Deathworld

Chapter 7

Nick exited Deathworld into the bare white space of his public-access area. He looked around at those white walls with a faint feeling of guilt. Even if they did eventually look better, when he got his decorating done, it wasn't going to be the same as his own space on the family's server. He felt annoyed at himself for not having been more careful with his time, and was starting to be annoyed at himself for getting his mom and dad so angry. He was beginning, much to his annoyance, to be able to see their point.

Pretty soon I'm going to be starting to think I should go apologize to them some more, Nick thought, rebellious.

But would that be such a bad idea? It might do something to change the fact that his life seemed to be completely screwed up at the moment.

You're just freaked because of this stuff Khasm and Spile told you about…

He swallowed. That was true.

And Charlie…

"Charlie Davis's space," he said to the white walls around him.

Nick was feeling a little ashamed of himself. He should have stopped by days ago. But he'd been busy… "Trying that workspace for you now."

That busyness had been shaken out of him, now, by his conversation with Khasm and Spile. Until now Nick had assumed that the suicides were genuine, just people who somehow couldn't cope. It had never occurred to him that something else might be going on… and he still wasn't sure what, but the idea gave him the creeps.

"The space you require is accessible," said his public space's management program.

Nick got up out of the virtual version of the implant chair and went over to the air, pulling on the doorknob sticking out of it. The door opened, and he looked through into the big, circular, wood-paneled space with its portraits of doctors in frock coats and wigs, the stadium benches, and the steam engine down in the low part in the middle.

The steam engine wasn't there, though. What was there was a group of 2-D and 3-D images of people… kids Nick didn't know. He walked down the stairs between two sets of bleachers, looking at them. There was no sign of Charlie. Either he was out in the real world somewhere, or working on something else…

Or he's in Deathworld someplace.

Nick thought about that, then went back up the stairs and stepped back into his workspace, shutting the access to Charlie's space behind him. Then he opened the doorway he usually used to access Deathworld. Burning red, the copyright information hung there in front of him. "Yeah, yeah, get on with it," Nick said. "Front-door access, please."

The long copyright warning notice hung there a few moments more, and then showed him the great front gates. Nick walked in and said, "Deathworld utilities, please…"

In front of him appeared a huge dark-green onyx desk, piled high with ledgers, and behind the desk, a clerk-demon wearing a green eyeshade, and sleeve garters and a bow tie (though no shirt). It looked up at him with a blunt, only slightly wicked face, like that of a cartoon bulldog with the demise of some cartoon cat on its mind. "Yeah? Oh, it's you, Nick."

"Hi, Scorchtrap," Nick said, strolling over to the desk. "How's the union thing going?"

"Aah, the usual," said the demon. "Management says they can't budge on the last offer, we say fine, we'll strike, they say okay, they'll bring in cheaper labor… " The demon leaned to one side and spat brimstone into an ornately carved spittoon by the desk. Sulfurous smoke rose from it. "Scabs, that's what they mean. It stinks more than usual, Nick. Our problem is, we got no rights."

"Well, just hang in there," Nick said. "You guys have personality… they'd be nuts to get rid of you."

"From your mouth to the Boss's ear," said Scorchtrap. "Cheapskate that he is. He promised us that this bargaining round, he'd give us a decent profit-sharing agreement. Now he won't even give us the time of day. It's enough to make you lose your faith in market forces." The demon grimaced. "But enough of my problems. What can I do for you?"

"Looking for a friend of mine," Nick said. "Charlie Davis."

The demon pulled up a thick scroll from behind this desk. This unrolled out across the floor and into the distance, where it vanished, like railroad tracks converging at the horizon. Scorchtrap made a disgusted face, tossing the scroll to the desk. "Retrotech," he said, and reached into the air, grabbing a little cord that hadn't been there a second before, and pulling down a text window. "This guy come in here recently?"

"The past day or so, I think."

Scorchtrap studied the text that was scrolling through the window too fast for Nick to read, and finally came to the end of it. "Nobody by that name."

"He might be using a `nym.' "

'Yeah, but if he is, we can't disclose it," Scorchtrap said, pulling on the cord again. The window rolled itself up like an old-fashioned window blind, with the same flapping noise, and vanished. "Privacy legislation, you know how it is, Nick… gotta keep the nosey-bodies at bay. Even when it's in a good cause."

"Yeah, I guess." Nick let out a long breath. "Listen, do this for me. Let me have a look at the login records for the last couple of days."

Scorchtrap raised his eyebrows. "You kidding?" he said. "You must feel like curling up by the fire with a good book. You know how many people we get in here every day?"

"Just the newbies, Scorchtrap. There can't be that many of them."

"You wanna bet?" The demon shook his head, and reached up to pull that cord. The window came down again. "Been busy around here the last week or so, Nick. Lotta trouble upstairs… you know what about."

"I know," Nick said, somber, and leaned on his elbows on the desk, looking at the window.

Scorchtrap hadn't been kidding. Deathworld had experienced between five and ten thousand new user logins per hour from all over the planet during the period in which Nick was interested. Even though Nick waded through it as best he could, there was no telling what `nym' Charlie might have chosen… for he was not one of the dim types who pick an anagram of their name, or their mother's maiden name, for a pseudonym.

Finally he sighed and gave up. Scorchtrap made a sympathetic tsk, tsk noise and rolled the log window up again. "Sorry about that, buddy," the demon said. "Anything else I can do for you today? Got some new 'lifts' being released on Six… "

"Naafi," Nick said, "not for me, today. I've got business on Eight." He turned, waving at the demon. "You take it easy," he said.

"Yeah, you too, Nick… Hey, wait a minute!" Nick looked back. "Yeah?"

"You check the message boards yet?"

"Uh, no! Not a bad idea. Thanks, Scorchtrap."

"Any time, kid." The demon opened a large ledger labeled DAMNED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE and started leafing through it. "And you keep your feet dry down in the Maze! You don't wanna catch anything down there."

Nick grinned. The desk, and the demon, vanished. In Nick's opinion, the Deathworld programmers were using the demons to keep themselves amused, sometimes possibly even playing them "live." This amused him, too, and he wasn't above playing the game with them when the opportunity presented itself. It might improve my game stats, he thought, but besides that, why shouldn't they have fun, too?

He walked through the darkness a little way to where he knew there was a huge archway somewhat reminiscent of the main gate. This one, though, had engraved in the stones of the arch the words MARX WAS WRONG: THE OPIUM OF THE MASSES IS NEWS.

Nick headed in through the archway and found himself in a tremendous room modeled after the Beaux-Arts reading room of the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library, but all done in black and gray, with high, dark windows, where the original had been done in ivory, wood, and gold. He made his way past the pillared "calls" desk, behind which a huge white lion was standing on its hind legs and going through some card-catalog drawers on the desktop, and glanced down the length of the room. There were two lines of huge long dark-topped tables, each table with four shaded lamps down the middle of it.

Nick walked to the nearest of these and sat down in the subdued light of one of the lamps.

Moving and shifting beneath the surface of the table were hundreds and hundreds of text messages, images, and "flat" virtclips, scrolling by, never stopping, all messages from Banies to Banies, talking about Deathworld itself, or the music, or other Banies, or Joey, or any of the myriad other things that Deathworld fans could possibly think of to discuss when they weren't actually exploring the place. Nick placed a hand flat down on the table and said, "Start a search, pleases… "

"Whatcha lookin' for, boss?" said the table in another demon-gruff but friendly voice.

"Uh, any message from Charlie to anybody else?"

The table emitted a sigh. "You know how many Char-lies we got in here, Nick?" it said. "You wanna narrow that search down a little, or don't you have a life?"

Nick laughed. "Any message from a Charlie to me, or from any Charlie to any Nick."

"Nothing found on the first search," the table said. "Nothing on the second. Try something else?"

Nick thought for a moment. If Charlie's been in here, at least he hasn't been trying to reach me. That could be a good thing… or might not. "Any public message about suicide," Nick said after a moment.

"You really don't have a life, do you," said the table. "Eighteen thousand messages about that in the last two weeks. And another six thousand went into the bit bucket between then and now. I told them I needed more storage, but do they listen to me, n0000000. "

"Yeah, right," Nick said. He leaned his head on one hand for a moment, thinking. "Look," he said, "show me any message in which the words 'I want to kill myself' or 'I feel like killing myself' or 'I want to end it all' are used."

"You want me to be a dumb machine and sort just for those phrases," the table said, sounding slightly affronted, "or can I get a little bit heuristic about this and also look for sentences that mean the same thing?"

"Uh, feel free."

"Better sample," the table said. "Still pretty big. Four hundred eighty-six messages."

"Okay," Nick said. "Okay, display them."

"You want something to drink?" the table said. "A cola."

A glass of it appeared next to Nick on the table. "Statutory regulations require us to inform you that the ingestion of virtual beverages does not provide any hydration, nutrition, or other dietary benefit to your physical body," said the table in an intensely bored tone of voice. "Then again, there aren't any calories, either. So drink up, and don't spill."

Nick raised an eyebrow, picked up the glass, and drank, while starting to read the messages. Every time he had read enough of one, he tapped on the table and it vanished, to be replaced by another.

Pretty soon his tapping finger was getting tired. A lot of the messages were facetious. A lot of them were deadpan, in terms of composition… but when there was no video to go with the text, as often happened, there was no way to tell how serious the person leaving the message had been, or if they were serious at all. One message Nick came across, which had been left only a few hours before, was typical. WHAT'S THE POINT? said its subject line.

There were various replies to this, some sympathetic, some jeering, but no one seemed to be taking it very seriously, or actually dealing with the idea that this person really seemed to want to "end it all." No one even just came out and said "Don't!" Because they're afraid of finding that he or she was kidding around, maybe, and they don't want to take the chance of looking stupid?… Nick let out a breath and glanced at the sender's name. "MANTA." Just another handle, behind which sat a real person in who knew what state of mind. At first glance it would be easy to think it was someone too depressed even to look over the text and correct it where the context filter in the Deathworld voice-to-text system had slipped up. A yell for help? Nick thought, glancing down at the time stamps and other system information, node locations and so forth, saved at the bottom of the message. If it was one, how could you even find the person? This stuff is all coded, it isn't meant to help you locate them easily. Though he had heard that there were ways to track back an original user to his virtmail account, even to his posting location, from this footer material, if you knew how to read it. By the time you did, though, would the person who'd left the message even still be breathing?… And if you did find them, would they just laugh at you for taking their joke seriously?

Nick shook his head and went back to his reading, but after about twenty minutes more he stopped, exasperated by his inability to be certain about whether the messages weregenuine. "Is there any way to tell which of these people mean it?" he said. "Semantic analysis or something?"

"I'm a computer, not a doctor," said the table. "That starts getting into diagnosis. You think I want the AMA after me? Life's tough enough."

Nick had to laugh. "Okay," Nick said, "forget it. But listen-" He thought for a moment. "Are there any messages from any of the… you know. The Angels of the Pit…"

"Three remain in the database," said the table. "But they've been locked off, Nick. Confidentiality issues."

Nick sat back in his seat, thinking a little more. "Okay," he said. "Would you do me a favor?"

"Anything within reason," said the table.

"If any messages come for me while I'm in-environment from a Charlie-or never mind that… from anybody-route them to me right away."

"You're overriding your previously set no-bother instruction?"

"Yeah."

"Got it. Let us know if you want it changed back at some point."

"Right. Thanks, guy." Nick patted the table, then got up and headed out of the reading room again.

He made his way back to his access door, back into his plain white workspace, and stood there a moment, thinking. Do I want to comm him at home?

Maybe not… it might freak his folks somehow. Or it might freak mine, if he called me back at home and let them know what it was about.

Instead, Nick made his way back into Charlie's workspace. "Hello…" he said, hoping to wake up the system.

"Hi, Nick," said the soft woman's voice that represented Charlie's "system manager." "Charlie says, 'Make yourself at home and use whatever you have to.' "

"Uh, good. I need to leave him a message."

"I can record virtual voice, virtual image and voice, or text.

Tell me what you prefer."

"Virtual image and voice."

"Go ahead. Stop for five seconds and then say 'Fin- ished' when you're done."

"Charlie…" Nick said. "I have to tell you about this. I ran into some people in Deathworld… they knew a couple of the people who committed suicide. But they think something's going on, something odd… "

He went on to lay out everything Khasm and Spile had told him… especially the part about drugs being involved. Then he summed up what he'd found when he searched the message database. Nothing much… but it might make it clear to Charlie why he was feeling a little weird about what was going on.

Finally he trailed off, not knowing what else to add. "Just comm me at home, if you can," Nick said. "Not too late… Dad's been working weird hours the past week or so. The studio had to send him to California for something… don't ask me why he couldn't just go there virtually." He tried to think if there was something else he should mention. He had the feeling that he'd forgotten something. "Okay? Comm me. And listen… be careful."

Nick paused. "Finished," he said.

"Thank you, Nick," Charlie's system said. "I will pass this on to Charlie as soon as he checks in."

"You have any idea where he is?"

"Not at the moment. I'm sorry."

Nick nodded. "Thanks…"

He wandered back up the steps again, not without pausing to look back at those images of kids his age, or a little older or a little younger. Wondering, he turned and headed back to his own workspace, trying to figure out what to do next…

In the VAB, dusk was drawing in, and the big sodium lights hanging from the cross-gantries in the ceiling were turned on, flooding the concrete with a harsh, bright glare. "Okay," Mark said to Charlie, coming across the floor to him. "Here you are."

He held up what he carried, white and shimmering in that fierce light. Charlie looked at it in bemusement. "It's a jacket," he said.

Mark rolled his eyes. " 'It's a jacket,' he says. Do you know how much programming there is in this thing? This is not just any jacket!"

"Okay," Charlie said, "it's a magic jacket. Do I have to wear a bow tie with it? And does the tie have to be magic, too?"

"I swear," Mark muttered, "once we both get somewhere physical at the same time, I'm going to whack you a good one with something that can't just be deleted. Here, put it on."

He helped Charlie into the jacket, a rather formal-looking one of the kind a gentleman might wear to dinner. To Charlie, it felt completely normal. "Nice material," he said, patting it down.

Mark stood back from him. "It should be," he said, rather sourly, "considering what it would cost you per hour if someone, I should use the word loosely, 'professional' had built this for you."

"I feel like a waiter," Charlie said. "Probably I look like one, too. So where's the switch?"

Mark sat on the Rolls and shook his head. " 'Switch'?" he said. "Please. And if you look like anything, you look like a doctor. And you'll probably make a great one someday, as long as you don't try understanding anything more complicated than a stethoscope, okay?… Look, there aren't any switches. You just wear it into Deathworld. You wear it out again. Make sure you don't take it off-not only because you won't be able to record anything you're perceiving, but because it's set up to work only when it's in circuit with your own virtual account and your own implant. I haven't been able to implement a whole lot of fail-safes, partly because I still don't completely understand how to subvert all their systems. But there's a real good chance that if the jacket comes out of circuit with you, with your implant I mean, every alarm in that place will go off. This would be a bad thing, because immediately afterward, every security op associated with Joey Bane Enterprises, not to mention every lawyer they've got, thousands of them probably, will be chasing you down the labyrinthine ways. You're getting all this?"

"Uh, yes," Charlie said. He was also enjoying it. It was always fun to get Mark annoyed about something. "Had a bad time getting the details worked out?" he asked.

Mark glowered at him. "I spent the better part of five hours analyzing Deathworld's security systems," he said.

"Oh, well, five hours," Charlie said.

"And if you think I enjoyed it, you're-"

Charlie started laughing. He couldn't help it. "Of course you enjoyed it!" he said. "You're a pirate at heart, Gridley. That's why it drives you nuts to be your father's son." He laughed some more, unable to stop.

Mark gave him a crooked smile. "Yeah, yeah, Mr. Psychoanalyst," he said. "Well, you can't help it, I guess, it's your mom's side of the family. Look, never mind that. Just don't let this thing off your back, okay? You can wear a 'seeming' over it-in fact, probably it'd be smart if you did."

"Okay," Charlie said.

"I had to do some jury-rigging," Mark said. "The security systems in Deathworld are really complex, and to keep the flow of information moving out of there and into your space, I had to do spectrum-fission on it, scatter it up and down several different kinds of in-Net communication then reweave it to `singleband' throughput on the outside."

"I hope that wasn't meant to make some kind of sense to me," Charlie said, checking the jacket to see if it had an inside pocket. It did.

"That's data storage, in there," Mark said. "Meanwhile, just think of the outbound signal as white light broken down to a spectrum, then 'welded' back to white again," Mark said. "The important thing is, it worked when I tested it." He raised his eyebrows. "Though the first couple of test cycles were interesting. What matters is that what you see and hear will go back to your site and store themselves there. One thing: When you're done with the jacket, don't leave it in your workspace. Leave it in mine."

"Oh? How come?"

Mark gave him another of those endearing it's-like-thisstupid expressions. "If something goes wrong," he said, "or on the other hand, if something goes right, and in the unlikely event that someone gets cranky afterward about what's been done-you want the Deathworld people to take you to court for theft of intellectual property and copyright violations, thus ruining your not-even-startedyet brilliant medical career for ever after? Or do you want them to come after me for it, and let me take the heat as the Brilliant But Slightly Unstable Genius Son of the Director of Net Force?"

Phrased that way, the answer more or less made itself obvious. "Uh," Charlie said.

"Exactly, `uh,' " said Mark. "So I've left my space open for you, day and night. As soon as you're done with a run, leave the jacket here. Over the desk. When you've done that and left, the logs at my end will wipe, leaving no 'electron trail' to your workspace. That much I managed with no trouble. But the rest of it remains technically a little fragile, so as I said, don't lose that jacket, don't take it off… "

"Right."

"As for the rest of it," Mark said, "per our discussion about what you think's going to start to happen later, I've `trip wired' the outside of your own workspace. I think I can safely say that no one will be able to detect that trip wiring. The minute someone tries to hack into any of your accounts-either yours or your folks' alarms will go off here in my space, and my system will start a traceback on whoever's trying to get at your files. When that happens, your own space will alert you, if you're in Death-world, through the links I've built into the jacket. For times when you're not virtual, you'll want to install some other alert method, to your home comms or whatever-I've left the 'hot ends' of the alert routines visible for you, in your space. Hook them up whatever wayyou like, then camouflage them. After that, we'll have the information we need to send Net Force after whoever it is. And then you and I will be covered with glory."

Mark grinned. "Assuming," he added, "that they don't pitch eight kinds of fit when they find out what we're doing." He made a pointing-upward gesture that indicated the entire adult world in general, but specifically his father, and his mother, and Charlie's mom and dad, and James Winters. "Because you haven't told them…"

Charlie made an unhappy face. "How did you know?"

"The same way I know that I haven't exactly told my dad about what we're up to," Mark said. "You know you're being careful… I know you're being careful. But they don't understand, do they?"

"I'm not sure they would," Charlie said, "no." The thought of what his father's face would look like, if he told him what he was planning to do, had been haunting him the last day or so. And as for Mom… But haunting him more assiduously were the faces of Renee, and Malcolm, and Jeannine, and the rest of them. No one else was in the position to find out as much about what had happened to them as Charlie was. And more to the point, time was running out. There was only so much of the month left, at which time Charlie was sure that the person who he was sure had been stalking the "suicides," and was somehow complicit in their deaths, might well go dormant again. A year would go by during which media and police attention to the suicides would wane, and then, Charlie was sure, there would be more of them.

No more, he had thought last night, as he'd been going over his plans, and had started putting them into operation while scanning through some of the bleak-sounding messages left in the Deathworld "bulletin board" system. No more deaths. The image of the dim hallway, the peeling paint, a huddled form lying across the room from him, intruded itself again. No more.

"Hey," Mark said.

Charlie looked up.

Mark leaned back a little, let out a breath, looked the jacket up and down one more time. "Not that it's not a good idea. But are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?"

Charlie walked around slowly and waved his arms around a little in the jacket, getting the feel of it. There was a faint fizzing sensation associated with it, something like the sensation that came with a mouthful of soft drink before you swallowed it. "Yeah," he said. "It's partly that I know I can pull this off, solve this problem, without having to run to 'the grown-ups' for help. But there's also the time problem. If I waited to do this the way my folks or Winters would rather have me do it, it could get to be too late." He shook his head. "So I don't see that I have a choice. There are things more important than just 'being careful.' "

"Yeah." Mark let out a long breath.

Charlie sighed as he came back and leaned against the Rolls. "Besides, for Winters at least, I'm going to need more solid evidence than I've currently got. What I'm sitting on right now won't stand up."

"Well," Mark said, "you'll have some solid stuff pretty soon, if you're right." He leaned back on the Rolls's hood. "But if you insist that it's not going to be enough just to have proof that someone tried to hack into your workspace…"

"It's going to have to go a little further than that," Charlie said. Meaning that I am going to have to stake myself out as bait, not just virtually… but physically. The prospect still made him nervous enough, though, that he was unwilling to say it out loud, even to Mark.

"I could see where it might," Mark said. "But the implementation's gonna be tricky. How's your research been coming?"

"Oh, fine," Charlie said. "There's tons of stuff available on the subject on the Net." He smiled, but the expression was grim. Suicide, even in these affluent times, was not something that was showing any tendency to go away. "I get depressed sometimes just reading it."

"That might be a good thing, under the circumstances. If one of the people you're interested in finding actually comes across you, you'll look more like you're really likely to do something about it."

"Don't even joke about it." Charlie had spent the last couple of evenings, when he wasn't busy with other things, studying the symptoms of impending suicide as carefully as if he was about to have a test on them… which, in a way, he was. If there was anything he knew about himself at the moment, it was that he wasn't in the slightest suicidal, but the descriptions of the feelings of those who were filled Charlie with pity. And the idea of such people being ruthlessly taken advantage of by someone with another agenda besides pity, a deadly one, left him furious.

Mark's expression was somber. "I wasn't joking… not really. But look… the minute you decide it's enough, that you have the data you need…"

"I'll call."

"Call a minute early," Mark said, "just to be safe. I won't be far from my workspace anytime I'm not in school."

Charlie got up, dusted the jacket down again. "Cut it out!" Mark said. "It's not like it can get dirty, or wrinkled."

"One less thing to worry about," Charlie sighed. He looked up at the faraway ceiling of the VAB. A couple of buzzards peered down at him from the tops of their metal cliffs. "You get it to rain again?"

Mark shook his head. "You can't hurry nature," he said, with a wry look. "Besides, I'm still analyzing the phe- nomenon… There are some weird things about the humidity that have to be resolved… When are you going to go in and try that out?"

"Tonight," Charlie said. "My folks are going out. I won't be disturbed. And then again early in the morning, and late tomorrow night again, and early in the morning after that… " He slid down off the hood of the Rolls. "Until we get a result."

"Assuming you do," Mark said. "Well, just be careful. I'll be keeping an eye on the jacket's link to my space tonight, and whenever I'm in from now on. Yell if you need anything."

"Believe me, I will." Charlie headed toward the door back into his workspace. "I'll call you as soon as I go in, so you can check the link. Let me know if you find out you're going to be elsewhere, though."

"No chance of that tonight," said Mark, "or in the next few. At least not till I can get this thing's armor to stop going away without warning… " He tapped the Skoda's hood. It lifted itself smoothly up. A moment later Mark was half under it, nothing showing but his neodenimed legs. Charlie took in this view, smiled slightly, and headed back to his space.

No one looked twice at the lone kid, small, kind of young looking, dressed in worn slicktites and a floppy striped "sagdown" shirt several years out of style, as he wandered around in the ash and darkness of the Eighth Circle. Banies came in all ages and sizes, and could look any way they pleased if they felt like going to the trouble of adopting a seeming, or could show themselves "as they were"- though if this was how this kid really looked, there were doubtless those who would have found him a little strange. His sense of style needed work, and the weary look on his face alone was enough to suggest that he probably was as depressing as a Joey Bane lyric himself.

He had been here for a while now, looking around him like someone feeling slightly lost. Anyone interested enough to notice would have seen that he tended to avoid the other Banies in the area, by and large, though he spoke politely enough to them when they approached him. Almost always, after a little while, they went off and left him where he was, and he found himself alone again.

And soon enough-though perhaps not soon enough for him-someone noticed.

The boy was kicking through the ash of the outer reaches with his back to Mount Glede, while in the area through which he walked, nothing could be heard but one song, over and over again, repeating at his request to the environment: the final chorus from the Seattle concert version of "Cut the Strings," with the six-minute instrument destruction sequence ending in the demolition of the venerable old King Dome, scheduled to be blown up anyway that year after the Quake of '22. For about the fifteenth time in a two-hour period, that vast crash and shriek of destruction filled the air, but the images accompanying it were being suppressed, and only darkness surrounded the boy who was listening, standing there, staring at the ash around his feet, like a dark statue…

When the girl approached him, seemingly melting out of the storm of black ash that was falling at the moment, the look he gave her was less than interested.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," the boy said, looking her over dully. Long dark coat, short purple skirt, black vee-neck top, purple hair, pale skin-she was taller than he was, maybe a year older, and she looked faintly annoyed. "What?" he said then, for she was staring at him.

"Are you lost?" she said.

"No." He turned away.

"Well, you look lost," she said after a moment. "In fact, I don't think I've seen anyone more lost-looking than you in the last couple months."

"That's nice," he said, glowering. "I don't recall asking you for your opinion."

He walked away from her… then stopped suddenly, staring down at the crevasse which had just opened up at his feet.

"There's a lot of that going around," the girl said, sounding slightly amused. "Get very far on your own?"

"Not really," the boy muttered. "This place is an exercise in frustration."

"Life stinks… " she said.

"Tell me something I don't know."

"That you're not going to get very close to the Keep without a guide," she said. "Even the walk-throughs mention that. Unless you've got one of the newer ones… "

He backed away from the crevasse, angling a little away from the girl. "Maybe I don't want a guide," he said.

"Maybe you should have brought a chair," she said, "because you're gonna be stuck here a good long while without someone to go 'pathfinder' for you."

He started away from her, and almost as if the environment had heard her, another crevasse came tearing along the ground and passed right in front of him. There it stopped, while black ash snowed down from the edges of it into the fiery depths, glittering in the hot light.

He stared down into the crevasse, and his shoulders slumped. "It's never gonna stop doing that, is it?" he said.

"Nope," she said. "But some of us get the hang of 'anticipating it."

She tilted her head a little to one side, watching him. After a moment he turned, slow and reluctant. "All right," he said. "What would you suggest?"

"Telling me your name, for one thing," she said. "Ch-Manta," he said.

"Manta. I'm Shade," she said. "You're pretty new around here, huh?"

"Yeah. Well, no. I've been here awhile… but I don't know the place real well as yet… " He breathed out, then, turning again to look past the crevasses, across the dark plain toward Mount Glede. "I don't know if I'm going to," he said.

"You got problems?" Shade said, sitting down beside him.

"Huh?" Manta said, looking shocked. "Oh, no… everything's fine."

"I'm not so sure," Shade said. "You look sad."

"How can I look sad?" Manta said. "See, I'm smiling." He produced a smile that even in the darkness was not terribly convincing.

Shade laughed softly. It managed, somehow, to be a sorrowful laugh. "Yeah," she said, "I see that. I know that smile… I've worn it, sometimes."

"Have you been here a long time?" Manta said.

"A couple of years," said Shade, "in and out. I know the place pretty well."

"What're you doing here, then?" Manta said, studying the ground. "If you've been here that long, you should have solved the place by now… "

"Oh, there's more to Deathworld than just solving it," said Shade, pulling her feet up under her to sit cross-legged. "It's about people as much as anything else… "

"Seeing them get punished," Manta said bitterly, "yeah. That's worth something."

"It'd be pretty dull around here without the Damned," said Shade, glancing around her as a few of them ran by a few hundred meters away, pursued by demons. A couple of the Damned pitched straight down into a crevasse that opened before them, and the demons stood on the air above them and peered down, watching them fall. "Sounds like you're enjoying it, though."

"Like to see it really happening," said Manta softly.

"How much more real does it have to get?" said Shade. She gave him a thoughtful look. "Or is there somebody you'd particularly like to see it happening to?" Her voice was almost playful.

"Wouldn't be much point in that," Manta said. "It wouldn't make any difference." He shuffled his feet in the ash. "Nothing will, really."

He turned. "Look, forget it. I gotta go."

"Manta, wait," Shade said, walking around in front of him. "Look, you can't just turn away from people when they're trying to help you."

"Watch me," Manta said, his voice bitter. "I'm not worth helping. Let me alone for long enough, and it won't be an issue."

Shade gave him a look. "You know," she said, "if you weren't such a Banie, you'd be a waste of time. Look, how'd you ever get down this far with an attitude like that?"

"When you hear it from all the people around you all the time," Manta said, "you learn to get things done anyway. But I'm tired of it now." He turned and looked at Mount Glede again. "I just want to do this one thing… and then it's going to be all over with. I'm going to cut the strings… "

Shade looked at him in silence for a moment. "That's not something to joke about," she said.

"You think I'm joking, too, huh?" Manta said, giving her a cold look. "Get your laughing done now, then. A week or so and you won't have another chance to do it while I'm around."

The look Shade gave him was odd. "Manta," she said, "you wouldn't really-"

"I see what happened to the earlier ones," Manta said, sitting down on a rock and looking at Mount Glede. "Whatever else their families thought, down here they have some honor, anyway. They're the Angels of the Pit. Maybe people down here are a little crazy… but at least someone notices whether they're here or not. Not like others-" He broke off.

"You don't have a lot of friends, do you… " Shade said.

"I don't have any friends," Manta said. "And I don't want any. They just pretend to care about what's happening to you, and then they dump you when they realize what you're really like. I don't need any more of that-" He choked off, as if holding back tears.

"It's not like that," Shade said. "We're Banies. We have to look after each other, because no one else will… I want you to meet someone I know… He's felt the same way you have."

"If you think you're going to talk me out of how I feel," Manta said, "you're wasting your time."

Shade glowered at him. "It's my time. I can waste it if I like. Right now, though, I want you to give me a virtmail address for you, so we can meet down here again, and you can talk to my friend Kalki. He's a Banie, too. In fact, he's a more serious Banie than almost anyone else you're likely to run into down here. He's got the biggest `lift' collection I've ever seen. Thing is, he was about ready to cut the strings once, too. But it's a mistake to do that while there's still music in them, Manta. He was there. He knows. You need to talk to him."

Manta studied the ash falling around them, and into the nearest crevasse. After several long moments he said, "I don't see why not. It's not going to make any difference." He raised his head and gave Shade a long, cool look. "If I do decide to cut the strings… there's nothing you can do to stop me. You, or anyone else."

"Of course not," Shade said. "But you have to be sure, first… otherwise Joey wouldn't like it."

"Like he'd care."

"You'd be surprised," Shade said. "Manta… give yourself a break."

"Nobody else has," he said. But he watched her as he said it.

Shade shook her head and held out her hand. "I'm not everybody else," she said. "Let me have an address for you, and later on, in a day or two maybe, you can talk to Kalki."

Manta looked at her doubtfully. But at last he held out his hand to her, and there was a little white envelope in it, the icon for a virtmail address. Shade reached out and took it from him, and tucked it away in one of the pockets of her coat.

"Meantime," she said, "let's see if we can't at least get you in the front door of the Keep. Come on!" Shade looked right and left. "It's narrower over there," she said. She held out a hand.

Manta hesitated… then took it. Together they made their way down along the length of the crevasse, stepped across it, and vanished into the darkness.

Some hours later, just after six the next morning, Charlie blinked his implant off and got up, stiffly, to walk around the den. His muscles ached more than usual, and once more he resolved to have a look at the implant chair's muscle management routines. They weren't as effective as usual. Or I'm spending a lot more time in "the great never-never" than usual..

Probably the latter. Charlie stretched, then wandered downstairs to the kitchen. He glanced around and saw nothing of his mother's on the table. She was already on her way to work, possibly having another in-service today and so having to do her change-of-shift report with the night nurses on her floor earlier than usual. Charlie sighed and rooted around in the fridge for the milk, poured himself a glass, and downed it. Then he poured another and glugged that straight down, too.

His father came in and headed for the coffeepot. "Morning," Charlie said as he went by

"Thank you for not saying 'good," " his father muttered. He was already in his whites. He got busy pouring himself a cup of coffee the size of a small birdbath in a big brown cup Charlie's mother had brought back from a nursing conference in Germany.

"Early seminar this morning?" Charlie said.

"Yup. Backbones again," said his father, and slurped the coffee. "Ow, hot…" He took the milk carton that Charlie handed him and poured milk into his coffee until it turned a very unassertive shade of beige. "Better… It's just today and tomorrow, anyway, then life goes more or less back to normal." His father sighed. "Though I wish the school wouldn't run all these fellowship-program events at the same time that the accreditation team comes through."

"Maybe they do it on purpose. To show how a good teaching hospital runs under pressure."

His father looked at him with resignation over the cup. "That thought's crossed my mind. Nasty idea. In any case, there's nothing I can do about it. Meanwhile, you were up late again. I passed you when I came in. Third night in a row now."

"I'm doing research for a project," Charlie said. Let him think it's for school. _ _

"What on?"

"Suicide."

His father sighed. "Still thinking about those kids, huh? Your mother mentioned. Sad situation."

"Yeah," Charlie said. "It's pretty depressing."

His father chugged the much-milked coffee straight down. "Tell me about it. Well, ask your Mom if you need any more help… I've gotta get out of here." He rinsed out the coffee cup, upended it by the sink, and headed for the door, pausing only to hug Charlie in passing. "I feel guilty," he said. "The absentee parent."

"It's not a problem, Dad."

"I want a rematch on that chess game. You promised me best two out of three."

"You tell me when," Charlie said. "Gonna stomp you." "Don't be so sure. See you later… "

The front door shut. Charlie stood looking out into the back garden, where the first rays of sun were beginning to fall. I have been spending too much time "down there," he thought. Good old normal sunlight is beginning to look strange.

But it was in a good cause, and Charlie thought he was beginning to make some headway. Shade… There was definitely something odd about her, a sense of her watching him closely for some reaction. Just hope the one I've found is the right one…

He slowly made his way upstairs with one more glass of milk. The information which Nick had given him was turning out to be very useful, both the 'walk-through' and the other info, the stuff about the kids he'd run into, Khasm and Spile. The rumor, confirmed to the two most recent suicides' parents, that drugs had been involved-and the information that this news was possibly being suppressed-all fit in very neatly with Charlie's suspicions. Especially the idea that they weren't genuinely suicidal. Someone met them, probably in Deathworld, managed to get close enough to them, physically, to get sco-bro into them and then set up their suicides…

Now all Charlie needed was to re-create the initial part of the setup, without becoming a statistic himself.

To this end, the walk-through which Nick had given him had been extremely comprehensive, not as error-ridden as Nick had feared, and Nick himself had also appended some material to it as notes which Charlie had found very useful. He sat down on the sofa across from the implant chair in the den, finishing his glass of milk, and thinking about his next moves, the ones he would begin tonight after school. Charlie had been able to get down to Eight in fairly short order. I wonder if the system notices things like that… Charlie thought. But then lots of people must tell their friends how to get through- it quickly, how to meet them places… It probably all averages out in the end.

Either way, I have to follow up this contact with Shade, and keep looking to see whatever else turns up. No way I'm going to sit around and let this happen to someone else. It's still May…

Charlie sighed, put the milk glass aside, and sat down in the implant chair-he still had about half an hour before he had to leave for school, and this was the best time to catch people. He closed his eyes, triggered his implant on again, and glanced around the lowest level of his workspace, where the 3-D and 4-D images still stood. "Workspace management," he said.

"Here, Charlie."

"Is Nick Melchior available?"

"Checking that for you now. But this time does not match his usual online times for the past two weeks. Not available."

"Okay, what about Mark?"

"Mark's workspace is available as usual, and he is in residence."

"Good." Charlie went over to the usual access door, opened it. The VAB's lights were on. It was early enough at the Cape that not much light was getting in. Charlie wandered across the floor, where he could see the RollsSkoda, its hood still up, and a pair of legs still visible.

"That thing giving you trouble?"

"Please," said Mark, sounding tired. "If you see the man who invented technology, send him up. I have something for him." He stood up from under the hood and made an eloquent fist. "I just can't get this thing's armor to stay solid when it should." He sighed, straightened up. "There's always the possibility that I've found a bug in the programming language itself… but I really don't want to believe that. It would be big trouble… "

The desk wasn't too far away, and Charlie saw the Magic Jacket lying over it as he had left it much earlier. "Is it okay?" he said.

"It was fine," Mark said. "I 'looked' in on you five or six times, just to check on it. No problems." He looked at Charlie, with a rather challenging expression. "Except with you. You didn't seem terribly comfortable down there."

"I hate it, the whole fake-seeming business," Charlie said. "Skulking and acting… I don't like not being me. Being me is hard enough, without having to fake being someone else as well." He let out a long breath. "But I guess this is in a good cause."

"You'd better believe it is," Mark said, "because you've had a trip."

Charlie swallowed. "What? Already? When?"

"Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, actually. Someone unauthorized was trying to get into your space. I tried to get hold of you, but you were offline."

"Whew," Charlie said. "I wasn't expecting anything that fast." He thought for a moment. "Mark, that means that whoever tripped the 'wire' has definitely been reading the message boards in Deathworld. I didn't actually talk to anybody until this morning, real early, before school."

"How many people have you talked to?"

"Uh, six or seven. A couple have seemed interested in me… but I'm not entirely sure yet that it's more than casual. I should get a better idea later."

"Okay. Well, you're recording everything… "

"I never take off the magic jacket… no matter how much it itches."

"It doesn't itch!"

"It does. It fizzes. I feel like I'm wearing a can of soda." "Must be feedback through the implant," Mark said, thoughtful.

"Can't you do something about it?"

"Not while you're wearing it," Mark said. "Let me play with it today if I have some time. I'll leave it in your space when I'm done with it."

"Yeah, fine. But Mark, who tripped the wire?!" "I don't know."

"You don't know? I thought you put a trace on the trip wire routine!"

"I did," Mark said, sounding extremely annoyed now, "but unfortunately, your pigeon was using an anonymizer to conceal the server of origin. They're perfectly legal. I thought the routine I had running would beat it… but this `anonner' is a new one, just opened up. Among the identification routines it's been built to defeat is the one I was using. Dammit."

"But can't you use something… you know… from Net Force?"

Mark's voice got, if possible, even more annoyed. "The `industrial strength' identification routines at Net Force are locked down tight, Charlie… to get permission to use the 'Drano' utilities, you have to have a court order and ID as a senior Net Force supervisor. Which I am not… yet. And I can't exactly ask any of them, either. So I'm winging it, using routines that have a lot less oomph. If I want to upgrade one of those to industrial strength I'm going to have to do that myself. In fact that's what I'll have to do after school today go check out this new anonymizer, find out which protocols it's using, figure out how to defeat them. Probably take me a day or so. You better sit the next couple dances out until I can sensitize the 'trip wire' to backtrack the next hit correctly."

Charlie was fuming. "You don't know anything about where the 'trip' came from?"

"Not a thing," Mark said, sounding just as annoyed. "Could have been next door to you, or in Ulan Bator."

Charlie sighed. "Okay," he said. "Let me know when you get the new routine up again."

"I will. But look, Charlie, just give it all a rest for the moment. A day or so won't make any difference."

"Yeah…" Charlie headed out of the VAB and back to his own space, beginning now to be actively nervous. A day or so… But no matter what Mark said, Charlie couldn't get rid of the idea that it could matter. It most definitely could…