Gridiron

Book Five

Mitch watched Kenny working in the computer room on CCTV. There was one thing you could say about Kenny, thought Mitch, and that was the guy's level of concentration. He never looked up. Just kept his eyes on screen and his fingers on the keyboard. Another fifteen minutes passed and, growing impatient for news, he tried to call him on the phone. Unable to carry the full band width on cellular transmission, the CCTV was pictures only. But it was plain to see that Kenny wasn't answering.

'What's the matter with him?' said Mitch. 'Why doesn't he pick up the phone?'

Bob Beech, standing at Mitch's shoulder gave a laconic shrug and extracted a stick of gum from one of the many pockets in his sportsman's vest.

'He's probably got the phone turned off. When he's got his head into a problem he often does that. I guess he'll call when he's got something for us.'

'Maybe you ought to go and help him,' Mitch suggested.

Beech drew a sharp intake of breath and shook his head. 'It may be my computer but it's Aidan Kenny's building management system,' he said.

'If he needs my help I reckon he'll ask for it.'

'Where's Richardson?' Mitch shook his head wearily. 'He was supposed to go and find Kay '

Mitch clicked the mouse to look inside the swimming pool The picture on the CCTV continued to show a swimming pool with no sign of Kay and the same unidentified object near the foot of the screen.

Marty Birnbaum came alongside Mitch and leaned towards the screen. 'If I were you,' he said quietly, 'I wouldn't look too hard for either one of those two. If Ray did find Kay then he might prefer to be left alone for a while.'

'You mean…'

Birnbaum raised his almost invisibly fair eyebrows and ran a hand through a head of yellow curls so small and neat that there were many at the office, Mitch included, who had wondered if it might be permed. And the tan? That looked fake too. As fake as the smile, anyway.

'Even with a plane to catch?'

'We're none of us going anywhere at the moment. Besides, Ray

Richardson being the kind of guy he is, I can't imagine he would take very long about it, can you?'

'No, I guess not, Marty. Thanks.'

'Don't mention it. And I mean don't mention it, Mitch. You know what he's like.'

'Oh, I know what he's like all right,' he said grimly. Mitch stood up, took off his jacket, undid his tie and, rolling up his shirtsleeves, went over to the window. The building was warming up.

Outside the Gridiron the sky was turning a delicate shade of purple. Most of the lights in the other office buildings nearby had already gone out as people left early for the weekend. Though he could not see the ground Mitch knew that there would be little traffic moving in the downtown area now. About this time the bums and the winos started to take over. But Mitch would happily have organized a midnight walking tour of Pershing Square just to have been out of the building. He didn't mind the heat so much as the smell, for the stink of excrement was now unmistakable. First rotting meat. Then fish. And now the smell of shit. It was almost as if the bad smell was having a psychosomatic effect on him, although he knew that was not the only reason he was so worried. What had really started to bother him was the thought that somehow Grabel had sabotaged the Gridiron's building management systems as a way of getting back at Richardson. When better to do it than two or three days before the inspection? Grabel knew his way around computers, too. He was no Aidan Kenny, but he knew what he was doing.

Mitch turned to face the room. Everyone was just sitting around the long, polished ebony table, or lounging on the big leather sofa underneath the floor-to-ceiling window, waiting for something to happen. Looking at their watches. Yawning. Anxious to get out and go home and take a bath. Mitch decided to say nothing. There seemed to be no point in alarming them without good cause.

'Seven o'clock,' said Tony Levine. 'What the hell's keeping Aidan?' He stood up and went over to the phone.

'He's not answering,' Mitch said dully.

'I'm not calling him,' explained Levine. 'I'm calling my wife. We were supposed to be going out to Spago's tonight.'

Curtis and Coleman appeared at the door of the boardroom. The older man looked questioningly at Mitch, who shrugged back at him and shook his head.

'Couldn't we at least open a window?' said Curtis. 'This place smells worse than a dog kennel.' He began to take out his police radio.

'These windows were not designed to be opened. And they're not just bullet-proof.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means,' said Beech, 'that you won't be able to use that radio in here. The glass is an integral part of the Faraday Cage that surrounds the whole building.'

'The what?'

'The Faraday Cage. Named after Michael Faraday, who discovered the phenomenon of electro-magnetic induction. Both the glass and the steel framework are designed to act as an earthed screen, to shield us from external electrical fields. Otherwise the signals emitted by the VDUs could be captured with the aid of some simple electronic surveillance equipment. And used to reconstruct the information appearing on those computer screens. A corporation like this one has to be extremely careful of electronic eavesdroppers. Any one of our competitors would pay a lot of money to get their hands on our data.'

Curtis pressed the send/receive button on his radio a couple of times as if seeking to verify what Bob Beech had told him. Hearing nothing but white noise he put the unit down on the table and nodded.

'Well, you learn something every day, I guess. Can I use your phone?'

Tony Levine cleared his throat. 'I'm afraid you won't be able to do that either,' he said perplexedly. 'The phone isn't working. At least, the outside lines aren't. I just tried to call home. It's out.'

'Out? What do you mean, out?'

'Out. As in not working.'

Curtis crossed the room angrily, snatched up the phone and stabbed out the number of New Parker Center as if he was killing ants. Then he tried 911. After a minute or so he shook his head and sighed.

'I'll check the phone in the kitchen,' volunteered Nathan Coleman. But he was soon back again, his face wearing an expression that indicated no improvement on the situation.

'How could this happen, Willis?' said Mitch.

Willis Ellery leaned back in his chair. 'All I can think is that there's been some kind of spurious tripping of the magnetic circuit-breaker that controls the telecommunications power distribution unit. That might have been caused by powering up equipment. Or it could be that Aid had to shut something down and then start it up again.'

He stood up to consider the matter further and then added, 'You know, it could be there's a general problem with all the fibre-distributed data interface. There's a local equipment room on this floor with a horizontal local area network that's connected to the computer room via a high-speed backbone LAN. I can go and check that out.'

Curtis watched him leave the room and grinned. 'High-speed backbone,' he said. 'I love that. There are times when I could use a little of that myself. You know, with all these technical experts around, Nat, it beats me that we're stuck inside an office building at seven o'clock at night.'

'Me too, Frank.'

'But doesn't it give you a good feeling? To know that we're in such capable hands? I mean, thank God we've got these guys with us, y'know?

I'd hate to think what might have happened if we'd been here on our own.'

Mitch smiled and tried to shrug off the detective's sarcasm. But there was something he had said that he couldn't shift from his mind. The time. Seven o'clock. Why did that of all things seem to nag at him?

And then he remembered.

He returned to the work-station and clicked the mouse to get the CCTV camera view of the computer room and Kenny still typing away, trying to solve the glitch. Everything looked normal. Everything except the hands of the clock on the wall. They read six-fifteen and had done so for the last forty-five minutes. And now that he looked more closely at the television picture, he began to see small repetitions in Kenny's behaviour: the same little jerk of the head, the same frown, the same finger movements across the keyboards. Mitch felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He had been viewing nothing more than a tape recording of what had happened in the computer room. Someone had wanted them to think that Aidan Kenny was working at trying to debug the building management systems. But why? For the moment, Mitch kept the discovery to himself, hoping to avoid alarming everyone. He turned around in his chair and looked at David Arnon.

'Dave? Have you got that walkie-talkie?'

'Sure, Mitch.' Arnon handed over the set he always carried on site to speak to the construction people.

'They've got one of those in the security office, right?'

Arnon nodded.

'I'm going to get the security guy, Dukes, to see what's keeping Richardson.' He caught the tiny pupil in Birnbaum's pale blue eye and added, 'I don't give a fuck what he's doing.'

Birnbaum shrugged. 'It's your funeral, Mitch.'

'Maybe.'

Curtis was still wearing his sarcastic face. Mitch looked at him and nodded towards the door.

'Could I have a word with you please, Sergeant? Outside?'

'I'm not doing anything right now. Why not?'

Mitch said nothing until they were further up the corridor. 'I didn't want to say anything in front of everyone in there,' he said at last. 'I guess I didn't want to scare them the way I'm scared now.'

'Jesus, what's up?'

Mitch explained about the time on the clock in the computer room and his suspicion that for the last three-quarters of an hour they had been viewing a tape recording, a recorded loop of what was happening.

'Which means that something may have happened in the computer room just after six-fifteen. Something that someone is trying to hide from us.'

'You think Aidan Kenny is all right?'

Mitch let out a sigh and shrugged. 'I really don't know.'

'This someone,' Curtis said after a moment, 'do you think it could be your friend from the garage? The one who knocked you out?'

'The thought had crossed my mind, Sergeant.'

'How far do you think he would go?'

'I really don't figure Grabel for a murderer. But if Sam Gleig disturbed Grabel sabotaging the computer, then it's just possible he could have been killed for it. Maybe that part was an accident. Anyway, I think Grabel may have come back here to warn me. It could be that he had second thoughts about the whole thing.'

'Either way, we're in trouble.'

'Yes, I'm afraid so,' said Mitch.

'Well, hadn't we better go down to the computer room and find out if Mr Kenny is OK?'

'Sure. But if I'm right it means that we don't dare use the elevators.'

Curtis looked blank.

'Abraham controls the elevators,' explained Mitch. 'The whole building management system could be screwed.'

'Then we'd better take the stairs,' suggested Curtis.

'I'm not walking. We'll get Dukes to check on Kenny on his way up here. You see, if we are going to be trapped in the building for a while, it would make more sense for them to come up stairs where there's food and water, rather than remain down there where there's none.'

Curtis nodded. 'Sounds sensible.'

'At least until we can get help.'

Mitch pressed the call-button on the walkie-talkie and lifted the set to his ear. But as they came alongside the open space of the atrium it was the ground-level security alarm that he heard.

After he had recovered from the toxic effects of his futile attempt to revive Kay Killen, Ray Richardson had gone to a phone and tried, without success, to call the boardroom. A call to Aidan Kenny proved equally fruitless. So Richardson returned to the atrium to find Joan. She was sitting on the one of the big black leather sofas where he had left her, beside the still-playing piano, a handkerchief pressed to her nose and mouth against the foul smell that filled the building. Richardson sat down heavily beside her.

'Ray?' she protested, recoiling from his wet body. 'You're soaked. What happened?'

'I don't know,' he said quietly. 'But I don't see how anyone could say that it was my fault.' He shook his head nervously. 'I tried to help her. I jumped in and tried…'

'What are you talking about, Ray? Take it easy, dear, and tell me what's happened.'

Richardson paused as he tried to collect himself. He drew a big breath and then nodded.

'I'm OK,' he said. 'It's Kay. She's dead. I went into the pool and she was just floating there. I jumped in and pulled her out. Tried to revive her. But it was too late.' He shook his head. 'I don't understand what could have happened. How could she have drowned? You saw her yourself, Joan. She was a terrific swimmer.'

'Drowned?'

Richardson nodded nervously.

'You're sure she was dead?'

'Quite sure.'

Joan put a sympathetic hand on her husband's trembling back and shook her head. 'Well, I don't know. Maybe she dived in and hit her head on the bottom. It happens all the time. Even to the best of swimmers.'

'First Hideki Yojo. Then that security guy. Now Kay. Why does this have to happen to me?' He chuckled uncomfortably. 'Christ, what am I saying? I must be crazy. All I'm thinking about is the building. I was trying to pull the poor kid out of the water and you know what I kept thinking? I kept thinking, a swimming accident. Like Le Corbusier. Can you believe it? That's how obsessed I've become, Joan. That beautiful girl is dead and what's going through my fucking mind is that she went the same way as a famous architect. What's the matter with me?'

'You're upset, that's all.'

'And that's not the only thing. The phones aren't working. I just tried to call upstairs. To tell them that she's dead.' Richardson's jaw quivered a little. 'You should have seen her, Joan. It was terrible. A beautiful young woman like that, dead.'

As if on cue the piano stopped playing Bach's Goldberg Variations in the style of Glenn Gould and, in the style of Artur Rubinstein, began to play the insistent tolling bass of the funeral march from Chopin's Sonata in B-Flat Minor.

Even Ray Richardson recognized the unrelenting, sombre tones of the piece immediately. He stood up, fists clenched with outrage.

'What's the fucking idea?' he yelled. 'Is that someone's idea of a joke?

If so, then it isn't funny.'

He marched back to the hologram desk as indignantly as his wet shoes allowed.

'Hi!' said Kelly in her brightest-button-in-the-class voice. 'Can I help you, sir?'

'What's the idea with this music?' snapped Richardson.

'Well,' smiled Kelly, 'it's very much in the tradition of funeral marches born in the French Revolution. In the contrasting central episode, however, Chopin — '

'I didn't ask for the fucking programme notes. I meant that the music is in very bad taste. And why aren't the phones working? And why does the place smell like shit?'

'Please be patient. I'm trying to expedite your inquiry.'

'Cretin,' shouted Richardson.

'Have a nice day.'

Richardson stamped his way back to Joan.

'We'd better go back upstairs and tell everyone what's happened.' He shook his head. 'God knows what that fucking cop is going to say.' He turned on the heel of his squelching shoe and started towards the elevators.

Joan stood up and caught him by the sleeve of his wet shirt.

'If the phones aren't working,' she said, 'then probably the elevators aren't either.'

She pointed to the blank floor-indicator panel above the car that Declan and the two painters had taken a short while earlier.

'I noticed it went out when they passed the fifteenth floor.' She shrugged as Richardson frowned back at her with blank incomprehension. 'Well, they were going back up to twenty-one, weren't they? It never got there.'

A bell rang as the doors to one of the other five elevators, summoned automatically to the atrium floor by Abraham, opened in front of them. Richardson stared into the car suspiciously.

'It looks OK,' he said.

Joan shook her head. 'I don't like it,' she said.

Richardson stepped into the waiting car.

'Ray, please come out,' she pleaded. 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'

'Come on, Joan,' he urged. 'You're being irrational. Besides, I'm not climbing twenty-one flights in wet shoes.'

'Ray, think about it,' she insisted. 'The front door is locked. The HVAC has stopped working. The aromatizer has gone screwy. The phones are out. You want to be trapped inside an elevator on top of all that? If you do, go right ahead, but me, I'm taking the stairs. I don't care how many floors it is. I can't explain it, but no, I'm not going in there.'

'What is this, Navajo wisdom or something? Actually it's nice and cool in here.'

He put his hand against the wall of the elevator car, then snatched it away as if he had been burned.

'Jesus Christ,' he exclaimed and stepped smartly out of the car, rubbing his fingers against the palm of his other hand.

'What's the trouble now?' The voice belonged to Dukes, the security guard.

'Something is wrong with the elevator,' Richardson admitted, looking baffled. 'The wall of the car is freezing cold. Like the inside of an ice-box. My hand just stuck to it.'

Dukes stepped inside and touched the wall with his forefinger. 'Man, you're right,' he said. 'How is that possible?'

Richardson rubbed his chin and then pinched his lower lip thoughtfully. 'There's a high-velocity duct from the central plant on the roof,' he said after a moment or two. 'Air is passed over refrigerant in the direct expansion coil. That feeds cool air into a fan assisted terminal variable volume box that is supposed to feed into low-velocity duct work. I can only think that somehow the building's entire supply of cool air must have been re-routed down the elevator shafts. That must be why it's so hot out here.'

'Sure is cool standing in here. Man, look,' he observed. 'I can see my breath.'

'The freezer effect must be like wind chill or something. Like the Midwest in winter.'

Dukes shivered and stepped out of the car. 'I'd sure hate to be in there with the doors closed.'

'My wife thinks there may be three people stuck in one of the other cars,' said Richardson. 'Around the fifteenth level.'

'The three guys who were here earlier?'

Joan nodded.

'In this kind of cold storage they've got no more chance than a bag of T-bones.'

'Fuck,' said Richardson. 'What a fucking fuck-up.' He put his hands on top of his head and walked around in a small circle of frustration. 'Well, we've got to get them out of there. Good drivers aren't so easy to find these days. Declan's practically one of the family. Any thoughts?'

Dukes frowned. His first thought was to call Ray Richardson a selfish motherfucker and remind him that there were two other people trapped with his precious fucking driver. But the man was still the boss and Dukes didn't want to lose his job. So instead he pointed past the elevator doors.

'How about we hit the fire alarm? It's an automatic response from the fire department, isn't it?'

'Worth a try, I guess.'

They walked round the corner, behind the elevators to where a fire hose was located on a wall next to a fire-alarm box. Dukes drew his gun to smash the glass.

'No! Put that thing away!' yelled Richardson, too late.

It was not the fire alarm that was activated now but the security alarm. The sight on CCTV of a gun being waved around the atrium was sufficient for Abraham to initiate automatically the Gridiron's defensive systems. The doors to the emergency stairs locked on every level. A steel portcullis descended from the ceiling, closing off both stairs and elevators. Only when Abraham considered that the upper levels had been rendered impregnable to intruders did the deafening klaxon stop.

'Shit,' said Dukes. 'I clean forgot about that.'

'You fucking idiot,' snarled Richardson. 'Now we're really stuck down here.'

Dukes shrugged. 'So it's the cops who turn up instead of the fire department. I don't see that makes any difference.'

'It would have been nice to have waited for them in comfort,' said Richardson. 'I don't know about you, but I could have used a drink.' He shook his head angrily. 'You're fired. Do you know that? When we're out of this situation, you're history, pal.'

Dukes shrugged philosophically, glanced at the Sig automatic still in his hand and then replaced it in his holster.

'I'll say one thing for you, asshole,' he grinned. 'It takes guts for a man to fire someone with a gun in his hand. Or stupidity.'

The walkie-talkie on Dukes's belt buzzed. Dukes unclipped it and pressed the call-receive button.

'What the hell's happening down there?'

'Mitch?' Richardson snatched the handset away from Dukes. 'Mitch, it's Ray. We're boxed in down here like a Japanese dinner. Dukes drew his gun to break the glass on the fire alarm instead of using the little hammer on the chain. Thinks he's Clint fucking Eastwood or something. It set the defence systems off.'

'Are you all OK?'

'Yeah, we're all right. But listen, did Declan and those two painters make it up there.'

'No. We haven't seen them.'

'Then they must be stuck in the elevator. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that somehow the entire air-conditioning output for the building has been re-routed down the goddamn elevator shaft. The car they took must be an ice-box. That's why we were trying to call out the fire department.'

'You can forget that,' said Mitch. 'I think Abraham has been sabotaged.'

'By who, for chrissakes?'

Mitch told him about Allen Grabel.

'If I'm right and Abraham has lost his integrity, then he may have been given a new set of priorities. Somehow I don't think they include calling the public services on our account. We'll have to try and think of something from up here. What about Kay?'

Richardson sighed. 'She's dead.'

'Dead? Jesus, no. What happened?'

'Don't ask me. I found her floating in the pool. I tried to revive her but it was no good.' He paused for a moment and then added: 'Look, what do you mean Abraham's lost his integrity? What's Kenny doing to get the systems back on line?'

'We can't make contact,' said Mitch. 'I'd been hoping you could check out the computer room on your way up.' Mitch explained his theory about the looped video recording. 'Somehow we've got to get into that computer room and cancel all the BMS programs.'

'What about your work-station in the boardroom?' asked Richardson.

'Can't Beech do something from there?'

'Only if Abraham allows it.'

'Jesus, what a fuck-up. What are we going to do?'

'Look, stay cool. We'll try to think of something and then come back to you.'

'Yeah, well don't leave it too long. It's like an oven down here.'

In the brushed aluminium ceiling of each elevator car was a round hole of less than half an inch in diameter. Recessed behind the hole to a depth of several millimetres was the triangular-shaped nut that held the car's inspection hatch in place. To undo the nut and open the hatch required a special socket spanner held by Otis maintenance engineers. Despite the obvious futility of the attempt, Dobbs, the tallest of the three men trapped inside the car, was trying to shift the nut with a small screwdriver from his overalls pocket.

'Gotta be a way of turning this,' he said, through chattering teeth.

'You're wasting your time,' said Declan Bennett, already blue with cold.

'You got a better idea, friend?' said Martinez. 'Let's hear it, if you do,

'cause there ain't no other way out.'

'Damn thing,' said Dobbs. 'Won't budge.' He dropped his aching arms from the ceiling, stared disappointedly at his tool and, as if recognizing its inadequacy, threw it aside in disgust. 'You're right. I might as well stick my dick in there. Then at least I'd die happy.' He laughed bitterly. 'I can't figure this cold. I've heard of a climactic modifier bringing on a chill, but this is ridiculous. Never thought I'd get myself froze to death in LA.'

'Who said anything about dying?' asked Declan Bennett.

'I got me an ice-box at home,' said Dobbs. 'And I read the instructions. I reckon we've got about twelve hours, and then we'll keep fresh right up to Christmas.'

'They'll get us out,' Bennett insisted.

'And who's going to get them out?'

'It's just a computer malfunction. Something wrong with the software. Same as with the front door. I heard Mr Richardson telling his wife. There's a network engineer trying to get everything back on line. Any minute now and this elevator is going to start moving again. You'll see.'

Martinez pulled out his frozen hands from underneath his armpits and breathed on them.

'I don't think I'll ever take an elevator again,' he declared. 'Assuming I survive.'

'I used to be in the British Army,' said Bennett. 'So I know a little about survival techniques. It's possible to survive extremes of cold for several hours, days even, so long as you increase your heart rate. I suggest some running on the spot. Come on. We'll all hold hands for extra warmth.'

The three men joined hands in a circle and started to jog, their breath puffing. They looked like three drunken Eskimos carousing around the steam from a cooking pot. The elevator car creaked slightly under their half-frozen feet.

'We've got to keep the body moving,' said Bennett. 'Blood freezes, y'know. Just like any other liquid. But before then your heart gives out. So you've got to give it something extra to do. Let it know you're still in charge of things.'

'I feel like a fairy,' complained Martinez.

'That's the least of your problems, fella,' said Bennett. 'Just count yourself lucky that you don't suffer from claustrophobia as well.'

'Claustro-what?'

'Don't tell him,' Dobbs told Bennett. 'No point in giving him ideas.' He looked at Martinez and grinned like the other man was a child.

'It's a fear of Santa Claus, that's what it is, you dumb Mexican. Just keep holding my hand and stop askin' stupid questions. You're right about one thing though. From now on, we're both taking the stairs.'

'Could I have your attention please?'

Frank Curtis waited for everyone in the boardroom to grow silent and then started to speak:

'Thank you. According to Mr Bryan, the integrity of this building's management systems has failed. Which, if he will forgive me, is just another way of saying that the computer that controls everything, the machine you people call Abraham, has been sabotaged by a madman. It seems as if your former colleague, Allen Grabel, bears your boss some kind of grudge. Anyway, our situation is this. The phones don't work. The entrances and exits are locked, as are the doors to the emergency stairs. There are three people trapped inside one of the elevators, so we have to assume that they don't work either. And I'm sure you don't need me to remind you that the windows are unbreakable and that it's very hot in here. And there has been another fatality. I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, but your colleague, Kay Killen, has been found dead in the swimming pool.'

Curtis waited a minute to allow the murmur of shock to subside.

'We're not sure how it happened exactly but I think we have to admit the possibility that the computer and Allen Grabel were together responsible in some way.'

Now he had to raise his voice as shock began to give way to alarm.

'Look, I'm not going to bullshit you people, or keep you in the dark about anything. You're all grown-ups. I figure our best chance of getting out of here as soon as possible is that we should all know the full facts of the situation we're in. So here they are. It's possible, even probable, that Grabel was responsible for the murder of Sam Gleig. What I'm sure of is that we have been unable to make contact with Mr Kenny in the computer room and that the elevator car has been turned into an icebox. In other words, it may be that there are already four other people in this building who are dead too. I hope I'm wrong, y'know? But I think it safe to assume that Allen Grabel may have sufficiently corrupted the integrity of your computer so that the building has now become extremely hazardous to the rest of us.'

'I checked the fibre-optic cables in the local equipment room,' announced Willis Ellery. 'As far as I can see there's nothing wrong with them.'

Bob Beech was shaking his head.

'I don't see how Grabel could have done it,' he said. 'If you ask me, Aidan Kenny's more of a proposition. This is his building management system. He was pretty tight on access codes and all that stuff. I don't figure Grabel for this at all.'

It was Mitch who was shaking his head now.

'That doesn't make any sense. Aidan was proud of this building. I can't believe he would sabotage it.'

'Either way, we're going to need your help, Mr Beech,' said Curtis.

'Can you do any thing on the work-station in here? Perhaps to get those guys out of the elevator?'

Beech grimaced. 'The only MMI's a keyboard, so it might be difficult. I'm not much of a typist. I'm used to a speech interface with Abraham. And this is just a dumb terminal, y'know? I can only do what the main computer will let me do.' He sat down at the computer. 'Still, I guess I can try.'

'Right,' said Curtis. 'The rest of you, listen up. Someone is bound to notice before very long that we're not where we're supposed to be. For instance: Mr and Mrs Richardson are supposed to be flying to Europe. And your families will start to wonder where you are. I know mine will. The chances are that we won't be stuck in here for very long, but we ought to take a few precautions, just in case it ends up being longer than we think. So each of us have to assume some basic responsibilities. Mitch?'

'OK. Marty, you'll be in charge of food and water. The kitchen's next door. Find out what we've got.'

'If you think it's necessary.'

'Tony? After Kay, you probably know the plans of this building as well as anyone.'

They're right here, Mitch,' he said. 'On my laptop.'

'All right. Study them. See if you can't figure another way out. Helen? I guess you know who's been working where?'

Helen Hussey nodded, nervously feeding a strand of her long red hair through her lips.

'Maybe you can devote some thought to where we might find tools on this level.'

'I'll start next door,' she said. 'In the kitchen.'

'Detective Coleman?' Mitch handed him the walkie-talkie unit. 'Maybe you could keep in touch with the people down on the atrium floor. Let us know if they need anything.'

'Sure thing.'

'Sergeant Curtis will liaise with all of the relevant personnel. If you've got some information, then you tell him. David? Willis? Let's put our heads together and see if we can come up with a way to get those people out of the elevator car.'

'One more thing,' added Curtis. 'From what I've heard, Kay Killen was a strong swimmer. Yet something caused her to drown. Something unexpected, perhaps. So, whatever you do, wherever you go, please be careful.'

'What would you like me to do, Mitch?' asked Jenny.

Mitch squeezed her hand and tried a smile. It made his mouth start to bleed again.

'Just don't say I told you so.'

Ray Richardson picked the handmade shirt off his chest and tried to flap some air into the space between the sodden material and his sweatcovered skin. Outside the steamed-up doors and windows of the Gridiron it was dark. But for the bright lights, the smell of shit and the incessant piano music, he might have tried to sleep.

'How hot do you think it is?' asked Joan, shifting uncomfortably on one of the big leather sofas.

Richardson shrugged.

'It's not the temperature so much. Without the AC the tree makes it very humid down here.'

Dukes stood up and started to peel off his dark blue shirt.

'You know what? I'm going to take a swim.'

'How can we?' growled Richardson. 'You locked the door that led to the swimming pool.'

Then he realized that Dukes was talking about the fishpond that surrounded the tree.

'Not a bad idea at that,' he admitted, and began to undress.

Wearing just their shorts, the two men collapsed into the water. The salmon-sized, brightly coloured fish darted away in all directions. Joan regarded the water uncertainly.

'Come on in,' urged her husband. 'It's just like swimming in the Amazon.'

'I don't know,' she said. 'What about those fish?'

'They're Koi carp,' said Richardson, 'not piranha.'

Joan leaned forwards and splashed some water on her face and chest.

'I can't believe you're bashful,' teased Richardson. 'Not after that picture in LA Living. Keep your blouse on if you're shy.'

Joan shrugged and began to pull at the zipper of her calf-length skirt. She dropped it to the floor, tied the ends of her blouse together and stepped into the water.

Richardson sank underneath the surface of the water, and then surfaced again like a hippopotamus. He floated on his back for a moment and looked up at the inside of the atrium. Now that he was here it seemed like the best place to appreciate the internal geometry of the design: how the shape changed incrementally from oval to slim rectangular as the tower rose, with the atrium tapering past the curving ribs of the galleries and the central spine of the dicotyledon tree. It was, he thought, like being inside a huge white whale.

'Awesome,' he murmured. 'Just awesome.'

'Yes, wonderful,' enthused Joan, thinking he was talking about being in the water.

'It's just like a fire hydrant in summer,' agreed Dukes.

'I'm glad you persuaded me to come in,' she said. 'Do you think that it's safe to drink the water? I mean, has it been treated with Choke Water like the fountain outside?'

'I should hope not,' said Richardson. 'Not with these fish in it. They cost fifteen thousand bucks a piece. The water has to be especially dechlorinated and purified for them.'

'But what if the fish have, you know — gone to the bathroom in it?'

Richardson laughed. 'I don't think a little fish shit will do you any harm, love. Besides, I don't see we have much choice in the matter.' He swallowed a mouthful of the warm brackish water by way of confirmation.

The water had not been as deep as Joan had expected when she got in, but as she sat on the oil-smooth floor of the pool it seemed that the level was decreasing.

'Hey,' said Dukes, 'did someone let the plug out?'

He stood up. It had been waist deep when he climbed in. Now it hardly passed his knees. He looked around desperately for some kind of container and, seeing nothing that could do the job, began to scoop handfuls of their now rapidly dwindling supply into his mouth. Richardson sat up sharply. He was beginning to think that Mitch might have been right: that someone really did mean to harm them. Why else would he have chosen to drain the pond now if it was not to deprive the three of them of water?

He lay on his belly like one of the rejects from Gideon's army, and started to lap at the last few inches of water like a dog. Then he just lay there watching the carp flapping around helplessly.

'Saves trying to catch the fish I suppose,' he said, sitting up at last. 'We might get hungry.'

Joan stood up, hardly caring that Dukes might see her underwear.

'Sashimi makes me thirsty,' she said.

Dukes smiled and watched the water glistening on her half-naked body like the glaze on a clay figurine, dripping in a small potable trickle from the ebony curl of pubic hair that was just visible through her wet panties, wanting to put his mouth under it and drink it as if it came from a spring. Fat or not, he thought, she had a pretty face.

'Me too,' he said.

On the black screen of Tony Levine's laptop computer was the greenline drawing of the outside of the elevator doors. His thumb rolled the trackball of the mouse so that the view passed from one side of the doors to the other and the drive system above them. Willis Ellery took out his pen and pointed at what looked like the chain of a bicycle.

'OK,' he said, 'this is a high speed, fully adjustable MRDS. It uses this controllable DC motor to operate these two struts that pull the doors apart and then push them shut again. Near the top of the doors the force keeping the doors together will be greater than at the bottom. So that's where we'll try and force them apart: the bottom. That way we divert all that modified air product back into the main body of the building and away from the three men stuck inside the car. At the very least it should stop them freezing to death. Then maybe we can think about climbing down the shaft and opening the hatch on top of the car.'

'Sounds good to me,' said Mitch. 'But we'll need some kind of a knife or a screwdriver. David, why don't you ask Helen what she's got?'

Arnon nodded and went off to look for her.

'Even if we don't get the doors very far apart,' added Ellery, 'there are sensors incorporated in the drive mechanism. Some kind of a light tray. If we breach the beam we ought to be able to actuate the reverse door movement.'

'You mean open them?' grinned Curtis.

'That's right,' Ellery said quietly. Shocked by the death of Kay Killen, he failed to see how any of what was happening could be considered amusing. The news that they were trapped in the Gridiron had left him with a distinct feeling of nausea, as if he had eaten something disagreeable for lunch. He sighed with very obvious impatience.

'Look, I'm giving this my best shot,' he said.

'Sure you are,' said Curtis. 'We all are. So we ought to keep our spirits up, right? Let's not allow what's happened to get to us. You know what I mean?'

Ellery nodded.

Arnon came back with a selection of carving knives, kitchen scissors and wooden place mats.

'We can shove the mats in the space we create with the knives,' he explained. 'To keep the doors wedged open.'

'OK,' said Mitch, 'let's get started.'

The four men walked along the corridor to the elevators.

'Which one?' said Ellery.

Mitch touched the elevator doors gingerly. They were, as Richardson had said, freezing cold.

'The middle one on this side.'

Ellery selected a long bread knife and dropped on to his belly. Where the two doors met, he placed the tip of the knife and started to shove. Levine stood over him and, further up the height of the doors, tried to force another knife into the join. Neither man made any noticeable progress.

'It won't go in,' grunted Ellery.

'Careful you don't cut yourself,' said Curtis.

'There's no give at all. Either the drive system is stronger than I thought, or it's jammed solid.'

Levine broke his knife and narrowly missed severing a finger.

Curtis stepped forward with a pair of open scissors and took Levine's place.

'Let me try.'

After a couple of minutes he too stepped away and peered more closely at the entire length of the join. Then he rubbed his thumb across the join near the very top of the doors and, taking the blade of the scissors prised it into the connection. Something broke away, only it was not a piece of metal.

'The doors are not jammed solid,' he said grimly. Curtis bent down to collect the fragment off the carpet and then held it out on his palm for everyone to see. It was a shard of ice. 'They're frozen solid.'

'Shit,' breathed Levine.

'I hate to say it, gentleman,' said Curtis, 'but anyone on the other side of these doors is almost certainly dead already.'

'Those poor guys,' said Arnon. 'Jesus, what a way to get it.'

Ellery stood up and took a deep, unsteady breath. 'I don't feel so good,' he said.

'Is that it?' said Levine. 'We're just giving up?'

Curtis shrugged. 'I'm open to suggestions.'

'There must be something we can do. Mitch?'

'It's like the man said, Tony. They're probably dead already.'

Levine kicked the door in frustration and let out a whole stream of curses.

'Take it easy,' said Mitch.

'There are four, maybe five, people dead in this fucking place and you're telling me to take it easy? Don't you get it, Mitch? We're history, man. No one's going to get out of here. That shit Grabel's going to take us out one by one.'

Curtis took Levine firmly by the shoulders and forced him back hard against the wall.

'You'd better start dealing with this,' he said. 'I don't want to hear any more of your bullshit.' Releasing Levine from his powerful grip, he smiled and added, 'There's no point in upsetting the ladies.'

'Don't worry about them,' said Arnon. 'They've got the balls for anything — even if they did belong to someone else first. Take it from me, Sergeant, they're fireproof.'

'Would you excuse me, please?' Ellery said weakly. 'I have to go to the bathroom.'

Mitch caught him by the arm. 'Are you OK, Willis? You look kind of pale.'

'I don't feel so good,' admitted Ellery.

The three men watched Ellery walk up the corridor to the boardroom.

'Dave's right,' sneered Levine. 'Ellery and Birnbaum are the only ladies who'll get upset around here.'

'You think he'll be all right?' Curtis asked Mitch, ignoring Levine.

'He was fond of Kay, that's all.'

'We were all fond of her,' said Arnon.

'Could be he's a little dehydrated,' said Curtis. 'We'd better make sure he drinks something.'

They returned to the boardroom and shook their heads silently when the others asked about the three men in the elevator.

'So it's serious,' Marty observed dryly. 'Well, at least we won't starve or die of thirst. I've prepared a list of our supplies, although I fail to see why I was given such a menial task. I am the senior partner here, you know, Mitch? By rights it ought to be me who's in charge.'

'You want to take over?' said Curtis. 'Hey, be my guest. This isn't an ego thing with me, I don't have a burning desire to inflict my will on other people. If you think you can get us out of here, go right ahead, I won't stand in your way.'

'I didn't say that. I was just pointing out that the normal hierarchy seems somehow to have become inverted.'

'Well, that's what happens in a crisis, Marty,' quipped Arnon. 'The old class structures no longer mean anything. Survival is often based on the possession of certain practical skills. Like being an engineer. Having an intimate knowledge of the terrain. That kind of thing.'

'Are you suggesting I don't know anything about this building, David?

Exactly what do you think a senior partner does on a job like this?'

'Well, you know something, Marty? I've been asking myself that very question for months now. I'd love to hear the answer.'

'Well, really.' Birnbaum's indignation made him stand to attention, like a man making a plea before a court. 'Tell him Mitch. Tell him — '

Curtis cleared his throat loudly. 'Why don't you just read the list?' he said. 'You can argue about your job descriptions when we're out.'

Birnbaum frowned, then, sulkily, he started to list their supplies:

'Twelve two-litre bottles of sparkling mineral water, twenty-four bottles of Budweiser, twelve bottles of Miller Lite, six bottles of a rather indifferent California Chardonnay, eight bottles of freshly squeezed orange juice, eight packets of potato chips, six packets of dry-roasted peanuts, two cold poulets, a cold ham, a cold salmon, six French sticks, several pieces of cheese, fruit — there's plenty of fruit — six Hershey bars and four large Thermos flasks of coffee. The ice-box isn't working, but there's still running water.'

'Thanks a lot, Marty,' said Arnon. 'Nice work. You can go home now.'

Birnbaum coloured, thrust the list into Curtis's hands and marched back into the kitchen, followed by David Arnon's cruel laughter.

'Plenty of food, anyway,' Curtis said to Coleman.

'I could sure use a beer,' he replied.

'Me too,' said Jenny. 'I'm thirsty.'

'My stomach's rumbling like the San Andreas fault,' said Levine. 'Bob?

You want something from the kitchen?'

Bob Beech pushed himself away from the dumb terminal, stood up and went over to the window.

'Bob?' said Mitch. 'Is there something we need to know about?'

Appetites went on hold as Beech replied: 'I think we need to revise our expectations of rescue,' he said coolly. 'Radically.'

The time was almost nine o'clock.

'None of us is the kind of person who keeps regular hours, right?' said Bob Beech. 'Take me. Sometimes I work until midnight. A couple of times I haven't gone home at all. I'd say that's true of just about everyone in this room. Sergeant Curtis?'

'A cop works all kinds of hours,' he admitted with a shrug. 'Get to the point.'

'Does the name Roo Evans mean anything to you two gentlemen?'

Nathan Coleman looked at Curtis and nodded. 'The black kid from Watts,' he said. 'The drive-by.'

'We're investigating his murder,' said Curtis.

'Not any more, you're not,' said Beech.

'What's that supposed to mean?' said Coleman.

'You're both suspended on full pay and held for questioning at the 77th Street Station by your own internal affairs department on suspicion of being involved in Evans's murder. At least, that's what your Captain Mahoney believes.'

'What the hell are you talking about?' demanded Curtis.

'I'm afraid it's not me who's been doing the talking. Someone has tapped into your central dispatch computer over at City Hall. Done a pretty good job of it, too. If you don't believe me take a look on the terminal there. Nobody's expecting to see you back at your desks in Homicide for quite some time. Maybe never. As far as the rest of your brother officers are concerned, you're both personae non gratae. That's Latin for You're fucked.'

Curtis turned and stared blindly at the computer.

'Are you shitting me?' he said. 'Is this straight up?'

'Believe me, Sergeant, I wish I was.'

'But wouldn't someone from I.A. have to call Mahoney and tell him?' said Coleman. 'Wouldn't they?'

Curtis sighed. 'That used to be how it worked. But now the computer handles everything. It's supposed to guarantee objectivity, y'know? Make sure the criminals get a fair shake at us. That stupid bastard Mahoney will just sit there on his fat ass and accept what's written on the computer print-out like it came down from the Almighty himself. Probably even call my wife and tell her not to expect me home for a while.'

'Like I say,' nodded Beech, 'it gets better. Someone has also faxed the airline and cancelled the Richardsons' seats on that flight to London. Even cancelled your dinner reservation at Spago's, Tony. Thoughtful, huh?'

'Shit. I had to wait four weeks for that lousy reservation.'

'Faxed or E-mailed wives, girlfriends, boyfriends. Told them the phones are down here, that we're all working on through the night to get this mother finished.'

There was a long, stunned silence. Finally David Arnon said, 'Do you think Grabel would call Mastercharge? Wipe out my debt?'

'Nobody is expecting us home tonight?' said Jenny. 'And nobody knows we're stuck here? With a madman?'

'That's about the size of it,' said Beech. 'But it gets even better than that.'

'What could be worse than that?' shrugged Coleman.

'Allen Grabel isn't responsible.'

'What? Who is then?' said Helen.

'Nobody.'

'I don't understand,' said Curtis. 'You said "someone" had tapped into central dispatch…"

'The "someone" we have all assumed is Allen Grabel is Abraham itself.'

'Are you saying that the computer is responsible for what's happening?' said Marty Birnbaum.

'That's precisely what I'm saying.'

'What the… I don't get it,' said Curtis. The only criminal minds I understand are the ones filled with guns, and drugs, and shit like that. Why would a computer do such a thing?'

'Oh come on,' interrupted Marty Birnbaum, 'you can't be serious, Bob. The integrity of the system may, as you say, have failed. But what you're suggesting is absurd. Alarmist, even. You're being quite irresponsible. Really. Why should Abraham intend harm to anyone? I'm not sure you can even talk about a computer having an intention at all.'

'Well, there at least we are in agreement,' said Beech. 'Not why, Sergeant. How. Why implies a motive. This is a machine we're talking about, remember?'

'Why? How? What fuckin' difference does it make? I'd like to know what's happening.'

'Well, it could be there's been some kind of brown-out.'

'What the hell's a brown-out?' said Coleman.

'A low voltage level rather than no voltage at all. The back-up generator is supposed to kick in if there's a major power failure. There could be just enough power so that the Powerbak system doesn't come on-stream, but not enough so as to let Abraham run things properly. Could be it's starved of power. Like a brain without oxygen.' He shrugged. 'I dunno. I'm just guessing, really.'

'Are you sure about this, Bob? About Abraham?'

'Mitch, there's no other explanation. I've been reading the transactions on the terminal as they were made on the Yu-5 downstairs. The speed of the transactions alone convince me that there's nobody in there operating the computer. I'm sure of it. No pre-programmed instructions either. Abraham is doing this all himself.'

'Bob? Maybe there's another explanation,' said Mitch.

'Let's hear it,' said Beech.

'This is a very complex system we're dealing with here, right? And complexity implies an inherent instability, doesn't it?'

'That's an interesting possibility,' admitted Beech.

'Come again?' said Curtis.

'Complex systems are always on the edge of chaos.'

'I thought there was some kind of law that prevented computers from attacking humans,' said Coleman. 'Like in the movies.'

'I think you're talking about Isaac Asimov's First Law of Robotics,'

Beech said thoughtfully. 'That was fine when all we had to deal with were binary systems, computers that function according to a sequential yes/no system. But this is a massively parallel computer, with a neural network that functions according to a system of weighted maybes, a bit like the human mind. This kind of computer learns as it goes along. In the established church of computer discipline and practice, Abraham is the equivalent of a Nonconformist. A free-thinker.'

'Maybe so,' said Marty Birnbaum. 'But that's a whole different ballpark from the one you guys are batting in. Initiative's one thing. Intention is something entirely different. What you're suggesting here is

-' He shrugged. 'No other word for it. Science fiction.'

'Shit,' said Beech. 'Mitch, this is unbelievable.'

'Could it be,' Mitch argued to Beech, 'that Abraham has passed a certain threshold of complexity and become autocatalytic?'

'Auto what?' said Levine.

'A computer self-organizes from the chaos of its various programmed responses to form a kind of metabolism.' Beech was looking more and more excited.

Jenny stood up slowly.

'Whooa,' she said. 'A kind of metabolism? Are you saying what I think you're saying, Mitch?'

'That's exactly what I'm saying.'

'What's he saying?' demanded David Arnon. 'Bob? Do you know what he's saying? Because I don't have a fucking idea.'

'I tell you something,' said Beech, 'I'm not a religious man. But this is the nearest I've ever come to experiencing a revelation. I have to admit the possibility that, for want of better words, Abraham is alive and thinking.'

What Bob Beech had to say left Willis Ellery feeling more nauseous than before. Believing that he was going to throw up, he went to the men's room, closed the cubicle door and knelt before the toilet bowl. His own shallow breathing and the cold sweat starting on his forehead seemed to underline the turmoil that was taking place inside his stomach. Only nothing happened. He belched a couple of times and wished that he had the nerve to stick a couple of fingers down his throat like some bulimic, adolescent schoolgirl. But somehow he could not bring himself to do it.

After several more minutes had elapsed, the feeling in his stomach seemed to drop down to his bowels and Ellery thought he would have to take a shit instead. So he stood up, unsteadily, unbuckled his belt, dropped his pants and shorts and sat down.

Why did it have to be Kay? he asked himself. Why? She had never done anyone any harm. Couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old. What a waste. And how was it possible for her to have drowned?

Even if Abraham had intended to kill her, how could it have managed it?

It wasn't like there was a diving board, or a wave machine. How was it possible?

The engineer in Ellery wanted to find out. He told himself that as soon as he was finished in the can he would call Ray Richardson on the walkie-talkie and get some details regarding the way in which Kay had met her death. No doubt Richardson had found her floating in the water and had simply made an assumption, as most people would have done. But there were other ways it could have happened. She had been electrocuted perhaps. Gassed even. Now that really was a possibility. With the automatic dosing pump it might have been possible for Abraham to have manufactured some kind of lethal gas. Or maybe he just hit her with ozone.

After a short spasmodic cramp Ellery evacuated his bowels and almost immediately started to feel better. He elbowed the toilet flush and activated the automatic personal-cleansing unit, left the cubicle and went to wash his hands in the long marble step of a sink that someone had considered fashionable. Ellery wanted to fill a bowl and push his whole face into it, but the shape of the sink made that impossible. It was not the kind of sink that encouraged you to linger.

Ellery looked at himself in the mirror and found his face recovering some of its former high colour.

'A sink ought to look like a sink, not a goddamn desktop,' he growled to himself.

He ran the tap, splashed cold water on his face and then drank some. The thought suddenly struck him that he was going about his business in much the same way that Kay Killen would have been going about hers when she met her death. The nausea returned as he realized he was in as much danger as Kay Killen had been.

Abraham controlled the washrooms just like he controlled the swimming pool.

Ellery did not want to touch the tap to turn it off, nor to dry his hands under the hot-air machine, for fear that he might be electrocuted. He ran to the door and laughed as he managed immediately to haul it open. Tony Levine nearly fell on top of him.

'What the fuck's the matter with you, man?' snarled Levine. 'Jesus, you scared me.'

Ellery smiled sheepishly. 'I think I scared myself, Tony,' he said. 'I was just thinking about Kay. I don't think she drowned at all. In fact, I'm quite certain of it. Richardson thought that because he found her floating in the water, that's all.'

'So what happened to her, Lieutenant Columbo?'

'It came to me just now. Abraham has charge of all the chemicals that go into the pool. I think she must have been gassed.'

Levine's nose wrinkled with disgust. 'She sure would have been gassed if she'd walked in here.' He laughed loudly. 'Man, this place stinks even worse than it does in the rest of the building. Whaddya eat for breakfast, Willis, dog food?'

Levine pushed past Ellery.

'Obnoxious bastard,' he said. He stared at the door for a moment and then returned in silence to the boardroom.

The clunk of the door closing behind Levine muffled the quieter sound of the airlock as the computer prepared to change the pungent atmosphere.

'The more complex a system is,' Mitch was explaining, 'the less predictable it becomes; and the more likely it is to act according to its own set of priorities. You see, no matter how smart you think you are, no matter how much you think you know about what an algorithmic system is capable of, there will always be results that you could not have predicted. From a computer's point of view, chaos is just a different kind of order. You ask, why should any of this be happening? But you might as well ask, why shouldn't any of this be happening?'

'How can a machine be alive?' said Curtis. 'C'mon, let's get real here. No one outside of comic books believes that such a thing is possible.'

'It all depends what you mean by life,' argued Mitch. 'Most scientists agree that there is no generally accepted definition. Even if you were to say that the ability to reproduce yourself was a basic condition of being alive, then that would not actually exclude computers.'

'Mitch is right,' agreed Beech. 'Even a computer virus fulfils all the conditions of being alive. It's a fact we might not like to face, but possession of body is not a precondition of life. Life is not a matter of material, it's a matter of organization, a dynamic physical process, and you can get some machines to duplicate those dynamic processes. Fact is, some machines may be held to be quite lifelike.'

'I think I prefer lifelike to their being alive,' admitted Jenny Bao. 'Life still seems sacred to me.'

'Everything seems sacred to you, honey,' muttered Birnbaum.

'The Yu-5 — Abraham — is designed to be self-sustaining,' said Beech.

'It's designed to learn and to adapt. To think for itself. Why do you look surprised? Why is it so hard to believe that Abraham can think? That it might be any less capable of thought than God, for example? In fact, it ought to be a good deal easier to accept. I mean, how do we know that God knows, that God hears, that God sees, that God feels, that God thinks, any more than Abraham? If we're willing to overlook the essential absurdity of belief that makes a sentient God possible, then why do we find it hard to do the same with a computer? Language is at the root of the problem. Since it's certain that machines can't behave more like humans, then humans are obviously going to have to behave much more like machines. And language is where that homogenization will have to begin. Computers and people are going to have to start speaking the same language.'

'You speak for yourself,' said Curtis.

Beech smiled. 'You know, people have been writing about this kind of thing for years,' he added. 'The story of Pygmalion. The Golem from Jewish fable. Frankenstein. The computer in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. Maybe now it has happened: an artificial being, a machine just took charge of its own destiny. Right here in LA.'

'There are plenty of other artificial beings in LA already,' said Arnon.

'Ray Richardson, for one.'

'Great,' said Curtis. 'We made the history books. Let's hope we stay alive to tell our grandchildren about it.'

'Look, this is serious, I know. People have been killed and I deeply regret that. But at the same time I'm a scientist and I can't help feeling somehow — privileged.'

'Privileged?' Curtis spoke with contempt.

'That's the wrong word. But speaking as a scientist, what's happened is enormously interesting. Ideally one would like time to study this phenomenon properly. To investigate how it has happened at all. That way we could reproduce the circumstances in order that it could be repeated somewhere else, under controlled circumstances. I mean, it would be a shame just to wipe it out. If not immoral. After all, Jenny's right. Life is something sacred. And when you create life, that makes you a kind of god and that in itself brings certain obligations vis a vis that which you have created.'

Curtis took a pace back and shook his head with confusion.

'Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. You said something there. You said it would be a shame just to wipe it out. Are you saying that you can put a stop to all of this? That you can destroy the computer?'

Beech shrugged coolly.

'When we built the Yu-5, naturally we considered the possibility that it might end up competing with its creators. After all, a machine doesn't recognize normal sociological values. So we included a tutelary program in Abraham's basic architecture. An electronic template called GABRIEL. To deal with the unpluggability scenario.'

'The unpluggability scenario?'

Curtis grabbed Beech by the necktie, and thrust him hard against the boardroom wall.

'You dumb asshole,' he snarled. 'We've been breaking our balls trying to save the lives of three men stuck in an elevator controlled by a homicidal computer and now you're telling me that you could have unplugged it all along?' His face became even more contorted, and he seemed about to strike Beech until he was restrained by Nathan Coleman.

'Cool it, Frank,' urged Coleman. 'We still need him to turn it off.'

Beech pulled his tie free of Curtis's fist. 'They were dead anyway!' he yelled. 'You said so yourself. Besides, you don't trash a $40 million piece of hardware without checking the subsumption architecture. An accident is one thing. But A-life culpability is another.'

'You piece of shit,' sneered Curtis. 'Dollars and cents. That's all you people can think about.'

'What you're suggesting is absurd. Nobody in their right mind would dump a Yu-5 down the toilet without first attempting a proper verification.'

'There are five people dead, Mister. What more verification do you need?'

Beech shook his head and turned away.

'Now you've got your damned verification,' said Curtis, 'what are you going to do about it?' He glanced impatiently at Coleman. 'It's OK, Nat, you can let go now.' He tugged his arms free of his colleague's slackening grip. 'Do more of us have to die before you get it through your stupid skull that this isn't some half-assed experiment at Caltech or MIT or whichever petrie dish mould you sprang from? We're not talking artificial life now. We're talking real life. Men and women with families. Not some tin fucking man without a heart.'

'Bob?' said Mitch. 'Can you turn it off? Is that possible?'

Beech shrugged. 'By rights I should get Mr Yu's permission to do it. There's a proper protocol for doing something like this, y'know?'

'Screw Mr Yu,' said Curtis. 'And screw his fucking protocol. In case you'd forgotten, it's not that easy to get hold of anyone right now.'

'Come on, Bob,' Mitch urged.

'OK, OK,' said Beech and sat down in front of the terminal. 'I was going to do it anyway.'

The walkie-talkie buzzed. Coleman answered it and stepped out of the boardroom into the corridor, heading towards the balcony.

'Hallelujah,' said Helen. 'Now maybe we can get the hell out of this multi-storey lunatic asylum.'

'Amen to that,' said Jenny, 'I've had a bad feeling about this place all afternoon. That's why I came here in the first place. To rid the place of its bad spirits.'

'Whatever floats your boat,' said Arnon and flopped down on the sofa.

'But the sooner we get out of here the better.'

'Yeah, well, don't hold your breath,' said Beech. 'It takes time to pour programming acid into the equivalent of a thousand ordinary computers.'

'How long?' said Curtis.

'I really couldn't say. 'I've never trashed a $40 million computer before. It took thirty-six minutes to kick Isaac's ass into touch, and that program was only a couple of hours old. You remember, Mitch? The SRS?' Beech started to type some transactions.

'Yeah, I remember.'

'Well, this mother has been running for months. Even before we installed it in this building. God only knows how much data it's acquired in all that time. We could be talking several hours here.'

'Several hours?' Curtis looked at his watch.

'Minimum.'

'You're kidding.'

'What's to kid? Hey, you want to take over, Sergeant, be my guest.'

'Just get on with it, Bob,' insisted Mitch. 'Please?'

'OK, here we go,' sighed Beech as his hands clattered over the keyboard. 'A dirty job, but someone has to do it.

'This is the end.' Beech was singing the line of a Doors song. 'The end.'

'I never liked that song,' said Arnon. 'It's depressing. And the book. Nobody gets out of here alive. Appropriate, huh?'

'Abraham?' said Beech. 'We are rolling out the black carpet and aiming you at oblivion, my silicon friend. Speaking for myself, I'd like to have gotten to know you a little better. But ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to make you die. There's a cop here who says you're out of here, pal, or I'm Rodney King II. So it's bedtime for Bonzo. Capisce? The Big Sleep for the Big Beep. EOD. EOL. EQJ.'

Nathan Coleman leaned over the glass barrier that gave on to the atrium and stared down at the ground floor. It was like being on a ship's mast looking down at the human insects that crawled on the bleached white quarterdeck. Three of them. The walkie-talkie snapped like the sound of a loose sail and one of the insects waved.

'Hey,' said Richardson, 'what the hell is happening up there? We're feeling like we've been forgotten: marooned, or something.'

'It's a long story and I'm not sure I understand most of it,' said Coleman. 'There's been a lot of heavy philosophy talked about artificial life and stuff. But the sports report is that your computer has been acting on its own initiative. It's gone haywire or some shit like that. Anyway, the play is this: Mr Beech is about to terminate it,' said Coleman, well aware of the possibility that this might well upset the Gridiron's architect. 'With extreme prejudice.'

'Well, Jesus, what the hell for? We've got to sit tight, that's all.'

'I don't think so, Mr Richardson. You see, Abraham cancelled your flight tickets to London. And he got the LAPD computer at City Hall to suspend me and Sergeant Curtis. And a whole lot of other things too. The bottom line is that no one is expecting us home tonight. It looks as if the computer might be making plans to become Silicon Valley's first serial killer.'

Coleman heard Richardson relay the news to Joan and Dukes. Then Richardson said, 'Whose dumb idea is that, for Chrissakes? No, don't tell me. That bagel-headed Sergeant of yours. Put me on to Mitchell Bryan will you? I need to speak to someone who appreciates what is being suggested here. No offence intended, son, but this is a $40 million piece of hardware we're talking about here, not some Casio personal fucking organizer.'

Nat put two fingers in his mouth and made as if to vomit over the side of the balcony and on to Richardson's head.

'I'll get him to call you, OK?'

Coleman switched off the walkie-talkie and started back towards the boardroom. Now that it looked like they were getting out he was thinking about the girl he was planning to see the next day. Her name was Nan Tucker and she worked for a real estate company. He'd been introduced to her at the wedding of an old girlfriend who was convinced that two people called Nat and Nan were a match made in heaven. Coleman wasn't sure about a match, but he had arranged to take Nan for brunch at the most romantic restaurant he knew, the Beaurivage in Malibu, even though it was way too expensive, even though he suspected they would have little in common besides the very obvious physical attraction each seemed to hold for the other. At the same time, brunch was all he had planned. Nathan Coleman left the sexual initiatives to women these days. Often, in these politically correct times, it was safer that way. And the old perfect gentleman routine? It hardly ever failed.

Coleman slowed for a moment as he heard a muffled noise from behind the washroom door. He was about to go and investigate when he saw Mitch coming up the corridor towards him. Coleman walked on a little and handed Mitch the walkie-talkie.

'Your boss wants to talk to you. I told him Mr Beech was pulling the plug on the computer.' Coleman shrugged laconically. 'He sounded kind of pissed about it. Guy sure does like busting the balls of the people who work for him, doesn't he?'

Mitch nodded wearily.

Coleman had been about to say something else about Ray Richardson, but instead he turned around and was looking back up the corridor at the washroom.

'Did you hear something?'

Mitch listened and shook his head. 'Not a thing.'

Coleman walked back to the washroom, paused outside the door for a moment and then pushed it. The door didn't move.

Certain he could hear something now — a muffled cry for help?

Coleman pushed again. This time the door opened easily and as he entered the men's room the cry, now a scream, was immediately curtailed by a short report, more of a loud pop than an explosion, like a tyre blowing out on a wet road surface, or the eructation of a hot lava pool. Coleman felt something collide with the exterior side of the door and a warm wet spray hit his face and neck. He heard Mitch call out to him but did not hear what was said as slowly he began to realize that he was covered in blood.

Like most policeman in LA, Coleman had often been involved in a shooting and for a second or two he thought that he had been hit, most probably with some kind of high-velocity round. He staggered forward, wiping the blood from his eyes and braced for the pain. It never came. A moment later he understood that the sound of hammering he could hear was not gunfire, it was not even his own heartbeat, but Mitch banging on the other side of the door.

'Are you OK? Nat? Can you hear me?'

Coleman pulled at the door handle and found that the door was locked again.

'Yeah, I think so, but I'm locked in.'

'What happened?' And then, 'Sergeant? Come here. Coleman's trapped in the washroom.'

Coleman wiped some more blood off his face and, looking about the washroom, felt his jaw start to drop. There was blood everywhere, whole gouts of clotted gore: dripping from the ceiling, smeared on the cracked mirror, collected in a shallow pool on the shelf of a wash-hand basin and running in a stream towards his feet. Like a red tide had risen and fallen in the washroom in the space of a few seconds. Coleman stiffened his jaw and looked to the source of the flow.

A pile of blood-soaked rags stood like a range of small mountains in the corner of the room. Nearby was a human leg, to which a penis and testicles were still attached. A neatly severed hand was frozen in the action of turning on the faucet. Hanging on one of the cubicle doors was a pink silk tie, except that when Coleman reached out and touched it he realized that it was not a tie at all, but a length of human intestine. Turning away he slipped in the blood and fell to the floor to find himself face to face with the owner of the still steaming body parts that now littered the Gridiron washroom like a shark attack. It was Tony Levine. Or, rather, his decapitated head, complete with pony-tail.

'Holy shit,' exclaimed Coleman pushing the head away with revulsion. It rolled across the floor like a broken coconut, and came to rest on the ragged edge of what has once been his neck.

The eyelids in the head lifted, and penetrating, undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on Coleman, with a mixture of indignation and regret. Then the nostrils flared and, instinctively, Nathan Coleman addressed the severed head.

'Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?' he said, shuddering.

Levine's head made no reply, but for another ten or fifteen seconds his eyes stayed on Coleman's own, before the lids drooped and life finally departed from the dead man's brain.

Between the pounding blows on the other side he could just hear Frank Curtis shouting. Once again Coleman pulled at the handle, but the door was still locked.

'Frank?' he shouted.

'Nat? Is that you?'

'I'm OK, Frank. But Levine is dead. It looks like he got hit by a fuckin'

Patriot missile. There's blood and pieces of this guy all over the washroom. It's like Sam Peckinpah's dinner in here, man.'

'What happened?'

'Hey, you tell me,' Coleman shouted. 'I just opened the door and it was like the guy blew apart in front of me.' He shook his head. 'I'm kind of deaf, too. My ears are ringing. Like I've been in a plane or something. Frank? Are you still there?'

'OK, Nat, we're going to get you out of there.'

But inside the washroom, a loud buzzer sounded.

'Wait a minute, Frank. Something's happening. Can you hear it?'

The voice came from somewhere up above Nathan Coleman's head, an Englishman's voice, and for a millisecond he thought it was God. Then he remembered Abraham.

'Please vacate the washroom,' said the voice. 'Please vacate the washroom. Automatic cleansing of this facility will commence in five minutes. Repeat. Please vacate this washroom. You have five minutes.'

'Frank? The man wants to clean up the mess in here. What do I do now?'

'Stand clear of the door, Nat. We're going to break it in.'

Coleman retreated into the only cubicle that remained clear of Levine's anatomical diaspora, tipped the seat on the toilet bowl and sat down. There followed a short silence and then, on the other side of the door, the dull, unmistakable impact of a man's shoulder. To Nathaniel Coleman, it was an informative sort of sound. Before being transferred to the Homicide Bureau he had been a patrolman. After three years cruising LA in a black-and-white you got to know the kind of doors you could break down and those you could not. Curtis went at it like some comic-book hero, but Coleman could tell that his effort was wasted and that the door would stand fast.

The buzzer sounded again.

'Please vacate the washroom. Please vacate the washroom. Automatic cleansing of this facility will commence in four minutes. Repeat. Please vacate this washroom. You now have four minutes.'

Coleman dropped his head back on to his shoulders and stared up at the blood-spattered ceiling and the small loudspeaker that was installed there.

'Well, if you could just open this fucking door I'd be glad to get out of your way.'

Then he stood up and returned to the door. 'Frank?'

'Sorry, Nat. Damn thing doesn't budge. We're going to have to try something else. Sit tight.'

Coleman glanced uncomfortably at Levine's head lying on the floor and hammered on the door.

'Frank? I don't want to end up like Levine here, so you'd better think of something quick. I just got the four-minute warning.'

A minute passed and the buzzer sounded a third time. 'Please vacate the washroom…'

Coleman lifted his eyes towards the ceiling and grimaced. He drew the Glock 9 millimetre from the clip holster he wore inside the waist of his pants and with a finger in one ear silenced the loudspeaker with a couple of shots.

'Nat? Nat, what the hell's going on in there?'

'It's OK, Frank, I just got tired listening to the fuckin' computer telling me to get my ass out of the can, that's all. So I bust some shots off.'

'Nice work, Nat. For a moment there I thought you had a 211 in progress.'

'No. Just the 207, same as before. Only I don't think old Abraham wants any ransom money. I think he wants my butt.'

Frank Curtis slapped the washroom door hard with frustration.

'What happens during automatic cleansing?' he asked Mitch, who shrugged and with a look turned the question towards Willis Ellery.

'The washroom is sprayed with a hot ammonia solution,' said Ellery.

'How hot?'

'Not boiling, but still pretty hot. After that it's dried with hot air before the air itself is changed under pressure and aromatized.'

'Is the cleansing program what killed Levine?'

Ellery shook his head. 'I doubt it. Being trapped in a washroom during a cleansing program wouldn't be a pleasant experience, but it's not necessarily a fatal one. The thing is — well, I should have thought of it before. You see, I was in there immediately before Tony and I nearly mentioned it to him. Only he said something to me that put it right out of my head.'

'Mentioned what?' Curtis asked impatiently. 'Come on, we haven't got much time here.'

'If Abraham is using the HVAC to make things uncomfortable for us, it stands to reason it might use the washroom for a hostile purpose. From what Coleman has said it sounds to me as if Abraham killed Tony using air pressure. It must have increased the psi in there to way above normal, like on an aircraft. But possibly that wasn't fatal until Coleman opened the door. Then there would have been a sudden and immediate depressurization. Enough to blow Levine apart.'

'Is there any way of stopping the cleansing program?'

'You mean that doesn't include Abraham?" Ellery laid his hand on a panel on the corridor wall beside the door.

'I've got a feeling that there's something behind here that might do the job,' he said, 'but I need to check it out on the laptop first.'

'Do it,' Curtis said urgently.

Ellery ran back towards the boardroom. Halfway there he stopped, turned on his heel and called back, 'If the program starts, tell Coleman to make sure he covers his eyes.'

'OK.'

Mitch was inspecting the way the panel cover was attached to the wall.

'Self-tapping screws. I'll speak to Helen and see if she found a screwdriver.'

Curtis hammered on the washroom door.

'Nat? We're working on an idea to get you out of there, but it's going to take a couple of minutes. If the program starts make sure you cover your eyes. The liquid contains ammonia. And it might be hot.'

'Fucking great, Frank,' said the voice behind the door. 'I'll look for a brush and see if I can't get some of this dirt out from under my fingernails, shall I?'

Curtis sprinted back to the boardroom, where he found Willis Ellery and Mitch studying a 3-D drawing.

'What have you got?' he said urgently, trying to make sense of the luminescent green drawing.

Not to be hurried, Mitch moved the trackball to turn the Intergraph drawing first one way and then the other.

'Each washroom is self-contained,' explained Ellery. 'Behind that panel are pipe, duct and cable tails, connected to building services. Water enters the washroom via the wet riser and the computer takes over, heating it, mixing it with ammonia for cleaning, whatever. If we can cut off the mains water supply we can effectively stop the whole cleansing program.'

'Right. How do we do that?'

'Just a minute,' said Ellery. 'Let me see.'

Curtis glanced about. Bob Beech was hunched over the computer terminal. Arnon and Birnbaum had one of the building plans spread on the table in front of them and were discussing something with one ear on the latest crisis. Jenny was sitting at Mitch's shoulder watching the laptop screen. At the far end of the table Helen Hussey had laid out a selection of tools and other useful objects as if preparing for surgery. There was a first-aid kit, a carpet knife, a small handsaw, a bevel, a jointer, a rasp, some tin snips, a plasterer's float, a pair of pliers, a shave hook, the scissors, some knives and forks, an assortment of coach-bolts, a couple of screwdrivers, a bottle opener and a large wrench.

Curtis selected one of the screwdrivers.

'Where in hell did you find that lot?' Curtis asked, impressed with her resourcefulness.

'You'd be surprised what builders leave lying around a new building,' she said. 'There was a whole bag of tools in the ladies' washroom, of all places.'

'Yeah, well, you'd better keep out of the washrooms from now on," said Curtis, raising his voice. 'All of you. Abraham just killed Levine in the men's room. And now Nat's stuck in there.'

'My God.'

'Do you have a monkey wrench there, Helen?' asked Ellery.

She had never liked Tony Levine. Always trying to come on to her. He was worse than Warren Aikman. But she was sorry he was dead. With a shock she realized she had already lost count of the number of people who had died in the Gridiron since the late afternoon.

'I don't know,' she said vaguely, and held up something she thought might fit the description.

'Even better,' said Ellery excitedly. That's a Stillson.'

When the water started to pour into the washroom Coleman was almost relieved, for it was neither hot nor did it seem to contain ammonia. But with each minute that passed the level began to increase. By the time Curtis was back on the other side of the door, it was several inches deep. Coleman might have tried to stop the flow except that the water was pouring into the washroom from every conceivable entry point: from high-pressure sprinklers on the ceiling, from the faucets on the sink, even from the cisterns behind the toilets. The idea that Abraham intended that he should drown was beginning to seep slowly through the policeman's imagination.

'Got a fuckin' leak in here, Frank,' he yelled. 'Place is filling up with water. No ammonia. Maybe Abraham changed his mind about the cleansing program after I hit his voice box.'

This gave Coleman an idea. Once again he drew his gun.

'Hey, Frank,' he yelled. 'Stand away from the door. I'm going to try and blast a few holes in the door. I reckon I'm going to need some help with the drainage in here before very long. Frank?'

'Ah, that's a negative, Nat,' shouted Curtis. 'I've just been told that the door's made of steel. You'd need a fifty calibre BMG to get through this. Just try and take it easy. We've got something going here. A way of disconnecting the whole bathroom module from the mains supply of water.'

'OK, Frank, Whatever you say. But don't leave it too long. I never did like any of those submarine pictures.'

Coleman holstered his gun and, with the water nearly up to his knees, sat down on the toilet again.

Bending forwards he scooped some of the water into his hands and drank it.

'I guess I won't die of thirst anyway.'

Curtis released the last of the self-tapping screws and let the panel fall off the wall and on to the floor. In the recessed space were a large red elbow-shaped pipe, a smaller branch pipe connecting the washroom, a couple of ceramic disc valves and, inside a mineral insulated square box, the electrical trunking that controlled the operation of the washroom. Willis Ellery pointed to a joint on the branch pipe and said, 'I think all we have to do to turn off the mains water is tighten this.'

'Hold on a second,' said Curtis. 'Is this pipe going to be safe to touch?

What about all that electrical stuff in there? Suppose Abraham's got the pipe wired to the fucking mains electricity?'

'He's got a point, Will,' said Mitch, already keying the code number that was printed on the box cover on to his laptop. 'WSPC 21. The wiring diagram might even show us how to open the door.'

The pull-down menu on the screen asked which version of the wiring instructions he required, Quick or Technical. Mitch chose Quick and watched as the Intergraph programme sketched out a line for each cable instead of a line for every wire.

Willis Ellery leaned across his shoulder and studied the diagram for a minute or two.

'None of the pipes is connected to the electricity supply,' he said at last. Then, beating the palm of his hand with the Stillson pipe wrench, he added, 'Well, here goes,' and prepared to try and close off the water. Adjusting the serrated jaws of the Stillson to fit the joint around the branch pipe, he began to tighten the screw.

'Seems safe enough so far.'

Mitch was reading the wiring diagram. Curtis was looking over his shoulder.

'What is that thing?'

'Washroom Patching Services Cabinet Number 21,' said Mitch. 'Cables for each type of building service. This one's illumination. Downlight and uplighting. This one's HVAC. This one's IT- basic telecommunications requirement and low speed data. It looks as if the door is handled by the HVAC cable. You see? The tray in the ceiling above the door and these two vertical poles either side. If we uncouple this one then the door ought to open.'

'Kind of stiff,' grunted Ellery and, releasing the wrench for a moment, spat on his hands. 'God, I hope this works.'

'What's this cable here?' Mitch asked himself. 'FSS. ESS. What's that?

This one goes to the wall surrounding that branch pipe.'

He flicked the cursor arrow to the top of the screen and pulled down the Glossary.

'Fire Stop Sleeve. Earthquake Stop Sleeve.'

Mitch frowned. 'I guess if this pipe moves within the sleeve then it makes… Willis, no!'

Willis Ellery never heard Mitch.

As he pushed the Stillson wrench against the joint, the smart pipe shifted within the specially designed stop sleeve, making contact with the piezoelectric metal actuator that warned Abraham to stiffen the exterior perimeter's steel frame against seismic shock.

Willis Ellery let out a scream that was a mixture of pain and surprise. Like any human body he made an excellent conductor of electricity, producing as good a reaction as any electrolyte solution. It was not a particularly high current that electrocuted him, just the standard current alternating at sixty cycles per second. But Ellery's hands had been damp with spit and sweat, and when the power hit him it was impossible for him to release his grip on the Stillson and break the passage of the current. It was as if the electricity that gripped him did so with the serrated strength of the Stillson itself. The Stillson gripped the joint; and electricity gripped the Stillson; and Willis Ellery could do nothing but stand there and hold on, shaking up and down, screaming like an hysterical child.

Seeing Mitch reach for Ellery's arm, Curtis struck him aside with a blow of his fist.

'Don't touch him!' he yelled. 'You'll be electrocuted too.'

Ellery uttered a feeble cry as he tried desperately to release his grip on the wrench. 'Ple-e-ease!' he screamed. 'He-elp me-eee!'

'We have to find something non-conductive to pull him off,' shouted Curtis. 'A brush handle, or a length of rope. Hurry!'

He ran back to the kitchen and surveyed the area. There was nothing that looked as if it might not conduct the electricity from Ellery's body into the hands of his rescuers. Then he had an idea. The kitchen table. Sweeping everything off the wooden surface on to the floor he yelled to Mitch, 'Here, we'll use this.'

'Well, thanks a lot,' protested Marty Birnbaum. 'I just sorted out our supplies on that.'

Ignoring him, Curtis and Mitch picked up the table and carried it into the corridor where Ellery was still in the grip of the electrified wrench and now only just conscious of what was happening. There was a strong smell of burning in the air. Like singed hair in a barber's shop. Curtis flung the table over on to its side.

'Slide it into him,' he said, 'like a cow-catcher.' Both men took hold of a table leg and pushed it hard into Ellery's jerking body, forcing him away from the Patching Cabinet. As his grip on the wrench was broken, Ellery yelped with pain and one of his thumbs emitted a blue flash that disappeared into the carpet with a puff of acrid smoke. The combined force of the electricity discharging itself from his body and the table ramming into his side was enough to fling him across the corridor, where he collided with the wall and collapsed unconscious on to the floor.

Curtis was on him in a second, like some unsporting wrestler, flipping the man on to his back, tearing open his shirt front and pressing his ear against his chest. 'Is he dead?' said Helen.

Straddling Ellery's thighs, Curtis said nothing and, placing one hand over the other, with elbows locked, he began to press Ellery's heart between his breastbone and spine, trying to find a rhythm in his chest compression that would squirt enough blood out of it to supply the unconscious man's brain.

'Helen,' he said breathlessly, 'find out if Nat's OK. Jenny? Get a blanket, a table cloth, something to keep this man warm. Mitch, call Richardson on the walkie-talkie and let him know what's happening.'

Curtis kept up the compression for another couple of minutes and then leaned forwards, listening for a heartbeat. He shook his head and started to undo Ellery's urine-soaked pants. Jenny returned with a table cloth.

'Pull these down,' he yelled, 'and get a hold of his femoral artery.'

He started the compressions again. Jenny pulled Ellery's pants down. Ignoring the stink of urine, she pushed the scrotum in Ellery's underpants to one side and let her fingers reach for his groin.

'Can you feel it yet?' he grunted. 'Can you feel it when I press his chest?'

'Yes,' she said after a momentary pause. 'I can feel it.'

'That's good. Someone find out what that asshole Beech is doing. Has he managed to pull the plug on this son of a bitch yet?'

Curtis put his ear to Ellery's chest and listened again. This time he heard a feeble heartbeat. The bigger problem was that Willis Ellery's respiratory muscles had seized up and his breathing had not yet restarted.

'You can let go of his crotch now,' he told Jenny. 'Did you speak to Nat?' he asked Helen.

Kneeling by Ellery's side, he pinched the man's nose and started to give him mouth-to-mouth respiration.

'Nat's OK,' Helen told Curtis. 'The water's up to his waist and rising, but he's OK.'

With his mouth pressed periodically to Ellery's there was no time for Curtis to answer her. Not that he had much to say. He told himself he was all out of good ideas. There were no options left that he could think of. It was all down to Beech now.

Ten minutes passed and still Curtis did not give up on Willis Ellery. One of the things he had learned as a young patrolman was that victims often died because the person attempting to resuscitate them gave up too quickly. He knew he just had to keep going. But he was already tiring. He knew he was going to need help.

Between forcing breaths into Ellery's traumatized lungs, Curtis asked Jenny if she could take over for a while. Covering Ellery with the table cloth, she looked at Curtis with tears in her eyes and nodded.

'You know how?'

'I took a first-aid course in college,' she said, and moved alongside Ellery's head.

'Don't give up until I tell you,' he ordered. 'There's the danger of anoxia. Suspended respiration might cause blindness, deafness, palsy, you name it.' But it was plain to see that Jenny would keep going for as long as it took. Curtis stood up stiffly and watched her carry on. Then he went to speak to Beech.

Bob Beech was worried.

The last time he had felt so worried had been in the middle of the 1980s, on his graduate course in computer security at Caltech, when he had constructed his first self-replicating program or, as he had subsequently learned to call all such SRPs, a computer virus. In those days everyone had been writing them, inspired by an article that had appeared in Scientific American.

With three hundred lines of MS-DOS Beech had created TOR, after Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. Beech's idea had been to create a program that would destroy the heresy of pirated MS-DOS software in the Far East, where software piracy was almost endemic, and then to sell the successful result to the Microsoft Corporation. The trouble was that TOR had behaved more like a real computer virus than Beech had ever anticipated and had combined with another virus, NADIR, the existence of which Beech had been quite unaware, to create a new superstrain of virus, later known as

TORNADO. This mutation had acted with catastrophic effects,

destroying not just data written with pirated Microsoft product, but data written with legitimate software too. At the second A-life conference in 1990 at Los Alamos, Beech had heard one delegate estimate the cost of the damage wreaked by TORNADO to be several billion dollars.

Beech had never told anyone that he was the author of TOR. It was his darkest secret. Ten years on, with numerous TORNADO anti-viral programs still on the market, fifth- and sixth-generation mutations of TORNADO continued to survive inside PCs all over the world. He had written a few anti-viral programs himself, one of them for TORNADO, and reckoned he knew as much about disassembling rogue SRPs as anyone.

GABRIEL was the most sophisticated disassembly program — ever since TOR he had disliked the term 'computer virus' — Beech had ever written, based on principles he had learned from epidemiology and biological virology. As a piece of livewire it was, Beech considered, a real bastard. Not only was GABRIEL designed to be completely autonomous, it was also supposed to be extremely aggressive to the infected host. Except for the circumstances in which he now came to trigger GABRIEL, Bob Beech might have been proud of his disassembly program. The only fly in the ointment was that it did not work.

GABRIEL was, as he had told Frank Curtis it would be, slow acting, but even after a few minutes Beech knew that he ought to have seen some sign that GABRIEL was having the desired effect on Abraham's architecture. But there was nothing to indicate that Abraham had suffered so much as a minor thrash, stray, bozo, hung file or line gremlin. Beech had positioned himself at a vantage point within the system-architecture where, like some epidemiologist staring at the progress of a virus under an electron microscope, he ought to have been able to witness Abraham in the very earliest stages of the infection: the clock. GABRIEL had been designed to destroy Abraham's sense of time first of all. As the minutes rolled by on the clock it was plain to see that the DP was inoperative. It was now eleven-fifteen and Abraham was still behaving like the blue-ribbon program Beech had helped to create, with no errors and no bugs. Plainly GABRIEL was impotent, at least as far as Abraham was concerned.

A couple of times he retyped the transactions that would trigger the DP, just in case he had made a mistake, but with no more success. When David Arnon asked him how things were coming along, Beech did not answer. And he hardly noticed the commotion that followed Willis Ellery's electrocution. Stunned, he sat in front of the terminal, motionless, waiting for something to happen, recognizing in his heart of hearts that nothing would. His remarks about the responsibilities of a god struck him as hollow now. It was as if God, having decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, found that his much vaunted fire and brimstone just bounced harmlessly off the city walls.

Turning in his chair, Beech found Frank Curtis standing behind him, wearing an expression so frightful that he was suddenly more afraid of the policeman than he was of the consequences of what had failed to take place in the silicon heart of the machine.

'I don't know why,' he said, shaking his head. 'But — but it, GABRIEL, the disassembly program, it doesn't fucking work. I've tried several times to trigger the DP but there's no sign that Abraham has been infected. No sign at all. It's weird. I simply don't understand how he could be resisting it. I mean, the DP is specific to Abraham, written into his basic architecture. It's like you were born with some kind of congenital disease, or some genetic predisposition to cancer, and all you needed was the wrong kind of diet to set it off. The only thing I can think of is that somehow Abraham has discovered a way of making himself immune. But I really don't know how.'

The already angry expression of the face of Curtis grew more murderous.

'So you can't unplug it,' he growled. 'Is that what you're telling me?'

Beech shrugged apologetically.

'You dumb bastard,' said Curtis, and drew his gun.

'For Christ's sake,' yelled Beech and leapt off his chair, backing away across the boardroom. 'You can't. Please. No one writes a tighter code than me, man. But you've got to believe me, this is completely beyond my control. There's nothing I can do.'

Curtis looked at the gun in his hand as if surprised at the reaction it had produced. He smiled.

'I'd like to. Really, I would. If my partner drowns, I might.'

He turned abruptly and walked out.

Beech dropped into a chair and pressed a hand to his chest.

'That crazy fucking bastard,' he said, shaking his head. 'I thought he was going to shoot me. Really I did.'

'Me too,' said David Arnon. 'I wonder why the hell he didn't.'

Standing on the lid of the toilet, the top of his head inches from the ceiling, Nathan Coleman felt the cold water lapping at his shirt collar. It was only a couple of weeks since he and Frank Curtis had gone to Elysian Park where the naked body of a young black female had been found floating in the reservoir that ran under the Pasadena Freeway, just a few hundred yards from Dodger Stadium.

Coleman would have hardly thought it possible, but at the very moment when the water was right under his chin, he began to remember the taped commentary given by the pathologist during the girl's p.m. At the time he had hardly been paying attention at all, leaving Frank to ask the questions. But now he found that he could recall Dr Bragg's account in uncomfortable detail. Like he had prepared the subject of drowning for an exam. Yeah, thanks very much. What a time to improve your fucking memory. A complete mindfuck.

Drowning wasn't so bad if you were committing suicide. At least then you didn't struggle. But when it was accidental, you usually tried to fight it by holding your breath until you were too exhausted or hypercarbic to continue. The girl from the reservoir had tried to fight it. Not surprising since she had been held under the water by a gang of South Central crackheads. According to Dr Bragg, she had put up quite a struggle. It had taken three to five minutes for her to die.

Coleman didn't know if he could deal with something that took that long.

When you eventually let out your breath and drew water back into your airway, that could set off the vomiting reflex, after which you just aspirated the contents of your own stomach. Plus the water. You could aspirate so much water that it might account for as much as 50 per cent of your blood volume. Jesus Christ. And if that wasn't bad enough, drowning was not just an asphyxial event. It fucked up your fluid balance and blood chemistry: the circulating blood diluted, your electrolyte concentration reduced. Red cells might swell or burst, releasing large amounts of potassium which proceeded to fuck your heart around. Actual death might be precipitated by vagal inhibition originating in the nasopharynx or glottis. But just as often you could die from fouling of the lung by filthy water.

What a fucking way to go.

Coleman tucked his toe into the door lock and pushed his mouth another inch clear of the water. His head touched the ceiling. He wasn't going to get out of this. Just like in the movies. Like one of the poor guys trapped in the torpedo room. The only things missing were the depth charges.

He drew his gun clear of the water and pressed the muzzle against the side of his head. He would wait until the last possible minute. Until the water was over his nostrils. Then he would pull the trigger.

Halfway along the corridor, Curtis met Jenny coming towards him.

'I thought I told you not to stop,' he snapped at her.

'But Will's breathing again,' she said. 'I think he's going to be OK. And what the hell gives you the…'

Jenny's voice faltered as she caught sight of the 9mm Sig in the policeman's big hand, and the thunderous expression on his face.

'What is it?' she asked anxiously. 'What's the matter?'

'The unpluggability scenario. That's what the matter is. Your friend Beech screwed up. We might just as well try and unplug the Hoover Dam.'

He strode down the corridor working the slide on the automatic to load the gun's firing chamber.

Mitch, kneeling by the breathing but still unconscious figure of Willis Ellery, stood up when he saw Curtis coming.

'Better stand well out of the way,' yelled the policeman. He took a marksman's aim at the washroom services patching cabinet. 'I'm not such a good shot. Besides, there might be a few ricochets. With any luck one of them might hit your pal Beech.'

'Wait a minute, Frank,' said Mitch. 'If Bob manages to take Abraham off-line then we might need those electrics to open the door.'

'Forget it. Abraham's here to stay. It's official. Your macho friend just put up his fucking hands and surrendered. The goddamn disassembly program or whatever the hell he calls it doesn't fucking work.'

Curtis fired three shots at the box of electrics. Mitch covered his ears against the deafening noise, and a shower of sparks flew out of the box.

'I can't think of anything else to do,' yelled Curtis, and squeezed off three more. 'And I'm not about to let my partner drown like a kitten if I can prevent it.'

Cable glands blew away from cable ends, and clips from casings as two more 180-gram rounds thudded into the WSPC.

'What I wouldn't give right now for the scatter-gun in the trunk of my car,' yelled Curtis and finished off the rest of the 13-shot magazine. Rubbing his shoulder Curtis dragged the kitchen table up to the door.

'Give me a hand here,' he said to Mitch. 'Maybe we can batter it down.'

Mitch knew it was useless, but by now he also knew that it would have been quite hopeless to have argued with Curtis.

They lifted the table, stepped back to the other side of the corridor and rammed the table's corner against the door.

'Again.'

Once more the table banged against the door.

For several minutes they kept up the battery until, exhausted, they collapsed on top of the table itself.

'Why did you have to build the damn thing so strong?' panted Curtis.

'Jesus, it's a fucking washroom, not a bank vault.'

'Not us,' breathed Mitch. 'The Japanese. Their design. When modules are used you just fit them in.'

'But the rest of it. What the hell's so wrong with a human toilet cleaner anyway?' Curtis was almost crying.

'Nobody wants to do that kind of job any more. Nobody you can rely on. Not even the Mexicans want to clean toilets.'

Curtis picked himself off the table and hammered on the door with the flat of his hand.

'Nat? Nat, can you hear me?'

He pressed an ear still ringing against the door and found it cold from the mains water that was pressing against it.

Frank Curtis heard the unmistakable sound of a single gunshot. Curtis sat down against the wall. He could feel the cold of the water now filling the men's room through his shirt. Helen Hussey sat down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.

'You did everything you could,' she said.

Curtis nodded. 'Yeah.'

Leaning forward he drew his gun from the clip under the belt at the back of his pants and then leaned back again, this time more comfortably. The black polymer grip made it seem more like something that he might have considered shaving with than a weapon. He thought he might as well have used an electric shaver on the door for all the damage the gun had inflicted. He remembered the day he had bought it.

'That's a nice gun you've got there,' the gunsmith had said. He might have been describing a friendly-looking labrador.

Curtis hefted the gun in his sweating hand for a moment, then threw it across the corridor.

When Helen Hussey called the atrium on the walkie-talkie to report that Nathan Coleman had shot himself to escape drowning, Ray

Richardson understood for the first time the gravity of their situation. For him the worst thing was the realization that what had happened was going to affect his whole future. He doubted that the Yu Corporation would pay the balance of his fees and wondered if anyone would ever commission a smart building again. Certainly he could not see how the Yu Corporation building would become anything but notorious. People already hated modern architecture, and this would confirm their prejudices. But even among architects themselves what was happening seemed destined to consign Richardson to some kind of professional wilderness. Gold medals for excellence were not handed out to architects whose designs were found to be responsible for eight, maybe nine fatalities.

Of course you had to stay alive to be able to defend yourself against your critics. Stuck on a baking hot atrium floor, without food or water, how long could they hold out? Richardson went to the front door and peered to see through the tinted glass. Beyond the empty piazza was the Babel-like landscape of downtown: the monuments of modern worship, monuments to function and finance, well-designed tools for the classification and efficient exploitation of labour, liberating the ground for the speedy circulation of the life-blood of capitalism, the office worker. He rubbed the glass clear of condensation and looked again. Not that he really expected to see anyone in the darkness out there. The only consideration given to what happened in these urban areas at night, when the last hot desker had gone home, armed with his portable phone and his laptop so that he might do some more work, was how to deter the poor and the destitute from coming there to sleep, to drink, to eat, and, sometimes, to die. It did not matter where they went, as long as they kept moving, so that by daybreak when the office workers returned to the area, their arrival might not be obstructed by those who lived on the Nickle.

If only he had not been so committed to the principle of design deterrence. If only he had not thought to add Choke Water to the fountain, or render the piazza's surface inhospitable to those who might have slept there. If only he had not made that call to the deputy mayor's office and had those demonstrators removed. He meandered around the base of the tree looking up towards the top. He kept walking until he remembered that one of the upper branches came very close to the edge of the twenty-first level. And the tree itself was covered in lianas that ran the whole length of the trunk, and were as strong as ropes. Could they climb up to the twenty-first level, to food and water?

'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' asked Dukes.

'Incredible as that might seem, yes, I am,' answered Richardson.

'What do you think our chances are?'

'I dunno. How strong is your wife?'

Richardson shrugged. He was not sure.

'Well,' Dukes said, 'better than down here. Reckon I'm going to try anyway. I used to climb a lot of trees when I was a kid.'

'In LA?'

Dukes shook his head. 'Washington state. Up near Spokane. Yes, sir, I climbed me a lot of trees in my time. Never did see a tree like this one though.'

'It's Brazilian. From the rain forest.'

'Hardwood, I guess. What do you say we try and get some sleep? Take a shot at it in the morning.'

Richardson glanced at his watch and saw that it was close to midnight. Then he looked at the piano. It was playing another strange piece.

'Sleep?' he snorted. 'With that fucking noise? I've tried telling the hologram to put a sock in it, but no dice. It just goes on and on. Maybe the computer's planning to drive us nuts. Like General Noriega.'

'Hey, no problem,' said Dukes and drew his gun. 'To shoot the piano player, you just shoot the piano. What do you say? I mean, you're still the boss round here.'

Richardson shrugged. 'I'm not so sure about that,' he admitted, 'but go right ahead. I never did like the piano much anyway.'

Dukes turned, worked the slide of his Clock 17 automatic and fired just once into the polished black woodwork, dead centre of the Yamaha nameplate. The piano stopped abruptly, in the middle of a loud and hectoring finale.

'Nice shot,' said Richardson.

'Thanks.'

'But you missed your vocation. With an aim like that you should have been a critic.'

Fear crept down the corridors and along the atrium floor of the Gridiron like some psychotic night watchman. Most of those trapped in the building slept hardly at all, while others paid for their apparent lack of vigilance with vividly claustrophobic nightmares, their periodic cries and shouts echoing in the cavernous purgatory that was the dark, almost empty, office envelope. Buzzing with the memories of the day and the preoccupations of sudden mortality, all human brains stayed active until the dawn came, and light brought the false promise of safety.