Deathworld

Chapter 9

Charlie came out into the ashy darkness between the Lake. of Tears and the Dark Artificer's Keep, and stood looking around him for a second with Mark. Here and there in the darkness beyond the lake, the Damned ran by, pursued by the usual demons. Banies made their way toward the Keep, or into and out of it. There was no sign of any pursuit, but then he wasn't sure what pursuit would necessarily look like. It could wear a seeming as easily as he could, and didn't have to look like anyone he would recognize at the moment. And is it Kalki? Or Shade? Or someone else they've sent after me?

"One thing you've going for you," Mark said, "they'll be looking for one kid, not two."

"Great. That means they'll either pass me by, or find me and also try to trace and grab whoever's with me," Charlie said. "Why leave witnesses?"

This thought made Mark widen his eyes briefly. Then he grinned. "I don't think so somehow," Mark said. "I don't care who they are. They're not going to get into my workspace from my ID here. It's too well protected for that." He looked around them, though, with some concern. "But I don't think we should just be standing around. Where do we go?"

"For the moment," Charlie said, "safety in numbers. There are more people in the Keep than there are out here. Let's get inside."

They headed in through the front door. There were a fair number of Banies who used this spot as a gateway "access" while working on solving the Eighth Circle, and most of them were heading past Charlie and Mark toward the entryway that led to the Stairways to Nowhere. "We could lose ourselves pretty well in there, from the look of it," Mark said.

"Lose would be the word," Charlie said, nervous. "I don't know my way around in there real well-"

"Doesn't matter. Whoever's chasing you," Mark said, "we've just got to keep them in here, and occupied, until the Net Force people can get in and identify them."

Charlie swallowed. "Will they be able to do that in forty minutes?"

"More like thirty-five now," Mark said, not even having the grace to sound scared. "They'd better."

"But how are they going to find us?"

Mark tugged at the virtual "fabric" of the Magic Jacket's sleeve. "I left full details about this in the message to my dad," he said. "The tracking routine it uses is piping direct into his space. Anything you see or hear, he and Net Force will, too… and it's all archiving, storing virtual locations and addresses second by second. All we can do now is leave the tracking to him and his people, and get ourselves deep inside here… deep enough that anyone who comes after us is plainly doing it on purpose and not just as some kind of accident."

Charlie looked around him, looked at the entry to the stairways. "Okay," he said. "I guess we'd better-" "Manta!"

Charlie jumped. But it wasn't Kalki's voice, or Shade's.

Not that that means anything! He turned, half-furious, half terrified to see Nick hurrying toward them through the great doors. "Ohmygosh," Charlie said, grabbing Nick by the shoulders as he got close, "I'm gonna kill you! Do you know who I thought you were?"

"I can imagine. But I didn't want to yell your real name in the middle of all this. Who knew what could happen? Hey, nice jacket."

"Never mind the jacket. How did you know my handle?"

"I've been reading the message boards," Nick said. "I put some things together. Your message timings, for example. Look, can this wait? I got the message you left me about the people who're after you. Had to be the hero, didn't you?"

Charlie opened his mouth to make some angry retort, and then stopped himself, for Nick's tone wasn't angry or mocking. It was a compliment. "Uh-"

"Yeah. Well, there's something I've been wanting to try, and we'd better try it now, before somebody grabs us." He looked over at Mark. "Who's your friend?"

"Nick, this is Mark. Mark Winters, Nick Melchior. Mark's a virtwrangler, Nick. He's figured a way to track our progress in here." Charlie displayed the jacket. "Look, we have to give the bad guys a target, but one that's too tough to actually catch. That means we've got to get in deep enough that the people looking for me won't be able to find me. Help's coming, but we've gotta stall."

"Great. Come this way," Nick said, heading off to their right. "Nine be deep enough for you?"

"Nine?" Charlie swallowed. "Nick, one of them, the one who called himself Kalki, he said he'd been through the gates of Nine… "

"He's full of it," Nick said. "No one can come back after they get through the gates of Nine. There's a 'limited resume' in place after that. The designers implemented it to stop all the walk-throughs from blowing the final solution of the environment."

"When did you find that out?"

"Yesterday. From the Gate Guardian."

"You found the way down to Nine?"

Nick nodded. "But I put it off… I didn't want to go through until you were along. So now we'll give it a try."

"You don't know if it works or not?" Mark said, sounding alarmed.

"We're gonna find out real quick," said Nick. "Come on!"

There were nine tall gray doors opening out of the left-hand side of the huge entry hall, genuine old-fashioned doors with lever handles, looking like something out of the seventeenth century, with fancy scrollwork carved around the gray stone doorjambs. "Don't look like we're rushing or anything," Nick said, "just stroll." Charlie found this extremely difficult to do under the circumstances, but he forced himself to slow down and keep pace with Nick.

"A lot of people look at this at one point or another," Nick said softly, "but usually there isn't anything here. There's a trick to it, though… "

He went to the first of the five doors and stood by it, idly, listening. Then he shook his head.

"Nothing," Nick said, "but this is gonna be easier with three of us. Each of you, quick, go up to a door and listen. If you hear anything, open it right away. Don't look obvious about it, though. You don't want anyone noticing if you can help it!"

Mark headed for the next door up, and Charlie took a long breath, trying to calm himself, and went to the door after that. He stood by it… and then his eyes widened. A soft rumor and murmur of voices, like a crowd-

He pulled the door open a crack and peered in.

The sound didn't change, but Charlie looked in and saw that the dimly lit room was completely full of people, pushing, murmuring, moving together. It was in fact a vast dance floor, absolutely crammed with people in every kind of clothes, ancient and modern, and they were dancing hard to Joey Bane's music. Hanging up high from an almost invisible ceiling was, of all things, a mirrored "disco ball," and it shot glitters and spots of light all around the room as it turned, picking out here a jeweled headdress, there a studded white Elvis jacket, over there a slowglass jumpsuit. Charlie looked back around the door, signaled unobtrusively to Nick and Mark. They came over, and as they did, Charlie slipped in through the door. They came after him, and Nick shut the door behind him.

The instant he did, the sound came blasting up to full: the "flap mix" of "Don't Look Back," banging away with its wild 11/4 beat. Mark looked around him with admiration at the dancers. "They may be the Damned," he said, "but they've got rhythm."

"They're not the Damned," Nick said, grinning. "They're us."

Charlie looked at him, bemused. "It's a party," Nick said. "The Party. One of the environment-programmers' jokes. Everybody who ever visited Deathworld wanders in and out of here eventually. Not the real them, of course; just a recording of them, a sim… "

"You mean we're in here somewhere, too?" Mark said, sounding slightly amused. "Someone might find that confusing… "

"Sorry," Nick said, "but I don't think it works that way. The one time your simulacrum can't be found here is when you're genuinely on-site. So the Guardian told me. But other people might see it and not know for sure, for a while anyway, whether it was really you they were interacting with…" He grinned. "There are probably some funny scenes, every now and then, because some people do just come here to dance… "

"Looks like a good place to get lost in, anyway," Charlie said.

"Better than that," said Nick. "This is the Party. And since it is, there's a side door… and a Lady sneaking out of it. We've got to catch her. Come on-"

Nick started to push his way through the crowd. The other two followed him. It was hard going, hot and difficult. The oblivious dancers were packed incredibly tightly together and the music was jarringly loud. Even Nick looked like he was wincing a little at the volume.

Mark was close behind Charlie. "Are you sure your dad's people are gonna get here before our time runs out?" Charlie yelled to Mark, that being the only way he could make himself heard.

Mark was beginning to look uncomfortable. "Look," he shouted back, "I did the best I could. My dad gets busy, too! I told you, I sent a 'most urgent' to his virtpager. He'd never ignore that unless some seriously important government thing-"

"Like happens every day!" Charlie yelled. But there was no point in fighting about it now. Charlie took another deep breath, went plowing through the crowd in Nick's wake.

It got harder as they got closer to the center of things. There's this, anyway, Charlie thought, it's not gonna be easy for anyone to follow us- For that moment he disobeyed the advice of the music, looked over his shoulder.

And saw one of those tall doors behind them open. A second later he got a glimpse of a long black drapecoat, violet skirt, violet hair, as Shade came slipping in

Uh-oh. Fear and loathing both rose in him, and Charlie struggled to deal with the reaction rationally. It wasn't as if she was going to be able to spray him with sco-bro here and now. If she's even directly involved. Had Mark gotten any concrete evidence that she was? Had he even managed to track down exactly who had tripped the "trip wire" around his workspace? And is Shade someone different from Kalki-or is she the same person? For I didn't see them together… Charlie gulped. No time to spend worrying about all this now. Just follow Nick and keep them in here, and pray that Net Force is on the job-

Ahead of him, Nick was maybe two thirds of the way through the crowd, moving faster now, as if it was begin

fling to thin a little in patches near the far edge of the room. He was making his way toward the far left corner. Charlie could just see that the crowd was somewhat sparser there. And also a black blot, a shape, leaning near a door, a normal human-sized door, not like the ones they had come through, a door that was just closing…

Nick came out of the crowd, with Charlie behind him, and Mark bringing up the rear. The black blot-shape, hard to see in the disco-ball dimness, was a tall, potbellied demon, presently standing in front of the newly closed door. He had little stubby black-leather wings, and he was wearing a uniform like the ones movie-theater ushers or hotel-lobby bellboys had worn a century ago, right down to a rather ridiculous looking little pillbox hat pushed over to one side and partly resting on one of his big ears. Nick, coming up to him, paused and looked at him oddly.

"Hey," he shouted over the music, "you're not Melchgrind! You're Wringscalpel! I remember how you wear that hat."

The demon with the flaming sword blinked at him. "Nick?" it shouted back, squinting at him. "Why, how are you, fella? You back again? I didn't think you were going to linger."

"Change of plans," Nick said loudly. "This isn't your usual patch, either."

"No, we have to rotate through all the 'portal' jobs," Wringscalpel said, sounding resigned. "Sometimes whether we've been briefed on them fine detail or not. If I had a nickel for-"

"Neither of us is gonna be worth a plugged nickel if we don't hurry up here, Wringer! We're in big trouble at the moment. Someone's chasing us, and we really need not to get caught."

"Now, you know I can't let you go through without passing the test… "

"There is no time for that!" Nick yelled. "Wringscalpel, in Joey's own name, will you let us through here before you have a bunch more fake suicides on your hands?!"

"Test?" said Mark. "What test?"

Wringscalpel's eyes went wide. "But I can't. It's not that I wouldn't do it for you, Nick, it's just that the machine's routines won't allow-"

"What test?" Charlie said.

"He's not going to ask you what's your favorite color, if that's what you were thinking," Nick said. "Hurry up and ask the damn questions, then, Wringscalpel! I'm answering for all three of us."

"You two agree to that?" Wringscalpel said.

"Yes," Mark said, and "Yeah, yeah, just do it!" Charlie said, for he could see Shade getting closer to them.

"All right. You understand the rules? If you miss a question, you're all bumped back up to One-" "Fine!"

"And they're not the same questions as yesterday, Nick, they change every hour-"

"Come on!" they yelled at him in unison.

"All right," Wringscalpel said. "What is the purpose of life?"

"He doesn't want anything easy, does he?" Charlie moaned.

"Shaddup, Charlie. Pain, Wringscalpel! And learning how to deal with it."

"What is the dawn of the soul?"

"Which version?" Nick said.

Wringscalpel looked surprised, 'then smiled. "London 2024."

"The other side, / where the shadows hide, / and the dark no longer falls: the night of pain, / when the final chord / Comes breaking through the walls!"

"Hey, you're serious about this," Wringscalpel said. "Are you sure I can't ask you your favorite color?" "No! Get on with it!"

"What is Joey's middle name?"

"The one on his birth certificate," Nick said, "or the one from the press release?"

Wringscalpel grinned. "The birth certificate."

Nick swallowed. "Illusion," he said.

"There you go," said Wringacalpel, and began to grow.

The floor of the place shook. The disco ball hanging from the ceiling of the Party Room started to tremble, and stalactites of crystal and onyx began to fall from way above it, causing screams among the partying multitudes, who scattered in every direction, but then returned to the dance floor as if driven there with whips.

Wringacalpel, though, was paying all of this no attention. His uniform was tearing and shredding away, falling to the floor, as the demon grew, lost his potbelly, gained wings that lost the toy look they had worn earlier and now looked seriously functional, gigantic pinions, that spread above him and out to either side. He cried a great cry that shook down more stalactites.

"Is he angry?" Charlie shouted at Nick over the din of the music, the screaming dancers, the crash of falling crystal.

Wringscapel heard this and laughed. "Angry? You kidding?" he said. "I get a bonus for this." He held out his huge hands, and suddenly they were filled with a flaming sword that lit the whole place blindingly in actinic blue-white fire. "And now I get to leave this job to somebody else, while I go up to Seven and kick some-"

"Yeah, great, later!" Nick shouted, and dodged under his arm, past him, through the suddenly open door.

Charlie and Mark followed him in a hurry. Past Wringscapel, on the other side of the door, it was as dark as the inside of a dog, and involuntarily Charlie looked behind them, back toward the light.

"Whoever's behind us, they can't follow us in here unless they pass the test," Nick said.

"Yeah, and what if they know the answers, too?" Mark said, looking around him in the darkness with some concern.

"There's still one thing I don't think they'll do," said Nick. "Come on!"

He ran into the dark. More slowly they went after him, but their eyes were getting used to the dimness now. They were in a huge, huge cave, the size of a sports stadium, its stony ceiling lost above them.

"What are we supposed to be doing?" Mark said. "Looking for the Lady," said Nick.

Charlie looked at him as they ran. " 'She left the party early'…" he said. "Or something like that."

"Something like that. We have to find her. She's the key."

"Shouldn't be hard, there's nobody but us in… uhoh."

There were eyes in the darkness. They glowed. The predatory eyes blinked slowly and looked thoughtfully at the three of them.

"Ignore them," Nick said. "Look for a single light by itself."

It was hard. They walked on through the darkness, and it got hot and stifling, and the eyes pressed in close around them, and they could all hear breathing… Charlie shook his head at the oppressive quality of the illusion. And he stopped, then, hearing footsteps behind him.

"There," Nick said. He pointed. One light, distant-not horizontal like the lights around them, but vertical, not green, but a pure white.

"What's the rush?" said a soft voice from behind them.

Charlie turned, and there she was, Shade, looking at him with an expression that was almost sad… but not quite.

I can't have more than fifteen minutes left, Charlie thought. I've lost track. All I can do now is stall, keep her talking…

"Kalki told me you ran off without a word," she said. "Without even looking at him! He didn't mean to frighten you, really… he was just going to give you a ride."

And she's got to do more than just talk. "Was he?" Charlie said. "And what would we have done then? He and I. Or the three of us. If there really are two of you…"

"Why, talk," Shade said. "What else would happen?" "I have two words for you," Charlie said. "Scorbutal cohydrobromate."

She looked at Charlie, and her eyes widened.

Not enough. "And a white cotton sweater," Charlie said. "It must have been very new, one of those teased-cotton ones… because it shed all over Richard Delano's rug."

The look on her face went horrified for a moment, just for a flicker. Then she got hold of herself again and smiled very slowly, a knowing smile. "Scorbutal? Someone your age," she said, "shouldn't be messing around with drugs, Manta. Your folks would be shocked to find out about it. Maybe some responsible adult should tell them what she thinks you've been up to, hmm? How you tried to buy some from her?"

He went hot with fury.

"But it doesn't matter," Shade said. Charlie stared at her, kept his mouth shut. "There are always other people to work with, aren't there? It's not like suicide is going to go away. There are always mixed-up kids who stumble into nasty places like this." She looked around her with scorn, at the eyes pressing in close. "Or going to incredible trouble to work themselves deep down into them. Places full of sick images and soul-destroying music and ugly ideas. Who would be surprised when kids who spend a lot of time in a place come to grief? No one would be surprised at all."

She looked at Nick and Mark. "It's nice to see you've picked up a couple of friends here, finally," Shade said. "But there will always be people who need friends, and aren't so spiteful and suspicious. For them… I'll always be here. Until Deathworld shuts down, some day. Maybe some day very soon… because, if there's justice, nothing lasts forever."

That smile again: self-satisfied, controlling. Charlie would have loved to have an excuse to punch her in the nose. But then he realized he didn't need to… and he stood quite still, and smiled just a little himself. He couldn't help it.

And a second later he had the satisfaction, as hot as the fury had been a moment before, of seeing her eyes go wide, as she stared at the man and woman who suddenly caught hold of her "seeming" from both sides. "Net Force," said the woman. "We have some questions we need to ask you, please, so if you'd come this way-"

There were suddenly about six other Net Force operatives there as well, all in their usual dark suits and coverslicks, and they closed in on the group. "You kids all right?" one of them said.

In the background Shade was shouting, "What? Who are you? This is an outrage! I want a lawyer-"

"Uh, we're fine," Nick said, looking around at the ruckus with some surprise. He looked at Mark and Charlie. "But how'd they get in here without answering the questions?"

"Either a search warrant," Mark said, looking at them with relief, "Or a 'back door.' Does it matter?" He looked at Shade as the agents walked her away. "Looks like it's gonna be a real interesting debrief. Here, wait a minute… " he said to the agent who had spoken to Charlie.

Mark reached up and helped Charlie out of the Magic Jacket.

"Thanks, Squirt," Charlie said as Mark handed the jacket to the operative.

"It's still live," Mark said. "The evidential trail is still hot, so you'll want to lock it down when you get it back into the examination space at HQ."

"Thank you," said the op.

"And," said another voice out of the darkness, "I would appreciate it if someone would give me an explanation of what's been going on here…"

Jay Gridley came striding out of the dark-a lithe, intent-looking Thai-American man, in a business suit and tie. Right now, though, the intentness was mostly concentrated on his son. Mark was looking a little sheepish. "Uh, hi, Dad," he said, "you see, Charlie came to me with a problem-"

"Excuse me," said a quiet voice from out of the darkness behind them, "but were you looking for me?"

They all turned. The Goddess of Virtue stood there looking at them, while lifting up a long pale veil that had covered her face and head. Astraea was astonishingly beautiful, a tall and slender woman all robed in Greek-classical white, and her expression was severe, intelligent, and a little sorrowful.

Jay Gridley smiled slightly. "Uh, yes, ma'am. Routinely."

"Yeah," Nick said. "Mostly to say, don't go… "

"But there is nowhere for me to stay," she said sadly. "My only dwelling is in the hearts of men, and all of mankind is wicked… "

They looked at one another. "If you wait about two seconds," Charlie said, "not all… because a baby'll be born somewhere."

She smiled at him. It was like the sun coming up. "Thank you," Astraea said. "I think I'll stay."

They were all quiet a moment. "Which way to the Ninth Circle?" Nick said at last.

"There is none," Astraea said. "Or rather, this is it. This is Despair, after all. But after this… you go out the far side. That way." She pointed, and suddenly there was a little light away off in the darkness, like an open door.

"Uh, thanks," Mark said. He was a little bemused as he said it, for Astraea had draped her former veil around her neck like a scarf, and now she reached around behind her into the darkness and came out with a sword and a pair of scales.

"And now," she said cheerfully, "back to the day job. See you later… "

She vanished.

Mark looked up at his father. "You know her, Dad?"

he said.

"You kidding?" said Jay Gridley softly, but with some amusement, as he looked at the distant light. "She's one of my bosses." Then he looked down at his son, and his face acquired a severity more like that of Justice's. "Meanwhile… you and I need to talk. Briefly, because I have to get back to work. But later on we are going to have a long discussion… "

Mark arid his father vanished. Mark's expression was mostly unrepentant, despite his father's sternness. All Charlie thought it was wise to do was nod and grin just a little. When they were gone, Charlie started to turn toward Nick…

… and everything dissolved in a mist of light, back to a white plain and blue sky. A great voice came from the heavens and said to Charlie, "Thank you for using Net Access. You have come to the end of your purchased access time for this session. Please see the customer representative for more time.. or inquire about one of our monthly billing accounts!"

And suddenly he was sitting in the implant chair again… and behind him, there was a little cchk! noise as the door of the suite unlocked itself and slid open.

Charlie was on his feet in about a second, and out into the hallway. There he stopped, openmouthed with surprise.

The place was full of uniformed police. Two of them, right then, along with a dark-suited woman in plain clothes wearing the inimitable Net Force ID, were escorting out someone in handbinders. She was of medium height, dark-haired with some gray sprinkled through it, a little pudgy, maybe about forty. She was a profoundly ordinary-looking person, one he would have passed in the street a hundred times and never noticed. She looked ordinary, like a mother… and she was wearing a soft, fuzzy white short-sleeved cotton sweater.

There he lost his train of thought, for two more Net Force ops, a man and a woman, came walking down the hall toward Charlie.

"Charlie Davis?" one of them said.

"Uh, yes."

"Your father wants to see you," said the woman op. "Right now."

Ooops.

He walked outside, past the shocked-looking counter guy, and saw his dad standing there. By a police car-his mother was just getting out of another. The street was full of people slowing down to rubberneck, or standing there watching and talking. It looked like a disaster area.

He was afraid the disaster was going to be his.

But Charlie couldn't say a word for the moment. The relief, and the fear, and a host of other emotions, had all come crashing down on him together as he walked out of that booth and saw her-the woman who was Shade, or Kalki, or both-being taken away from the next booth to the one he had been in. The next booth-! Charlie went over to his mother and father, and they closed in on him, and he grabbed them both and hugged them hard.

"We're going to talk about this later," his father said, very low. "A lot. But I want to hear all of your side first."

"Thanks, Dad," Charlie said.

"But I notice that someone else is wearing the handcuffs," his mother said, "so I guess we can assume that you've been doing something that's going to make us proud."

Boy, I hope so, Charlie thought as they walked him away.

It was a long, long talk they had, and one that was going to take more than one evening to resolve. Charlie realized that when he was in bed that night, suffering from near-terminal embarrassment and upset, and at the same time, great pride… for word came down on the late news that evening that the cases of all the Deathworld "suicides" were being reopened. Additionally, after a very belated session with his mother's hot and spicy ribs (most of the dressing-down he suffered had happened while they were all in the kitchen together, and she was cooking), the vidphone went off. His father went to get it and didn't come back for something like twenty minutes.

"Who was it, honey?" Charlie's mother said.

"Jay Gridley," said Charlie's dad. He sat down and began to toy with one last rib he hadn't touched during dinner.

Charlie didn't say anything, though he very much wanted to-every word he had said, earlier, had seemed to trigger some new and interesting strain of the basic argument. "He says," Charlie's dad said, turning to Charlie, "that you may have saved ten or twenty people's lives."

Charlie swallowed.

"He also says you're to see James Winters tomorrow morning at eight," said his dad. "I assume that won't interfere with school?"

"Uh.. no."

"Good. Let us know what happens… "

"Uh, I will."

And that had been all. Charlie had gone to bed in a very subdued mood. But he had not been able to avoid seeing the look his mother and father exchanged as he'd gone upstairs. It had been worried, frightened, relieved… but not angry.

The next morning, having left his workspace and taken his seat in Winters's office, he wondered if being spared last night had simply left him mostly intact for a more thorough reaming-out today. Mark Gridley was there when Charlie got there, and he, too, was looking rather pale.

For a minute or two Winters just sat behind his desk, looking over documentation that was scrolling through the virtual window hanging nearby. Finally he shook his head and sat back, and looked at the two of them.

"Well," he said. "It's taken me the better part of last night and this morning, but I've finally finished reviewing the forensic and other information that our fast-response team went out to act on yesterday." He sighed. "Mark has already finished his debrief, but since he acted as 'enabler' for you on this, Charlie, I thought it might be wise to have him here to sketch in any details there necessary. Does that meet with your approval?"

"Uh, yes, sir."

"With one note," said Winters. "The wild, I would say profligate, illegality of a lot of Mark's 'enabling' needs to be stressed here. I would have thought," he said to Mark, "that after the last time, I wouldn't need to have this discussion with you again. But I see that no human agency can possibly predict your actions. You, I'm just going to have to refer back to your father. Again."

Mark didn't quite squirm.

"Don't bother trying to play to the stands quite so blatantly," Winters said. "There is no one in the stands but me, and I am not cheering."

He looked slowly over at Charlie. "Meanwhile," Winters said, "your mother is a very understanding woman." "She is? I mean, yes, sir, she is… "

"Because she has not herself assisted in having you committed," Winters said, "on finding out what you've been up to these past couple of weeks. I seem to remember you telling me that, as soon as you came across any information concrete enough to warrant action, that you would let me know."

The silence settled down heavy. "I didn't think it was concrete enough yet," Charlie said, his voice sounding even smaller than he was afraid it would. "It needed to be tested."

"Using yourself as bait," Winters said.

"When you're hunting polar bear," said Charlie, "that's the only bait that's any good."

Winters looked at him hard for a moment. Then he sat back and rocked a little in his chair. "This much I'm going to give you," he said. "You were right about one thing. The woman you caught was definitely getting ready to do it again. Immediately. Besides the stun gun, we found a big spray can of sco-bro in the front seat of her car. And all the ropes and ligatures you could have desired were in the trunk, ready to use."

Charlie shivered. "It's still May," he said.

"Yes," said Winters. "That much you're right about. But why?"

Charlie blinked. "Why is it May?"

"I mean," Winters said, "why was she attacking these kids in May?"

Charlie shook his head. "I never did figure that out," he said.

"Because," said Winters softly, "that's very close to when her son committed suicide."

Charlie's eyes widened. "Richard-"

"Exactly wrong," said Winters, annoyed. "Don't guess, Charlie. There's been too much guessing in this, not enough precise use of data. Fatal for a doctor."

Charlie swallowed.

"Mitch Welles," said Winters.

"He was the first one," Charlie said. "April of 2023-" He shook his head.

"April," Winters said. "Not May. Now, Maureen Welles had… well, not exactly a collapse after her son died. But she wasn't well. After she recovered, she went on a campaign to prove that her son had been induced to kill himself by something that had been done to him in Deathworld. She spent all her efforts trying to get the legislation that I told you about through Congress. It didn't get her anywhere. She was sure that there was a conspiracy against her, but as I said, the only conspirator against her that anyone can identify was the Congressional calendar. And her own single-mindedness." He let out a long breath. "Her marriage went to pieces in the middle of it all. She and her husband separated-he said, because chasing down her son's murderer had become her entire life."

Winters went on rocking in his chair for a few moments, scowling at his desk.

"Sounds like she was obsessed," said Mark very qui- etly.

"It sounds like it," said Winters. "Well, all her complaints and attempts to get Deathworld shut downgot her nowhere, as you might imagine, since there was no evidence whatever to suggest that the environment, or Bane, were implicated in any way in her son's death." He sighed. "And then the second suicide happened. That's when we got involved. Once could be an accident. Twice could be a coincidence-"

"Three times is enemy action," Mark said.

"Well, even proverbs can be wrong," said Winters, lacing his fingers together. "But this time, as it happens, it was indeed enemy action. Because Mitch Welles's mother decided that if the government and Net Force weren't going to do the responsible thing and shut Deathworld down, then she would do it herself."

He breathed out. "Well, that's the simple way to describe it. Your mom would know," and Winters glanced up at Charlie, "that the ways a human mind gets itself into such a position are usually a lot more subtle than people suspect from outside, or after the fact. After all, she had managed to convince herself, over time, that her son couldn't have killed himself, that it had to be murder. Well, acknowledging that he had committed suicide would mean admitting that it might possibly have been due to something she d done wrong… so that was a realization that her mind buried as soon as it could. From that it was just a step to believing that Joey Bane was personally responsible for his death. And from there, maybe not such a long step to believing that anyone who was in Deathworld willingly was somehow complicit in her son's 'murder.' "

"Maybe," Charlie whispered. "It would explain a lot."

Winters shook his head. "It may be something like that which was going on in her head. The process itself is obscure, and it's probably going to stay that way for a while, because she's not talking about much of anything now. But soon enough Maureen Welles got the idea that, if people had accused her son of being a suicide, then she was going to turn that back on them, get revenge on them for hurting her, for hurting him like that. They would be the suicides, not him. She started monitoring the new login information, and the message boards, as anyone could… but her purpose was to pick likely targets, to make sure that the ones she 'worked with' in her Shade and Kalki personas seemed genuinely suicidal, people who 'were going to do it anyway.' Their deaths would make her son's look like what she was sure it was: something done to him, to them, by the environment they'd been spending time in. That this would also hurt Joey Bane must have occurred to her. She may even have had some fantasy of killing him and turning him into a 'suicide' as well. More to the point, though, she was sane enough to realize that a string of suicides would affect the place adversely."

"But it didn't," Charlie said. "It went wrong. In a lot of ways. No one put it together that the suicides were connected. And Deathworld got even more popular."

Winters's look was grim. "You're right. It backfired on her. Her methods were too subtle. Not subtle enough to completely prevent the suspicion, here and there, that these suicides weren't uncomplicated. But distributed over so much time, and such a large physical area, they didn't attract the attention she wanted. And she wasn't completely nuts, not yet. Her first murder took a lot out of her, scared her-scared her briefly sane. She kept quiet for a while. The next suicide, the one in October, was genuine, and had nothing to do with her. But come the next year, around April, her pain started to unseat her reason again. By May she was more than ready to murder someone else, as revenge against Bane… or as a kind of sacrifice to her dead son." He frowned. "And she did… then scared herself sane again for a little while."

"But she couldn't stay that way," Charlie said. "Probably the knowledge of what she'd been doing was starting to prey on her. And her son was still dead… "

"And Deathworld was still in operation," Winters said, sounding a little sad now. "It must have been intolerable for her. One part of her wanting to believe that her son had been exonerated, avenged… another part of her continually wanting revenge on whatever had taken him away from her."

"And so she kept on killing," Mark said. "And then did it again, this month… "

"Twice," Winters said, somber. "But now she was getting into the pattern of serial killers. One murder isn't enough. The same kind of murder isn't enough. They have to get closer together, be more terrible, somehow, to provide the same level of catharsis. But they never do."

"It's a drug," Charlie said softly.

"Something like one," said Winters. "The addiction always getting worse, in her case, because the dose increases and increases and doesn't do any good. And then this last time, she was driven to commit two murders.. and no sooner have they happened than Deathworld, her old enemy, suddenly is doing better than ever. It drove her to levels of rage she'd never experienced before. She decided to go straight out to try to kill again. And found you… using some pretty advanced 'hunting' routines. She tripped the 'wire' around your workspace, as you thought. Felt you out, to make sure you were suicidal enough. And then went for the kill."

Winters's eyes were resting on Charlie in a way that made him even more uncomfortable than the man's anger had.

But there was only one answer to that look. Charlie swallowed. "You remember Helicobacter?" he said.

Mark looked at Charlie as if he was from Mars. But Winters's expression shifted microscopically to something a little less uneasy than it had been.

"Helicobacter pylorii," Charlie said. "Forty years ago everybody thought stomach ulcers were caused by stomach acid." He had to laugh, for at this end of time, it sounded silly. But back then, they hadn't had any other answer that made sense. "Then a scientist, a doctor, noticed that in all the cultures he took of his patients' stomach ulcers, they all had this one bacterium present. Helicobacter, they called it, because it was shaped like a little helix. He worked with that bug for something like five years, until he was convinced that it was the cause of stomach ulcers, and that it could be killed, and the ulcers wiped out, just by using the right kind of antibiotic for long enough. He published papers, tried to convince everybody. They laughed at him. They said that the proof wasn't conclusive, that the evidence was all circumstantial. They wouldn't approve even animal testing, let alone human." Charlie smiled a smile as grim as Winters's had been. "So finally the guy swallowed a pure culture of Helicobacter and gave himself the fastest, nastiest case of bleeding ulcers anybody ever saw. Then he put himself on a course of antibiotics, and cured them."

Winters just looked at him.

"A lot of doctors have done stuff like that," Charlie said. "Pasteur. Jenner. It's traditional." He gulped, for Winters's look was not getting any friendlier. "When you're sure you're right. But when it's a life-and-death thing… the only life you have a right to put on the line is your own."

Winters just looked at him, like something carved from stone. "Mark," he said at last, "would you excuse us?"

Mark threw Charlie one apologetic glance, and then removed himself from the room with a speed that suggested he had recently had ion drivers installed.

A moment's silence ensued. "Now what the hell am I supposed to do with you," Winters said at last, "when you play the moral card on me like that."

Charlie thought it wisest to keep his mouth shut for the moment.

Winters sighed and leaned back in his chair again. "Your mother and father," he said, rubbing his face, "are going to have my hide off my bones if I don't come down on you hard for this dumb stunt. Which it was." Charlie looked down. "The 'morality card' aside. Morality starts at home, Charlie. You have not treated your folks very well. If you and the irrepressible Mr. Gridley hadn't had God's own luck, not to mention a sense of timing developed well beyond what people of your tender years should have, you could very well have been 'suicide' number seven. And maybe Mark and Nick for eight and nine. And regardless of the fact that the work and the evidence you left us would have made your death murder rather than suicide, and that your murderer would have been behind bars very quickly indeed, it would have shattered your parents' lives."

Charlie sat there with the sweat bursting out all over him, because he knew it was true, and that one way or another, he was unlikely to hear the end of this for months.

The silence stretched out again for a long while.

"All right," Winters said. "We'll see what you work out with them. They've let me know that, after talking to Jay Gridley, they think you should be allowed to continue as a Net Force Explorer. You may have to get used to being, uh, monitored a little more closely. You threw quite a scare into them."

Charlie swallowed. "Yes, sir."

"But there is this." He gave Charlie a thoughtful look. "If you hadn't done what you did… heaven knows who she might have killed next. How many more murders it would have taken to quieten her ghosts… and of course they wouldn't have stayed quiet, not for long." He sat back, looking at his folded hands. "Unfortunately, among the various kinds of serial killers, there are a few who `seal over' very effectively for prolonged periods between crimes. They're crazy as bedbugs, but either they're not crazy enough to let their symptoms show where people can see them, or there's no one to see. Living by herself, her son dead, her husband pretty much permanently out of thepicture, with no one to see how weird she got every April… this could have gone on for a long while. It could have caused Deathworld to be shut down, and left Bane fighting endless lawsuits that would not have been his responsibility. So an injustice has been prevented… though frankly, from what I've seen of the place, I wonder if-"

Then Winters stopped himself. "No," he said, sounding annoyed. "Injustice is injustice, dammit, and artistic opinions shouldn't enter into it. That way lies tyranny. Now would you mind explaining why you're looking at me like that?"

Charlie had begun to smile, just a little. He couldn't help it. "I think there's more to that place than meets the eye," he said. "And really, Mr. Winters, I think the media' ye overstated the case a little about Deathworld. It's not as kinky and cruel as they think. It's more a teaching exercise."

"Oh, is it?" Winters said. "Well." He glanced down at his desk, reading something that had been manifesting under its surface for a while now.

He sighed. "It was always forensics with you, wasn't it?" he said. " 'The noblest use of science,' I heard one of my people call it. Well, some good has come of this aspect of your riffling of the records, anyway. There really should have been more cooperation among the various police forces handling the suicides. There are mechanisms set up for that, but they don't get used enough. This outcome will enable us to put bugs under some people's rumps, and have them look more closely at how to coordinate deaths that have similarities. A 'smart' system can be coached by forensic people and profilers to start handling and correlating data like this… as long as the cops put it in. And that a kid beat them to a serial killer might just shame them into using it." He raised his eyebrows. "Fine. But at the end of the day I suppose I might have known you'd do what you did, once faced with the evidence. Regardless of how earnestly you promised me you wouldn't jump the gun."

Charlie blushed hot again. This is all I need. A rep as an incorrigible gun-jumper. With one of the two men who'll determine whether I ever work in Net Force at all. _ _

"Don't mistake my intent," said Winters. "I don't mindlessly push the 'team player' concept because some corporate-minded superior makes me do it. I do it because it is the sine qua non of this organization, the single thing that makes us effective. When you start working with other people in Net Force someday, assuming that you graduate medical school without incident and that you are somehow spared for that work by an overly kindly Universe which keeps you from getting your butt kidnapped or killed when you put it in harm's way"- Charlie began wondering whether it was possible to feel as hot and embarrassed as he presently did without actually running a clinical fever- "then you are going to have to do what you tell them you're going to do, for the simple reason that they're going to act on that information, and when they do, if you're not doing what you said you were going to do, you may get them killed. They will be depending on you to keep your word. If you can't… you are no good to anyone. So get the polar bears and the Helicobacter out of your system now, because there'll be no room for them later."

Winters looked at him.

"Uh," Charlie said, "yes, sir."

There was a long silence. "Good," Winters said. "Then we understand each other. Insofar as anyone my age can truly understand anyone yours." He shook his head. "Which is little enough. Especially after I just heard you defending Deathworld to me." He raised his eyebrows at Charlie. "I wouldn't have thought you'd care much for the music, for one thing. I thought you were all for tech-notrad."

"The context," Charlie said, "makes other readings possible."

Winters gave him a cockeyed look. "I hear the sound of someone managing information on what he considers a 'need to know' basis." He sighed. "You should go away, now, because you're making my head hurt." He glanced at the bird feeder stuck to his window, where a small brown bird was taking out one nut at a time and dropping it to the ground. "Even more than he was," Winters added, "until I realized what he's doing. He's feeding two of his buddies on the ground. Possibly his kids. They're too big to tell."

He made a shooing gesture at Charlie. Charlie got up."… So get out of here," he said.

In haste, Charlie got out.

School that day went by in something of a blur, mostly caused by Charlie having to refuse again and again to say anything about what had happened down at the public access place near the Square. The case was now officially sub judice and could not be discussed. By the end of the day he was thoroughly tired of not being able to say anything, and seriously relieved to see Nick.

"Are you okay?" Charlie said to him as they started to walk in the general direction of home.

"Uh, yeah." Nick chuckled a little. "I didn't realize whose son Mark was! James Winters called my dad.". "He did? Oh, no!"

"No, it was okay," Nick said, sounding completely unconcerned… but then he didn't have to answer to James Winters. "My dad was really impressed."

"Winters didn't… say anything awful, did he?"

"Not at all. He was nice, actually. From what my mom said, he made me come out sounding like some kind of hero." He gave Charlie an odd look. "They're probably gonna hand you the same kind of stuff."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that," Charlie said. "It hasn't been a problem so far."

They headed for Nick's apartment, if only because Charlie wasn't willing to go straight home to his own and find some new and interesting aspect of last night's argument waiting for him. When they got there, though, Charlie wondered whether this had been wise, for Nick's mother was putting down the receiver of the vidphone with an odd look on her face.

Nick froze when he saw it. Charlie, not knowing what that kind of expression might mean on someone else's mother, didn't bother panicking. On his own, though, he would have been cautiously optimistic about what was to follow. "Hi, Mrs. Melchior…"

"Hi, Charlie honey, how are you?" She sounded very abstracted.

"Uh, hi, Mom," Nick said.

"Nick," his mother said, "what have you been doing?"

Charlie saw the oh-no-what-now look cross his friend's face. "We came straight from school, Mrs. Melchior," he said, hoping it wouldn't make things worse. "Did we-"

"No, Charlie, it's all right," said Nick's mother, looking dubious. "I guess. Honey, that was someone from the service provider."

Nick instantly burst out in a sweat that Charlie could see from two feet away, and indeed could practically feel. "Mom, in three weeks I'll have enough to give them about two hundred-"

"I wouldn't worry about that," his mother said, "because they say that the last month's bill has been paid in full."

Nick's eyes widened. "Oh, no. If Dad went and-"

"Your dad didn't do anything, honey," said Nick's mother, sitting down at the small kitchen table and looking at him oddly. "It seems someone from Joey Bane Enterprises got hold of them and said that the company was paying your expenses for 'your efforts on their behalf.' Which they took to mean the last month's comm charges, with a cash reserve to cover another year's worth of use. And apparently they're reimbursing you for your public access in the last couple of weeks."

"Oh, wow," Nick said, looking almost weak with relief, and collapsing into the chair opposite his mom at the table.

Charlie stood and watched all this with poorly concealed approval.

"Charlie," said Nick's mother to him, turning on him what would have been a fairly fierce expression except for the confusion still underlying it, "did you have something to do with this?"

"I don't think so," Charlie said. Not directly, anyway. Or at least not the way you think…

He was spared having to go through any longer a list of mental reservations by Nick's mother sighing, raising her hands in the air, letting them fall again. "Honey," she said, "it's very nice of them to come in and get you off the hook like this-"

"Mom," said Nick, "I'm going to keep the summer job… if it's all the same to you."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "That's the best thing I've heard all day," she said, and got up, heading down the hall toward the rear of the apartment. "Meanwhile, I suppose we'd better see about getting your server reconnected… "

Nick and Charlie looked at each other as she went down to the den. "It's a miracle," Nick said softly.

"Somehow I doubt it."

"I wonder how much of… you know, what we did… is going to come out."

"I don't think it'd be smart for us to discuss that here," Charlie said softly. "Not under the circumstances. You gonna be online again tonight?"

"One way or another," Nick said. "I meant it about the job… I noticed that when I'm out of the apartment more, the tension level around here goes down somewhat. I would have thought it'd be the other way around. Could it be that they wanted me to get out more or something? Even if it's just to use a public booth?"

Charlie shrugged. "Who knows," he said, "what parents think?"

"I know what you mean." Nick grinned a little. "I like to think of dealing with them as practice for when we finally meet up with alien life-forms."

"You and me both, brother. Well, if you ever find out why it's working better, tell me. Meanwhile, let's do whatever needs doing here, and then get out before the situation deteriorates somehow… "

Later that evening Nick and Charlie met in Deathworld again, near the Keep of the Dark Artificer. This time there was no agenda, nothing to worry about. This time they could walk and talk and simply relax, debriefing each other. "You know," Nick said, once or twice catching a betraying expression on Charlie's face, "if I didn't know better… I'd think you were beginning to like some of this music."

"Oh, I don't know… " Charlie said as they went in the gates of the Keep, and the demons there snapped to attention and saluted them. "Some of the rhythms are more interesting than I thought originally… " He grinned. "But the lyrics…"

"Oh, give me a break. So they're depressive." "Morbid," Charlie said, "that's the word I would have used."

They strolled through the great "front hall," while Charlie looked around him, apparently fascinated by the architecture. Nick raised his eyebrows, mildly exasperated. "Just because some idiot critics call it morbo-jazz," Nick said, "isn't any reason to take them seriously. It's hardly even jazz. If you think about it, you'll see that the basic riff structure has been completely… uh…"

He trailed off, coming to a stop, slowly becoming aware that Charlie was staring at him. " 'Completely uh?'"

There was a dark form standing in their path, all in black leather, a shadow dressed in shadows. "Hey, Nick," said Joey Bane, dry-voiced and ironic. "How goes it?"

Nick couldn't find it in his heart to say "Badly, as always," for this was the man himself, no simulacrum, no clone generated by the machine. The look in his eyes was too feral, too amused, and too real, for any program to fake.

Camiun was over his shoulder, and for once its strings were still. "I asked the system to let me know when you two gents came through next," Joey Bane said. "I believe your last visit was, well, to put it politely, interrupted… "

"Uh," Nick said. "Yeah. I mean, no, it-"

"Look, relax," Bane said. "Nobody's going to ream you out. You did me and mine a favor. I thought I'd try to return it, a little. Come on."

He gestured them toward the back of the entry hall. They walked with him. "Besides," Joey said, "I would have come to take a look at you eventually, anyway. You just hurried me a little."

Nick goggled. On the other side of Joey, Charlie was looking at Nick and plainly trying not to burst out laughing. Nick ignored him. "You wanted to look at me? Why me?"

Bane laughed. "Because you're the one who's always subverting my staff."

Nick blushed. "I never-"

"You always! The DP people who do their dialogue-are always saying, 'There's this kid who talks to us all the time, and treats us like people-' ".

"Scorchtrap!"

"And the others. Bluebelch and Wringscalpel and Twistlestomp and the others. Where do they get these names, anyway? Whatever… they say the Demons want you to sit in on their next collective bargaining session. As if I don't give them stock options, and as if we didn't just have a split? What do they want now? Do they think I'm made of money?" Joey gave the two of them an ironic look. "But, kid, even the tables here say nice things about you. Somebody who's as kind to inanimate objects and support staff as you are will go far in the world."

Nick grinned. He couldn't think of anything to say to that.

"So," Joey said, "make yourselves at home. No connect charges for you two anymore. Though I think we'll see more of you than of your friend here." He nodded courteously enough to Charlie.

"I don't know," Charlie said suddenly, acquiring a wicked look. "I heard some material borrowed from Hovannes in that last lift Nick played for me. Maybe we have common ground after all."

Bane grinned. "Maybe we do. Stop in sometimes and find out. Meanwhile, what's your pleasure, gentlemen?" "We were going to do the Ninth Circle," Nick said, looking over toward the doors on the left-hand side. "I wouldn't go that way."

Nick looked at him in surprise. "Why not?"

"There's a shortcut. Who wants to go through all that stuff again? The noise, the crowd-" He waved his hand, made an annoyed noise. "Nick, why go through all that again? You did it once. Once is enough. Suffering for a purpose-" He looked up, as it were, through the depth of Deathworld, somehow including in the glance all the screaming and horror of the upper levels, all the rage, and the acknowledgment of evil. "That's one thing. Purification, punishment with an object, to deter or teach you never to do it again, that's one thing. But prolonging it indefinitely, punishment for its own sake, for the mere love of cruelty-" He shook his head. "That's not how we do it in Des Moines. Come on."

He led them toward the back of the entry hall. The place was empty, for the moment, except for the three of them. "One word," said Joey. "You got to the very threshold, last time, before you left. We have an agreement, which one of my clones would 1-lve administered to you before passing that last doorwL you saw off in the distance. We do not discuss with anyone but other people who've passed Nine, what lies beyond that portal. Anyone who does and is caught at it is banned for life." He shrugged. "Every now and then someone breaks the promise and tells… but you know what? No one believes them. Suits me. And as for the rest of us… sometimes it's fun to have a secret. Sometimes it's fun to make a promise and keep it forever. Can you cope with that?"

They both nodded.

"Right," Joey said.

He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, piercingly.

Suddenly the air was full of music the likes of which Nick had never heard before-Camiun singing, for once, not in its usual dark fierce minor, but in a triumphant clarion major that was most uncharacteristic. Around them, like a mist, like a dream, the darkness and the stone and the night all began to melt away. Light came pouring in, and the view across a green landscape that scaled up and up through rolling hills. Farther up yet, to mountains stacked halfway up the sky, green at first, then blinding with snow, but snow that looked down on what seemed like an eternal spring.

The chords crashed around them as Nick looked at Joey Bane, the only dark thing in all that landscape, with astonishment.

"Okay, so life stinks," Joey said, ". but then you stop complaining, and get on with finding out how to make it work."

Through waves of triumphant music of lute and bass and jazz sax the three of them walked uphill, into the light, toward the crowd of Banies dancing under the second sun.