'The Doctor?' Johanna asked.

Stabfield slammed his fist down on the top of the screen. 'Of course the Doctor,' he shouted. Almost immediately he was calm again. Only the exaggerated swaying of his head betrayed his emotion. 'He is in the interactive television unit,' Stabfield said quietly to Johanna. 'Bring him here.'

213.

The hostages were quiet again, shocked by Westwood's sudden actions and the violent response. The Voracians were even more vigilant now, standing slightly further away, holding their guns more tightly.

Sarah was sitting between the d.u.c.h.ess and Amba.s.sador Anderson. The d.u.c.h.ess was quiet, clearly depressed and losing hope. Anderson was also quiet, but Sarah could see that he was seething.

She nudged the d.u.c.h.ess gently in the ribs, and caught the Amba.s.sador's eye. 'You see the light outside the windows the light from the searchlights,' she said.

They both nodded, puzzled at Sarah's question.

She leaned forward, and they automatically edged closer to her. 'Sometime soon,' Sarah said, 'those lights will go out. Just for a second or two.' And she began to explain about the Doctor and his plan.

'All nodes are now on-line.'

Stabfield smiled, flexing his claws within his gloves. 'Good,'

he said.

The CD was resting in its case on the table beside the Voracian technician. The technician made to pick it up, but Stabfield beat him to it.

Stabfield lifted the transparent slipcase, almost gingerly prising it open. He lifted the disc from inside, angling it so it caught the fluorescent light. On the monitor in the far corner of the room, his action was repeated and on the screen within that monitor and so on into infinity.

The technician opened the CD drive and Stabfield carefully placed the disc on to the tray, gently pushing it shut with an artificial index finger.

In the corner of the room the security camera's image was suddenly cut off, as if the camera's plug had been pulled violently from its socket. The screen snowed over with static.

Stabfield's smile extended slightly, reaching almost to both corners of his mouth as they twitched upwards. 'Unleash Voractyll,' he said.

214.

The Doctor had been feeling quite pleased with his handiwork. He was sitting in the chair in front of the wall of televisions, swivelling gently to and fro as he surveyed the output from the Hubway security cameras. Each of the televisions on the wall showed a different picture and the Doctor scanned the monochrome images.

He watched Sarah talking more and more a.s.sertively to the d.u.c.h.ess of Glas...o...b..ry and a big man in a suit as other hostages sat round despondently. He watched Stabfield open a CD case with something akin to reverence. He watched empty corridors and computer rooms.

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw but did not notice Johanna Slake and two Voracians crossing an area of open ground outside the main house. They moved furtively, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the glare of the searchlights. The Doctor was intent for the moment on Stabfield. He watched the grainy pictures of the director of I2 carefully placing a CD-ROM into the drive tray of a computer in the main suite. 'That doesn't look promising,' he murmured.

The outside door crashed open with a wrench of metal and wood. The Doctor turned sharply in his seat. 'h.e.l.lo,' he said.