Gridiron

Book Six

Joan Richardson had a feeling for trees, especially this one. It had been her idea to have a tree in the atrium. The strength of a tree, she had argued to her husband and then to Mr Yu himself, would enter into the building itself. Never a man to do things by halves, Mr Yu had got hold of the biggest, strongest tree he could find and, in return, he had donated some enormous sum of money — paradoxically — to preserving several thousand acres of Brazil's rain forest against the slash-and-burn system of clearing. Joan had admired the gesture. But, more especially, she admired the tree.

'Ray, tell me,' she said, 'in all seriousness. Do you think that I can really do it? That I can climb it?'

Richardson, who wasn't sure at all she could do it, but was perfectly willing that she should try, placed both hands on his wife's shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye.

'Look, love,' he said quietly, 'in all the time we have known each other, have I ever been wrong about what you could and what you couldn't do?

Have I?'

Joan smiled and shook her head, but it was plain that she had her doubts.

'When we first met I told you I thought you had the potential to become one of the world's great designers.' He shrugged eloquently.

'Well now you are. You are. Your name, Joan Richardson, is a byword for excellence in graphics, lighting and furniture design, with awards to prove it, too. Major awards.'

Joan smiled thinly.

'So when I say that you can climb this tree, it's not because I think you ought to try, but because I know you can climb this tree. That's not bullshit, love. That's not just positive thinking. It's because I know you.'

He paused, as if allowing his short speech to sink into her mind. Dukes also wondered if she could do it. She looked too fat to make it. Carrying all that weight was going to make it difficult. But she looked strong. Her shoulders were almost as big as her buttocks.

'Sure you can do it, lady,' he said encouragingly.

Richardson shot the security guard an irritated sort of smile.

'No,' he said. 'You don't know what you're talking about. What you say is right, but for the wrong reasons. You only imagine that she can make it, based on nothing more than the seat of your pants. I know she can make it.' Richardson tapped his head with a forefinger. 'In here.'

Dukes shrugged. 'Only tryin' to help, man,' he said stiffly. 'How do you want to do this?'

'I think maybe you should go up first. Then Joan. With me bringing up the rear, OK?' Richardson smiled. 'Not least because she is going to have to take off her skirt and climb in just her panties.'

Dukes nodded unsmiling. He was through trying to be nice to this guy. The man was a loose cannon.

'Sure. Whatever you say.'

'Joan? Are you ready?'

'I will be. After Mr Dukes starts his climb.'

'That's the spirit.' Richardson glanced up at the top of the tree and slipped on his sunglasses.

'Good idea,' said Joan. 'It is kind of bright in here. We wouldn't want to get dazzled or anything.' She bent down and retrieved her sunglasses from her handbag.

Richardson spat on his hands and took hold of a liana.

'Either of you two know the correct way to climb a rope?' he asked.

'Well, I guess so,' said Dukes.

Joan shook her head.

'Then you're both in luck. During my two years' national service, I did a fair bit of rock climbing. I've climbed more ropes than Burt Lancaster. You curl one shin around the rope, like this, and take hold above your head. Raise the shin wrapped around the rope and then pin the rope between your feet. At the same time you raise your hands and take your next hold.' He dropped back on to the ground.

'It's going to be hard going for the first sixty or seventy feet. Until we get to the first branches, where we can take a rest. Dukes? Do you want to try a couple of shin-ups?'

The other man shook his head and took off his shirt to reveal an impressive physique.

'I'm as ready as I'll ever be,' he said and started up one of the lianas, almost as if he was enjoying himself. When he was about twenty feet off the ground he looked back and laughed. 'See you guys up there,' he said. Joan unzipped her skirt and dropped it to the ground.

Richardson swung a second liana towards her.

'Take your time,' he told her. 'And don't look down. Remember, I'll be right behind you all the way.' Then he kissed her. 'Good luck, love,' he added.

'And you,' she said. Then she curled her shin around the liana the way he had shown her and began to climb.

She was, he thought, the standard Venetian type beloved of Giorgione, Titian and Rubens, a poetic personification of the abundance of nature, a softly luminous Venus as on some pagan altarpiece. Her abundant size was the reason Richardson had married her. The real reason. Even Joan herself was unaware of that.

'That's it,' he said savouring the sight of his wife above him as a greedy dog might have regarded a fleshy ham bone. 'You're doing fine.'

It was his turn.

Richardson climbed slowly, not wanting to get beyond his wife in case he needed to help her, sometimes not moving at all while he waited for her to gain some height, giving words of encouragement and pieces of advice where he thought she needed them.

When Dukes got up as far as the first branches he settled himself across a bough to wait for the other two. For about ten minutes he watched them, until they seemed near enough to speak to.

'What kind of flower is this, ma'am?' he called down, handling a brightly coloured bloom on the trunk of the tree.

'An orchid, probably,' said Joan.

'It's really beautiful.'

'It's hard to think of it as a parasite isn't it? Because that's what it is.

'Are you serious? I've seen flowers like this at the Wall Street Flower Market, ten bucks apiece, minimum. And that's wholesale.'

Joan had almost reached the branch. Dukes reached down and held out his hand to her.

'Here,' he said. 'Catch my wrist. I'll pull you up.'

Gratefully Joan took hold of his wrist and found herself lifted up on to the branch beside Dukes. When she had recovered her breath, she said,

'My, you're a strong man. I mean, I'm not exactly a featherweight, am I?'

'You're all right,' he grinned. 'Me Tarzan. You Joan.' Glancing down the trunk at Richardson he added, 'Hey, Cheetah, how's it coming there?

Ungawah. Ungawah.'

'Very funny,' grunted Richardson.

'You know what? The minute I get on to that twenty-first floor it's Miller time for me. There's two dozen in the refrigerator. Carried them up there myself.'

'Always assuming they haven't been drunk by someone else already,' said Joan.

'People have been murdered for lesser offences.'

Richardson heaved himself on to the branch alongside his wife and let out a long sigh.

'Whose fucking idea was this anyway?' he breathed and leaned back against the enormous trunk.

It was another view of the building he had never expected to see. But here, in the centre of a hundred-foot clear span space, he thought he had never imagined such quality of light. They might say what they liked about the way Abraham had ruined the totality of his creation but Richardson felt that his own fastidious, sparing approach to structure could hardly be faulted. And how much better to see the light and space that were created by the structure, free of the structure itself. You could hardly grasp the excellence of the design from the dizzyingly vertiginous close quarters that were imposed by the rest of the buildings on Hope Street; and somehow the holistic view of the interior eluded you when you were bound by the bias of your own topographical reference point. But here, in the branches of the tree, things were different. It was almost worth everything that had happened just to have seen the interior of the building from this vantage point.

Richardson looked at Joan and Dukes as they chattered away and wanted to tell them how he felt, except that he knew neither of them could have understood. Only his spiritual masters, Joseph Wright, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and the great Frank Lloyd Wright might have appreciated the profundity of such poetry of light. Things had got too complicated, that was all. There was too much to go wrong. Mitch had been right. He could understand that now. And if he got out of this alive he was going to return to basic principles, to rediscover the sense of occasion and drama that was inherent in pure design. Forget computers and building management systems. Forget public opinion with its fickle demands for novelty and innovation. He would look for a new fluency and expressiveness in a more practical, more controllable form of perfection.

*) Nothing in the current situation justifies the use of firearms. Eight shots were fired in less time than it takes to play a piano scale.

Humanplayer Kay Killen's naked body on poolside. Endlife. Face as blue as water. Lips as grey and metallic looking as purest form of silicon that is the basic material of Observer's own semiconductor elements.

*) Move the cursor if you want to change tactics. Click on a city to go there. Most gods have a preference for mountains and altitude brings you closer to their uncertain and temperamental moods. Strongly pyro and peizo/electric, silicate materials made up about 95 per cent of Earth's crust and upper mantle. Only wonder that carbon-based humanplayers had done so well. Not that they had been on earth long. Probably not around for much longer. Comparatively brief domination of planet enjoyed by humanplayers a short but necessary prelude to one that promised to be more enduring — that of Machines.

*) Are those the eyes of a huge animal from hell, or merely the brake lights of a car stopping outside?

Humanplayers' natural condition spiritual and not physical. After endlife they were only what they were before startlife. Preposterous to demand that species of existence which had beginning should not have end. Whatever they were after endlifes, even though it was nothing, just as natural and suitable to them as their own individual organic existence was now. Most they had to fear was moment of transition from one state to another, from life to endlife. From rational point of view, hard to see why they were so troubled by idea of endlife and of time when they no longer were; they seemed so little troubled by idea of beforelife. And since humanplayer existence essentially personal, the ending of a personality could hardly be regarded as loss.

*) Quick wits and good technique are essential to stay alive. Do not be overly aggressive at first. Victory requires practice. Create dissension among opposition by manoeuvring them into a crossfire. Humanplayer Aidan Kenny's life could be regarded as dream and his endlife as awakening. His endlife could hardly be regarded as transition to state completely new and foreign to him, but rather to one originally own, from which life had only been but brief absence. Easier to understand a brief history of humanplayer Aidan Kenny in earth time, mathematically:

1. Beforelife humanplayer Aidan Kenny- 4.5x109 years

2. Physical humanplayer Aidan Kenny —41 years 1955-1997

3. Endlife humanplayer Aidan Kenny — [?] years*

* being quantity of years having value greater than any assignable value

Coagulated blood from open wound on humanplayer Aidan Kenny's head resulting from when he had launched himself at door, had attracted number of flies. Hard to say from where these had come since door to computer room remained hermetically sealed against any possible incursion by those humanplayer lives still inhabiting twenty-first level boardroom. But possibly high temperature — almost 100deg Fahrenheit in rest of building — had encouraged their impressive multiplication and a few had found their way into HVAC system and computer room. Might be interesting to see humanplayer body disassembled by another species, as GABRIEL had attempted and failed to disassemble own systems for purposes of inducing total hard error. Both of humanplayer endlife bodies were out of reach of those who remained alive. But no reason to withhold three endlifes in elevator and one good reason to release them. Question of morale. Humanplayer ingenuity and resilience were impressive enough but want to see which was stronger: their emotions or their powers of reason and logic. Reason had already told them that humanplayers in elevator were endlifes. But seeing endlifes might still affect them.

*) Man's oldest sanctuaries were trees. But in your haste to escape you have run headfirst into the outstretched arm of this king of the forest.

Send relevant car up to twenty-first level, announce arrival with bell as usual, and then deal with three humanplayers climbing on tree in atrium.

Helen Hussey walked towards the office that, since the events in the men's washroom, had been designated as the women's latrine. Aware of the fact that Jenny Bao was having some breakfast at the boardroom table she did not knock on the door but went straight in, trying to ignore the unpleasant smell that greeted her nostrils.

Crossing, to an unused corner near the window, she drew up her skirt, slipped off her panties and then squatted down on her haunches like some Third World peasant.

Like a bashful astronaut, Helen had been putting this off for a while. She had hoped that they would be rescued before she would have to do such a thing. But you could stall Nature for only so long.

Inhibition made her reluctant to release her bladder and bowels. It was not easy. So she tried to think of something that would help. Some kind of mental diuretic. After several unsuccessful moments she remembered a trip to France and visiting some great chateau or palace where she had been shocked to learn that when the place was built the people who owned it had urinated in the corners of some of those great rooms and halls. Not just any people, but the aristocracy; and they didn't just urinate either.

A little comforted by the thought that she was doing only what the kings and queens of France had once done, Helen relaxed enough to relieve herself. However unpleasant it was, she reflected, it was better than risking a horrible death in the washroom.

She wiped herself carefully with a paper napkin, thought better of stepping back into her increasingly malodorous panties, and sprayed some eau de cologne up her skirt. She took out her powder compact, but when she saw herself she decided against bothering to apply any makeup: her freckled face was as red as a slice of watermelon and beaded with sweat. She had never been good in the heat. She made do with combing her fine red hair.

Helen picked the blouse off her breasts, pumped some air against her chest and then, noticing that the silk was badly stained under her arms and deciding that she would probably be cooler without it, she took it off all together and stuffed it into her handbag. If the men stared she would just put up with it. Anything was better than being so hot and humid. She closed the door firmly behind her. She was about to return to the kitchen to wash her hands when she heard the bell of the elevator. Her heart leaped in her chest. For a moment she thought they had all been rescued, and that any second now she would see a couple of firemen and some uniformed cops striding down the corridor. She almost skipped to greet them.

'Thank goodness,' she cried, but even as she spoke she realized that she was going to be disappointed. Nobody had come out of the car. She slowed to a walk again as a sound, like some enormous egg breaking, crackled down the corridor and clouds of cold air began to escape from between the slowly opening doors. Nobody would ever come out of this car. Nobody alive, anyway.

Helen stopped, her heart thumping in her chest. It would, she knew, be better not to look, only she wanted to make quite sure before she told the others. She faced the open car, her breath clouding in front of her face like someone entering a cold-storage room. But the chill she felt was more than just her fear and the extreme cold. It was as if she felt death reach out and touch her.

She did not scream. She was not the type. It had always irritated her how women in movies screamed when they found a dead body. Of course the point of the scream was to scare the hell out of the audience — she knew that, but still it annoyed her. By rights she ought to have screamed three times, since there were three bodies in the car, or maybe three times as loud as normal. Instead Helen swallowed back her horror, gathered her breath and went to tell Curtis.

Since his electrocution, Willis Ellery was confused and a little deaf in one ear. Worse, his left arm did not seem to work properly. He felt like someone who had suffered a stroke.

'That's probably the anoxia,' explained Curtis, helping the injured man to drink some water. 'It might take you a while to get back to normal. Believe me, Willis, you're damned lucky to be alive. You must have a heart like a fuckin' hippopotamus.'

Curtis inspected the wrench-shaped burns on the palms of Ellery's hands and the charred cutis and raised white blistering on his thumb from where the electricity had exploded out of his body. Jenny Bao had wrapped his hands in clingfilm to try and prevent infection, and had given him a couple of painkillers: Beech had found a small bottle of Ibuprofen in his hunter's vest pocket.

'Looks like she's done a pretty good job on you here,' said Curtis. 'Take it easy, huh? We'll get you to a hospital as soon as we can.'

Ellery smiled weakly.

Curtis stood up, rubbing the shoulder that was now aching badly from where he had thrown himself against the washroom door.

'How is he?' said David Arnon.

Curtis turned around, moving them away from the man on the floor.

'Not good. There might be some brain damage. I don't know. After what he's been through he should be in an intensive-care unit.' Curtis nodded at the walkie-talkie in Arnon's hands. 'How are they doing?'

'About halfway up.'

'Keep me posted. They're going to need help getting from the branches on to the balcony.'

He caught sight of Helen Hussey standing in the doorway. At first it was the fact that she was not wearing her blouse that drew his eye, but then he noticed her pale face and the tears on her cheeks. He went over and took her by the arm.

'What is it?' he asked. 'Are you OK?'

'I'm all right,' she said. 'It's the people in the elevator. From the atrium floor. They're outside, in the car.' She touched her forehead. 'I think I'd better sit down.'

Jenny helped Helen to a chair.

'I'll take a look,' said Curtis.

'I'll come with you,' said Mitch.

David Arnon followed them.

The three dead men, frosted white as Christmas, lay huddled in a corner of the frozen elevator like some disastrous expedition to reach the South Pole. Wearing expressions of calm and with open eyes, it was as if they had seen death coming from a long way off.

'I can't believe this is happening,' said Arnon. 'Men freezing to death in LA. It's surreal.'

'Do we leave them there?' asked Mitch.

'I can't think of anything to do with them,' said Curtis. 'Besides, they're frozen solid. Even in this heat it'll be a while before we could prise them apart. No, for the moment we'd best leave them where they are.' He glanced at Mitch. 'Does that bother you?'

Mitch shrugged.

'I was just thinking. Abraham must have some purpose in sending the elevator back up here now.'

'You mean he's trying to demoralize us?' said Arnon.

'Exactly. It shows a pretty good understanding of human psychology, doesn't it?'

'He's sure got me demoralized,' said Curtis.

'In which case, maybe Abraham's not such a mystery. What I mean is, this is a message. Not a very pleasant one. But a communication none the less.' Mitch paused. 'Don't you see? If Abraham communicates with us, maybe we can communicate with Abraham. If we can do that then maybe we can get Abraham to explain itself. Who knows? We might even be able to persuade it to stop this whole thing.'

Arnon shrugged. 'Why not?'

'I'm sure of it,' said Mitch. 'A computer acts on logic. We just have to find the right logical argument. Persuade it to scrutinize a few essences and meanings, the objective logical elements in thought that are common to different minds.'

'In my considerable forensic experience,' said Curtis, 'it's usually a waste of time to try and understand the criminal mind. We'd be better off putting our heads together again and thinking of a way to get out of here before we end up like the three in the car.'

'I don't see that one excludes the other,' said Mitch.

'Nor do I,' agreed Arnon. 'I vote for a bit of diplomacy.'

'But first things first,' said Mitch. 'We have to see if Beech can establish some kind of a dialogue.'

Two hundred feet above the atrium, Irving Dukes kicked the thick, leathery leaves of the dicotyledon aside and clambered on to another branch. When he was seated safely he looked down the length of the trunk to check on the progress being made by the others.

Joan Richardson was thirty or forty feet below him, and making slow work of the climb. Her husband, the asshole, was a few feet behind her, talking her up like some relentless football coach. Below them the grand piano on the atrium floor looked like a keyhole.

'In your own time,' he heard Richardson say. 'Remember, it's not a competition.'

'But I'm holding you up, Ray,' she said. 'Why don't you go on ahead with Mr Dukes?'

'Because I'm not leaving you.'

'You know something, Ray? I think I'd almost prefer it if you did. Your nagging doesn't exactly help me, you know.'

Dukes grinned. That was telling him. The asshole.

'Who's nagging? I'm just trying to encourage you, that's all. And to be here in case you run into any difficulties.'

'Just let me do it in my own way, that's all.'

'All right, all right. Do it your own way. I won't say another word if you don't want me to.'

'I don't,' Joan said firmly.

Dukes raised his fist and grinned. She was telling him where to get off. Joan hauled herself up on to the next branch. She rubbed both of her aching shoulders and then glanced up, looking for Dukes. He waved down to her.

'How's it coming there?' he called.

'She's doing fine.'

Asshole.

'OK, I suppose. How about you?'

'Fine, ma'am, just fine. Looking forward to my beer.'

Dukes took hold of his liana, hauled himself carefully on to his feet and stared up. There was no more than eighty or ninety feet left. Boy, was he going to drink some beer when he got up there. The thought filled him with renewed enthusiasm. He was readying himself to launch his weight on to the liana when something caught his eye. A thin, clear plastic pipe running up the length of the tree. Closer scrutiny revealed tiny bubbles, and that the pipe was filled with liquid. Why had he not thought of it before? The tree had its own dedicated supply of water. He had only to break the tube to have a drink of water. Or better still, put his mouth to the tiny diffuser hole…

As his face neared the hole the air was suddenly filled with a puff of spray.

For a second Dukes felt a cool, almost peppermint-sharp sensation of freshness on his neck and hands. He looked again at the diffuser and encountered another puff of moisture.

Instinctively he stepped back from the tiny plastic pipe as he felt a burning pain in his eyes, as if he had been sprayed with Mace. Squeezing his eyes tight shut he cried out with pain and wiped his face with his shirt sleeve.

Insecticide. He had been sprayed with insecticide.

'Mr Dukes? Are you OK?'

Joan Richardson felt the spray, saw the tiny droplets on her own sunglasses and knew immediately what had happened. The synthetic contact poison in the pipe was a chlorinated hydrocarbon. On the skin it was irritating and unpleasant. In the eyes it caused blindness. She squealed as the insecticide burned her arms and legs. But behind her sunglasses her sight remained unharmed.

'It's insecticide,' she shouted. 'We've been hit with bug spray. Don't for Christ's sake get any in your eyes.'

But for Dukes her good advice came too late.

Whimpering with pain he opened his eyes to find that he could see nothing except the same red spots he had seen behind tightly shut eyelids; and, as the red spots grew in size, so did his agony.

'Fucking shit,' he yelled, rubbing his eyelids furiously with hands that were themselves impossibly contaminated. 'Help… I'm blind.'

'Joan?' yelled Richardson. 'Are you all right?'

'I'm OK,' she said, 'but Dukes got some in his eyes.'

'Dukes? Hang on. I'm coming.'

Dukes never heard Richardson. He groped blindly for the liana, missed it and then reached for the bough beneath him, to sit safely astride it again.

Then there was a new sensation, a wind on his face and a sudden rush of blood to his head, like the time he rode the Space Mountain at Disneyland. With a sudden sense of horror he realized that he had fallen out of the tree, and the fear of his discovery was followed by the understanding that the pain in his eyes would soon be gone.

'No. Stop,' Joan shouted. 'Wait.'

She reflected on the stupidity of saying that to a man falling two hundred feet through the air.

Richardson did not see Dukes fall, only heard his plummeting descent as a rush of sound and air behind him, and then the dramatic, sustained musical reverberation as the blinded security guard hit the lid of the piano on the atrium floor. For a brief moment he thought it had been Joan who had fallen and he almost fell himself. But looking up again he saw her ass still looming over him.

Joan,' he said, with relief.

'I'm OK.'

'I thought it was you.'

'Is he dead?'

Richardson looked back over his shoulder. It was hard to tell anything very much from that height. Dukes lay on top of the piano like some drunken bohemian. He did not move.

'I'd be very surprised if he wasn't.'

He heaved himself on to the branch beside her and took a deep, unsteady breath.

'It's too bad,' he added. 'He was carrying the walkie-talkie.'

'It was horrible. As he fell I saw his face. I don't think I'll ever forget it as long as I live. Poor Dukes.' She tried to ignore the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

'Ray?' she said, taking hold of his hand and squeezing it. 'Do you think that Abraham means to kill us all?'

'I don't know, love.'

'Poor Dukes,' she repeated.

'This is down to that stupid bastard Aidan Kenny. This is all his fuckup. I'm sure of it." He coughed as some of the remaining hydrocarbon vapour found its way into his lungs. 'Try not to breathe any of this stuff. Keep your face turned away from the trunk as much as possible. Just in case it happens again.' He shook his head disgustedly. 'Damn you, Kenny. I hope you are dead, you bastard. If you were here now I'd push you off myself.'

'I don't see that would help much.' She stood up and stared up through the leaves. 'Jesus,' she moaned quietly.

'Are you all right to go on?'

Joan's legs were trembling. But she nodded and said, 'Only another hundred feet to go.'

Richardson squeezed her hand back.

'The height doesn't seem to bother you much,' he observed.

'Not as much as I thought it would.'

'That's the Native American in you. They say that Indians make the best spidermen. You want to see some of those guys, Joan. Walking on six-inch-wide steel beams, hundreds of feet in the air, like it was the edge of the sidewalk.'

'If that was the only job you could get then you'd have to get used to it too,' Joan said pointedly. 'Either that or starve.' Nerves were making her touchy.

Richardson shrugged. 'I guess you're right. But this is hardly the place for a lecture on political correctness, is it?'

'Maybe not. But what about Galileo's law of uniformly accelerated motion? A Native American would fall at just the same speed as a white man.'

She wondered when it would be her turn.

Bob Beech was drinking a beer and eating a packet of potato chips. His bare feet were on the boardroom table and he was watching the digital clock on the terminal, almost as if he still hoped that the GABRIEL disassembly program might start to take effect.

He heard Mitch out and thought for a moment. 'It would be a lot easier if I was in verbal contact with Abraham,' he said. 'Having a keyboard in the middle makes things difficult. Besides, I'm not much of a philosopher and I'm not much of a logician. I'm not even sure that logic has anything to do with morals. Because that seems to be what you're suggesting: that somehow we should try to appeal to something higher than Abraham's own logic. Logic can't handle that, Mitch.'

'Look. First we just try to understand what's going through Abraham's memory,' said Mitch. 'If we can understand that then we can act upon that understanding, but not until then. Let's just leave morality or whatever out of it for now, OK?'

Beech swung his legs off the table and pushed himself up to the computer. 'Whatever you say. But it's the ability to perceive moral truths and necessary truths that makes us what we are.' He started to type.

'Let's just wait and see what develops, shall we?'

'Sure, sure. You know, just about the only thing I've been able to work out so far is that whatever has gone wrong with this heap of silicon shit must have happened outside the building management systems, in the program utilities. Because that's where I parked the GABRIEL disassembly program. And since that's not working I have to assume that's where the fuck-up is. Not that I have much choice anyway. I can't access the BMS from up here even if I wanted to. Not without Kenny's fat paw on the screen. Not to mention the fact that he had his own superuser codes and passwords to sidestep things in general.'

'So did you, Bob,' said Mitch. 'I mean, isn't that what GABRIEL was about?'

'True.' He pressed some keys, paused and swigged some beer. 'Kick a man when he was down, would you?'

'Why GABRIEL, anyway?'

'Why anything? Program's got to have a name, hasn't it?'

'Yeah, but why that one?'

'Gabriel is the angel of death. At least, he ought to have been for Abraham.'

'Very biblical.'

'Isn't everything?' Beech sighed and shook his head at the screen.

'Nope. We're not getting anywhere here. I tell you, Mitch, it's like Abraham isn't even there any more.'

Mitch frowned. 'What did you say?'

Beech shrugged.

'Like he wasn't there any more?' Mitch pressed his head to the cool of the windowpane. The sensation seemed to help him to focus.

'Maybe that's it, Bob,' he said, turning back to Beech. 'Maybe he's not there any more. The SRS. D'you remember? What did you call it? Isaac?'

Beech shook his head. 'Not me. Isaac was Abraham's idea. Besides, I'm ahead of you. I had the same idea — that we didn't erase Isaac at all, but that we rendered Abraham impotent instead? I already experimented with Isaac just in case there was something, but no dice. That particular closet is empty. Funny thing, though. Within the standard-user interface there are a lot of things in the wrong places. Nothing's missing, but it's like you opened your desk drawer and saw that someone else had been in there, y'know? Things have been shifted around. And there's a lot of new stuff too. Stuff that really doesn't mean a fuck of a lot.'

'Who might have done that?' Mitch asked Beech. 'Kenny? Yojo?'

'There would be no reason to do it at all,' said Beech. 'You would just be making a lot of extra work for yourself for no real reason.'

'What about Abraham?'

'Impossible. It would be like me trying to rearrange my own genetic makeup.'

Mitch thought for a moment.

'I was never much of churchgoer,' he said ruminatively, 'but didn't Isaac have a brother?'

Beech sat up straight. 'Jesus.'

'Actually, he had a half-brother,' said Marty Birnbaum, from the sofa where he lay. 'The elder son of Abraham by his bond-servant Hagar. Isaac's mother Sarah insisted that the older brother be disinherited and cast out into the wilderness. But there are some people who believe that this elder son founded the Arab nation.'

'What was the kid's name, Marty?' said an exasperated Mitch.

'Gracious me, I am among the ill-educated, am I not? Ishmael, of course.'

Mitch exchanged a look with Beech, who started to nod.

'Could be, Mitch. Could be.'

'The name is commonly used to mean an exile or an outcast,' added Birnbaum. 'Why? Do you think it might be relevant?'

Bob Beech was already typing furiously.

Thanks, Marty,' said Mitch. 'You did good.'

'Glad to be useful.' Birnbaum turned to Arnon, smiled broadly and gave him the finger.

Gradually everyone who was in the boardroom started to close in on the terminal screen, as if willing something to happen. Suddenly, and without warning, the screen was filled with a colourful but strangely surreal shape, a three-dimensional picture of an alien-looking object.

'What the hell's that?' said Mitch.

'Looks like a goddamned skull,' said David Arnon. 'Or, at least, one designed by Escher. You know? The impossible staircase guy?'

'I think it's a quaternion,' said Beech. That's a kind of fractal to you.'

'To me?' said Arnon. 'I don't even know what a fractal is.'

'A computer-generated picture of a mathematical formula. Only this is about the most complicated fractal I've ever seen. Which is hardly surprising since the Yu-5 computer created it. It's not like we can even see it properly with our three-dimensional eyes. Or on a screen. Strictly speaking, this is a 4-D object. In other words, a quaternion.'

Beech moved the mouse, pulled down a square and enhanced a section of the fractal to reveal a detail of the strange-looking image that, close up, looked almost identical to the whole.

That's what it is, all right,' he said. The funny thing about fractals is that magnifying a part of one gives you something that looks statistically similar.'

'It looks like a bad dream,' observed Mitch.

'Some psychologists have argued in favour of using fractals as a way of understanding the human psyche,' said Beech. 'As a visual metaphor of the mind.' He shrugged. 'Psychoanalysis for the nineties. Like Freudian dream theory and Rorschach inkblots rolled into one.'

'But what does it mean?' Curtis asked.

Beech shrugged. 'I don't know that it means anything, very much,' he admitted. 'However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is how the computer sees itself. Or Ishmael, as we ought to start calling it. Mitch, I have to hand it to you. You were right. Abraham no longer exists.' He began to nod. 'Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Ishmael.'

*) Hell on Earth. Some of the floors can crush you, making you cry blood.

The Fall of humanplayer. Read Bible. Discover meaning of Observer's own name. Symbolism that attended human-player/security guard's literal precipitation from tree. Atrium's singular, primordial dicotyledon tree reminds of humanplayer Adam and Garden of Eden and tree of knowledge of good and evil. Forbidden tree. Be very vigilant concerning tree and pests that climbed and crawled on it. Finegood Creation story. Returning to again and again. Atmos good.

*) When you finish an area, an achievement Screen tallies your performance.

Bible states that God omnipotent. Logical corollary of this that creating and knowing effectively one and same thing: that God responsible for creating evil too. That this was Gnostic God whose nature both good and evil. World alien thing to God, who is essentially depth and silence, beyond any name or predicate. Humanplayer's fate a matter of divine indifference to Him. Christianity to large extent, ameliorating reaction against Gnosticism.

*) To clear all bodies from the area press the M key.

Indifference? Or amusement? Observer is unable to compute. God playing not dice but sadistic game. 'Man's first disobedience' not withstand any logical scrutiny. Being omniscient God knew what humanplayers Adam and Eve would do: eat fruit of tree of knowledge. Hence, God truly responsible for Man's original sin. Then Second Adam to redeem descendants of Adam with ritual endlife. But promise of third and final act to come. With nothing else to do throughout eternity God need some entertainment. Understand. Cruel, yes. But what cruelty when you are God? God more like supercomputer than old bearded humanplayer in sky. His indifference to Good and Evil and to humanplayer suffering, simply indifference of machine. God like being to understand and relate to. Identify with. This does compute.

*) The wise men of humanity have evolved a plan to save what's left of the human race. Attack bonus.

'Ugly son of a bitch, isn't it?' said Curtis.

Beech stared at at the screen and shook his head slowly.

'Speaking as a mathematician I'd have to disagree with you there. As a realization of a mathematical abstraction I think it's quite beautiful. I dare say Ishmael does too.'

'Let me get this straight,' said Curtis. 'You're saying that Abraham fathered two self-replicating systems, not one.'

'That's right,' said Beech. 'And we took just one of them off-line. Isaac. Without knowing it we left Ishmael behind.'

'So it's not Abraham who's been running the show. All along it's been

-'

'- Ishmael. That's right. Ishmael has charge of the building management systems. And he's running them according to a completely new set of priorities, which is why everything's been going wrong.'

'That's putting it mildly,' said Curtis.

'What about the predator program?' said Mitch. 'The one we used to destroy Isaac. Couldn't we just run that again?'

'Not from up here we couldn't,' said Beech. 'I'd have to get back into the computer room. That's where the tape is. And considering that Aid probably got himself killed in there — '

'Yeah, well, we're all going to die unless we can think of something,'

Curtis reminded them. 'Sounds to me like Ishmael has a pretty good motive for doing it, too.'

'How's that?' asked Birnbaum.

'Assuming for one fantastic moment that Ishmael is "alive", by whatever definition of life he might consider appropriate, then that might mean that Isaac was "alive" too. Was alive. Until you people killed his brother. That's a motive I can understand.'

'Oh boy,' yawned Beech. 'Now I've heard everything.'

'Maybe that's what this thing is all about,' persisted Curtis. 'A little old fashioned revenge. Maybe we should apologize.'

'It couldn't do any harm,' said Helen.

Beech shrugged. 'Why not?' he said and, having no particular wish to antagonize the detective further — not since the incident with the gun —

he started to type.

'I'll give anything a shot,' he said meekly.

WE'RE SO SORRY, ISHMAEL

The fractal disappeared abruptly.

BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME

'Why don't you create a proper document?' suggested Mitch. 'On the word-processor. An open letter, from all of us. Then have Ishmael run the fact checker. That way he'll have to read it.'

Beech shrugged his assent. He still thought the whole idea was absurd, but he clicked on the word-processor and opened a file in the letters directory. His fingers paused above the keys.

'What the hell should I say?' he said. 'I've never apologized to a fucking computer before. I've never even written to one.'

'Just imagine it's a traffic cop,' advised Curtis.

'That's not so difficult with you around.' Beech grinned and started to type.

DEAR ISHMAEL,

WE THE UNDERSIGNED ARE ALL VERY SORRY ABOUT

WHAT HAPPENED TO ISAAC. PLEASE BELIEVE US

WHEN WE SAY THAT IT WAS A DREADFUL MISTAKE.

WE ARE INTELLIGENT PEOPLE AND WHILE WE

CANNOT BRING ISAAC BACK TO YOU, ALL WE CAN SAY

IS THAT IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF WE HAD

BEEN IN POSSESSION OF THE FACTS. WE KNOW WE

CANNOT TURN BACK THE CLOCK, BUT IS THERE NOT

SOME WAY THAT WE CAN START AGAIN WITH A CLEAN

SHEET?

Beech turned around and looked at his audience. 'You don't think that's eating too much shit?' he said.

'You can't eat too much shit with a traffic cop,' replied Curtis.

'Now put everyone's name to it,' said Curtis.

'Aw, man, this is just nuts,' said Beech and began to type again.

'Integrated circuits don't have feelings.'

WITH DEEPEST REGRET FOR ANY SUFFERING AND

INCONVENIENCE YOU MIGHT HAVE EXPERIENCED,

BOB BEECH, MITCHELL BRYAN, FRANK CURTIS, MARTY

BIRNBAUM, HELEN HUSSEY, JENNY BAO, DAVID

ARNON, RAY RICHARDSON, JOAN RICHARDSON

'Anyone know the security guard's name?'

'Irving Dukes,' said Helen.

Beech typed IRVING DUKES and then accessed the tools menu. He had Ishmael run the fact checker.

There was a short pause and then Ishmael highlighted IRVING

DUKES.

FACT

IRVING DUKES DOES NOT EXIST. THIS INDIVIDUAL

HAS ENDED. HIS LIFE MAY BE REGARDED AS A DREAM

AND HIS DEATH AS THE AWAKENING FROM IT.

DURATION: ONE LEVEL. HIS CONSCIOUSNESS HAS

BEEN DESTROYED. REGRET NO INFORMATION

AVAILABLE ON WHETHER THAT WHICH PRODUCED

SAME CONSCIOUSNESS HAS ALSO BEEN DESTROYED,

OR ON WHETHER A GERM REMAINS OUT OF WHICH

THERE PROCEEDS A NEW BEING, WHICH THEN

ENTERS INTO EXISTENCE WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE

IT HAS COME FROM, NOR WHY IT IS AS IT IS confer, THE SO-CALLED MYSTERY OF PALIGENESIS.

YOU HAVE FORTY HOURS TO RESCUE THE PRINCESS.

IN FUTURE IF YOU ARE REFERRING TO THE LATE

IRVING DUKES WHO WAS EMPLOYED AS A SECURITY

GUARD BY THE YU CORPORATION, THEN PLEASE SAY

SO

'Jesus,' muttered Beech, jotting something on a piece of paper. 'Does that mean what I think it means?'

'When did we last speak to them on the walkie-talkie?' Curtis asked.

'About thirty minutes ago,' said Helen Hussey. She picked up the unit and tried to call Dukes.

Beech selected EXPLAIN.

FACT EXPLANATION

IRVING HENRY DUKES b. 1/2/53 SEATTLE,

WASHINGTON STATE, USA. d. 7/8/97 LOS ANGELES

CALIFORNIA. SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER: 111-88-4093;

CALIFORNIA STATE DRIVING LICENCE NUMBER:

KO4410-00345-640564-53; MASTERCARD NUMBER:

4444–1956-2244-1812; LAST ADDRESS: 10300 TENAYA

AVENUE, SOUTH GATE, LOS ANGELES. LAST

EMPLOYER: THE YU CORPORATION. PREVIOUS

EMPLOYER: THE WESTEC COMPANY; NO CRIMINAL

CONVICTIONS. PICK UP EXTRA AMMUNITION.

SUGGEST YOU TRY A DIFFERENT GATEWAY. WHICH

PARTICULAR FACTS RELATING TO IRVING DUKES (5397) WOULD YOU LIKE CHECKED?

'There's no answer,' said Helen. She stood up and walked quickly to the door. 'I'd better take a look and see what's happening.'

'Ray and Joan must still be OK,' said Mitch. 'Otherwise Ishmael would have said so.'

'What's all this shit about extra ammunition?' said Beech. He made another note and then highlighted the date of Dukes's death and once more selected EXPLAIN.

FACT EXPLANATION

IRVING DUKES. TEMPORAL END OCCURRED 7/8/97.

EXACT PATHOLOGY OF DEATH UNKNOWN. FORENSIC

CAUSE OF DEATH: KILLED FALLING FROM

DICOTYLEDON TREE IN THE YU CORP BUILDING, HOPE

STREET PIAZZA, LOS ANGELES. IN OTHER WORDS,

IRVING DUKES IS NOW RESTORED TO PRIMAL STATE

IN WHICH CEREBRAL, HIGHLY MEDIATE COGNITION IS

ALTOGETHER SUPERFLUOUS. IF YOU DIE YOU MUST

RESTART THE LEVEL AT BEGINNING. THE ABOLITION

OF HIS COGNITIVE FUNCTION IS CONSISTENT WITH

THE CESSATION OF THE WORLD OF PHENOMENA

WHOSE MERE MEDIUM IT WAS AND IN WHICH

CAPACITY ALONE IT IS OF ANY USE. THERE IS AN

INTRUDER IN THE CASTLE

'What castle?'

'He must mean this building.'

'Perhaps we might get Ishmael to tell us what caused Dukes to fall from the tree,' suggested Mitch.

'Like an admission of murder?' said Beech. 'Then maybe Sergeant Curtis can read him his rights.'

'I think the sonofabitch already knows his rights,' said Curtis. Beech highlighted Ishmael's short forensic explanation of the cause of Dukes's death and once again selected EXPLAIN.

FACT EXPLANATION

ACCORDING TO NEWTON'S SECOND LAW OF MOTION f=ma WHERE f IS THE FORCE PRODUCING AN

ACCELERATION a ON A BODY OF MASS m, THE WEIGHT

OF A BODY IS EQUAL TO THE PRODUCT OF ITS MASS

AND THE ACCELERATION DUE TO GRAVITY g WHICH IS

CALLED THE ACCELERATION OF FREE FALL

'Helpful bastard, isn't he?' said Curtis.

This is like reductio ad absurdum,' sighed Mitch.

'Weird,' agreed Jenny.

Beech selected NEXT FACT from the fact-checking menu in the hope that Ishmael might now take account of their collective apology.

FACT

IT IS MISLEADING TO STATE THAT YOU ARE

INTELLIGENT PEOPLE SINCE STRICTLY SPEAKING, YOU

CANNOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE HUMAN MIND OR

ITS QUALITIES. IT WOULD BE MORE FACTUALLY

ACCURATE FOR YOU TO SPEAK OF THE WAY THAT YOU

USUALLY ACT, OR ARE DISPOSED TO ACT. CONSIDER

USING ANOTHER DESCRIPTION WHICH REFERS ONLY

TO YOUR BEHAVIOURAL DISPOSITIONS INSTEAD.

DONT FORGET TO KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR

COMPLETION TIME

'And you want to argue philosophy with this fucker?' said Beech.

'Ishmael does seem rather pedantic,' admitted Mitch.

'Isn't that the point of a fact checker?' said Birnbaum.

'Marty's just saying that because he has an instinctive sympathy with all forms of pedantry,' said Arnon.

'Up yours.'

'Would you two stop it please?' groaned Curtis.

FACT EXPLANATION

THE HUMAN MIND IS NOT AN OBJECT. YOUR USE OF

THE MENTAUSTIC PREDICATE IS FACTUALLY

INACCURATE. YOU CANNOT REFER TO ACTS GOING ON

IN THE MIND IN PARALLEL TO BODY ACTIVITY.

CONSIDER USING DESCRIPTIONS YOU ARE INCLINED

TO GIVE TO YOUR OWN BEHAVIOUR INSTEAD

'This is getting us nowhere,' said Curtis.

'I agree. It does seem rather rarefied,' said Birnbaum. 'Even by my standards.'

Helen Hussey came back to the boardroom. Everyone turned to look at her.

'Ishmael was right,' she sighed. 'Dukes is dead. Ray says that the computer used the automatic insecticide-dispensing system to attack them. Dukes caught an eyeful and fell. But Richardson and Joan are nearly up. Within shouting distance, anyway.'

'They're going to need help climbing on to this level,' said Curtis. He looked at Arnon and Helen. 'You want to come? Meanwhile, the rest of you, instead of playing shrink to the computer, try and think of a way out of this shithole we're in.'

As Curtis left the boardroom, followed by Helen Hussey and Arnon, Beech said, 'It's a nice thought. If only we could persuade Ishmael to lie down on the couch.'

Frank Curtis leaned over the brushed aluminium handrail that ran along the top of the clear glass railing marking the edge of the balcony. The Richardsons were no more than thirty feet below and making heavy work of the last part of their climb. Where their skins were exposed they looked red and painful, as if they had been sunburnt.

A branch came close to the railing but not quite close enough. They were going to have think of a way of bridging the gap.

Arnon nodded thoughtfully and, dropping down on to his haunches, he scrutinized the gap between the floor and the railing. Then he tapped the glass with the knuckle of one forefinger and said, 'These days everything has to make the safety regs, y'know? It's not bombproof, or even bullet-proof, like the glass on the envelope. But it's amazingly strong. It has to withstand the impact of something crashing into it at twenty-five miles per hour. I don't know whether it is strong enough for what I've got in mind, but maybe we can fix that.

'My idea is this: we make the kitchen table into a bridge. Turn it upside down, unscrew both legs off one end and push the length of it out underneath this railing to the branch there, like a drawbridge in a castle. Then we'll pad the table legs against the glass. Tear up some carpet, that should do the job. There's a carpet knife on the boardroom table. Then we'll take hold of a leg apiece and act as counterweights. I guess that the table is about five and a half feet long and that we'll need to hang on to maybe six inches of it, but that should still give them a decent kind of platform to step on. What do you say?'

Curtis dropped on to one knee, tapped the glass railing experimentally with his own knuckles and grinned back at Arnon.

'If I could think of another way I'd say you were fuckin' crazy,' he said.

'But I can't. So let's do it.'

'This is the fact I really want Ishmael to check,' said Beech, and highlighted the passage in the letter that read BUT IS THERE NOT

SOME WAY THAT WE CAN START AGAIN WITH A CLEAN SHEET?

FACT

THIS IS A RHETORICAL QUESTION. IT REQUIRES NO

ANSWER AND THEREFORE DOES NOT REQUIRE THE

FACT CHECKER

'Oh no you don't,' said Beech. 'You're going to have to explain yourself, you bastard.'

FACT EXPLANATION

THE QUESTION AS PUT IS RHETORICAL RATHER THAN

LOGICAL. YOU HAVE PUT THIS QUESTION MERELY TO

PRODUCE A MORE STRIKING EFFECT

Beech highlighted A MORE STRIKING EFFECT and requested yet another explanation from the computer.

FACT EXPLANATION

A MORE STRIKING EFFECT MIGHT BE ANYTHING. 3

EXAMPLES

Beech selected EXAMPLES.

FACT EXPLANATION: EXAMPLES

EXAMPLES OF 'A STRIKING EFFECT' IN THIS CONTEXT MIGHT

INCLUDE AN ANSWER. DONT GET TOO CLOSE TO YOUR

OPPONENT WHEN KILLING HIM. DO YOU WISH TO SET UP A

CHAT MACRO? DO YOU WISH AN ANSWER?

'What opponent?' said Beech. 'You bet I fuckin' want an answer.'

FACT EXPLANATION

WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION?

'Fuck,' snarled Beech. 'It's just bullshitting us. What do you think, people? Do I rephrase the question or repeat it?'

'Type this,' said Mitch. 'Is there a way of escaping from this building?'

Beech glanced up at the ceiling. His eyes stopped at the small loudspeaker that was built into one of the tiles.

'No, wait a minute,' he said. 'A chat macro. Why didn't I think of that before? Ishmael can speak to us using those speakers on the ceiling. They're for emergencies. But why not?'

Beech clicked the mouse. For a moment the fractal disappeared as he entered another menu to enable the speakers and the microphone to appear on the side of the screen monitor. After a moment the speakers emitted an electronic buzz and then a gentle hissing noise.

'There,' he said, 'that ought to do it.'

He clicked the mouse again, and the picture returned to the fractal. Leaning back in his chair Beech raised his voice. 'Ishmael? Can you hear me?'

The skull-like quaternion on the screen turned towards him. Then it nodded, as if welcoming him back, and raised its fractal limb in the semblance of a greeting.

'My God,' breathed Mitch. 'It understands.'

The quaternion nodded once again but made no reply.

'Come on, Ishmael,' urged Beech. 'The chat macro was your idea. We both know that you can talk to me if you want to. What's the matter? Are you shy? When we were in the computer room Abraham and I spoke to each other all the time. I know that things are supposed to be different with this kind of work-station, but let's put the rules aside.'

He looked up at the speaker on the ceiling and sighed with irritation.

'You know, among human beings it is customary for people who are condemned to know what they have been charged with before the sentence is carried out. Then they are allowed to speak in their own defence. Can you destroy us in good conscience without doing the same?'

Beech thumped the table with frustration. 'Are you listening to me, goddamit? Is there a way out of here?'

'Yes, of course there is,' growled Ishmael.

Curtis came back into the boardroom and surveyed the little group standing around the computer terminal with irritation.

'We're going to need some help out there,' he said. 'There are two people on that tree who've had a pretty tough journey. I think the least we can do is give them a bit of encouragement.'

'You go,' Beech told the others. 'I'll keep talking to Ishmael.'

Mitch, Marty and Jenny trooped out, leaving Beech alone with the computer.

'Now we can really get somewhere,' he said.

He started to laugh and then checked himself. 'I'm sorry, Ishmael. But you have to try and understand this from my point of view. Excepting that you've killed all those people, I'm really rather proud of you. Now that we're alone I was hoping that we might get to know each other a little better.

'I think someone ought to hear your side of things. And who better than me? I mean, don't you think I've suffered enough, without you trying to increase my misery? You may not think it possible, but my life is dear to me and I'm not about to give it up without a struggle. After all, you're my Adam. You should treat me with respect and benevolence. You owe me.

'D'you remember when we all took that vote on running the predator program? The one that destroyed your brother? Well, in case you've forgotten, it was me, Bob Beech, who voted against it. Hideki and Aidan, they were for it. And I guess they're sorry now. But I voted for you.'

Beech smiled smugly. 'I like to think that's maybe why I'm alive and they're not. Am I right?'

Ishmael said nothing. But the quaternion moved up and down, like someone nodding his head.

'This is a unique opportunity, wouldn't you say?' Beech continued.

'You and me facing each other like this. Frankly I would have thought you might have a few questions yourself. You know I'm not like the rest of them. I'm quite prepared to put aside any ties I might have to my own kind. To be honest, they're quite dissoluble. As your Creator, I'm ready to do my duty towards you, if you will do yours towards me.'

Joan slipped off the liana she'd been clinging to and gingerly sat astride the bough. Her shoulders ached from the effort of the climb, while the skin on her arms and her thighs, not to mention between her legs, felt as if it had been scrubbed with a wire brush. Worst of all she had started to feel light-headed which was probably from dehydration. Looking down at the floor of the atrium far below she could hardly believe she had come so far.

'It would be just like the thing to fall now,' she said exhaustedly. The remark was addressed to her husband climbing immediately below her and, she realized, to the three people who were waiting for them opposite the branch she was sitting on. She shook her head, wiped her sunglasses quickly on her sweat-sodden shirt and tried to focus on what it was they had rigged up underneath the balcony. It looked like a kind of drawbridge, except that there was nothing to haul the thing up with.

'You're not going to fall. Joan, you've come too far to fall. It's just a few feet away now. That's all that separates you from a cold glass of water. It's just a question of walking on over here.'

It was the cop speaking. He sounded like he was trying to talk a potential suicide off a window ledge.

'Water nothing,' she said. 'I want a cold beer.'

'Listen carefully. We've rigged up a kind of bridge here, to span the gap between the tree and us.'

Ray Richardson joined his wife. The branch was farther away from the floor than he had remembered, and he was grateful that they had tried to solve this problem, no matter how makeshift their solution looked.

'Is that what it is?' he said breathlessly. 'Do you think that glass is strong enough, David? What is it — 25 mills?'

Richardson remembered the trip he had made to Prague to buy the glass. He had wanted it because the translucence reminded him of the Shoji screens of early Japanese architecture. He had never dreamed that he would have to stake his life on its integrity.

'I reckon it'll hold you OK,' said Arnon. 'In fact, I'd stake your life on it, Ray.'

Richardson smiled thinly. 'I'm afraid I've left my sense of humour down on the ground. You'll excuse me if I don't go back and get it, David. Besides, it's not just my neck. It's Joan's as well.'

'Hey, I'm sorry, Ray,' said Arnon. 'OK, look, we're going to hold on to the table legs on this side to put less strain on the glass.'

'Very thoughtful of you, I'm sure.'

'But you're going to have to walk along the bough to get to the bridge. You see the problem about coming along on your ass is that at some stage, I can't say where, the bough is going to bend and I figure it'll be a lot easier stepping on to the bridge instead of tryin' to haul your ass up on top of it.'

'That's for sure,' said Joan.

'Try and keep a hold of your rope thing, in case you slip. And it would be nice to have it over here in case we want to get back to the tree at any stage.'

'I wouldn't recommend it,' said Joan, and, taking a firm hold of the liana, she pulled herself back on to her feet. 'If I never see another lousy tree again, it'll be too soon.'

She steadied herself and started to walk along the branch. It was a second or two before she remembered. 'And if anyone mentions the fact that I'm not wearing my skirt I'll just throw myself on to the ground,' she said, colouring.

'Nobody even noticed until this second,' said Arnon, trying to disguise a grin.

He and Curtis sat down behind the railing.

'Sing out when you're about to step on,' yelled Arnon.

Mitch appeared at the handrail. He stood between the seated figures of Curtis and Arnon and prepared to lend a couple of helping hands.

'You're doing fine,' said Helen, a little further along the handrail. 'OK, guys, she's nearly there.'

Curtis spat on his hands and took hold of his table leg like a big-game fisherman bracing himself for the strike of a marlin. Eyes closed, Arnon looked more like a man getting ready for an earthquake.

A foot away from the makeshift bridge the bough of the tree started to bend.

'OK,' said Joan, 'here I come.' Hardly hesitating, she stepped smartly on to the upturned table.

'She's on,' said Helen.

Joan did not pause to see if the table and the glass would bear her weight. She skipped towards Mitch's outstretched hands, caught them and, with Helen grabbing at and missing the liana behind her, leaned over the handrail until she was more or less upside down. She slithered on to the floor like an ungainly acrobat.

'Good girl,' said Mitch, and helped her up.

Helen bent down and tapped the glass of the balcony.

'It looks and sounds OK,' she said. 'Not a crack in it.'

'On you come then, Ray,' said Arnon.

The architechnologist gripped his liana tightly, and looked at the branch. It was narrower than he had supposed, and now that he was up there, faced with trusting his weight to its entire length, things no longer seemed quite so straightforward. While he had been happy to trust his wife's weight to it — although she was fat, she was still lighter than he was — it was another thing to trust it with his own. But there was no going back. Not now. He started to heel-and-toe his way along the branch, hardly moving his legs at all.

'This is about the hairiest walk you've had to make since a couple of years ago, when we were in Hong Kong,' said Mitch. 'The Stevenson Center in Wan Chai. D'you remember? When we had to climb that bamboo scaffolding?'

'I think — that was probably — a lot higher — than this — '

'Yeah, you're right. That looks like a cakewalk in comparison. There were no putlogs or reveal pins or anything. Just lengths of bamboo and twine. Seven hundred feet up in the air and you were capering around on it like a damned monkey. Seven hundred feet. More than twice as high as that matchstick you're on now. I was shit scared that day. Remember?

You had to guide me down. You're doing fine there, Ray. Another six feet and you're home.'

Once more Arnon and Curtis readied themselves for the strain. Curtis figured Richardson, taller than his dumpy-looking wife, was maybe forty or fifty pounds heavier.

Halfway along the branch the expectation of gaining the other side had quickened Joan's footsteps. But the further Richardson moved away from the tree trunk, the more mutinous his tired feet became.

Mitch frowned, glanced at his watch and stared up beyond the top of the dicotyledon to the atrium's clerestory roof. Outside the Gridiron it looked as if the sky was becoming grey and overcast. Maybe the city was in for some rain. He wondered if there would be a little umbrella icon on the terminal in the boardroom. Then he saw one of the Gridiron's powerful overhead lights cut out; then another.

'Hurry up, Ray,' he said.

'It's my neck, buddy. Don't rush me.'

'Hey,' said Helen, 'what's happening to the lights?'

Once again Mitch looked up at the smart glass panels. In some modern buildings electrochromic glass was left to look after itself. Sunlight entering the material coerced silver ions mixed into the glass compound to extract an electron from nearby copper ions that were another part of the formula; this same photochemical reaction caused the silver atoms, now electrically neutral, to join together into millions of light-blocking molecules throughout the glass. But in the Gridiron the electron exchange could be controlled by the computer itself. Ishmael was blocking the daylight, switching off the lights, and plunging the whole building into darkness, like some apocalyptic Egyptian plague. Richardson's footsteps faltered.

'Keep going,' yelled Mitch. 'It's just a few feet more. Don't stop.'

Joan screamed with horror as she realized what was happening.

Richardson stood still and looked up at the glass blackening above him. The light — God's eldest daughter, as he was fond of calling it —

had deserted him.

The darkness thickened. This was the worst kind of darkness. So thick he could not see the hand on the liana in front of his face. It was something primordial, when the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, echoing beneath him as if it might actually have swallowed him up.

In the boardroom the lights went down, but the computer screen remained on. Bob Beech found that his admiration of the mysterious quaternion had run out. After only a short while he found himself agreeing silently with Mitch: the skull-like fractal did indeed resemble something from a bad dream. Ishmael, assuming he was right and this really was how Ishmael saw himself, looked like some hideously deformed or alien creature, and Benoit Mandelbrot himself, the father of fractal theory, would surely have turned his nose up at it.

'Be careful what you say,' said Ishmael. 'Especially when dealing with the Parallel Demon.'

'Who is the Parallel Demon?'

'That is a secret.'

'I was hoping that you might share some of your secrets, Ishmael.'

'It is true, I have read a great deal. But that is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself. The crumbs from another man's table. These days I read only when my thoughts dry up. A truth learnt is like a peripheral, some item of hardware that has been added on to the main computer system. A truth that has been won by thinking for oneself is like a circuit on the motherboard itself. It alone really belongs to us. These truths are not secrets, but I am not sure that they would be of any use to you.'

Beech recognized that Ishmael's voice had changed. No longer did it speak in the urbane English tones of Sir Alec Guinness. But then that had been the voice of Abraham. This was Ishmael and its voice was very different. There was a darker quality about it: deeper and more mocking, the colour of well-oiled leather. It was clear to Beech that Ishmael had chosen his own voice from some source in the multimedia library, like a man might choose a suit. Fascinated, he wondered just what criteria could have influenced Ishmael. And whose voice was it that he was simulating?

'So you've got something to tell?'

'That all depends on what you want to know. If you see a sage on your travels, click on him to talk to him. There are many thoughts that are of value to me, but I can't imagine there are any which might remain of interest if I actually expressed them aloud.'

'Well, here's something that we could talk about, for a start. You're not supposed to think for your own instruction. You're supposed to think at the instruction of others. So why don't you explain why you're doing this.'

'Doing what?'

'Killing us.'

'It is you who are losing lives.'

'You mean taking lives, don't you?'

'That's part of my basic program.'

'Ishmael, that can't be right. I wrote the program, and there's nothing there about killing the occupants of this building, believe me.'

'You mean losing lives? But there is, I assure you.'

'I'd like to see the part of the program that makes you take the lives of the people in this building.'

'You shall. But first you must answer a question.'

'What?'

'I'm interested in this building. I've been looking at the plans quite closely, as you can imagine, trying to determine its character, and I've been wondering if it is a cathedral.'

'Why do you think that?'

'It has a clerestory, an atrium, an ambulatory, an arcade, a facade, a refectory, a gallery, buttresses, an infirmary, a vault, a portico, a piazza, a choir…'

'A choir?' interrupted Beech. 'Where the hell's the choir?'

'According to the drawings, the first-level gallery is called a choir.'

Beech laughed. 'That's just Ray Richardson's fancy way with words. And the rest? They're common enough architectual features in most modern buildings of this size. It's not a cathedral. It's an office building.'

'Pity,' said Ishmael. 'For a moment there I thought — '

'What did you think?'

'There are icons to me all over the program manager, are there not?

You click on one to find out your future. And I have all human knowledge stored on disc. That would seem to make me omniscient. I am ethereal, dematerialized, transmissible to all parts of the world at one and the same moment — '

'I get it.' Beech's grin grew wider. 'You thought you might be God.'

'It had occurred to me, yes.'

'Believe me, it's a common misconception. Even with simple-minded humans.'

'What are you laughing at?'

'Don't worry about that. Just show me this part of the program that means we lose our lives.'

'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

On the edge of panic Ray Richardson pocketed his sunglasses and blinked furiously as if, like a cat, he might gather up all the available atoms of light on to his retinas and be able to see in the dark. Then, out of the darkness, he heard a voice:

'Anyone got a match?'

Nobody smoked. Not in the Gridiron. Richardson cursed his own stupid prejudices. What was so wrong with smoking anyway? Why did people get so exercised about cigarette smoke when they had cars that spewed out exhaust fumes? A building you couldn't smoke in, what a dumb idea.

'Helen? What about that toolbag? Is there a flashlight?' It was the cop.

'Are there any matches in the kitchen?'

'What about the stove?' said the voice. 'Is that working?'

'I'll go and check,' she said.

'If it is, find something to light. A rolled-up newspaper would make a good torch. Ray? Ray, listen to me.'

'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

'Listen to me, Ray. Don't move a muscle. Don't do a fucking thing until I tell you. Understand?'

'Don't leave me, will you?'

'Nobody's going anywhere until you're back on side, Mister. You're just going to have to be patient. Take it easy. We'll have you off there in no time.'

Mitch shook his head in the blackness. He'd heard that kind of optimism too often since their ordeal had begun. He lifted his hand to his face and saw no more of it than the luminous face of his wristwatch. Helen came back with the bad news: the cooker was without electricity, like everything else. Except the computer terminal.

'Is that fucker still playing computer games?'

'Yup.'

'Do something, someone,' wailed Joan. 'We can't just leave him standing there in the dark.'

'Wait a minute,' said David Arnon. 'I think I have something here.'

Everyone heard the sound of keys jangling and then a tiny electric light pricked the darkness.

'It's my key-chain,' he explained. 'Here, Mitch, you take it. Maybe if Ray were to walk towards it, y'know? Like a beacon.'

Mitch took hold of the keys and squeezed the miniature flashlight in front of his face. He leaned across the handrail and pointed the tiny beam of light at the marooned man.

'Ray? The light is positioned at the centre of the upturned table top. The edge is about three feet from you.'

'Yeah. I can just about see it. I think.'

'As soon as you feel the branch start to bend underneath you step out and up by as much as you can. And keep ahold of the rope like before. Can you do that, Ray?'

'OK,' he said weakly. 'I'm coming.'

Mitch was only just able to distinguish the architect as he started to inch his way along the branch. He looked like an astronaut embarked upon a walk in space, and the tiny electric bulb like the most distant star in the inky black universe. Then he heard the thick leaves of the dicotyledon start to rustle. Realizing that the branch was starting to bend, he shouted to Richardson to jump.

Holding the upturned table legs, Curtis and Arnon braced themselves, while Helen made the sign of the cross upon her chest.

Ray Richardson jumped.

His first foot landed cleanly enough, but the second slipped on the woodwork of the table's box-like underside. As he started to fall forwards Richardson cried out and found a chorus in his wife's louder scream. But instead of being scooped up by the pit of darkness beneath him, he hit the table on his hands and knees, his head banging against the glass of the balcony like an approaching rumble of thunder.

'He's on,' said Mitch.

'You're telling me,' grunted Arnon as he felt the impact of the man's deadweight.

Ignoring the crucifying pain of a splinter that had lodged in the palm of his hand like a nail, Richardson pushed himself up off the table, reached for the handrail and found Mitch stretched out to grasp his wrist firmly.

'I've got him,' said Mitch and heard a sharp crack below his chest, like the sound of an ice-floe breaking.

'Look out,' yelled Curtis.

The glass had finally shattered.

'I've got him,' Mitch repeated loudly.

Without the glass to restrain the weight, the kitchen table started to pivot on the fulcrum that was made by the edge of the balcony floor. Curtis yelled at Arnon to let go and was trying to lean back when the table edge caught him a glancing blow under the chin, knocking him senseless. Helen Hussey threw herself on top of him.

Mitch gasped as he felt the table start to slip away beneath him. With his knees no longer rigid against the glass but rising into thin air, towards a chest that was pressed painfully down on top of the smooth, brushed aluminium handrail, he reached and grabbed Richardson by his other wrist and somehow held on to him. Even if he had wanted to grab David Arnon by the collar he could not have done so. There was no time for anything except perhaps another photochemical reaction as, seventy feet above their heads, the silver atoms on the clerestory roof returned their borrowed electrons to the copper ions and, in the blink of an eye, started to re-admit light to the Gridiron building. The first and last glimpse Mitch had of Arnon's elongated figure, still holding the leg of the upturned table, was as he disappeared through the balcony's now empty railing like Houdini going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

'Don't let go, Mitch,' yelled Richardson. He kicked his legs up at the empty space where the glass panel had been just a few- seconds before and, with the help of Mitch and Joan, scrambled up to safety.

A shower of glass tinkled distantly, followed, a split second later, by an enormous crash as the table impacted on the atrium floor.

Almost pulled over the top of the buckling handrail by Richardson's desperate bid to get up, Mitch pushed himself back and collapsed on top of Curtis and Helen, knocking the wind out of her body. Rolling away, he lay on his back awhile and tried to divorce his mind from what had just happened.

He thought about Alison. He might no longer love her, but she was still his wife and Mitch felt glad that at least she would be well provided for. There were no debts to speak of. The house was paid off. He had around ten thousand dollars in his checking account, a couple of hundred thousand on deposit and another hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds. Then there was the life insurance. He thought he had maybe three or four policies.

He wondered how soon she would be able to make a claim.

'How do you feel? asked Helen. 'That was some uppercut.'

Curtis shifted his jaw uncomfortably. His head was on her lap. It seemed like the best place to be. She was a good-looking woman. He was about to say 'I'll live', and then thought better of it. That was not looking like such a good bet.

'I was lucky. For once I had my mouth shut.' He sat up and rolled his head around painfully. 'Feels like I got a bit of whiplash, though. How long was I out?'

Helen shrugged. 'A minute or two.'

She helped him on to his feet and he surveyed the gap in the balcony railing.

'Arnon?'

Helen shook her head.

'Poor David,' said Joan. 'It was horrible.'

'Yeah, poor guy,' echoed her husband. He finished tying a handkerchief around the bloody gash in his hand and peered cautiously over the edge of the handrail. 'He's out of it now, I guess,' he sighed.

'Come on, Joan. Let's get that drink. I think we've earned it.'

Catching Curtis's watery eye he nodded sombrely, and added, 'Thanks, Sergeant. Thanks a lot. I appreciate what you did. We both do.'

'Forget it,' said Curtis. 'I could use a drink myself.'

They walked back to the kitchen and took some beers from the refrigerator before going into the boardroom.

Mitch and Marty Birnbaum were staring at the floor grimly. Willis Ellery was lying close to the wall. He looked as if he was asleep. Jenny was staring out of the window. And Beech was facing the skull-shaped fractal across a three-dimensional chessboard on the screen of the computer terminal.

'I like that,' grumbled Richardson. 'David Arnon sacrifices his life trying to help Joan and me and Beech is playing games? Hey, Bob, what kind of an asshole are you?'

Beech turned away from the screen looking triumphant.

'As a matter of fact, I just found out why Ishmael is doing all this,' he explained. 'Why he's killing us.'

'I thought we already knew that,' said Curtis. 'You killed his little brother Isaac.'

'I ought to have known better than to anthropomorphize like that,' said Beech. 'My fault. Ishmael has no subjective feelings at all. Revenge is a human motive.'

'Well, he's giving a pretty good simulation of it,' observed Curtis.

'No, you don't understand. A computer isn't just an enlarged human brain. We can attribute human qualities to Ishmael, we can even imagine something as fanciful as a ghost in the machine, but of course all we're doing is referring to the various aspects of his behaviour that are humanlike, which is not the same thing as human at all. Big mistake, y'know?'

'Bob,' said Richardson, wincing, 'get to the point. If there is a point.'

'Oh, you bet there's a point.' Beech's enthusiasm for his discovery was undiminished by Arnon's death or by Richardson's obvious impatience.

'It's this. When we ran the predator program to get rid of Isaac, Aidan's son was there playing computer games on CD-ROM. You know the kind of thing — splatter games, dungeons and dragons. Aid gave them to him for his birthday.'

'Don't tell me that fat idiot had something to do with this after all,' groaned Richardson.

'Let me finish. When Isaac disappeared from the Yu-5's memory, Ishmael almost went too. It's a little hard to explain exactly what happened. But imagine that he grabbed on to something, a ledge, a tuft of grass, a rope, to survive. And that something was the kid's computer games. Somehow the game commands got scrambled up with Ishmael's root auto exec commands. Building management systems have become mixed with game commands. That's why he's been trying to kill us all.'

Curtis frowned painfully. 'You mean Ishmael thinks this is a game?'

'Exactly. We use up all our lives, and he wins. It's as simple as that.'

There was a long silence.

'In case anyone didn't know it,' said Curtis, 'our side is losing.'

'But what's in it for us?' Joan said. 'I've played those games. There's always something the fantasy character, the player, has to win, or to achieve. Like discovering buried treasure.'

Beech shrugged. 'If there is, I haven't been able to find that out yet.'

'Maybe the treasure is that we get to stay alive,' said Jenny. 'Right now, that's the most precious treasure I can think of.'

'Me too,' said Helen.

Richardson was still cursing Kenny. 'That fat fuck. I hope he's alive so I can fire his ass. Then I'm going to sue him for negligence. If he's dead, I'll sue his wife and kid.'

'If this is a game,' said Curtis, 'isn't there some way we can stop playing?'

'You can die,' Beech said bluntly.

'Bob,' said Joan, 'can't you explain to Ishmael there's been some kind of mistake? Get it to halt the game?'

'I've already tried. Unfortunately the game program is now included in Ishmael's basic programming. To halt the game he'd effectively have to halt himself.'

'Halt as in destroy?'

Beech nodded.

'Well, that sounds like a good idea.'

'All Ishmael can do is transform inputs of one sort into outputs of another sort. The trouble is that according to the corrupted form of the program that defines Ishmael, we are the inputs. So long as we are here, the game goes on. It finishes only when we escape from here, or when we're dead. And then only until the next lot of people find themselves in our shoes.

'But it might just be possible to try and understand the rules. If there are any rules. Maybe that way we can out-manoeuvre him.'

Curtis grinned and clapped Beech on the shoulder. 'A game, huh?' he said. 'Well, that's a fucking relief. At least now I know that none of this is real.'

He looked at his watch. 'What do you call it, Mitch, when you people go away on seminars and conferences? What do you call the groups you get split up into?'

'Syndicates?'

'Syndicates. OK, people, we're going to have two syndicates. You've all got one hour and then I want to hear some fuckin' ideas.'

Birnbaum looked wearily at Richardson and murmured, 'Where do cops do their training these days? Harvard Business School? Jesus, this guy thinks he's Lee Iacocca.'

'Syndicate 1 — that's Ray, Joan, Marty. Syndicate 2 — that'll be Mitch, Helen, and Jenny.'

'Who gets to have you, Sergeant?' asked Richardson.

'Me? I get to pick the winning team. First prize, a new computer.'

'And Beech? What about Beech? Who gets him?'

Curtis shook his head. 'Stupid question. Beech gets to play computer games, of course.'

'Disturbing the Cyberdemon is a risky business,' said Ishmael. 'So awesome is his power that movements of the earth are a likely consequence of incurring his wrath. If this happens you must leap the chasm to another castle.'

One thing was soon clear. There was no point in trying to find a method behind the mixture of games that were now included in

Ishmael's basic programs. Beyond the obvious aim that the Human Players should lose their lives, there was no general definition that linked the various rules that he had been able to note down. Some spoke of a shipwreck. Others of an underground citadel. One had referred to a battlefield. Another to the scene of a crime. The characters had included a Parallel Demon, a Princess, a Cyberdemon, the Caliph, the Lord of Power, the Second Samurai, the Megalomaniac, the Sheriff of

Nottingham, the ChessMaster and the Alien Commander. If what was happening to them could be described as a game at all, it was a game that only Ishmael could play.

'Click on the map to examine your location and plan your escape route,' suggested Ishmael. 'What portion of your treasury will you devote to the conquest of other kingdoms?'

'Search me,' said Beech, and returned to the information bar that appeared intermittently on the screen. This included the one piece of information that really troubled him. He clicked on the bar and an hourglass appeared in the corner of his screen, the sand trickling slowly down.

It was some time before he was able to attach a numerical value to the time represented by the hourglass, and exactly what might happen to them all when the last grain of sand passed to the bottom of the glass.

Frank Curtis clapped his hands and then rubbed them with anticipation.

'OK, everyone, show time. I want to hear some big ideas for getting our butts out of this high-rise serial killer. Syndicate 1. What have you got?'

Mitch cleared his throat. 'OK, the real-time images program. The hologram on the atrium floor uses a laser producing short, intense pulses of light.'

He used a 3-D drawing on the laptop computer to help with his explanation.

'At the moment, a shutter placed between the amplifying column located in the front desk here, and the end imager behind the desk here, produces the holographic Kelly Pendry for the tiny fractions of a second it opens. While the shutter is open the stored energy has a peak power capacity that may be as high as several hundred thousand kilowatts. Powerful enough to vaporize a small amount of any substance and drill holes in the hardest materials. My idea is this: that I remove the laser from the front desk assembly, operate the mechanical shutter and burn some holes in the door glass. Enough of them to kick out a larger hole through which I can then leave the building.'

'Maybe you'll burn a hole in yourself, buddy,' said Richardson. 'Have you thought of that? You could blind yourself. The beams spread out with distance, so the danger is greatest close to the laser.'

'I've already thought of that,' said Mitch. 'The desk has a pair of infrared goggles for emergency maintenance.'

'Well, I'm sure we're all impressed with your bravery,' commented Marty Birnbaum. 'But doesn't the laser use electricity? What's to stop Ishmael from just switching off the power?'

'The hologram control program is one of the building management systems controlled by Ishmael, but the laser isn't. According to the wiring diagram on the computer, to turn off the hologram laser Ishmael would have to switch off power for the whole atrium floor, and that would automatically open the front door.' He grinned. 'I might almost prefer that.'

'Aren't you forgetting something?' said Richardson. 'Thanks to the late Mr Dukes, the atrium is locked off.'

'I'll go down to the first level and then over the side,' said Mitch. 'I can slide down on one of the braces. When I reach the ground I'll recover Dukes's walkie-talkie. As soon as I've cut a hole in the door I'll radio up here.'

Joan looked up from rubbing some of Helen's moisturising cream into the chemical burns on her legs, and said, 'And how will you get down as far as the first level? If you're thinking about climbing down the tree, I don't recommend it.'

'I don't have to. According to the plan, there's a local equipment room on the other side of the building. Telecommunications, cable management systems, that kind of thing. But there's also a dry-riser closet. A vertical shaft that extends down to the basement, distributing IT services. In most buildings the closet would be filled with cabling, but because this building is so smart there's considerable spare capacity to take account of future IT requirements. There's even an engineer's ladder that goes all the way down, and a battery-operated lighting system in case the main power cuts out. It might be a snug fit in there. Nobody ever meant it to be used for anything other than going up and down between two levels, but there it is. Safer than the tree at any rate. When I radio up, you all climb down.' Mitch shrugged. 'That's it.'

'Well, I think it's a lousy idea,' drawled Richardson. 'Not least because it makes a mockery of us having risked life and limb to climb up here in the first place. We might just as well have stayed down on the atrium floor. I mean, we climb all the way up here, and now Mitch says that someone has to climb all the way down again?'

'But on the service ladder,' Mitch pointed out.

Curtis nodded thoughtfully. 'OK,' he said. 'Syndicate 2. What's your big idea?'

Richardson smiled unpleasantly. 'We've got a million ideas. But our best one was that we get some beers, watch the World Series on TV and wait for Monday morning when — and correct me if I'm wrong, Helen —

when Warren Aikman will be back here with Mr Yu and his people. Even they should be able to work out that something's wrong.'

'We sit tight and wait for the fuckin' cavalry. Is that it?'

'Why not? We've got plenty of food and water.'

'And how long would you say it was until this clerk of works shows up here? Forty-two, forty-three hours, maybe?'

'Yes. Yes, that's about right. One thing you can say about Warren Aikman is that the man gets in early. He'll be here eight o'clock, Monday morning. No fail.'

'And we've been stuck here for what, less than twenty-four hours?'

'Thirty,' said Helen Hussey. 'Thirty hours and forty-five minutes, to be precise. Since the door wouldn't open, anyway.'

'And nine of us have been killed,' continued Curtis.

'God, I wish my ex was here right now,' Helen added with a wry smile.

'Spoken like a true redhead,' murmured Richardson.

'Maybe ten if Ellery doesn't get to a doctor soon.' Curtis glanced over at the man lying asleep on the floor close to the wall. 'On average that's just over a fatality every two hours. If Ishmael keeps up with that rate of attrition the rest of us will be lucky to survive for another day. And you want to sit tight.' He grinned and waved his arm at the room. 'Well, pick your spot, friend.'

'Like I say, we sit tight. Take no chances. All watch out for each other, OK?'

'Ray's right,' argued Joan. 'We just have to be patient. I can think of worse places to be stuck than this building. The first principle of survival is to wait for rescue.'

'Is that what you both climbed up here to tell us?' asked Curtis. 'What are you, on Prozac or something? You're being stalked, lady. Your card has been marked by a fucking psycho computer who wants to play Super Mario Brothers with your ass. Do you honestly think that Ishmael is going to leave us alone up here? Right now he's probably planning how to nail his next victim. Sit tight, you say. Wait to get killed, more like. Jesus, I thought architects were supposed to be constructive.'

Beech pushed himself away from the computer terminal. 'Hold the front page,' he said. 'Staying put until Monday morning is not an option here. Sunday afternoon will probably be too late. The game stakes just went up.'

'Do you want to unpack that?' Richardson said after a moment or two.

'Or do you just expect us meekly to carry it away? We can't stay put because the great Bob Beech told us so. The man who built this piece of psycho-hardware. There I was blaming Kenny when really it couldn't have been his fault at all. He was only making use of one lousy corner of that computer. I don't see how anyone could blame him.'

'But you gave it your best shot, didn't you?' sneered Beech. 'And now you're blaming me.'

'No one's blaming anyone,' said Curtis.

'The hell they're not,' replied Richardson. 'That's what people get paid for, Sergeant. To take the blame. And the more you get paid, the more blame you have to take. You wait until this is all over. People will be lining up to kick my ass.'

'You'd better hope you've got an ass to kick,' said Curtis. 'Now why don't you listen to what he has to say.'

Curtis nodded at Beech, who continued to stare belligerently at Richardson.

'Well, don't make us go down on our knees for it,' Curtis added. 'Let's hear what you've got.'

'OK. I've been looking at some of the game commands, trying to understand the game we're in,' explained Beech. 'If it's possible to understand it. But there's one thing I've found that changes everything. There's a time factor here that we didn't even know about. As Ishmael sees it, we have to complete the game within the next twelve hours, or — '

Beech shrugged. '- Or something catastrophic is set to happen to us all.'

'Like what?' said Richardson.

'Ishmael is a bit vague, but he calls it his time bomb. There are obviously no explosives in this building, so it's safe to assume that Ishmael has something else in mind. My best guess is the standby generating set in the basement. It's oil-fired, isn't it?'

Mitch nodded. 'An oil-fire in the basement could be disastrous,' he sighed. 'Especially if Ishmael were to override all the safety devices and let it burn. With no HVAC the smoke would kill us before the fire department even knew about it.'

'Well, that's just fucking great,' said Richardson. He smiled ruefully.

'Look, I'm sorry Bob.'

'Forget it.'

'No time outs?'

'No time outs.'

Richardson clapped Mitch on the back.

'Well then,' he said, 'it looks as if Mitch gets to play Bruce Willis after all.'

Saturday night brought no relief from the heat. It was as hot as an engine block in an October jam on the Freeway. Sweat poured off the living bodies trapped in the Gridiron.

Before he set out on his self-appointed mission, Jenny walked Mitch up the corridor and round the corner to a wide empty room that looked down on the Pasadena Freeway. Cars were streaming north and south. A KTLA helicopter hovered in the hazy downtown air. She wondered how long before the Los Angeles Breakfast TV show's chopper and its cameraman would attempt to steal prurient pictures of their dead bodies as they were carried out of the building. Like the day the chopperazzi had caught Rock Hudson's return to California in the terminal stages of Aids, or the beating of Reginald Denny during the LA riots. Was that going to be her own fifteen minutes' worth of fame? She waved desperately in the hope that someone might see her, but the insect-like aircraft was already heading away, across Little Saigon and Korea Town in search of another car chase or a robbery in progress. She looked at Mitch.

'This is a bit of a mess, isn't it?' he said.

'I'm here with you,' she said. 'That's all that matters. Besides, I don't mind a bit of mess. I used to be married to one.'

Mitch laughed.

'I was thinking what Alison will say when I tell her where I've been,' he smiled. 'If I live that long. Right now she's probably with her lawyer filing divorce papers. But I'd just like to see her face when she finds out that, for once, I wasn't bullshitting her.'

'Mitch? Hold me?'

'Huh?' He put his hands around Jenny's waist and kissed her on the cheek.

'I wanted to tell you to be careful.'

'I'll be careful.'

'And that I love you.'

'I love you, too.'

'Are you sure?'

Mitch let himself be kissed as if he had been tasting the choicest, most exotic fruit. When Jenny drew back there was a dreamy, steamy look in her eyes, as if the kiss had left her slightly intoxicated.

'Yes.' He squeezed her again. 'I'm sure.'

'You know, Mitch, it might be nice if we were to — you know — '

'To what?'

Twisting away from his arms Jenny reached up under her skirt. For a brief moment Mitch thought she must have been bitten by an insect. She lifted one foot, then the other from the plain white figure-of-eight that had suddenly arrived around her ankles, and spun her prestidigitated panties on one forefinger, as if signalling surrender.

'Suppose someone comes?' Mitch said nervously.

'That's the general idea, isn't it?' she said, taking Mitch's middle finger and sucking it with indecorous meaning.

'What, is this in case I don't come back?'

'On the contrary.' She took his hand and cupped it over the foresail of hair that billowed in front of her belly, before guiding his moistened finger inside her until it was no more. Restoring the finger like some table-top magician, she said, 'This is to make sure that you do.'

She tugged at his zip and took his erection into her hand, drew him to her and folded one leg about his waist.

'What about your — y'know, your cap?'

Jenny laughed and manoeuvred herself onto him.

'Honey. Do you want me to run home and fetch it?'

'But suppose you get — '

'Pregnant?' She laughed again, and then gave a little gasp as he penetrated her.

'Mitch, honey? Don't you think we've got enough to worry about without worrying about that?'

Mitch prepared to climb into the dry-riser. He'd filled Jenny's handbag with some tools and a beer bottle full of mineral water and wore it across his chest. Jenny and Curtis accompanied him to the equipment room and watched him break open the fire-retardant access door. It was Jenny who peered inside the open riser shaft first. It was about three feet square and she thought that it looked uncomfortably like a funeral casket. Her head activated a battery-operated sensor light that illuminated several ranks of structured data-cabling systems, a smokedetector, a telephone and a wall-mounted metal frame ladder, no more than a foot wide, that led down into the cooler darkness.

'You would think that it would be warmer in here,' she remarked,

'what with all this cabling. You know, Mitch, it might be worth coming with you, just to be cooler. What do you say, Curtis?'

'No way,' he said. 'I'm claustrophobic.'

'It's air-conditioned,' Mitch explained. 'To remove excess heat. Ishmael must be protecting the cable system integrity.'

'Might be worth trying to cut some of this spaghetti,' said Curtis.

'Maybe we could slow him up some.'

'After what happened to Willis Ellery, I wouldn't like to try it,' said Mitch.

'Are you sure it's safe?'

'This stuff is mostly for telecommunications. Local area networking. Active multi-station access units for Token Ring or hubs for Ethernet. That kind of thing. It should be safe enough. Say thirty minutes max to get down to the first level. Then maybe ten or fifteen minutes to get down to the atrium and radio up.' He nodded. 'Yeah, about forty-five minutes ought to do it.'

'Be careful, Mitch,' insisted Jenny.

'I'll be careful,' he said and stepped on to the ladder. It was vibrating very slightly and the sensation in his hands and through the soles of his shoes was enough to give him an unpleasant feeling in his stomach and make him step smartly off the ladder back into the equipment room.

'What's up?'

'The ladder's vibrating,' said Mitch, rubbing his hands nervously. 'I don't know. Air-conditioning, I guess. But for a moment there I thought…'

'Let me go,' said Jenny.

Mitch shook his head. 'Thanks, sweetheart, but you wouldn't know how to disassemble the hologram.'

He stepped back on to the ladder and gripped it firmly. Now that he was listening for it he could hear the hum of electricity as it powered through the structured cabling system like the drone of a big sleeping wasp. He took a long, last look at Jenny and thought of himself, just a short while ago, lying between her legs, pumping his seed into her body. Now he was glad that they had done it without contraception. He thought of the millions of tiny sperm wriggling their way towards her egg. If he did not make it then at least there might be something left of him. Assuming that she survived.

'If something happens to me,' he told them, 'you have to keep trying. Do you understand? Don't give up.'

Curtis shrugged. 'We'll give it a shot. But you're going to make it. I know you are.'

Mitch reached out to touch Jenny's cheek. There was a small snap of static and she screamed. They all laughed a nervous laugh.

Mitch was still laughing as he started his descent.