Resurrection, Inc.

1

The two Enforcers found the dead man in the street, long after curfew. The city’s night hung around them, tainted with a clammy mist caught between the tall and dark buildings. The smell of fresh blood, smoke, and the sweat of close-pressed bodies drifted upward into the air.

The slain man was naked, spread-eagled inside a geometrically perfect pentagram drawn in blood. At each of the five corners of the pentagram burned candles of black paraffin, made to look archaic with artificially molded runnels of wax along the sides. A wide knife wound hung cleanly open in the center of the victim’s chest, like an appalled extra mouth.

With a throb of its rear jets, the Enforcers’ armored hovercar descended to the flagstones. As the engine purred its way into silence, Enforcer Jones, a tall and thin black man, emerged from the craft. He hung back uneasily, remaining near the hovercar. “Neo-Satanists again!” he muttered under his breath.

The other Enforcer, Frampton, agreed. “Yeah, they give me the creeps.” Belying his words, he went eagerly forward, amused and confident.

Weapons bristled from pockets and holsters on the Enforcers’ body armor; tough helmets with laser-proof black visors covered their faces. In the mercifully brief four weeks Frampton had been assigned to him, Jones had never seen his partner’s face, yet somehow he imagined it would wear a stupid boyish grin, maybe some scattered pimples, maybe curly hair. Frampton seemed to think all this was fun, a game. It didn’t matter, though—they weren’t friends, nor would they ever be. Other Enforcers had a real camaraderie, a team spirit. But this would be Jones’s last night patrol anyway.

“Think I should put out the candles?” Frampton asked.

Jones moved away from the hovercar, shaking off his revulsion of the pentagram, the blood sacrifice. “No, I’ll do it. You see to his ID.”

Frampton retrieved some equipment from the hovercar while Jones stepped forward, methodically squashing each of the five black candles with the heel of his boot. In the distance, through gaps between the massive squarish buildings, he could see the running lights of another patrol car moving in its sweep pattern.

Frampton made a lot of unnecessary noise as he carelessly tumbled equipment onto the flagstones within the pentagram. He picked up one of the scanner-plates and pushed it flat against the dead man’s palm. The optical detectors mapped the swirls and rivulets of the man’s fingerprints, searching for a match in the city’s vast computer network.

“Nothing on The Net about him.” Frampton double checked, but came up with the same answer again.

“Figures,” Jones said.

“Ever wonder how the neo-Satanists manage to get people who aren’t even in the databases, every time? Weird.” Frampton sounded breathless. He was always trying to make conversation. Always.

Jones turned an expressionless black visor at his partner for a long and silent moment. He wanted to act cold, wanted to be gruff with the other Enforcer. It was too late to make friends now—better just to keep up the act for one more night. “How do you know they don’t just alter the data on The Net?”

Frampton considered this in silent amazement. “That would be awfully sophisticated!”

“Don’t you think this is sophisticated?” Jones jabbed a hand at the body, the candles, the pentagram. “Enforcers sweep this area every five minutes after curfew. You know how strict it is, how closely patrolled—and the neo-Satanists still managed to get him out on the street, draw the pentagram, light the candles, and then vanish before we could get here.”

Only members of the Enforcers Guild were allowed on the streets of the Bay Area Metroplex between midnight and dawn. Jones didn’t fully understand the actual reasons for the curfew—he’d heard rumors of a war taking place somewhere, but he had yet to see any signs of battle. Other, more sensible people cited the occasional violent riots caused by angry blue-collars who had been displaced from their jobs by resurrected Servants.

Jones himself had participated in some of the mock street battles staged by the Guild after dark. Nobody really got hurt—the damage usually included no more than a few blasted palm trees, a handful of scorched tile rooftops, and plenty of noise in the streets. But it all sounded terrible and dangerous enough to the general public huddled in their living quarters, that they would always feel grateful for the protection the Guild offered. Besides, it gave all the Enforcers something to do.

Earlier in the night, Jones and Frampton had captured a chunky Asian man cowering under the overhang of a darkened business complex. The man had been trying to hide, not knowing where to go, as if he had a chance of avoiding the Enforcer sweeps.

Frampton had pulled out two of his weapons and started toward the unfortunate man, but Jones restrained his partner and listened while the chunky man babbled an explanation. He and his wife had argued, and he had stormed out of their apartment, either forgetting about the curfew or not caring. Now his wife wouldn’t let him back in, and the man had been trying to stay out of sight until dawn.

Sheepishly the Asian man keyed his Net password into the terminal mounted in the armored hovercar; his ID checked out.

“You know what we have to do now,” Jones said from behind his visor.

The man swallowed and hung his head in dejected horror. “Yes.”

“All your Net privileges are revoked for a week. Sorry. Curfew is curfew.” The Asian man sulked behind the restraining field in the back of the hovercar while Jones and Frampton escorted him home.

Without The Net recognizing his identity, the man would effectively be a non-person for an entire week: he would not be able to buy anything, make person-to-person video or voicelinks, call up entertainment, or even enter his own home unless someone else let him in.

The man’s wife looked frightened but not surprised when the Enforcers arrived to escort her husband back into the dwelling; she didn’t look pleased to see him, and the prospect of having to do everything herself for the next seven days seemed to make her even angrier yet….

“Give me a hand here?” Frampton opened the refrigerated, airtight compartment in the back of the hovercar and returned to the slain man in the pentagram.

Jones bent to take the body’s cold, naked feet while the other Enforcer tightened his handhold under the man’s armpits. Jones could feel the rubbery dead flesh of the victim’s ankles even through his flexsteel-mesh gloves.

Frampton pursed his lips and grinned at the mouthlike wound in the dead man’s chest. “Well, it’s off to the factory for you, my boy. I bet you’re going to miss all this excitement, Jones.”

Transfer generally equated with punishment in the Enforcers Guild, and Jones had screwed up several days before, during a daytime stint on the streets. He had frozen for a moment, let his conscience whisper a few words in his ear, when he had seen a rebel Servant break from her routine and run.

All Servants were reanimated corpses, dead bodies with microprocessors planted in their brains to make the bodies move again, to let them walk and talk and do what they were told. It was much cheaper than manufacturing androids from scratch for doing menial and monotonous tasks.

But even with her head shaved, the lifeless pallor to her skin, and the gray jumpsuit/uniform of all Servants, Jones had difficulty convincing himself that the rebel Servant wasn’t human, that she was already dead and merely reanimated, that she didn’t matter.

The Enforcer found his reprimand ironic: Starting tomorrow, he would be taken from his easy post-curfew beat for full-time service at Resurrection, Inc. to escort newly resurrected Servants to their assignments.

But at least it would get him away from Frampton and his constant inane chattering.

They placed the slain man in the back compartment of the hovercar, folding his arms and legs to fit him into the cramped space. Frampton stood with a miniature Net keyboard in his hand, punching in data about the discovery. “Verify cause of death,” Frampton said. “Single wound, no other apparent bodily damage, no identity information on The Net.”

Jones glanced at the wound in the man’s chest. “Concur.”

“To Resurrection, Inc., right?”

“Yeah.”

Frampton dropped his voice slightly. Because of the dark visor, Jones could read no expression on his partner’s face. “Man, I hope that never happens to me.”

Jones closed the compartment and set the controls for quick-freeze. A hissing noise filled the air. He knew exactly what Frampton meant, but he asked anyway, “What? Being a neo-Satanist sacrifice, or becoming a Servant?”

“Neither one.”

2

On the sixth underground level of Resurrection, Inc., the technician placed the body from Vat 66 onto a clean inspection table. The body’s arms moved loosely, still dripping, almost cooperating, as the tech rearranged them. Four days of conditioning had left the muscles free of rigor and the dead brain ready for imprinting as a Servant. The room smelled strongly of chemicals, making the tech’s eyes and nostrils burn, even after his two years of working there.

On the pocket of the tech’s non-porous lab smock, he had carefully stenciled his name, “RODNEY QUICK,” so no one would steal it. Yet Rodney Quick was generally the only human to spend an entire shift on Level Six anyway; the rest of the workers were Servants—bald and dressed in their characteristic gray jumpsuits—and certainly no Servant would dream of stealing his lab smock. But the stenciled name made Rodney feel important and easily recognized by anyone who might take notice of his work.

Rodney straightened the body’s pliant limbs while drops of vat solution trickled into drainage grooves cut in the polished table surface. The tech hummed to himself as he found a roll of shredded duo-sponges and dabbed the remaining solution from the body.

Thick but limp brown hair hung straight down from one side of Rodney’s head, while on the other side the hair had been tapered drastically back, leaving the area above his ear shaved clean. He stood a few inches shorter than anyone who had ever tried to intimidate him, and his watery blue eyes flicked too often from side to side. The gold-plated stud in his left nostril and the two silicon fingernails on his right hand should have been stylish.

Adjusting the bright overhead lights, Rodney let the glare wash down on the naked body, illuminating the open sacrificial wound in the center of the man’s chest. Beneath the inspection table, sharp-angled shadows crowded on the floor, responding with grotesque exaggerations to Rodney Quick’s every move. He was reminded of the monsters he had imagined under his bed-unit when he was a child.

The pre-Servant from Vat 66 had finished several days of initial prep for resurrection, soaking in a solution of scrubber bacteria that removed all the lactic acid from the muscles and purged the dead body of waste and undigested food. As a last step before bringing the body to the inspection table, Rodney had drained all the blood vessels and refilled them with saline solution in preparation for the synBlood.

Rodney slipped a pair of magnifying goggles over his eyes and bent down to inspect the wound in the man’s chest. His own shadow lurched across the prone body, but Rodney didn’t notice with his drastically reduced field of view. The tech could see that the wound was clean; the tissue had been hacked and the veins and arteries roughly severed, but Rodney didn’t think it would be difficult to make repairs.

He measured the chest cavity and, leaving the table unattended, went searching for an appropriate synHeart. In the resurrection room other Servants wandered about, performing pre-programmed tasks, checking dials and monitoring vats, meticulously jotting down information. Rodney always felt the irony of having Servants assist him here on Level Six—it seemed like having cattle help out in a slaughterhouse.

The technician stopped at the door to the organ-supply room, keyed in his request to the Net terminal mounted by the door. Moments later, in a puff of cryogenic mist, the door slid open and a flashing light indicated the location of an appropriate cardiac pump. Rodney removed the synHeart and, as he walked out of the clammy-smelling storeroom, he was tempted to toss the organ up in the air and try to catch it when it came back down. But he restrained himself—as always, Supervisor might be watching.

“Out of useless death, we create Service to mankind,” said the inscription above the elevator doors—a quote attributed to Francois Nathans, the magnate of Resurrection, Inc. Rodney suddenly noticed the quote again after two years of working in the lower levels, and he wasn’t quite sure whether to take it with a liberal dose of seriousness or irreverence.

Certain criteria had to be met before Rodney could even begin the resurrection process, and the Enforcers didn’t always know what they were doing when they brought the bodies in. Rodney rejected some of the pre-Servants if they had been too badly mangled, or if rigor had set in too firmly. A potential Servant generally had to be the victim of a sudden death—if a person died from a debilitating disease or old age, the machinery of the body would already be damaged. And Rodney Quick was not about to spend all his waking hours restringing ganglia, growing compatible muscle fiber, popping in a junkyard of synEyes, synLivers, synLungs—no thank you, the company wasn’t quite that desperate for pre-Servants. Besides, the whole process had to be cost-effective or it didn’t make good business sense.

Any death from an accident, or poisoning, or even cardiac arrest was fair game, though. The Enforcers brought in even marginally adequate bodies, anyone they found dead, whether after the curfew or during the daytime, whether dead in bed or killed during one of the street riots. Sometimes Rodney wondered what kind of hold Francois Nathans had on the Enforcers Guild to make them cooperate so easily, especially when Nathans publicly despised the Guild for forcing its “protection” on all of them.

The inadequate pre-Servants, along with other discarded bodies, were shipped off to be converted into animal feed for the great Midwestern agricultural wasteland. Oh, sometimes the family whined about not having the body of their loved one for whatever funeral rites they desired, but Nathans and his partner Stromgaard Van Ryman had won a major victory by battling—both legally and morally—to convince the public that the dead were a major resource to be used for all mankind. What a terrible waste, they campaigned, to stick a body uselessly into the ground just so a few family members could cry over it.

Rodney brought the synHeart back to the table and, adjusting the local room temperature to keep him from perspiring, took a deep breath. He lowered his magnifying goggles and arranged his tools, then set to work. He used arterial sealants, capillary grafts, cellular cement to lock the cardiac pump firmly in place. Every half hour or so, a parade of pain marched up and down his stiff back.

The technician worked alone, in silence, and when he finally eased the tiny battery pellet into the synHeart’s chamber and made ready to close the chest wound, he mused to himself, amazed at how easy it had been for him. His spine ached, and his fingers felt stiff, but he felt proud at proving his skill again. Let Supervisor try to deny that he was one of the best damned technicians in all of Resurrection, Inc!

Though both of Rodney’s parents had been blue-collars, he himself had fought above all that. It could be done, if you had the ambition and the drive. He had spent his teenage years in terror, knowing that he was doomed to follow in his parents’ footsteps of manual labor, tedious blue-collar work that required no brains, no skill at all. Then even that bleak future had been stolen from him by the Servant revolution.

But Rodney had had enough years ahead of him to plan a little, to realize how he must adapt to survive in a rapidly changing new world. He had pored over the resources of The Net, isolating himself, focusing his teenage world on the bright pixels. He expended all his effort to climb a few rungs higher on the ladder of success, finally reaching a position where he could feel important—Main Technician on Lower Level Six of Resurrection, Inc.

But now, with Servants rapidly replacing many blue-collar jobs, all the lower rungs in the ladder of success were also disappearing—and Rodney Quick found himself back near the bottom again through no fault of his own.

Rodney’s father, who had worked in a factory that manufactured shampoo and soap products, was killed in one of the early anti-Servant riots, receiving the full force of an Enforcer’s scatter-stun. Rodney’s mother, tossed out of her job as a dishwasher at the Sunshine cafeteria, now lived off the blue allotment, a special fund garnered from a tariff on the purchase price of Servants. His mother now wandered the streets with the other aimless and apathetic blues who had no training and no hope for any other type of employment. Competition was vicious for the remaining jobs, and Rodney’s mother didn’t have the stamina or the enthusiasm to fight for something she had always thought would be hers by default. Nor would she have anything more to do with her son, claiming that the stink of Resurrection clung to him and that it reminded her of her husband’s blood.

Rodney finished the synHeart operation on the pre-Servant and sealed the dead man’s chest, taking care to make certain the skin seams matched. He then rigged up a slow-pump that began the long and delicate process of refilling the blood vessels with synBlood.

Rodney clasped his hands behind his back in a Napoleonic pose and walked away from the pre-Servant on the table, leaving the pumps to do their work. He inspected the entire resurrection room like a commander surveying his troops. Occasionally he had other human sub-technicians to assist him in some of the inspections and operations, but most of the time Rodney remained the only human on the floor, with only a few other Servants to handle the uninteresting tasks.

Seventy different vats rose from floor to ceiling, dispersed in perfect geometrical order around the room. Some of the vats were for the initial bath of scrubber bacteria; others were for the solution of genetically volatile bacteria to perform the finishing touches before reanimation. Intermediate holding chambers of mud-thick silvery paste were sunk into the floor between some of the vats. At any one time Rodney could prepare over a hundred different Servants for resurrection.

While grooming himself for a position at Resurrection, Inc., Rodney had reached out through The Net, uncovering the scattered history of Servants and the corporation. After many abortive attempts to build a serviceable, human-looking android, researchers had given up in despair at the incredible task of manufacturing something as sophisticated as the human body. Even the few almost-successful android attempts would have been prohibitively expensive to mass-produce—and if android labor was going to cost more than even Union workers, why bother at all?

But fifteen years before, Francois Nathans had realized that a nearly inexhaustible supply of almost-androids lay waiting to be used: the perfect machine of the human body, discarded at death but often still completely serviceable with only a few minor repairs. Rather than trying to recreate out of inanimate materials, and then mass-produce, the delicate interconnecting mechanisms of neurons and muscles and bones and tendons and sensory organs, Nathans argued that it made more sense to find a new “engine” to put into these already built—but no longer functional—machines, instead of doing everything from scratch.

The sophisticated microprocessor embedded in a Servant’s head linked into the existing contours of the brain, simulating life. Attached to the proper ganglia, the microprocessor acted as a controlling motor, a new engine for the discarded machine. A special “Command” phrase bound all Servants and made them obey, humans, locking their reflexes and forcing them to follow instructions.

As far as Rodney was concerned, Servants weren’t real people; the tech couldn’t possibly think of them as such. Sure, the bodies moved, and Servants could respond when you talked to them, but no real person lived inside. Servants retained their language skills, and some basic knowledge—pretty much anything that happened to be residing on the surface of the temporal lobe when they died. Servants varied—some were like blundering zombies who needed explicit instructions for almost everything, but others held a residue of intelligence and could actually respond almost conversationally.

But no Servant had a memory of its past life—all of that had been erased either in death or in the resurrection process… or maybe the microprocessor just couldn’t reach deep enough to catch hold of those memories. It didn’t matter—despite the artistry Rodney Quick put into the creation of his Servants, they were all just pieces of equipment, machinery, appliances.

Certainly not people.

Rodney stopped and gawked at the body of a well-proportioned young female floating in one of the final baths, weighted down by heavy spheres tied to her waist, wrists, and legs. The front panel of the vat was transparent, and she hung suspended in the thick golden-colored solution, but Rodney could imagine all her details to perfection. She had already been shaved and trimmed, but Rodney still remembered when she had come in, dead from self-inflicted poison. She’d had thick red hair, beautiful, almost the color of blood. Rodney kept records of all such details.

It seemed that every time he tried to start a relationship with a woman, an honest-to-goodness human being, she always broke it off. Handlers of the dead had been despised and shunned throughout history, though in modern times men had claimed to be enlightened about such things. Undertakers and morticians, sextons during the Black Death, gravediggers, the eta in Japan, “resurrectionists” in the nineteenth century illicitly providing dead bodies for medical research…. How the hell was he supposed to fight against leftover cultural sentiments?

Rodney sometimes wondered if spending his teenage years sweating over a Net terminal, trying to escape from the other jobless blues and into a real job, might have left him socially inept… not quite able to relate to others in a meaningful way. He dressed stylishly, according to illustrations in all the Net periodicals. He tried to be funny, compassionate, interesting—yet women seemed so volatile, so unpredictable, with so much capacity for hurting in them.

On the other hand, Servant females never said a harsh word. Rodney placed his fingertips against the warm glass of the finishing vat, staring at the naked body of the once redheaded female, watching as she moved slowly in the gradual convection currents of the amniotic fluid. His own breath began to condense fog on the side of the glass.

“What, exactly, are you doing, Mister Quick?” A woman’s voice: deep and thick, uninflected but carrying a symphony of overtones that made Rodney’s blood congeal.

Supervisor crossed her arms over a deep-purple sleeveless tunic edged with random lines of silver thread. She stood nearly Rodney’s height, built somewhat stockier, but seemed immensely tall in her own personal presence. Her long bluish-blond hair had been pulled into three even braids, neatly splayed and pinned to the back of her purple tunic. A primary Net keypad had been tattooed on the palm of her right hand. Supervisor’s eyes had a pearly, distant look to them, but hard lines on her brow and around her lips quickly destroyed any dreamy look she might have worn. Though she stared directly at him, Rodney felt as if Supervisor watched him with many more eyes than just the two on her face.

One of the few humans who could act as a walking Interface with The Net, Supervisor lorded over all the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc. Her brain carried a remote gateway processor, implanted so that she could directly connect to The Net. Interfaces were rare and highly valued, so Francois Nathans had arranged to effectively own Supervisor, protecting her and doing everything to keep her happy. Consequently, Supervisor encountered no interference when she acted out her managerial fantasies on her human underlings.

She enjoyed harping on Rodney in particular, or so it seemed to him.

“I asked what you are doing, Mister Quick.” The flatness of her voice didn’t change, but Rodney could hear a thread of surprise that he had not immediately answered her question.

“I am inspecting the vats, madam. To be sure the Servants haven’t made mistakes in their tasks.”

“Servants do not make mistakes if their instructions are clear,” she said.

“You’re right, madam. I was making sure my instructions were clear.” Rodney clenched his fingers into a fist.

“Why aren’t you keeping careful watch on the pre-Servant in Vat 66? Everything is routine?” Supervisor’s voice had the barest lilt at the end, only enough for him to guess that she had posed a question.

“Yes, um, everything’s routine, Madam. I’m pumping the synBlood in right now, and then he’ll go to the secondary vat. You’re welcome to inspect my surgery—you can see I took great precautions while installing his new cardiac pump. I’m sure you’ll find everything satisfactory.”

“Since you are involved, Mister Quick, I expect nothing more than ‘satisfactory.’ You are incapable of better.” She huffed, then continued. “The pre-Servant in Vat 66 now has a new designator, a name. You will henceforth refer to him as ‘Danal.’ “ She paused, and then spoke again; her gaze bored into him. “I will give you a warning, Mr. Quick. Francois Nathans himself has expressed an interest in this particular Servant. After resurrection is complete, Danal is to be presented to Vincent Van Ryman.”

“Van Ryman? But… isn’t he the neo-Satanist priest?”

“That is his business, not yours,” Supervisor snapped, raising her voice only a little, but the relative difference was enormous. “Your point of concern is that Mister Nathans is extremely interested. Therefore your performance on this resurrection will have a direct bearing on your own future existence. Think on that carefully, Mister Quick, before you become distracted by female anatomy.”

Rodney swallowed. “Yes, Madam. I, um, understand perfectly. I won’t let you down.”

“I have no confidence in you whatsoever. You cannot let me down.” Supervisor turned curtly and walked across the room to the elevator shaft, seeing yet not seeing with her pearly Net eyes.

Shaken, Rodney retreated from the female’s vat and hurried back to the inspection table, where the slow pump droned as it continued to exchange the inert saline solution with artificial blood. Rodney used his magnifying goggles to recheck for any minute leaks around the seal of the chest wound. Satisfied, he removed the goggles and stepped back to look at the pale and motionless body stretched out under the harsh glare of the overhead lights.

He hated this place, but he couldn’t think about leaving. Sometimes, though, he had to unleash his rebellion in little ways. Smirking, Rodney patted Danal’s cold cheeks in mock paternal affection. He muttered to himself, “Such tender loving care for a corpse!”

He swallowed in a dry throat, looking around to see if Supervisor had seen him. She always moved silently, maliciously, spying. He didn’t see her, but that meant nothing—when linked to The Net, she had all the ears and eyes of the entire network.

The other Servants moved about their mindless tasks. The vats bubbled and the slow-pump hummed, but everything else was quiet. Lower Level Six seemed suddenly alien to him, and Rodney felt vulnerable and alone.

3

Jones carefully arranged the pieces of his Enforcer armor on the spongy bedroom floor, and then aligned all his weapons on the bed-unit. He yawned and stretched before beginning the laborious daily process of assembling his uniform.

He slipped the torso guard over his shoulders and mounted the pelvic plate, making sure everything fit properly before fusing the seams. Then came the arm guards and several segments of leg shielding. The armor was made of lightweight flexsteel fibers, dura-plated around the joints, making for a flexible and comfortable suit that was completely protective.

Last, Jones picked up the high-impact fiberglass helmet and stared for a moment at his reflection in the polarized black visor. The visor could withstand even a laser strike full in the face, but it didn’t allow so much as a glimmer of feeling to show through. Jones narrowed his dark eyes, trying to make himself look tough but not quite succeeding. His thin moustache had never grown quite full, though he hadn’t shaved it in years. Jones was tall, well built but not massive—yet every Enforcer looked the same behind all that armor.

He picked up his weapons in order, slipping them into the appropriate sockets on his armor. Heater-knife, club, grenade, smoke bomb, two projectile weapons, a fully charged scatter-stun, and a pocket bazooka. Bristling with death, every day: instead of filling Jones with power and confidence, it made him feel small and dependent. Not a policeman, according to the official description, but one of the “conformance assurance personnel,” or perhaps even “a modern-day knight against the dragons of social unrest.”

His personal Servant Julia stood at the doorway, watching him, waiting for him to speak.

“Good morning, Julia.” He consciously gave her a warm smile.

“Good morning, Master Jones,” she said, like a recording. She still wore the long blond wig he’d bought for her, but then he remembered with some sadness that he had just never told her to take it off. It meant nothing. According to the scant information he had been able to get from Resurrection, Inc., Julia had had blond hair during her life; and apparently Julia had indeed been her real first name. But they told him nothing else about her.

She was small and trim, and would have been attractive—though not beautiful—if it hadn’t been for her baldness and the unnatural pallor of her skin. The transparent synBlood did nothing to give a flush to any Servant’s skin. Servants didn’t need to sleep, though they could sit motionless and pass hours without flinching. Julia’s hair would never grow, nor would her fingernails.

Jones strode to the door of his quarters. She didn’t move. “Wait for me, please, Julia. You can do whatever you want during the day, and I’ll see you when I come back home.” He spoke gently, as if it mattered to her.

Julia sat down on a chair facing the doorway. “Yes, Master Jones.” Her blond wig had shifted on her head, but she made no attempt to fix it. He knew full well that she’d be there, unmoved, when he returned in the evening.

He was trying so hard, hoping, but he began to confess that nothing would make her seem more human, like a real companion. Jones had bought her the wig and some real clothes in place of the gray Servant jumpsuit, but the clothes made her look pathetic—she wore them like chains, though perfectly willing to oblige. Somehow Jones felt as if he had tried to dress up a dog or a monkey in some ridiculous costume. Julia was not meant for a dress, or for any sort of human trappings, because she was not—he knew he would eventually admit it to himself—she was not human.

Jones rarely went out even to entertain himself, and he made almost no effort at all to join the camaraderie with others in the Enforcers Guild. He just didn’t remember how to make friends anymore, and all he had to comfort him were the scars of an earlier friendship.

People felt intimidated by Enforcers, and Jones suspected that the Guild itself fostered that attitude. He doubted if anyone would want to have an Enforcer as a true companion. Even female Enforcers were few compared to the males, and any Guildswoman snapped up a male companion of her choosing.

A month before, everything had finally reached its peak, but Jones had covered it up well. He had become completely exhausted from staring at the walls, the ceiling of his apartment, alone, blinking at the vapid Net entertainment channels. Enough. A few more nights like this, and he would have to squeeze back tears, or else run yelling through the empty after-curfew corridors.

Jones had surrendered most of his merit earnings to purchase a Servant, compulsively, before he could think too much about it. Though only an inexpensive, marginally responsive Servant, Julia had brought him to his knees in debt. For what? He didn’t know. Few people like him ever had a Servant; he wasn’t so sure he even wanted one. Ever since his transfer to become an escort for Resurrection, Inc., Jones had been required to guard and protect emerging Servants against the angry people on the streets. But he himself had a knee-jerk reaction of dislike and uneasiness toward Servants. Why in the world did he want one for himself? What was the point?

Sure, he had convinced himself he needed someone to sweep the floors, to cook and clean and do other routine things a Servant would be expected to do—but Jones also wanted someone to talk to, a companion, a friend. Okay, so he was lonely—bring out the violins, he thought bitterly. It wasn’t his fault, but he just didn’t have it in him to lay his friendship on the line, to risk everything. Friends were unpredictable—they died…. And it was easier to buy a Servant, a surrogate companion—that’s me, he thought, good old path-of-least-resistance Jones.

With unrealistic expectations and barely restrained hope, Jones always treated Julia as an equal human. Though Julia rarely responded with more than mechanical gestures or words, still he talked to her, asked her if she would do things. He wanted to be a friend, and have a friend in return. He wanted to console himself by having someone else around. He talked and she listened attentively, apparently interested regardless of the subject matter, and Jones felt relieved just to have his bottled-up words falling on open ears, Servant or otherwise. But he knew deep inside that Julia was not interested, and he doubted if she even understood what he really felt.

Jones had tried to make love to her, once. She had been fully cooperative, even though he found himself reluctant to give her the explicit step-by-step instructions she required. He sensed absolutely nothing spontaneous in their lovemaking, no feeling and no compassion on her part—Julia had been simply doing a task, like any other—and Jones had abhorred himself afterward.

Often, when he couldn’t sleep, he told himself over and over that he had purchased a Servant, not a friend, barely even a pet—an appliance. But still he couldn’t abandon hope completely. Jones continued to search for something, a flicker behind her eyes, or something responsive to his words and gestures, something to let him know she was aware of him as a person rather than as “Master.”

It was probably an echo of that hope that had damned him, that had forced his punishment and transfer to Resurrection, Inc. He had hesitated a moment too long on the streets when a renegade Servant had come running down the thoroughfare marked for pedestrian traffic only. Jones was in full armor, patrolling the streets, keeping the numerous sidewalk vendors and craftsmen cowed, watching the vagabond singers, the jugglers. Then the female Servant had gone running by, her eyes glazed with fear, her skin looking almost flushed. Her loose gray jumpsuit fluttered with the speed of her flight—Jones had never in his life seen anyone run so fast.

But something traveled through the crowd even faster, an almost telepathic warning that passed from person to person, sensing something amiss with a flash of mob insight. Their tinderbox mentality ignited upon seeing something unusual, something alien—a Servant with fear on her face, with life in her eyes, fleeing from shouting men. The rest of the crowd began to converge, blocking her way.

Momentarily Jones felt his body freeze with shock and surprise. The female Servant seemed to have stolen some small pieces of equipment—a Servant had stolen something, and Jones’s amazement grew even greater. He mechanically pulled out his scatter-stun.

The people saw the Enforcer and seemed to hesitate for a breathless moment. They wanted to see blood. Jones could feel it.

The female Servant knew she was trapped. Jones was appalled and did not look directly at her as he pointed the scatter-stun; he had the setting turned low. The Servant had looked at him for a microsecond, pleading with her eyes, as if she could understand something in his flickering hesitation. But she could never have read anything through the black polarized visor that covered most of his face.

Before he could fire, the Servant leaped to the side of the street in three great strides, still clutching her precious equipment. Too late, Jones saw the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patch like many others scattered at random places on the city streets—a square of lush green lawn bounded by a low barbed fence; everyone knew that the patches of greenery were covered with a disintegrator blanket to vaporize anyone who dared to step on the perfect grass.

Jones knew immediately what the Servant intended to do, and fired a burst of his scatter-stun, catching and stunning a few others in the crowd standing too close to him. The Servant leaped gracefully over the barbed fence and plunged without a ripple through the green grass, vanishing instantly. A thin smell of ozone drifted upward, but Jones only stared. The disintegrator and the lush grass had swallowed her up completely. A Servant who perhaps had awakened to her own humanity again… but now he would never know.

Then the crowd had turned ugly, deprived of their entertainment for the moment. Other Enforcers eventually arrived, subduing the disturbance; a dozen people had died. Jones felt invisible fingers pointing at him.

But the Enforcers Guild didn’t punish its members openly, didn’t believe in public disgrace—the Guild protected its own. But there always remained transfer—yes, the Guild protected its own, all right. And he had been pulled from his curfew beat to the much more unpleasant job of guarding Resurrection, Inc.

Now he wondered if it had been worth his mammoth effort to get into the Guild six years before. Jones either had to buy his way in, or be chosen by someone important in the Guild—or he could be sponsored.

Jones had been sponsored by a friend, Fitzgerald Helms. Actually, the word “friend,” with its flat single syllable, was completely inadequate to describe the complex and trusting relationship he had had with Fitzgerald Helms. It was the sort of thing that happened no more than once in a lifetime—a friend who made you know what it would be like to have a clone, because only a carbon-copy counterpart could be so much like yourself.

Jones and Fitzgerald Helms had been on the streets together during their teenage years, when they could look at the jungle of the city with exhilaration rather than confused fear. Helms was a mulatto, pale enough that he could disguise himself if he wanted to, but he never wanted to. He let his reddish scouring-pad Afro grow out in wild directions, while Jones himself kept his wiry black hair trimmed tight against his skull. Neither one of them could grow much of a moustache, but both had tried relentlessly since they were fourteen.

Both Jones and Fitzgerald Helms avoided their listless parents, business and technical people so wrapped up in their jobs that they had no ambition to do anything. Jones and Helms had not been interested in education or the rat race of the corporate world. They blithely accepted a blue-collar future without qualms, confident that they would find a job working in one of the larger manufacturing plants, or as gardeners, mechanics, whatever—the possibilities seemed endless. But then had come the Servant revolution, and the two young men found themselves in a generation slice that was too old to learn the new tricks necessary to cope with a changed world.

The younger kids—the smart ones, at least—had nearly enough time if they wanted to launch themselves into feverishly learning Net skills, or some profession that required mental ability rather than just movable arms and legs. But Jones and Fitzgerald Helms both found themselves out of that game. They had been athletic and active outside, surviving more than their share of street fights, but neither one of them was good enough to fantasize about a career at athletics or the other violent entertainment modes. After nearly a year, they could no longer avoid facing their only remaining option, a dark option they both hated to consider. Enforcers. The Guild would take care of them. If they could pass the incredible tests required of outsiders before they could be allowed to join the Guild.

He and Helms had primed themselves for weeks, training, fighting, running, even studying various weapons capabilities as described on The Net. First Fitzgerald Helms would beat Jones, then Jones would beat Helms. They were perfectly matched, reflections of each other.

But on the day of the brutal, real tests in front of the Guild echelon representatives, Helms had succeeded, and Jones had failed—both of them by a hair.

Fitzgerald Helms immediately designated himself as sponsor for Jones, but neither one of them wanted to contemplate that as a possibility. Jones could only admire the shining armor, the weapons, the confidence his friend gave off even behind his polarized visor.

A year later, Helms was killed at the end of a vicious game of Dodge the Enforcer. Some out-of-work blues driven nearly insane from the boredom, the frustration, the hopelessness, became almost suicidal. They made a game of provoking an Enforcer to the point of outrage, and then tried to escape before the Enforcer let loose and killed them. Helms had been caught up in a surprisingly elaborate plot staged by several starving former restaurant workers; the ringleader, a thin and wild-eyed dishwasher, proved to have a brilliantly logical and manipulative mind—a mind that would surely have gotten him a job working with The Net if he had so much as tried.

He had directed a game that looked so childishly desperate and simple, but Fitzgerald Helms had fallen prey to its complexity and found himself trapped in a cul-de-sac with the laughing wild-eyed dishwasher. The dishwasher had looked on the point of orgasm when he detonated the chunks of explosive taped to his own chest, leaving no portion of his body intact to resurrect as a Servant, and not much of Fitzgerald Helms either.

The other accomplices in the game were immediately rounded up, cleanly executed, and shipped off to Resurrection, Inc. Before killing each accomplice, the Enforcers took great pleasure in informing them that, as Servants, they would be used exclusively for Guild labor.

And, according to the rules, Jones took the place of his sponsor in the Guild when Fitzgerald Helms was killed in the line of duty. Jones had not looked forward to the day when he could claim the benefits of sponsorship, but he had known it would happen sooner or later. Rumor had it that Enforcers on the street didn’t live long, despite their weapons and armor.

Jones was even offered a reduced-price option on the new Servants resulting from the executions, but he had declined. He hadn’t even considered purchasing someone like Julia until much later.

And now he was in the Guild, comfortably set for life.

He had to do his best, make a clean effort, in honor of Helms. All he could do was sit and hold the memories, over and over again. Jones knew he could never find another friend like Helms, and he didn’t bother to try.

He stood at the doorway of his living quarters and took a last look at Julia, sitting on the chair and watching him with rapt attention. She hadn’t moved a muscle.

The dawn light cast deep shadows from the buildings onto the street, throwing everything into an exaggerated black-and-white relief. Beneath his visor Jones could catch the faint damp tang of salt in the air. Pigeons and seagulls had begun to stir, looking for any scraps of street garbage they had missed the previous evening.

Jones stood in front of the mammoth headquarters of Resurrection, Inc. The towering gray structure looked like a tombstone for all humanity—and the unseen underground complex below was several times the size of the administrative offices above. Two sets of revolving doors waited to receive the visitors and workers. A great marble plaque engraved with the words “Servants for Mankind—Freeing Us from Tedium to Pursue Our True Destiny” stared from the front of the building.

People had just begun to venture outside, loosed from curfew for another day. The streets were quiet now, but they would start to get ugly later on. They always did. And Jones would have to march back and forth, escorting Servants to their assigned labor, making certain nothing got out of control.

Francois Nathans, the head of Resurrection, apparently professed a great dislike for the Enforcers and their Guild; but he was forced to keep a pool of Enforcers around his corporation due to the very nature of the work he did and how much the public disliked it. Jones tried not to think about it, afraid he might somehow get into trouble, but he found it ironic that the one man in the Metroplex powerful enough to damage the Enforcers Guild had his hands tied, forced to use the services of the Guild more than any other private corporation.

Jones stopped for a moment, staring at the huge poured-stone building, the one structure that was almost singlehandedly reshaping society. First the discovery of fire. Then the Industrial Revolution. Then Resurrection, Incorporated. That had been one of their most successful slogans.

“And then what?” Jones thought.

Several people pointedly avoided Jones as he pushed his way through the gleaming revolving door.

4

The body named Danal hung suspended in the final purging bath of amniotic solution. Faint smells of chemicals wafted up from the open vents at the top of the vat. Rodney Quick wished his nostrils would become desensitized once and for all.

A long, colorless scar ran down the center of Danal’s chest where Rodney had implanted the synHeart, a scar that would never fade because a Servant could not heal itself. Danal’s body had been shaved and his nails trimmed back; he hung in the amber nutrient bath, drifting, held submerged by weighted spheres attached to his arms legs, and waist. The pre-Servant’s eyes were closed beatifically, as if enjoying his last peaceful taste of death.

An involuntary shudder traced itself down Rodney’s spine, but he managed to hide it from any invisible spying eyes. Seventy other vats functioned in the large room, creating Servant after Servant. Each day new pre-Servants arrived, and resurrected bodies walked out under their own motor power. Have microprocessor, will travel. The entire system was too efficient to be openly ugly, and perhaps that was why it had fooled him for so long.

The bright harsh light of Lower Level Six seemed colder every day. Death surrounded Rodney, and the stink of resurrection chemicals hung about him like a cloud, a breath from the Grim Reaper, clinging to him even when he walked away from work and tried to slip into a normal life of his own.

The odd feeling of low horror had been growing steadily within him for days now, making it difficult to do his job. Only now, after all the time of working for Resurrection, had he finally come to face his own mortality, the very real possibility of his own death. The knowledge slowly turned his nerves to jelly.

Supervisor breathed down his neck like a vampire, making his job a nightmare. She seemed to have singled Rodney out for career destruction, just at a whim. Rodney knew of other humans who had worked for her, filling various jobs—including the one he himself now held—and those others had disappeared, with no explanations and no excuses offered by management. As a living Interface with The Net, Supervisor knew full well how valuable she was to Resurrection, Inc. She seemed sickeningly confident that no one would call attention to anything she might do. Rodney felt trapped in a cat-and-mouse game, unable to do more than panic. He continued to do his job, hoping that it wouldn’t be today, not today. But he didn’t know how much longer he could grovel and use excuses to fend off Supervisor’s increasingly more elaborate accusations.

The worst part had been recognizing some of the new pre-Servants that came in just after the unofficial disappearances, Supervisor’s previous victims. The records claimed that these cadavers were other people entirely, and The Net denied any correlation with the missing humans. But Rodney never forgot a face. Not even a waxen grimace of a death could make him doubt the identities of the bodies going into the resurrection vats.

And being turned into a Servant must be worse than dying in the first place.

What alternative did he have? When people died clean deaths, they ended up as Servants; Rodney, of all people, knew the criteria for acceptance. Was he supposed to hope for a long, debilitating disease to ruin his body… or a messy enough death that no technician would bother to reassemble the pieces?

The more he thought about it, the more Rodney felt a gnawing helplessness—he could do nothing to save himself if Supervisor finally chose to destroy him, and he could do nothing to protect his own body afterward. What option did anybody have?

Yes, he did know of an option, but he barely dared to whisper it in his own thoughts. Cremators. Even the idea frightened him, but he knew it had to be true. He believed in the Cremators. The need was too great for it to be just another rumor.

More than ever before, people had become preoccupied with, and terrified of, death—caused in great part by the brooding and listless presence of Servants. But Rodney had heard of a mysterious group of militants—the Cremators—who, if you formed a contract with them, would do everything in their power to destroy your body after death, guaranteeing that you could never become a Servant. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, with all the ritual. Real information about the outlaw Cremators was hard to come by, though, and The Net swallowed up any actual reports of their activities.

Francois Nathans himself had frequently publicized enormous rewards for any information about the Cremators. Nathans seemed to be nervous, perhaps even frightened by them—and if it was all just a fabricated rumor, why would such a powerful man care? The Enforcers Guild turned every suitable dead body over to Resurrection, Inc.; Rodney didn’t know for sure if the law required it, or if the corporation paid well for them, or if Nathans just twisted the thumbscrews on the hierarchy of the Guild. But if the Cremators were snatching suitable pre-Servants out from under Nathans’ nose, then the man would be hard pressed to ignore the challenge.

Rodney didn’t know if he dared attempt to contact the Cremators, but it would have to be soon. Would they even meet with him, knowing that he worked for Resurrection, Inc? He became jittery again. Rodney didn’t have the slightest idea how to begin his search. What if someone found out?

“I like to see a man contemplating, thinking.”

The man’s voice seemed to echo off the walls, and Rodney whirled, looking for its source. For a terrified moment he was disoriented and did not notice the three others standing in the maze of vats and tables.

“That’s one of the reasons why I worked so hard to create Servants,” the man continued. “To free more of man’s time for philosophizing.”

Then Rodney saw Supervisor’s purple sleeveless tunic and her cold, half-focused stare, but he realized with some relief that she seemed cowed by the two men standing beside her. The taller of the two men was much older, thin, but with a fire of knowledge behind his eyes that made even Supervisor’s gaze seem harmless. The older man was immaculately dressed, and his steel-blue hair had not a strand out of place. The other man seemed much younger but he carried himself with an uncharacteristic weariness and uneasiness. The younger man had gleaming dark hair and a shadowy complexion that spoke of possible Asian or Indian ancestry deep in his genes. He stood a few inches shorter than the older man, but his shoulders were broad and he radiated an animalistic strength.

The older man arched his eyebrows as he looked at Rodney, and he spoke again without taking his gaze from the technician. “Don’t be rude, Supervisor. Please introduce us.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, looking surprised. “Mister Nathans, this is Rodney Quick. Rodney, this is Francois Nathans, and the gentleman with him is Vincent Van Ryman.”

Neither man reached forward to shake his hand, and Rodney had all he could do to keep his own composure. He had never before seen either of the two men: the head of Resurrection, Inc. and the supposed High Priest of the neo-Satanists. What did they want with him? What had Supervisor accused him of now?

Rodney became suspicious again. He didn’t know what Nathans or Van Ryman looked like. He felt his heart beating harder, hammering the blood through his veins with such force that it squeezed cold sweat out of his pores. This could be a trap. This could be some twisted trick for Supervisor to make him drop his guard in awe at the distinguished visitors… and then she would do something to make him cause his own downfall.

But what if these two were the real Nathans and Van Ryman? Then Rodney would probably act like an idiot and cause his own downfall with no help from Supervisor whatsoever. He had no way of telling. Rodney knew little more than a scattered collection of half-truths and legends about famous people. He did have a sixth-level Net password, but that didn’t allow him access to the most confidential databases.

Rodney knew, though, that Francois Nathans had founded Resurrection, Inc., as a junior partner to Stromgaard Van Ryman—Vincent Van Ryman’s father—who provided most of the financial backing for the new corporation. Stromgaard Van Ryman had apparently shown an adequate business sense, but Nathans was far superior in vision, charisma, and political savvy. Eight years after the formation of Resurrection, Inc., when Servants had begun to make major inroads on the work force, Nathans had assumed his role as head of the corporation, and Stromgaard Van Ryman had sold his portion of control. About the same time, Stromgaard was apparently involved with the inception of the neo-Satanist movement, but two years after the new religion had taken root, Stromgaard mysteriously disappeared. Rumor said he was sacrificed by his own cult. His 21-year-old son Vincent had emerged as the High Priest of the neo-Satanists shortly thereafter.

That had all happened several years before. And now Rodney knew the Servant from Vat 66—Danal, he corrected himself—was somehow special. Vincent Van Ryman supposedly had something important in mind for him. But why was Nathans interested, too? Just out of camaraderie with the son of a friend? Or just to make certain his important customer went away satisfied? Or did Nathans have something to do with the neo-Satanists, too?

“Mister Nathans and Mister Van Ryman would like to see Danal now. They want to make sure everything is satisfactory.” Supervisor’s flat voice held many subtle overtones, and Rodney heard each one of them like an icicle on his eardrums. Van Ryman still had not spoken.

“I saw you inspecting our Danal as we came in,” Nathans said. His voice was rich and friendly but some what distant, as if he spoke through a mask over his own personality. “It’s good to find such diligence, especially in one of our own workers.”

Rodney finally found his own voice, using instinct to switch into a self-defense mode, smoothing the stutter from his words before he spoke them. “Yes, sir. Supervisor hinted at how important this Servant is to you, and I’ve been watching him very carefully. I’m sure you can see that everything is perfect. The surgical work installing his synHeart is the best I’ve ever done.”

Nathans smiled. “I’m very pleased to hear that, Mr. Quick. May I call you Rodney?”

He nodded quickly, feeling terribly conscious of his hair, wondering if it was out of place, if his gold nose stud was tarnished, if the beads of sweat were showing on his forehead.

Van Ryman went close to the tank, fascinated by Danal’s body submerged in the golden solution; he seemed unable to tear his eyes from it. The dark-haired man pressed his face up against the glass to see more clearly.

“Supervisor, leave us,” Nathans said abruptly.

Supervisor looked surprised and rebuffed at the dismissal, but she turned without a word and left. The simmering noises of the vats swallowed up the rustle of her clothes. Rodney could barely contain his satisfaction as he watched Nathans’s offhanded manner with her. Rodney felt important, raised back up to the level of a human being again. He had to consciously restrain himself from strutting like a bird.

Nathans reached out and placed a paternal hand on Rodney’s shoulder. The tech stiffened a moment, but allowed himself to be turned aside as the older man began to walk slowly along the row of resurrection vats. Rodney followed closely, and Francois Nathans began to speak to him in a hypnotic voice, making him feel warm and confident in himself, saying all the right things, pulling all the right strings.

“Rodney, we’ve been watching your work for a long time. You have a special touch with the Servants, and you know the resurrection process inside and out. It’s unfortunate that Supervisor’s been slipping your name to us frequently, placing the blame for certain minor things on your shoulders, but we haven’t seen any decline in the quality of your work. I’m tempted to think that she’s just playing another one of her games, pin the tail on the scapegoat. She does that, you know. Remember, she’s not quite normal, not like you and me—she gave up a lot to become an Interface with The Net. The company needs her services, but sometimes she overestimates her own importance. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” Nathans smiled broadly.

“She sure knows how to make work miserable for me,” Rodney said quietly. Internal ropes hindered him from opening up to the man’s friendliness. He still wondered why the two men had come to him, what they had in mind. As Rodney and Nathans passed a row of recently emptied vats, the tech noticed that Van Ryman had remained behind to stare through the glass walls at Danal in the resurrection solution.

Nathans interrupted his thoughts. “You might wonder why I’d take the time to come talk to a mere technician.” He paused. Rodney didn’t dare acknowledge the suggestion with a nod.

“Well, because I firmly believe that the future of any corporation begins at the roots. The future managers are today’s technicians, if you don’t mind my being frank, and I always like to keep a pool of candidates under consideration for possible promotions.”

Rodney’s heart fluttered; none of this seemed possible. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vincent Van Ryman do something to the vent at the top of Danal’s tank. He turned quickly and suddenly felt Nathans’s grip tighten on his shoulder. Summoning up his courage, Rodney turned back to face the head of Resurrection, Inc.

“Thank you for your confidence in me, Mr. Nathans.” Rodney forced a calm expression onto his face. “I’ll try not to let you down.”

Nathans smiled at him again, this time with dazzling sincerity. Vincent Van Ryman came up to join them, and Rodney was alarmed to see a heavy expression of near tears on Van Ryman’s face.

“I think everything’s satisfactory, Mr. Quick,” Van Ryman announced; his voice was rich and mellow, but with a curious strained edge to it. “You certainly know your work.”

Rodney averted his eyes, trying to look embarrassed at the compliment. “It was just a routine resurrection. I’m sure you’ll be happy with your Servant.”

Things seemed less certain now. At least Supervisor was straightforward in her psychological warfare. Was Nathans truly the compassionate boss he seemed to be?

Rodney had seen Van Ryman meddling with Danal’s tank, he was certain of it, though he couldn’t imagine what possible sabotage the dark-haired man could have performed. If Van Ryman was indeed the High Priest of the neo-Satanists, perhaps he had some other ritualistic purpose in mind. And in that case, though it might give him the jitters, Rodney didn’t particularly care. Mumbo-jumbo and superstition were weapons against the uneducated blue-collars.

But if Van Ryman had done something, should Rodney mention it to Nathans? Or might that be worse than not saying anything, if Nathans ended up being part of it? After all, Nathans had carefully led him away from the tank, distracted him, so Van Ryman could have time alone.

Or maybe Nathans had been deviously sincere about looking for new management recruits, and this was some sort of test to see how dedicated Rodney was to the successful completion of his job. If so, if he suspected sabotage from anyone—even a person as powerful as Vincent Van Ryman himself—then he should report it to Nathans. But he should also be willing to trust his ultimate boss, Francois Nathans, in all things. And if Nathans was obviously involved with this staged tampering perhaps Rodney was supposed to see the attempt, but to trust Nathans to intervene if anything absolutely needed to be stopped. Should he say anything or not?

Rodney’s head was still spinning when Nathans patted him on the back, and Van Ryman shook his hand, thanking him for the preview of his new Servant. The technician convinced himself to make a parting comment. “Thank you both for coming. I very much enjoyed meeting both of you. I hope I haven’t disappointed you.”

“Of course you haven’t, Rodney. I’m sure we’ll be talking again.” Nathans nodded and then motioned for Van Ryman to enter the lift compartment first. The doors whisked shut and swallowed up the two men.

The instant the lift doors had closed, Rodney rushed back to the vat that held the Servant named Danal. Carefully he inspected the vent openings, but could not tell if they had been moved. He sniffed the air, trying to detect any unusual smell, but found none. A smudge on the transparent wall showed where Van Ryman had touched the glass, but that proved nothing. He squinted into the yellow amniotic fluid, trying to detect any changes. Was it murkier now than before? Did he see any difference?

Supervisor wouldn’t hesitate for a moment if Rodney did anything to jeopardize the successful resurrection of this particular Servant. The scrubber bacteria in the final bath, the solution in which Danal now hung suspended, were genetically volatile, easily mutated, and more than once a mutated solution had adversely affected the physical or mental condition of a reanimated Servant. Sometimes the motor control seemed skewed; sometimes the mental faculties were dulled or sharpened—and an unusually intelligent Servant caused more concern than a totally stupid one. What if the original memories of the individual somehow came too close to the surface? But without the final solution to do one more scouring and to replace the electrolytes in the brain, the microprocessor would not function properly.

Rodney could think of no way to verify any tampering, short of taking a sample of the amniotic solution to the analytical lab. But then he’d have to explain his suspicions, and that might cause him as much trouble as he was trying to avoid.

The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that Nathans had devised a test for him. Or perhaps it was Supervisor’s doing after all. But even the major fact of knowing this was a test didn’t help him at all. Nor did he know what the penalty for failure would be.

5

“Command: Open your eyes.”

The Command phrase sent the microprocessor into its override mode. Synapses fired, reforging old links through ganglia. The microprocessor tagged and identified the proper muscles, then caused them to contract.

Danal’s eyes fluttered open.

Light bombarded his retinas, and the microprocessor immediately directed the irises to constrict, stepping down the glare. Danal blinked a second time.

Sensations began to fill his mind like wildfire; each cell in his body awoke with a scream of exhilaration. Danal sensed that his body was slick and smooth, hairless. He could feel every nerve ending like spiders on his skin; he could almost feel the light from the harsh overhead panels striking him.

A man filled his field of view, and Danal drank in every detail without looking elsewhere. The technician stood slightly shorter than Danal, and his face seemed wildly asymmetric with brown hair hanging long on one side of his face, cropped short on the other—one eyebrow shaved, the other enhanced by eyeliner—a single gold nostril stud reflecting the light. Danal stared without moving, and the descriptor words and concepts congealed in his brain, reassigning mental labels to the images his retinas conveyed: “brown,” “gold,” “eyebrow.”

The microprocessor frantically scanned Danal’s temporal lobe, accessing any information that had survived the journey through death and back, scribbling on the newborn tabula rasa. Danal noticed black symbols across the pocket of the tech’s white lab smock, but for a moment they meant nothing to him. Then suddenly, like a light bulb flicking on inside his head, the symbols snapped into focus and became words, RODNEY QUICK.

“Can-you-understand-me?” Rodney said in careful syllables.

Danal heard the question, digested it, and searched for the appropriate response. Slowly, still uncertain of his specific muscle control, he moved his head down and then up, hesitantly at first, and then nodding deeply and confidently.

“I want you to answer me with your voice,” Rodney said quickly. “Command: Answer.”

Danal dredged up the word from deep under his subconscious, peeling back the wrapper of information stored there. Other words, phrases, idioms poured forth, filling the empty pockets of his resurrected brain. He exhaled, setting his vocal cords vibrating with specific and careful control. He moved his jaw, his tongue, his lips, shaping and forming the sounds in the immensely complicated task of speaking:

“Yes.”

The nutrient solution still trickled out of the tank from which Danal had emerged, running through grates in the floor to holding vats even farther beneath the ground. Danal stood like a statue. Solution dripped down his slick skin. He noticed that the yellow droplets had a decidedly pinkish tinge, and something buried at the back of his mind told him that the different coloration was a sure sign of mutating bacteria in the final bath….

Rodney quickly hosed the remaining liquid into the grate, washing away any incriminating pink tint, although the anomalous color was already fading as the mutated bacteria died upon exposure to the harsh outside world. For good measure, Rodney turned the high-pressure hose and blasted the motionless Servant, rinsing the last of the solution from the Servant’s skin.

Some of the exterior nerves on Danal’s body shut themselves down as the icy water drenched him. His fragile muscle control, still not completely activated, went haywire. Danal fell backward, collapsing to the floor. Too late, his arm reached out to break his fall, but he twisted awkwardly and struck his head on the side of his emptied vat. Half an instant later, he identified the sensation of pain.

Danal lay crumpled and helpless—but completely awake—on the cold, wet floor as the tech stood over him. Danal stared at a droplet of water barely half an inch in front of his unblinking eye, fascinated by the play of light on its surface.

“Oh, brother!” Rodney snorted, “Command: Stand up.”

The microprocessor reached out again for the right nerve ganglia, activating Danal’s Servant programming. His muscles awakened, and he climbed stiffly to his knees, barely keeping his balance and barely able to stop the landslide of sensory input pouring into his undead eyes. He coughed the nutrient solution out of his lungs, then regained control of himself. An impulse made him want to smile blithely, but somehow the subtle facial muscles remained frozen, leaving Danal filled with awe yet expressionless.

Without turning his head from the tech, he used peripheral vision to focus on the room around him, the vast resurrection chamber with its rows upon rows of different vats and chambers, inspection tables, other Servants going about their tasks. Danal found it fascinating.

Rodney narrowed his eyes and looked furtively over his shoulder, then turned back to the newly resurrected Servant. “Command: Dance!”

Jerkily, without thought, Danal tried to lift one leg, then the other. He somehow managed to hop back and forth, looking ridiculous. He stumbled again, but regained his balance. His muscle control spread rapidly, and with the speed of the microprocessor Danal seemed to have a longer time to compensate and shift his balance. The Servant achieved a subtle mastery of his body, like a precocious child rapidly putting together all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Rodney gave a little superior-sounding laugh.

“What are you doing now, Mister Quick?”

Danal watched as Supervisor came up silently from behind. She moved as if partially in a trance, floating between the vats, but with a presence about her that made her seem to emanate from the walls, the floor, the lights, everywhere The Net could see.

Rodney jumped, and Danal could see the color drain from his face. But the tech composed his face into a serious expression without missing a beat and turned to face Supervisor. “I’m testing his muscle reflexes, madam. He seems to be coordinating well.”

“Bullshit.” Her voice carried no excitement, no anger, just a flat statement that exposed the technician as a liar, allowing no room for question. “Mister Nathans said to give Danal special treatment. If you fail, I am going to destroy you.”

The tech spoke defensively. “This Servant is my very best work, madam! Look where I installed the synHeart unit: only half the scar you’d expect. You saw the wound where the neo-Satanists hacked out his heart!”

“Just do your job, and do it adequately, Mister Quick.” Supervisor smiled at him, “Try to survive as long as you can.”

Rodney made no comment, but Danal noticed faint beads of sweat begin to pop out of the tech’s visible pores.

At the mention of the scar, Danal stared at his body, looking at the white line at the center of his chest where the—knife—had cut. His past seemed to be swathed thickly in cheesecloth, hidden from his view, and he wondered—but any answers rising in his memory melted like snowflakes in a fire. He wanted to reach out and finger the scar, but his muscles could not find the volition to do so.

Supervisor stood in silence for a long moment, apparently to let Rodney fidget and sweat for as long as possible. “Well, Mister Quick? Is he ready?”

“Yes, most certainly. As always, promptly on the deadline. A routine resurrection, madam.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Supervisor held out her right hand, running her fingers along the primary Net keyboard tattooed on the palm. Ten keys, each with five functions coded to the five specific fingerprints on Supervisor’s left hand, made it possible for her to type fifty different characters. She input the proper sequence that linked her to the vast resources of The Net. After she had reoriented herself to her new position as a small blip in the enormous computer database, Supervisor activated the Net-compatible scanners implanted in her eye. Danal endured her inspection as she looked at him through machine eyes.

“Glycerin levels all wrong. And I see a glitch in his brain-wave pattern. Dammit! The bacteria mutated—you weren’t watching him, Mister Quick.” She seemed unaccustomed to using an angry tone of voice, and the words came out awkward, but still threatening.

“Yes! Yes, I was, madam! The nutrient bath was as clear as can be—yellow like chicken soup!” One, and only one, drop of sweat ran down the side of Rodney’s forehead.

“I somehow doubt you saw nothing unusual. Even you aren’t quite that stupid. You’ve been licking the glass on the female tanks again, haven’t you?”

“No, madam!” He sounded indignant. “You know how attentive I’ve been, especially with this Servant.”

Supervisor abruptly ignored Rodney and turned to the placid-looking Servant who stood damp and naked under the harsh lights. “Danal, what do you remember from your past life?”

Danal wrinkled his forehead a little, but stood silent.

“He’s brain-damaged! Aww, shit!” Rodney gasped to himself. Nonchalantly, but with amazing speed, Supervisor boxed him in the ear to silence him.

“Nothing,” Danal finally answered. “I don’t remember anything.”

Supervisor paused, looking somewhat surprised. Rodney breathed a loud sigh of relief and put his hands on his hips, trying to regain a semblance of control. “Why did you take so long to answer?”

“I was thinking.” The words flowed easily through his vocal cords now. After an oblivion of rest, he wanted to stretch his voice, to shout, to sing. But his body didn’t move. He stood and waited, like a mannequin.

Supervisor and the tech looked at him strangely for a moment.

“Servant, Command: Input Mode.” Supervisor’s fingers raced across the tattooed keyboard on her palm.

Danal’s body responded of its own volition, controlled by the microprocessor. His arms and legs snapped to attention, and he opened his mind to receive.

In less than a second The Net scanned Danal’s new identity and confirmed his name and the name of his Master, Vincent Van Ryman. After a short pause, short even for the microprocessor’s view of time, bytes of information filed onto his memory, and his parched mind rapidly absorbed the data.

The Net gave him nuggets of his Master Van Ryman’s history and habits, presumably so Danal could be a better Servant for him. All at once, and without time to sort through the facts and arrange them in any order, Danal learned that Vincent Van Ryman lived a comfortable life from the profits of when his father Stromgaard had sold his share of Resurrection, Inc. to Francois Nathans. Protected by elaborate Intruder Defense Systems, Van Ryman lived alone in an eccentrically antique home.

Julia? Danal wondered. The thought had come to him from the far reaches of his mind, whispering at the corners of his ears like memories shouting at him through miles of dense fog. The thought came with no explanation, no further details—who was Julia? Other memories, a seething pot of déjà vu boiled far beneath the surface of his brain, out of the microprocessor’s reach.

Another pause in the microprocessor’s slowed-down time—Danal felt The Net picking around in his mind, double-checking, making sure of his identity. Danal kept his thoughts vividly aware, though he didn’t know what to expect, or how he would know if something went wrong. His core-programming penetrated deeper than instinct, molding his life, making him know that he was not to ask questions, not to think, not to feel.

He suspected that he already knew as much as a Servant should know about his Master, but The Net divulged yet another file, this one coded for a much higher-level password.

Vincent Van Ryman was the leader of the neo-Satanists,

a secret society that had adapted ancient Satanism to the context of modern technology. Van Ryman had, however, denounced his connections with the group, and had become one of its strongest opponents—but recently he had returned to the fold again, with a zeal and vehemence that overshadowed even his initial fervor.

Danal’s head swam with a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts, ghosts of memory fleeing like shadows when ever he tried to focus on them. He was a Servant. His mind was a clean slate, polished smooth by passage through death and back. He had nothing of his past.

Or, more likely, he was not able to access the memories… but he knew they existed, closeted away somewhere. And these spurious glitches of thought jumping out helter-skelter onto his forebrain—did they flash back to a life that never existed? Who knew what dreams and fantasies a brain could summon and create during the deepest sleep of all?

By the time Danal had assimilated all this, Supervisor’s finger still hadn’t had enough time to lift itself from the keypad on her palm. “Completed,” she said to no one in particular. “Servant: What is your name?”

“My name is Danal.”

“Who is your Master?”

“Vincent Van Ryman.”

“See, I told you he wasn’t brain-damaged,” Rodney interrupted. “I watched him like he was my own baby.”

Supervisor ignored him completely. “What is the square root of 49?”

“Seven.”

“Spell the word ‘Rhinoceros.’”

“R-H-I-N-O-C-E-R-O-S.”

Supervisor tested him with the standard questions, assessing the baggage of knowledge he had managed to carry over from his first life.

“He tests out quite high,” she commented after she had finished. Rodney grinned broadly, as if barely able to control himself from giggling now that the terror and uncertainty had passed.

Danal said nothing. He waited, wishing he had some tool to dig deeper into his memories and bring them into the light—or cauterize them and seal the images below his consciousness forever.

6

Danal stared out the narrow window of the Enforcer’s hovercar as the Metroplex rushed by below. He sat back in the detention/cargo compartment, saying nothing. The Enforcer escort seemed to ignore him.

The elevator had taken Danal up from the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc., leading him to the lobby. Most of the reception area had been decorated with deeply grained clonewood, giving it the rich, somber appearance of an old-time funeral parlor. Danal had stepped out of the lift and, without moving, stared at the carpet, the ornaments, the light-fountain, the receptionist. Only a moment later, one of the Enforcers came and took him to a waiting hovercar, commanding him to wait in back.

They rose over the crowded streets. The monotonous buzzing of the pedestrians seemed to interfere with itself and left an eerie type of silence in the air. Barely heard, smog scrubbers mounted on the sides of taller buildings added their background drone, filtering the air to recover valuable chemical particulates. Apartments and business complexes stretched into the sky, and endless blind eyes of windows gaped at the world.

As they flew, the Metroplex seemed to stretch out, clean and repetitive, like a vast computer chip from the air: street after street, section after section, all arranged in geometric order. The larger industrial centers could be seen in the distance, but all around them lay the spreading shopping zones intermixed with residential areas.

As the hovercar approached its destination, Danal spotted the vast Victorian mansion looming in front of them, an anomaly among the crowded condominium complexes. The gabled house seemed to command the entire area, standing alone at the end of the block, surrounded by a small lawn of carefully groomed green vinyl sod.

Van Ryman’s bizarre home bristled with odd angles, sharp gables, and black and peeling shutters. One of the gutters hung carefully askew, as if it had been mounted purposely off balance to provide a calculated effect, dramatically decrepit. A weathervane driven by a random motor sent the silhouette of a capering demon in drunken pirouettes. Leering gargoyles squatted on the gables, somewhat brighter and more polished than the rest of the structure, as if they were new.

Danal stumbled slightly from the throbbing flashback as he tried to keep a placid expression on his face, a Servant’s expression. He grasped at the fleeing thought that had soared outward from his mind’s core, slipping through his mental fingers. Ripples in his memory died away, leaving a blank hole and no more of an answer.

Another bubble had popped deep in his subconscious—the spark of a buried memory from beyond the wall of death, like an outstretched hand from the grave. The first such explosion of unbridled memory still burned bright in his mind from when he had stood, still dripping, newly awakened from the resurrection vat. A name, a concern—Julia—but no face, no other details arose to fill in the gaps….

So many sights, sounds, smells, experiences had poured into his starved sensory organs, and everything fell neatly into the empty pockets of his memory, stocking the shelves, filling in the gaps. Danal felt ready to burst after a scant few minutes, and he rapidly learned how to filter what he experienced, to weed out some of the extraneous detail no matter how much it saddened him to have to ignore any part of his new life.

He wondered if all Servants felt this way.

The Enforcer unsealed the detention/cargo compartment, allowing Danal to step methodically out of the hovercar. The Servant stood next to the Enforcer in front of Vincent Van Ryman’s mansion, waiting. The Enforcer seemed uneasy, jittery. Danal felt himself churning with doubts, curiosity, perhaps even rebellion. Part of him knew what Servants were like and what they were supposed to be like. But something was wrong. And that frightened him.

The Enforcer finally stepped on the walkway to the porch, in front of a faintly shimmering wall of air: the deadly force field of Van Ryman’s Intruder Defense Systems.

“Vincent Van Ryman!” the Enforcer called, afraid to go any nearer to the house. “I have escorted your Servant Danal.” The Enforcer fidgeted. Danal stood perfectly still, expressionless.

The spangles in the air faded, and Danal sensed that the field had been switched off. But the Enforcer did not seem eager to proceed. He cleared his throat. “You go first, Servant. Command: Walk.”

The Enforcer motioned him ahead, and Danal strode calmly down the walkway to the porch. The sidewalk was poured from black textured concrete and clean, without weeds. Danal kept walking, his legs mechanically moving him forward as the Servant programming forced him to follow the Enforcer’s Command. Uneasiness grew in him, but he didn’t try to smother any new visions rising to the surface, where the microprocessor could grasp them and hold them up for inspection.

Déjà vu. The phrase suddenly clicked into his head, and somehow it felt right.

He mounted the creaking steps of the porch, where the rail appeared splintered and weathered, but when he focused his attention on it for an instant, he realized that it had been painted and textured to appear so. Everything here had the tinge of familiarity to it, and the part of him that wasn’t frightened wanted to see what lay hidden inside Vincent Van Ryman’s home.

Apparently relieved at seeing his charge delivered safely, the Enforcer saluted the unseen monitors in Van Ryman’s house, then turned and walked quickly back to the hovercar. Danal watched him for an instant, puzzled, and then faced the door.

“Your Servant Danal reporting for duty, Master Van Ryman.” He remained on the porch, drinking in the details of the wood, seeing an artificial hornets’ nest carefully mounted under one of the eaves. He stared at the ornate door knob, at the hideous brass gorgon’s head that gripped a door knocker in its fangs.

A voice struck at him from a speaker hidden in the gorgon’s jagged mouth. “Open the door and come in, Danal.”

The interior hall was dimly lit by a hanging chandelier that left the corners in a deep murk. Plush purple carpeting cushioned Danal’s feet as he took another step forward, and stopped. His Master Van Ryman stood in shadows at the end of the hall.

“Welcome, Danal.” His attitude seemed to show an irregular mix of excitement and terror, masked by an effort to seem calm.

Danal voluntarily used the microprocessor to think and examine with greater speed, filing the details in his growing mental database. Van Ryman was almost exactly the same size and build as Danal, but he had dark, lanky hair grown long and square about his shoulders; his face was wide and somewhat rough, but receptive. A rich green robe loosely covered his tight-fitting black clothing. Van Ryman’s forehead was damp and glistening clean, reddened as if he had just scrubbed it vigorously.

They stood frozen, staring at each other, and Danal felt oddly like an animal squared off at a territorial boundary. Van Ryman’s face sparked a strange reaction in the Servant. He seemed familiar, oddly so. Danal wanted to ask a question, but he felt queasy inside, uneasy, even though his synHeart carefully regulated his pulse. Without the subtle control of his facial muscles to show and release his anxiety, the turmoil reflected back into his mind.

To break the frozen moment Danal reflexively turned away to close the heavy clonewood door.

Vincent Van Ryman chuckled to himself and took two steps closer; Danal could hear his quiet sigh of relief like thunder in the muffled silence of the house. Under the better lighting of the chandelier Danal saw his Master’s eyes, and realized that they had struck a lance of disorientation in him, the eyes—somehow wrong. Something didn’t fit, but Danal turned his mind inward and beat down the feelings, uneasily desperate to keep his identity as a Servant.

“Once again, let me welcome you into my home, Danal.” Van Ryman’s gaze was marginally fearful, flicking over Danal’s face, penetrating, as if waiting for some reaction. The Servant fought to keep from staring at his Master, at the man’s familiar features, at his unfamiliar eyes.

Van Ryman surprised him by stepping forward to grasp his gray Servant’s jumpsuit, pulling it open at the chest. With a discernible shudder of excitement or revulsion, Van Ryman touched the lumpy pale scar of Danal’s death wound on his pallid skin. The man smiled to himself, nodding. Incapable of resisting, the Servant stood motionless for the inspection.

In the close light Danal could see nearly invisible red pinpricks clustered behind Van Ryman’s ears and dotted unevenly along his jawbone. They would have been in distinguishable in less dramatic lighting, with less intensive observation. Danal noticed similar pinpricks on the tips of his Master’s fingers.

Van Ryman pursed his lips and placed hands on his hips as he stood quietly, staring at the Servant with a faraway look in his eyes. Then, nonplussed, he straightened Danal’s gray jumpsuit again as if nothing had happened and rubbed the palms of his hands rapidly together with a scouring sound.

“Please, won’t you come into my study? Command: Follow.” He spoke cordially but firmly, with enormous self-confidence. Van Ryman started down the hall, then turned to keep his eyes on Danal, as if uncomfortable at having his back to the Servant. They passed a small control room for the Intruder Defense Systems and a bathroom. Danal followed, wide-eyed again, gulping in the details of the house as he walked.

He felt a sense of skewed antiquity in the dark elegance: many things old and valuable, but with no common focus or period, as if a collector had gathered them simply because they were old, not caring whether they belonged together in the same decor.

Danal mentally slapped himself to drive away the buzzing voice in his mind. The flashbacks emerged like the memories of a stranger, someone he had never known, someone vastly different from Danal himself. But he fought against an even greater fear of asking questions.

Van Ryman padded around a corner, and they emerged into the firelit study. Van Ryman turned again, looking at him with a hopeful and desperate expression.

“I’d like to have a long talk with you, Danal. I need some answers.”

7

The thrumming background noises in Rodney Quick’s apartment barely penetrated his concentration. He didn’t hear the heat exchanger working against the damp night air, or the tickings from the pipes, the clock, the appliances. The soundproof walls kept the city noises out and trapped the silence in.

Rodney stared at the dead surface of his Net terminal. Behind the thin glass, behind the phosphors ready to merge and regroup to spell out messages from the terminal, lay the gateway to The Net, the maw of the greatest source of information in the world.

Everything was on The Net—if you knew where to look.

Rodney cracked his knuckles and tentatively reached toward the terminal keyboard, but he abruptly got up instead and went about the apartment, switching off the lights one by one until he had blanketed the entire living area in protective, comforting shadow. In the dimness he made his way back to the terminal, moving carefully around the sometimes cushioned, sometimes hard corners of furniture. It was his own apartment, but often he felt like it turned into a stranger when all the lights were out.

It was irrational to think that anyone would see him now. But what he was about to do seemed better done in secret, in the darkness.

The terminal remained powered on always, and now the faint glow of amber phosphors seeped through the murky black background, waiting for the touch of the cathode rays. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen the rectangular cursor throbbed slowly, hypnotically. Rodney reached forward again and found the keys. His fingertips instinctively went to their familiar positions. In the darkness Rodney could barely see the ghosts of the main Net menu burned into the screen from many previous logons.

Upon returning home, he had procrastinated for a long time. He flicked glances over his shoulder at the terminal. Wanting to logon, to begin the search, to get it over with.

But first Rodney moved toward the shower chamber as he pulled off his clothes, dropping them on the floor wherever they fell. He wanted to stand under the hot needles of water blasting away the cold sweat and the musty stink of fear, purging the day from his system.

And after the shower Rodney walked back into the main living area, naked. He looked at the terminal again and impulsively decided to wear one of his old robes made from Sri Lankan vat-grown silk fibers. He had not worn the robe in so long, he wasn’t sure he could find it at first. Rodney wasted time looking for it. Eventually he pulled the limp wad of glistening fabric—sleek and black with a garish dragon etched onto the back—out of his low-priority storage bins, watching as all the wrinkles slithered into nothingness as he shook out the robe. He slipped it over his shoulders, feeling the slick, cool touch against his still wet skin. Rodney tied the sash tight across his waist, then went to the terminal.

Before he could begin to think again, he let his fingers race over the keyboard, logging on. Rodney had never learned how to type, but countless hours of practice had taught him to use four fingers and a thumb with lightning speed.

He pushed the Return key, waited for the system to acknowledge.

“WELCOME TO THE BAY AREA METROPLEX NETWORK.”

“USERNAME:”

Rodney typed in his name with spontaneous flicks of his fingertips.

“PASSWORD:”

He hammered in his password. A few beads of sweat appeared of their own accord on his forehead. Rodney had a sixth-level Net password, two steps above the fourth-level passwords most adults had. He had worked his way up, sharpening his computer finesse and using it to advance himself. Net passwords were one of the only things in the world that were still truly earned. You had to earn each upgrade yourself, through your own merit skill.

“WELCOME TO THE NETWORK, RODNEY QUICK. HOW MAY WE HELP YOU TODAY?

“?”

At the prompt, four other major menus appeared, asking him to choose between Communications, Entertainment, Calculations, or Information Services. Rodney chose the latter, then cracked his knuckles as he lifted his hands away from the keyboard. Steepling his fingers, he blew on them and half-closed his eyes, trying to think of the best way to attack the problem, to ask his question.

A sudden shudder whipped up and down his spine. His eyes flew open again.

Supervisor was an Interface. She could tap into what he was doing—even in his own home—if she wanted to….

He had come home that evening in a sweat, trembling, barely seeing anything around him. Supervisor had renewed her attacks with a greater vigor, finding subtle ways to stretch Rodney’s nerves, snapping them one by one.

This morning, before starting the workday routine, Rodney had inspected the roster and the banks of frozen pre-Servants. Other Servants milled around, monitoring temperatures in the vats, cleaning up, keying in data as they stared at the display panels in front of each tank. Rodney logged on to The Net, using his work account and password, and skimmed down the day’s schedule.

He found his own name on the list of bodies scheduled to be resurrected.

Too astonished even to consider the coincidence of someone else having his name, Rodney called up the file. It contained only one line of text.

“WE ARE ALMOST ON SCHEDULE WITH YOU MR. QUICK.”

His skin felt cold and white enough with fearful anger that he almost looked like a corpse already. Rodney tried to delete the file, but found that it had been password-protected.

The feelings of persecution and rage grew strong enough for a moment to drive down his terror, and he stormed about the room, shouting at the Servants, who obediently moved out of his way. One male seemed so intent on his tasks that he almost walked into the raging tech. “Go screw yourself!” Rodney snapped, and the Servant looked down at his crotch in total bewilderment.

On one of the vats Supervisor had mounted a plaque with his name on it. “FOR RODNEY QUICK.” Rodney’s anger drained away like spilled milk. All that day Supervisor never showed herself.

Rodney couldn’t run away. They held him in a web of dependence that had damned him. No matter where he went, he would have to use The Net and his password for money, for transportation tickets, for food, for identification. And every time he logged on, he would pinpoint his location, screaming out “Here I am!” to anyone who bothered to look. Supervisor was an Interface—she could find him herself, and she could come to get him if he ran away. Supervisor would do it quietly, at her own speed—but she would do it.

Now, though, if he could find the Cremators, perhaps he could win a small victory.

The Information Services menu spilled out across the screen. He selected “SEARCH DATABASE.” Another menu came up, listing the broad divisions of the database, and Rodney wound his way deeper into the mind of The Net, tunneling through menu after menu after menu.

“SEARCH FOR WHAT?” the terminal finally asked.

“CREMATORS,” Rodney typed, then sat back to wait. A “SYSTEM BUSY” message instantly appeared in the system line at the bottom of the screen. A second later Rodney scanned the summary paragraph, but it made no mention whatsoever of the group he sought.

Not terribly surprised, Rodney then looked for other ways to approach the problem. His peripheral vision vanished, and the rest of the world faded away as he rose to the challenge and devoted himself entirely to finding what he needed to know.

He tried anagrams of the word; he accessed the foreign-language dictionary databases and asked the computer to search for the key word in nineteen different languages. He followed every possible line of cross-referencing in an electronic wild-goose chase that led him through the labyrinths of The Net. He rose through the menus again and plunged in along an alternate route, asking different but related questions. Sometimes he received answers, but nothing helped much.

Rodney had honed and developed his own Net finesse during his teenage years, while his friends had discovered the Net simulation/adventure games and spent their time blasting graphic aliens or guiding their cursors through childish pixel mazes. But Rodney had learned how to run the tightrope of the computer network, skipping through directories and opening files no one else had even thought to look for.

Some of his age group smugly went into professions that would always be honored and safe: banking, politics, administration, engineering. All fine and good if you happened to be particularly bright, but Rodney knew he didn’t have the brainpower to break into any of those fields. He didn’t really care, though, so long as he found something other than the walking death of the wandering blues.

Rodney knew that he might have hope, if he worked hard enough—the good old work ethic from times gone by. The Net itself was the biggest employer in the Bay Area Metroplex, requiring such a vast number of operators, technicians, programmers, debuggers, hacker-security officers, database assistants, maintenance specialists, hardware engineers, systems administrators, not to mention the hordes of accountants, secretaries, administrators, and other electronic paper pushers.

Right now, though, the supposedly infinite resources of The Net seemed not to be able to find a scrap of information about the Cremators.

Feeling a growing desperation and helplessness, Rodney pounded his fist on the side of the console.

He shuddered to think how Francois Nathans would react if he knew what his own technician was trying to do. For a moment a twinge of guilt made Rodney stop another search for cross-references to Viking funerals. Nathans had been good to him—but Nathans had declared war on the mysterious Cremators. And if a man like Nathans could not unearth a single detail about the group, what chance did Rodney have in finding them?

After the Servant Danal had been released and escorted off to his destination, Rodney had not expected to see any more of Nathans. Nathans was too important a man to bother with a mere technician, and Rodney had suspected with some chagrin that Nathans’s first visit was just to emphasize how important the Servant was, not necessarily to commend any special work Rodney Quick had performed.

But Nathans did come once more, when Supervisor wasn’t around. “Rodney, I’ve checked into your background, and I am indeed impressed at what you have made of yourself.” Nathans folded his hands and smiled. “Nothing angers me more than to see a man waste himself on useless, monotonous work, letting his brain turn to jelly. By caring about your future, by working to learn, you’ve made yourself an important part of what I firmly believe to be the most crucial corporation in the evolution of mankind.”

Dazed and somewhat baffled, Rodney nodded and mumbled something that expressed his deep gratitude. He sincerely hoped that Supervisor was eavesdropping.

“If you ever have any problems, don’t hesitate to come see me directly. Keep up the good work, Rodney.” Nathans shook his hand. The other man’s grip was dry but firm, not a mere token gesture.

Rodney had not dared to take him up on the offer, not even after the most serious of Supervisor’s threats. Maybe this was an even bigger trap, a net within a net. And Supervisor had specifically warned him—forcing him back against one of the warm, bubbling resurrection vats and holding him there without even moving a finger—that if he ever went to tell Nathans about anything, she would destroy him before he could say a word.

His imagination churned away, surrounding him with horrifying possibilities: as an Interface, she could probably use The Net to make an elevator crash, a control panel overload, to turn any of the numerous appliances in his own living quarters into a weapon….

He had to find the Cremators. He didn’t want to come back as a Servant. Even then, Supervisor would probably keep him as her private toy. He had to find the Cremators. Even if he alienated Francois Nathans in the process. His situation had gotten too serious to leave any other alternatives.

“STRING NOT FOUND,” The Net answered.

In disgust and frustration almost to the point of tears, Rodney gave up. He logged off, and the screen went blank, leaving him in darkness.

The wake-up alarm brought him out of the murky depths of nightmares. The sound drove an icy nail of fear into him as he realized that morning had come. His eyes opened wide, and he knew they would probably be bloodshot when he went to look in the mirror. It was almost time to go to work again, to confront another day.

Before even bothering to shower, Rodney went slowly into the kitchen area and powered up the coffee dispenser, letting the synthesizers and heaters begin to manufacture the one and a half cups he drank every morning.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the message light on his Net terminal blinking on and off.

Suddenly awake now, Rodney went carefully over to the screen, moving with a tension that made him seem to be stalking the terminal.

“YOU HAVE ELECTRONIC MAIL ITEM(S) NOT READ.”

Probably just an updated Net entertainment schedule.

Rodney logged on and chose the Communications option from the first-level menu.

It could be an advertisement. Mass electronic mailings sent out to all Net users. Rodney had developed a program in his own Net account that would scan all such messages to see if they were electronically generated and sent to large user groups. Then he could toggle his system to ignore all of them, or throw them into a file for low-priority reading. But he hadn’t had a chance to debug the routine yet. Yes, it was probably just an advertisement message.

He chose Electronic Mail from the Communications menu.

“YOU HAVE ONE MESSAGE.”

Or maybe it was a survey. “Rodney Quick, we have selected you at random…”

He selected the message and displayed it on the screen.

“A REPRESENTATIVE WILL MEET YOU AT EXACTLY 11:33 A.M. WE THINK YOU WILL BE EXTREMELY INTERESTED IN OUR FINE MAPS AND DEMOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS—MERCATOR, LIMITED.”

To his amazement, the words vanished as he read them, as if the sensors on the Net terminal could scan his eye movements. The screen suddenly drew a map of the vicinity around Resurrection, Inc., highlighting one area. Then the screen went blank.

Frantically he tried to read the message again, but it had been purged. He dug deeper and found that The Net had no record of the message at all. No electronic address had appeared on the header to the message, no source-computer slugline.

Wide-awake now, Rodney chewed his lip, smelling the freshly processed coffee from the kitchen area. Maps? A Mercator projection was a type of map that made the world look squashed flat on a piece of paper.

But “mercator” was also one of the anagrams he had used the night before.

8

Looking satisfied and possessive, Vincent Van Ryman shuffled into the expansive study. His slippers scuffed the carpet into dark contours as he walked. Danal paced smoothly just behind him, moving without a sound.

Van Ryman stopped, placing his hand on the top of an overstuffed chair. Danal instantly noticed the details, the front of the cushion where the maroon-crushed velvet had worn away, the heavily lacquered wood trim sporting a row of decorative brass studs.

Curtains had been drawn across the French windows, though the neighboring condominium buildings blocked out most of the sunlight anyway. Crowded bookcases surrounded the room, mounted on top of half-walls covered with clonewood paneling. Next to the bookcases, a Net terminal displayed a simulation/adventure game interrupted in progress.

The maw of a large fireplace was filled with jagged quartz crystals bathed by scattered laser light. Mirrored tiles covered the hearth and the inside of the fireplace, reflecting and shattering the light into a million glittering fragments. A large white-light hologram of an ocean scene hovered above the mantel, framed in garishly ornate bronze.

Danal stopped just inside the room, absorbing details and waiting as Van Ryman moved about. The dark-haired man occupied himself compulsively, seeming insecure, as if he didn’t know what to do in the presence of his Servant.

“Why don’t you sit with me, Danal? I was just relaxing by the fireplace.” Van Ryman gestured again toward the Servant. “Sit, please.”

Danal automatically went to the side of the overstuffed chair, stopped, turned to the front of the chair, stopped, placed himself in front of the cushion, stopped, and finally sat down with exaggerated care. He sat stiffly in the soft chair, refusing to relax into the cushion.

Van Ryman shrugged and walked over to a small table beside the bulky black frame of a Grande piano. Danal could see that a touchpad synthesizer keyboard had replaced the ivory keys, and microspeakers had been installed in the otherwise empty shell of the antique piano. Van Ryman picked up a cut-crystal decanter partially filled with a honey colored liquid; he neutralized the cork with a switch on the side of the decanter and poured himself a small amount into a snifter. From the other side of the room Van Ryman studied Danal for a moment and then poured a second snifter. He strode over, extending it to the Servant.

Danal accepted the glass automaticalIy, but held onto it and made no move to bring it to his lips, though Van Ryman sipped his own with obvious pleasure.

“Go on, drink. It’s Glenlivet—you’ll like it.”

Danal hesitated. “Master Van Ryman, I am required to remind you that I am only your Servant. I am not a human and I am not a guest. It is not necessary to treat me with such courtesy.”

“Thank you, Danal. I consider myself reminded, and I choose to disregard your advice. Taste your scotch. We need to have a talk, a real talk, and I feel more comfortable if I think I’m talking to someone, rather than just tapping into a database.”

“Yes, Master Van Ryman.” Danal raised the snifter to his face, automatically inhaling and drawing in the strong aroma of the old scotch. The scent set his olfactory nerves tingling, rushing back to his brain for advice, setting off bells and lights, awakening other neurons that had until then been stubbornly asleep. He wet his lips with the Glenlivet and stepped up the workings of the microprocessor so he could analyze and concentrate on the initial touch of the alcohol before he drew in a mouthful.

The scotch burned his lips, but he let a small amount pour over his teeth and across his tongue, feeling its slow progression. His tongue awakened, and the insides of his cheeks felt pleasantly seared. He swallowed and concentrated on the sensation as the Glenlivet flowed down his esophagus, seeming to warm and tingle his chest from the inside out. His mind recognized the taste, the experience, and stretched a little further toward awakening.

Then he returned to real time, where Van Ryman had barely had time to blink, still watching him.

“Thank you, Master Van Ryman.”

Satisfied, the man turned and went over to the black-lacquered piano bench and sat down, straddling it so he could face the Servant. He regarded Danal in silence and took a deep swallow of his scotch before he spoke again. He wouldn’t look at Danal as he talked.

“I suppose you’ve already been given a superficial gleaning of my personal file. My father Stromgaard”—he allowed himself a faint, pleased-looking smile—“was one of the founders of Resurrection, Inc. He and Francois Nathans put it together and made it fly. Nathans had the charisma, but eventually he pushed Stromgaard out of the business. I guess he forgot it was Van Ryman money that financed the corporation in the first place. No matter, my father found something much more important to devote himself to.”

Van Ryman let the words hang as he looked up at the drab and passive Servant. Danal sat motionless, listening with simulated rapt attention.

The man rubbed his palms briskly together again, “Danal, I want you to think of me as your friend as well as your Master. Talk to me if you want, and be sure to answer the questions I ask. Servants are bound by their programming to do exactly what their Masters require, and I require you to trust me, to be as candid and as honest as you can. Understood?”

The Servant answered automatically, immediately, though his mind balked at the thought of implicitly trusting this man with the alien eyes and the face with a fun-house-mirror familiarity.

“Now then, Danal, before I show you the house, do you think you’re up to some conversation? Or would you like to rest?”

Danal paused a moment, listening to the tone of the man’s voice, the nuances of his expression. He could not decide if Van Ryman wanted to talk, or if he was rationalizing an excuse to be rid of the Servant for the time being.

“Whichever you prefer, Master Van Ryman. I am here to Serve you.”

The man pursed his lips, then rubbed his hands briskly together. “Well then, I’ll ask a few questions, and you answer as best you can.” He paused for one uncomfortable moment. The lasers in the fireplace scattered purple light, distracting him. Van Ryman rested his elbow against the touchpad synthesizer keys; one prolonged note of cello tone filled the room until Van Ryman straightened again, too wrapped up in his own thoughts even to notice. “Tell me, Danal, what’s it like?”

“I don’t understand, Master Van Ryman.”

“What does it feel like?” He seemed to gather up his nerve, and asked with more vehemence, “To be a Servant, I mean? What do you see, what do you think about, what do you remember? About death? You experienced it all and came back to us. What did you see there beyond the border?” His eyes looked glazed and distant. “Did you bring anything back with you?”

Guided by his inherent programming, Danal answered the questions in the order they had been asked, without thinking. “I see everything around me with great fascination. I want to learn it all again as fast as I can. I am intrigued by everything, and I want to examine. But I can’t—I am a Servant. Servants have no curiosity.”

“Nonsense.” Van Ryman smiled, apparently satisfied with Danal’s candor. “Here, to show you my goodwill, I’ll let you inspect anything you see, if you wish. I’m a very congenial Master, and I’ll let you do many things.” His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, but Danal noticed. The line of tiny red pinpricks along his chin became visible again. “But you have to answer my questions in as much detail as you can.”

“I will, Master Van Ryman.”

“Good, good.”

Danal walked slowly around the study, delighted, inspecting the dusty leather-bound books. He tried to show restraint, but he suddenly felt as if he had been freed, to inspect and touch and observe and analyze everything he could find. On the books he saw unusual symbols and strange languages.

Van Ryman broke his train of thought. “And about my other question, Danal? What about death itself? Do you remember anything?”

The Servant stood in front of the glowing laser fireplace, feeling the pleasant warmth from the thermal crystals. Purple light dappled his gray uniform. “Nothing clearly.”

Van Ryman clutched at the ambiguity. His out-of place eyes lit up and he sat straight on the piano bench. “But you do remember something? A picture, a thought maybe? Danal, this is very important. You have to tell me everything!”

Danal hesitated the briefest of moments as he analyzed the wisdom of confessing his flashbacks to this man. His Master. He wanted to Serve, to do his duty, and nothing else. His programming threatened him, clamping down with iron fingers on his free will. He had no choice.

“Yes, I do recall things. Strange things. I can’t explain or interpret them. They aren’t memories… more like flashes of something bigger buried deep inside.”

“Yes! Tell me.” Van Ryman’s eyes seemed to be ignited with the fires of Hell, and he looked as if he enjoyed it.

With his back to Van Ryman, Danal stared at the white-light hologram in its frame above the fireplace feeling more comfortable when he could avoid his Master’s gaze. He touched one of the digital squares below the frame, and the angle of the hologram scene changed, panning down the beach and focusing on the rocks on the shore. The sun slanted toward afternoon, washing over the grass-tufted sandstone cliffs that formed a wall to the beach.

“It happened three times, four times. I can’t make sense of the flashes,” Danal answered, puzzled. “I can feel the information there, just waiting to be triggered by… something. And when it does, it comes in a burst, unconnected, like a line of text lifted at random out of a file.”

Danal found a trail of footprints in the sand on the holographic beach, eroding as the tide washed in. The waves were tipped with gentle but dramatic whitecaps as they curled in toward shore, trapped motionless in three dimensions by the hologram. Absently Danal changed the view again, following the footprints.

“And what do these flashes show?” Van Ryman got up to pour himself a second snifter of scotch. Danal could tell by his Master’s careful movements that he remained intent on Danal’s answer. “Anything you see here, perhaps? In this house?”

“Yes,” the Servant said slowly. “Yes, I feel a sense of familiarity about some things. And you, Master Van Ryman—it was very strong when I first saw you in the hall. Does any of this make sense?”

The man stood up with bright eyes, grinning. “More than you can know, Danal.” Van Ryman seemed barely able to contain his excitement. “And these flashbacks, do you think they’re messages? Messages from beyond death, communications from Satan Himself? Pointing out that there’s something special about this house, about me?”

Danal paused, then answered carefully. “I’m not sure, Master Van Ryman. That’s a possible interpretation.” It wasn’t the right one, Danal thought, but Van Ryman already knew what he wanted to hear.

The dark-haired man nearly shouted with excitement and rubbed his hands together. His voice carried a whispered awe that Danal found frightening.

“It means we are expected!”

In the hologram two people lay naked and laughing by a rock outcropping on the wet sand: a man who appeared to be Van Ryman himself, smiling and at peace, with calm eyes; the other, a thin and supple woman, whose clean blond hair had been darkened by sea water and sand.

The young woman—Julia?—stared out of the hologram at Danal, taunting his memory with her crystal-blue eyes. Her narrow features were dimpled and elfin, almost wraithlike. A gull hung up in the sky, and tidepools were scattered in the pockmarked black rock stretching out into the water, waiting for the waves. Julia had just tossed a stone into one of the larger pools, and the ripples echoed outward in perfect circles. The Van Ryman in the picture was watching her, though—not the stone not the waves, not the gull. It seemed so different.

Alarmed, Danal folded the picture completely into his memory with all the speed the microprocessor would allow him. In the study, the real Van Ryman was too excited to notice the people in the picture for an instant, and Danal’s fingers flew to the “Reset” button on the hologram, returning it to the default view of a serene and desolate oceanscape.

For some reason Danal didn’t want Van Ryman to see the quiet, intimate picture. Irrational. Van Ryman was in the picture. But it was a different Van Ryman, one who had… who had discarded the fallacy of the neo-Satanists… under Julia’s urging, all under Julia’s urging…. A Van Ryman who would never have restored the gargoyles to the eaves of the mansion… one who would never look for messages from Satan in the disjointed flashbacks of a Servant.

Everything tumbled around in his head, letting the spurts of memory ricochet off themselves. Nothing resolved itself. Nothing made sense. But his Servant programming threatened to override—Danal had no right to question his Master, nor would he dare to.

He turned to face Van Ryman before anything else could happen, before he could lose his calm and passive Servant facade. “I am very tired now, Master Van Ryman. May I go to my room to rest?”

The man was too delighted to pay much attention to the Servant. “Yes, yes, of course! Thank you very much, Danal. I’ll have to call Nathans right away.”

Pressure built up in Danal’s memory, and he reeled as he wandered out of the study. Too many impressions were striking his underloaded brain, and his mind would soon be a tangled mass of contradictions. Now truly weary, he went toward his room. He wanted to sleep… and to forget.

He left the study and walked down a hall, past a central sitting area and a wide, blue-carpeted staircase leading upstairs; above, a carved railing set off the walkway from where it overlooked the first level. The kitchen and dining areas, as well as the terrarium room, were through the sitting room and in another wing, but Danal walked blindly past the stairs and past the small sauna to a large room, a bedroom.

“Danal! Command: Stop! Where are you going?”

On Command phrase the Servant’s muscles locked up and refused to function. Van Ryman bustled up in his green robe, looking suddenly uneasy again. Danal stood motionless and saw that he had almost entered the master bedroom of the Van Ryman mansion.

“I was trying to find my room, Master Van Ryman.”

The man paused for a moment in indecision. The silence was magnified by Danal’s distorted perception of time. “Well it certainly isn’t there! It’s upstairs, the second room. You’ll see it—I’ve got it set up for you. Go! Why didn’t you ask?”

“Servants are not supposed to ask questions, Master Van Ryman.”

Leaving Van Ryman trapped by the truth of the statement, Danal brushed past him and went back to the stairs.

9

Francois Nathans paused alone in the doorway of an apartment building across from Resurrection, Inc. Carefully adjusting his disguise, he let his eyes grow accustomed to the sunshine before he emerged onto the crowded street. The wind had picked up, ruffling the pedestrians’ hair as they moved back and forth. A lost piece of paper curled along the ground, brushing up against many legs that paid it no heed.

Nathans stood, waiting for the subtle transition to happen, for him to become an anonymous pedestrian. As far as anyone else could see, he was just another employee of a local business park, living in an island of apartment buildings surrounded by office complexes. Nathans breathed the outside air and set out, confident.

More and more often Nathans found himself using the passage from his private offices in the deep lower levels of Resurrection, Inc. to Apartment 117 in the complex across the street. It felt good to be alone, away from the pressures, and he had found no greater isolation than when he was surrounded by a thousand strangers.

Nathans wore a stiff denim jacket and black pants with silver stitching. Before leaving his office, he had changed his hairpiece to a longish spiky-blond style, since it felt like a “blond” day to him. As always, a fresh hairpiece felt good against his cleanly shaven scalp. Nathans selected a woven straw hat that cast his eyes into shadow, letting him stare with secret interest and curiosity at the other people on the street.

In no hurry, he watched the activity around him, pondering where to go for his walk. People always fascinated him, sometimes infuriated him, but never bored him. He stood under the hum of the smog scrubbers, contemplating, as an Enforcer hovercar moved slowly over the heads of the pedestrian traffic on the street; its black shadow looked like a shark swimming through the crowd.

Nathans stared proudly for a long moment at the massive Resurrection building across the street. First the discovery of fire. Then the Industrial Revolution. Then Resurrection, Incorporated.

He couldn’t remember if he had thought of that one, or if it was Stromgaard. Probably not Stromgaard—the elder Van Ryman had adequate business sense, and plenty of money to back the formation of Resurrection, Inc., but he just had no… charisma, or the relentless enthusiasm to carry the corporation to its true potential. After seven successful years Nathans had more or less usurped Stromgaard Van Ryman’s position, pacifying the other man by letting him take charge of the new religion they were then forming, the neo-Satanists.

Nathans smiled a little, remembering his glory days, when he had tried to cajole start-up money for the Servant corporation from Stromgaard’s pockets. Nathans had his own fortune, of course, but nobody knew about that, and he had to find a more obvious backer.

He had seen that the technology for reanimating the dead was nearly at hand—biomechanics, bioelectronics, and bio-organics had all developed extensively, but no one had integrated the separate subfields into a direct application. While others spent halfhearted attempts at creating human-style androids, and gave up in despair at the complexity and the cost, Nathans conceived of Servants as a cost-effective alternative.

Medical science had been unable to breach the barrier of death, to bring people back to life. The brain itself proved to be as large a puzzle for the neuro-engineers as the rest of the body had been to the biomechanics. But Nathans never even attempted to bring the mind back to life; he didn’t want to resurrect people—he needed only the strong arms and legs to do work.

Nathans had gathered up the most brilliant researchers, the mavericks who wanted free reign in the lab and who wanted to be judged by their results and not by tedious paperwork. He brought the researchers together, gave them a combined focus and a challenge—if they could figure out how to do the resurrection process, each one of them could literally have anything he or she wanted.

The team admirably did as they were asked and also came up with a few extra useful items, such as the technique of surface-cloning, which had in itself proven useful on a number of occasions. A few members of the first team were now perfectly wealthy and perfectly happy off on islands someplace, Tierce in Fiji, Bombador and Smythe still living together in Samoa. Swensen now had her own genuine nineteenth-century farm deep in the isolated rural sections of Minnesota, working her fingers to the bone for the sheer joy of it. And poor Ferdinand, the maladjusted one, who had worked a different shift just to avoid the other members of the team—as his reward he had begged to become an Interface, and now spent his entire time catheterized, fed by IVs but linked to The Net and swimming in ecstasy in mankind’s greatest collection of knowledge.

They had served him well, all of them, and Nathans sincerely hoped that each had gotten something to make him or her happy.

Nathans started to walk aimlessly, traveling in whatever direction the crowd’s currents decided to take him. As he looked around, he remembered how horrified the common people had been by the first Servants. But after a year or two, the initial superstitious horror became a more rational fear: for a few months’ salary of one blue-collar Union employee, a corporate owner could purchase a lifetime Servant instead—and Servants worked harder, worked longer hours, did not take breaks, never called in sick, never goofed off, and never dreamed of going on strike. As an even greater economic incentive, Servant laborers required less-strict safety standards, and never complained of poor factory conditions.

But the blues themselves had proven even more stubbornly ignorant than Nathans had expected. Looking at the forlorn, aimless people scattered in the crowd—in greater numbers every day—made him feel depressed and enraged. He wanted to shout at them, force them to see how they were wasting themselves. Why hadn’t they seen what was coming? If they had so much as tried to train themselves, they could have moved into some other job—anything that required the smallest amount of thinking could not be done by a Servant. Rodney Quick had done it; after looking into Rodney’s confidential datafile, Nathans was impressed at how the tech had worked his way up from a blue-collar background, using his own head and nothing more. Not at all like the other apathetic clods.

For the time being, the blue allotment paid for their existence, but the next generation would have to fend for themselves, find a way to survive by using their brains rather than just being assembly-line oxen, or they would perish.

The point of freeing mankind from manual labor was so people could spend their time thinking, philosophizing, educating themselves through the vast databases available through The Net. But the idea had backfired on him, and the people who had been freed from their workhorse lives refused to consider the infinite possibilities before them. With life so full, with so many things to do, with all the information in The Net for the taking if only they made the effort, the blues whined about being bored, with nothing to do.

It should have worked. It all seemed so simple and clear-cut. Because of their additional free time, the blues should have been demanding more art and music and entertainment, thereby creating the need for more artists and more musicians, all of whom could come from their own ranks. But the pornographic or slapstick drivel they demanded as entertainment was a long way from his expectations.

He had insisted on giving the blues the benefit of the doubt, naively believing that they did want the finer things in life but had been denied them because of social inequalities or economic pressures. But their dismal response appalled and offended him. He had spent a lot of time poring over The Net’s databases, but he could find no justification for the voluntary ignorance of the general public they simply didn’t want to better themselves.

And that had forced him to make an important transition in his own philosophy: perhaps these people were the lower end of the human spectrum, atavisms from the Middle Ages, members of the species adapted for a different time in the human dock—and now their time was up. Survival of the fittest, applied to human society.

Nathans stopped at a display of groomed rosebushes nearly exploding with roses. An Enforcer guarded the hedge and watched closely as Nathans bent to smell one of the blooms. The plants had been boosted to produce dozens more flowers than they normally would; the roots would burn out, exhausted, in only a few years, yet it would be a spectacular flash of glory. But someone always had to pull out the weeds to let the flowers grow.

Nathans fervently considered this to be the next step in the evolution of mankind, a societal evolution to hone mental capabilities and to selectively breed out those who had no imagination, no personal drive, no powers of reason. Nathans thought it was a grand and subtle plan, for the ultimate benefit of Homo sapiens. Perhaps it seemed harsh, but he believed a more humane solution would have far more destructive consequences.

Subversive groups like the Cremators undermined his power, threw obstacles in the path of this social plan. Involuntarily his fingers clenched, and Nathans almost grasped one of the thorny stems of the boosted rosebush. Carefully he stood up again, smiled at the Enforcer, and made himself walk casually away. Nathans managed to control his frustrated anger, fighting down the urge to stretch out his foot and trip someone.

The Cremators baffled him. He had the greatest resources available in the entire Metroplex, probably in the world, and still there had never been a successful attempt by the Enforcers, or Resurrection, Inc., to locate a single member of the group. Nathans could not understand how anyone could manage to elude his intensive demands for information, but the Cremators had done their cover-up work better than anyone could have conceived.

He could not deny that certain pre-Servants had vanished without a trace, or that the public rumors about the Cremators had not been generated by the rumor division of the Enforcers Guild. But not only did the Cremators steal his potential Servants away—even worse, they in creased the public fear and paranoia about Servants in general. Nathans was helpless, and furious that he was helpless.

He strolled along, passive, so in tune with the organism of the crowd that he rarely even bumped elbows with another person. Nathans pushed through a knot of congestion where five street vendors had set up their rickety tables. He stopped to look, perhaps to chat. It always pleased him to see that some of the blues used their spare time to make and create things.

He paused pensively in front of a jeweler’s stall. In several trays were various rings, pendants, earrings, studs, buckles, all made from polished and skillfully modified debris: scrap metal, acrylic-coated paper, wood splinters suspended in colored resins. One of the pendants in the glittering, unarranged chaos caught his eye—a neo-Satanist star-in-pentagram made from twisted copper wire and epoxied onto a wafer-thin disk of porcelain.

Nathans reached forward to pick it up, carefully inspecting the work with a bemused expression on his face. While keeping an eye on everything else that happened at her table, the craftswoman dickered heatedly with another customer about an inexpensive clip-on nose stud. Nathans studied her carefully as he appeared to consider the pendant, still keeping his face in the shadow of his hat brim.

The jewelry vendor had long brown hair braided with a rainbow of different-colored ribbons, like the striking plumage of an extinct bird. She had strung herself with a tangled mass of jewelry, most of which seemed to be her own creations. The woman’s face was wide, not very attractive; she had a few pimples, a few freckles, a few moles. But she had a pretty smile, and she actually wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, harking back to the wave of hippie nostalgia that had swept the Metroplex a few years before.

Giving up on the other sale, she plucked the nose stud from the dissatisfied customer’s fingers and abruptly turned away from him to face Nathans. “Like that one?”

“Yes I do. It’s very interesting,” he said, sounding complimentary but uncertain. It was all a game; they both knew it.

“Are you a neo-Satanist, then?”

“Are you?” Nathans answered quickly, taking her off guard.

“No. I don’t go for that sort of stuff,” she said without vehemence, careful not to scare off a prospective customer. “But it’s okay, I mean. We’re all different, right?”

“Then why do you make a pendant like this, if you’re not part of the religion?”

She shrugged, flipping one of her braids back. “I try to do lots of different things. And I have to make what the market demands, or else why bother sitting out here quibbling prices all day long? There’s a lot of interest in this stuff. That’ll be my third one sold today—if, of course, you decide to buy it.”

Nathans appreciated her frankness. He and Stromgaard and Vincent had formed neo-Satanism with a consciously mischievous intent, as a simple joke at first and then an appallingly real joke as the stupid blues ate it up. If someone was foolish enough to be taken in by such a ridiculous and absurd religion, if someone would freely give money and fanatical energy to something that was such an apparent sham, then didn’t that person deserve to be defrauded, a disgrace to the human race?

“Of course I’ll take it,” he answered the jeweler. “But you’ll have to wrap it up for me, please.” Before she could quote him a price, Nathans removed his Net card and swept it through her reader, transferring money from one of his fictitious sources into the woman’s home account. The jeweler handed him the pendant in a white paper bag taken from a fast-food center. She nodded at the fair, but not overly generous, price he had credited her.

“Good enough. Thanks for not haggling!” she said. “It’s such a pain in the ass.”

Nathans tucked the bag inside the denim jacket. “Have a nice day.”

He walked off again past the line of vendors, paying little attention to the flower sellers, the caricature artists, the middle-aged man selling cookies. Looking, smelling, experiencing, sensing the instincts of the mass mind of the public, he could almost feel his mental batteries charging.

Nathans particularly liked the singers, especially those who had written their own songs. A new style of mournful street spontaneity had grown popular, called the “blues’ blues.” A man and his sister sat together on a blanket, loudly singing improvised words to the music from a Tchaikovsky tape. Nathans stood listening while the others paused and then moved in. He quickly slid his Net card through the singers’ reader, giving them a small donation. They didn’t break their refrain to thank him, and that pleased him even more.

He walked again, looping around slowly, not anxious to return to Resurrection, Inc. Today he didn’t really feel up to going past Soapbox Derby, though he never tired of listening to the people ranting there. Sure, most of the invective predictably attacked Resurrection, but Nathans felt gratified to see the people thinking at least, planning ways to change the world order. If they kept it up, they might actually succeed in raising their own social consciousness. Otherwise, they would be doing nothing more than assembling furniture, cleaning rooms, lifting boxes, and washing dishes, not thinking of anything beyond their own paycheck.

Out of curiosity, with a faint predatory smile on his face, Nathans slowly came up behind one of the wandering blues. The man’s sluggish movements and dead lack of expression clearly tagged him for what he was. Feeling the game build slowly, Nathans shadowed him, not trying to hide his movements but somewhat disgusted (yet not really surprised) when the blue didn’t even realize he was being followed.

As they moved on, Nathans began to grow almost nauseated by the man’s aimless course, his dejected stance. Nathans wanted to shout, to shake the man and insist that his life didn’t have to be like this—was he a machine that without a mechanical job he was lost? Didn’t humanity have the power to think, letting a man occupy himself with great things instead of trivial “busy” jobs?

Nathans narrowed his eyes, fixing his stare at the back of the man’s head. It was going to be difficult for his own subtle revolution to come about, his own important alteration of society, his vision of the bright and optimistic future. Nothing could happen until most of these pathetic people went away.

A rush of excitement filled him as he reached into his pocket, pushing aside the white sack containing the neo-Satanist pendant and fingering a small tube the size of a penlight. A hisser, an aerosol weapon, a high-pressure subdermal sprayer that could paint a broad layer of toxin onto the skin, unnoticed. The poison would take hours to permeate the stratum corneum to the basal cell layer; once into the bloodstream, the toxin would begin to neutralize the serotonin in the man’s brain, paralyzing all his muscles—including the diaphragm and the heart.

Nathans would be long gone by that time. It didn’t pay to be blatant about murder. After all, he didn’t have anything personal against this particular man, only against his medieval “life is a vale of tears” attitude.

He pulled out the hisser, carefully laying it against his wrist and hiding its tip with his curled fingertips. As Nathans came up behind the blue, he could feel his own blood pounding, his cells tingling with the anticipation. He always felt a sense of triumph when he could do something to bring about the great social change, rather than just sitting back and letting the cumbersome grinding wheels of evolution take their own course.

He saw the hairs on the man’s neck, a few glints of sweat, the naked skin waiting…. The toxin was warm and gentle; he wouldn’t even feel it sprayed on his skin. Nathans raised the hisser, exposing its tip.

But then he stopped himself, realizing that this wasn’t what he should be doing. If his theory of inexorable social change was really true—and he knew it was—then it had to run by itself. It should not require overt action from him, any direct assistance. If the world truly worked according to the “survival of the fittest” paradigm, then it would have to take care of itself. One man killed would not make a difference one way or another.

Nathans hesitated, torn, wishing he could do some thing active for once. He admitted to himself that he would have enjoyed killing the man, but in the end he backed off, bleeding the compressed air out of the hisser as he let the other man move along with the crowd, continuing his ponderous trek.

The walk left Nathans feeling oddly refreshed, exhilarated in spite of the non-confrontation with the blue. He drew in another deep breath of the sweat-mingled air. The breeze picked up, and he had to hold onto his straw hat before it sailed off above all the other heads.

He felt he could go back to his office suite now, ready to play the part of the corporate executive again. Back in front of the great building of Resurrection, Inc., he read the placard from a distance before he ducked inside the apartment complex, finding his special key to #117.

“Servants for Mankind—Freeing Us from Tedium to Pursue Our True Destiny.”

Nathans took the words to heart. The world, the universe was predictable. Everything would work out all right. But he was deathly afraid he wouldn’t see the results in his own lifetime. He had to use all his resources to make sure that it did happen.

10

Danal left the lights on in his room as he lay awake on the narrow bed, motionless, slowly recharging his energy reserves. The house remained silent. It was long after dark.

Danal’s austere room was sparsely furnished with a bed, a plastic chair and, looking out-of-place, an old, non-functional Net terminal on a small table in the corner. After all, Servants needed few comforts of existence.

Danal lay back, pondering, all alone in the mansion. To pass the night in peace, the Servant realized he could step down the workings of his microprocessor, so that time would seem to pass more quickly. But he was not anxious for his new life to flash by any faster. He didn’t need to sleep, and he wasn’t certain he’d be able to even if he tried. And Danal wasn’t particularly sure he wanted to find out what kind of dreams he would have.

On an impulse he shut off the light and lay alone in darkness. His Master Van Ryman had gone away at dusk, departing for one of the neo-Satanist Sabbats as the population in the streets trickled away to do their evening’s work before the Enforcers’ midnight curfew. As he departed, Van Ryman left Danal with the provocative comment that he had free run of the house to do as he wished.

For the first time, unobserved by needle-sharp eyes, Danal felt able to let his wall down, to drop the Servant facade. It felt so stifling, so unnatural, to respond with mechanical efficiency and passive complacency. At the back of his mind he began to wonder if he was wearing the clever disguise of a Servant, if the flashbacks some how signified that Danal had brought more back with him from death… or if all Servants were like this, all wearing a false disguise to fool the humans.

Danal stood up and left his room. Hesitantly he began to explore the big house, trying not to abuse the privilege. He wandered through the rooms, touching things with gentle awe, looking at hallways, at knickknacks, at a universe of tiny details.

Danal picked up a small vase that held a porcelain rose. He touched a kiln-fired ashtray, crudely made but with an air that suggested the piece was expensive. Danal looked at the elaborate furniture, one piece at a time.

He went into the different parts of the house, moving slowly in the silence. Off the master bedroom he saw a sauna room with faded old boards weathered from too much steam and hot water. He hesitated at the doorway, not venturing inside. The place seemed to exude a steam of memories as well, like psychic impressions swirling out of the cracked floor.

Just to the right of the front door was the cramped control room for the Intruder Defense Systems. The crowded and intricate panels blinked like city lights, but the ominous machinery frightened him, and Danal stood outside looking in, afraid to enter in case he might touch something.

In the open sitting room at the end of the main hall, the Servant found a low door half-hidden under the stair case that led up to the loft and the other two rooms. He felt drawn to the door, but when he reached the handle, he found it locked. Danal tried to pull at the knob, but it remained fastened. A sudden fear ran up his spine, and he turned to leave the door alone, trying not to think about it.

Danal walked slowly into the study, the room where Van Ryman had first interrogated him. In the following days, the Servant had been cleaning the house, or taking care of the plants and flowers in the terrarium room. He had also been attempting to cook, using fresh ingredients and unpackaged vegetables and meats, but even though he carefully and methodically followed the proper steps, he didn’t seem to have any real finesse for cooking.

In the study he looked at the rugs on the floor, at the lacquered black Grande piano. Experimentally he ran his fingers over the synthesizer keypad, but the unit had been powered down, and no music emerged. He walked along the row of books, studying the neo-Satanist texts. Gingerly he opened one that sounded particularly sinister, the Malleus Maleficarum, and scanned across a few pages, but it all seemed like a gibberish of plastic Latin—words that were supposed to sound mysterious and arcane but had no actual meaning. Brownish-red ink sketched various shapes and symbols and things that looked like spells.

With growing enthusiasm Danal put the book back and stepped over to the white-light hologram on the mantel. The fireplace sat dead and cold, with a grayish crystal inside it. He worked the hologram’s position coordinates again, maneuvering the beach scene until he found the image of Van Ryman and Julia on the beach. He stared at the picture, haunted, drinking in the details for a long moment. His heart felt heavy inside him, but he didn’t know why.

Danal stood motionless and uneasy. Thinking, pondering, waiting. He heard his Master’s words echo over and over in his head, You may inspect anything you wish.

He listened to the silence, knowing Van Ryman wasn’t there, and stepped in front of the Net terminal. He looked at the vacant screen of glass, behind which words could come, evoking mysteries from The Net itself. He stared at it, nearly hypnotized.

Danal reached forward, almost touched the keyboard, drew back, stopped, thought for a brief moment, realized how ridiculous he was being, then reached forward again. He touched his fingers to the panel, and hit the Return key. Real, mechanical keys moved up and down as he touched his fingers to them, making knife-switch contacts. The screen came alive, responding:

“WELCOME TO THE BAY AREA METROPLEX NETWORK.

“USERNAME:”

Danal sat in the chair next to the terminal, resting his elbows on his knees, then typed some letters. With few other names in his nearly vacant memory, the Servant tapped out “VINCENT VAN RYMAN.” The Net returned and prompted him for his access code. Danal felt dizzy for an instant, and hammered a complex, seemingly random pattern of thirteen characters.

The green pixels on the screen vanished briefly, and Danal channeled his thoughts through his own microprocessor, scaling his time sense up to the same speed as The Net itself. For almost a year, it seemed, random pixels ignited and flashed on the screen before the characters returned.

“WELCOME TO THE NETWORK, VINCENT VAN RYMAN. HOW MAY WE HELP YOU TODAY?

“?”

Danal suddenly realized what he had done, that he had somehow keyed in Van Ryman’s supposedly unbreakable personal Net password, a tenth-level access code. He stared down at the tips of his fingers in awe.

Danal logged off immediately and took two steps away from the terminal as if it would bite him, attack him, swallow him up. He turned and hurried back to his room, leaving all the lights on.

11

Rodney didn’t like the faces all around him on the streets. He was supposed to feel safer among numbers, but some how the people made him even more uneasy as he darted through the crowd—bumping elbows, almost tripping himself—to the meeting place.

The air, the surroundings felt extremely oppressive around all the uncaring pedestrians. He sensed too many things here, too many chances for a mass-trans vehicle to suddenly come careening at him, too many chances for Supervisor to cause a power surge and make a Net booth explode as he passed it, or send an underground repair rat running amok to burst the seams of a power conduit just as Rodney Quick walked above.

Supervisor would take special care to leave Rodney’s body intact—so he could return as a Servant.

He hadn’t made his bargain with the Cremators yet.

But would Supervisor kill him here? Out in the streets? Or would she do it where she could watch in person?

Supervisor had not shown up at Resurrection, Inc. all day, and her unexplained absence seemed more sinister than her presence. What was she doing?

This morning his coffee from the vending panel on Lower Level Six had tasted odd, so odd that he quickly discarded it after touching no more than a drop on the tip of his tongue. And in his own shower Rodney had been suddenly blasted by a scalding spray, with all the cold water mysteriously gone—and nothing wrong with the controls. What if… ? He hurried along.

At the Cremators’ specified meeting place, he paced nervously around the base of an auto-statue of some long-forgotten military hero. The auto-statue shifted its position several times a day to reenact different grandiose poses. Looking incongruously colorful, carefully trimmed geraniums rose around the feet of the great general like the gloriously spilled blood of many enemies.

Rodney chewed his lip and tapped his two silicon fingernails on the rim of the statue. He didn’t have the slightest idea who the Cremators were or how to recognize them. He didn’t know what to do. Two Enforcers stood nearby, motionless. They seemed to be looking at him.

He glanced at the chronometer on his wrist, saw that he had arrived two minutes early. No one else seemed distinct from the rest of the crowd, no one else seemed to be waiting for anyone.

Claiming he had an appointment with a dentist, Rodney had left Resurrection, Inc. for a few hours. Suddenly fearing that Supervisor might check, he made a last minute appointment with a real, but inexpensive, dentist, an appointment he had no intention of keeping. But then as time slowly dragged by, closer and closer to 11:33 A.M., he began to fear that Supervisor might check further, to see if he had actually shown up for his appointment. Just before departing, Rodney sent electronic mail to the dentist’s appointment address, telling him he would be a little late…. Rodney hoped he could afford to pay for both the Cremators and the dentist.

Suddenly Rodney realized that a short, thin woman had come up to him on one side, and before he could turn, a man approached on the other side. The tech almost jumped, flinching and ready to run, but the strange man spoke to him in a calm and soothing voice.

“We’re glad you could get here, Mr. Quick. We are the representatives you wanted to meet.”

Rodney felt a terrified relief, but then he cringed. “How do I know you’re—”

The woman snapped at him, “What do you expect us to do, carry ID cards? Name tags? Shit!”

Avoiding her glance, Rodney could barely stutter an inane reply.

The male Cremator was a largely built man, dressed unusually but comfortable enough in his unusual appearance that he didn’t seem strikingly noticeable. He stood tall and wore a beard looping around his chin, framing it in Abraham Lincoln fashion but leaving his lip clean shaven. His skin was all the same tone, somewhat textureless, even pasty-looking, and Rodney wondered if perhaps the man was black and trying to hide the fact. But then he realized his own inability to see the obvious—the Cremators, incognito, of course. Covering themselves.

“You can call me Rossum Capek,” the man said. “You can call her Monica. If you must have names.”

The man was dressed in a khaki overcoat and wore a black top hat that made him look like something out of a classic Charles Dickens presentation. Yet when the Cremator spoke, his voice had a rich timbre, a confident and knowledgeable tone but not condescending. The slightest touch of condescension would have immediately put Rodney on his guard.

The accompanying woman, Monica, was thin and stern looking with dark hair cut in a jagged page boy—she looked familiar to him in the vaguest of ways. She was dressed in a nondescript wrap decorated with hexagonal blotches of earth tones. Her eyes were alert, flicking back and forth—darker than dark eyes, opaque eyes, and Rodney suspected that she wore contact lenses augmented with extra micro-sensors. The woman said nothing and only watched Rodney, watched Rodney, making him feel uneasy.

Capek put a hand lightly on the tech’s shoulder, and with an unyielding force, directed Rodney to walk with them. “Let’s go to more pleasant surroundings. We have some very important matters to discuss, and I’d like to make things a little more congenial.”

The two Cremators quickly guided him to a street corner where they could board a mass-trans vehicle. After only five stops Rossum Capek motioned for him to disembark. Air pressure hissed as the mass-trans vehicle spewed open its doors in front of a large shopping-plex. The man and woman rapidly escorted Rodney out onto the pavement again, flanking him right and left.

The propped-open mall doors had been smeared with fingerprints too high for any child to reach. Rodney didn’t have time to discover the name of the particular mall as they ushered him inside—all shopping-plexes looked basically the same, anyway.

Capek knew exactly where he was going and moved ahead, confident that Rodney and the woman would follow. The various specialized shops blurred past, and Rodney caught glimpses of them with wide eyes, but most passed in an indistinct collage. Capek halted once to allow them to catch up.

“I know a delightful little café at the heart of the mall. It’s rather exclusive, but we can talk there.”

The cafe was indeed very exclusive. Almost empty, it was hushed and waiting impatiently for a luncheon crowd. Capek smiled and, without a word, the cafe host nodded and led the three of them to a small table deep in the back.

Rodney forgot his anxiety for a moment and savored the surroundings. The air smelled fresh from dozens of hanging ferns and potted plants, from moist terrariums on every table. Mingling with the smell of earthy greenery was also the complex aroma of fresh-baked bread.

Huge skylights of plate glass let the hazy sunshine pour through, dappling the interior cobblestone walkways. A colorful patio umbrella shielded each table from the bright sunlight streaming down. The sound of running water made the atmosphere seem even more peaceful, and Rodney realized that a tiny moat surrounded each exclusive table, more for appearance than for an actual barrier. The tech noticed as he stepped over the two flat stones to their table that the bottom of the shallow stream had been strewn with old pennies and dimes, apparently for decoration, artifacts from the days of tangible currency.

Capek held a wicker chair for Monica, and she sat down without taking her opaque eyes from Rodney. The Cremator sat down himself as Rodney awkwardly took his own seat. The tech looked at the two Cremators, first the man and then the woman, waiting in silence, but neither of them seemed ready to speak.

Momentarily a waiter appeared, walking lightly over the stepping-stones to stand expectantly beside their small table. Rodney saw with slight distress that he carried no menus. “I’m ready to take your order.”

The waiter placed his hands behind his back and smiled with a vacuous stare. Rodney wondered if the waiter would be filing away their selections in his memory, or if he had a transmitter hidden somewhere on his uniform to send their order directly to the kitchen.

Capek folded his hands on the table and answered confidently. “I’ll have an espresso, and she will have tea—Lapsang souchong, I believe?” The woman nodded.

The waiter turned to Rodney, who hesitated uncomfortably for a moment. The waiter immediately spoke into the silence, “If you’re not in the mood for coffees or teas, sir, may I offer you something else? Some wine perhaps, or a beer?”

The Cremator interjected, “They do have a very good beer, Mr. Quick. They brew it themselves, in large oak casks. ”

Rodney grasped at the suggestion and nodded. After the waiter had vanished, Rossum Capek made brief at tempts at small talk, to which Rodney mechanically responded. Monica sat in silence, scowling, suspicious, until the waiter returned with their order.

The Cremator picked up the tiny white china cup in his large hands and took a sip of the steaming liquid. He closed his eyes in obvious satisfaction. Monica ignored her tea, but Rodney could smell a smoky, tarlike aroma drifting toward his nostrils. He took a swallow of his reddish-amber beer; he would have liked it colder.

“Now then, Mr. Quick,” Capek spoke, finally getting down to business. Reflexively Rodney took another deep drink of his beer, looking around the castle-like terrarium in the center of their table. “You obviously know what services we offer, or else you wouldn’t have been so persistent in trying to find us. However, you are the first from your, er, organization to express anything other than hostility toward our operations.”

“I’m in a better position to be afraid than most people,” Rodney answered. “I know what goes on there. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to find the Cre—”

“Careful!” The woman suddenly sat up straight. Her tea sloshed near the rim of her cup, spilling a drop onto the saucer.

“Yes, Mr. Quick. Please be vague if at all possible.” Capek smiled patiently and made Rodney feel comfort able again. The tech understood their paranoia, though, and spoke in a hushed voice.

“Yes, I know what you promise. But death is such an unpredictable thing—how can you guarantee that you’ll be able to… you know, carry out our agreement?”

“We haven’t made any agreement yet,” Monica interrupted. Her companion waved her to be patient.

“We can’t make any guarantees, since death is such an unpredictable thing. But we do promise that we’ll at tempt everything in our power to see you safely removed from the resurrection loop. Since we don’t make our contracts public, you can’t know how many times we fail… but so far we’ve been successful in more than eighty percent of our attempts. We have greater powers than you might suspect.”

Rodney tried to calculate how many contracts that meant, but then he realized that on Lower Level Six he saw only the suitable pre-Servants; others too old or too badly damaged would never have shown up on his roster at all. Many of those cadavers must disappear as well, not to mention the ones that vanished before an Enforcer could even log the death onto The Net.

Rodney tapped his two fingernails on the thick side of the beer mug and took another drink. Only a mouthful of foam remained on the bottom of the mug, and uncannily the waiter appeared, standing unobtrusively on the other side of the moat and not interrupting their conversation. In the lull he spoke over the trickling water, asking if Rodney wanted another beer.

“Yes,” he said, feeling somewhat daring now, not quite noticing the effects of the alcohol but badly wanting to.

The waiter disappeared, and the tech dropped his eyes a little, speaking before the nervousness could build and before the other man could return with his second beer. “And what about payment? How much will all this cost me?”

Rossum Capek’s face seemed distorted by the curved glass of the terrarium, and Rodney shifted his seat to see him more clearly. The Cremator finally removed his top hat and set it delicately on the tablecloth. “We’ll determine what you can afford. We serve all concerned people, not only the rich or the poor. Our group operates on the archaic system of barter, so you won’t have to directly transfer funds from your account.”

“Barter?” Rodney frowned. “But—”

“We can’t get payment through The Net,” Monica finally spoke up. “The Guardian Angels are constantly sweeping all transactions to see if they can identify something they can trace to us.”

Capek nodded. “We’re in a precarious position, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”

The Cremator sipped his espresso again, leaving Rodney to ponder for a moment. The Guardian Angels were a cadre of Interfaces who constantly monitored all financial transactions on The Net, searching for electronic fraud or embezzlement, tracing any transfer of funds for questionable dealings. Punishment for abuse, fraud, or embezzlement was severe, and Rodney knew the corporate moguls were more frightened of a reduced popular faith in The Net than they were worried about the actual crime itself. Superhackers had built a great many safe guards and fraud traps, and the Guardian Angels kept a detailed watch over the entire system.

The waiter unobtrusively placed a second mug of beer on the table, hooking his finger around the handle of the empty glass and snatching it away. The Cremator fell silent until the waiter had left again. “For instance,” Capek continued, “that’s why you’ll have to pay for this meeting today. We can’t leave anything of ourselves behind. Your Mr. Nathans would be on us in a moment. He is very intelligent, and very angry. Our group’s existence is too important to all people—we offer a crucial option to mankind. We can’t risk being caught. Too much is at stake here.”

Rodney fidgeted in the wicker chair, feeling the rough cushion prick the seat of his pants. He tried to steer the conversation back, growing nervous again, doubting that he’d get to the dentist in time after all. “What kind of barter are you talking about, exactly?”

The Cremator fingered the brim of his hat. “Occasionally we find ourselves in need of certain things, equipment, documents—I myself have a fondness for printed books. But most important, we need a pool of people as resources to buy things when we do need them.” Capek swallowed the last of his espresso and placed the tiny cup upside-down on the saucer as he stood up.

“My companion will tell you some of the things you need to get for us. I’ve got other business right now, and it’s best that we three leave at different times, in different directions.” He straightened his khaki coat and replaced the black top hat on his head, tipping the brim at Rodney. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Quick. I hope we can work something out.”

Rodney said “thank you” as Rossum Capek strode across the stepping-stones. Off in the café’s jungled shadows filled with potted ferns, he saw the waiter pointedly not watching the Cremator leave.

Monica spoke quickly and firmly, expecting Rodney to listen. Her opaque eyes bored into him, and he took a reflexive swallow of the second beer.

“The most important thing you can get us, as soon as possible, is a liter of solution from the final resurrection bath. Preferably one of the mutated batches.”

Rodney’s unshaven eyebrow rose up. “How am I supposed to get that? Hey, and how do you know about the mutations?”

Monica looked sourly at him. “Don’t ever be surprised by what we know or don’t know. You work down in the resurrection levels. Find a way to smuggle out some solution before it all drains down the grates. Nobody will notice.”

“But where should I take it?” He narrowed his eyes nervously. “How often is this sort of thing going to happen?”

“It’ll happen as often as necessary.” Her expression emphasized each word. “We’ll send you transient messages by electronic mail, with portions of instructions. It’s your body and soul we’re talking about here, Mr. Quick. You don’t expect it to come cheap.”

Rodney hung his head sheepishly, staring into the disappearing foam on top of the beer. “No, I guess not.”

The woman stood up, her tea untouched and cold, and shook her jagged page-boy hair. “Before you start complaining to yourself, think of your alternative. Do you want to be a Servant?”

Rodney felt a small glimmer of anger reawaken in him. “At least they’re not worried about anything.”

She whirled and glared at him with such a piercing gaze that he quickly averted his eyes and consciously drank the last of his beer. “How do you know Servants aren’t worried? How do you know they don’t remember anything but just can’t show it?”

He couldn’t respond before she splashed through the moat, ignoring the stepping-stones and getting the tops of her white boots wet. She walked off, trickling water as it beaded on the polymer surface of the boots. Rodney looked up at the skylight overhead, pulling his chair out to avoid the shadow from the patio umbrella.

“Could I get you another beer, sir?”

Rodney almost jumped as the waiter appeared at his shoulder. The taste inside his cheeks seemed to cry for another mug, and he wanted to sit and sulk. But before he could order, he suddenly remembered the cost, cringing at the cafe’s lush—expensive—surroundings. He quickly changed his mind and waved the waiter away, sitting alone for a few moments, not eager to face the bill.

12

The tall, cylindrical headquarters of the Enforcers Guild stood like a pillar of one-way mirrors through which the Guild could see in all directions and watch over the entire world. A gray soup of clouds typical of mid-spring reflected from the Guild building, making its polished walls look like a smeared black-and-white photograph.

Jones stood out of uniform in the brisk morning air, wearing a tight black skin-shirt that made his dark flesh look the color of wood. Beside him Julia stood motionless, unaffected by the cold breeze that sent goose pimples down Jones’s arm, seemingly unaware of his distraught and uncertain mood. Her loose gray jumpsuit billowed around her body; she looked like just another Servant for sale.

As they kept walking toward the mirrored building, the crowds thinned out quickly, as if pedestrians were afraid to approach the Guild headquarters. The weekend crowd was always a different sort from the everyday traffic on the streets. People wandered about shopping, frantic to get errands finished. Businessmen wore casual clothes, but remained near their own office complexes in a holding pattern, almost uncomfortable not to be at work. As always, scattered here and there, were a few of the wandering jobless blues, who probably never noticed what day of the week it was.

Jones noticed that the people on the street seemed to be avoiding him, shying away. He was used to that, the invisible prestige of the Guild that made him feel like a pariah. It saddened him to think that becoming an Enforcer had required him to sacrifice something so basic, so essential to a normal life. But then he remembered with a slight shock that today he was not wearing his armor. After a moment he understood that the people were avoiding Julia. This angered him, and he tentatively reached out to hold onto her wrist, as if daring someone to make an unkind comment. Couldn’t they see that she was… she was a Servant.

Servants—just property, buying and selling, mix and match. If you don’t need them anymore, just get rid of them. Jones winced, trying to swallow his guilt. That wasn’t it at all. Julia would understand, if she understood anything. She gave no sign. She never did.

He entered the Guild building, with Julia tagging obediently behind. Off-hours and empty, the lobby smelled dank with disinfectant and the decontaminated residue of cigarette smoke from the smokers’ lounge on Floor 2. The air carried several levels of subliminal noise, humming and hissing, static from the white-noise generator that supposedly created a more peaceful work environment. The air conditioner kept the air pumped to a just-below-comfortable temperature. He had not come to the headquarters off-hours since… since just after Fitzgerald Helms had died.

Now that the lobby was without other people milling about, Jones could see where too many feet had begun to crush the nap of the red dura-carpet. Overhead in the ceiling panels he could hear a repair-rat scurrying about its pre-programmed path, checking wiring, replenishing fluorescent cylinders, dissolving dust and grit. The building’s directory screen had been shut off, leaving a blank gray rectangle on the wall above the two vacant desks where receptionists normally sat.

“This way, Julia.” He moved quickly to the dead escalator that led to the mezzanine. He walked up the rubber-jacketed stairs that seemed frozen halfway out of sync. Julia followed.

The mezzanine level was also empty. He knew the entire building could not be deserted, and he was finally relieved to notice two other men standing together down one of the corridors, and at the rear of another hall he noticed a Servant janitor patiently waxing a floor. Darkened cafeterias were lined up in the main lounge area of the mezzanine next to a couple of Guild-members-only bars that served drinks and sandwiches at lunchtime. A barber shop sat empty beside the rest rooms and showers; three public Net booths stood beside various potted plants in the open areas.

The one functional upper-floor lift waited at the far side of the open mezzanine area. Though he and Julia were almost the only ones in the entire building, the lift still took a full minute to return to the mezzanine. He ushered Julia into the clonewood-paneled interior of the lift and then joined her, requesting floor 14 from the panel.

“SPECIAL ACCESS PERMISSION REQUIRED FOR UPPER-MANAGERIAL LEVELS. ”

Jones bent over to speak into the cloth-covered microphone patch. “I’m here to see Guildsman Drex. I have an appointment—my name is Jones, Enforcer, Class 2.”

The lift door closed, sealing them in the narrow chamber. Annoying easy-listening music wafted through the air as the computer searched Drex’s appointment calendar. The lift started to move upward, apparently satisfied that all was in order.

Jones took Julia’s hand and patted it; but her hand was limp and the flesh felt cold.

He stood apart from her. Might as well begin the separation now. Jones let out a long, low breath, discouraged. He had never quite realized how strong his conscience and guilt had grown. Self-defense mechanisms? He realized now—or at least he had been trying to convince himself—that he never should have purchased Julia in the first place.

Working at Resurrection, Inc., watching the way they processed the human bodies, the way they treated Servants as products—it had made him pay attention to things he had not thought about before. Escorting Servants for hours and returning home to find Julia unmoved and silent still caused his stomach to tie in knots. He could speak to Julia, and she would respond in her own way, but she would give only answers, never questions, never comments, never expressing an interest. She sat in a trance all day long; when he slept at night, she rested primly in the shadows, motionless, waiting for the daylight. No matter how hard he tried, Julia was not a friend, not a companion. Her very existence had an eeriness, an offensiveness, that Jones couldn’t reconcile with himself.

No, he never should have gotten Julia in the first place.

Days before, Jones had placed a classified ad in the Guild’s message and information transfer network. All such ads were immediately routed first to the upper-management levels, and then slowly worked their way down one level at a time as the higher echelons declined the items for sale or exchange. Rank did have its privileges.

Jones didn’t know what happened to used Servants. Since a Servant’s tiny battery pellet would continue to power the microprocessor for a century or so, a Servant must certainly be expected to outlive its owner. Jones couldn’t believe that Servants would be destroyed (of course, Resurrection, Inc. would say “deactivated” or “decommissioned”) when they were no longer needed. When someone returned a Servant to the corporation, the Servant was probably reprogrammed and sent out again—who was ever to know?

But he couldn’t bear the thought, even the slim possibility, of Julia—blank, mannequinlike Julia—being destroyed because he had cashed her in for a refund. Jones had no intention of making a profit. He wasn’t doing this for the money. In fact, even after only a short month of owning her, he had decided to ask a fairly low price, less than he had paid for her.

His ad had trickled down the Guild hierarchy, finally being snapped up by a fourth-level Guildsman, Mr. Drex, still in upper management, a good owner for Julia. Drex had asked Jones to come and show him his female Servant.

Jones did not know Drex, nor had he even heard of the man. But the administrative system of the Guild was so intricate and complex that few people bothered to learn of anyone in authority other than their own immediate supervisors. Jones didn’t think he even knew the name, offhand, of the ultimate boss of the Guild itself… nor did he particularly care.

The lift doors slid open, and Jones quickly moved out into the black-and-white tiled upper-management levels. Everything in the Enforcers Guild was supposed to be black and white, he thought ironically. The managerial levels were efficient but not ornate. A few other lights supplemented the fluorescent panels set into the ceiling. The air conditioning up here felt even cooler than in the lobby.

Jones stared for an instant, and then the doors of the lift slid shut behind him. Julia wasn’t with him; she hadn’t bothered to move out of the elevator. He whirled and punched the button again, opening the lift. “Come on! Don’t just stand there!” He tried, and succeeded, to build up some frustrated and impatient anger. He didn’t really want to be angry at her. She couldn’t help it. Would she always remember him like this?

Julia moved out and followed him dutifully. Far down the hall a man’s silhouette waved at him. “Mr. Jones! Down here.”

Jones signaled that he had heard and quickly strode toward the man. “Julia—Command: Follow!”

He flicked glances back and forth as he passed other darkened offices; in the off-hour shadows he could see the individual offices decorated to each manager’s preferences. Jones felt self-conscious, wishing he had chosen to dress in a more formal fashion. Too late now. No matter, this would be just a simple business transaction anyway.

One entire wall of the Guildsman’s office was a giant, polarized plate-glass window, from which he could look out on the dizzying panorama of the city. Bright sunlight poured in, filtered of the damaging intensity that would have caused his expensive oak desk to blister and peel.

Drex stood up as Jones and Julia went through the door, keeping his gaze mostly on the female Servant. The Guildsman had thick salt-and-pepper hair cut squarely about his shoulders and with a geometrically precise straight cut to his bangs. The wrinkles about his eyes had been accentuated with indigo dye so that his crow’s-feet looked like a blue web spreading out from where his eyelids met.

Drex spoke with slippery words in a cultivated, professional-manager voice. “So, Enforcer, this is your personal Servant? Julie, you said her name was?”

Testing, Jones could tell, testing. “No sir. Julia. That was her name in life, according to Resurrection, Incorporated.”

“Yes, yes, I see.” Jones could tell that the Guildsman was paying little attention to him.

Drex stepped from around his desk, and Jones saw that he was really quite short, standing only as high as Julia’s nose and barely up to the Enforcer’s shoulders. Drex looked at the Servant with probing eyes, waiting, and then turned to Jones with a hint of impatience in his voice. “Well? Undress her for me, please.”

Jones made no move for at least two seconds. A crease rippled the dark skin of his forehead. “Undress her? What for?”

The Guildsman scowled, and then suddenly smiled with feigned patience and understanding. He folded his hands together in front of him. “I don’t mean any offense, or to make any implications about your character, Mr. Jones, but I naturally need to see that she hasn’t been beaten or bruised. I don’t want her deformed in any manner.”

Jones told himself that this made sense, although the gleam in Drex’s eyes made him uneasy. The Guildsman leaned back against the wooden desk, brushing aside one of his piles of hardcopy as he watched.

Uncomfortable and filled with distaste, Jones undid the front of Julia’s gray jumpsuit. He blinked and his eyes went blurry with shame. He didn’t want to know if they were tears. Julia did not move until Jones muttered under his breath, “Help me, please.” With the slightest of motions the Servant shrugged out of the jumpsuit and Jones tugged it down her body, letting it drop to the floor.

Drex stood up, smoothed the back of his trousers with a brush of his palm, and took one step forward to stare at Julia. Even though the light streaming through the plate glass window left no shadows in the room, he squinted, making the indigo-dyed crow’s-feet clench together.

The Enforcer swallowed awkwardly and stepped back, trying to hide as Drex paced around Julia.

Her skin was pallid but smooth; her eyes had a great, blank, innocent look to them. The Guildsman bent closer to look at her fist-sized breasts tipped with pale bloodless nipples, the naked and hairless folds between her legs, the curves of her buttocks.

He made a little humming noise of satisfaction, but Jones was taken by surprise when the Guildsman suddenly turned and addressed him. “All right then, Enforcer, I don’t understand. Why are you trying to get rid of her?”

Jones felt cornered, trapped, and out of self-defense he spoke plainly, “I realized I don’t need a Servant after all. I’ve had her only for a few weeks and I just… it was different than I thought. I work at Resurrection, Inc., you know, escorting the other Servants and… if I may speak openly, sir, I just didn’t want her anymore.”

Drex nodded and absently ran his spread fingers through the thick black/gray strands of hair, but the resilient and perfectly straight bangs immediately fell back into place.

“Very well, Enforcer. I’ll take her. At the price you ask.” He looked up and motioned to the console at the side of his desk. “Please logon, enter your password, and I’ll transfer into your account. Do you mind if I have the Guardian Angels check your title to this Servant?”

“No, of course not. It’s clear.”

As they transferred the money, a heaviness sank deeper and deeper into Jones’s chest. But the momentum of the transaction pushed him along and he tried not to think, following only the instructions second by second as they happened. Finally he swallowed and was surprised to find how dry his throat was.

He stood before the Servant and said, “Julia, Guildsman Drex is now your master. You have to obey him just like you would obey me.”

“Thank you, Enforcer. That was a nice touch.” Drex smiled, sincerely this time. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” His tone had a certain dismissal to it.

Jones hesitated a moment, looked searchingly at Julia’s eyes, but again he saw nothing there. “Goodbye, Julia,” he said, his voice hoarse. She made no response.

“Thank you, Enforcer,” Drex repeated, punctuating his words with an impatient finger tapping on the desktop. Jones had no choice but to leave.

Julia didn’t turn as he walked out the door.

13

“Danal!”

The Servant looked up as Van Ryman’s voice reverberated through the intercom system. Danal stopped his vigorous polishing of the stair railing and quickly ran down the carpeted stairs with precise control of his feet. He made only a whisper of sound.

He paused as the locked door under the stairs called out to him again, yanking at his puppet strings of dreaded curiosity. But he pushed past it and into the study, where his Master Van Ryman waited.

Van Ryman’s face changed immediately upon seeing Danal. He looked up from the scattered books and papers on the rolltop desk against one wall of the study. The French windows were open, letting in a cool breeze; Danal could hear the faint hum of the Intruder Defense field surrounding the mansion. The laser fireplace had been shut off, and only the overhead lights illuminated the room.

Van Ryman carelessly rolled and folded several ancient looking scrolls, charts with planetary signs, constellations, and other symbols. His odd eyes were bright but bloodshot, and he had not shaved, giving the impression that he had slept little.

Sometimes Van Ryman looked at his Servant in awe or in worshipful expectation; at other times his eyes had a wistful look, a loving expression; yet in contradictory moments, he looked at Danal with scorn and distaste. It was as if Van Ryman were seeing three totally different people.

“Ah, Danal,” the man said and wiped both of his hands on his shirt, sitting back. “Please make me some tea. Red hibiscus, I think—I’m in the mood for something… bitter. And hurry—when you come back I’m going to have a very important mission for you.”

He paused and looked up at Danal for emphasis. “This will probably be the most important thing that either one of us has ever done.” Van Ryman quickly bent back to his documents.

Danal acknowledged the orders and went into the kitchen area. The white tile and stainless steel glistened from his thorough cleaning the day before. Sometimes he suspected that Van Ryman saddled him with tedious and trivial cleaning jobs just to keep him occupied, making a good show of needing a Servant.

Danal dispensed a small beaker of water and slipped it into the insulated heating chamber; a moment later he used the beaker’s handle pads to lift the boiling water out. Turning to the tea cabinet, he selected the drawer filled with hibiscus blend and removed a small amount by hand. As the strainer sank to the bottom of the beaker, Danal watched as the hibiscus petals caused a bright scarlet color to seep into the water, red like foaming arterial blood.

The flicker built in his mind, thrumming. Sparks of fragmented visions came and went in front of his eyes, each a miniature nova.

He paused, cradling the fragile webwork of the oncoming memories, terrified of the revelation and too frightened to hold it back. He jerked his head upward, gritting his teeth, trying to keep control of his identity. He forced himself to pick up the beaker and pour the bright red tea into a thin porcelain cup.

But a different force grabbed hold of his mind, relentlessly cracking open his buried thoughts like a cruel stepfather throwing skeletons out of the closet. Danal moved like an automaton as he reached forward to the knife rack embedded into the wall. He strained against a rubbery nightmare, reaching forward, groping away from his past.

He removed one of the wide kitchen knives from its whet-slot and held it out gingerly, staring at it in blank-eyed horror as visions caught themselves on the glint of the blade and exploded in a panorama of dark ritual in front of his mind’s eye.

The kitchen knife became a sacrificial knife held in his hands. Runes and symbols had been electrostatically etched on the stainless-steel blade. He saw robes—white, scarlet, black. He heard the chants, synchronous, nonsensical, augmented by the microspeakers hidden in the ceiling of the yawning sacrificial grotto.

But it was as if he stood on both sides of the mirror, both priest and victim. Holding the knife and wearing the black robes of a High Priest, he stared down at the naked and bound form on the altar stone.

And also, but what seemed to be a different time: He looked up, straining against the bonds, the sacrificial victim, feeling the cold from the engraved concrete of the altar biting into his back. The wide blade of a rune-carved knife rose up, catching torchlight on its tip.

But then a switch again, from the point of view of the High Priest: The hilt, made of simulated human bone, felt dry against his uncallused fingertips. He brought the knife down in a smooth arc. He watched the victim as foamy arterial blood sprayed upward, scarlet, like thick hibiscus tea.

Victim: He didn’t feel the tip of the sacrificial knife pierce his chest. The echoing chant filled his head, filled the heavens. A brilliant blackness exploded outward simultaneously from his heart and brain….

And Danal found himself crumpled on the kitchen floor like a survivor cast free from the wreckage of a ship. The thin teacup still wobbled on the counter where he had abruptly released it, but it hadn’t spilled.

The colors, the vibrant pain, the growing confusion and uneasiness about his former life, all made Danal reel. The thick scar in the center of his chest throbbed in remembered pain.

The Servant stepped up the workings of his microprocessor until subjective time had almost stopped; in his own timeframe he spent the equivalent of half an hour composing himself, calming his responses, searching for answers—or at least to hide from them….

Returning to the surrounding world, Danal balanced the smooth cup on a saucer. Walking with a methodical gait in his slow-time that allowed him to keep careful poise, the Servant left the kitchen, returning to the study. Van Ryman had rolled the top down on his desk, locking it. He sat in the overstuffed chair, watching Danal come in with his tea. The dark-haired man rubbed his hands together.

“Your tea, Master Van Ryman.” The Servant extended the cup forward; in an offhanded way Van Ryman gestured for him to set it on an end table instead. The man did not seem to have noticed any additional delay caused by Danal’s flashback.

“Please turn on the fireplace, Danal. But leave the heat off.”

“Yes, Master Van Ryman.” The Servant felt beneath the mantel of the fireplace until he found a pair of switches. He flicked the outer switch, and purple light flashed down, scattered from the quartz crystals and the mirrored panels of the hearth, and sent a scintillating violet glow about the room.

Danal hesitated under the oceanscape hologram, but he forced himself to look away, terrified that he might have yet another explosion of visions. Memories seemed to lurk everywhere.

Van Ryman took one sip of his tea, grimaced at its tartness, and then smiled in satisfaction. “Now then, Danal, as to the crucial errand I mentioned. I want you to return to Resurrection, Inc. You have an appointment to meet with Francois Nathans, in person. He’s very interested in your well-being.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “And in our success. He’s eagerly expecting you.” Van Ryman rubbed his palms together vigorously, and once again Danal felt that something was terribly out of place, even deeper than the Master’s out of-place eyes.

“Will I be escorted, Master Van Ryman?”

“No! You have to do this alone. Your own actions are very important. You won’t understand now, but if everything works out as it should… well, we’ll see.”

Van Ryman stood up, leaving his tea untouched, and went over to the rolltop desk. He produced a key from a leather thong around his neck and twisted open the desk’s catch, sliding up the oak slats and revealing the scrolls and books crammed into the desk cavity. He rustled through the papers until he yanked one out of the stack.

“I’ll let you in on a secret, Danal. Listen to this, from the Writings.” He ran his finger down the handwritten pages, ticking off several items.

“You are Danal. Danal, the Messenger. You are the Prophet. You are the Bringer of Change and the Fulfiller of Promises. You are the Stranger whom everyone knows. You are the Awakener and the Awakened. You are the Destroyer. Our hope rests in your future.”

Van Ryman closed his eyes for a moment, then quickly came back to himself, pushing the paper inside the desk and slamming the desktop down again so that it locked by itself. “Come with me, Danal. We need to prepare you.”

Baffled by what Van Ryman had said, the Servant followed him into the foyer. Destroyer? Bringer of Change? Neo-Satanist ritualistic babble—it meant nothing to him. He wished now that he had taken some time alone in the house to look at the documents, to familiarize himself with the theology his Master Van Ryman took so seriously.

But the last flashback gnawed at him: the sacrifice, the pain, the excitement—and he was afraid to unearth any more.

Van Ryman opened the doors of a narrow coffinlike closet in the front hallway. He withdrew a beige trenchcoat with slate-colored lining and shook it out before extending it to Danal.

“Here, you’ll have to wear this. A Servant walking alone in the streets will look too… vulnerable.”

Danal passively took the jacket and slipped it over his jumpsuit. The cloth felt stiff and alien, encasing him in something which, as a Servant, he felt he should not wear. Unconsciously he slipped his hands into the deep pockets.

Van Ryman took two objects from a shelf in the closet. “By disguising you, Danal, we should be able to throw any suspicious people off the track. You’ll be much safer this way.”

He placed a thin stencil template of an inverted star-in-pentagram on Danal’s forehead and sprayed red grease paint with an airbrush. The mark stood out brightly on his pallid skin.

The Servant felt uncomfortable and frightened, but he could not refuse his Master’s direct wishes. This was too carefully planned, too well rehearsed. What did Van Ryman have in mind?

“There, much better! Now you’re marked as a neo-Satanist—you should be all right. They can still tell you’re a Servant by your skin, but only if they look.” Van Ryman glanced at the stenciled star-in-pentagram. “You’ll need to wear a hat, too.”

From the depths of the closet Van Ryman produced a fuzzy black stocking cap that slid neatly over Danal’s smooth scalp but left the red pentagram showing clearly against his forehead.

Danal felt like a mannequin, a toy about to be wound up and set on a course he had no choice but to follow. Van Ryman moved with an intensity, captivated and involved in the game, filled with eagerness overlying an anxious dread.

Danal waited passively as Van Ryman opened the door of his Intruder Defense control room. Switches and panels and surveillance videoscreens glittered and glowed.

“Danal, you know how to get to Resurrection, Inc. from here, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he replied. A detailed map of the entire Metroplex had been burned into his microprocessor.

Van Ryman seemed to be only half listening. “Good.” He punched some keys on one of the already logged-on terminals, establishing a direct communications link with Francois Nathans. Danal tried not to listen.

“He’s coming. You’d better get ready,” he said to the screen. The voice receptor picked up his words, encoded them, and transmitted the message directly to Nathans’s electronic address. “This is the trigger moment we’ve all been waiting for.”

Van Ryman turned to Danal. “Open the front door.”

Mid-morning sunlight entered the foyer, illuminating the dark shadows inside. He could see the black textured concrete of Van Ryman’s walkway extending to the public sidewalk, and from there to the streets and the people and the entire city—people who hated Servants and, he recalled uneasily, who disliked neo-Satanists as well.

Danal could barely see the hazy hemisphere of ionized air of the Intruder Defense field surrounding the mansion. Van Ryman fiddled with the controls; without looking up, he announced, “Go now, Danal. I’ve opened the door field. I’ll be watching and ready when you come back.”

“Yes, Master Van Ryman.” Indeed he did see a portion of the blurred air become fully transparent again as the deadly field was reshaped enough to let him pass through.

“Danal!” Van Ryman came to the porch to see him. He hung onto his words breathlessly. In the slanted sunlight the Servant could see the line of faint pinprick scars on his Master’s face and jawline. “Good luck.”

Danal stepped out, began to walk, and kept walking, feeling paradoxically naked in his neo-Satanist disguise, vulnerable and trapped.

Alone, he tried to sidestep the psychological battlefield of the streets. As he walked, the mansion fell behind him with all its gables and towers and its too-polished gargoyles. He felt like a walking time bomb, the jagged tip of an iceberg thrusting itself upward from his past.

You are Danal. Danal, the Messenger. You are the Prophet.

He walked purposefully, knowing Van Ryman would be watching through his monitors until he was out of range. He let the streets swallow him up. Conflicting emotions and confusion made his heart heavy. As a Servant, he had already felt the latent antagonism of the people, but now, marked with the sign of the neo-Satanists, he could feel even more angry, disgusted stares from the crowd.

You are the Bringer of Change and the Fulfiller of Promises.

Danal wondered if the protection supposedly offered by the pentagram mark on his forehead was worth the wrenching, disconnected feelings in his stomach. This time, he experienced no wonder and awe at the streets’ varied impressions. The pedestrians’ quick glances and muttered obscenities were also laced with fear. He wanted to tell them he was not one of the Satan worshippers

Near Resurrection, Inc. he stood as if hypnotized, staring into the feathered surface of the pool surrounding a splashing fountain. Warm salt water gushed from ornate, abstractly phallic orifices. Overhead, a pair of seagulls floated on thermal currents, searching for garbage that someone might drop into the fountain. Prominently painted on the concrete lip around the pool were the words, “DO NOT DRINK.”

You are the Stranger whom everyone knows.

Fine droplets of mist from the fountain splattered against his polymer trenchcoat. He knew he shouldn’t be hesitating. He shouldn’t be stopping. But then, he shouldn’t be uneasy either—as a Servant, he had been given clear-cut instructions. He should have been concerned only with following them.

You are the Awakener and the Awakened.

In truth, Van Ryman had not actually told him to keep the pentagram, had not Commanded him to continue wearing the disguise at all. Danal understood what the Master had implied, but without the binding Command phrase, a Servant was free to interpret orders as he wished, wasn’t he? Danal continued to rationalize to himself, thinking rapidly, trying not to wait too long by the fountain before someone became suspicious.

You are the Destroyer.

On impulse he splashed water on his forehead and scrubbed with the corner of his trenchcoat, staining the cloth a greasy red. He tossed the sopping black stocking cap into the water and it slowly sank to the bottom. He leaned over the fountain to see his reflection. The mark was gone.

He felt as if he had cast one of the leering gargoyles off his back.

14

In her own quarters, Supervisor began by playing the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, selecting it from the Net library of music and setting the piece on auto-repeat. The slow, quiet beginning of the music drifted out from the thin band of microspeakers at waist level around the room. She used the keypad tattooed on her palm to activate the implanted speakers in her head, hooking her mind up to the direct electronic translation of the symphonic masterwork.

She closed her thick eyelids, reveling in the pure digitized tones, receiving the real music from the inside in an ecstatic experience that few other people could ever have. She allowed herself to savor each note in private, where no one else could see her. The somber andante tempo set the mood for her search.

In further preparation, Supervisor removed her sleeveless purple tunic and neatly placed it on the meditating chair. Standing naked, she undid her three equal braids, brushing the bluish-blond hair out into a fine web; stray strands drifted with leftover static electricity. She would never admit her apartment was too empty, too lonely; with all The Net for company, no Interface should ever get lonely.

Supervisor took the wand, laying an impedance path from the wall’s power plate along the floor to the center of the room, where she would be sitting. She lit incense, then switched off all the lights, leaving only darkness except for a dim red glow from the photo-receptive mood specks painted on the wall.

Supervisor arranged her stocky body in a lotus position on the floor, sitting in the center of the impedance path. She could feel the pleasant pressure of the neutral-textured carpet against her buttocks. The temperature in the room was perfect. She controlled her breathing and listened to Beethoven’s music for a few minutes, closing her eyes, washing away all barriers. Then she brushed her fingertips against the keyboard on her palm, logging onto the computer network.

In the back of her mind, Supervisor had already begun to formulate a strategy for her search. The Cremators. The information must exist somewhere on The Net. She decided to find them, expose them. The problem would occupy her entire mind, her entire body, and she would be taken away from this… triviality. Supervisor would once again prove her incredible worth to Resurrection, Inc.

Of course, she chose to seek out the Cremators for the sheer challenge rather than out of any sense of duty to the corporation. Life presented so few challenges. She savored the tingle of excitement that skittered along her spine.

Personally, Supervisor didn’t care about what the Cremators did; moral qualms were for weaker people who had no interest in seeing the greater universe. Resurrection, Inc., with its power and visibility, balked at anyone opposing their operations; the Cremators fought for another way of existence, with a philosophy perpendicular to that of the corporation. And, regardless of any objective assessment of their motives, Supervisor had a deep admiration for the Cremators’ ability to elude all the intense searches for so long.

Francois Nathans had used his best hackers and database jockeys, but no matter how talented they were, they still suffered under the handicap of being only human. An Interface was the only appropriate person to conduct such an in-depth search.

Supervisor generally regarded normal humans with a semi-tolerant distaste. She recognized that though they might strain themselves to the limit, they were still bound by the vulnerabilities and unpredictabilities of a biological organism. They could not possibly have the speed, the reliability, the framework of logic, or the breadth of experience of an Interface. Like her.

Since her rigidly conditioned childhood, Supervisor had given up all fleshly pleasures—not just sex, but also mundane personal contact, the visual stimulation of sightseeing around the Metroplex, and the joys of eating. She saw the latter as only a means of taking in energy, although occasionally in private she did allow herself the detachment necessary to enjoy the art of well-prepared foods and carefully blended liqueurs.

She found it infinitely more pleasurable to be floating in the Network, tunneling down avenues of data, sorting through bright information that she didn’t even have to remember because she could access it again anytime she wanted.

Some humans did have the right idea, though it was far too late for them to ever become true Interfaces. Rodney Quick, for instance, was a capable human; he knew how to use The Net. She didn’t dislike him—in fact, he flattered her with his ridiculous fear of her authority. Almost unconsciously, she had responded to his fear by making herself dictatorial and intimidating. As another challenge, she had decided to push her powers to the limit, to do what Rodney seemed to expect of her, to destroy him as efficiently and as intricately as she could.

Supervisor had no active malice in mind, because malice was a human thing. But Rodney’s occasional “Quickening” of the female Servants late in his shift showed that he was still too closely concerned with physical stimuli.

Supervisor had run three other people into the ground, setting her snares and drawing them tighter. A game, intricate and challenging, and ultimately satisfying. Normal humans would consider this to be cruel and malicious, but she recognized her need as a misguided backlash from her own exotic childhood; other humans had normal aggression-dampening routines, beating on people, picking on things, pulling the wings off of flies.

By causing Rodney Quick’s death and resurrecting him as a Servant, she would in a way be bringing him one step closer to the ideal. If only the resurrection process weren’t so flawed. If planting the microprocessor in Rodney’s brain would order his thoughts and physical actions, make them more easily controlled by the person himself, then this could only be a step in the right direction. However, after seeing some of the Servants walk out like mannequins, she thought the process had overshot the mark and developed something more machine than human.

Unlike the perfect amalgam that she herself was.

The Net accepted her logon, and she felt her consciousness link up with the stream of information. The various directories stood like gateways in front of her, each leading down an infinite hallway of mirrored doors. Every directory was like a separate museum of knowledge, with more facts than any single mind could hold.

Entering the huge Network, Supervisor had left her tangible body behind, and she knew that if she could bend back and look at her Net-self, she would see only a blurred locus of incandescent light that moved down different datapaths. This was home. This was peace.

She had experienced The Net many times before and needed only a moment to reorient herself to her new physical state. With all the energy of The Net to draw on, with the secondary power pouring into her body through the impedance path from the power plates on the wall, she had no risk of becoming tired.

She began her search.

As an Interface, Supervisor could move down any path without the hindrance of passwords, able to go up and down, in and out, digging into any file she required.

She started by assimilating all the pre-Servants known to be missing—Cremator successes?—and then she used a complex routine to unearth all past records about them. The previous data activity of a deceased person remained accessible only for a certain time before it was erased or stored on a separate omnidisk. Dumping the data into an open-ended file, she activated another routine to correlate all the information, searching for parallels.

Supervisor spun down other paths as the sifting subprogram churned away behind her. She moved into the Enforcer log files of corpses found during routine duty, and then cross-checked those names to make certain every cadaver had actually been delivered to Resurrection, Inc.; some names had likewise disappeared in between lists, and she included them in the growing file behind her. Third, she checked The Net’s master death record, scanning the obituary files and collating them with the first two lists, looking for other names that had disappeared along the way.

The growing number of subfiles churned through cross-checking routines that spit out the coincidental occurrences, leaving only the genuine anomalies. Supervisor began to grow alarmed—she doubted even Francois Nathans suspected the scope of the Cremators’ involvement.

She folded herself back to the output end of her processing file, searching the missing persons’ outgoing electronic-mail archives. The computer started storing and assimilating and correlating all the information, looking for common pathways, common messages sent.

Every one of the names had been searching through The Net for the Cremators, some with real skill and imagination, others with almost pathetic clumsiness. But somehow they had all found their target. In less than a second Supervisor scanned the paths of all the outgoing messages, frustrated to find that none of them led anywhere. They were all blind attempts to contact someone, anyone: vigorous database searches, or just short letters doggedly sent out to “The Cremators” over and over again.

Then, changing her plan of attack, Supervisor began a backlash routine to go over the files again, this time searching for common messages received. With a large enough control sample taken from other random people on The Net, she was quickly able to eliminate the spurious messages, the mass mailings received by everyone.

After several iterations she found one thing, one message they had all received and all deleted; it came from the same electronic address. She used a grave-digger routine to unearth the original message, but was able to gather only selected pieces of the text. It seemed innocuous enough, a simple business advertisement about a mapmaking and demographic-studies consulting firm. She flashed down another data corridor, trying to reference the firm’s control number, and found that the company did not exist.

Mercator.

Cremator.

She tunneled down the return path of the deleted messages, elated with the challenge, the possibility of success. Along the way she encountered several dead ends, false cross-links, booby-traps that would have been successful against even the best superhacker. But she was an Interface. She made it through to the home directory.

And she found the Cremators.

All of the information had been hidden from her before, and in awe Supervisor scanned the deepest secrets of the Cremators. In growing horror she found information that amazed her, made her feel like an idiot for not suspecting—

Supervisor turned to flee in triumph, but found suddenly that the electronic gateways, the datapaths ahead of her, began shutting down one by one. She could feel the influence of other Interfaces, different from any she had ever encountered before, nearly unreal minds that never left The Net. They had hidden themselves in the forest of files and directories, like predators waiting for her. As they moved forward, she could see their electronic identities, blurred formless things of bright colors, moving in ambush around her.

The gateways closed on all sides, closer and closer. United, the other Interfaces were infinitely stronger, and Supervisor could not break through. She could see the knowledge of the Cremators all around her and was trapped by it. Although she battered her consciousness against the barriers, they became stronger and stronger, as her fear and helplessness grew.

More and more interlocks were placed around her as the other Interfaces rerouted the datapaths. For the first time in her memory, Supervisor was severed from The Net, trapped inside, completely isolated on a data island. Her incorporeal form had no voice with which to shout for help. And there was no possible way for her to get out, ever….

Back in the apartment, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 automatically stopped, returned to the beginning notes, then repeated itself again and again and again.

15

The mammoth headquarters of Resurrection, Inc. rose like a tombstone in front of Danal. Still hiding his Servant identity with the beige trenchcoat, he looked at the building in brooding awe.

Other people milled about; most moved hurriedly toward the enclosed plazas as an early spring rain started to fall. The Servant stood oblivious, but conscious of every droplet of water striking his skin.

“…return to Resurrection, Incorporated… meet with Francois Nathans…”

Danal walked toward the nearest transplastic revolving door, the entrance for workers and visitors.

“He’s eagerly expecting you.”

Danal pushed his way through the door, grasping the long brass handle as if he were a pallbearer. He had been here before. This place had given him a second birth, but he remembered nothing else about it. He had been brought in at night with a shipment of other corpses, through a different door, processed and turned into what he was now. But the techs had not been thorough enough. Too many stains of his past life remained, coming back to haunt him in incomprehensible flashes and painful knives of memory.

Danal wondered if the techs could purge his brain again, start him over fresh and clean and untainted. But for some reason he found that prospect more frightening than just learning to live with his past, to live with the shadow of a person he had once been.

As he entered the carpeted lobby Danal saw the main receptionist sitting behind a glossy black landscape of her acrylic desktop, tapping her impossibly long fingernails on a keyboard. Her eyes were a cool purplish color from mood-responsive contact lenses.

He shrugged off his trenchcoat and stood exposed as a Servant in his gray uniform. The receptionist looked up, mildly surprised at the audacity of his disguise, but then she recognized that no Servant could have done such a thing by himself.

Danal’s voice sounded dry and lifeless to his own ears. “My Master Van Ryman instructed me to come here. I am to see Mr. Francois Nathans.”

This is the trigger moment we’ve all been waiting for.

The receptionist turned away, ignoring him as she spoke into an intercom port. “He’s here, Mr. Nathans. ”

Danal heard no response from Nathans, but the receptionist acknowledged anyway. She looked coolly at him again, but this time her eyes were brown. “Take the fourth lift on the right. That’s a direct line down to Mr. Nathans’s main office. Command: Go.”

Before Danal could say anything, his Servant programming took control and sent his feet moving toward the indicated lift. Vaguely, he resented her use of the Command phrase, which stripped him of any discretion whatsoever. He had obviously shown himself to be independent just by coming here alone; the shackling phrase relegated him to the status of a puppet, and she could have seen that she didn’t need to use it.

As Danal moved away, the receptionist stretched out her arm to take the dripping polymer trenchcoat from him. He had no choice but to let her have it. He didn’t know if she was keeping it for him, or just making certain that he couldn’t drip rainwater in Nathans’s office… or maybe she was stripping him of something that could hide his identity as a Servant.

The dampness on Danal’s pale scalp and face dried quickly, and his gray jumpsuit had already volatilized most of the moisture in the fabric. Danal hoped his Master Van Ryman would not notice he had lost the black stocking cap. He didn’t want to explain what he had done.

The special lift doors opened automatically for him as he approached. The doors waited like an open mouth with the fangs cleverly hidden.

The doors hissed shut, and the lift obeyed his voice command, suddenly plunging downward, deep below ground level to the main offices of Francois Nathans. The lift didn’t distinguish between the words of Servants and those of humans. After a moment Danal stepped out, dizzy but reorienting himself quickly.

The corridors were dim and cold from the heavy air conditioning; a high humidity level and a faint musty smell made the place dank. Ahead of him a wide double door of walnut-attribute clonewood stood partly open, inviting. He took one step out of the elevator and the doors closed behind him. Listening, he could hear the whirring machinery as the lift chamber reset itself back to the main lobby level.

The Servant moved to the door of the office, stepping silently on the thick maroon carpet, though he knew that Nathans must have heard the lift’s arrival. He placed one hand on the brass handle of the heavy door, pulling it open wide enough to admit himself. Some instinct warned him not to knock. He could feel shadows around him, an oppressiveness, as if he were deep below the Earth’s crust.

His nerve ends tingled with a handful of invisible needles. His mouth felt dry and tasted like metal. Warning bells sounded in his mind, but he took a quick, cold breath and steeled himself, tensing his muscles to keep the mental turmoil trapped within.

Something was going to happen.

He felt like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point.

Danal stepped into the chamber. “I’m here, Mr. Nathans.”

In an eyeblink he saw all the baroque furniture, the tapestries, the faint illumination from thick black candles on the desk, the bookshelves, the reception table. A thick plate-glass window looked out through murky water; large and small fish swam in shadowy shapes out to the limits of visibility. Danal didn’t know if Nathans had had a large aquarium installed, or if they were indeed under the water of the Bay.

His eyes locked on Nathans, who was off in a corner hastily donning an embroidered white robe. Though Nathans’s back was turned, Danal could see he was short and bald, with real rubies implanted decoratively on his naked scalp. Nathans turned to show his face and smiled thinly at Danal, but the smile seemed directed inward.

“Welcome, Sacrificial Lamb,” Nathans gloated.

He made the neo-Satanist sign of the broken cross.

The juggernaut of memories buried beneath Danal’s thin Servant facade exploded, suddenly becoming a raging black monster that lunged to the end of its chain… and the chain snapped. Using the blurred reflexes from his microprocessor-enhanced brain, Danal leaped forward, unable to control his reflexive fury.

He hated this man, loathed him with a passion strong enough to transcend death. Danal’s Servant identity scrabbled to regain control, but his former self was too strong, too murderous. The Servant’s arms shot out with his hands rigid and his fingers extended like wooden stakes.

His resurrected mind, the other Danal, meant to strangle Francois Nathans, but his hands moved in such a blur of speed that they plunged through the skin of the bald man’s neck as if it were cheese and snapped his spinal column, wrenching the exposed vertebrae out of place.

He withdrew even before the blood began to gush out. Viewed through the microprocessor’s slow-time, the universe stopped for an instant, poised on the tip of the blade before plunging down into disaster. Immediately Danal realized what he had done.

Nathans did not seem to comprehend that his life was ended, and continued to smile for an instant before an expression of shock dropped onto his face.

Danal stared in horror, and finally blood spurted onto his uniform. Then the bald man lurched forward, trying to grapple with Danal. He caught the Servant’s shoulder but could not hold on, and slid down Danal’s chest to the floor. A long scarlet smear emblazoned the gray jumpsuit.

Danal’s throat was as dry as paper. He stumbled back, gaping at Nathans as he fell. Shadows across the aquarium window seemed to grow larger, pounding to get in; then Danal realized the pounding was in his temples.

He had broken the most fundamental Servant programming.

His chest throbbed with fire, as if from a cold sacrificial knife. He could feel the long scar on his breastbone writhing like a dangerous worm.

Nathans lay on his face in a puddle of blood that was already disappearing as the dirt- and lint-destroying enzymes in the carpet fought to clean up the mess. Danal saw the intricate stars, pentagrams, and astrological symbols embroidered on the white robe.

“Sacrificial Lamb.”

Just who was the victim after all?

Lulled by a false sense of privacy as the lift doors enclosed him, Rodney Quick caught himself whistling an aimless tune. He stopped, then smiled, then grinned, as he realized that he had been almost happy for the last couple of days. He warned himself not to get his hopes up, yet another part kept reminding him that this was the first hope he’d had in a long time.

Supervisor had not shown herself for three days. She was gone… vanished.

By the end of the second day, Rodney had been jumpy, edgy, fearing some trick, some trap. But now, after several shifts all alone, at peace, unharassed, able to do his job in Lower Level Six, he began to fantasize that perhaps Supervisor had been reassigned.

The tech began to remember, and unconsciously embellish, everything that Francois Nathans had told him: the commendations, the praise for work well done. Rodney hoped that, since he had confessed his fear of Supervisor, perhaps Nathans had done something about her.

On Lower Level Six the pre-Servants floated in their vats, the operations continued, and Rodney started to open his eyes again. He looked for details in things instead of only shadows. He began to smile and even whistle. He took delight and amazement in everyday objects he had not noticed for years.

Rodney wondered if this was sort of a reverse love, feeling so incredibly happy when someone else was not around.

Now he had decided to take Francois Nathans up on his standing invitation to “drop in whenever you like,” to find out for himself exactly what had happened to Supervisor, to learn if his happiness should be genuine or if it was only a fluke, a brief pause before the nightmare began again.

After the lift doors closed, and before the inane music could begin, Rodney spoke into the input speaker, “Lower main administrative offices. Francois Nathans, please.”

The lift requested his identity, and he spoke his name and entered his Net password. The terminal made no response until the elevator chamber obediently plunged downward.

If Supervisor was indeed gone, by some miracle, and if his life continued with the giddy lightheartedness that he was experiencing now, Rodney began to think seriously of perhaps rescinding his contract with the Cremators.

Within two days they had already made him purchase some ropewire, spotlight bulbs, and a piece for an antique generator that burned hydrocarbon fuel. He’d had to ransack the lists of technocollectors to find someone willing to sell him, even at an exorbitant price, the old flywheel.

Overall, the cost of the items had not amounted to much, not really, and certainly not as much as he had expected to pay the Cremators. But he didn’t know how much longer it would last, how often they would request that he make these “little” purchases.

The worst assignment so far had been smuggling out a liter jar of the lukewarm, pinkish amniotic solution from a mutated batch. In a carefully rinsed soft-drink container he had caught some of the draining solution, then sealed it in a vacuum-flask… nervous all the time, convinced that Supervisor was watching, that she would catch him at his theft. What if Supervisor was in some way connected with the Cremators, and she knew what he was doing all along? How did he even know that Rossum Capek represented the real Cremators?

But if he let himself believe that, he had no hope left in the world.

Rodney received his electronic messages, which deleted themselves as soon as he read them. He had to pay attention, or else he might not be able to remember what he was supposed to do. And if he screwed up, he didn’t know how many chances the Cremators would give him.

He had never again seen Rossum Capek, or Monica, or even the same representative twice. He always delivered his purchases to a different place, but everything always went smoothly.

“If I need to get in touch with you,” he had once demanded, “how will I be able to find you?”

“We’ll know if you need us,” answered the Cremator, a freckle-faced twelve-year-old boy. “And if we don’t know, you don’t really need us.”

Somehow it all seemed a little spooky.

As the lift doors split open and he stumbled toward the private offices of Francois Nathans, Rodney Quick swallowed, looking for some saliva in his dry throat. He puffed up his determination again, vowing to find out what was going on, one way or another. Who the hell did Supervisor think she was?

And then he had no time for anything else as a Servant exploded toward him. He saw a splash of blood on the uniform; he saw a crumpled white-robed body—Nathans!—lying on the floor in a liquid pool of deeper maroon on the carpet.

As his jaw dropped in awe, Rodney saw the door burst open. In one infinite moment he saw finger wide indentations of crushed and splintered wood from the Servant’s grasp as the gray-clad figure pushed the door open and lunged toward the lift.

Rodney was in the way.

A Servant? A Servant!

Rodney realized too late that he should move, that he should run. The Servant was out of control.

Distractedly, the Servant tossed him aside with unheeded strength, heaving him back against the far wall. Everything was so incredibly fast—no one could move that fast!

Rodney slammed into the wall with the force of an avalanche. His nerves surrendered before he could feel the explosions of pain, but he heard a multitude of bones crack and shatter like popcorn in a furnace.

Rodney saw that he had fallen on the floor like torn rags in the corner of the lift. His eyes seemed to be filling with blood from the inside. He was able to catch a frozen snapshot of the Servant’s face looking down at him with an expression of total disbelief and horror at what he had done.

Rodney realized, without a doubt, that he was a dead man. He had been prepared for death for a long enough time… but then a limitless despair opened up below him: of all places, he was going to die in the tightest administration levels of Resurrection, Inc. Before he lost complete nerve control of his facial muscles, they formed themselves into a last mask of sorrow.

There was no way in the universe that the Cremators would ever get hold of his body now. He was doomed to return as a Servant after all.

As the technician fell, sliding to the ground with his neck and the back of his head crushed against the wall, Danal finally wrenched the wild horses of his old self to a halt, quelling further rampage. Tears seeped into his eyes even before the tech had come to a rest on the floor.

He hadn’t meant to do it. It was an accident! He wasn’t able to stop himself. He had lost control, and the demons had escaped.

Francois Nathans was slaughtered… but Nathans had intentionally unleashed something buried within Danal, recklessly playing with a deadly weapon. But this tech had simply stood in the way at the wrong moment, an innocent bystander, before Danal could get a grip on his accelerated reflexes, on the juggernaut within him. Danal had only meant to brush him aside, just to knock him out of the way.

What good were apologies now?

Before the tears could blur his vision, Danal picked up Rodney Quick’s broken body and carried it like a doll into Nathans’s office. Gently he lay the tech on the sofa and straightened his arms. Blood seeped from the back of his head into the red crushed velvet of the arm rest.

Danal recognized him as the technician who had been present at his awakening down on Lower Level Six, and felt a deeper sadness. Rodney Quick.

“I’m sorry I can’t do anything else for you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

The Servant lurched blindly into the lift without looking back and mumbled for the elevator to take him back to the lobby. He stared at his sticky hands, and his face went slack. Even with stepped-up thinking, he couldn’t resolve his questions, his contradictions, his suspicions.

Who was he, really?

His ingrained Servant conditioning fought with itself in an utter failure to comprehend. The dark personality submerged beneath Danal’s outer skin had broken through his Servant identity, leaving him helpless, overriding his real wishes. The most terrifying part was that it had been so easy—Danal had been helpless to stop it from happening.

Was this what he had wanted to know? Did he want to remember who the original Danal had been? What type of person could be capable of such abominable, unprovoked actions?

As the lift pulled him upward, he felt the scar on his chest from the sacrificial knife, and once again he allowed the flashback of the neo-Satanist ritual to flood into his mind, making his temples pound.

What had he done to deserve a death as violent and as terrible as that, with the heart cut from his chest by a dull blade?

Danal no longer wanted to discover the origin of his flashbacks. He wanted to start all over again. He wanted to be a simple Servant, following orders, without the slightest inkling of his past. He wanted forgiveness for his awful crime.

But he would get none—they would terminate him. He would die again.

The lobby spread out in front of him as the lift doors parted, but now the microprocessor drove his brain at a snail’s pace. Events whirled around him like a maelstrom of razor blades. He stepped out of the elevator, holding his blood-covered hands dumbly before him.

Several people noticed him at once. The receptionist looked up, cocked her head, and calmly screamed in the exact pitch that activated the droning alarms.

One of the Enforcer escorts had just entered the lobby and stood contemplating the large Metroplex map on the wall, searching for the location of his next delivery. Danal noted instantly that the Enforcer was tall and thin, and his hands and wrists showed black skin that would normally have been covered by armored gloves. The same Enforcer who had escorted him to the Van Ryman mansion, seemingly a lifetime before.

As the alarms throbbed through the intercom, the Enforcer whirled and fumbled at his armor. Behind the black visor he tried to grasp the situation and choose the proper weapon for combat.

In a daze Danal turned away and stumbled toward the transplastic door. It was too late now. He saw no way out, and he still had no answers.

“Servant! Halt!” the Enforcer shouted, finally sliding a wide-barreled pocket bazooka from its holster.

Danal hesitated a moment. The Enforcer, in his alarm, had not used the Command phrase. Danal knew he would be terminated if he stopped. He had murdered Francois Nathans and Rodney Quick.

He did not want to die a second time.

Danal had no other decision to make. Without a thought he burst toward the door, pumping his legs faster than any normal human could. The Enforcer blinked in amazement. The receptionist screamed again.

The Enforcer pointed his weapon and launched a projectile.

Danal plowed through the revolving doors as a blast shattered the transplastic and blew shrapnel outward. He let out a cry of pain as something ripped through his shoulder, but he swallowed his fear and rushed into the milling streets.

“Rebel!” the Enforcer cried. He fired again, blasting away the debris of the door, and climbed rapidly through the jagged opening.

Danal floundered among the gawking pedestrians, trying to swim through the crowd, but he could not cloak himself in anonymity. The crowd hated him, hated all Servants. They stared at him with mocking expressions. But they would not help anybody; they hated Enforcers, too.

The Enforcer danced through the churning bodies and fired a third time.

A woman beside Danal screamed and fell to the pavement with blood dribbling out the back of her head. Ice began to form in his stomach as he ran, waiting for a projectile to pierce his body and detonate, which would leave nothing for anyone to resurrect. He dodged, running much faster than his pursuer but much slower than any exploding bullet that might be launched after him.

The Enforcer stopped, looking down helplessly at his weapon in horror or confusion, but the visor hid all expressions.

Danal’s chest ached where his original heart had once been, but that heart had been torn from him by a murderer’s hand, replaced with a biomechanical pump. Danal clutched his torn shoulder and saw clear synBlood oozing between his fingers.

The Enforcer moved again, shoving a man out of his way. Someone else screamed next to the fallen woman. The Enforcer took out his riot club, swinging it but hitting no one.

“You can’t treat citizens like that!” someone shouted. The crowd’s anger began to ignite like a match.

In the wake of Danal’s flight, a man fell into an old woman; he regained his balance and angrily swung at her. The Enforcer fired twice, but into the air this time. Several screams echoed in the crowd as Danal continued to flee. A man struck the Enforcer from behind, but he turned and convulsively struck the man full in the face with the riot club. Some of the people were hitting each other in a senseless release of their anger.

And Danal ran to escape from the mob that was drawing in like a noose around the hapless Enforcer. The black monster of his imprisoned memory battered his Servant identity, and Danal fought against releasing it.

He was a murderer. Unprovoked, he had slaughtered two men. He had resisted direct orders from an Enforcer, and he had fled from justice.

Danal was terrified by his own capabilities, by what was locked in the mausoleum of his dead memory. He did not want to know what his flashbacks signified. He wanted only to forget.

He looked ahead of himself with tunnel vision, seeing only the path of least resistance, the confused route that let him avoid as many people as possible yet left enough of them in the way to baffle the Enforcer’s line of fire.

Just ahead of him, Danal fixed his gaze on a thin man with square-cut salt-and-pepper hair, grinning and strutting proudly down the street with a female Servant. Details flooded into his mind—he saw the insignia of a Guildsman on the man’s lapel; he saw indigo lines tattooed into the wrinkles around his eyes; he saw one of the Guildsman’s knobby hands massaging the female Servant’s buttocks. She seemed not to notice at all.

The other Servant wore the usual gray jumpsuit, but the old man had placed a long blond wig on her head and flowers in the artificial hair. He had draped jewelry on her neck and wrists. She walked like a piece of livestock.

The Guildsman turned, startled, as Danal nearly ran into him, and then gaped as he noticed the long smear of Nathans’s blood on his jumpsuit and the wound on Danal’s shoulder bleeding clear synBlood. In reflex to her Master’s actions, the female Servant turned to look at Danal as well.

Her crystal-blue eyes were empty. The resurrection process had washed the sea spray from her face, and her artificial hair had been combed by someone else. Her elfin, dimpled features were waxy and lifeless.

But it was still the face on the beach, the one he had found in the hologram on Van Ryman’s mantel.

Suddenly his real memory burst open, all of it. Thousands upon thousands of thoughts stumbled hungrily into the light of day. His old self, his true self emerged.

And Danal knew.

He screamed as the agony struck him, making his knees buckle, turning the pain in his torn shoulder into a mere annoyance. The world vanished in the resurgent flood of his flashback as his life and his violent death on the sacrificial altar rose up to stare him in the face.

He saw that the old Guildsman had already hurried Julia away, frightened by the rampaging Servant. Danal watched her in anguish for only a moment, fixing the scene in his mind, then ducked blindly down a crossway, then another, until he had run far enough ahead of the mob to feel relatively safe. But he could no longer hide from his returning memories.

He tried to sort out his thoughts. And everything fell back into place, just where it had always belonged.