Utopia

by Lincoln Child

 

 

CON­TENTS

 

To my daugh­ter, Veron­ica

 

AC­KNOWL­EDG­MENTS

MANY PEO­PLE HELPED make this book a re­al­ity. My cousin, Greg Tear, was in­volved al­most from the be­gin­ning, and proved him­self both a fount of ideas and a tire­less sound­ing board. Er­ic Si­monoff, my agent at Jan­klow & Nes­bit, did a hero­ic job of read­ing (and, bless him, re-​read­ing) the manuscript and of­fer­ing vi­tal crit­icism. Bet­sy Mitchell proved to be a sup­port­ive and shrewd read­er, and the nov­el is much the bet­ter for her in­put and that of her as­so­ciates. And Matthew Sny­der of Cre­ative Artists Agen­cy proved him­self once again to be the best gun­slinger on the West Coast.

 

I’d like to thank my ed­itor at Dou­ble­day, Ja­son Kauf­man, for his en­thu­si­asm and his in­valu­able as­sis­tance with the manuscript. To Spe­cial Agent Dou­glas Margi­ni, for his ad­vice on weapons and law en­force­ment pro­ce­dures—and for the “ride­along”—my thanks. And I’d like to give spe­cial thanks to my co-​con­spir­ator and writ­ing part­ner, Dou­glas Pre­ston, for his ex­ten­sive in­put and for en­cour­ag­ing me to write this book in the first place. Through­out sev­en joint nov­els he has proven him­self to be both a loy­al part­ner and a close friend, and I look for­ward to our next sev­en col­lab­ora­tions. Doug, take a bow.

 

There are oth­ers whose con­tri­bu­tions, large and small, must be ac­knowl­edged: Bob Win­cott, Lee Suc­kno, Pat Al­loc­co, Tony Trisch­ka, Stan Wood, Bob Przy­byl­ski. No doubt there are oth­ers I’ve ne­glect­ed to name, and to you I of­fer my cring­ing apolo­gies in ad­vance.

 

I want to thank the many mem­bers of the Pre­ston-​Child on­line bul­letin board; your en­thu­si­asm and ded­ica­tion won’t be for­got­ten.

 

And last, but far from least, I want to thank the three wom­en in my life—my moth­er, Nan­cy; my wife, Luchie; and my daugh­ter, Veron­ica—for mak­ing this book pos­si­ble.

 

It goes with­out say­ing that Utopia—and its cast, crew, and guests—are en­tire­ly imag­inary. Ref­er­ences to per­sons, places, and things out­side the Park are ei­ther fic­ti­tious or used fic­ti­tious­ly.

 

u•to•pi•a (yoo•tō'pē•ah) n. 1. A state or sit­ua­tion of per­fec­tion. 2. An ide­al place or lo­ca­tion, fre­quent­ly imag­inary.

 

 

PRO­LOGUE

IT WAS THE ul­ti­mate coup, and Corey knew it. Not on­ly had he scored a Jack the Rip­per T-​shirt—the ex­act thing his moth­er had sworn for three months that she would nev­er, ev­er buy him—but now the whole fam­ily was about to ride Not­ting Hill Chase. Ev­ery­one knew it was the most amaz­ing ride, not just in Gaslight but in the en­tire Park. Two of his school bud­dies had been here on va­ca­tion last month, and nei­ther one had been al­lowed on it. But Corey was de­ter­mined. He’d no­ticed his par­ents were hav­ing a blast, de­spite them­selves. Just as he’d known they would: af­ter all, this was on­ly the newest, best amuse­ment park in the whole world. One by one, the lit­tle fam­ily rules had fall­en away, un­til at last he’d tried for the Big Kahu­na. An in­ten­sive half hour of whin­ing wore them down. And now, as the line ahead grew short­er and short­er, Corey knew he was home free.

He could see the ride was re­al­ly fan­cy, even for here. They were in some kind of wind­ing al­ley with old hous­es on ei­ther side. There was a faint chilly breeze, with a musty smell to it. Won­der how they faked that. Lit­tle flames burned atop iron lamp­lights. It was fog­gy, of course, like the rest of Gaslight. Now he could see the load­ing plat­form ahead. Two wom­en clad in fun­ny-​look­ing hats and long dark dress­es were help­ing a group of peo­ple in­to a low, top­less car­riage with big wood­en wheels. The wom­en closed the car­riage and stepped back. It jolt­ed for­ward, wheels turn­ing in rhythm, and dis­ap­peared be­neath a dark over­hang as an­oth­er emp­ty car­riage came up to take its place. An­oth­er group board­ed, rolled for­ward out of sight; yet an­oth­er emp­ty car­riage slid in­to po­si­tion. Now it was his turn.

There was a scary mo­ment when he thought he might be too short for the ride, but by draw­ing him­self up with a her­culean ef­fort Corey raised the top of his head above the min­imums bar. He quiv­ered with ex­cite­ment as one of the ladies ush­ered them up in­to the car­riage. Im­me­di­ate­ly, he dart­ed like a fer­ret for the for­ward seat, plant­ing him­self firm­ly up­on it.

His fa­ther frowned. “Sure you want to sit there, skip­per?”

Corey nod­ded vig­or­ous­ly. Af­ter all, this was what made the ride so scary. The car­riage’s seats faced each oth­er. That meant the two who sat in the front would ride back­ward.

“I don’t like this,” his sis­ter whined, tak­ing a seat be­side him.

He gave her a bru­tal, si­lenc­ing jab. Why couldn’t he have had a cool big broth­er, like Roger Prescott had? In­stead, he was stuck with a wimpy sis­ter who read horse books and thought video games were gross.

“Keep your arms and legs in­side the barouche at all times, please,” the la­dy said in that weird ac­cent Corey sup­posed was En­glish. He didn’t know what a broosh was, but it didn’t mat­ter. He was rid­ing Not­ting Hill, and no­body could stop him now.

The la­dy closed the door, and the lap bar came au­to­mat­ical­ly in­to po­si­tion across Corey’s chest. The car­riage jerked, and his sis­ter gave a small squeak of fear. Corey snort­ed.

As they be­gan to move for­ward, he craned his neck over the side, look­ing first up, then down. His moth­er quick­ly reined him back, but not be­fore he’d no­ticed that the car­riage was on some sort of belt, clev­er­ly con­cealed and al­most in­vis­ible in the dim­ness, and that the wheels were just turn­ing for show. It didn’t mat­ter. The car­riage trun­dled ahead in­to dark­ness and the sud­den am­pli­fied clat­ter of horse’s hooves. Corey caught his breath, un­able to sup­press a grin of ex­cite­ment as he felt the car­riage be­gin to rise steeply. Now, out of the dark­ness, he could see the vague shape of a city spread­ing out around him: a thou­sand peaked roofs, wink­ing and smok­ing in the night air; and, far­ther away, a cool-​look­ing tow­er. He did not no­tice the tiny in­frared cam­era con­cealed in­side its up­per­most win­dow.

 

FORTY FEET BE­LOW, Al­lan Pres­ley watched the mon­itor dis­in­ter­est­ed­ly, as the kid in the Jack the Rip­per T-​shirt rose up Al­pha lift. That shirt had been the most pop­ular sell­er in Gaslight the last four months run­ning, even at twen­ty-​nine bucks a pop. It was amaz­ing the way wal­lets flew open when peo­ple came here. Speak­ing of fly­ing open, the kid’s jaw was drop­ping al­most like a car­ica­ture: his head swivel­ing this way and that, leav­ing faint green­ish heat trails in the in­frared mon­itor as his car rose up above the sprawl­ing rooflines of Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don. Of course, the kid had no idea he was as­cend­ing through a cylin­dri­cal screen, dis­play­ing a dig­ital im­age beamed from two dozen pro­jec­tors on­to the fiber-​op­tic lights of the cityscape. It was an il­lu­sion, of course. At Utopia, il­lu­sion was ev­ery­thing.

Pres­ley’s eyes flit­ted briefly to­ward the girl sit­ting next to the kid. Too young to be of in­ter­est. Be­sides, the par­ents were with them. He sighed.

At most of the first-​line thrill rides in the park, cam­eras were strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned at the fi­nal hair-​rais­ing de­scents, cap­tur­ing the looks on the rid­ers’ faces. By pay­ing five dol­lars at the ex­it, you could buy an im­age of your­self, usu­al­ly grin­ning ma­ni­acal­ly or frozen in fear. But it had be­come an un­der­ground tra­di­tion among the more dar­ing young wom­en to bare their breasts to the cam­era. Of course, the re­sult­ing pic­tures nev­er reached pub­lic view. But male mem­bers of the back­stage crew were great­ly en­ter­tained. They’d even come up with a term for the prac­tice: mel­oning. Pres­ley shook his head. The crew at the wa­ter flume in Board­walk got a good twelve, fif­teen eye­fuls a day. Here in Gaslight, it was much less com­mon, es­pe­cial­ly this ear­ly.

With an­oth­er sigh, he put aside his copy of Vir­gil’s Geor­gics and quick­ly scanned the rest of the three dozen mon­itors ar­rayed along the con­trol room wall. All qui­et, as usu­al. By Utopia stan­dards the Chase was a rel­ative­ly low-​tech coast­er, but it still more or less ran it­self. The most ex­cite­ment Pres­ley usu­al­ly got was when some fool tried to clam­ber out of a car midride. Even that had its es­tab­lished rou­tine: the in­tru­sion mats along the ride­path would ac­ti­vate; he’d alert the tow­er op­er­ator to stop the ride; then he’d send Dis­patch to es­cort the guest away.

Pres­ley’s eye wan­dered back to cam­era 4. The kid was at the top of the ratch­et hill now. In a sec­ond, what lit­tle light there was would go out, the car would head in­to the first drop, and the re­al fun would be­gin. He found him­self watch­ing the ex­cite­ment paint­ed on that lit­tle face—clear even through the ghost­ly in­frared—and try­ing to re­mem­ber the first time he’d rid­den Not­ting Hill him­self. De­spite the count­less thou­sands of rides he’d worked as fore­man, there was still on­ly one word to de­scribe it: mag­ic.

The con­sole speak­er crack­led. “Hey, Elvis.”

He didn’t an­swer. In Amer­ica, be­ing a white male with the last name of Pres­ley car­ried un­avoid­able bag­gage. It was like hav­ing the last name of Hitler. Or Christ, maybe, as­sum­ing any­body had the balls to…

“Elvis, copy?”

He rec­og­nized the nasal voice of Cale, over on the Steeplechase at­trac­tion. “Yeah, yeah,” Pres­ley said in­to his mike.

“Any ac­tion over there?”

“Nope. Dead.”

“Same here. Well, al­most. Had five puk­ers this morn­ing, boom, one af­ter the oth­er. You should have seen it: un­load­ing looked like a war zone. They had to close down for ten min­utes to let San­ita­tion clean up.”

“Fas­ci­nat­ing.” There was a deep, vis­cer­al shud­der in the con­trol room as one of the car­riages hur­tled down the fi­nal ver­ti­cal drop that end­ed the ride. Au­to­mat­ical­ly, Pres­ley glanced up at the bank of cam­eras as the car­riage moved to­ward the un­load­ing area. Dazed, hap­py faces.

“Let me know if you get any­thing good,” Cale con­tin­ued. “One of the com­mis­sary chefs told me they ex­pect a bunch of soror­ities to come through tonight. Maybe I’ll stop by af­ter shift.”

A warn­ing light glowed red on the cir­cuit pan­el be­fore him. “Got­ta go,” Pres­ley said. He snapped a but­ton to speak with the tow­er op­er­ator. “I’m show­ing a safe­ty dog fail­ure at Turn Omega.”

“Yeah, I see it,” came the re­sponse. “Where the bots at?”

“Lu­bri­ca­tion at the Ghost Pond.”

“Okay. I’ll call Shop.”

“Copy.” Pres­ley sat back and scanned the mon­itors again. Warn­ing lights were al­ways go­ing off. The rides were so ov­erengi­neered with re­dun­dant safeties there was nev­er cause for con­cern. Most were false alarms, any­way. The biggest dan­ger was to the me­chan­ics, who had to keep their fool heads and fin­gers out of the way of the cars when the rides were live.

 

COREY WAS CLING­ING des­per­ate­ly to the lap bar, shriek­ing at the top of his lungs. He could feel grav­ity press­ing against his chest, tug­ging ir­re­sistibly at his armpits, try­ing to lift him bod­ily from the car. At the top of the lift—so the sto­ry­board went—their imag­inary hors­es had been spooked by some ghost­ly ap­pari­tion, and now the car­riage was a run­away. He was sur­round­ed by a pan­de­mo­ni­um of noise: the clat­ter of the run­away car­riage, the shrill neigh­ing of pan­icked hors­es. And, above it all, the pierc­ing, con­stant, grat­ify­ing shriek of his sis­ter. He was hav­ing the time of his life.

Now they were rac­ing through a se­ries of amaz­ing­ly re­al­is­tic set pieces as they sped down the cob­bled hill: a de­sert­ed, spec­tral lake; a maze of dark nar­row al­leys; a dockscape of rot­ting piers and shade-​haunt­ed clip­per ships. The car­riage jerked up­ward once, then twice, with gut-​wrench­ing force. Corey clung tighter, for ru­mors of what await­ed at the end of the ride had reached his ears: the car­riage would ul­ti­mate­ly ca­reen over the side of the hill and hur­tle straight down through black space.

 

“I’M AT DOG 91. Checks out fine. Hey, Dave, do you know why, dur­ing a phys­ical, the doc tells you to turn your head when he’s check­ing your john­son?”

“Nope.”

Pres­ley lis­tened au­to­mat­ical­ly to the me­chan­ics’ chat­ter over the ra­dio, bare­ly pay­ing at­ten­tion. He swept the mon­itors, then dropped his gaze once again to Geor­gics. He’d been a clas­sics ma­jor at UCB, al­ways meant to go on to grad­uate school, but now just couldn’t sum­mon the en­er­gy to leave Utopia and go back to school. As it was, he was prob­ably the on­ly per­son in the en­tire state of Neva­da who spoke Latin. Once he’d tried to use this as a pick­up line. It hadn’t worked.

“Well, some­body ex­plained it to me. The doc­tors don’t want sali­va spewed in their face when you cough.”

“No shit. That’s it? And here I al­ways thought there was some anatom­ical rea­son, be­cause…hey, Christ, dog 94 is burned out.”

Pres­ley sat up, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly now.

“What do you mean, burned out? It’s not a damn light­bulb.”

“Just what I said. It’s smok­ing, stinks like hell. Must have over­load­ed. Nev­er seen any­thing like it, even in the sim­ula­tor. Looks like dog 95’s the same way…”

Pres­ley leaped to his feet, chair spin­ning and rat­tling away be­hind him. He glanced to­ward the ride’s break­out di­agram. Safe­ty dogs 94 and 95 con­trolled the fi­nal ver­ti­cal de­scent from Turn Omega.

This wasn’t good. Sure, the safeties would stop any traf­fic com­ing up. But he’d nev­er heard of the dogs fail­ing be­fore, es­pe­cial­ly two in se­ries, and he didn’t like it. He grabbed for the ra­dio and the tow­er op­er­ator. “Frank, drop the plates. Shut it down.”

“Al­ready on it. But oh, my God, a car’s just pass­ing now…”

Pres­ley’s trained eyes dart­ed to the bank of mon­itors. What he saw turned the blood in his veins to ice.

A car­riage was hurtling down the fi­nal de­scent of Not­ting Hill. But it was not the even, con­trolled de­scent he had wit­nessed so many times. The car­riage was cant­ed away from the ver­ti­cal track, its de­tached un­der­car­riage swing­ing hor­ri­bly. The oc­cu­pants were pressed against the lap bars, clutch­ing at each oth­er, the whites of their eyes and the pinks of their tongues pale green in the mon­itor wash. There was no au­dio feed but Pres­ley could see they were scream­ing.

The car­riage cant­ed still far­ther as it picked up speed. Then there was a jar­ring wrench and one of the oc­cu­pants tum­bled for­ward. His small hands scrab­bled fran­ti­cal­ly, but the G-​forces were too strong; the hand slipped past the safe­ty bar, past the adult hands that reached des­per­ate­ly for it, and as the rid­er cartwheeled to­ward the cam­era, hurtling down with ap­palling speed, Pres­ley had just enough time to make out the Jack the Rip­per stitch­ing be­fore the im­pact killed the vi­su­al feed.

 

TWO WEEKS LAT­ER

 

7:30 A.M.

FROM ITS JUMP­ING-​OFF place at Charleston Boule­vard, above the Las Ve­gas Strip, Ran­cho Drive makes a ca­su­al bend to the left and heads straight for Reno. It ar­rows north­west with ab­so­lute pre­ci­sion, ig­nor­ing all nat­ural or ar­ti­fi­cial temp­ta­tions to curve, as if in a hur­ry to leave neon and green felt far be­hind. Coun­try clubs, shop­ping cen­ters, and fi­nal­ly even the sad-​look­ing er­satz adobe sub­urbs fall away. The Mo­jave Desert, tucked be­neath the as­phalt and con­crete sprawl, re­asserts it­self. Spi­dery ten­drils of sand trace their way across what the signs start call­ing Route 95. Joshua trees, hir­sute and sprawl­ing, dot the grease-​wood desert. Cac­ti stand like stan­dard-​bear­ers to the empti­ness. Af­ter the fran­tic, crowd­ed glit­ter, the grad­ual tran­si­tion to vast emp­ty spaces seems oth­er­world­ly. Ex­cept for the high­way, the hand of man ap­pears not to have touched this place.

An­drew Warne tilt­ed his rearview mir­ror sharply up­ward and to the right, sigh­ing with re­lief as the daz­zling bright­ness re­ced­ed. “How could I pos­si­bly have come to Ve­gas with­out bring­ing dark glass­es?” he said. “The sun shines 366 days a year in this place.”

The girl in the seat be­side him smirked, ad­just­ed her head­phones. “That’s my dad. The ab­sent-​mind­ed pro­fes­sor.”

“Ex-​pro­fes­sor, you mean.”

The road ahead was a burn­ing line of white. The sur­round­ing desert seemed bleached by the glare, yuc­ca and cre­osote bush re­duced to pale specters. Idly, Warne laid the palm of his hand against the win­dow, then snatched it away. Sev­en-​thir­ty A.M., and al­ready it had to be a hun­dred de­grees out­side. Even the rental car seemed to have adapt­ed to the desert con­di­tions: its cli­mate con­trol was stuck on the max­imum AC set­ting.

As they ap­proached In­di­an Springs, a low plateau rose to the east: Nel­lis Air Force Base. Gas sta­tions be­gan to ap­pear ev­ery few miles, out of place in the emp­ty void, sparkling clean, so new they looked to Warne as if they’d just been un­wrapped. He glanced at a print­ed sheet that lay clipped to a fold­er be­tween their seats. Not far now. And there it was: a free­way ex­it sign, bright green, new­ly mint­ed. Utopia. One mile.

The girl al­so no­ticed the sign. “Are we there yet?” she asked.

“Very fun­ny, princess.”

“You know I hate it when you call me princess. I’m four­teen. That’s a name for a lit­tle kid.”

“You act like a lit­tle kid some­times.”

The girl frowned at this, turned up the vol­ume on her mu­sic play­er. The re­sul­tant thump­ing was clear even over the air con­di­tion­er.

“Care­ful, Geor­gia, you’ll give your­self tin­ni­tus. What’s that you’re lis­ten­ing to, any­way?”

“Swing.”

“Well, that’s an im­prove­ment, at least. Last month it was goth­ic rock. The month be­fore, it was—what was it?”

“Eu­ro-​house.”

“Eu­ro-​house. Can’t you set­tle on a style you like?”

Geor­gia shrugged. “I’m too in­tel­li­gent for that.”

The dif­fer­ence was ev­ident the mo­ment they reached the bot­tom of the ex­it ramp. The road sur­face changed: in­stead of the cracked gray con­crete of U.S. High­way 95, lined like a rep­tile’s skin by count­less re­pairs, it be­came a pale, smooth red, with more lanes than the free­way they’d just left. Sculpt­ed lights sloped grace­ful­ly over the macadam. For the first time in twen­ty miles, Warne could see cars on the road ahead. He fol­lowed them as the high­way be­gan a smooth, even climb from the al­ka­li flats. The signs here were white, with blue let­ters, and they all said the same thing: Guest Park­ing Ahead.

The park­ing lot, al­most emp­ty at this ear­ly hour, was mind-​numb­ing­ly large. Fol­low­ing the ar­rows, Warne drove past a clus­ter of over­size recre­ation­al ve­hi­cles, dwarfed like in­sects by the ex­panse of black­top. He’d snort­ed in dis­be­lief when some­one told him sev­en­ty thou­sand peo­ple vis­it­ed the park each day; now, he was in­clined to be­lieve it. In the seat be­side him, Geor­gia was look­ing around. De­spite the prac­ticed air of teenage en­nui, she could not com­plete­ly con­ceal her ea­ger­ness.

An­oth­er mile and a half brought them to the front of the lot and a long, low struc­ture with the word Em­barka­tion dis­played along its roof in Art De­co let­ters. There were more cars here, peo­ple in shorts and san­dals milling about. As he eased up to a toll­gate, a park­ing at­ten­dant ap­proached, in­di­cat­ing Warne to low­er his win­dow. The man wore a white po­lo shirt, the styl­ized lo­go of a small bird sewn on the left breast.

Warne reached in­to the fold­er, pulled out a lam­inat­ed card. The at­ten­dant stud­ied it, then plucked a dig­ital sty­lus from his belt and ex­am­ined its screen. Af­ter a mo­ment, he hand­ed the pass­card back to Warne, mo­tion­ing him through.

He parked be­side a line of yel­low trams, then dropped the pass­card in­to his shirt pock­et. “Here we are,” he said. And then, look­ing out at the Em­barka­tion Build­ing, he paused mo­men­tar­ily, think­ing.

“You’re not go­ing to try to get back to­geth­er with Sarah again, are you?”

Star­tled by the ques­tion, Warne looked over. Geor­gia re­turned his gaze.

It was re­mark­able, re­al­ly, the way she could read his mind some­times. Maybe it was the amount of time they spent to­geth­er, the de­gree they had come to re­ly on each oth­er in re­cent years. What­ev­er the case, it could be very an­noy­ing. Es­pe­cial­ly when she chose on­ly to spec­ulate on his more sen­si­tive thoughts.

The girl low­ered her head­phones. “Dad, don’t do it. She’s a re­al ball-​buster.”

“Watch your mouth, Geor­gia.” He pulled a small white en­ve­lope from the fold­er. “You know, I don’t think there’s a wom­an on earth that would pass muster with you. You want me to stay a wid­ow­er the rest of my life?”

He said this with a lit­tle more force than he’d in­tend­ed. Geor­gia’s on­ly re­sponse was to roll her eyes and re­place the head­phones on her head.

An­drew Warne loved Geor­gia in­tense­ly, al­most painful­ly. Yet he’d nev­er an­tic­ipat­ed how dif­fi­cult it would be to nav­igate the world, to raise a daugh­ter, all by him­self. Some­times he won­dered if he was mak­ing a roy­al mess of the job. It was at times like this that he missed his wife, Char­lotte, most acute­ly.

He looked at Geor­gia an­oth­er mo­ment. Then he sighed, took hold of the door again, and yanked it open.

In­stant­ly, fur­nace­like air boiled in. Warne slammed the door, wait­ed for Geor­gia to hoist her back­pack on­to her shoul­ders and fol­low, then hopped over the shim­mer­ing tar­mac to the Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter.

In­side, it was pleas­ant­ly chilly. The Cen­ter was spot­less and func­tion­al, framed in blond wood and brushed met­al. Glass-​front­ed tick­et win­dows stretched in an end­less line to the left and right, de­sert­ed save for one di­rect­ly ahead. An­oth­er dis­play of the lam­inat­ed card and they were past and head­ed down a bright­ly lit cor­ri­dor. In an hour or so, he knew, this space would be jammed with har­ried par­ents, squirm­ing kids, chat­ter­ing tour guides. Now, there was noth­ing but rows of met­al crowd rails and the click of his heels on the pris­tine floor.

A mono­rail was al­ready wait­ing at the load­ing zone, low-​slung and sil­ver, its doors open. Over­size win­dows curved up both sides, meet­ing at the trans­port mech­anism that clung to the over­head rail. Warne had nev­er rid­den on a sus­pend­ed mono­rail be­fore, and he did not rel­ish the prospect. He could see a scat­ter­ing of rid­ers in­side, most­ly men and wom­en in busi­ness suits. An op­er­ator di­rect­ed them to the front­most car. It was, as usu­al, spot­less, its sole oc­cu­pants a heavy­set man in the front and a short, be­spec­ta­cled man in the rear. Though the mono­rail had not yet left the Cen­ter, the heavy­set man was look­ing around busi­ly, his pasty, heavy-​browed face a mask of ex­cite­ment and an­tic­ipa­tion.

Warne let Geor­gia take the win­dow seat, then slid in be­side her. Al­most be­fore they were seat­ed, a low chime sound­ed and the doors came noise­less­ly to­geth­er. There was a brief lurch, fol­lowed by silky ac­cel­er­ation. Wel­come to the Utopia mono­rail, a fe­male voice said from ev­ery­where and nowhere. It was not the usu­al voice Warne had heard on pub­lic ad­dress sys­tems: in­stead, it was rich, so­phis­ti­cat­ed, with a trace of a British ac­cent. Trav­el time to the Nexus will be ap­prox­imate­ly eight min­utes and thir­ty sec­onds. For your safe­ty and com­fort, we ask that you re­main in your seats for the du­ra­tion of the ride.

Sud­den­ly, bril­liant light bathed the com­part­ment as the Cen­ter fell away be­hind them. Ahead and above, du­al mono­rail tracks curved gen­tly through a nar­row sand­stone canyon. Warne glanced down quick­ly, then al­most snatched his feet away in sur­prise. What he had sup­posed to be a sol­id floor was ac­tu­al­ly a se­ries of glass pan­els. Be­low him was now an un-​ob­struct­ed drop of per­haps a hun­dred feet to the rocky canyon floor. He took a deep breath and looked away.

“Cool,” Geor­gia said.

The canyon we are trav­el­ing through is ge­olog­ical­ly very old, the voice went smooth­ly on. Along its rim, you can see the ju­niper, sage­brush, and scrub piñon char­ac­ter­is­tic of the high desert…

“Can you be­lieve this?” said a voice in his ear. Turn­ing, Warne saw that—in fla­grant de­fi­ance of the “re­main seat­ed” edict—the heavy­set man had walked back through the car to take a seat across from them. He wore a painful­ly or­ange flo­ral shirt, had bright black eyes, and a smile that seemed too big for his face. Like Warne, he had a small en­ve­lope in his hand. “Pep­per, Nor­man Pep­per. My God, what a view. And in the first car, too. We’ll have a great view of the Nexus. Nev­er been here be­fore, but I’ve heard it’s out­stand­ing. Out­stand­ing. Imag­ine, buy­ing a whole moun­tain, or mesa, or what­ev­er you call it, for a theme park! Is this your daugh­ter? Pret­ty girl you’ve got there.”

“Say thank you, Geor­gia,” Warne said.

“Thank you, Geor­gia,” came a most un­con­vinc­ing re­ply. …On the canyon wall to the right of the train, you can see a se­ries of pic­tographs. These red-​and-​white an­thro­po­morphs are the work of the pre­his­toric in­hab­itants of this re­gion, the pe­ri­od now known as Bas­ket Mak­er II, which flour­ished al­most three thou­sand years ago…

“So what’s your spe­cial­ty?” Pep­per asked.

“I’m sor­ry?”

The man shrugged his squat shoul­ders. “Well, you ob­vi­ous­ly don’t work at the Park, ’cause y’all are rid­ing the mono­rail in. And the Park hasn’t opened yet, so you’re not a vis­itor. That means you’ve got to be a con­sul­tant or a spe­cial­ist. Right? So is ev­ery­body on the train, I’ll bet.”

“I’m an—I’m in robotics,” Warne replied.

“Robotics?”

“Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.”

“Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence,” came the echo. “Uh-​huh.” Pep­per took a breath, opened his mouth for an­oth­er ques­tion.

“What about you?” Warne in­ter­ject­ed quick­ly.

At this the man smiled even more broad­ly. He put his fin­ger to one side of his nose and winked con­spir­ato­ri­al­ly. “Den­dro­bi­um gi­gan­teum.”

Warne looked at him blankly.

“Cat­tleya dowiana. You know.” The man seemed shocked.

Warne spread his hands. “Sor­ry.”

“Or­chids.” The man sniffed. “Thought you might have guessed when you heard my name. I’m the ex­ot­ic botanist who did all the work at the New York Ex­po­si­tion last year—maybe you read about it? Any­way, they want some spe­cial hy­brids for the athenaeum they’re build­ing in At­lantis. And they’re hav­ing some prob­lems with the night-​bloomers in Gaslight. Don’t like the hu­mid­ity or some­thing.” He spread his hands ex­pan­sive­ly, knock­ing both his and Warne’s en­velopes to the ground. “All ex­pens­es paid, first-​class tick­et, nice fat con­sul­tan­cy fee—and it’ll look great on my ré­sumé, too.”

Warne nod­ded as the man re­trieved the fall­en en­velopes, passed his back. That he could be­lieve. Utopia was sup­pos­ed­ly so fa­nat­ical about the ac­cu­ra­cy of its themed Worlds that schol­ars were oc­ca­sion­al­ly seen wan­der­ing around, slack-​jawed, tak­ing notes. Geor­gia was gaz­ing around at the canyon, pay­ing no at­ten­tion to Pep­per.

…The twen­ty square miles owned here by Utopia is rich in nat­ural re­sources and beau­ty, in­clud­ing two springs and a catch­ment basin…

Pep­per glanced over his shoul­der. “How about you?”

Warne had al­most for­got­ten the slight­ly built man with glass­es sit­ting be­hind them. The man blinked back, as if con­sid­er­ing the ques­tion. “Smythe,” he said in an ac­cent that sound­ed faint­ly Aus­tralian. “Py­ro.”

“Py­rotech­nics? You mean, like fire­works?”

The man smoothed his fin­gers over the tiny tooth­brush mus­tache that grew in the shad­ow of his nose. “I de­sign the spe­cial shows, like the re­cent six-​month cel­ebra­tion. Trou­bleshoot­ing, too. Some of the late-​show in­door chrysan­the­mums are launch­ing too high, break­ing panes of glass in the dome.”

“Can’t have that,” Pep­per said.

“And in the Grif­fin Tow­er show, guests are com­plain­ing the ma­roons at the end are too loud.” The man fell silent abrupt­ly, shrugged, turned his head to look out the win­dow.

Warne shift­ed his own gaze to the pass­ing rus­set-​col­ored cliffs, then back to the in­te­ri­or of the mono­rail. Some­thing had been both­er­ing him, and he sud­den­ly re­al­ized what it was. He turned to Pep­per. “Where are all the char­ac­ters, the ac­tion fig­ures, Oberon, Mor­pheus, Pen­drag­on? I haven’t seen so much as a de­cal.”

“Oh, they’re around, all right—in the shops and some of the kid­die at­trac­tions. But you won’t see any guys in ro­dent suits walk­ing around. Nightin­gale was very par­tic­ular about that, they say. Very con­cerned about the pu­ri­ty of the ex­pe­ri­ence. That’s why all this—” he waved a pudgy hand—“the Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter, the mono­rail, even the Nexus—is so un­der­stat­ed. No com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Makes the ac­tu­al Worlds that much more re­al. Or so I’ve heard.” He turned to the qui­et man be­hind them. “Right?”

Smythe nod­ded.

Pep­per leaned a bit clos­er to Warne. “Nev­er thought too much of Nightin­gale’s stuff my­self. Those Fever­stone Chron­icles an­imat­ed movies, based on his old mag­ic act? Too dark. But my kids are crazy for it. And they watch his car­toons ev­ery week, like clock­work. They al­most killed me when they heard I was com­ing here and they couldn’t tag along.” Pep­per chuck­led, rub­bing his hands to­geth­er. Warne had read books where peo­ple rubbed their hands in an­tic­ipa­tion, but he wasn’t sure he’d ev­er ac­tu­al­ly seen any­body do it.

“My daugh­ter would have killed me if I didn’t bring her,” he replied. “Ouch!” he yelped as Geor­gia kicked him be­neath the seat.

There was a brief si­lence. Warne rubbed his calf.

“So, you think it’s true they’ve got a nu­cle­ar re­ac­tor buried un­der­neath the Park?” Pep­per asked.

“Huh?”

“That’s the ru­mor. I mean, just imag­ine the elec­tri­cal over­head. The place is its own mu­nic­ipal­ity, for heav­en’s sake. Think of the juice it must take to keep the whole place go­ing, air-​con­di­tion­ing, rides, com­put­ers. I asked one of the hosts back in the Cen­ter, and she said they used hy­dro­elec­tric pow­er. Hy­dro­elec­tric! In the mid­dle of the desert! I…hey, look—there it is!”

Warne glanced for­ward, then froze de­spite him­self. He heard Geor­gia draw in a quick breath.

The mono­rail had just banked around a par­tic­ular­ly steep bend, and ahead, the canyon widened dra­mat­ical­ly. Stretch­ing from wall to wall, from the top of the canyon to its base, was a vast cop­per-​col­ored fa­cade, glim­mer­ing bril­liant­ly in the morn­ing sun. It was as if the canyon sud­den­ly end­ed in this mas­sive wall of bur­nished met­al. The cul-​de-​sac was an il­lu­sion, of course—a large, cir­cu­lar rock val­ley be­yond en­closed the Park it­self—but it was spec­tac­ular, breath­tak­ing, beau­ti­ful in its own spar­tan way. The on­ly break in the fa­cade was two tiny squares dead cen­ter, near the top, where the mono­rail tracks en­tered. Along the up­per edge was the sin­gle, huge word, Utopia, in let­ters of some mi­ca­like sub­stance that winked and glit­tered, ap­pear­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing with the an­gle of the sun. Atop and be­yond, a huge geodesic dome arched over ev­ery­thing, a com­plex lat­tice of crys­tal poly­gons and met­al web­bing. At its apex, a flag rip­pled: the styl­ized lo­go of a vi­olet bird on a field of white.

“Wow,” Geor­gia said un­der her breath. …We hope you en­joy your vis­it. And re­mem­ber, if you have any ques­tions or con­cerns, we in­vite you to vis­it one of our Guest Ser­vices lounges with­in the Nexus or the Worlds them­selves. Please re­main seat­ed un­til the mono­rail comes to a com­plete stop.

The car fell silent as they glid­ed for­ward in­to shad­ow.

 

8:10 A.M.

THE NEXUS WAS a broad, gra­cious space, framed in the same brushed met­al and wood of the Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter. Restau­rants, shops, sou­venir bou­tiques, and Guest Ser­vices lounges lined the walls to the left and right, stretch­ing ahead for what seemed a lim­it­less dis­tance. Warne fol­lowed the oth­ers down the mono­rail off-​load­ing ramp, Geor­gia in tow, gaz­ing about cu­ri­ous­ly. The ceil­ing was open to the glass dome far above, fram­ing a huge cloud­less sky that arced over the Nexus in a bril­liant azure band. Be­fore him, in­for­ma­tion kiosks and low, grace­ful foun­tains gleamed in the slant­ed bars of sun­light. Signs, large but dis­creet, di­rect­ed vis­itors to­ward the Park’s four Worlds: Camelot, Gaslight, Board­walk, Cal­lis­to. The air was cool, a lit­tle moist, and full of mut­ed sound—voic­es, the pat­ter of wa­ter, some soft­er noise he couldn’t iden­ti­fy.

A group of youngish men and wom­en were wait­ing at the base of the ramp. They wore iden­ti­cal white blaz­ers and car­ried iden­ti­cal fold­ers. They looked, in fact, as if they could have all been re­lat­ed. Warne won­dered, on­ly half in jest, if there were height, weight, and age re­stric­tions for Utopia em­ploy­ees. He dis­missed the thought as he saw one of the wom­en walk­ing briskly to­ward him.

“Dr. Warne? I’m Aman­da Free­man,” the wom­an said, shak­ing his hand.

“So I see,” Warne replied, nod­ding to­ward the name­plate af­fixed to her blaz­er lapel. He won­dered how she had rec­og­nized him.

“I’ll be pro­cess­ing you in­to Utopia, giv­ing you a brief ori­en­ta­tion.” Her voice was pleas­ant, but al­most as brisk as her walk. She nod­ded to­ward the small en­ve­lope he was car­ry­ing. A minia­ture bar code had been im­pact-​print­ed along one edge. “May I have that?”

He hand­ed it to her, and she tore it open, up­end­ing it in­to her palm. Out tum­bled an­oth­er styl­ized bird, this one in green. She af­fixed it to his jack­et. “Please wear this pin while you’re with us.”

“Why?”

“It iden­ti­fies you as an ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist. You have your pass­card? Good. That and the pin will give you the back­stage ac­cess you’ll need.”

“Beats pay­ing ad­mis­sion.”

“Keep the pass­card handy. You may be asked to show it from time to time. In fact, most crew work­ing the Un­der­ground keep them clipped to their pock­ets. Is this your daugh­ter?”

“Geor­gia, yes.”

“I didn’t re­al­ize she was com­ing along. We’ll have to get her a pin, as well.”

“Thank you.”

“No prob­lem. She can wait in Child-​Care Ser­vices while you’re pro­cessed. You can pick her up af­ter­wards.”

“Child-​Care Ser­vices?” Geor­gia asked, her voice steely with in­dig­na­tion.

Free­man smiled briefly again. “Ac­tu­al­ly, it’s the young adult di­vi­sion of Child-​Care Ser­vices. I think you’ll be pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.”

Geor­gia flashed Warne a dark look. “Dad, this bet­ter be good,” she mut­tered. “I don’t do Le­gos.”

Warne looked past her, to­ward the off-​load­ing ramp. The py­rotech­nics spe­cial­ist, Smythe, was walk­ing pur­pose­ful­ly down in­to the Nexus. Nor­man Pep­per was talk­ing an­imat­ed­ly with one of the white-​blaz­ered men. The two be­gan mov­ing away, Pep­per rub­bing his hands and smil­ing wide­ly.

They dropped Geor­gia at the near­by ser­vices desk, then pro­ceed­ed down the cen­tral cor­ri­dor of the Nexus.

“You’ve got a beau­ti­ful daugh­ter,” Free­man said as they walked.

“Thanks. But please don’t tell her that. She’s got a chip on her shoul­der as it is.”

“How was the mono­rail?”

“High.”

“We like to bring vis­it­ing spe­cial­ists in on the mono­rail their first day here. Gives them a bet­ter feel for what it is that pay­ing guests ex­pe­ri­ence. You’ll be giv­en di­rec­tions to em­ploy­ee park­ing as part of to­day’s ori­en­ta­tion pack­age. Much less scenic, nat­ural­ly, but it shaves off fif­teen min­utes or so of trav­el time. Un­less you’re stay­ing on-​site?”

“No, we’re stay­ing at the Lux­or.” Un­like most theme parks, Utopia was geared to­ward a full-​im­mer­sion, sin­gle-​day ex­pe­ri­ence: there were no overnight ac­com­mo­da­tions for tourists. Warne had been told, how­ev­er, that a small be­hind-​the-​scenes ho­tel ex­ist­ed: a first-​class re­sort for celebri­ties, star per­form­ers, and oth­er VIPs, with more spar­tan quar­ters for vis­it­ing con­sul­tants, bands, and overnight staff.

“What’s with the clocks?” Warne asked as he strug­gled to keep up. He’d no­ticed that, al­though it was now quar­ter past eight, the dig­ital clocks set in­to the tow­er­ing walls of the Nexus read 0:45.

“Forty-​five min­utes to Ze­ro Hour.”

“Huh?”

“Utopia is open 365 days a year, 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. At clos­ing, the clocks start a twelve-​hour count­down. Lets the cast and crew know how much time they have left un­til open­ing. Of course, there are no clocks in the Worlds them­selves, but—”

“You mean it takes twelve hours to get the Park ready again?” Warne asked in dis­be­lief.

“Lots to do,” Free­man said with an­oth­er small smile. “Come on, we’ll take a short­cut through Camelot.”

She steered him to­ward a mas­sive por­tal in the near­er wall. Above it, the word Camelot shone in Old En­glish black let­ter. This type­face was, so far, the on­ly de­vi­ation Warne had seen from the rigid­ly en­forced de­sign of the Nexus: even the doors to the bath­rooms and the emer­gen­cy ex­it signs were in the same re­served Art De­co type.

Three white-​jack­et­ed at­ten­dants, stand­ing out­side the Camelot por­tal, smiled and nod­ded at Free­man. She steered Warne past them, through a for­est of crowd rails and in­to a wide, emp­ty queu­ing cham­ber. In the far wall stood half a dozen sets of met­al doors. On cue, one of the doors slid back and Free­man led the way in­to a cav­ernous, dark­ly ap­point­ed el­eva­tor.

The doors closed again and that same silky fe­male voice said, You are now en­ter­ing Camelot. En­joy your vis­it. There was a muf­fled metal­lic thud and the el­eva­tor came to life. Ex­cept, Warne no­ticed, it was nei­ther as­cend­ing nor de­scend­ing: it was mov­ing for­ward hor­izon­tal­ly.

“Is it a long way to the Park it­self?” he asked.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, we’re not re­al­ly mov­ing,” Free­man replied. “The car just gives the il­lu­sion of move­ment. Stud­ies showed that guests find the Worlds eas­ier to ad­just to if they be­lieve it takes a jour­ney—how­ev­er short—to reach them.”

Then the doors on the far side slid open. For the sec­ond time in the last half hour, Warne felt him­self stop in sur­prise.

Ahead lay a wide pave­ment of dark cob­ble­stones. Quaint build­ings—some with thatched roofs, oth­ers with peaked gam­brels—lined both sides, stretch­ing ahead to what looked from a dis­tance like a large vil­lage square. Be­yond the square, the cob­bled road di­vid­ed around the bai­ley of a cas­tle, sand-​col­ored and mono­lith­ic. Above its high crenel­la­tions flew a hun­dred mul­ti­col­ored ban­ners. In the dis­tance, he could see more tow­ers and the notched, cru­el-​look­ing face of a moun­tain ris­ing above a grassy hill, snow swirling around its sum­mit. Far over­head, the soar­ing curve of the dome gave an il­lu­sion of end­less space. The air smelled of earth, and fresh-​cropped grass, and sum­mer.

Warne walked slow­ly for­ward, feel­ing a lit­tle like Dorothy, step­ping out of her drab monochro­mat­ic farm­house in­to Oz. Wait un­til Geor­gia sees this, he thought. Bril­liant sun­shine blan­ket­ed the en­tire scene, giv­ing it a clean, lus­trous edge. Park em­ploy­ees hur­ried quick­ly here and there over the cob­bles, but not in the jack­et­ed uni­form he had seen else­where: here were men in par­ti-​col­or tights; wom­en in flow­ing robes and wim­ples; a knight in ar­mor. On­ly a small knot of white-​blaz­ered su­per­vi­sors, with palm­top com­put­ers and two-​way ra­dios, and a crew mem­ber from Main­te­nance, hos­ing down the cob­bles, broke the il­lu­sion.

“What do you think?” Free­man asked.

“It’s amaz­ing,” Warne replied hon­est­ly.

“Yes, it is.” He turned and saw her smil­ing. “I love to watch peo­ple en­ter­ing a World for the first time. Since I can’t go back and do it again my­self, watch­ing some­body else is the next best thing.”

They made their way down the broad thor­ough­fare, Free­man point­ing out at­trac­tions as they went. As they passed a bak­ery, a mortared win­dow opened, re­leas­ing an ir­re­sistible aro­ma. Some­where, a bard was tun­ing his lute, singing an an­cient lay.

“The de­sign phi­los­ophy of all four Worlds is the same,” Free­man said. “Vis­itors first pass through a set piece—in Camelot’s case, this vil­lage we’re in—that helps ori­ent, set the mood. De­com­pres­sion, we call it. There are restau­rants, shops, and con­ces­sions, of course, but most­ly it’s a spot for the guests to just ob­serve, get ac­cli­mat­ed. Then, as you move deep­er in­to the World, we start in­te­grat­ing the at­trac­tions—rides, live shows, holo­graph­ic events, you name it—in­to the en­vi­ron­ment. It’s all seam­less.”

“I’ll say.” Warne no­ticed that, ex­cept for the sign­boards of the shops and eater­ies, there was no mod­ern sig­nage any­where: rest rooms and the clev­er­ly in­te­grat­ed in­for­ma­tion kiosks were in­di­cat­ed on­ly by what ap­peared to be high­ly re­al­is­tic holo­graph­ic sym­bols.

“Schol­ars come here be­cause this lane we’re pass­ing through is a su­perbly de­tailed re­con­struc­tion of New­bold Saucy, an En­glish vil­lage de­pop­ulat­ed in the four­teenth cen­tu­ry,” Free­man said. “Guests come be­cause Drag­on­spire is prob­ably the sec­ond most thrilling roller-​coast­er in the Park, af­ter Scream Ma­chine over in Board­walk.”

The cas­tle loomed ahead of them as they ap­proached the square. “An ex­act re-​cre­ation of Caernar­von, in Wales,” Free­man said. “With se­lec­tive com­pres­sion and forced per­spec­tive, of course.”

“Forced per­spec­tive?”

“The up­per sto­ries aren’t full-​size, they’re small­er. They give an il­lu­sion of cor­rect pro­por­tion, but are warmer, less in­tim­idat­ing. We use the tech­nique through­out Utopia, on a va­ri­ety of lev­els. For ex­am­ple, that moun­tain, there, is re­duced in size to give the il­lu­sion of dis­tance.” She nod­ded through the open portcullis. “Any­way, in­side this cas­tle is where The En­chant­ed Prince is shown.”

The troubadour’s song had long fall­en be­hind them, but oth­er nois­es came to Warne’s ears: bird­song, the pat­ter of foun­tains, and the same soft­er noise he had heard in the Nexus. “What’s that sound I keep hear­ing?” he asked.

Free­man glanced at him. “You’re very ob­ser­vant. Our re­search spe­cial­ists have done pi­oneer­ing work in womb-​feed­back re­search. Once guests fill Camelot, the sound won’t be au­di­ble. But it will still be there.”

Warne threw her a puz­zled look.

“It’s the sci­ence of re­pro­duc­ing cer­tain womb­like ef­fects—tem­per­atures, am­bi­ent sounds—to fos­ter a sub­lim­inal sense of tran­quil­ity. We have five patents pend­ing on it. The Utopia Hold­ing Com­pa­ny has over three hun­dred patents, you know. We li­cense some to the chem­ical, med­ical, and elec­tron­ics in­dus­tries. Oth­ers re­main pro­pri­etary.”

Three of which were de­vel­oped by me, Warne thought silent­ly, al­low­ing him­self a lit­tle twinge of pride. He won­dered if the wom­an knew the con­tri­bu­tion he’d made to the day-​to-​day op­er­ation of Utopia: his meta-​net­work, which co­or­di­nat­ed the ac­tiv­ities and in­tel­li­gence of the Park’s robots. Prob­ably not, con­sid­er­ing the way she was show­ing him around, talk­ing to him like he was some as­sis­tant pro­gram­mer. Once again, he found him­self won­der­ing why Sarah Boatwright had sum­moned him here so abrupt­ly.

“This way,” Free­man said, turn­ing down a side al­ley.

A man in a vi­olet cape and dark knee breech­es passed them, prac­tic­ing his Mid­dle En­glish. Ahead, two burly main­te­nance spe­cial­ists walked by, car­ry­ing a large met­al cage be­tween them. In­side sat a small drag­on, tail twitch­ing, crim­son scales shim­mer­ing in the sun. Warne stared. The damp nos­trils flared as air passed through them. He could swear the thing’s yel­low eyes gleamed as they fas­tened up­on him.

“A man­drake, on its way for in­stal­la­tion in Grif­fin Tow­er,” Free­man said. “The Park’s still closed. That’s why they’re not trav­el­ing be­low. What is it, Dr. Warne?”

Warne was still star­ing af­ter the drag­on. “I’m just not used to see­ing skin on them, that’s all,” he mut­tered.

“Ex­cuse me? Oh yes: that’s your field, isn’t it?”

Warne licked his lips. The cos­tumes, the di­alect, the fa­nat­ical re­al­ism of the sur­round­ings…He shook his head slow­ly.

“Can be a bit much when no guests are around to break the il­lu­sion, right?” Free­man’s voice was qui­eter, less brisk. “Let me guess. When you ar­rived, you thought the Nexus was spar­tan-​look­ing, kind of drab.”

Warne nod­ded.

“Peo­ple of­ten feel that way when they first en­ter Utopia. A guest once told me it re­mind­ed her of a bil­lion-​dol­lar air­port ter­mi­nal. Well, it was de­signed that way, and this is the rea­son.” She waved her hand at the scene around them. “Some­times the re­al­ism can get dis­ori­ent­ing to guests. So the Nexus pro­vides a neu­tral set­ting, a buffer zone, a tran­si­tion be­tween the Worlds.”

She turned to­ward a two-​sto­ry half-​tim­bered res­idence, lift­ing the iron latch of the front door. Warne fol­lowed her in­side. To his sur­prise, the build­ing was mere­ly a shell, open to its roof. A plain gray door was set in­to the back wall, a fin­ger-​ge­om­etry scan­ner and a card read­er be­side it. Free­man stepped up to the scan­ner, placed her thumb in the mold. There was a snap, and the door sprang open. Be­yond, Warne could see the cool green glow of flu­ores­cent light.

“Back to the re­al world,” Free­man said. “Or as close as we get to it around here.”

And she mo­tioned him through the door­way.

 

8:50 A.M.

SARAH BOATWRIGHT, HEAD of Park Op­er­ations, sat at the crowd­ed con­fer­ence ta­ble in her of­fice, thir­ty feet be­low the Nexus. The of­fice was frigid—the pri­ma­ry air-​con­di­tion­ing ducts ran be­hind the rear wall—and she cra­dled her hands around a large cup of tea. Sarah Boatwright was fa­nat­ical about tea. Once an hour, like clock­work, the best restau­rant in Gaslight sent down a cup of the day’s house se­lec­tion. To­day it was jas­mine, first-​grade. She watched the small, ball-​shaped young flow­ers un­curl in the hot liq­uid, and leaned for­ward briefly to in­hale their fra­grance. It was exquisite, ex­ot­ic, al­lur­ing.

It was 0:10, Utopia time, and the var­ious park chiefs had gath­ered in her of­fice for the dai­ly “Pre-​Game Show.” She took a sip, feel­ing the warmth slow­ly spread through her limbs. This was the re­al start of her day: not the alarm clock, not the show­er, not the first cup of the morn­ing. It all start­ed now, when she gave the day’s march­ing or­ders to her cap­tains and lieu­tenants; when she took the helm of the great­est theme park ev­er built. It was her job to make sure that, al­though be­hind the scenes al­most any­thing might be hap­pen­ing on a giv­en day—two thou­sand ri­otous Boy Scouts, ir­reg­ular­ities in the elec­tri­cal grid, a vis­it­ing prime min­is­ter and his ret­inue—to the guests, ev­ery day had to seem pre­cise­ly the same. Per­fect. She could imag­ine no job more chal­leng­ing, or more re­ward­ing.

And yet to­day, min­gling with the usu­al sense of an­tic­ipa­tion, was some­thing else. It wasn’t ap­pre­hen­sion—Sarah Boatwright had nev­er had much use for fear of any kind—so much as a kind of wari­ness. An­drew is here, she thought. He’s here, and he can’t pos­si­bly know the re­al rea­son. It was the forced du­plic­ity that made her wary: she felt it quite dis­tinct­ly as she glanced around, men­tal­ly check­ing off faces. Re­search, In­fras­truc­ture, Gam­ing, Food Ser­vices, Med­ical, Guest Re­la­tions, check, check, and check. Bob Al­loc­co, head of Se­cu­ri­ty, sat at the far end of the ta­ble, sol­id as a bull­dog and al­most as short, his sun­burned face im­pas­sive. They all looked back at her, alert, se­ri­ous, at­tuned to her mood. She pre­ferred things that way: busi­nesslike, brisk. Few jokes were ex­changed un­less Sarah made the first over­ture. Fred Barks­dale was the al­lowed ex­cep­tion, of course: his al­lu­sions to Shake­speare and wry En­glish hu­mor had the ta­ble help­less with laugh­ter on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. And here he came, café au lait bal­anced pre­car­ious­ly atop a sheaf of com­put­er print­outs. Fred­dy Barks­dale, head of Sys­tems, with that over­size mop of blond hair and the cute wor­ry lines scrib­bled across his fore­head. Just the sight of him sent a stab of af­fec­tion through her that drove away thoughts of An­drew Warne, threat­ened to up­set her brisk pro­fes­sion­al­ism. She gave a brief, man­age­ri­al clear­ing of the throat, took an­oth­er sip of tea, and turned to the group.

“Right. Let’s get it done.” She glanced down at a sheet of pa­per on the desk be­fore her. “Es­ti­mat­ed at­ten­dance to­day: 66,000. The sys­tem is run­ning 98 per­cent op­er­ational. Any word on when Sta­tion Omega will be back on-​line?”

Tom Rose, In­fras­truc­ture chief, shook his head. “The ride seems to check out fine, green board all the way. But the di­ag­nos­tics keep giv­ing us an er­ror code, so the gov­er­nors refuse to sup­ply any juice from the grid.”

“Can you over­ride the gov­er­nors?”

Rose shrugged. “Sure, we could. And have an army of safe­ty of­fi­cials climb­ing all over us.”

“Dumb ques­tion. Sor­ry.” Sarah heaved a sigh. “I want you to keep on it, Tom. Keep on it hard. That at­trac­tion is one of Cal­lis­to’s biggest draws. We can’t af­ford to give it a va­ca­tion. Fred will lend you a trou­bleshoot­ing team if you want.”

“Of course,” Barks­dale said, smooth­ing down the front of his tie as he spoke. It was a beau­ti­ful tie, knot­ted with the same ex­traor­di­nary at­ten­tion to de­tail with which Barks­dale in­vest­ed all his ac­tions. Al­though he was not in the habit of ex­press­ing per­son­al emo­tions in a pub­lic meet­ing like this, Sarah had no­ticed that this tie-​smooth­ing habit seemed to sur­face when he had some­thing on his mind.

Her eyes swept the ta­ble. “Any oth­er news I don’t want to hear?”

The head of En­ter­tain­ment spoke up. “I just learned the band that was sup­posed to play the Um­bili­cus Lounge to­day won’t be mak­ing it. Drug ar­rest at LAX or some­thing.”

“That’s dandy, just dandy. We’ll have to get one of the house bands to cov­er.”

“Firmware could do it, but they’re booked to play Poor Richard’s.”

Sarah shook her head. “Um­bili­cus pulls in three times the crowd. Get that band down to Cos­tum­ing as soon as they get in—if they haven’t played in space suits be­fore, they’ll need to get used to them.” She looked around the ta­ble. “Any­thing else?”

“They nabbed a third-​time of­fend­er in the Gaslight casi­no,” the head of Casi­no Op­er­ations said. “Sev­en­ty-​five years old, if you can be­lieve it. Eye in the Sky got him on tape, string­ing a slot ma­chine.”

“Too bad for him. Cir­cu­late his pic­ture to Surveil­lance and Casi­no Se­cu­ri­ty, get his name on the Guest Ser­vices black­list.” Sarah glanced back down at her sheet. “Any progress re­port on At­lantis?”

“Fab­ri­ca­tion’s on track,” some­body spoke up. “Looks like we’ll make the dead­line.”

“Thank God for that.” At­lantis was the new—and quite con­tro­ver­sial—World, set for open­ing late in the year. “Dr. Finch, got the vi­tals for last week?”

The sal­low-​faced head of Med­ical picked up a chart. “Five births, all with­out com­pli­ca­tion. Two deaths: one heart at­tack, one aneurysm. Twen­ty-​nine in­juries, bro­ken wrist the worst.” He put the chart down again. “Qui­et week.”

Sarah Boatwright glanced at the head of Hu­man Re­sources. “Amy, any news on that pos­si­ble wild­cat job ac­tion by the san­ita­tion spe­cial­ists?”

“Noth­ing. And I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”

“Keep an ear to the ground. Let me know the minute you hear any­thing.” She looked back at her list. “Let’s see. At­ten­dance is down in Camelot, run­ning about 15 per­cent be­low the oth­er Worlds. The head of­fice has asked us to put an ex­plorato­ry com­mit­tee to­geth­er, find out what the prob­lem is.” She paused. “Let’s deal with that when I get back from San Fran­cis­co, shall we?”

She scanned the rest of the sheet, put it aside, picked up an­oth­er. “Okay, drum­roll please. The Tony Trisch­ka Band will be per­form­ing on the Board­walk, make sure they get comped for all meals and lodg­ing. Celebri­ty guests to­day in­clude Sen­ator Chase from Con­necti­cut and his fam­ily, the CEO of Gene Dyne…and the Earl of Wyn­dmoor.”

At this last name, an­oth­er groan went up.

“Is La­dy Wyn­dmoor go­ing to in­sist on that cas­tle thing again?” some­one asked.

“Prob­ably.” Sarah put the sec­ond sheet away. “The Neva­da Gam­ing Con­trol Board peo­ple will be out here a week from Wednes­day—ev­ery­body start prac­tic­ing your best smiles. And just one oth­er thing. The ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist, An­drew Warne, is ar­riv­ing to­day.” Notic­ing some blank looks, she went on. “He’s the robotics spe­cial­ist who cre­at­ed the Utopia Metanet. Please give him any as­sis­tance he may need.”

When this an­nounce­ment was greet­ed with si­lence, Boatwright stood up. “Very well. We’re at two min­utes and count­ing. Let’s sad­dle up.”

She turned to her desk as the group be­gan to shuf­fle out of the of­fice. When she turned back, on­ly Fred Barks­dale re­mained. As she’d known he would.

“Why is Warne com­ing to­day?” he asked, el­egant Home Coun­ties ac­cent sound­ing ev­er so slight­ly ag­grieved. “He wasn’t due for an­oth­er week.”

So that’s it, she thought. “I moved up his vis­it.”

“Couldn’t you have in­formed me, Sarah? I’ll have to get work­loads re­as­signed, he’ll need the re­sources of—”

Boatwright put a fin­ger to her lips. “It was Emory’s idea; it just came to­geth­er on Thurs­day. With the ac­ci­dent at Not­ting Hill Chase the week be­fore last, OS­HA about to get in­volved, the home of­fice wants us seen as fast on the case. But lis­ten.” She drew clos­er to Barks­dale, low­er­ing her voice. “I’m leav­ing for that en­ter­tain­ment con­ven­tion in Frisco to­mor­row. Re­mem­ber?”

“How could I for­get?” And then a light sud­den­ly dawned be­hind Barks­dale’s eyes. A smile re­turned to his lips, faint but no­tice­able. “And the con­ven­tion keeps you far from the ir­ri­tant—who might, af­ter all, still be suf­fer­ing the, ah, ‘pangs of dis­priz’d love’?”

“That wasn’t my first thought. I was go­ing to ask if you feel we can trust Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio to buy in on this, in my ab­sence. To work with An­drew, get this done. He’s the on­ly one who can do it, but he can’t do it alone. It’s not go­ing to be easy on ei­ther of them. Af­ter all, this is An­drew’s life work we’re about to com­pro­mise. And you know how Tere­sa feels about the whole thing.”

Barks­dale nod­ded slow­ly. “Ter­ri and I have had our dif­fer­ences of opin­ion. But they’ve nev­er been about the qual­ity of her work. She may not like what has to be done, but I think we can count on her to do it.”

“And you’ll keep close watch on their progress, in my ab­sence?”

Barks­dale nod­ded again.

“Thanks, Fred­dy.” She glanced to­ward the open door of her of­fice, mak­ing sure the cor­ri­dor was emp­ty. Then she reached for his lapels, pulled him to her, kissed him gen­tly. “I’ll make it up to you when I get back,” she mur­mured.

Then she stepped back and reached for her cup. “Now, come on. We’ve got a Park to open.”

 

9:00 A.M.

MO­MENTS LAT­ER, TEN thou­sand clocks with­in Utopia shift­ed in uni­son. The fi­nal sec­onds were count­ed down; the clock­faces went blank; then 9:00 was dis­played and nor­mal time re­sumed. Ze­ro Hour had ar­rived.

The Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter had be­come a place of con­trolled pan­de­mo­ni­um. At­ten­dants with coned flash­lights fanned out through the park­ing lots and on­to the ap­proach roads, di­rect­ing the heavy flow of traf­fic in a care­ful­ly chore­ographed bal­let. Blue-​and-​white trams, long and snake­like, wound their sin­uous ways be­tween load­ing points and the Cen­ter. Guides in the front cars of the trams, wear­ing jaun­ty white berets bla­zoned with the nightin­gale lo­go, spoke in­to mi­cro­phones in a dozen lan­guages, lay­ing down the ground rules of the Park be­tween jokes and bits of Utopia triv­ia.

With­in the Cen­ter, ev­ery tick­et win­dow was now in op­er­ation, tak­ing cred­it cards and—for sev­en­ty-​five dol­lars a head, all ages, no dis­counts—dis­tribut­ing per­son­al­ized nightin­gale-​shaped pins that, when dis­played on a shirt or lapel, grant­ed one day’s ac­cess to the mag­ical lands be­yond. Mono­rails glid­ed be­neath the twin met­al tracks that curved down the mid­dle of the en­trance canyon, run­ning 35 per­cent faster now in “peak mode,” shut­tling a thou­sand peo­ple to and from the Nexus ev­ery ten min­utes.

The Nexus it­self, which had been cloaked in a watch­ful, preter­nat­ural si­lence, now echoed with the sound of count­less voic­es. First-​timers stood in the shad­ow of palm fronds and foun­tains, scratch­ing their heads, con­sult­ing maps and guide­books. Vet­er­an vis­itors—“Utopi­ans” who formed clubs and In­ter­net sites to share their pas­sion—strode con­fi­dent­ly, neo­phytes in tow, to­ward their fa­vorite Worlds.

In­side Gaslight, a fish and chips sell­er ran past the en­trance to Not­ting Hill Chase—closed for ren­ova­tions—and head­ed for her stand. In Board­walk, the spot­ters on the Scream Ma­chine fin­ished their walk-​by, typed their au­tho­riza­tion codes in­to the con­trol room con­sole, and au­tho­rized the op­er­ator to ini­tial­ize the roller coast­er. Deep with­in Caernar­von cas­tle, an imag­ing spe­cial­ist did a fi­nal run-​through of the com­put­er ar­ray that con­trolled the holo­graph­ic se­quences for The En­chant­ed Prince.

The nine­ty-​minute pe­ri­ods di­rect­ly af­ter open­ing and be­fore clos­ing—when the max­imum vol­ume of guests en­tered and ex­it­ed the Park—were the most anx­ious for Utopia man­age­ment. Op­er­ations spe­cial­ists were on full alert, ready to deal in­stant­ly with any traf­fic flow ir­reg­ular­ities that might cre­ate bot­tle­necks at the Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter, the Nexus, or with­in the Worlds them­selves. Thou­sands of cam­eras—dis­creet­ly placed be­hind one-​way glass, with­in false walls and beams, be­hind fa­cades—scanned the Park, en­sur­ing that the Worlds filled with­out hitch­es or snags. Se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists, some dressed in black blaz­ers, oth­ers in plain clothes, min­gled with the crowds, on the look­out for lost chil­dren and pick­pock­ets. But none of this was vis­ible to the av­er­age guest, who roamed the grounds and mid­ways, smil­ing and un­aware.

One place the guests did not roam—were, in fact, nev­er per­mit­ted to en­ter—was the “Un­der­ground,” the sub­ter­ranean lev­els be­neath the Park. Most guests did not even know the Un­der­ground ex­ist­ed: they as­sumed they were stand­ing on ground lev­el, rather than four sto­ries above the canyon floor. Al­though the Un­der­ground sport­ed no life­like holo­grams or laser shows, no foamed-​con­crete fairy-​tale con­fec­tions, this was where the re­al mag­ic of Utopia oc­curred. Park em­ploy­ees scur­ried about, some wear­ing the cos­tumes of the “cast” who worked among the at­trac­tions and tourists above; oth­er “crew,” whom guests nev­er saw, wear­ing an as­sort­ment of cov­er­alls, jeans, and suits. Cut­away di­agrams on the bare con­crete walls showed the lay­out of staff cafe­te­rias, wardrobe, bar­ber­shops, break rooms, stor­age, com­put­er cen­ters, re­search labs, and the rest of the thriv­ing se­cret city be­low the park. Tour guides and Guest Ser­vices spe­cial­ists used the tun­nels as short­cuts be­tween the dif­fer­ent Worlds. Tech­ni­cians, artists, and bu­reau­crats hud­dled in a dozen con­fer­ence rooms and labs, dream­ing up new at­trac­tions or fret­ting about mar­ket pen­etra­tion. Elec­tric carts purred their way through the labyrinths, whisk­ing a celebri­ty per­former or a much-​need­ed re­place­ment part from one sec­tion of Utopia to an­oth­er.

Tom Tib­bald made his way through the cor­ri­dors of C Lev­el, hum­ming tune­less­ly. He was in his ear­ly thir­ties, had a thick head of tight­ly coiled brown hair, and was be­gin­ning to sag a bit around the mid­dle. His white blaz­er sport­ed the gold lo­go of an elec­tron­ics spe­cial­ist. De­spite the hum­ming, he felt un­com­fort­ably self-​con­scious: of the fel­low crew who passed quick­ly by with­out re­mark; of the surveil­lance cam­eras mount­ed in the arched ceil­ing of the tun­nel; and es­pe­cial­ly of the hard lit­tle pieces of plas­tic and cop­per in his blaz­er pock­et. He walked past Cen­tral Make­up and Ma­chine Shop 3. The hum­ming stopped as he ap­proached the se­cu­ri­ty check­point at the staff en­trance.

The se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist in the booth glanced at his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, nod­ded, and turned to a key­board to make an en­try. Hum­ming again, Tib­bald pro­ceed­ed through the au­to­mat­ic doors and out in­to the staff park­ing lot.

Af­ter the cool air and mut­ed light of the tun­nels, the heat and bril­liant Neva­da sun­light struck him a dou­ble blow. Tib­bald gri­maced, turn­ing away for a mo­ment, let­ting his eyes ad­just. Then he sniffed and moved for­ward, more slow­ly now, glanc­ing care­ful­ly around the staff lot. Look­ing for the van.

The back­side of Utopia had none of the dra­mat­ic beau­ty of its front door. The canyon walls fell sharply away on both sides, run­ning down in­to the end­less brown of the desert floor be­low. Be­hind him rose the mas­sive rear wall of the Park, con­crete and cin­der block, in­fre­quent win­dows like tiny pock­marks in its bulk. At ei­ther side, near the top, were huge green doors, open­ing on­to ramps that sloped gen­tly down in long, curved planes: guest emer­gen­cy ex­its, nev­er used ex­cept in drills. Be­tween them, at ground lev­el, was a thick­et of load­ing docks, staff en­trances, equip­ment shops, and ve­hi­cle sheds.

There it was: a brown, long-​wheel­base van, parked to one side away from oth­er ve­hi­cles, Ex­ot­ic Bird Train­ers of Las Ve­gas sten­ciled on its win­dow­less sides. Tib­bald made for it, hop­ing to hell the thing was air-​con­di­tioned. Win­dows were rolled shut: a good sign. But when he reached it and opened the pas­sen­ger door, there was no wel­com­ing gush of chill air. He sighed re­gret­ful­ly, tugged at his col­lar, and climbed in.

The stench of guano was al­most pal­pa­ble, and the front seat of the van was cov­ered in olive-​col­ored oil­skin. Not sur­pris­ing, Tib­bald thought, with all the bird shit in this junker. In the back, he could see a tall white-​barred cage con­tain­ing half a dozen Moluc­can cock­atoos, huge and pale pink. They re­gard­ed him silent­ly, salmon-​col­ored crests flared. Then Tib­bald glanced over at the driv­er and blinked in sur­prise.

“What hap­pened to the oth­er guy?” he asked with a sniff. “The one I met the first time, I mean.”

The man be­hind the wheel re­turned the glance. He had al­mond eyes and wide, sharp cheek­bones that gave his face a strange heart-​shaped sym­me­try. “Oth­er en­gage­ments,” he replied af­ter a mo­ment.

Tib­bald thought a mo­ment, de­cid­ed this was sup­posed to be a joke, and made the ap­pro­pri­ate laugh.

“You’ve got them?” the man asked. He spoke care­ful­ly, with the faintest trace of an ac­cent. Tib­bald tried to place it. He had friends in Guest Ser­vices who talked to for­eign­ers ev­ery day, could name any ac­cent there was with just one word. But Tib­bald nev­er dealt with guests, and af­ter a mo­ment gave up.

“Right here.” He reached in­to his blaz­er pock­et, fished out the plas­tic cards, and held them up, fan­ning them like a hand of play­ing cards. “All your fa­vorite fla­vors: lemon-​lime, grape, root beer, and new wild cher­ry.”

The man frowned and made a quick sup­press­ing ges­ture with his hand. Tib­bald dropped the pass­cards be­low the lev­el of the win­dow. “You know, for a lit­tle bit more mon­ey, I could have got­ten you the specs for that au­dio-​mor­ph­ing tech­nol­ogy you want. Would have saved you a lot of both­er, snag­ging it your­self like this. What park did you say you work for? Par­adise Is­land? Fan­ta­sy World?”

“I didn’t say,” the man replied. He point­ed to the pass­cards. “Test­ed?”

Tib­bald nod­ded proud­ly. “Re­pro­grammed ev­ery one my­self.” He be­gan tick­ing them off with his fin­gers. “This one gives ac­cess to all guest ar­eas, this one to Main­te­nance, this one to the Hub.” His fin­ger light­ed on the last pass­card, col­ored a pale red. “And this right here is the re­al bad boy. All se­cure sites up to lev­el 3.” He with­drew the fin­ger, a ner­vous look com­ing over his face. “Look, if they catch you, don’t use my name. I know noth­ing about it. Right?”

The man nod­ded.

Tib­bald smiled, then reached in­to his pock­et and pulled out a hand­ful of nightin­gale-​shaped pins. “Right. And here’s the im­age­tags you asked for. They’re gener­ic, can’t be traced. Just pin one to your jack­et and you’re good to go.”

“Ev­ery­thing else is set?”

“To­day’s down­link al­ready took place. Couldn’t change things now to save my life.” Tib­bald licked his lips. “Could I have the mon­ey now?” Though this was said ca­su­al­ly, it was fol­lowed by an­oth­er sniff: the dry sniff of a ha­bit­ual co­caine us­er.

“Sure thing.” The man reached in­to his coat pock­et—Tib­bald no­ticed idly the coat was leather, de­spite the heat—and pulled out a thick en­ve­lope of bills. He hand­ed it over to Tib­bald. “You’ve done well,” he said.

As Tib­bald be­gan to count the bills, the man threw an ap­pre­cia­tive arm over his shoul­der. The man’s oth­er hand went back in­to the leather jack­et, com­ing out this time with a small au­to­mat­ic pis­tol.

Tib­bald’s eyes were on the mon­ey, and it wasn’t un­til the man placed the gun be­tween his ribs and pulled him in close that he re­al­ized what was hap­pen­ing. His eyes widened, his lips worked to form a protest, but sur­prise dulled his speed.

Al­though the bul­lets were hol­low-​point, de­signed to ex­plode in­side meat rather than pass through it, the leather-​jack­et­ed man an­gled the bar­rel care­ful­ly down­ward, to­ward the strug­gling Tib­bald’s spine, to avoid the pos­si­bil­ity of hit­ting his own en­cir­cling el­bow.

There was a muf­fled thunk, then an­oth­er. The par­rots screamed their ap­proval. Tib­bald jerked, sagged. He made a thin reedy sound like air es­cap­ing from a bel­lows. The man re­leased his hold, let­ting Tib­bald flop back, pluck­ing the en­ve­lope of mon­ey away from the flood of red. Pulling the tarp down over the body, he wrapped it care­ful­ly, then rolled it over the seat in­to the rear of the van. He glanced through the win­dows quick­ly, then grunt­ed, sat­is­fied ev­ery­thing had gone un­no­ticed.

He be­gan to snug the gun back in­to his coat, then stopped. He’d moved quick­ly, but not quick­ly enough: a thin crim­son jet traced a damp line up the front of his shirt.

With a curse, he slid the gun home, grabbed the zip­per of his coat, and snugged it up tight. Two min­utes in a men’s room would set things right.

Be­sides, once in­side a cos­tume, it would make no dif­fer­ence.

 

9:10 A.M.

AN­DREW WARNE SAT in a plush chair in a large of­fice on A Lev­el. Aman­da Free­man was at a com­put­er ter­mi­nal, typ­ing. Over the last fif­teen min­utes, she had asked a re­mark­able num­ber of ques­tions. Once, years be­fore, Warne had done some con­sult­ing work for the CIA. The case of­fi­cer who’d done the back­ground check for Lan­gley had been far less in­quis­itive.

Aman­da fin­ished typ­ing, then looked over at him. “I knew you were in robotics, but I had no idea you were the brain be­hind the Metanet. I un­der­stand it con­trols all the robots in the Park?”

Warne nod­ded. “Ex­cept for the few that are to­tal­ly au­tonomous.”

“Very im­pres­sive.” Free­man con­sult­ed her screen again, then scrib­bled some­thing on a piece of pa­per and hand­ed it to him. “I be­lieve we’re through here. Your meet­ing’s sched­uled for eleven. Here’s the of­fice num­ber. Just ask any­body in Guest Ser­vices for di­rec­tions. You might want to use the time to look around.”

“Sure thing. Maybe I’ll take in the nu­cle­ar re­ac­tor.”

Free­man’s eyes dart­ed to his face, her faint iron­ic smile re­turn­ing. “So you’ve heard that one, too. I’m trained to re­spond that we uti­lize hy­dro­elec­tric pow­er.” She stood up. “This just leaves the ori­en­ta­tion—stan­dard for all ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ists.”

“What, like a train­ing film? I was hop­ing to see a bit of the Park with my daugh­ter.”

“It takes just five min­utes. Fol­low me, please.”

She led the way out of the of­fice and down the cor­ri­dor. Warne fol­lowed, feel­ing a grow­ing an­noy­ance. He’d al­ready sat through more red tape than he should have. And now, ori­en­ta­tion? As if he were just an­oth­er spe­cial­ist brought in to do some win­dow dress­ing. Had Sarah set this up for his per­son­al mor­ti­fi­ca­tion? But Warne quick­ly dis­missed this. Sarah Boatwright may have been many things, but she’d nev­er been pet­ty.

He hugged him­self as he walked, rub­bing his arms. “I thought my old com­put­er lab was chilly. But it’s cold enough to hang meat in here.”

“It’s a by-​prod­uct of the pu­rifi­ca­tion pro­cess. There’s two mil­lion square feet of floor space be­neath the Park, but the air pu­ri­ty here ap­proach­es that of a chip fab­ri­ca­tion plant.” She ges­tured down the cor­ri­dor. “No smok­ing, of course. And all the scoot­ers and carts are elec­tric. The on­ly non­elec­tric ve­hi­cle al­lowed is the ar­mored car that makes a week­ly pick­up.”

They were walk­ing past a gallery of of­fices iden­ti­cal to the one they just left. Warne glanced through their win­dows, still hug­ging him­self. In one of­fice, he saw Nor­man Pep­per, his friend from the mono­rail, hands mov­ing an­imat­ed­ly through the air. “Did you know,” the ea­ger voice fil­tered through the open door­way, “that or­chids are the sex ma­ni­acs of the flo­ral world? In­stead of fer­til­iz­ing them­selves like oth­er plants, they go to in­cred­ible lengths to have sex with oth­er or­chids. Why, the flow­er of the Pa­phio­pe­dilum venus­tum has even evolved, right down to the veins, to look ex­act­ly like a…”

“It’s in here,” Free­man said, open­ing an un­marked door and ush­er­ing Warne in­to a small room. Walls, floor, and ceil­ing were all lined in the same dark ma­te­ri­al, and there were on­ly two iden­ti­cal chairs, across from each oth­er. He glanced around cu­ri­ous­ly. This was not the pro­jec­tion room he’d ex­pect­ed. It looked more like the of­fice of a psy­chi­atrist with an un­der­de­vel­oped sense of in­te­ri­or de­sign.

Free­man di­rect­ed him to the near­est chair. “You can let your­self out af­ter­wards. You’ve got my card, feel free to page me at any time. First vis­its can get a lit­tle over­whelm­ing.”

She left the room, closed the door be­hind her.

A mo­ment lat­er, Er­ic Nightin­gale was sit­ting in the op­po­site chair.

Warne al­most leaped to his feet in sur­prise. He stared in amaze­ment.

The holo­graph was in­cred­ible in its de­tail. Warne knew, of course, that holo­graph­ic tech­nol­ogy was a spe­cial­ty of the Park, but he had no idea they’d made such ad­vances. The im­age in the chair could have been Nightin­gale him­self. There he sat—con­sum­mate ma­gi­cian, the vi­sion­ary be­hind Utopia—in his trade­mark top hat, white tie, and tails, the same thin in­tel­li­gent face and bright black eyes, small goa­tee on his youth­ful chin de­tailed down to the in­di­vid­ual whiskers. The fab­ulous­ly suc­cess­ful, leg­en­dar­ily ec­cen­tric per­former, no­to­ri­ous for his the­atri­cal ex­trav­agan­zas, his per­fec­tion­ism, his pen­chant for blur­ring the line be­tween re­al­ity and il­lu­sion. By com­bin­ing tra­di­tion­al stage per­for­mances with tech­nol­ogy and dark role-​play­ing, he had lever­aged the art of mag­ic in­to a vast en­ter­tain­ment en­gine. Nightin­gale’s two car­toon se­ries, based on char­ac­ters de­vel­oped in his act, had be­come the biggest prime-​time shows ev­er for the five-​to-​fif­teen-​year-​old set. It was his star pow­er that had brought to­geth­er the con­glom­er­ation of cor­po­ra­tions and ven­ture cap­ital­ists form­ing the orig­inal Utopia Hold­ing Com­pa­ny. And he had been the sin­gu­lar vi­sion­ary be­hind Utopia’s de­vel­op­ment—up un­til his death in a plane crash, six months be­fore the Park was to open its doors.

And here he sat, a high­ly pro­cessed con­fec­tion of diffract­ed light, gaz­ing di­rect­ly at Warne.

The im­age spoke. “Thank you for com­ing to Utopia,” it said. “We ap­pre­ci­ate the ex­per­tise you bring to the Sys­tem, and we hope your stay here will be a pleas­ant one.”

Warne half lis­tened, still a lit­tle numb with sur­prise. This was the man who had sat in his own Carnegie-​Mel­lon lab two and a half years ear­li­er, out­lin­ing his dream for Utopia, ask­ing for Warne’s help. This was the man who had so af­fect­ed Warne’s life: first for the bet­ter, then—un­in­ten­tion­al­ly—for the worse.

Nightin­gale had been dead for more than a year. And yet here he was. Star­ing at the im­age, Warne felt the af­fec­tion he’d had for the man—nur­tured over so many cups of cof­fee, so many brain­storm­ing ses­sions—re­turn abrupt­ly, al­most painful­ly. He hadn’t re­al­ized how much he missed the in­tel­lec­tu­al vig­or of their friend­ship, the un­spo­ken mu­tu­al re­spect. Nightin­gale had been en­tranced by Warne’s the­ories of robotics and ma­chine in­tel­li­gence. The very fact they were so con­tro­ver­sial had en­er­gized him, and he’d be­come Warne’s most pow­er­ful ad­vo­cate: pre­cise­ly the kind of ad­vo­cate he could use, right about now. Warne felt both sad and slight­ly un­com­fort­able, as if he were in the pres­ence of a ghost.

He knew a lit­tle about holog­ra­phy. 3-D video sys­tems pro­duc­ing im­ages on­ly a me­ter in size took out­ra­geous amounts of com­put­ing horse­pow­er. And yet the fig­ure be­fore him was full-​size, full-​col­or, de­void of pro­cess­ing ar­ti­facts or tricks like emul­sion swelling. And it had none of the ghost­ly, in­dis­tinct qual­ity of first-​gen­er­ation holo­grams. Warne glanced around the dark walls, look­ing un­suc­cess­ful­ly for the dis­play sys­tem. Then he turned back to the holovideo in the chair op­po­site him and tried to con­cen­trate on what he—what it—was say­ing.

“Close to 500 mil­lion peo­ple will vis­it an amuse­ment park this year,” the Nightin­gale-​im­age was say­ing. “But I’ll let you in on a se­cret. I have some­thing bet­ter than amuse­ment parks in mind for them. You see, I want them all to come to Utopia in­stead. If we can pro­vide a ful­ly im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence—that utopi­an ex­pe­ri­ence which ed­ucates while it de­lights—we can achieve our goal. And we can achieve it with­out gim­micky rides or cheap amuse­ment park thrills. That’s where you come in.” Nightin­gale smiled—the broad, ex­cit­ed, al­most con­spir­ato­ri­al grin that Warne re­mem­bered so well. “You have come here be­cause of your own spe­cial skill. And that skill, what­ev­er it may be, will help make Utopia a more re­al­is­tic place. Or a place that runs even more smooth­ly. Or a place that push­es even hard­er at the bound­aries of the imag­ina­tion. Be­cause Utopia is all about chal­lenges. If we don’t chal­lenge our­selves, we won’t evolve.”

The Nightin­gale-​im­age stood up. Warne no­ticed that, some­how, the holo­gram had the same kind of phys­ical en­er­gy—abrupt, lithe, elec­tric—that the liv­ing ma­gi­cian had al­ways dis­played.

“When I first de­scribed my con­cept of Utopia, the pun­dits told me I was crazy. No­body would drive miles in­to the desert to vis­it a theme park. Las Ve­gas was a ter­ri­ble lo­ca­tion, they said. It was an adult play­ground, not fam­ily-​ori­ent­ed. Peo­ple didn’t want themed en­vi­ron­ments that would chal­lenge their imag­ina­tions. They just want­ed roller coast­ers. But I know Utopia will live up to its name. It will be­come the most suc­cess­ful theme des­ti­na­tion in the world. And with the skills of such off-​site ex­perts as your­self, we will con­tin­ue to grow.”

Nightin­gale re­moved his top hat, turned it up­side down. “You will find that Utopia is all about il­lu­sion. We don’t shy away from ar­ti­fice here. In­stead, we strive to im­merse guests in il­lu­sion. Drown them in it.” He dipped his hand in­to the hat. When the hand came back in­to view, a white dove was perched on the in­dex fin­ger, head cocked, beady eyes star­ing. “And if they leave with some of the best, most vivid mem­ories of their lives, aren’t those mem­ories just as re­al as any oth­ers? And that is pre­cise­ly how we cre­ate re­al­ity out of il­lu­sion.” With a flour­ish, he loft­ed the dove in­to the air. The bird raised its glossy head, stretched its wings wide. As Warne watched, the white feath­ers be­gan to glow with an al­most metal­lic shine. Then, abrupt­ly, it mor­phed in­to a small drag­on. A jet of fire shot from be­tween part­ed jaws, and Warne ducked in­stinc­tive­ly. The drag­on whirled above Nightin­gale’s head, then van­ished in a puff of blue smoke.

The Nightin­gale-​im­age was look­ing di­rect­ly at Warne, still grin­ning broad­ly, as if en­joy­ing the ef­fect he was hav­ing on the lis­ten­er. No doubt he had care­ful­ly craft­ed this as a per­for­mance, not know­ing it would be­come a self-​ad­min­is­tered eu­lo­gy.

The im­age’s black eyes glit­tered be­neath notched brows. “Since the Utopia project first broke ground, we’ve al­ready made many of the most im­por­tant in­no­va­tions in themed en­ter­tain­ment. High­ly re­al­is­tic, con­sis­tent en­vi­ron­ments. Sub­lim­inal mood stim­ulus. Break­through tech­nolo­gies for holog­ra­phy and oth­er video sys­tems. In­tel­li­gent, au­tonomous robot­ic agents.”

“Thank you,” Warne mur­mured to the im­age.

“It is with your help that we will con­tin­ue such in­no­va­tion. And Utopia will con­tin­ue to build on what it al­ready is to­day: the van­guard of a new era in fam­ily en­ter­tain­ment. And a cru­cible for new tech­nol­ogy. En­joy your time with us.”

As he spoke, Nightin­gale had been hold­ing the top hat be­tween his hands. Now he spread his hands apart, and the im­age be­gan to wa­ver slight­ly. The out­line shim­mered gold and sil­ver, glit­ter­ing strange­ly in the mut­ed light of the room. The shim­mer­ing spread quick­ly in­ward, un­til what had been Nightin­gale now ap­peared as a hol­low, hu­man-​shaped cor­us­ca­tion of mag­ical dust. The glim­mer­ing cloud seemed to bow slight­ly. “Un­til we meet again,” Nightin­gale said, but al­ready the voice was grow­ing as thin and in­sub­stan­tial as the im­age it­self. The glit­ter­ing out­line bright­ened sud­den­ly, fir­ing in­to count­less pin­points of light, and then with the faintest sweep of strings it was gone.

Warne stood star­ing, im­mo­bile, at the place where Nightin­gale had stood, torn un­com­fort­ably be­tween present and past. He blinked away the sting that had come to his eyes.

“Good-​bye, Er­ic,” he said qui­et­ly.

 

9:45 A.M.

AN­DREW WARNE WALKED along­side a white pick­et fence, blink­ing in the bright sun­light as crowds streamed past him. The side­walk was a broad ex­panse of wood­en ties, worn and bleached as if from years of salt and sun. Near­by, a hur­dy-​gur­dy man cranked his mu­sic box, tame mon­key squat­ting on one shoul­der. On the far side of the thor­ough­fare was a small jew­el of a city park, full of land­scaped walks and wood­en bench­es. At its cen­ter stood a gaze­bo, where a rag­time band in straw boaters and red-​and-​white-​striped jack­ets belt­ed out an ir­re­sistibly cheery ver­sion of “Roy­al Gar­den Blues.” And over ev­ery­thing loomed the huge roller coast­er named the Brighton Beach Ex­press, its in­tri­cate spi­der­web of wood­en sup­ports and vast ski jump of a first drop like an old post­card brought mag­ical­ly to life.

This was Utopia’s Board­walk, a painstak­ing re-​cre­ation of a turn-​of-​the-​cen­tu­ry sea­side amuse­ment park, au­then­tic down to the cast-​iron street­lights and even—Warne re­al­ized with some sur­prise—the faintest touch of horse ma­nure in the air, odd­ly pleas­ant in this con­text. And yet it was not au­then­tic, of course, be­cause no re­al board­walk of 1910 had been this per­fect. It was like a fond­ly re­mem­bered nos­tal­gic con­fec­tion, a past san­itized of its im­per­fec­tions, but­tressed by an ar­se­nal of hid­den tech­nol­ogy. Warne worked his way through the crowd to the bor­der of the lit­tle park, pulled a guidemap from his pock­et and con­sult­ed it, then start­ed down the near­est path­way.

Ahead now he could see the blue oval of the pond. The smooth bright curve of the glass dome far over­head lent a sense of un­re­al­ity to what was an al­ready ex­ot­ic set­ting. Chil­dren and adults knelt along the pond’s mar­ble lip, trail­ing hands in the wa­ter, gaz­ing out at the small sail­boats that leaned and flut­tered their way across the placid sur­face.

Warne winced in­ward­ly. It had seemed like an ob­vi­ous spot to meet: cen­tral­ly lo­cat­ed, prob­ably not too crowd­ed. It hadn’t even oc­curred to him there would be sail­boats. He won­dered how Geor­gia would re­act.

And then he tried to dis­miss the thought. It was in­stinc­tive, au­to­mat­ic, this de­sire to shel­ter her. Though near­ly three years had passed since Char­lotte’s death, it nev­er seemed to go away. And the more he al­lowed it to show, the more Geor­gia seemed to re­sent it. I’m a big girl now, her look would al­ways tell him. I can han­dle my­self. She nev­er said it aloud—just as she nev­er spoke much about her moth­er—but he knew it, any­way, with a kind of pa­ter­nal sixth sense. Fun­ny: de­spite how much clos­er they’d grown in the last three years, there was still this pock­et of ter­ra incog­ni­ta in­to which he was not al­lowed to ven­ture.

And then he saw her, stand­ing be­tween two knots of Asian tourists at the far end of the pond, gaz­ing out over the wa­ter.

For a mo­ment, he just stared, love and pride min­gling with­in him. Most four­teen-​year-​olds were a lit­tle awk­ward, gan­gly, dan­gling pre­car­ious­ly be­tween the child and the adult. Geor­gia was dif­fer­ent. She stood slen­der and tall, poised un­con­scious­ly, like a thor­ough­bred. There was so much of her moth­er in her ev­ery move­ment: in the way she drew the chest­nut hair away from her face with a fin­ger, the way her dark eye­brows knit­ted to­geth­er as they stared out in­to the pond. And yet she was beau­ti­ful in a way Char­lotte had nev­er been. Warne of­ten won­dered where Geor­gia got her looks. Not from him, cer­tain­ly. He looked down in­to the wa­ter at his feet: a thin, tall man with a dark com­plex­ion and a lantern jaw stared back up at him. When he went places with Geor­gia, Warne usu­al­ly felt both grat­ified and a lit­tle alarmed. The girl turned heads.

He came up to her and she caught sight of him, rolling her eyes in mock ex­as­per­ation. “It’s about time,” she said, tug­ging the head­phones out of her ears. “Come on, let’s get go­ing.”

“Go­ing where?” Warne asked, falling in­to step be­hind her as she led the way back out to the boule­vard. He was sur­prised that, with such an abun­dance of choic­es around them, Geor­gia could be so sin­gle-​mind­ed. But she was strid­ing for­ward, snaking her way through the crowds, a girl on a mis­sion.

“To that, of course,” she said with­out look­ing around, pok­ing a fin­ger in­to the sky.

Warne looked up. “That?” he asked. Then he un­der­stood: the vast wood­en ram­parts of Brighton Beach Ex­press tow­ered over them, the sin­uous lines of the track bed ris­ing and falling like a mas­sive rib­bon.

“Oh, that,” he said. “You…you sure you want to go on that?”

Geor­gia didn’t both­er to an­swer. “I’ve got it all mapped out,” she said. “I vis­it­ed a ton of web­sites, got all the at­trac­tions rat­ed, best to worst, for each of the Worlds. So we’re go­ing on that first, then the Scream Ma­chine, and then—”

“Hey, slow down!” This was not how Warne had en­vi­sioned his first vis­it to Utopia: dash­ing mad­ly through the crowds, so busy con­cen­trat­ing on where he was putting his feet that he bare­ly had time to take in the sur­round­ings. “What’s the hur­ry?”

“Well, you haven’t told me how long you’re go­ing to be tied up. There’s a lot to see, and I don’t want to miss any­thing. Jen­nifer from my home­room class was out here in Febru­ary, and they liked it so much they stayed on an ex­tra day, just so they wouldn’t miss any­thing. Cost them five hun­dred bucks to change their tick­ets, she said.”

“I don’t know how long I’m go­ing to be tied up, princess, but it couldn’t be for too long.” They were pass­ing the En­chant­ed Carousel—fa­mous, Warne had read, for sport­ing the most wood­en hors­es of any sin­gle carousel—and the lan­guid waltz strains float­ed to­ward them over the cool, per­fumed air. “The meet­ing with Sarah’s at eleven. I’ll know more then.”

“What’s the big se­cret, any­way? Why couldn’t she tell you what it’s about?”

“There’s no big se­cret. I think it has to do with ex­pand­ing the role of the Metanet.” Ac­tu­al­ly, Warne hadn’t spo­ken di­rect­ly with Sarah Boatwright; the eleven o’clock meet­ing had been ar­ranged through her ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant. Al­though he didn’t say it, Geor­gia’s ques­tions were once again echo­ing his own. He changed the sub­ject. “Hey, guess who I just had a talk with? Er­ic Nightin­gale.”

At this, Geor­gia slowed a lit­tle. She looked at him, as if try­ing to fath­om the joke. “Come on, Dad. That’s bull­shit.”

“Watch the mouth. Ac­tu­al­ly, Nightin­gale did all the talk­ing. It was a holo­gram, life-​size, amaz­ing­ly re­al. It was geared to all the vis­it­ing spe­cial­ists. Kind of a pep talk.”

“Like you need one! You gave him half the ideas for this place.”

Warne laughed at this ex­ag­ger­ation. “Just some of the ear­ly AI stuff, the robotics.”

“Hey, where are all the robots, any­way?” Geor­gia looked around as she walked. “Haven’t seen one yet.”

“They wouldn’t re­al­ly be in char­ac­ter here. Wait un­til we get to Cal­lis­to.”

The en­trance to Brighton Beach Ex­press was a large brick build­ing, dec­orat­ed as a nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry amuse­ment hall, just be­yond the Aquara­ma. Flags hung like bunting from its up­per sto­ries; hand­bills and an­cient-​look­ing broad­sides were plas­tered to the fa­cade, ped­dling ev­ery­thing from dance-​hall re­vues to patent medicines in heavy-​bot­tomed script. Three vault­ed arch­ways led in­to the ride, each bear­ing a dif­fer­ent sign­board: Panop­ti­con, The Burn­ing Ru­ins, Meta­mor­phoses. Lines of vis­itors snaked away from each arch­way.

“We just stud­ied meta­mor­pho­sis in bi­ol­ogy,” Geor­gia said. “It was bor­ing.”

“Maybe, but the line is short­est.” Warne eyed his watch. “Let’s go.”

The line moved quick­ly—Warne had read about the Park’s abil­ity to keep guests en­ter­tained, even when cued—and with­in a few min­utes they were in the shad­ow of the build­ing. Be­yond the arch­way, the hall was dark. The line split in two, and a wom­an in a severe­ly tai­lored gown di­rect­ed Geor­gia to the right. Warne fol­lowed, let­ting his eyes ad­just to the dim light. The air seemed chill­ier in here, more hu­mid. Up ahead he could hear laugh­ter, sub­dued ooohs. He could make out peo­ple lin­ing up sin­gle file, star­ing at what ap­peared to be tall panes of glass set in­to the wall of the cor­ri­dor.

With­in mo­ments, Warne and Geor­gia took their places in front of the first two panes of glass. Warne looked at the pane fac­ing him, saw him­self star­ing back. So it’s a mir­ror, he thought. Big deal.

Sud­den­ly, Geor­gia dis­solved in­to laugh­ter be­side him. “Oh, my God!” she squealed, star­ing at her own pane. “Gross!”

Then Warne’s mir­ror abrupt­ly went blank. What the hell? That’s no mir­ror. A mo­ment lat­er, his re­flec­tion reap­peared. But some­thing seemed wrong; the im­age was off some­how, un­set­tling­ly so. But he couldn’t put his fin­ger on it and, with a shrug, moved on to the next pane, which Geor­gia had just va­cat­ed.

Again, he saw a mir­ror im­age of him­self. Again, it van­ished. And again, it reap­peared. On­ly this time it was ob­vi­ous what was wrong. He had abrupt­ly grown fat.

The An­drew Warne that stared back at him ap­peared to have put on an in­stant two hun­dred pounds. His bel­ly pro­trud­ed alarm­ing­ly, his promi­nent Adam’s ap­ple was ob­scured by a dou­ble chin. It was a sur­pris­ing, shock­ing im­age. And yet it was un­mis­tak­ably him: or rather, him as he might have been. At the next pane, Geor­gia was point­ing and snick­er­ing at her­self.

Meta­mor­phoses, in­deed, he thought. How the hell do they do it?

He moved on to the next pane. Now he went from be­ing fat to alarm­ing­ly thin. The eyes, sunken with­in a fleshy face in the pri­or frame, stared out at him from gaunt hol­lows. His jaw, large to be­gin with, now seemed far too big for the chick­en-​bone neck.

Abrupt­ly, he re­al­ized how it was done. It was holo­graph­ic tech­nol­ogy, like the im­age of Nightin­gale he’d seen be­fore. There must be an imag­ing cam­era be­hind the glass. It scanned in his im­age, then used mor­ph­ing soft­ware to change that im­age—make it fat­ter, skin­nier, what­ev­er—and re­pro­ject it. Like the wavy mir­rors in a fun house, on­ly light-​years more ad­vanced…

He re­al­ized that Geor­gia had been stand­ing at the ad­join­ing pane longer than usu­al. He glanced over, saw her look­ing in­tent­ly at the im­age. Cu­ri­ous, he leaned over. What he saw made him catch his breath.

It was an im­age of Geor­gia, com­put­er-​aged by about twen­ty years. The same chest­nut hair, thought­ful eyes, rose­bud mouth, strik­ing fea­tures. But there was some­body else in that face, too: the im­age of his dead wife, Char­lotte, faint but un­mis­tak­able. It was like a specter, look­ing out at him through his daugh­ter’s eyes.

They stood silent­ly for a mo­ment, star­ing. Then Warne licked his lips, placed one hand on Geor­gia’s shoul­ders. “Come on,” he said. “We’re hold­ing up the line.”

Be­yond the gallery, the queue snaked to­ward the board­ing area for the coast­er. The space around them was built to re­sem­ble a turn-​of-​the-​cen­tu­ry sub­way sta­tion. Brighton Beach Ex­press was set in­to the tiled walls in squares of black. Board­ing straight ahead. Min­gling with the queued guests were men and wom­en in pe­ri­od dress, laugh­ing and chat­ter­ing. A peanut ven­dor stood against one wall, hawk­ing his wares in a loud voice. Near­by were con­ces­sion stands, vaudeville acts. Warne shook his head. The il­lu­sion was re­mark­able. If it wasn’t for the oth­er guests around him, he’d have sworn they’d trav­eled back in time, to the Coney Is­land of a hun­dred years be­fore.

Be­side him, Geor­gia was un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly silent. He thought back to the mir­ror im­age he’d just seen. “Your mom and I took you to an old-​fash­ioned park like this. When you were sev­en, maybe eight. Ken­ny­wood. Re­mem­ber?”

“No. Hey, why do we have to wait with all these peo­ple, any­way? Can’t you get us to the head of the line? You’re a big im­por­tant per­son here.”

“Sweet­ie, that was a long time ago. By the way,” he said with a teas­ing smile. “I meant to ask. How was Child-​Care Ser­vices?”

Geor­gia wrin­kled her nose at the em­pha­sis. “Ac­tu­al­ly, pret­ty cool. You could watch any old At­mos­fear re­run you want­ed, and they had tons of com­put­ers and games. But I re­al­ly didn’t spend much time on that stuff. I was busy do­ing this.” And she dug in­to a pock­et of her jeans, pulled out a fold­ed sheet of pa­per.

“What’s that?” Warne reached for it au­to­mat­ical­ly.

Geor­gia held it away from his grasp. “It’s a list. Of qual­ifi­ca­tions.”

Warne wait­ed.

Geor­gia shrugged. “You asked what kind of girl­friend I’d ap­prove of. So I wrote it all down.” She looked at him. “You want to hear it or not?”

He re­turned her gaze cu­ri­ous­ly. “Yes, I do.”

The line moved for­ward, and Geor­gia fol­lowed it. She un­fold­ed the list, be­gan to read. “Num­ber one: does not wear high heels. Num­ber two: not a veg­etar­ian. Three: plays hearts, chess, and backgam­mon, but not too well.”

At this, Warne chuck­led to him­self. He was an ace at backgam­mon, but some­times for­got to let Geor­gia win the oc­ca­sion­al game.

“Brings presents on ev­ery vis­it. Eats choco­late cake.”

Warne loved choco­late cake. He felt touched: Geor­gia re­al­ly had him in mind when she made this list, as well as her­self.

“Be­lieves in large al­lowances. Must not have red hair.” She smiled slight­ly as she said this. Sarah Boatwright’s hair was a re­mark­able, in­tense cop­per.

“Plays on-​line RPGs. Must not be on a di­et.”

Warne be­gan to no­tice an un­com­fort­able pat­tern: Sarah, though trim all her life, seemed to be con­stant­ly on a di­et.

“Goes to Mc­Don­ald’s at least once a week. But likes root beer floats more than shakes. Likes the Three Stooges more than the Marx Broth­ers. Can’t be mean to my dad, like Sarah was.”

“She wasn’t mean,” Warne said au­to­mat­ical­ly.

“Wears blue jeans a lot. Must hate an­chovies, sar­dines, and all oth­er kinds of fish.”

Warne sighed in­ward­ly. It was grow­ing clear that no wom­an could ev­er live up to all these de­mands.

“Must think that—”

“How long is this list, any­way?” Warne said, snatch­ing it adroit­ly out of her hands. He smiled at the hand­writ­ing: for all her pre­ten­sions to ma­tu­ri­ty, Geor­gia still dot­ted her i’s with lit­tle hol­low cir­cles. The smile went away as he scanned the list. “Good Lord. Thir­ty-​sev­en items.”

Geor­gia nod­ded proud­ly. “Took me al­most the whole time I was wait­ing for you. Just one thing got left off, be­cause it was so ut­ter­ly ob­vi­ous.”

“What’s that?”

“She has to like Fats Waller. But then, who doesn’t?”

You, prob­ably, in an­oth­er month or so, Warne thought.

They were near the head of the line now. Ahead, Warne could see a man in a con­duc­tor’s uni­form ush­er­ing a dozen peo­ple in­to what looked like an open-​air el­evat­ed train. He swal­lowed painful­ly.

“What time is it?” Geor­gia asked.

“Five min­utes to ten.”

“Good. That gives us plen­ty of time to ride the Scream Ma­chine be­fore your meet­ing. Maybe the Flume, too.”

Warne felt his lips tight­en. It was go­ing to be a long six­ty min­utes.

 

9:55 A.M.

THE MAN CALL­ING him­self Mr. Doe stood on a walk­way over­look­ing the Hos­pi­tal­ity Cen­ter, lean­ing against a guardrail. He en­joyed the ca­su­al way his linen jack­et draped over the fresh­ly paint­ed rail. He gazed down at the Nexus be­low, its broad av­enue sweep­ing up to­ward the mono­rail sta­tion. Though it was al­most ten, thick knots of peo­ple were still stream­ing down the off-​load­ing ramps. A ver­ita­ble riv­er of hu­man­ity, he thought: it brought the Book of Joel to mind. He quot­ed aloud: “Mul­ti­tudes, mul­ti­tudes in the val­ley of de­ci­sion.” But no: if he were hon­est with him­self, the scene had a bleak­er, post­mod­ernist cast more ap­pro­pri­ate to T. S. Eliot than the Bible. He liked the sound of his voice, and he spoke again, a lit­tle more loud­ly now:

A crowd flowed over Lon­don Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had un­done so many.

He glanced down again at the Cen­ter, but the em­ploy­ees be­hind the cres­cent-​shaped desk were far too busy to have heard. In fact, the on­ly per­son who seemed to have no­ticed was a man in a cor­duroy jack­et, step­ping out of a near­by men’s room. Their eyes met; the man tipped his tweed cap, turned, and went on his way.

John Doe’s gaze swept back out over the Nexus. He de­cid­ed he dis­ap­proved of the de­sign scheme: the chrome and wood con­struc­tion seemed like some mon­strous syn­the­sis of Wal­ter Gropius and Pi­rane­si.

The se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, how­ev­er, was an­oth­er mat­ter. He was im­pressed by both its ex­tent and its re­straint. The pas­sive-​mo­tion cam­eras in the Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter and the mono­rails were all fifth-​gen­er­ation, mar­vels of minia­tur­iza­tion. He glanced to­ward the wall near­est the Hos­pi­tal­ity Cen­ter. Take, for ex­am­ple, that prox­im­ity sen­sor con­cealed be­hind the Cast On­ly sign. A nor­mal vis­itor to the park couldn’t find it if he was look­ing for it. And, even if he did find it, he wouldn’t know what it was. But Mr. Doe’s prac­ticed eye iden­ti­fied a DeM­ini­ma Sen­salert—lat­est re­lease, very ex­pen­sive, hard to ac­quire un­less one was a ma­jor world pow­er. Which, in a sense, Utopia was.

But a sys­tem was on­ly as good as its hu­man min­ders. Af­ter all, the for­ti­fi­ca­tions of Troy didn’t fall, ex­act­ly: it was the fools in­side that let the Tro­jan Horse in of their own free will. And the se­cu­ri­ty grunts at Utopia didn’t seem near­ly as im­pres­sive as the toys they’d been giv­en to play with. Walk­ing around so pur­pose­ful­ly, black blaz­ers in­stead of the usu­al white, ra­dio cords fit­ted snug­ly in­to their ears…they stuck out like sore thumbs, might as well have been tot­ing Uzis and wear­ing flak jack­ets. Even the plain­clothes op­er­atives were easy to spot. Oh, he’d seen a wide va­ri­ety of dis­guis­es: a fat tourist in a Hawai­ian shirt, a tall, thin man laden down with cam­eras, a sup­pos­ed­ly preg­nant wom­an. But they all wore the same thick-​soled, stan­dard-​is­sue black shoes as the reg­ular se­cu­ri­ty staff.

Mr. Doe shook his head. It could not have been bet­ter if he’d ar­ranged it for him­self. Which, in a way, he had.

He wait­ed an­oth­er mo­ment, en­joy­ing the feel of the warm sun on his shoul­ders. Then he picked up his leather satchel and made his way down to ground lev­el, head­ing for the por­tal in­to Gaslight.

 

IN­SIDE, AWAY FROM the crowds once again, Mr. Doe strolled down the cob­bled streets, hands in his pock­ets, whistling a com­pli­cat­ed fig­ure from Bach’s Chro­mat­ic Fan­ta­sy. His eyes re­mained con­stant­ly on the move. But un­like oth­er guests, he was not tak­ing in the spec­ta­cles, at­trac­tions, cos­tumed cast mem­bers. In­stead, he was ex­am­in­ing what was sup­posed to re­main hid­den: se­cu­ri­ty out­posts, ex­its and en­trances for Utopia em­ploy­ees, in­frared cam­eras. His mood, al­ready good, im­proved. The tem­po of the whistling ac­cel­er­at­ed.

Al­though Mr. Doe had nev­er been in­side Utopia be­fore, he com­mand­ed an in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the Park’s lay­out. With­out ef­fort, he traced the short­est route to Gaslight’s casi­no, a painstak­ing re­pro­duc­tion of the con­ser­va­to­ry in Lon­don’s Roy­al Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Gar­dens. He stopped be­fore its south­ern por­tal, gaz­ing in frank ad­mi­ra­tion at the glit­ter­ing fa­cade of glass and steel, the grace­ful out­lines. Now, this was more like it. He stepped in­side.

With­in, the at­mo­sphere was qui­eter, more state­ly. There was none of the bus­tle found among the thrill rides and eater­ies out­side. Pot­ted palms and Vic­to­ri­an ban­ners lined the walls. Cock­tail wait­ress­es in bom­bazine and taffe­ta rus­tled by, car­ry­ing gratis or­ders of pink gin and brandy-​and-​so­da. Croupiers and deal­ers, dressed in Ed­war­dian frock coats, held sway over count­less ta­bles. Be­neath the cen­tral transept lay two mas­sive rings of slot ma­chines, each a huge con­trap­tion of brass and tin, with me­chan­ical disks and hand-​paint­ed cher­ries. Mr. Doe strolled by, mar­veling at the way Utopia had de­con­struct­ed all the el­ements of gam­bling to keep the casi­no in pe­ri­od with the rest of Gaslight.

There was, in fact, on­ly one el­ement here that was dis­tinct­ly, in­ten­tion­al­ly un-​Vic­to­ri­an: the Eyes in the Sky, count­less bub­bles of smoked glass dot­ting the pan­eled ceil­ing. Un­like else­where in the Park, se­cu­ri­ty in the casi­nos was meant to be seen.

Mr. Doe gazed around, smil­ing broad­ly, as he watched the hun­dreds of pa­trons: bend­ing over the craps ta­bles, plac­ing their chips be­fore the roulette wheels, yank­ing slot ma­chine han­dles like au­toma­tons. So many peo­ple, so busi­ly em­ployed at los­ing mon­ey.

As a stu­dent of hu­man fol­ly, he was huge­ly amused by the great irony the con­ser­va­to­ry pre­sent­ed. Now here was a mir­acle of rare de­vice: a theme park that at its core was built, not around a brand of beer or a car­toon char­ac­ter, but around casi­nos. It was a won­der­ful per­ver­sion of Er­ic Nightin­gale’s orig­inal vi­sion. The re­vised, cor­po­rate, post-​Nightin­gale sce­nario seemed per­fect­ly clear to Mr. Doe: peo­ple would come, fall un­der the care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed spell, lose their in­hi­bi­tions, then their mon­ey.

It was re­mark­able, re­al­ly: Utopia had been open six months al­ready, and there had been rel­ative­ly lit­tle out­cry over this dirty lit­tle se­cret. Per­haps that’s be­cause Utopia did it so well.

Mr. Doe gave the con­ser­va­to­ry a fi­nal, care­ful look. So iron­ic—and yet, so very nec­es­sary.

He made his way back in­to the fog-​heavy streets of Gaslight. Out­side a small shop whose sign read Black­pool To­bac­conist and Cigar Em­po­ri­um, he stopped. Near­ly hid­den in shad­ow was a small, un­la­beled door. He glanced ca­su­al­ly back over his shoul­der. Then he placed his hand on the knob and turned.

Be­yond the door, a long cor­ri­dor of gray con­crete curved away in both di­rec­tions. A patch of the far wall was paint­ed in er­satz wood grain—just enough to fool any pass­ing guest in­to think­ing the open door was part of the at­trac­tion. Mr. Doe closed the door care­ful­ly be­hind him, ori­ent­ed him­self to a men­tal map, then start­ed down the cor­ri­dor. Reach­ing a wide met­al stair­case, he de­scend­ed to A Lev­el.

At the first in­ter­sec­tion, he stopped. A uni­formed of­fi­cer was ap­proach­ing from a cor­ri­dor la­beled Cen­tral Pro­cess­ing. Mr. Doe turned to­ward him, putting a slight­ly lost look on his face.

The se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer caught sight of him and stopped abrupt­ly. “Can I help you, sir?” he said guard­ed­ly.

“Why, yes, you can. I’m look­ing for An­imal Han­dling. I’m sup­posed to meet my col­league there.”

“You’re an ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist? Where’s your pin?”

“Pin? Oh, of course, my pin!” Mr. Doe stam­mered. He reached in­to the pock­et of his jack­et and pulled out the small green nightin­gale. “I for­got, I was sup­posed to wear this. Sor­ry.” He fixed it to his lapel.

“May I see your pass­card, please?” the guard asked.

“Got it right here.” He fum­bled in an­oth­er pock­et, pulled out the lam­inat­ed card.

The of­fi­cer ex­am­ined it, then hand­ed it back. “Thank you. Head down this cor­ri­dor, make your third right, sec­ond door on the left.”

“Ap­pre­ci­ate it.” Mr. Doe smiled and nod­ded, watch­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer con­tin­ue on his way. The guard had act­ed pre­cise­ly as the train­ing man­ual spec­ified he should. Clear­ly, it was as he’d been as­sured: he could re­ly on the low­er ech­elons of Se­cu­ri­ty to re­act re­flex­ive­ly, to fol­low the book. This was very good in­deed.

 

AN­IMAL HAN­DLING WAS a jun­gle of cries, hoots, and un­pleas­ant­ly ex­ot­ic scents. Wrin­kling his nose, Mr. Doe made his way past a small band of quar­rel­ing chim­panzees, lo­cat­ing the door marked Ex­ter­nal Prep 3. In­side, the al­mond-​eyed man in the leather jack­et stood be­side the enor­mous par­rot cage.

“Any prob­lems?” Mr. Doe said, clos­ing the door be­hind him.

The man shook his head. “They weren’t too ea­ger to take a clos­er look,” he said, jerk­ing his fin­ger to­ward the heav­ily smeared news­pa­per lin­ing the cage bot­tom.

“Of course, they weren’t. The rest of the team?”

“Ev­ery­thing’s on sched­ule.”

“And our lit­tle com­put­er whiz?”

“He’s rest­ing com­fort­ably.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Mr. Doe nod­ded to­ward the cage, and the man slid open a draw­er con­cealed in its bot­tom. Mr. Doe drew clos­er, reached in­side, and pulled out a ra­dio trans­mit­ter, thin and black, with a stub­by an­ten­na pro­trud­ing from its top. He snapped it on, punched in a code, lift­ed it to his lips.

“Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, this is Prime Fac­tor. Give me a sit-​rep, please.”

There was a pause. Then the ra­dio crack­led in­to life. “In po­si­tion,” came the voice.

“Ten-​four. I’ll check back with you at 1300.” Mr. Doe changed fre­quen­cies, lift­ed the ra­dio again. “Crack­er Jack, come in. Crack­er Jack, do you read?”

This pause was much longer. Then the ra­dio squawked, much more nois­ily this time. “Af­fir­ma­tive.”

“We’re mov­ing. Are you ready with the smoke and mir­rors?”

“Af­fir­ma­tive,” the sec­ond voice re­peat­ed.

“Roger, out.” Mr. Doe slipped the ra­dio in­to a pock­et, then turned back to the draw­er be­neath the cage, ex­am­in­ing its con­tents with a crit­ical eye.

“Now for the weapon du jour.” Mr. Doe con­sid­ered a Ruger, then re­ject­ed it on pure­ly aes­thet­ic grounds. His gaze lin­gered on the nice brushed-​met­al Colt, but de­cid­ed he wasn’t in the mood for a gun with such a hefty kick. He’d set­tle for the Glock-9: light, ef­fi­cient, de­pend­able in case things got out of hand.

He tossed the gun from hand to hand, then snugged it in­to a ver­ti­cal-​car­ry hol­ster be­neath his jack­et. Kneel­ing be­side the al­mond-​eyed man, he opened his satchel, then be­gan plac­ing items from the draw­er care­ful­ly in­side it. He worked quick­ly, with prac­ticed move­ments, and the satchel was filled in thir­ty sec­onds. He zipped it closed and stood up, pass­ing it to the oth­er, who slung it over his shoul­der and turned to­ward the door. Hand on the knob, the man looked back at Mr. Doe, nod­ding.

“You know some­thing?” Mr. Doe said, re­turn­ing the nod. “You look just like John­ny Ap­ple­seed.” And he smiled.

 

11:00 A.M.

THE AP­PLIED RE­SEARCH Cen­ter on B Lev­el looked just like his old lab suite at Carnegie-​Mel­lon, Warne thought to him­self—or would have, if he’d had twen­ty times the en­dow­ment. The rooms were spa­cious, gleam­ing, bril­liant­ly lit. They passed a da­ta cen­ter full of ter­mi­nals and rack-​op­ti­mized servers; a lab in which white-​coat­ed tech­ni­cians hov­ered over the sub­assem­bly of what looked like a holo­graph­ic trans­mis­sion sys­tem.

Geor­gia walked be­side him, guidemap in one hand. “Do you have to meet with Sarah Boatwright now?” she asked. “I mean, we’ve on­ly got­ten to two rides.”

Thank God, Warne said to him­self. Brighton Beach Ex­press had been bad enough, but the sec­ond coast­er—Scream Ma­chine—had been much worse. His stom­ach re­mained some­where in the vicin­ity of his gul­let, and if he closed his eyes, he could still see the wood­en sup­ports, whizzing past scant inch­es from his face. “It shouldn’t be long. We’ll be back out again be­fore you know it. Be­sides,” he ven­tured, “aren’t you cu­ri­ous to see her af­ter all this time? It’ll be a sur­prise—I didn’t tell her you were com­ing along.”

Geor­gia’s on­ly re­sponse was a non­com­mit­tal sniff.

Warne glanced at the num­bers on the pass­ing doors, then down at the di­rec­tions Aman­da Free­man had giv­en him. Con­fer­ence room B-23. Why a con­fer­ence room? he asked him­self. Odd place for an in­for­mal meet­ing with Sarah. Her ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant had told him the meet­ing would con­cern fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the Metanet, the com­put­er in­fras­truc­ture he’d de­signed to run the Park’s robots. And he could cer­tain­ly use an as­sign­ment like ex­pand­ing its func­tion­al­ity. But at first, he hadn’t al­lowed him­self to get too ex­cit­ed. Af­ter all, his break with Utopia’s home of­fice hadn’t been ex­act­ly am­ica­ble. Then, just last Thurs­day, the as­sis­tant had called to move up the meet­ing by a week. That meant ea­ger­ness on their part: af­ter all, the At­lantis roll­out wasn’t far off. The Metanet would have to be ex­pand­ed to ac­com­mo­date the robots in this new World. That must be it. No doubt this ini­tial meet­ing would be a brief, fence-​mend­ing vis­it, in which the project would be laid out. Then, af­ter tour­ing the Park with Geor­gia, he’d go home, put to­geth­er a pro­pos­al. And then more, longer meet­ings would fol­low. That’s the way Utopia worked.

To his right, he no­ticed a set of dou­ble doors. “Here we are,” he said, grasp­ing the near­est han­dle and turn­ing it. His palm was slip­pery on the pol­ished met­al. The thought of see­ing Sarah again filled him with a strange mix­ture of an­tic­ipa­tion and dread. He let Geor­gia in, fol­lowed her through the door, and then stopped in sur­prise.

The con­fer­ence room was much big­ger than he’d an­tic­ipat­ed. He closed the door and walked for­ward slow­ly, look­ing around. There was a large ta­ble in the cen­ter, sur­round­ed by per­haps a dozen chairs. An elec­tron­ic white­board, cov­ered with scrib­bled log­ic di­agrams, stood at one end. An LCD pro­jec­tor sat at the oth­er. Sev­er­al com­put­er ter­mi­nals on wheeled met­al racks were crowd­ed to­geth­er along one wall. Geor­gia glanced around for a mo­ment, then walked cu­ri­ous­ly to­ward the white­board. Warne watched her ab­sent­ly.

And then the door opened again and Sarah Boatwright stepped in­to the room.

He’d won­dered what it would feel like to see her again. He had imag­ined awk­ward­ness, a lit­tle re­proach, maybe even anger. But the one thing he had nev­er imag­ined was mere de­sire. And yet the long­ing that rose in­side him as he caught sight of her was un­mis­tak­able.

It had been twelve months since she’d ac­cept­ed the job as head of Op­er­ations, left Carnegie-​Mel­lon, and ef­fec­tive­ly end­ed her re­la­tion­ship with Warne. And yet she looked younger some­how, as if the chill air of Utopia had re­gen­er­ative prop­er­ties. Un­der the ar­ti­fi­cial day­light of the Utopia Un­der­ground, her cop­pery hair looked al­most cin­na­mon, her green eyes flecked with gold. As al­ways, she stood very erect, chin held high. She had al­ways been self-​pos­sessed, self-​as­sured, with­out doubt the strongest wom­an he’d known. But there was a new bear­ing about her, a way she car­ried her stat­uesque limbs, that he was in­stant­ly aware of: an air of com­mand. The om­nipresent teacup hov­ered in one hand, and a small sheaf of pa­pers was bal­anced un­der the op­po­site el­bow.

“An­drew,” she said, nod­ding. “Thank you for com­ing.” She placed the teacup on the desk, ex­tend­ed her hand.

Warne shook the prof­fered hand. Sarah’s touch was brief, pro­fes­sion­al, with­out trace of lin­ger­ing af­fec­tion.

And then she caught sight of Geor­gia, who was watch­ing them silent­ly from the far side of the white­board. Sarah let her hand fall to her side. For a very brief mo­ment, her face reg­is­tered sur­prise: a blank, ex­pres­sion­less look that Warne had seen on­ly rarely. Then, as quick­ly as it had come, it van­ished.

“Hi, Geor­gia,” she said, smil­ing. “I didn’t know you were com­ing. This is a sur­prise. A nice sur­prise.”

“Hi,” was Geor­gia’s re­ply.

There was an awk­ward si­lence of per­haps five sec­onds.

“You look like you’ve grown at least five inch­es since I last saw you. Even more pret­ty, too.”

In re­sponse, Geor­gia walked away from the white­board to stand be­side her fa­ther.

“How’s school go­ing? I re­mem­ber you were hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble with French.”

“It’s fine, I guess.”

“That’s good.” A beat. “Have you been in the Park yet? Vis­it­ed any of the at­trac­tions?”

Geor­gia nod­ded. Her eyes re­mained low.

Sarah’s own eyes moved to­ward Warne’s. Drew, what’s she do­ing here? her ex­pres­sion read.

At that mo­ment, two more peo­ple ap­peared in the door­way: a tall, slen­der man around forty, and a young Asian wom­an in a white lab coat.

Sarah glanced at them. “Come in, please,” she said crisply. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Warne. An­drew, this is Fred Barks­dale, CTO and head of Sys­tems.”

The man smiled, re­veal­ing a set of white, per­fect teeth. “A plea­sure,” he said, strid­ing for­ward to shake Warne’s hand. “Wel­come to Utopia. At long last, I might add.”

“And this is Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio, who works with Fred in Robotics.”

Hear­ing this, Warne looked at the Asian wom­an with fresh cu­rios­ity. He’d spo­ken with her dozens of times over the phone—enough to have be­come good friends à la dis­tance—but had nev­er seen her in per­son. Tere­sa was around five foot four, with dark eyes and bobbed, jet-​black hair. She re­turned his gaze, look­ing at him in­tent­ly. For a mo­ment, he found him­self al­most shocked by how at­trac­tive she was. Over all their many con­ver­sa­tions, he’d nev­er thought to at­tach a face to the deep, la-​con­ic voice in the tele­phone.

“Tere­sa,” he said. “We fi­nal­ly meet.”

The wom­an re­spond­ed with a smile and a bird­like duck of the head. “I can’t be­lieve it. I feel like I’ve known you for years.” Her smile was warm, but a lit­tle imp­ish; it crin­kled her nose and the cor­ners of her eyes.

“And this is Geor­gia,” Sarah went on. “An­drew’s daugh­ter.”

Both Barks­dale and Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio turned cu­ri­ous­ly to­ward the girl. Watch­ing them, Warne felt sud­den mis­giv­ing. Clear­ly, this wasn’t the in­for­mal chat, the nos­tal­gic tête-​à-​tête with Sarah, that he’d been ex­pect­ing. He’d made a sig­nif­icant mis­cal­cu­la­tion.

There was an­oth­er mo­ment of si­lence. Warne felt Geor­gia edge a lit­tle clos­er to him.

“Well, we’d bet­ter get start­ed.” Sarah squared her pa­pers on the desk. “Geor­gia, lis­ten. We need to speak to your dad for a few min­utes. Would you mind wait­ing out­side?”

Geor­gia did not re­ply; she did not need to. The knit­ting of her eye­brows, and the sud­den, stub­born jut of her low­er lip, were re­sponse enough.

“Here,” Barks­dale spoke in­to the si­lence. “I’ve got an idea. What if Ter­ri takes her to the near­est cast lounge? We’ve got ev­ery fla­vor of so­da imag­in­able, and they’re all free.”

Now it was Tere­sa’s turn to look ag­grieved, but Warne flashed Barks­dale a grate­ful glance. The man had clear­ly sensed the awk­ward­ness of the sit­ua­tion and hit up­on a tact­ful so­lu­tion.

Warne looked back at Geor­gia. “How does that sound, sweet­heart?” he asked. He watched the wheels go around in her head. She knew that she could not eas­ily refuse such a po­lite ges­ture from an adult. And—he hoped—she didn’t want to em­bar­rass her dad.

The firm line of her low­er lip soft­ened. “Cher­ry Coke?”

“Oceans of it,” Barks­dale said, smil­ing.

“Okay.”

Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio looked first at Barks­dale, then at Geor­gia, and then at Warne. “Nice to meet you at last, Dr. Warne,” she said in a jok­ing con­tral­to. “Come on, kid­do.” And then, ush­er­ing Geor­gia be­fore her, she walked out in­to the cor­ri­dor and closed the door be­hind her.

 

11:15 A.M.

AN­OTH­ER CHER­RY COKE?” Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio asked as she shift­ed in her seat, try­ing to find a com­fort­able po­si­tion in the red plas­tic chair.

Across the ta­ble, Geor­gia shook her head. “No,” she said. And then she added, “Thanks.”

Tere­sa smiled, then glanced pri­vate­ly at her watch. The meet­ing would take half an hour, maybe forty min­utes. But on­ly ten min­utes had gone by, and al­ready she could think of noth­ing else to say to the girl be­fore her. She heaved an ill-​sup­pressed sigh. I can’t be­lieve I turned down a $120,000 re­search job at the Rand In­sti­tute to ba­by-​sit a brat­ty kid.

She stirred again in her chair. As an­noy­ing as it was to be play­ing ba­by-​sit­ter, she was al­most glad she didn’t have to be in that con­fer­ence room, see An­drew’s face when he heard the news. Over the course of the last year, she’d de­vel­oped an af­fec­tion for the man that went be­yond in­tel­lec­tu­al ad­mi­ra­tion. A robotics lab could be a lone­ly place. Af­ter all, the things didn’t usu­al­ly talk back to you; and when they did, what they had to say was rarely in­ter­est­ing. She’d found her­self look­ing for­ward to the tele­phone chats with Warne. It was nice to talk with some­body who un­der­stood, who en­joyed, hear­ing about the lit­tle vic­to­ries, the off­beat the­ory. He even seemed to ap­pre­ci­ate her quirky sense of hu­mor—and that was say­ing some­thing. An­drew Warne was a great guy; this was a rot­ten de­vel­op­ment. And not just for him.

Tere­sa watched as Geor­gia pulled a me­dia play­er out of her pock­et, put the head­phones over her ears, and then—as if re­al­iz­ing this was rude—took them off again. She won­dered why Warne had brought the girl along. But as quick­ly as she thought this, she re­al­ized the an­swer. He couldn’t have known why he was re­al­ly asked here. They’ve been so se­cre­tive about it all. He must have thought it would make a good va­ca­tion.

She de­cid­ed to try a dif­fer­ent tack. “What’s that you’re lis­ten­ing to?” she asked, nod­ding to­ward the play­er.

“Ben­ny Good­man. At Carnegie Hall.”

“Not bad. Al­though old Ben­ny is a lit­tle bit too white-​bread for me, if you know what I mean. You like Duke Elling­ton?”

Geor­gia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? The guy’s on­ly the foun­da­tion of all mod­ern mu­sic. I don’t just mean jazz, ei­ther. That guy could swing. His con­cert at New­port, in 1956? Check out ‘Dimin­uen­do and Crescen­do in Blue.’ The sax play­er, Paul Gon­salves, takes a so­lo for twen­ty-​sev­en cho­rus­es. Twen­ty-​sev­en freakin’ cho­rus­es. Un­be­liev­able.”

This was greet­ed by si­lence. Tere­sa sighed again. She re­al­ized she was talk­ing to Geor­gia like she was an adult. But she had no idea how to talk to a kid. Even as a kid, she hadn’t known how to talk to oth­er kids. Hell, she bare­ly felt com­fort­able talk­ing to oth­er adults some­times. One thing she knew, though: if she had to sit here for an­oth­er half hour, she’d go stir-​crazy.

Abrupt­ly, she stood up. “Let’s take a walk.”

Geor­gia glanced at her in mute in­quiry.

“Well, you look about as bored as I feel. Come on, there’s some­thing I want to show you.”

With Geor­gia in tow, Tere­sa thread­ed her way through the com­plex pas­sage­ways of B Lev­el, ar­riv­ing at last at a small, un­marked door. She opened it, re­veal­ing a nar­row met­al stair­case. She ush­ered Geor­gia ahead of her, and they be­gan to climb.

The stairs seemed to as­cend for­ev­er. At last, they reached a small land­ing of cor­ru­gat­ed met­al, ringed by waist-​high re­tain­ing bars. On the far side, a nar­row­er stair­case rose again, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to an en­closed pas­sage. With un­spo­ken mu­tu­al con­sent, they stopped on the land­ing for a breather.

“Isn’t there an el­eva­tor?” Geor­gia pant­ed.

“Yup. But I hate el­eva­tors.”

“Why?”

“Claus­tro­pho­bic.”

Si­lence de­scend­ed as they caught their breath. Then Tere­sa turned to Geor­gia. “So, what’s it like to have such a bril­liant dad?”

Geor­gia looked over in sur­prise, as if she’d nev­er con­sid­ered the ques­tion. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“Okay? I’d have killed to have a dad like yours. My fa­ther’s idea of ad­vanced math was count­ing the beads on his rosary.”

Geor­gia seemed to think a mo­ment. “He’s just like any oth­er dad. We have fun.”

“You in­ter­est­ed in robotics?”

Geor­gia nod­ded. “Sure. I was, any­way.”

Tere­sa con­sid­ered this. It was still hard to be­lieve that she was stand­ing here, talk­ing with the daugh­ter of An­drew Warne: fa­ther of the Metanet, con­tro­ver­sial pi­oneer in robotics and ma­chine in­tel­li­gence, late­ly de­part­ed from Carnegie-​Mel­lon. In the course of man­ag­ing the Metanet, she’d had so many one-​on-​one phone con­ver­sa­tions with him that it was some­how hard to imag­ine him with a fam­ily. But of course, she knew the his­to­ry: how his wife, a naval ar­chi­tect, had drowned four years be­fore while test­ing out a new sail­boat de­sign in Chesa­peake Bay. How he’d been close­ly in­volved with Er­ic Nightin­gale in the Park’s ear­ly vi­sion, but af­ter Nightin­gale’s death had been alien­at­ed by the cor­po­rate types who’d moved in to fin­ish Utopia. She even knew the gos­sip: How he and Sarah Boatwright had been see­ing each oth­er back at Carnegie-​Mel­lon. How his con­tro­ver­sial the­ories on ma­chine learn­ing weren’t bear­ing their promised fruit. How the start-​up com­pa­ny he’d found­ed af­ter leav­ing Carnegie-​Mel­lon had re­cent­ly gone bel­ly-​up, vic­tim of the dot-​com im­plo­sion. Not all Utopia ru­mors were ac­cu­rate, of course. But if that last one was, she felt dou­bly bad for him to­day.

She pushed her­self away from the bars. “Come on,” she said. “On­ly sev­en­ty-​one more steps. I count­ed them once.”

The stair­case be­yond led steeply up­ward, through an en­clo­sure formed by two long, slen­der beams that arched away over­head, out of sight. There were no win­dows, and the tube­like pas­sage was lit by long flu­ores­cent lights set in­to the walls.

“We’re al­most there now,” Tere­sa pant­ed as she pulled her­self up with the handrail.

Grad­ual­ly, the an­gle of the stair­case less­ened. Tere­sa led the way around a sharp curve, then stepped on­to an­oth­er met­al plat­form and stood aside, ges­tur­ing for Geor­gia to come and stand be­side her. She watched the girl step for­ward, then stop sud­den­ly in as­ton­ish­ment.

“Take a good grip on that handrail, there,” Tere­sa said, grin­ning at the slack-​jawed ex­pres­sion. “It can take a minute to ad­just. Close your eyes for a mo­ment, if that helps.”

They were stand­ing on an ob­ser­va­tion plat­form, tucked high up un­der the domed glass roof of Utopia. Be­low them, be­yond a pan­el of one-​way glass, stretched the en­tire Park. The cool rib­bon of the Nexus could be seen ar­row­ing down its cen­ter. Spread­ing out from it, like the sec­tions of a halved grape­fruit, were the Worlds them­selves: each a ri­ot of col­or and shape, each ut­ter­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers. Cal­lis­to, the fu­tur­is­tic space­port, had from this height the kind of dark, bur­nished sheen of a black-​light pho­to­graph; Gaslight lay en­shroud­ed in veils of fog; Board­walk was all bril­liant light and bright pas­tel shades. Peo­ple were ev­ery­where: walk­ing along the boule­vards and side­walks, wait­ing in lines, snap­ping pho­tographs, study­ing maps, talk­ing with cast mem­bers, eat­ing, drink­ing, laugh­ing, shout­ing. It was like view­ing a map of the Park, brought mag­ical­ly to life. And yet it was much more than that; be­cause from this height, all the com­plex se­cret ma­chin­ery that no tourist ev­er saw was laid bare: the hid­den en­trances and ex­its, the false backs of the build­ings, the elec­tric carts and props and equip­ment and ac­cess cor­ri­dors that filled the spaces be­tween the walls and be­hind the fa­cades.

Tere­sa point­ed to a work­man who was trot­ting, ra­dio in hand, along a nar­row cor­ri­dor al­most di­rect­ly be­neath their feet. “Pay no at­ten­tion to the man be­hind the cur­tain,” she said with a laugh. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s awe­some,” Geor­gia said, eyes shin­ing as she stared out at the spec­ta­cle that lay spread out be­neath them. Sud­den­ly, she point­ed. “Look! There’s Brighton Beach Ex­press. We were on that this morn­ing. And there’s the Scream Ma­chine. I didn’t know they were that close to­geth­er.”

“That’s part of park de­sign,” Tere­sa replied. “You put the ex­it of one at­trac­tion near the en­trance of an­oth­er.”

She stood back, still smil­ing, watch­ing Geor­gia look around in fas­ci­na­tion. Un­like most com­pet­ing parks, Utopia did not al­low back­stage tours. No guest ex­cept for VIPs ev­er got to see the Un­der­ground. And sure as hell no guest ev­er got to see this. It was too bad, in a way, be­cause it was one sight guar­an­teed to amaze any­body—even pre­co­cious four­teen-​year-​olds who think they’ve seen ev­ery­thing.

“Take a look at this,” Tere­sa said. And she point­ed to a small plac­ard set in­to the rail­ing be­fore them: Er­ic Nightin­gale, 1956–2002. “We call this Nightin­gale’s Nest. It’s ded­icat­ed to his vi­sion for Utopia.” She glanced again at Geor­gia. “You ev­er meet him?”

“He used to come over to our house, talk with my dad, about robotics, I think. He played backgam­mon with me a cou­ple of times. He let me win more than Dad does.”

Tere­sa shook her head, pri­vate­ly amused at the im­age of the great Er­ic Nightin­gale play­ing backgam­mon with a kid in ju­nior high. Then she, too, turned her gaze out over the Park. “Ev­ery­body who works at Utopia comes here once,” she said. “Usu­al­ly on their first day. It’s kind of an ini­ti­ation. Oth­er than that, though, it’s pret­ty qui­et. All those stairs, you know. But I like com­ing here. God knows I can use the ex­er­cise. It’s peace­ful. And if I’m feel­ing down—you know, about my job or some­thing—I know that com­ing up here will re­mind me of what I’m work­ing for. That makes it kind of ap­pro­pri­ate to­day.”

She shut up abrupt­ly, aware that she’d said more than she planned. She looked over to see Geor­gia re­gard­ing her with a strange, in­tent look. She’s think­ing some­thing about me, Tere­sa thought. I won­der what it is. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.

“What?” she said aloud.

Geor­gia looked away for a mo­ment. Then she looked back. “I was just won­der­ing. You like Fats Waller?”

“Like? What’s not to like? I think I wore out my copy of ‘Hand­ful of Keys.’ And pi­ano play­ing just doesn’t get any bet­ter than ‘Car­oli­na Shout.’” Now it was her turn to stare quizzi­cal­ly at Geor­gia. “Why?”

Geor­gia’s eyes held hers briefly, and then the girl looked quick­ly away. “Oh, noth­ing,” she said. It was as if she had sud­den­ly grown shy.

Tere­sa glanced at her watch. “Well, we’ve man­aged to kill half an hour. Let’s get you back to your dad.” And she led the way down the stair­case.

 

11:15 A.M.

AN­DREW WARNE LOOKED from Sarah to Fred Barks­dale, then back again.

Sarah mo­tioned to­ward the ta­ble. “An­drew, please,” she said. “Take a seat.” She placed her cup and saucer di­rect­ly across from him, then sat down her­self. Reach­ing for the sheaf of pa­pers, she squared them once again on the ta­ble, then passed them to Warne. “Sign these be­fore we con­tin­ue.”

Warne took the pa­pers, scanned them quick­ly. He looked up. “This is a nondis­clo­sure agree­ment.”

Sarah nod­ded.

“I don’t un­der­stand. I al­ready signed one of these, dur­ing de­vel­op­ment phase.”

“It’s Chuck Emory and the home of­fice. They want to make sure a tight lid is kept on what we dis­cuss here to­day.”

Sarah of­fered noth­ing more, mere­ly re­turn­ing his gaze. Af­ter a mo­ment, Warne sighed, low­ered his eyes, and scrib­bled his name on the sig­na­ture line. Bull­shit red tape, he thought to him­self. The bean coun­ters in New York get worse by the year. And yet it made sense. Ex­pand­ing the Metanet would re­quire ac­cess to new and sen­si­tive Utopia tech­nol­ogy.

Sarah took back the pa­pers. “Thank you.” She placed them neat­ly be­side the teacup. “I’m sor­ry we couldn’t give you de­tails any ear­li­er, but we just no­ticed the prob­lems re­cent­ly and we’ve been try­ing to de­ter­mine a pat­tern.”

Warne glanced at her. “Prob­lems?”

Sarah turned to­ward Barks­dale. “Fred, would you pro­vide back­ground?”

“Right,” Barks­dale said. He placed his el­bows on the arms of his chair and tent­ed his fin­gers, star­ing at Warne from be­neath a well-​combed mop of blond hair. “Over the last two weeks, we’ve no­ticed odd things go­ing on with some of the tech at Utopia. Glitch­es in the uni­ver­sal trans­la­tion sys­tem in Guest Ser­vices, for ex­am­ple. The AI that con­trols di­ag­nos­tics for Sta­tion Omega—the free-​fall ride in Cal­lis­to—kept re­port­ing fail­ures, wouldn’t let the ride start up. But most of the prob­lems have been with the robotics.” He be­gan tick­ing off points on well-​man­icured fin­ger­nails. “A jan­ito­ri­al bot on C Lev­el tried to mop an elec­tri­cal pan­el; it was de­ac­ti­vat­ed just in time. A mail-​de­liv­ery bot be­gan drop­ping mail in trash cans in­stead of in-​box­es. Some of the fire-​breathers in Drag­on­spire for­got their tim­ing and mis­fired. Al­most singed a Japanese tour group.”

“These prob­lems,” Warne replied. “Are they on­go­ing?”

“That’s the most frus­trat­ing part. Ex­cept for Sta­tion Omega, they’ve been in­ter­mit­tent. And even that prob­lem went away just an hour ago, gave the ride en­gi­neers a green light. No­body knows why. We’ve run fault-​tol­er­ance tests, en­gi­neer­ing eval­ua­tions, even gone low-​tech with os­cil­lo­scopes and trace pens. There’s noth­ing wrong.”

“Phan­tom ab­nor­mal­ities,” Sarah said. “They’re fine one minute, have a psy­chot­ic break the next. Then they’re fine again.”

Warne turned from Barks­dale back to Sarah Boatwright. A chill was be­gin­ning to form in the pit of his stom­ach.

“Volt­age ir­reg­ular­ities?” he asked.

Barks­dale shook his head. “Ev­ery line in Utopia is per­fect­ly clean. The pow­er grid nev­er fluc­tu­ates.”

Warne nod­ded. “That’s right, I for­got. The nu­cle­ar re­ac­tor.” When no­body laughed, he asked an­oth­er ques­tion. “Be­ta-​test­ing ar­ti­facts?”

“No,” Barks­dale said. “Ev­ery­thing’s run­ning in pro­duc­tion.”

“Bugs?”

“Af­ter so many pro­cess­ing cy­cles? And in so many places? And then to have them van­ish?”

“Have you set up a clean room, tried to iso­late an event?”

“With the num­ber of au­tonomous bots out there, the truth is, we wouldn’t know where to be­gin.”

The room fell silent. The chill was spread­ing quick­ly. “In­ter­mit­tent prob­lems like these of­ten mean ex­ter­nal in­tru­sion,” he said, choos­ing his words care­ful­ly.

Barks­dale shook his head again. “Ab­so­lute­ly not. There’s a moat around all the pro­duc­tion servers. No ex­ter­nal con­nec­tions. The on­ly por­tal to the out­side is the guest in­for­ma­tion web, and that’s lo­cat­ed off-​site, fire­walled to the hilt.”

Sarah Boatwright sipped her tea. “Just to be sure, Fred had the white-​hats at KIS work it over last month. They said it was the most se­cure sys­tem they’d ev­er seen.”

Warne nod­ded ab­sent­ly. He’d worked with Key­hole In­tru­sion Sys­tems the year be­fore, when the robotics web serv­er at Carnegie-​Mel­lon had been hit with a de­nial-​of-​ser­vice at­tack. “White-​hats” were li­censed hack­ers, hired by cor­po­ra­tions to break in­to their com­put­er sys­tems and pin­point weak­ness­es. The cow­boys over at KIS were the best in the busi­ness.

Warne licked his lips. He had to ask the ques­tion. “Okay, so there’s trou­ble in par­adise. I’m sor­ry to hear about it. But how ex­act­ly does this re­late to the—what did your as­sis­tant call it over the phone—the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the Metanet?”

Barks­dale and Sarah Boatwright ex­changed glances. “Dr. Warne, I don’t know ex­act­ly how to say this,” Barks­dale replied. “I was hop­ing you’d come to the same con­clu­sion we have. The prob­lem seems to lie with the Metanet.”

Even though he’d al­ready be­gun to fear just such a re­ply, Warne was stunned. He felt his mouth go dry. “Don’t you think that’s jump­ing to con­clu­sions?”

“It’s the on­ly thing all the fail­ures have in com­mon. We’ve elim­inat­ed ev­ery­thing else. There’s no oth­er an­swer.”

“No oth­er an­swer?” Warne heard his own voice, faster and loud­er than he’d meant it to be.

Barks­dale nod­ded. “The Metanet is sup­posed to be self-​learn­ing. Per­haps, over time, it has mod­ified its own rule-​set for the worse. You know: ‘Striv­ing to bet­ter, oft we mar what’s well.’”

“No, I don’t know. The sys­tem gets a ner­vous tic, and you blame the head.”

“It’s rather more than a ner­vous tic,” Barks­dale said. He had a strange look on his fine­ly fea­tured face, like a doc­tor break­ing bad news to a pa­tient. “There’s some­thing else. What hap­pened on the Not­ting Hill ride the Fri­day be­fore last.”

Warne had seen a short blurb about this in the pa­per. “That was a me­chan­ical fail­ure. Shod­dy work­man­ship or some­thing.”

“All of our high-​G rides are built by the Swiss firm, Tait­tinger & Rochefort. The Rolls-​Royce of the roller-​coast­er world.”

“What­ev­er. It was an ac­ci­dent. What’s the rel­evance?”

“Two bots are as­signed to that at­trac­tion. Dur­ing the day, while the ride is op­er­ational, they work lu­bri­ca­tion. Af­ter the Park clos­es, they do a safe­ty in­spec­tion of the en­tire track. They’re pro­grammed to look for met­al fa­tigue, stress points, to make sure the elec­tron­ic safe­ty dogs that con­trol the move­ment of the cars on the ratch­et hills and de­scents are se­cure. For some rea­son we don’t know, sev­en nights ago they loos­ened a dozen of the dogs in­stead of tight­en­ing them, re­vers­ing po­lar­ity. Dur­ing op­er­ation the next day, five of the dogs short­ed out, two at a crit­ical point. With­out the dogs to keep it on the track, a car de­railed on the fi­nal de­scent. Back­up safe­ty plates in the un­der­car­riage kept the car from leav­ing the track com­plete­ly, but it whip­sawed severe­ly through­out the en­tire sev­en­ty-​foot drop.”

“I re­viewed video logs of the in­ci­dent,” Sarah said. “It was like watch­ing a dog shak­ing a rat. A boy in the front seat lost his grip and fell out. He sur­vived, by a mir­acle. But both legs were shat­tered, sev­er­al ribs crushed. He’ll be in a wheelchair for months. The oth­er oc­cu­pants of the car were bad­ly bruised. The fa­ther suf­fered a bro­ken col­lar­bone. Need­less to say, lawyers have been cir­cling ev­er since.”

Warne re­al­ized he was hold­ing his breath. He ex­haled slow­ly. “You’re sure about this?”

Both Sarah and Barks­dale nod­ded.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Did you ex­am­ine the bots’ pro­gram­ming?”

“It was the first thing we did af­ter clos­ing the ride. We had a code-​re­view team, led by Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio, check ev­ery line from the com­mand stack to the map­ping rou­tines. The Metanet had re­pro­grammed the bots to loosen the safe­ty dogs.”

“Both bots?”

“Each loos­ened pre­cise­ly six safe­ty dogs.”

Warne felt some­thing ridicu­lous­ly like pan­ic threat­en to seize his limbs. He fought it back. “Wait a minute. Let’s back up here, think about the Metanet’s job. It’s a neu­ral net­work that ex­am­ines the op­er­at­ing code of the Park’s robots, and op­ti­mizes that code. That’s all it does. It’s a pas­sive-​learn­ing sys­tem. It wouldn’t just…” Warne stopped. “You’ve con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­ity of in­ter­nal tam­per­ing?”

Barks­dale nod­ded, smooth­ing down his tie. “All of our IT staff goes through rig­or­ous psy­cho­log­ical test­ing and back­ground checks. Our com­pen­sa­tion and ben­efits pack­ages are the best in the in­dus­try, we have an em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion rate of 99 per­cent—”

“Wait, wait,” Warne in­ter­rupt­ed. “That’s all well and good. But this has got ‘in­side job’ writ­ten all over it. I mean, what oth­er ex­pla­na­tion is there?”

Warne watched as Sarah and Barks­dale ex­changed glances. He could guess what they were think­ing: He’s de­fen­sive, lash­ing out, try­ing to lay blame any­where but his own cre­ation.

Barks­dale cleared his throat. “We have a strin­gent code-​pro­mo­tion pro­cess, noth­ing gets up­dat­ed with­out pass­ing up the man­age­ri­al chain and past me. But, Dr. Warne, the bot­tom line is, this sim­ply isn’t the work of a cor­po­rate spy or a dis­grun­tled em­ploy­ee. Di­ag­nos­tic fail­ures on mail-​de­liv­ery robots? The hand­writ­ing is all wrong. Be­sides, it’s too broad-​scale. Even so, we’ve be­gun in­ter­views and log check­ing, just to be sure.”

Sarah took a sip of her tea, re­placed the cup in the saucer. “Mean­while, An­drew, we want to de­task the Metanet.”

For a mo­ment, Warne was too stunned to re­spond. De­task the Metanet. Je­sus. He thought about the bots on Not­ting Hill Chase, the loos­ened safe­ty dogs. Was it re­al­ly pos­si­ble that he was in­di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for such a ter­ri­ble…

Then he shook his head. It wasn’t pos­si­ble, it couldn’t be.

He looked once again at Sarah and Barks­dale. He could see in their eyes that this con­ver­sa­tion was mere­ly for the sake of form. A de­ci­sion had al­ready been made.

“Sarah,” he said in his best ab­ject tone. “I know you must be un­der a lot of pres­sure over this. But I think it’s a rash de­ci­sion. Look, we can take a few days to ex­am­ine the prob­lem. You can show me the specifics. I’m sure some­thing will come to light.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, An­drew, I’m leav­ing for San Fran­cis­co to­mor­row morn­ing,” she replied. “Fred will give you what­ev­er you need.”

Warne watched the two share an­oth­er pri­vate look. Then he re­al­ized: Sarah and Barks­dale were an item.

Abrupt­ly, jeal­ous anger min­gled with the shock, dis­may, and mor­ti­fi­ca­tion that al­ready filled him. Not that he could blame Sarah, of course; go­ing for some­one like Barks­dale was al­most a giv­en. The guy was charm­ing in that Brit way that had al­ways seemed a lit­tle su­per­fi­cial to Warne; good-​look­ing, gal­lant, re­port­ed­ly a bril­liant CTO to boot. It was al­most too much. Warne felt like a Vol­vo, trad­ed in for a twelve-​cylin­der Jag.

He shook his head at the bit­ter irony. All this time, he’d been wor­ried about see­ing Sarah again—how she’d act, how he’d feel, what Geor­gia might or might not say. He hadn’t been think­ing much about the meet­ing it­self at all, save how it might jump-​start his stalled ca­reer…He sat back in his chair, feel­ing a lot old­er than when he’d first walked in­to the room. “You bought the tech­nol­ogy,” he said, the anger hard­en­ing his voice. “It’s yours to use as you see fit. Why did you bring me all the way out here to tell me the bad news?”

“We want you to head up the dis­as­sem­bly,” Barks­dale said.

“Don’t you think that’s a lit­tle cold? Not on­ly are you giv­ing my cre­ation a loboto­my, you want me to wield the scalpel?”

Barks­dale seemed to con­sid­er this. “It’s a non­triv­ial op­er­ation.”

“Sure­ly you have enough pro­gram­ming drones on hand to do your plumb­ing for you. You don’t need my help—”

“Dr. Warne, do you think it was my idea?” Barks­dale was smil­ing, but the rich En­glish vow­els car­ried the faintest un­der­cur­rent of ir­ri­ta­tion.

“Or maybe what you’re re­al­ly look­ing for is a scape­goat.”

Barks­dale shot him a look of sur­prise, and Sarah rose to her feet.

“I think you’ve heard all you need,” she said briskly. “Let’s wrap it up. Fred, I’ll see you at the State of the Park meet­ing. An­drew, why don’t you stay be­hind?”

“Right.” Barks­dale smiled briefly at Sarah, nod­ded a lit­tle war­ily to Warne, then left.

Sarah watched him go, then turned to Warne. “Well, I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your abil­ity to alien­ate an au­di­ence.”

“How’d you ex­pect me to re­act, af­ter hear­ing my biggest suc­cess is about to be trashed? Pleased?”

“You shouldn’t look at it like that. This Metanet ex­it is tem­po­rary, ex­plorato­ry.”

“Come on. I dealt with those home of­fice guys af­ter Nightin­gale’s death, re­mem­ber? You saw the re­sult. Once you take the Metanet off-​line, it’s not go­ing to go back on.”

Sarah reached for her teacup. “I un­der­stand how you feel, An­drew, but—”

“And that’s an­oth­er thing. What’s with this An­drew?”

“I think it’s bet­ter.” She with­drew her hand, looked him in the eye. “Don’t you?”

No­body won a star­ing match with Sarah. Abrupt­ly, the anger drained out of Warne, leav­ing him feel­ing de­feat­ed. He leaned against the ta­ble and crossed his arms.

Then he looked at Sarah. “It just oc­curred to me. To­mor­row is June twen­ty-​first.”

“And?”

“The first an­niver­sary of the day you walked out.”

“I did not walk out, Drew. I ac­cept­ed the job at Utopia.”

“Would it have killed you to stay a lit­tle longer? Try to work things out? I mean, I know we were both busy, we didn’t have as much time as we should for each oth­er. And I know Geor­gia didn’t make it easy for you. But you didn’t give her enough of a chance. You didn’t give us enough of a chance.”

“I gave as much as I could. Did you ex­pect me to give up my job?”

“I didn’t ex­pect you to pack up and move to Neva­da.”

“It was the chance of a life­time! Would you rather I’d stayed be­hind, re­sent­ed you for hold­ing me back?”

Sarah had stepped to­ward him with these words. Now she paused. Then, with de­lib­er­ate move­ments, she took a step back, reached for her teacup, took a sip.

“Let’s not play ar­chae­ol­ogy,” she be­gan again in a qui­eter tone. “It’s point­less, it won’t get us any­where.” She re­placed the cup with a steady hand. “Bring­ing you in­to this was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion for me. But there was no oth­er choice. No­body else un­der­stands the topol­ogy of the Metanet like you. You de­signed it, af­ter all. And…we just don’t want any more prob­lems.”

Warne didn’t an­swer. There seemed like noth­ing else to say.

“I shouldn’t have to re­mind you of the orig­inal terms of the agree­ment. Can’t you view this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty? The thing’s had six full months to ma­ture, op­er­at­ing in a pro­duc­tion en­vi­ron­ment you couldn’t be­gin to du­pli­cate in your lab.”

I’m with­out a lab at the mo­ment. But Warne sim­ply shrugged. “Sure. It’ll make for a nice post­mortem.”

Sarah looked at him as the si­lence length­ened. Then she turned back to the ta­ble, col­lect­ed her pa­pers, picked up her teacup.

“Tere­sa should be back any minute,” she said. “I sug­gest the two of you not waste any time. Mr. Barks­dale’s ex­pect­ing an ac­tion plan by the end of the day.”

She walked out of the con­fer­ence room, leav­ing the door open be­hind her.

 

11:45 A.M.

CAL­LIS­TO WAS UTOPIA’S fu­ture world, a bustling space­port in geosyn­chronous or­bit—vis­itors were asked to be­lieve—six­ty miles above Jupiter’s sixth moon. An­drew Warne found it hard not to be­lieve. Af­ter a brief, pitch-​black shut­tle ride, he had walked through the dock­ing area, Geor­gia at his side, then stepped out in­to the bustling main con­course—on­ly to stop again and stare around in sur­prise. Spread be­fore them was a thriv­ing hub of en­ter­tain­ment and com­merce that looked as if it had been torn whole from the twen­ty-​fourth cen­tu­ry. Strange-​look­ing aliens and cast mem­bers in fu­tur­is­tic uni­forms walked among the cam­era-​click­ing tourists. Ru­by-​and azure-​col­ored lasers lanced and flick­ered over­head. In­cred­ibly de­tailed holo­graph­ic im­ages were ev­ery­where: point­ing the way to rides and at­trac­tions, hov­er­ing like fu­tur­is­tic sign­boards above the en­trance to restau­rant and rest room alike.

As else­where, the span of the Utopia dome curved far above. But this was not the stripe of bril­liant blue sky he’d seen in the Nexus or Board­walk. In­stead, he saw a deep black­ness of lim­it­less space, punc­tu­at­ed by count­less stars. The rich­ly col­ored bulk of Jupiter filled more than a quar­ter of the sky. As Warne stared, he no­ticed that the clouds on the plan­et’s sur­face were mov­ing, roil­ing con­vul­sive­ly in earth-​sized tem­pests.

“Awe­some,” Geor­gia said as she looked around. “Just like in the show. But why are we here? We haven’t fin­ished Board­walk yet.”

“We’ll have plen­ty of time for that lat­er on,” Warne said. “Right now, there’s some­thing I want to show you.” He glanced at his watch. He’d agreed to meet with Tere­sa at one o’clock: that gave them a lit­tle over an hour. He tried to keep his step light, his tone re­laxed: Geor­gia was too un­can­ni­ly good at pick­ing up his moods. Thank God, she hadn’t asked him any­thing about the meet­ing.

He con­sult­ed a guidemap briefly, then steered Geor­gia out in­to the cur­rent of chat­ter­ing guests. The ex­cite­ment and en­er­gy grew stronger, the chill, ster­ile-​smelling air was filled with an al­most pal­pa­ble sense of glee. Cal­lis­to was the on­ly World where char­ac­ters from Nightin­gale’s wild­ly pop­ular car­toon show, At­mos­fear, could be found in cos­tume. It was al­so the lo­ca­tion of two of the Park’s most out­ra­geous thrill rides, Event Hori­zon and Moon Shot. As a re­sult, chil­dren were ev­ery­where: run­ning up to full-​size holo­grams of Er­ic Nightin­gale and cos­tumed cast mem­bers, drag­ging par­ents to­ward fa­vorite at­trac­tions, plead­ing for mon­ey to buy ac­tion fig­ures.

But the car­ni­val at­mo­sphere and ex­ot­ic sur­round­ings did lit­tle to pen­etrate Warne’s gloom. De­task the Metanet. He could still scarce­ly be­lieve it. To think that just two hours be­fore, he’d been wan­der­ing through Board­walk, like a prize id­iot, won­der­ing what ex­cit­ing new fea­tures they want­ed him to add to the robot­ic net­work. He shook his head bit­ter­ly.

“What’s up, Dad?” Geor­gia asked in­stant­ly.

“Noth­ing. This place is just…All these rides, all these shops. It’s so com­mer­cial. Nightin­gale would turn in his grave.”

“Dad, you are so ut­ter­ly out of it. It’s awe­some. Look at that.” She point­ed to­ward one of the qui­eter rides: a spi­der­like ar­ray of child-​sized rock­ets, cir­cling on pearles­cent met­al legs that seemed to fade in and out of sight, mak­ing the rock­ets ap­pear de­tached, self-​guid­ed. “Even the kid­die rides look great.”

Warne nod­ded. But it was a far cry from the vi­sion Nightin­gale had de­scribed, seat­ed at their kitchen ta­ble, cof­fee un­touched, on that night they had first met. He re­mem­bered how the ma­gi­cian’s black eyes had glit­tered with an al­most man­ic en­er­gy; how he had jumped out of his seat to pace, again and again, as he talked; how his hands had nev­er stopped mov­ing as they sketched out his idea for a vir­tu­al en­vi­ron­ment. He’d been trav­el­ing the world, vis­it­ing theme parks, cas­tles, tem­ples, me­dieval vil­lages. He want­ed to cre­ate vir­tu­al worlds com­plete in ev­ery de­tail; past worlds, fu­ture worlds, that would in­struct vis­itors as they en­ter­tained. Worlds that re­lied on im­mer­sive­ness, not rides, to de­light guests. A themed sys­tem, Nightin­gale had called it, that would use the lat­est ad­vances in dig­ital me­dia, holo­grams, robotics, to weave its mag­ic. And he’d want­ed Warne to de­sign the robotics sub­struc­ture.

Even with­out Nightin­gale’s in­ten­si­ty and charis­ma, the idea had held great ap­peal. It meshed per­fect­ly with Warne’s own high­ly con­tro­ver­sial the­ories about ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ma­chine learn­ing. So he’d pitched the idea of a meta-​net­work—metanet, for short—that would link all the Park’s robots to a cen­tral pro­ces­sor. The pro­ces­sor would study the robots’ ac­tiv­ity, cre­ate im­prove­ments, and down­load the op­ti­mized code dai­ly to the bots over the net­work. It would be the per­fect ve­hi­cle to demon­strate his the­ories about ma­chine learn­ing. But it would be just the start of a vast web of robotics and AI that would ul­ti­mate­ly en­com­pass the en­tire op­er­ation of the Park.

At least, that had been the plan…

“Is Tere­sa Japanese?” Geor­gia asked.

Warne pulled him­self away from his thoughts, dis­tant­ly sur­prised by the ques­tion. “I don’t know, princess. I don’t think so.”

“Dad, I told you not to call me princess.”

They had thread­ed their way deep­er in­to Cal­lis­to now, and the crowds on the con­course were thick­er here, jostling and laugh­ing and point­ing. To one side, guests were throng­ing around a tall, gaunt man in twen­ty-​fourth-​cen­tu­ry ar­mor and a glossy black cape. This was Mor­pheus, the de­mon­ic, mag­ic-​wield­ing ruler of Earth Prime: a crea­ture 50 mil­lion tele­vi­sion-​watch­ing chil­dren loved to hate. He was pos­ing for a pic­ture, hand on the shoul­der of a young boy, dev­il­ish beard part­ed in a smile. Warne looked to­ward him, frown­ing. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t spo­ken to Tere­sa in at least three weeks. That in it­self was un­usu­al: they’d de­vel­oped a habit of mak­ing con­tact at least once a week, mix­ing shop talk with gos­sip, shar­ing jokes, catch­ing up.

She was in charge of run­ning the Metanet. The least she could have done was warn him. Why hadn’t she? Anger lanced through him as he won­dered if she was some­how at fault for all this; if she’d done some­thing, in­ad­ver­tent­ly or oth­er­wise, to sab­otage his cre­ation. And to think his first re­ac­tion, up­on see­ing her in per­son, had been one of phys­ical at­trac­tion…He shook his head.

They had agreed to meet in her lab. And that’s what he’d do, he de­cid­ed: he’d meet her. He’d dis­cuss an ex­it strat­egy, make sure there were no im­ped­iments to a smooth tran­si­tion. And then he’d do what he had planned all along: en­joy the Park with his daugh­ter. Tere­sa and her peo­ple could take the Metanet off-​line them­selves. To hell with his con­tract. He’d be damned if he’d be the one to pull the plug on his own biggest ac­com­plish­ment.

Up ahead now, he could see a holo­gram of a skele­tal con­stel­la­tion, re­volv­ing above the en­trance to a bright­ly lit restau­rant: the Big Dip­per. A crowd of peo­ple were lined up out­side, mur­mur­ing and point­ing. In spite of ev­ery­thing, Warne felt him­self smil­ing. He could guess what they were point­ing at.

Be­side the restau­rant en­trance was a large take-​out win­dow, framed in chrome and open to the con­course. At its base, a se­ries of round seats set atop low posts were ar­rayed along a counter of some shiny trans­par­ent ma­te­ri­al. Be­hind the counter, a fu­tur­is­tic ice cream shop sat bathed in ghost­ly shades of black light. Tend­ing the shop was a large mo­bile robot. The mobot was a hi­lar­ious, un­gain­ly-​look­ing thing, a child’s un­steady con­struc­tion of met­al blocks. Its base was a dol­ly­like plat­form of six syn­chronous­ly driv­en wheels. Atop the drive mech­anism was a large cube that housed the on­board com­put­ing. Plant­ed on that was a tall cylin­der which sup­port­ed two ar­rays of ul­tra­son­ic trans­duc­ers.

Warne reached for Geor­gia’s arm, point­ed. She glanced over, then stopped abrupt­ly. A grin slow­ly broke across her face. “Oh, man,” she said at last. “It’s kind of weird to see him here—you know?”

It was mak­ing a milk shake. Warne watched as the mobot in­dus­tri­ous­ly scooped ice cream in­to a met­al mix­er, the pow­er­ful pin­cers mov­ing in short, con­trolled jerks. That had been the hard­est part: the sonar ge­om­etry. Be­cause he knew the robot would be work­ing in a fixed en­vi­ron­ment, ev­ery­thing else—the wheel en­coders for the dead-​reck­on­ing sys­tem, the topo­log­ical map—had been rel­ative­ly easy. But the stereo vi­sion nec­es­sary to carve per­fect scoops out of an un­pre­dictably shaped tin of ice cream had kept him up more nights than he cared to re­mem­ber. And it had giv­en birth to the mobot’s name: Hard Place. No doubt its sib­ling, Rock, was some­where in­side the restau­rant. Warne had de­signed Rock to tend bar: a far eas­ier job, pour­ing pre­mea­sured drinks, re­quir­ing less of the fine mo­tor con­trol sport­ed by Hard Place’s arm ser­vos.

“Come on,” Warne said, throw­ing his arm over Geor­gia’s shoul­ders. “Let’s get some ice cream.”

As they ap­proached, Hard Place fin­ished the shake and de­liv­ered it to a teenage girl at the counter. “Here you are,” it said, pan-​tilt cam­era nod­ding down to­ward the girl. “Your pass­card, please.” Warne watched as Hard Place scanned the card with its sonar clus­ter, hand­ed it back, then used its pin­cers to set the shake gen­tly down on the counter. Geor­gia was right: he, too, had grown so used to see­ing the mobot in the cramped con­fines of his Carnegie-​Mel­lon lab that it was strange to see it here, in this sur­re­al en­vi­ron­ment, serv­ing up re­al ice cream to re­al peo­ple.

The mobot swiveled away, trundling down the counter to­ward the next cus­tomer. Warne led Geor­gia through the knot of on­look­ers and found two seats at the far end of the counter. It had been Geor­gia who’d con­vinced him to plant a pan­ning ul­tra­son­ic sen­sor atop the robot’s cen­tral ar­ray, and di­rect it to swiv­el to­ward the clos­est hu­man voice. He could still re­mem­ber show­ing it to her for the first time, the way her young face had screwed up in dis­ap­proval. “It’s got to have a head, Dad­dy,” she’d said.

He had built these two robots as mere eye can­dy for Nightin­gale, plat­forms to demon­strate how voice recog­ni­tion and im­age pro­cess­ing could be put to com­mer­cial use. But Nightin­gale was a man who loved de­tails just as much as an over­ar­ch­ing vi­sion, and he’d been as de­light­ed with Rock and Hard Place as he had with Warne’s prizewin­ning the­sis on hi­er­ar­chi­cal neu­ral nets, or his scheme for a self-​learn­ing meta-​net­work. He’d in­sist­ed they find a home with­in Utopia.

Hard Place was ap­proach­ing them now. “Good af­ter­noon,” it rasped. “How can I help you?”

“A root beer float, please.” Warne hadn’t even need­ed to ask: Geor­gia could sub­sist on root beer floats alone. It had been the first thing he taught the robot to make.

“One root beer float,” Hard Place echoed back. Warne had al­most for­got­ten that ar­ti­fi­cial voice: dig­itized sam­ples of his own. And he’d cer­tain­ly for­got­ten just how big the robot was, al­most eight feet to the top of its sen­sor ar­ray. “Would you like any­thing else?”

“Yes. A dou­ble pis­ta­chio choco­late sun­dae with whipped cream, please.”

At this, Hard Place paused. “Dr. Warne?” it asked af­ter a mo­ment.

“Yes, Hard Place.”

The robot paused again, slight­ly longer this time. “A dou­ble pis­ta­chio choco­late sun­dae with whipped cream, com­ing right up. Ke­mo Sabe.”

Warne watched the robot as it piv­ot­ed and moved away. That jok­ing nod to The Lone Ranger had been his own pri­vate em­bel­lish­ment; his sig­na­ture at the bot­tom of the paint­ing. He’d de­cid­ed to add the rou­tine on that day eigh­teen months be­fore, when Rock and Hard Place were be­ing crat­ed up for de­liv­ery to Neva­da. Eigh­teen months, but the dif­fer­ence was like night and day. Then, he and Sarah had just be­gun see­ing each oth­er; she was an amaz­ing­ly con­fi­dent wom­an, an in­tel­lec­tu­al equal, a po­ten­tial sec­ond moth­er for Geor­gia. He’d be­gun pi­oneer­ing work for Er­ic Nightin­gale, with the promise of much more to come. The fu­ture looked bright with promise.

How quick­ly things had changed. Geor­gia hadn’t warmed to Sarah in the way he’d hoped; in fact, she seemed to re­sent her, be­came jeal­ous­ly pos­ses­sive of her dad. His own work was com­ing un­der in­creas­ing fire at Carnegie-​Mel­lon, seen as con­tro­ver­sial, un­proved. And then Nightin­gale had died. And Warne’s re­la­tion­ship with the cor­po­rate suits and bean coun­ters who’d rushed in to fill the gap soured, then broke apart com­plete­ly, leav­ing his con­trac­tu­al obli­ga­tion to the Metanet as the lone con­nec­tion to Utopia. Sarah had moved out, tak­en the job as Park chief. How iron­ic that she’d first met Nightin­gale through Warne him­self. With the Metanet mon­ey, Warne had left Carnegie-​Mel­lon to start a re­search com­pa­ny to help prove his the­ories on ma­chine learn­ing—on­ly to see it lose its fi­nan­cial back­ers when the dot-​com bub­ble burst. But through it all, he still had the Metanet—or so he’d be­lieved un­til this morn­ing.

Now Hard Place was glid­ing back with the root beer float. “Here you are,” it said, plac­ing the root beer float on the counter in front of him and turn­ing back to the row of ice cream tins, its AI rou­tines al­ready work­ing to­ward the goal state of a dou­ble pis­ta­chio choco­late sun­dae with whipped cream. The robot’s move­ments seemed a lit­tle more er­rat­ic, a lit­tle more hes­itat­ing, than he re­mem­bered. Al­most as if its pathfind­ing rou­tines had been de­op­ti­mized. Could this be a re­sult of the dai­ly up­link? Was it pos­si­ble, re­al­ly pos­si­ble, that the Metanet had…But Warne re­fused to fol­low this line of thought. He’d had more than his share of bad news for one day.

“Can I bor­row the guidemap?” Geor­gia asked.

“Sure.”

“And forty bucks?”

“Sure, just…Wait—forty bucks? Why?”

“I want to get one of those At­mos­fear T-​shirts. The weird shim­mery ones. Haven’t you seen them?”

Warne had seen them, dozens of them, adorn­ing the tor­sos of teenagers wan­der­ing the con­course. With a sigh, he opened his wal­let and passed over the mon­ey, watch­ing as she slipped the head­phones over her ears and took a sip of root beer.

If he was hon­est with him­self, he’d ad­mit this par­tic­ular stop was as much for him as it was for her. He need­ed to see this af­fir­ma­tion of his work, this re­minder of bet­ter times. Un­til just to­day—when he learned it was to be de­ac­ti­vat­ed—he hadn’t re­al­ized just how im­por­tant the Metanet was to him. And now, de­spite the de­fi­ant pos­ing, he felt a wave of de­spair wash over him. What was he go­ing to do now? He’d left Carnegie-​Mel­lon, burned his bridges. He glanced covert­ly at Geor­gia again. How was he ev­er go­ing to ex­plain it to her?

There was a near­by whirring, and Hard Place re­turned. “Here you are, Ke­mo Sabe,” it said as it set the sun­dae down be­fore Warne. He wait­ed. Next, the robot would ask for his pass­card, charge the ice cream or­der to his Utopia ac­count.

But Hard Place did no such thing. In­stead, it swiveled its sen­sor ar­ray first left, then right. With a low whirring sound, the robot be­gan rock­ing back­ward and for­ward. The move­ments seemed strange­ly hes­itant, un­cer­tain.

Geor­gia looked over from her root beer, plucked the head­phones away from one ear. “Dad?” she asked in­quir­ing­ly.

With a sud­den, sharp grind­ing, Hard Place charged to­ward Warne. Its box­like cen­tral hous­ing col­lid­ed with the counter, knock­ing over glass­es and straw dis­pensers. Mur­murs of sur­prise rose from the pa­trons. Abrupt­ly, Hard Place rolled back­ward, bang­ing rough­ly against the back­bar, then shot for­ward again at high speed, ser­vos twist­ing, sen­sor ar­rays spin­ning.

“Geor­gia!” Warne cried. “Get out of the way!”

The robot smashed again in­to the front counter. There were sharp gasps, a scream, as the pa­trons fell from their chairs, scram­bling to get away from the counter. But Hard Place had shot back­ward once more, col­lid­ing heav­ily with the rear counter. A dozen bot­tles of col­ored syrup fell to the ground, shiv­er­ing in­to pieces. With a squeal of mo­tors, the robot came for­ward again.

Warne leaped from his seat, star­ing at Hard Place in shock and sur­prise. He’d nev­er seen the robot act like this be­fore. In fact, it couldn’t act like this; he’d pro­grammed it him­self. What the hell is go­ing on? It was as if the robot was try­ing to break free of its en­clo­sure, force its way out in­to the con­course. But its pathfind­ing rou­tines were prim­itive; if that hap­pened, with its speed and size, it would tram­ple any­thing in its way.

The robot col­lid­ed with the counter in a shat­ter­ing crash. The long, trans­par­ent coun­ter­top shiv­ered, de­formed, spilling its re­main­ing con­tents in a stac­ca­to cho­rus. Hard Place reared back­ward, then came for­ward yet again, like a caged and an­gry bull.

There were shouts of warn­ing from be­hind Warne, cries of alarm. He looked to his right: Geor­gia was stand­ing some dis­tance away, star­ing, eyes wide. He thought quick­ly. There was on­ly one thing to do: try to reach the man­ual kill switch in the rear of the cen­tral hous­ing and de­ac­ti­vate the robot.

Gin­ger­ly, he ap­proached. “Hard Place,” he said in a loud, clear tone, hop­ing to get its at­ten­tion, in­ter­rupt what­ev­er bizarre be­hav­ioral loop it had fall­en in­to. As he spoke, he put his left hand up, fin­gers spread, in a pla­cat­ing ges­ture; he kept his right hand low, an­gling it slow­ly around to­ward the robot’s hous­ing.

At the sound of his voice, Hard Place swiveled its sen­sor ar­rays to­ward him. “Ke­mo Sabe,” it rasped.

And then one set of pin­cers shot out, catch­ing his right wrist in an iron grip.

Warne cried out with pain as Hard Place clamped down with crush­ing strength. The robot yanked him for­ward and Warne threw him­self across the counter and against the bins of ice cream, turn­ing des­per­ate­ly with the robot to keep his wrist from break­ing.

“Dad!” Geor­gia ran for­ward, reach­ing out to pull him away from Hard Place.

“Geor­gia, no!” Warne gasped, fight­ing to reach his left hand around the cen­tral hous­ing, fin­ger­nails scrab­bling on the smooth met­al. Hard Place slid back­ward, drag­ging Warne with him, ser­vos howl­ing un­der the strain. The robot’s sec­ond set of pin­cers shot for­ward, ar­row­ing to­ward Warne’s neck, just as his search­ing fin­gers found the small nub of the kill switch.

Abrupt­ly, Hard Place stopped. Sparks flew from its driv­etrain. Its sen­sor ar­ray sagged. The whine of mo­tors spun down. The pin­cers sprung wide, re­leas­ing their hold on Warne’s wrist. He fell heav­ily to the floor, then rose slow­ly from among the bins of ice cream, rub­bing his aching wrist. Geor­gia ran to­ward him again and to­geth­er they moved away from the smok­ing, dark­ened robot.

A crowd had gath­ered around, watch­ing the un­fold­ing events from a re­spect­ful dis­tance. Warne swept them with his gaze, breath­ing hard, drip­ping choco­late and vanil­la, still mas­sag­ing his wrist. Geor­gia stood be­side him, shocked in­to si­lence.

For a mo­ment, no one said any­thing. Then there was a low, ap­pre­cia­tive whis­tle.

“Great act, man!” some­body said. “For a mo­ment there, you had me con­vinced it was the re­al thing.”

“Too much!” called an­oth­er.

And then the clap­ping start­ed: first one pair of hands, and then an­oth­er and an­oth­er, un­til the air was filled with the sound of cheers.

 

12:45 P.M.

AS THE SUN climbed its way up the Neva­da sky, all col­or bled out of the land­scape be­low. The reds, yel­lows, browns, and pur­ples of the sand­stone canyons fad­ed, then turned white. The high desert veg­eta­tion stood sus­pend­ed as the shad­ows ran away to noth­ing.

Atop the rocky, bowl-​like es­carp­ment that sur­round­ed Utopia, the sun il­lu­mi­nat­ed a vast moon­scape of hol­lows and ridges. The mesa top was a crazy quilt of gul­lies, silent and de­sert­ed, punc­tu­at­ed by in­fre­quent ju­nipers and bristle­cone pines. The sky it­self was a dome of pale blue, emp­ty save for a lone air­plane, draw­ing a white line thir­ty thou­sand feet over­head.

In a nar­row gul­ly near the far edge of the es­carp­ment, some­thing stirred. The man who had moved lit­tle since be­fore dawn now stretched his legs and glanced at his watch. De­spite the bru­tal heat, he had been doz­ing. It was train­ing, more than any­thing else, that made this pos­si­ble. Much of the man’s pro­fes­sion­al life had been spent wait­ing. For hours, some­times days, he had wait­ed: in the jun­gle canopies of Mozam­bique; in foul Cam­bo­di­an swamps, sur­round­ed by leech­es and malar­ial mosquitos. The desert heat of Neva­da seemed a va­ca­tion by com­par­ison.

He yawned leisure­ly, crack­ing his knuck­les, then rolled his head around, work­ing a kink out of his thick­ly mus­cled neck. Be­hind him, the geodesic dome cov­er­ing Utopia rose up out of the canyon like the top of some gi­ant’s globe. Its ribs of steel and pan­els of glass, row af­ter count­less row, winked and shim­mered in the noon­day sun. It was en­cir­cled by sev­er­al bands of nar­row cat­walks, one above the oth­er, sep­arat­ed by per­haps fifty ver­ti­cal feet. The cat­walks were con­nect­ed by a se­ries of ac­cess lad­ders. Along one edge of the dome, a vast cres­cent-​shaped wedge was dark: the roof that hung over Cal­lis­to. Close-​up, from this high van­tage no tourist would ev­er en­joy, the dome was al­most oth­er­world­ly in its mas­sive beau­ty.

But the man atop the mesa was no tourist. And he had not come for the view.

He turned to­ward a long, low can­vas duf­fel that lay in the gul­ly be­side him. Draw­ing back its zip­per, he reached in­side, found his can­teen, and took a long, thirsty pull. Al­though there were no guards or se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras up on this de­sert­ed cliff top, the man’s move­ments re­mained ha­bit­ual­ly brief and di­rect.

He put the can­teen to one side, wip­ing his mouth with the back of a hand. A large pair of binoc­ulars hung around his neck, and now he raised them to his eyes. The laser range-​find­ing sys­tem made the binoc­ulars heavy, and he used both hands to steady them as he made a slow scan.

From his place of con­ceal­ment, he com­mand­ed an ex­cel­lent view of the rear ap­proach to Utopia. Far be­low, he could clear­ly make out the heavy-​du­ty ac­cess road that snaked its way up from the desert. A large re­frig­er­at­ed truck was mak­ing the climb now; he watched the driv­er silent­ly work­ing his way through the gears. It was a good re­con post: any flee­ing ve­hi­cles or ap­proach­ing cav­al­ry would be spot­ted im­me­di­ate­ly. He raised the binoc­ulars fur­ther, and the red nu­mer­als of the dis­tance read­out quick­ly rose as he panned over the more dis­tant back­drop.

To build their Park, the Utopia Hold­ing Com­pa­ny had pur­chased a tract of land bor­dered by U.S. 95 on the south and Nel­lis Air Force Base on the north. Deep in­side Nel­lis, at a site called Groom Lake, was an in­stal­la­tion once known on gov­ern­ment maps as Area 51. It was pa­trolled by per­son­nel au­tho­rized to use dead­ly force against tres­passers. To the east and west, Utopia was sur­round­ed by Bu­reau of Land Man­age­ment wilder­ness. The Park did not need the huge berms and perime­ter fences em­ployed by oth­er theme parks: it let na­ture, and the gov­ern­ment, do the job for it.

Per­haps Utopia and its pre­de­ces­sors were lulled by the same un­think­ing sense of se­cu­ri­ty and well-​be­ing they worked so hard to im­part to their vis­itors. When they thought of their perime­ters at all, most parks were pri­mar­ily con­cerned with keep­ing non­pay­ing guests from sneak­ing in. Se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures did not take in­to ac­count some­one whose skills at eva­sion and pen­etra­tion had been honed in half a dozen hos­tile en­vi­ron­ments.

The man took an­oth­er pull at the can­teen. Then he re­placed it in the duf­fel and pulled out an M24 Sniper Weapon Sys­tem ri­fle. Whistling tune­less­ly, he gave it a quick, au­to­mat­ic in­spec­tion. The SWS was based on a Rem­ing­ton Mod­el 700 re­ceiv­er: there were new­er ri­fles, but none more ac­cu­rate. At ten pounds it was rel­ative­ly light for a sniper’s tool. The flash hider and lens hood en­sured it would not vi­su­al­ly be­tray its pres­ence when used.

Cradling the ri­fle on his knees, the man fished in the bag and brought out four 308 Winch­ester car­tridges, load­ed with 168-grain boat-​tails: the most ac­cu­rate .30-cal­iber bul­let-​car­tridge com­bi­na­tion avail­able. He filled the mag­azine, ran the bolt to load the first car­tridge, then laid the ri­fle care­ful­ly back in­side the duf­fel. He was not con­cerned about the sun warp­ing the Kevlar-​graphite stock, but he did not want the heavy tar­get bar­rel grow­ing too hot to touch.

The sec­ond ri­fle he pulled from the duf­fel was a Bar­ret M-82 “Light 50.” It was con­sid­er­ably mean­er-​look­ing than the M24, and less ac­cu­rate; but with .50-cal­iber ma­chine-​gun car­tridges for am­mu­ni­tion, it would drop any­thing it hit even a thou­sand yards out.

With the ri­fles and oth­er ma­te­ri­als in the duf­fel, the man had lugged more than eighty pounds of gear on the sheer climb up on­to the es­carp­ment the night be­fore. But weapons re­dun­dan­cy was a dis­ci­pline that had been drummed in­to him since his boot days at Par­ris Is­land.

His ra­dio gave a muf­fled chirrup, and he plucked it from his belt, quick­ly tap­ping in the scram­bler’s de­cryp­tion code.

“Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo,” came the voice. “This is Prime Fac­tor. How’s your read?”

The man lift­ed the ra­dio to his lips. “Still five by five.”

“Sta­tus?”

“Ready to par­ty.”

“Very good. Mon­itor this fre­quen­cy, we’ll up­date you with­in the hour. Prime Fac­tor out.”

The ra­dio went silent and the man re­turned it to his belt. He glanced again at his watch: one o’clock pre­cise­ly. Then he turned back to the M-82, giv­ing it the same check he’d giv­en the first ri­fle. Sat­is­fied, he ran his hand along the tac­ti­cal tele­scop­ic sight. It was per­ma­nent­ly fixed, of course—re­mov­able sights couldn’t be re­lied on to hold ze­ro—and the weapon had al­ready been sight­ed in. He glanced to­ward the vast dome that rose be­hind and above him, his eye falling on a small speck of black that was crawl­ing across it. He snugged the beaver­tail stock against his cheek and fit­ted his eye to the scope. Now the black speck was a man in a white main­te­nance uni­form, mov­ing slow­ly across the net­work of met­al rib­bing, check­ing for bro­ken panes. He oc­cu­pied two grids in the scope’s range-​find­ing sys­tem: ap­prox­imate­ly three hun­dred yards away.

The man’s fin­ger snaked in­side the guard, ca­ress­ing the trig­ger. “Be re­al care­ful, now,” he whis­pered. “Wouldn’t want you to fall.”

Then—care­ful­ly, lov­ing­ly—he slid the ri­fle back in­to the duf­fel.

 

1:05 P.M.

HIS SUIT HAD been cleaned and pressed at Valet Ser­vices, an in­ci­dent re­port logged with Se­cu­ri­ty. And now An­drew Warne found him­self paus­ing in the cor­ri­dors of B Lev­el, rub­bing his chin per­plexed­ly. As a child, he of­ten had one re­cur­ring dream fol­low­ing par­tic­ular­ly trau­mat­ic days: he’d be walk­ing down a school cor­ri­dor on his way to the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice, pass­ing class­room af­ter class­room af­ter class­room, but nev­er get­ting any clos­er to the in­tim­idat­ing door at the end of the cor­ri­dor. He felt as if he were liv­ing that dream right now.

Be­side him, Geor­gia stirred rest­less­ly. “Are you lost?”

“No.”

“I think you are.”

“What’s this you busi­ness? I put you in charge of fol­low­ing the cut­away di­agrams, re­mem­ber?”

They stepped to one side to let an elec­tric cart purr past. Warne glanced again up and down the in­ter­sec­tion. Hadn’t they been here be­fore? The lay­out looked fa­mil­iar. But with the con­stant­ly chang­ing streams of cast and crew pass­ing by, it was dif­fi­cult to ori­ent him­self.

Be­sides, he was pre­oc­cu­pied. His wrist still throbbed where Hard Place had gripped it. He found he had been rub­bing it un­con­scious­ly.

Geor­gia looked at him. “You okay, Dad?”

“Just a lit­tle banged up. I’m sor­ry, that must have been pret­ty fright­en­ing.”

Geor­gia shook her head. “I wasn’t fright­ened.”

This sur­prised Warne. “No? I was.”

“Get re­al.” She looked at him, as if dis­be­liev­ing such pro­found ig­no­rance. “You built him, re­mem­ber? He couldn’t do any­thing bad. He wouldn’t let him­self.”

Warne shook his head. Geor­gia hadn’t been at the meet­ing, hadn’t heard what he’d heard. If she wasn’t ask­ing ques­tions, so much the bet­ter. But he sure as hell had some ques­tions to put to Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio—if they ev­er found her of­fice, that was.

His eye caught a sign he hadn’t re­mem­bered see­ing be­fore. New Tech­nol­ogy. Now, that was more like it. He glanced over his shoul­der again to make sure they weren’t about to be run down by an­oth­er main­te­nance cart, then led Geor­gia in the di­rec­tion of the sign.

An­oth­er minute and, mad­den­ing­ly, he had man­aged to get them lost again. This new sec­tion of B Lev­el they’d stum­bled in­to seemed re­served for man­age­ment: there was thick car­pet­ing un­der­foot, and sub­dued wall­pa­per cov­ered the con­crete walls. Just as he was about to give up and turn back, he saw a fa­mil­iar fig­ure ahead. He stopped abrupt­ly.

Sarah Boatwright was stand­ing in the door­way of an of­fice, her back to them, speak­ing briskly to two men in dark suits. They were lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly, nod­ding. Her straight cop­pery hair shook slight­ly as she mo­tioned with her arms.

See­ing her like that, fac­ing away from him, brought back a sud­den mem­ory: the first morn­ing they’d risen to­geth­er from the same bed. Be­fore leav­ing for work, the last thing Sarah had done was stand be­fore a mir­ror for sev­er­al min­utes, turn­ing, ob­serv­ing all an­gles of her per­son. At first, Warne thought this to be mere van­ity. But he’d lat­er re­al­ized that she was sim­ply scru­ti­niz­ing her­self for any­thing out of place, any im­per­fect crease. Sarah liked or­der in all things. But once she got to work, she would grow so com­plete­ly ab­sorbed she tend­ed to for­get such de­tails as ap­pear­ance. And so she made this con­scious, pre­ar­ranged ef­fort. Warne had been in­clined to laugh—un­til he re­al­ized how, from Sarah’s point of view, it was clear­ly the most log­ical so­lu­tion.

Sarah turned and caught sight of them. She smiled briefly and waved them for­ward, then turned back and said some fi­nal words to the wait­ing men. They nod­ded again and walked away.

“Didn’t mean to in­ter­rupt,” Warne said as they ap­proached.

“You’re not. Those are just the VPs of Trans­porta­tion and Con­cepts. Half a dozen new snags on the At­lantis fab­ri­ca­tion. Busi­ness as usu­al.” Sarah’s green eyes went from Warne to Geor­gia and back again. “You’re late for your meet­ing with Ter­ri. Are you lost?”

“Yes,” Warne said.

“No,” said Geor­gia si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, you’re not that far afield. Ter­ri’s lab is just around the cor­ner.” Sarah looked at Geor­gia again, hes­itat­ed. “Why don’t you come in for a mo­ment?” she said.

The of­fice was large, well ap­point­ed, and un­usu­al­ly chilly, even for the Utopia Un­der­ground. Af­ter the bright­ly lit cor­ri­dors, it seemed sub­dued, al­most dark. Sarah’s desk was bare save for a few fold­ers, a com­put­er ter­mi­nal, and an over­size teacup. As usu­al, noth­ing was out of place. Even the pic­tures on the walls—a pho­to­graph of Er­ic Nightin­gale with his arm around Sarah; a pic­ture of the Swope, the six­ty-​foot boat she’d helped crew in a New­port–Bermu­da race—were care­ful­ly aligned.

“Very nice,” Warne said, nod­ding. “You’ve done well for your­self. I just may have to bor­row the key to the ex­ec­utive wash­room.”

“Utopia’s been good to me.”

“So I see.”

There was an awk­ward si­lence, a sense of un­fin­ished busi­ness ly­ing be­tween them. Warne won­dered, a lit­tle ab­sent­ly, if he should apol­ogize for his out­burst af­ter the morn­ing meet­ing. As quick­ly as the thought came, he re­al­ized that, right or wrong, the last thing he felt like do­ing was apol­ogiz­ing.

“I heard about Hard Place,” Sarah said. “I’m glad you weren’t in­jured.”

“If you can call it that,” Warne said, rub­bing his wrist.

“I’ll have the log­ical unit sent over to Ter­ri’s lab for anal­ysis.” She didn’t say it—she didn’t need to—but the im­pli­ca­tion hung in the air.

Warne glanced over at Geor­gia. She had tak­en a seat at Sarah’s con­fer­ence ta­ble and was leaf­ing through a cof­fee-​ta­ble book ti­tled Utopia Por­traits.

“Sarah,” he said, low­er­ing his voice and mov­ing a lit­tle clos­er. “The Metanet isn’t re­spon­si­ble for this. It can’t be. You were at Carnegie-​Mel­lon dur­ing the de­vel­op­ment, you know what it’s ca­pa­ble of. Re­pro­gram­ming bots just isn’t part of its be­hav­ior pat­tern.”

“How can you say pre­cise­ly what it’s ca­pa­ble of? It’s a learn­ing-​ca­pa­ble ex­pert sys­tem. You de­signed it to im­prove it­self as well as the bots; to adapt to change.”

“But you’re act­ing like it’s some piece of rogue soft­ware. The Hold­ing Com­pa­ny wouldn’t have au­tho­rized its in­stal­la­tion if it hadn’t proved it­self in be­ta. It ran pre-​pro­duc­tion for six months with­out glitch­es. Right?”

“And now it’s run an­oth­er six months in an en­vi­ron­ment of con­stant change. Per­haps it’s done self-​mod­ifi­ca­tion in ways we’re not pre­pared to mon­itor. That’s Fred Barks­dale’s the­ory, any­way. And he’s in a po­si­tion to know.”

“But—” Warne stopped him­self with an ef­fort. There was no point in ar­gu­ing; he’d save that par­tic­ular dis­cus­sion for Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio. He sighed, shook his head. “Fred Barks­dale,” he re­peat­ed. “So are you two se­ri­ous, or is it just sort of a spring thing?”

Sarah looked at him sharply. But Warne was care­ful to smile.

“Is it that ob­vi­ous?” she said af­ter a mo­ment.

“Stands out like a neon sign.”

She smiled wry­ly. “Fred’s a nice guy.”

“Wouldn’t have tak­en him for your type. An up­per-​crust Brit, I mean. He seems so…I don’t know. Hunt club, pink gins, ironed copies of the Times, that sort of thing.”

“He’s the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed man I’ve ev­er met. I think I’ve been dat­ing sci­en­tists for too many years. No of­fense meant.”

“None tak­en.” But Warne felt the smile on his face freeze just a lit­tle.

He could see Sarah look­ing past him, and he glanced over his shoul­der. Geor­gia had low­ered the book and was watch­ing their tête-​à-​tête with an ex­pres­sion of dis­ap­proval.

Sarah took a ca­su­al step back. “Geor­gia, I’ve got some­thing for you.” She walked be­hind her im­mac­ulate desk, knelt down. There was the au­di­ble rasp of a key be­ing turned, a low whine of fans com­ing up to speed. Then she stepped away.

“Come on out,” she said in a coax­ing tone.

For a mo­ment, it seemed to Warne as if the desk it­self sud­den­ly moved. Then some­thing emerged from be­hind it: a port­ly, un­gain­ly-​look­ing thing like a beer keg laid on end, mount­ed on large knob­by tires. It stopped, head as­sem­bly atop the cab­inet swivel­ing quick­ly. It seemed to catch sight of them, emit­ted a strange low noise some­where be­tween a bark and a belch, and came abrupt­ly for­ward.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Geor­gia scram­bled out of the chair and held open her arms. “Wingnut!” she said. “Come here, boy.”

Warne watched the large thing roll ea­ger­ly across the floor to­ward Geor­gia. It didn’t man­age to stop quite in time, and Geor­gia was sent sprawl­ing.

He had for­got­ten just how much the stereo cam­eras on the head as­sem­bly re­sem­bled eyes; how well the yaw-​rate gy­ro he’d in­stalled in the robot base im­itat­ed the jerky, im­pa­tient mo­tions of an over­size pup­py. Even the thing’s clum­si­ness was in char­ac­ter. He’d orig­inal­ly built Wingnut as a demon­stra­tion tool, a sim­ple ve­hi­cle for ex­plain­ing robot­ic con­cepts like path plan­ning and col­li­sion avoid­ance. Warne was a strong pro­po­nent of ethol­ogy—us­ing an­imal be­hav­iors as mod­els for ro­bust AI ar­chi­tec­tures—and Wingnut had served as the per­fect paradigm. It was one of the ear­li­est ex­am­ples he’d built to im­ple­ment his the­ories on ma­chine learn­ing. And it had seemed an ide­al pet for Geor­gia, who was al­ler­gic to dogs. But when her in­ter­est waned, Wingnut had tak­en up res­idence at the in­sti­tute, where he quick­ly be­came some­thing of a cu­rios­ity piece. The robot sport­ed du­al pro­ces­sors, an ex­trav­agant amount of mem­ory, and some ex­pen­sive—if ag­ing—hard­ware. By the time Warne was done tin­ker­ing, its fifty thou­sand lines of scheme code in­clud­ed low-​lev­el be­hav­iors for fetch­ing, beg­ging, in­trud­er de­tec­tion, and a score of oth­er dog­gy tasks. And yet, ei­ther Wingnut had been giv­en one soft­ware patch too many or one of Warne’s grad­uate stu­dents had played a prac­ti­cal joke, be­cause the robot be­haved un­pre­dictably, in a way Warne’s oth­er cre­ations nev­er did. That is, un­til this morn­ing.

Now Wingnut had ac­quired Warne with its sen­sor ar­ray and came to­ward him, butting its head as­sem­bly none too gen­tly against his hip, as if ask­ing for a treat. “Hi, there,” Warne said. He was fond of the crea­ture and even now felt an ir­ra­tional im­pulse to give a gen­tle box to its nonex­is­tent ears. As he bent clos­er, how­ev­er, he was sur­prised to see that a lay­er of dust had set­tled around the mi­cro­phone in­put, ser­vos, and ac­tu­ators. It was al­most as if the thing had just been dragged out of a clos­et—not at all in keep­ing with the rest of Sarah’s of­fice.

He blew care­ful­ly at a few ar­eas, then rose to his feet. “Go play with Geor­gia,” he said.

Dur­ing his brain­storm­ing meet­ings with Nightin­gale, the ma­gi­cian had been en­tranced with the robot. Ul­ti­mate­ly, Warne had giv­en it to him as an ear­ly promise of more tech­no­log­ical good­ies to come. He’d al­ways as­sumed the Park de­sign­ers would fit Wingnut in­to some kind of at­trac­tion, most like­ly in Cal­lis­to some­where.

“How come you’re not us­ing him in the Park?” he asked.

“We’d al­ways planned to. But we’ve been evolv­ing more to­ward sen­so­ry en­vi­ron­ments—holo­grams, laser dis­plays, com­put­er-​con­trolled rides. Guest sur­veys, all that.”

“Guest sur­veys. Chuck Emory and his bean coun­ters.”

“There was al­so a feel­ing that he might be a lit­tle, ah, in­tim­idat­ing for the guests.”

“In­tim­idat­ing? Lit­tle old Wingnut?”

“He’s not that lit­tle.”

A man ap­peared in Sarah’s door­way, a sheaf of blueprints and me­chan­ical draw­ings be­neath one arm. “Ex­cuse me,” Sarah said, walk­ing over to speak to the new ar­rival.

Warne watched her for a mo­ment. Then he glanced to­ward his daugh­ter, who was on her knees mur­mur­ing to the robot. He looked around the of­fice once again, his eye com­ing to rest on the pho­to­graph of the Swope. At the time, it had seemed a good omen. Char­lotte Warne had built sail­boats; Sarah had raced them. He hadn’t re­al­ized this syn­chronic­ity would get the op­po­site re­ac­tion from Geor­gia than he’d ex­pect­ed. And there was some­thing else. His wife had loved sail­boats with a pure and sim­ple pas­sion. As he grew to know Sarah bet­ter, he re­al­ized her in­ter­est in sail­ing had been pri­mar­ily the in­ter­est of over­com­ing a chal­lenge.

He glanced back at his daugh­ter. Geor­gia had been the one chal­lenge Sarah was un­able to sur­mount. He thought back on the awk­ward in­ter­play in the con­fer­ence room, when Sarah first saw Geor­gia. There was no spon­ta­neous hug; just ob­vi­ous af­fec­tion, rather awk­ward­ly, for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed. It was al­most as if Sarah just didn’t “get” chil­dren. She’d tried—in a way she was still try­ing even now, with Wingnut. But Warne knew it would nev­er suc­ceed. Sarah was a supreme­ly log­ical per­son. But re­lent­less ap­pli­ca­tion of log­ic nev­er worked with a child; they would al­ways con­found your plans, do the op­po­site of what you ex­pect­ed.

Abrupt­ly, the phone on Sarah’s desk be­gan to ring. Warne glanced to­ward it, then at his watch. “We’d bet­ter be go­ing,” he said. “I’m sor­ry, Tere­sa’s lab is…?”

“Take your sec­ond right, third door on the left.” Sarah dis­missed the man in the door­way, stepped to­ward her desk. “An­drew, one word about Tere­sa. She’s not a typ­ical Park em­ploy­ee.”

“How so?”

“She’s bril­liant, of course—you can’t touch her skill at robotics pro­gram­ming—but she’s un­con­ven­tion­al. We’ve had some dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting her in­to the Utopia spir­it.”

“You mean, moody? Re­bel­lious?”

“Let’s say she swims against the cur­rent. For ex­am­ple, a few months ago she pro­grammed a mail-​serv­er bot to pinch the rear ends of a dataset of cute mail room guys.”

She’d been speak­ing in a low voice, but from across the room Geor­gia snort­ed with laugh­ter.

“You don’t say,” Warne replied.

“And she’s sus­pect­ed of post­ing a nude pho­to of Mar­garet Thatch­er, with Fred Barks­dale’s head su­per­im­posed on the shoul­ders, in the Sys­tems ladies’ room. She’s re­ceived three dis­ci­plinary no­tices since the Park opened.” The line of Sarah’s mouth tight­ened dis­ap­prov­ing­ly.

“Won’t be brain­washed in­to the feel-​good eth­ic, eh? Sounds like a trou­ble­mak­er to me.”

Sarah opened her mouth to an­swer, but paused when a white-​blaz­ered wom­an leaned her head in­to the of­fice.

“Grand Cen­tral around here to­day,” Warne mur­mured.

“Ev­ery day.” Sarah turned to­ward the wom­an. “Yes, Grace?”

“I’m sor­ry to in­ter­rupt, Ms. Boatwright, but you weren’t pick­ing up. There’s a gen­tle­man here to see you…”

“A gen­tle­man?”

“An ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist. Says you had asked to speak with him.”

“I don’t re­mem­ber any ap­point­ment.” Sarah walked back to her desk, tapped at her key­board, glanced at the mon­itor. “Very well. Ask him to wait just a mo­ment.”

She took some­thing out of a draw­er, came around the desk, and hand­ed it to Warne. “Here’s Wingnut’s echolo­ca­tor. I’d bet­ter see what this spe­cial­ist wants.”

“Thanks,” Warne replied, fas­ten­ing the lo­ca­tor around his wrist.

“I’m leav­ing first thing to­mor­row morn­ing. If I don’t see you again this af­ter­noon, good luck. I hope it all works out.”

Warne gave a win­try smile.

“Fred will do all he can to help. Re­mem­ber, noth­ing’s per­ma­nent. With any luck, you’ll cor­rect what’s wrong, and we can sub­mit a restart re­quest to New York.” She turned. “Good-​bye, Geor­gia. Good to see you again. Have a nice vis­it.”

“Thanks,” Geor­gia said, ris­ing from her knees.

Warne nod­ded to Sarah, then ush­ered Geor­gia out the door. In the cor­ri­dor be­yond, the white-​blaz­ered wom­an wait­ed, along with a tall, slen­der man with a close­ly trimmed beard. His gaze met Warne’s at a dis­tance, and he smiled.

There was a fran­tic, klax­on­like yip­ping from be­hind, and Warne turned to see Wingnut, mov­ing al­ter­nate­ly for­ward and back­ward across the car­pet in jerky mo­tions, his sen­sors pan­ning wild­ly.

“Well, what are you wait­ing for?” Warne asked. “Let’s go.” And as they made their way down the cor­ri­dor, passers­by gave the three­some—a man, a girl, and a hulk­ing robot that weaved er­rat­ical­ly be­hind them—a wide berth.

 

1:09 P.M.

AL­THOUGH WARNE HAD dis­ap­peared from view around the cor­ner, Sarah paused a mo­ment, star­ing at the spot where he had stood. The sense of wari­ness she’d felt dur­ing the Pre-​Game Show had not dis­si­pat­ed. Yet it wasn’t wari­ness, re­al­ly, so much as a con­scious­ness of some­thing un­re­solved with­in her. She’d nev­er been one for lengthy self-​anal­ysis, pre­fer­ring ac­tion over in­tro­spec­tion. Nev­er­the­less, she knew it had some­thing to do with the tim­ing of An­drew Warne’s vis­it. It had been Chuck Emory’s idea, of course. “Move it up, get him here now,” the CEO had told her from New York. “I want the Metanet off-​line be­fore any­thing worse goes wrong. But not a word about why he’s com­ing un­til he’s on-​site. We can’t af­ford to let this leak. Say what you must to get him there, but get him there.” She had dis­liked the de­cep­tion, of course. But there was some­thing more: she’d felt re­lieved, know­ing this meant she’d be away in San Fran­cis­co through most of Warne’s vis­it. And that was a sign of weak­ness—some­thing she de­test­ed. What was she wor­ried about? She had nev­er feared any­one’s dis­ap­proval, in­clud­ing Warne’s. Per­haps it was sym­pa­thy she felt; the days to come would be un­pleas­ant ones for him. They would be dif­fi­cult to watch, much less par­tic­ipate in.

All these thoughts flashed through her mind in a sec­ond. Then she turned to the man wait­ing out­side. “I’m sor­ry. Won’t you come in?”

The man stepped in­to the of­fice, smil­ing broad­ly.

“I don’t re­mem­ber ask­ing to speak with you, sir,” Sarah said, tak­ing a seat be­hind her desk.

The man nod­ded, fold­ing his arms grace­ful­ly in front of him. She no­ticed, al­most un­con­scious­ly, that the linen suit he wore was im­pec­ca­bly tai­lored, clear­ly ex­pen­sive. There was some­thing un­usu­al about him, but she was not quite able to put a fin­ger on it.

“There’s noth­ing wrong with your mem­ory, Ms. Boatwright,” he said. “You didn’t ask to see me. A small de­cep­tion on my part, I’m afraid.”

He came for­ward, and now Sarah re­al­ized what it was. The man’s eyes were dif­fer­ent col­ors. The left was hazel; the right, an in­tense blue.

She felt no alarm. It was a com­mon oc­cur­rence. Some of the Utopia groupies were a lit­tle too zeal­ous. They were the ones who vis­it­ed the Park dozens of times a year; who dressed in the for­mal garb of Er­ic Nightin­gale; who con­stant­ly ap­plied for jobs, even me­nial tasks like “hon­ey­cart” driv­er, in or­der to get back­stage. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, they found their way be­hind the scenes and had to be es­cort­ed out, gra­cious­ly but firm­ly. True, none of them had ev­er sought her out by name be­fore. But de­spite the un­usu­al eyes, this man looked nei­ther crazy nor dan­ger­ous. His face was hand­some and dig­ni­fied, the smile frank and straight­for­ward. He seemed to ra­di­ate a kind of calm com­po­sure. For a mo­ment, Sarah was re­mind­ed of Fred Barks­dale.

“May I ask your name?”

“Of course you may, Sarah—is it all right if I call you Sarah?” The voice was low and melo­di­ous, with a faint ac­cent that might have been Aus­tralian. “First names are so use­ful in es­tab­lish­ing trust. My name is Mr. Doe, Sarah. But you can call me John.”

There was a brief si­lence.

“I see.” Sarah turned to her com­put­er, tapped some keys. “There’s no record of any ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist named…ah…John Doe sched­uled at Utopia to­day.”

“Right again. An­oth­er small de­cep­tion. It is awk­ward, I’m sor­ry. Say, is that jas­mine tea you’re drink­ing? It smells mar­velous.”

Mr. Doe was still smil­ing eas­ily at her. Then he did a very strange thing. He came for­ward, perched on the edge of her desk, picked up the cup and saucer, and took a sip. Then he closed his eyes ap­pre­cia­tive­ly.

“Ah. Very ex­cel­lent.” He took an­oth­er sip. “But it tastes like a spring har­vest—first flush, you know. For this time of the day, a sec­ond flush would have been the more ap­pro­pri­ate choice.”

Sarah let her right hand drift ca­su­al­ly back to­ward her key­board. A short se­quence, typed on­to the nu­mer­ic key­pad, would bring Se­cu­ri­ty to the of­fice with­in nine­ty sec­onds. But then the man’s jack­et fell open as he bent for­ward to re­place the teacup. In­side, the butt of a hand­gun gleamed from a My­lar hol­ster. Her hand dropped from the key­board.

“What is it you want?” she asked.

The man looked hurt. “Why the rush, Sarah? Things are go­ing to start hap­pen­ing very quick­ly, very soon. So let’s take a mo­ment to get to know each oth­er first. Like civ­ilized peo­ple.”

She pushed her chair back a lit­tle, watch­ing him care­ful­ly. “Okay. Who are you?”

Mr. Doe seemed to con­sid­er this, as if he had nev­er heard the ques­tion be­fore. “You mean, what do I do?” He paused. “I guess you could call me an ex­pe­diter. I dis­like the word—it has such a fad­dish, ephemer­al sound—but I don’t know ex­act­ly how else to de­scribe what it is I do. I get things that oth­er peo­ple want. But ‘mid­dle­man’ sounds much too down-​mar­ket. Per­haps it would be eas­iest for you to think of me sim­ply as a man with a gift.”

He slid a hand in­to a pock­et of his jack­et, and Sarah gath­ered her­self to move quick­ly, if nec­es­sary. The man shook his head re­prov­ing­ly, as if dis­mayed by her mis­trust. Then he laid a small two-​way ra­dio on her desk with slen­der, el­egant fin­gers. He leaned across the desk, as if to im­part a se­cret.

“Sarah, I have good news for you,” he said. “You have it in your pow­er to make sure no­body in your Park dies this af­ter­noon.”

Sarah looked at the man, say­ing noth­ing.

“I know how much this Park means to you.” As the man spoke, he held her eyes at all times. There was a look of em­pa­thy, of pro­found un­der­stand­ing, on his face. “I know you place the very high­est val­ue on its smooth op­er­ation, on the safe­ty of your guests. Noth­ing need hap­pen to com­pro­mise that; noth­ing at all. As long as you fol­low a few sim­ple ground rules.” The sym­pa­thet­ic, un­der­stand­ing gaze con­tin­ued to hold her. “You are not to alert lo­cal or fed­er­al law en­force­ment. And you are not to try to evac­uate the Park. Busi­ness will go on as usu­al. Guests will come and go, just like they do ev­ery day of the year. Ev­ery­body has fun, no­body gets hurt. And when you come right down to it, isn’t that your job, any­way? Please don’t break the ground rules, Sarah.”

“What is it you want?” she asked again.

Mr. Doe leaned away. “I will be re­quir­ing sev­er­al things of you. It is very im­por­tant that you fol­low my in­struc­tions com­plete­ly and pre­cise­ly. We’ll keep in com­mu­ni­ca­tion by means of this.” He pressed a but­ton on the ra­dio, and it made a qui­et buzz. “But I want­ed us to have this lit­tle chat first, in per­son. You know: to break the ice, put a hu­man face on things, all that.”

He ad­just­ed his jack­et. “You’ll for­give me, I hope, but now I’ve come to the un­pleas­ant part of the con­ver­sa­tion.”

Sarah felt her jaw hard­en. “I don’t re­spond well to threats,” she said stoni­ly.

“Oh, it won’t take long. And these are such good threats, Sarah. Do ex­act­ly as I say, when I say it. Don’t try to stop me, or ham­per me, or de­ceive me in any way. Or else. You’ll find I know more about you and your Park than you re­al­ize. There are oth­ers with me, all of them far more in­tim­idat­ing than my­self. We’ve had lots of time to pre­pare. We’re watch­ing both your en­trances and your ex­its. If you co­op­er­ate, we’ll be gone be­fore you know it. And you can get on with the job of pleas­ing the guests.”

He slid off the desk. “There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? I al­ways think threat­en­ing some­one should be like ad­min­is­ter­ing an in­jec­tion. Do it quick­ly, and it won’t hurt as much.” He reached for­ward, and Sarah tensed again. But the man mere­ly smiled, brush­ing his knuck­les ca­ress­ing­ly across her cheek. “I’ll be in touch short­ly. En­joy your tea, Sarah—it’s quite exquisite. But re­mem­ber what I said about the sec­ond flush.”

As he turned and walked away, Sarah’s hand moved once again to­ward the key­board. But she thought about the gun, and the preter­nat­ural calm be­hind John Doe’s eyes, and she wait­ed.

Near the door­way, the man turned back. “One oth­er thing. You may be in­clined to doubt what I’ve told you. And you’re clear­ly a wom­an who doesn’t scare eas­ily. You may, for ex­am­ple, be tempt­ed to close down the Park to new ar­rivals. Or not com­ply with my re­quests. Ei­ther of which would be met by im­me­di­ate reprisal. So in an ef­fort to avoid any com­pli­ca­tions, I’ve ar­ranged for a lit­tle show. I mean, you put on so many, shouldn’t you get to see one your­self once in a while? It should re­move any lin­ger­ing doubts from your mind.”

He glanced at his watch. “It starts at 1:30 pre­cise­ly. En­joy.”

And then, with­out an­oth­er word, he was gone.

 

1:15 P.M.

DO YOU THINK per­haps he was daft?” Fred Barks­dale asked. “Like that fel­low last week, thought he was Abra­ham and Utopia was Sodom?” He swerved the wheel of the elec­tric cart to avoid a pedes­tri­an. At ten miles per hour, their cart was mov­ing at twice the speed al­lowed in the cor­ri­dors of the Un­der­ground.

Sarah shook her head. “He didn’t sound like the usu­al bomb crank or tele­phone jock­ey. He was too po­lite. Too so­lic­itous, some­how…” She shook her head rough­ly, as if to clear it. “He sought me out. He knew ex­act­ly what he want­ed. And then there’s this.” She pat­ted the pock­et of her jack­et.

They round­ed a cor­ner, the rub­ber wheels of the cart squeal­ing on the bare con­crete. Sarah glanced over at Barks­dale. The fine fea­tures of his face looked set, blond eye­brows fur­rowed in con­cen­tra­tion.

Barks­dale glanced over, met her gaze. “You all right, luv?”

Sarah nod­ded. “I’m fine.”

They came to an abrupt stop out­side a set of un­marked dou­ble doors. Leav­ing the cart parked di­ag­onal­ly across half the cor­ri­dor, Barks­dale trot­ted up to the doors, swip­ing a pass­card through the scan­ner. When the lock clicked open, he pushed the doors in­ward, then stepped back to al­low Sarah in ahead of him.

The Cen­ter for Mon­itor­ing Op­er­ations, known to all Utopia cast and crew as the Hive, was a large cir­cu­lar space filled floor-​to-​ceil­ing with rack-​mount­ed mon­itors. Here, the feeds for the Park’s main­line se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras were chan­neled in­to a sin­gle com­mand sta­tion. Not all video links in Utopia were view­able here: the in­frared cam­eras in­side the rides and at­trac­tions were closed sys­tems, and the Eyes in the Sky at Utopia’s four casi­nos were con­trolled from sep­arate lo­ca­tions. But views of more than six thou­sand lo­ca­tions through­out the Park—from restau­rants to queu­ing sta­tions to main­te­nance bays to mono­rail cars—could be in­de­pen­dent­ly con­trolled from with­in the Hive.

As Sarah walked in, she thought—as on all her in­fre­quent vis­its—just how ap­pro­pri­ate the nick­name was. The hun­dreds of mon­itors that sur­round­ed her on all sides, glass faces slant­ing down­ward at aching­ly reg­ular an­gles, were ir­re­sistibly rem­inis­cent of the in­te­ri­or of some vast hon­ey­comb.

She was not con­cerned; at least, not over­ly so. There had been too many false alarms over the months, too many threat­en­ing phone calls and e-​mails that nev­er fol­lowed through. But none of the cranks or prac­ti­cal jok­ers had ev­er in­tro­duced them­selves by name. None of them had giv­en her a two-​way ra­dio. Most es­pe­cial­ly, none of them had car­ried a con­cealed weapon. And so she’d called Bob Al­loc­co, head of Se­cu­ri­ty, and or­dered an in­ter­dic­tion. Just to be sure.

In­side the Hive, the air was cold and dry, with the faint, al­most sweet­ish smell of high pu­rifi­ca­tion. A dozen se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists sat at the mon­itor­ing sta­tions cir­cling the room, pan­ning across screens or speak­ing in­to head­sets. Bob Al­loc­co was stand­ing be­side the near­est spe­cial­ist, his im­pa­tient fin­gers drum­ming on the black com­pos­ite of the ta­ble. He swiveled at their ap­proach, then frowned, mo­tion­ing them to fol­low.

In the far wall, a door of smoked pri­va­cy glass had been set be­tween two tiers of mon­itors. Al­loc­co un­locked the door with his pass­card and led the way in, clos­ing the door be­hind them.

The room be­yond was small and dark. It con­tained sev­er­al large mon­itors, three phones, a com­put­er work­sta­tion, a cou­ple of chairs, and lit­tle else. As the door lock en­gaged, a fan came on, pro­vid­ing a low, scratchy back­ground hum: pink noise, en­sur­ing they could not be over­heard in the Cen­ter be­yond.

Al­loc­co turned to­ward them. “How se­ri­ous do you think this is?” he asked.

“I’m afraid we shall have to treat it as se­ri­ous, whether it is or not,” Barks­dale replied.

“We’ll know at 1:30,” Sarah said qui­et­ly.

Al­loc­co’s eyes dart­ed to­ward her. “How’s that?”

“He said he’d give us a demon­stra­tion. To show he meant busi­ness, prove it wasn’t a bluff.”

“And he didn’t give you any idea of what he wants?”

Sarah pulled the ra­dio out of her pock­et. “He said he’d con­tact us with this.”

Al­loc­co took it from her, turned it over in his hands. “Well, what­ev­er else the guy may be, he isn’t hard up for mon­ey. Look at this: a mil­itary-​grade scram­bler. With a sig­nal dif­fus­er, I’ll bet. No way to get a lock on his po­si­tion.”

He hand­ed it back. “Did he threat­en you?”

“He im­plied that if we didn’t do ex­act­ly what he want­ed, peo­ple would die.”

“Sounds bloody well like a threat to me,” Barks­dale said.

“He al­so told me not to con­tact law en­force­ment, not to evac­uate the park. Keep things strict­ly busi­ness as usu­al. Or else.”

There was a brief si­lence as this was di­gest­ed.

“And then he said some­thing else. That there were sev­er­al of them. And that they’d had plen­ty of time to pre­pare.”

She turned, caught Barks­dale’s eye. Even in the dim light, his face seemed to have gone a lit­tle gray.

“What’s go­ing on?” he asked. “Ter­ror­ists? Zealots? Some lu­natic fringe group?”

“No time for spec­ulat­ing,” Al­loc­co replied. “We have the gad­gets. Let’s find this guy.” He picked up a tele­phone be­side the work­sta­tion, di­aled a num­ber. “Ralph? Bob Al­loc­co. I’m in the Hive. Can you join me, please?”

He re­placed the phone. “Ralph Pec­cam, my top video tech,” he ex­plained. “Worked in Sys­tems be­fore, knows the whole in­fras­truc­ture like the back of his hand.”

“Dis­creet?” Sarah asked.

Al­loc­co nod­ded. “What time did this John Doe leave your of­fice?”

Sarah thought a mo­ment. “About ten min­utes af­ter one.”

“Okay.” Al­loc­co turned to the work­sta­tion, moused through a se­ries of menus. “Let’s pick up his scent.”

There was a qui­et rap on the door, and Sarah moved to open it. Stand­ing out­side, in the ethe­re­al glow of the Hive’s count­less mon­itors, was a short, skin­ny youth. He had a roost­er’s crest of red hair, and freck­les were splashed across his nose and cheek­bones. He could not have been more than twen­ty. The gold pin on his retro-​look­ing sports jack­et iden­ti­fied him as an elec­tron­ics spe­cial­ist.

“Ralph,” Al­loc­co said. “Take a seat.”

The youth glanced at Sarah, then sat down in front of the work­sta­tion, sniff­ing loud­ly.

“We’ve got a lit­tle project for you. Some­thing that stays in­side this room, okay?”

Pec­cam nod­ded silent­ly, large eyes flick­er­ing once again to­ward Sarah. He was clear­ly un­used to be­ing in such close prox­im­ity to the Park chief.

“Re­mem­ber the in­ter­dic­tion drills we’ve run? Well, this isn’t a drill. A man left Ms. Boatwright’s of­fice around eight min­utes ago. Let’s fol­low his trail.” Al­loc­co point­ed at some­thing on the screen. “I’ve brought up a list of the cam­eras in that cor­ri­dor. Start with B-2023.”

Pec­cam turned to the work­sta­tion and typed a se­ries of com­mands. An im­age ap­peared on one of the mon­itors: the en­trance to Sarah’s of­fice, tak­en from a ceil­ing-​mount­ed cam­era across the cor­ri­dor. Dis­played along the bot­tom of the screen was the time the film was tak­en. As the film ran in re­verse, the hun­dredths of a sec­ond flew past, al­most un­read­able. Be­side them was a long se­ries of num­bers.

“It’s black-​and-​white?” Sarah asked in sur­prise.

“All cam­eras in the staff ar­eas are black-​and-​white. On­ly the pub­lic ar­eas have col­or. We went over all this in one of the Pre-​Game Shows last month, when the new sys­tem was ful­ly in­stalled. Weren’t you lis­ten­ing?”

“Not close­ly enough, it seems. Get me up to speed.”

Al­loc­co waved his hand at the mon­itor. “The video is now en­tire­ly in the dig­ital do­main. No ana­log what­so­ev­er. That means no sig­nal degra­da­tion, in­fi­nite stor­age pos­si­bil­ities, the­oret­ical­ly in­fi­nite res­olu­tion. Ev­ery­thing’s striped to a uni­form SMPTE time code run­ning at—what is it, Ralph?”

“Thir­ty drop,” Pec­cam said in a hoarse voice.

“Thir­ty drop frames per sec­ond. We can syn­chro­nize pre­cise­ly any two, three, what­ev­er, feeds in the Park. And we can main­tain a his­to­ry in­def­inite­ly.”

Sarah nod­ded. “So you jour­nal ev­ery­thing?”

“Up to a point, be­cause the size of—Ralph, what’s the ar­chi­tec­ture again?”

“Each mon­itor is linked to a fiber-​chan­nel RAID ar­ray, cur­rent­ly scal­able to four ter­abytes.” Pec­cam sneezed ex­plo­sive­ly.

“Sounds like you’ve got a lu­lu,” Al­loc­co said.

“I went down to Med­ical for some an­ti­his­tamine two hours ago,” Pec­cam replied. “All it did was make me sleepy.”

“Well, we need you awake right now.” Sarah turned back to Al­loc­co. “If I’m un­der­stand­ing this, we can comb through old out­put, yes? See if John Doe made pri­or vis­its? Maybe see ex­act­ly what it was that he did?”

Al­loc­co scratched his chin. “The­oret­ical­ly. But as I was about to say, re­al-​time stream­ing video takes up band­width. A lot of band­width. You wouldn’t be­lieve how fast those four ter­abytes fill up. That’s why we kept the Un­der­ground cam­eras black-​and-​white. Ev­ery night, video stor­age is hand­ed off to the IT servers.” He nod­ded to­ward Barks­dale. “And that, Buck Rogers, is where your guys come in.”

Sarah looked over. “Fred?”

Barks­dale, who had been lis­ten­ing silent­ly, cleared his throat. “We store the video feeds on our WAN for two weeks. Then they’re moth­balled off-​site.”

“How fast can we get them back?”

“Overnight.”

“That’s not fast enough.”

“We’re get­ting ahead of our­selves here. We haven’t even lo­cat­ed the guy yet.” Al­loc­co stepped up be­hind Pec­cam, glanced at the im­age on the cen­tral mon­itor. “Good. Ten min­utes af­ter one. Now go for­ward, two hun­dred frames a sec­ond.”

On the cen­tral mon­itor, fig­ures passed by Sarah’s of­fice in blurs of gray. Then a shad­ow dart­ed through her door.

“Stop,” said Al­loc­co. “Back one hun­dred frames.”

Frozen on-​screen was Fred Barks­dale, step­ping in­to Sarah’s of­fice.

“That’s too late,” Sarah said. “Fred came in maybe two min­utes af­ter John Doe left.”

“Back at fifty,” Al­loc­co said.

An­oth­er blur of fig­ures, slow­er this time, mov­ing back­ward in silent pan­tomime. Then one of the fig­ures slid in­to her of­fice door in re­verse; turned; dis­ap­peared with­in.

“Stop,” Al­loc­co re­peat­ed. “For­ward, ten frames a sec­ond.”

On the mon­itor, in slow mo­tion, John Doe walked back in­to view. He glanced up and down the cor­ri­dor, smoothed one hand across the front of his suit, then walked out of the door­way and dis­ap­peared out of cam­era view.

“That’s the sono­fabitch?” Al­loc­co asked.

Sarah nod­ded. See­ing him again—the small beard, the easy, nar­row smile—sent a thrust of anger through her, mixed with some oth­er emo­tion she couldn’t iden­ti­fy. Her cheek burned where his knuck­les had brushed against it.

“Back one hun­dred and freeze.”

John Doe stood, mo­tion­less, in the door­way.

“Bring up the face. Ten x.”

The face now filled the screen, striped in the shad­ow of an over­head light. Sarah saw that the left eye was a dark­er shade of gray than the right.

“Can you clean that up?” Barks­dale asked. “Sharp­en it?”

“Yes,” said Pec­cam. “It’ll take a lit­tle time.”

“Then it can wait. Let’s find out where he went.” Al­loc­co peered at a list­ing that ran down the edge of the com­mand screen. “Bring up B-2027. Sync the time.”

The cen­tral mon­itor went black for a mo­ment. Then an­oth­er view of the cor­ri­dor, two doors down from Sarah’s of­fice.

“For­ward, thir­ty,” mur­mured Al­loc­co.

For a sec­ond, the cor­ri­dor was emp­ty. Then a wom­an wear­ing a Vic­to­ri­an-​era crino­line walked by. A mo­ment lat­er, she was fol­lowed by John Doe. He strode con­fi­dent­ly, even ca­su­al­ly, from the top of the screen to the bot­tom.

“B-2051,” said Al­loc­co. “Same sync.”

Now the view was of two in­ter­sect­ing cor­ri­dors. The wom­an in the crino­line ap­peared, turned left, and en­tered a stair­well. A main­te­nance cart passed lat­er­al­ly across the screen. Then John Doe emerged at the top. Stop­ping on­ly to look for op­pos­ing traf­fic, he went left, fol­low­ing the di­rec­tion the wom­an had tak­en.

“He’s head­ing for A Lev­el, maybe Gaslight,” said Al­loc­co, glanc­ing back at the screen list­ing. “Bring up A-1904.”

“Re­mem­ber,” Sarah said, “I don’t want a full-​scale in­ter­dic­tion. Not yet. Let’s see where he’s go­ing, if he’s re­al­ly got some­thing planned for 1:30. Get a se­cu­ri­ty net around him, just in case he’s on the lev­el. But don’t move in un­til I give the word.”

The A Lev­el cor­ri­dor now dis­played on the mon­itor was wider, more bright­ly lit. It was al­so bus­ier. Knots of Utopia em­ploy­ees passed be­neath the cam­era, talk­ing to­geth­er, head­ing to and from lunch at the A Café, the near­by em­ploy­ee cafe­te­ria. The wom­an in the crino­line went by. She had ap­par­ent­ly spot­ted her boyfriend, and the two of them were now walk­ing arm in arm, at a much slow­er pace.

“Tsk, tsk,” said Al­loc­co. “PDA. Bet­ter write them up.” Pub­lic dis­plays of af­fec­tion be­tween cast or crew mem­bers, while not ex­act­ly for­bid­den, were dis­cour­aged.

Now John Doe came in­to the mon­itor’s range. He strolled for­ward, then stopped in the mid­dle of traf­fic. Peo­ple thread­ed their way past, ig­nor­ing him.

“Now what the hell’s he do­ing?” Al­loc­co asked.

Sud­den­ly, John Doe glanced up, di­rect­ly at the lens. He smiled and raised his hands to his tie, as if to fix the knot.

“Cheeky,” Barks­dale mut­tered. “Vil­lain, vil­lain, smil­ing, damnèd vil­lain.”

Un­ex­pect­ed­ly, the pic­ture sheered away vi­olent­ly, and the mon­itor filled with stat­ic.

“What’s this shit?” Al­loc­co shout­ed.

Pec­cam’s hands dart­ed over the key­board. “Don’t know. Time code’s still run­ning. Must be a soft­ware glitch.”

With­in a few sec­onds, the pic­ture shiv­ered back in­to place. The throngs of peo­ple con­tin­ued to pass be­neath the cam­era, obliv­ious. But John Doe was gone.

“Bring up A-1905,” said Al­loc­co, glanc­ing at the list­ing. “Same sync.”

There was the same storm of gray stat­ic that had ap­peared on the pre­vi­ous feed. Af­ter a mo­ment, it, too, cleared.

“A-1906. Come on, hur­ry it up.”

Once again, no pic­ture.

“Christ,” Al­loc­co grum­bled.

He moved to­ward the door, opened it. “Lis­ten up,” he ad­dressed the Hive in gen­er­al. “Was there a prob­lem with the dig­ital feed five, ten min­utes back?”

The se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists turned to look at him. One of them nod­ded. “Yeah, we lost sig­nal for about ten sec­onds.”

“What? Sys­tem-​wide?”

“No, sir. A por­tion of A Lev­el and So­ho Square in Gaslight.”

Al­loc­co shut the door and turned back to Pec­cam. “Let’s fol­low the ob­vi­ous routes he might have tak­en. Bring up A-1940. Sync it ahead ten sec­onds.”

They ran through var­ious cam­era feeds, fruit­less­ly, for a few min­utes. At last, Al­loc­co sighed and spread his hands.

“What do you make of that?” he said.

“Couldn’t be the tech,” said Barks­dale. “It wouldn’t fail like that, not with the re­dun­dant clus­ter­ing.” He glanced at Sarah. “An­oth­er glitch.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “The tim­ing’s too con­ve­nient.” A new—and dis­turb­ing—thought had en­tered her mind.

“Can we track his tag?” she asked.

“We al­ready tried,” Al­loc­co replied. “He must be us­ing a gener­ic. Ralph, keep scan­ning. Let me know if you stum­ble across him.”

Al­loc­co turned away from the mon­itor. “What now?”

“We wait,” said Barks­dale.

Sarah glanced at her watch. It was twen­ty-​five min­utes af­ter one.

 

1:15 P.M.

TERE­SA BONI­FA­CIO’S AP­PLIED robotics lab was per­haps the messi­est pri­vate space Warne had seen since his MIT dor­mi­to­ry days. In an en­vi­ron­ment like Utopia that thrived on or­der and pre­ci­sion, it seemed al­most bel­liger­ent some­how: a state­ment of in­de­pen­dence. Thick tech­ni­cal man­uals lay face­down, pages bent, spines bro­ken. A skele­tal-​look­ing robot stood in one cor­ner, arm raised in im­ita­tion of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, gowned in green-​and-​white-​striped com­put­er print­outs. “Par­adise City” was play­ing some­where in the back­ground. Un­like the rest of the Utopia Un­der­ground—which had been rel­ative­ly scent­less—there was a faint odor in the air: odd, rather fishy. Warne’s nose crin­kled in­vol­un­tar­ily as he looked around. Tere­sa’s of­fice did not sport the usu­al shiny mu­rals of key Utopia at­trac­tions or framed mo­ti­va­tion­al phras­es. In­stead, gar­ish posters of Guns N’ Ros­es were tacked to the walls. One was au­to­graphed “Peace, Love, Slash” with a large red mark­er. A post­card la­beled Borokay Beach, Philip­pines was af­fixed to the in­side of the lab door. Near­by, some­one had taped a hand­writ­ten ex­cerpt:

When a task can­not be par­ti­tioned be­cause of se­quen­tial con­straints, the ap­pli­ca­tion of more ef­fort has no ef­fect on the sched­ule. The bear­ing of a child takes nine months, no mat­ter how many wom­en are as­signed.

—Fred­er­ick P. Brooks, Jr.,

The Myth­ical Man-​Month

Tere­sa was sit­ting in a far cor­ner, al­most in­vis­ible be­hind stacks of trade jour­nals and back is­sues of Amuse­ment In­dus­try Di­gest. She was sol­der­ing some­thing, a thin curl of smoke ris­ing be­tween her hands. When she caught sight of Warne, she put the sol­der­ing gun to one side, pushed the eye gog­gles on­to her fore­head, and came around the stacks.

“An­drew, it’s so great to have you here,” she said in her deep, un­in­flect­ed voice, smil­ing wide­ly. “I can’t be­lieve it, af­ter all this time, you’re—oh, Lord.”

Warne fol­lowed her glance. Geor­gia had just walked in­to the lab, Wingnut at her heels. Im­me­di­ate­ly, the robot stopped, its sen­sor ar­rays scan­ning the land­scape again and again, as if un­able to pro­cess all the sur­round­ing ob­sta­cles.

“Don’t wor­ry,” Geor­gia said. “It’s just Wingnut.”

“Sure.” Tere­sa stared at the over­size robot for a mo­ment. Then she looked back at Warne and laughed: the rich, iron­ic con­tral­to he’d heard so of­ten, long-​dis­tance. “You know, you’re some­thing of a leg­end in IT. No­body’s ev­er seen you. The on­ly peo­ple who talked to you over the phone were Barks­dale and me. There was a joke go­ing around that you didn’t re­al­ly ex­ist, that you were just some in­ven­tion of Nightin­gale’s. When word got around you were com­ing this morn­ing, two peo­ple came by to ask me if it was true.”

“You don’t say.” Warne glanced at Geor­gia, who was now stand­ing next to him, look­ing cu­ri­ous­ly at the sur­round­ing mess. With her near­by, he couldn’t tell Tere­sa what he thought of all this. Not yet. Even so, he’d be damned if he was go­ing to buy in­to this flat­tery.

The smell was stronger here, and Geor­gia wrin­kled her nose.

“It’s ba­goong,” Tere­sa said, turn­ing to Geor­gia and laugh­ing again.

“Baga what?”

“Shrimp paste. What you smell. Fan­tas­tic on green man­goes. No­body around here can stand it, though, ex­cept me.” The imp­ish smile widened. “That’s why I usu­al­ly eat lunch here, in­stead of the café.”

Warne thought of the post­card of the beach. Then he reached far down in­to his mem­ory. “Smells maba­ho,” he said. “Right? Tastes masarap.”

Tere­sa looked back at him. “You speak Taga­log?”

“Maybe five words. I had a Fil­ipino lab as­sis­tant once.”

“Yeah. We’re in­fest­ing the halls of sci­ence these days.” Then she turned once again to Geor­gia, who was rest­less, clear­ly ea­ger to get back to the Park. “I’ve got some­thing you might en­joy. It’s the new Game Boy, ‘Ar­chaeopteryx: Per­fect Edi­tion.’”

“I’ve played it,” Geor­gia said.

“Not this one, you haven’t.” Tere­sa turned away, opened a draw­er, rum­maged for a mo­ment. When she turned back, she was hold­ing a pock­et video game. But it was un­like any Warne had ev­er seen: its plas­tic cov­er had been re­moved, and half a dozen al­li­ga­tor clips were af­fixed to its elec­tron­ic in­nards, mul­ti­col­ored wires trail­ing away like tails.

“Some of these games have re­mark­able AI,” she said. “I some­times trace through their in­struc­tion sets in my down­time, look­ing for rou­tines we could can­ni­bal­ize. Work­ing with this one, I stum­bled up­on a dozen se­cret lev­els the de­vel­op­ers nev­er made pub­lic.”

“The mas­ter lev­els?” Geor­gia said, eyes widen­ing. “I read about those on the Web. I thought it was just bull­shit.”

“Geor­gia!” Warne said in ex­as­per­ation.

“Well, it isn’t bull­shit.” Tere­sa hand­ed her the game. “Here, knock your­self out. Just don’t de­tach any of the clips, or I’ll have to rewire the whole thing. You can have a seat at that far ta­ble, there. Just push the stuff on­to the floor.”

Warne watched Geor­gia move away, hunched over the game, al­ready ab­sorbed. So Tere­sa spent her down­time crack­ing Game Boys. Per­haps if she’d paid more at­ten­tion to the Metanet in­stead, he wouldn’t be here right now.

He turned back to see the wom­an re­gard­ing him. “So,” she said af­ter a mo­ment. “How do you want to start this?” She smiled again. When Warne didn’t re­turn the smile, un­cer­tain­ty be­gan to creep in­to her ex­pres­sion.

“You tell me,” he said. “It’s your lit­tle par­ty.”

Tere­sa’s smile fad­ed. “Look, An­drew,” she said in a low­er voice. “I know how you must feel. And I’m re­al­ly sor­ry about—”

“I’m sure you are,” Warne in­ter­rupt­ed in a rough un­der­tone. “But save it for your re­port. Bring in your team, I’ll get you start­ed. But then we’re leav­ing. You can clean up your own mess.”

This hung in the air for a long, un­com­fort­able mo­ment. Then Tere­sa turned away. “I’ll get the in­ci­dent re­ports,” she said over her shoul­der. She walked to the door of the lab, opened it, and stepped out, not both­er­ing to close the door be­hind her.

Warne closed his eyes, ex­pelled a long, slow breath. For a mo­ment, the lab was silent save for the beep­ings of the Game Boy.

“Dad?” Geor­gia said.

Warne looked over. She was bent over the game, not both­er­ing to look up. “Yes?”

“Why were you mean to her just now?”

“Mean?” Warne re­peat­ed, sur­prised. He’d had no idea Geor­gia over­heard any­thing. Nor­mal­ly, she paid lit­tle at­ten­tion to his work con­ver­sa­tions. Then he re­mem­bered her ask­ing if Tere­sa was Japanese. Geor­gia likes her, he re­al­ized with sur­prise.

Tere­sa ap­peared in the door­way again, a sheaf of pa­pers in her hand. She closed the door and walked quick­ly to­ward him, head low be­tween her shoul­ders, mouth set in a straight line. She looked pissed.

“The Metanet con­trol ter­mi­nal is over here,” she said with­out look­ing at him. She walked to­ward a desk in the far cor­ner of the room, Warne fol­low­ing. Two wood­en stools, one piled high with print­outs, were set be­fore a large com­put­er mon­itor. Tere­sa grabbed the chair and shook it with a sharp, an­gry ges­ture, knock­ing the pa­pers to the floor. She took a seat, pulled it close to the ter­mi­nal. Warne sat on the op­po­site chair. Tere­sa leaned her head in close to the ter­mi­nal, black eyes glit­ter­ing, and with a crook of a fin­ger mo­tioned Warne to do the same.

“All right, Dr. Warne,” she said in a low voice. “It’s ob­vi­ous that you’ve got—how can I put this sci­en­tif­ical­ly?—a ma­jor bug up your ass. And I know what species it is.”

“Then de­scribe it to me,” Warne replied, keep­ing his voice equal­ly low.

“You think I’m to blame for this some­how.”

“Well, aren’t you? You, or some­body on your team?”

“My team!” Tere­sa said in a voice of mock sur­prise.

“We’ve been work­ing to­geth­er, you and I, for al­most a year. Sure, it’s been by phone, but I thought we’d de­vel­oped a good re­la­tion­ship. A friend­ship. You know the Metanet isn’t ca­pa­ble of this kind of mis­be­hav­ior. I’ll bet you didn’t even put up a fight for it. Hell, you didn’t even warn me about this. You let me walk in like an id­iot, with my pants down around my an­kles.”

“My team!” Tere­sa re­peat­ed, as if still un­able to be­lieve what she had heard. She sat back. “Oh, my God. You’re a smart guy, I thought you’d have fig­ured it out by now.”

“Fig­ured what out?”

“Who have you ev­er spo­ken to about the Metanet be­sides me?”

Warne thought a mo­ment. “There was that lab as­sis­tant, Clay—”

“Bar­nett? Clay’s been work­ing in Imag­ing Tech­nol­ogy for the last five months.” She leaned clos­er again. “I have no fuck­ing team, An­drew. There’s on­ly me.”

“What?” Warne said in dis­be­lief. “You’re the on­ly per­son as­signed to the robots?”

“There’s a main­te­nance staff that does the blue-​col­lar work: ser­vo re­place­ment, di­ag­nos­tics. But I’m the on­ly tech.”

There was a brief si­lence. Warne strug­gled with this fresh sur­prise.

“As for warn­ing you, I was for­bid­den to say a word of this to any­body. I mean any­body, es­pe­cial­ly you.”

“Dad?” came Geor­gia’s voice from across the lab. “What are you talk­ing about? Why are you whis­per­ing?”

“Noth­ing, sweet­ie,” Warne said, straight­en­ing up. “We’re just—work­ing on a lit­tle prob­lem here, that’s all.”

Then he leaned back to­ward Tere­sa.

“You think I didn’t fight for the Metanet?” she whis­pered fierce­ly. “I did, tooth and nail. It’s my bread and but­ter. Es­pe­cial­ly now.”

Warne looked at her close­ly. “All right. Tell me about it.”

She pulled the gog­gles from her head, ran her fin­gers through her hair. “It start­ed short­ly af­ter the park opened. At first, I was told we were tem­porar­ily in main­te­nance mode. That we’d be ex­pand­ing the robotics staff as soon as the Fu­ture At­trac­tions Com­mit­tee is­sued a re­port. Well, the re­port came out, but I nev­er saw it. The new hires bud­get­ed for robotics were fun­neled else­where: imag­ing, acous­tics. And then, a cou­ple of months ago, they start­ed scal­ing back.”

“Scal­ing back?”

“Tak­ing nonessen­tial bots off-​line. Re­plac­ing them with hu­mans, or sim­ply de­task­ing al­to­geth­er. In fact, the on­ly bots we’ve added aren’t re­al, au­tonomous bots at all. They’re just an­imat­ed ma­chines, like the drag­ons and man­drakes in Camelot. And the World line man­agers, not me, take care of those.”

Warne passed the back of his hand over his fore­head. “But why?”

“Can’t you see why? It’s the bean coun­ters in the head of­fice. Robots aren’t sexy enough. Too aca­dem­ic, too high-​con­cept. Sure, it’s nice to keep a few around for eye can­dy: wow the tourists in Cal­lis­to, give the PR types some­thing to write about. But they don’t sell tick­ets. The home of­fice thinks robots are passé. Barks­dale told me him­self. They had a lot of promise, just like AI did, but it’s not pan­ning out. Ev­ery kid has a robot toy these days, lit­tle brain-​dead things that give the gen­uine ar­ti­cle a bad name. No­body cares whether it’s bots or mouth-​breathers that clean the floors on C Lev­el.”

“Er­ic Nightin­gale cared. He told me so him­self.”

Abrupt­ly, Tere­sa sank back. “Nightin­gale was a vi­sion­ary. He saw Utopia as some­thing more than just a New Age theme park with fan­cy gad­gets. He meant it as a cru­cible for new tech­nol­ogy.”

“A cru­cible for new tech­nol­ogy. I heard him give that speech just this morn­ing.”

“And I be­lieved in it!” she coun­tered de­fi­ant­ly. “I still do. That’s the rea­son I signed on here. But Nightin­gale’s dead now. And the Park doesn’t run on his vi­sion any longer. It’s run on ex­it polls and de­mo­graph­ics. All the at­ten­tion’s on the su­per­fi­cial. Bring in art his­to­ry schol­ars, make it look more re­al. Add big­ger and bet­ter holo­grams. Speed up the rides.” She low­ered her voice again. “And no­body was pre­pared for just how much those casi­nos would bring in. The whole at­ti­tude of the place has changed.”

Warne watched as she lapsed in­to si­lence. She had a most un-​Utopi­an can­dor. Here he’d burst in, full of righ­teous in­dig­na­tion, chip firm­ly on shoul­der, on­ly to re­lease Tere­sa’s own pent-​up frus­tra­tion.

“Dad?” Geor­gia called again. “You ready? Let’s get back to the Park.”

“Hold on a sec,” Tere­sa called over. “We’ve al­most got it worked out.”

There was a brief mo­ment in which the two ex­changed glances.

“Sor­ry, Tere­sa,” Warne said. “I guess I jumped to the wrong con­clu­sion.”

“It’s okay. Like I said, I know how you must feel. I feel the same way. And call me Ter­ri, please. I hate ‘Tere­sa.’”

“Named for the saint, I sup­pose?”

“Of course. I must be the on­ly non-​Catholic Fil­ip­ina on earth. Haven’t been to mass in ten years. My par­ents would roll over in their graves.”

There was an­oth­er brief si­lence. Warne felt con­fused, un­cer­tain of what to say or do next.

“Well, Nightin­gale would be pleased by the holo­grams, at least,” he said at last. “They’re tru­ly amaz­ing.”

“You’re right.” Her ex­pres­sion seemed to change. “You’d bet­ter take me with a grain of salt, Dr. Warne. Some of it’s just jeal­ousy talk­ing. There’s plen­ty of new tech­nol­ogy here. It’s just that, af­ter their big dis­cov­er­ies, the holo­gram staff got all the good­ies. And the bud­get to match. Orig­inal­ly, Imag­ing Tech­nol­ogy was as­signed eight peo­ple. Now they’ve got forty.”

“What big dis­cov­er­ies, ex­act­ly?”

“Fig­ur­ing out how to make holo­graph­ic im­ages life-​size, in­stead of the size of a cigarette pack. That was first. But the biggest break­through came af­ter Nightin­gale’s death. The Cru­cible.”

Warne looked at her quick­ly.

“Iron­ic, isn’t it? I sup­pose they named it af­ter his fa­mous lit­tle speech. I don’t know the tech­ni­cal de­tails—they’re still keep­ing it un­der pret­ty tight wraps. But it’s a sys­tem for cre­at­ing fan­tas­ti­cal­ly com­plex holo­grams us­ing com­put­ers. Of course, it takes mas­sive­ly par­al­lel CPU pow­er to work. But there’s no more need for lasers, pho­topoly­mers, any­thing. It’s al­most like the 3-D mod­el­ing pro­grams used for com­put­er-​an­imat­ed movies. Ex­cept in­stead of cre­at­ing two-​di­men­sion­al fig­ures, the Cru­cible can cre­ate full-​mo­tion holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tions.”

“Je­sus.” Warne fell silent a mo­ment. “Imag­ine the po­ten­tial.”

“You’re telling me. But those par­tic­ular patents aren’t be­ing li­censed. They’re keep­ing the mag­ic to them­selves, mak­ing it Utopia’s sig­na­ture. It’s been build­ing ev­er since the Park opened. The first holo­graph­ical­ly-​en­hanced at­trac­tion was Rip­per, over in Gaslight.”

“Don’t know any­thing about it.”

“At first it was more like a tri­al bal­loon than any­thing. See, the au­di­ence is in this the­ater, sup­pos­ed­ly to watch some Vic­to­ri­an re­vue. Then some­body yells that the bob­bies are chas­ing Jack the Rip­per, they’ve cor­nered him out­side. Then some­body else yells that the Rip­per’s run in­to the the­ater. And then the lights go out.”

“Sounds ef­fec­tive.”

“Try sphinc­ter-​slack­en­ing. In­cred­ibly re­al­is­tic holo­grams of the Rip­per, run­ning through the the­ater, pop­ping up be­hind your seat, bloody knife raised. Peo­ple scream­ing.” She shrugged. “It de­vel­oped an im­me­di­ate buzz. The pow­ers-​that-​be pricked up their ears, saw the po­ten­tial. So next, they de­cid­ed to add holo­grams to Event Hori­zon, which was still be­ing de­vel­oped.”

“That’s the roller coast­er in Cal­lis­to, right? I saw it on the guidemap.”

“Try next gen­er­ation af­ter coast­ers. Com­plete­ly dark. A bank of seats bolt­ed to a plat­form, synced by com­put­er to lurch up, down, side to side, in time to im­ages hurtling by you. Ex­cept here it’s not just a flat screen you’re star­ing at—it’s three-​di­men­sion­al comets and me­te­ors, hurtling right by your face. No need for trick glass­es. You’re ba­si­cal­ly in­side a holo­gram.”

Warne shook his head won­der­ing­ly.

“Then some­body got the bright idea of lever­ag­ing the tech­nol­ogy. You see the Mind’s Eye gal­leries in Cal­lis­to and the Nexus?”

“Nope.”

“They’re stu­dios where you can get a holo­graph­ic por­trait of your­self—alone, with one of the char­ac­ters, even with Nightin­gale him­self. And you know what? They can’t churn ’em out fast enough. So you’re a Utopia ac­coun­tant, watch­ing the mon­ey pour in­to the casi­nos, see­ing dads fight­ing each oth­er for the priv­ilege of slap­ping down a hun­dred bucks for a holo­graph­ic por­trait of their kid. Then you look at Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio and her robotics pro­gram. Who do you think’s com­ing up short when they pre­pare the next quar­ter’s bud­get?”

The ques­tion hung in the air, unan­swered.

“But that’s just the be­gin­ning.” She turned around, stood up. “Hey, Geor­gia, you want to come over here a minute? I want to show you some­thing.” Ter­ri wait­ed for Geor­gia to walk over, Game Boy in hand. Then she turned to­ward a small ob­ject Warne had as­sumed to be a robot: a black cylin­der on wheels, no more than forty inch­es tall. “They’re al­so work­ing on this.” She bent over it, pushed a few but­tons. There was a brief flick­er­ing in the near­by air, and then, sud­den­ly, a ba­by ele­phant was stand­ing shoul­der-​to-​shoul­der with Warne.

Warne shrank back in­stinc­tive­ly, al­most trip­ping over Geor­gia in sur­prise. The ele­phant was per­fect in ev­ery de­tail. The small black eye, buried with­in in­tri­cate folds of gray, glis­tened as it re­gard­ed him in­tent­ly. The fine hairs on the up­per lip shone. It was a holo­gram, but far more re­al­is­tic than even the im­age of Nightin­gale he’d seen that morn­ing.

“Good Lord!” Warne said.

“Awe­some!” Geor­gia breathed.

The ele­phant van­ished as Ter­ri pressed an­oth­er but­ton on the cylin­der. “It’s a portable holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tor,” she said. “Still un­der de­vel­op­ment. I’ve on­ly got this old pro­to­type be­cause they’re think­ing of in­cor­po­rat­ing some mem­ory chips from my de­ac­ti­vat­ed bots. They plan to use these in the Nightin­gale mag­ic shows open­ing in all of the Worlds next year.” She jerked a thumb at the black cas­ing. “That ele­phant was the last thing in its im­age buffer. It’s easy to use. Here, watch.”

She ad­just­ed a small lens on the hous­ing, pressed a but­ton marked sam­ple. Then she stepped back a few feet, po­si­tion­ing her­self in front of the lens, press­ing her hands against her head in a Stooge-​like im­ita­tion. There was a se­ries of warn­ing beeps, then a short whirring noise. Step­ping for­ward again, Ter­ri pressed an­oth­er but­ton marked dis­play. In­stant­ly, a sec­ond Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio was stand­ing next to her, in­cred­ibly life­like: Ter­ri, as her im­age had been cap­tured by the ma­chine just sec­onds be­fore.

“It can on­ly ren­der stills,” Ter­ri said. “But the de­tail sur­pass­es any­thing else around.” She looked at the frozen im­age. “Hey, Moe!” she said in a squeaky im­ita­tion of Curly.

“Can you make one of me?” Geor­gia asked.

“Sure thing.” Ter­ri ush­ered them over, showed Warne how to work the de­vice. With­in mo­ments, two Geor­gias were stand­ing side by side.

“Does my face re­al­ly look that fat?” Geor­gia asked, scru­ti­niz­ing the holo­gram.

De­spite him­self, Warne shook his head in mute ad­mi­ra­tion. Ter­ri switched off the de­vice, and the im­age dis­ap­peared.

“But what are they us­ing all this tech­nol­ogy for?” Ter­ri asked sud­den­ly. “En­ter­tain­ment. To project a mon­ster in­to your car on the dark rides, give the kid­dies an ex­tra scare. Do you re­al­ly think Nightin­gale would ap­prove of that? I think he’d call it short­sight­ed, and—”

There was a sud­den roar di­rect­ly over­head: a mas­sive, bone-​jar­ring sound, like ten vol­ca­noes erupt­ing at once. Geor­gia shrieked, clasped her­self in­stinc­tive­ly against her fa­ther. Warne cringed, throw­ing his arms over her head. The stool be­hind him went clat­ter­ing to the floor. Wingnut made a fright­ened-​sound­ing chirrup and moved quick­ly in­to the near­est dark cor­ner.

The ag­grieved look on Ter­ri’s face dis­solved in­to a grin as Warne slow­ly low­ered his arms.

“What the hell…?” he be­gan.

“Sor­ry, should have warned you two about that. We’re right be­low Grif­fin Tow­er, in Camelot. The 1:20 show’s go­ing on.”

Warne right­ed the stool, glanced up at the ceil­ing. “How many shows are there a day?”

“One in the morn­ing, two in the af­ter­noon, one in the evening.”

“You have to deal with that four times a day?”

Ter­ri’s grin widened a lit­tle. “It’s bet­ter since they moved me to the small­er lab. Be­fore, they had me un­der­neath Thames Tem­pest, in Gaslight. The riv­er used to leak.”

Warne wait­ed a mo­ment, let­ting the ring­ing in his ears ease.

Geor­gia glanced from one to the oth­er im­pa­tient­ly. “So are you guys done? I mean, how long does it take to un­hook the Metanet, or what­ev­er you have to do?”

Warne turned to her in sur­prise. “You knew?” He turned to Ter­ri. “Did you say some­thing to her?”

“Come on, Dad. It’s been writ­ten all over your face ev­er since that meet­ing.”

Warne shook his head, scratched the back of his neck rue­ful­ly. There was an­oth­er, soft­er ex­plo­sion over­head. He thought he could hear the screams and cries of an ex­cit­ed au­di­ence.

“This whole thing is pret­ty stupid, if you ask me,” Geor­gia added.

“What is?”

“Tak­ing it off-​line. I mean, there’s no bug, or glitch, or any­thing like that in it, what­ev­er Sarah says.”

Ter­ri’s eyes twin­kled mis­chievous­ly. “How would you know?”

Geor­gia sat up straight, looked at her square­ly. “Be­cause my fa­ther made it.”

Warne glanced away, blinked his eyes. For a mo­ment, he was afraid to speak. The lab fell in­to a brief si­lence.

“Sarah told me they want an ac­tion plan by the end of the day,” Warne said at last.

“Yup. Emory’s bean coun­ters in New York have giv­en us a week to de­task the Metanet. Ba­si­cal­ly, that means re­mov­ing a hun­dred-​odd robots from its con­trol. Fred needs to know the safest, fastest way to do that.”

Warne set­tled back on his stool. He took a deep breath. “First, you’d need to take the up­link ca­pa­bil­ity off-​line.” He thought for a mo­ment. “The way it works now, each night the Metanet an­alyzes the da­ta streams it gets from the in­di­vid­ual bots, look­ing for ways to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy. If it finds any, it trans­mits new code to the bots dur­ing the next morn­ing’s down­link. Right?”

“Right.”

“So first, you dis­able the ma­chine learn­ing sub­sys­tem. Once that’s done, you sim­ply turn off the up­link. That way, you can still send new in­struc­tions and firmware patch­es to the bots re­mote­ly. But the Metanet won’t make any mod­ifi­ca­tions of its own.”

Ter­ri nod­ded. “Makes sense.”

“Dis­abling the in­tel­li­gence will be the com­pli­cat­ed part. You’ll have to mod­el the pro­cess in a test en­vi­ron­ment first, of course. But once that’s done, the rest is easy. Com­pile a list of bots and their pro­cess­es. You make rec­om­men­da­tions as to es­sen­tial or nonessen­tial tasks.”

“You, you,” said Ter­ri. “What’s all this you busi­ness?”

Warne stared at her. He’d been plan­ning on spend­ing just a few min­utes here: as­sess the sit­ua­tion, give brief in­struc­tions, then leave Ter­ri to do the loboto­my her­self. But now a new thought came in­to his mind.

He glanced quick­ly at Geor­gia, who was fid­dling with the holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tor. There’s no bug, or glitch, she’d said. My fa­ther made it.

“Ter­ri, I have to ask,” he said, turn­ing. “There’s noth­ing you’ve done to the Metanet, as ad­min­is­tra­tor, that could pos­si­bly ac­count for this?”

Her brown eyes widened, flar­ing with sud­den in­dig­na­tion. “Na­da. It’s au­tonomous. I’ve sim­ply logged its up­dates.”

“So you’ve been mon­itor­ing the changes the Metanet made to bot ac­tiv­ities?”

“Most were pret­ty mi­nor. Stream­lin­ing be­hav­iors, up­dat­ing rule sys­tems, that kind of thing. It pret­ty much ran it­self.”

Warne stood, think­ing, rub­bing his bruised wrist, still aching from when Hard Place had gripped it.

“What’s go­ing through your mind?” Ter­ri asked, frown­ing.

Be­cause my fa­ther made it.

Be­sides Geor­gia, the Metanet was all he had left. It was the cred­ibil­ity he need­ed if he was ev­er go­ing to se­cure an­oth­er aca­dem­ic or re­search post. Hell if he’d give up on it with­out a fight.

Warne looked back at Ter­ri. If he un­der­stood things right, with the robotics work be­ing scaled back, the Metanet would mean al­most as much to her as it did to him.

He reached out sud­den­ly, put his hand on her arm. “Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we just de­vel­oped our ac­tion plan?”

She nod­ded cau­tious­ly.

“Well, that gives us some free time. What do you say if, in­stead of tak­ing it to the scrap­yard, we open the hood and try to fix the damn thing?”

Ter­ri looked at him for a mo­ment. Then, slow­ly, the frown fad­ed from the ex­ot­ic face and her imp­ish smile re­turned.

“I think I’m be­gin­ning to like the way you think. Sailor”—and at this she leered at him and lapsed in­to pid­gin En­glish—“you just bought you-​self a girl.”

 

1:17 P.M.

LIS­TEN UP,” THE voice crack­led across the back­stage sound sys­tem. “House opens in three min­utes.”

Jog­ging to­ward Wardrobe, Roger Ha­gen checked the clock. Prompt to the sec­ond, as al­ways. Some­times the punc­tu­al­ity was al­most de­press­ing.

All around, the usu­al last-​minute prepa­ra­tions for the Grif­fin Tow­er show were be­ing made. The front-​of-​house en­gi­neer was in his booth, prep­ping the con­trol board. The stage man­ag­er was go­ing down the event check­list with her as­sis­tant. Main­te­nance work­ers were milling about, check­ing gas and fog ef­fects, fir­ing up the col­ored smoke gen­er­ators. Grips, gaffers, elec­tri­cians, set dec­ora­tors, and make­up artists trot­ted back and forth. A close-​prox­im­ity shoot­er was busy set­ting up squib con­nec­tions to a bank of the­atri­cal flash pots. A few cast mem­bers al­ready in cos­tume worked on their fenc­ing moves. Oth­ers sat hud­dled in cor­ners, prac­tic­ing Mid­dle En­glish with dic­tion coach­es.

Per­form­ers “be­hind the show” at oth­er parks were known to act as if they were at­tend­ing frat par­ties. At Utopia, how­ev­er, they some­times seemed more rem­inis­cent of law stu­dents prep­ping for their bar ex­ams. Ha­gen ducked across the wings—care­ful not to trip on the rivers of coax and light-​pipe ca­bling that ran across the floor—then head­ed down a small se­ries of steps.

Wardrobe for the Grif­fin Tow­er show was packed: wiz­ards, wim­pled maid­ens, and knight-​er­rants stood around in var­ious stages of un­dress. There was a fran­tic whirring of sewing ma­chines, as­sis­tants rolling racks of an­tique cloth­ing back and forth. Har­vey Schwartz, port­ly wardrobe mas­ter for the show, caught sight of Ha­gen and broke in­to a grin. “Hey, look, ev­ery­body!” he cried, step­ping out from the bank of com­mer­cial wash­ers and point­ing in Ha­gen’s di­rec­tion. “It’s the lame duck!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ha­gen mut­tered, pulling off his shirt, open­ing his lock­er, and shrug­ging in­to the fire-​re­tar­dant Nomex jerkin that hung in­side. He glanced around a lit­tle un­easi­ly. De­spite the oc­ca­sion­al­ly stu­dious at­mo­sphere, Utopia back­stage had its tra­di­tions, like ev­ery oth­er park. And one of those tra­di­tions was to play a nasty prac­ti­cal joke on some­body’s last day at work.

One of the cos­tume as­sis­tants came over to help him in­to his own ar­mor. Ha­gen in­spect­ed ev­ery piece—mail shirt, leg­gings, boots—search­ing sus­pi­cious­ly for un­wel­come presents. Last month, they’d stuck a dog turd in the hel­met of some guy on his last day in the show. The poor slob hadn’t dis­cov­ered it un­til it was too late, and he’d had to go through the whole per­for­mance with the thing rolling around in­side his ar­mor.

Ev­ery­thing checked out, though, and Ha­gen gave the dress­er the okay to low­er the hel­met over his head. Im­me­di­ate­ly, Ha­gen’s world con­tract­ed to the small rect­an­gle of light al­lowed by the for­ward vi­sor. It wasn’t the ar­mor he mind­ed so much—af­ter all, the alu­minum was light and rel­ative­ly flex­ible—it was the loss of vi­sion. That, and the smell: by the end of a per­for­mance, the suit of ar­mor usu­al­ly smelled like a ripe lock­er room.

He could hear the fan­fare, the ris­ing cheer of the au­di­ence, as the cur­tain went up and the show be­gan. The dress­er fas­tened the fi­nal snap, switched on the small IR trans­mit­ter at­tached to his hel­met, hand­ed him his shield and sword, and gave him a go-​ahead rap. With a nod in the di­rec­tion of Har­vey Schwartz, Ha­gen made his way up the stairs to the back­stage area. It was much hard­er, walk­ing in the ar­mor. He had to be care­ful where he stepped: if he tripped and fell, he would not be able to get up with­out as­sis­tance.

He ap­proached the wings, peer­ing out be­hind one of the black­out cur­tains. It was a good crowd: the three-​thou­sand-​seat the­ater was packed. The Bat­tle of Grif­fin Tow­er had been in­tro­duced about four months be­fore and had quick­ly be­come one of Utopia’s hottest live-​ac­tion shows. Lit­tle kids es­pe­cial­ly were ea­ger to see, first­hand, the char­ac­ters from The Fever­stone Chron­icles, Nightin­gale’s an­imat­ed movies about a myth­ical, mag­ical Camelot. Watch­ing the smiles of the chil­dren, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by 25,000-watt strobes and flick­er­ing lasers, Ha­gen felt a lit­tle nag­ging tug of self-​doubt.

Utopia had been a good place to work. Years be­fore, dur­ing col­lege, he’d worked as a Dis­ney river­boat cap­tain, spiel­ing for guests. Utopia was very dif­fer­ent. True, the in­sis­tence on re­al­ism, the back­ground class­es, grew old pret­ty fast. At ev­ery show, there were al­ways one or two “nan­nies” on hand, check­ing for his­tor­ical ac­cu­ra­cy, award­ing points to the best per­form­ers. But the pay scale was the best in the in­dus­try. Each week, ev­ery­one got two hun­dred bucks’ worth of free to­kens for the casi­nos. And hard work was re­ward­ed: you did well, you got your pick of show times, an ac­cel­er­at­ed pro­mo­tion path to lead, or even fore­man.

The truth was, Ha­gen just didn’t like the desert. Many cast mem­bers—the ones who didn’t rel­ish the dai­ly thir­ty-​mile com­mute from the north­ern sub­urbs of Ve­gas—had made their homes in the town of Cre­osote, a few miles north of the Park on U.S. 95. Over the past year, what had once been lit­tle more than a desert truck stop had trans­formed in­to a bustling ag­glom­er­ation of trail­er parks and bun­ga­lows, with a bois­ter­ous nightlife and the air of a col­lege cam­pus. But for Ha­gen, liv­ing the life of a thir­ty-​year-​old stu­dent just wasn’t much fun any­more.

On­stage, My­man­teus the Arch­mage was now weav­ing his evil spell, bent on bring­ing the griffins of Grif­fin Tow­er to life. Some­body knocked on his ar­mor, and Ha­gen backed away from the cur­tain, swivel­ing to get a glimpse of Olm­stead, the guy who would be play­ing his shield bear­er…or écuy­er, as the nan­nies kept in­sist­ing they say.

“Hey, hey,” Olm­stead said, his nar­row grin­ning head stick­ing out of a chain-​mail hauberk lib­er­al­ly smeared with fire gel. “How’s it hang­ing?”

“Pret­ty damn high, in this rig.”

Olm­stead’s grin widened. “Come on. En­joy. It’s your last day, re­mem­ber? Me, I’ve got an­oth­er eight per­for­mances be­fore the week­end.”

Dra­mat­ic mu­sic swelled, pound­ing from bat­ter­ies of speak­ers hid­den be­hind false walls. The arch­mage’s spell was al­most com­plete, and back­stage the ten­sion had grown al­most pal­pa­ble. This was when the re­al fun start­ed. Ha­gen glanced over at the stage man­ag­er, stand­ing in the wings be­low a bank of mon­itors, her fin­ger poised above the ef­fects en­able but­ton on the for­ward con­sole. Near­by, the the­atri­cal tech stood by the py­ro­mu­si­cal fir­ing pan­el, mon­itor­ing the com­put­er-​chore­ographed firestorm that was about to launch. Be­hind them was a short, spec­ta­cled, schol­ar­ly-​look­ing lit­tle fel­low Ha­gen didn’t rec­og­nize, a deci­bel me­ter in one hand. Prob­ably that fire­works spe­cial­ist they were talk­ing about bring­ing in, he thought. The ma­roons—the low-​lev­el in­door salutes used in the fi­nale—were spec­tac­ular. But they were loud as hell. Guests were al­ways com­plain­ing, and two of the crew had de­vel­oped tin­ni­tus. Ha­gen stole an­oth­er glance at the bald guy brought in to fix things. Qui­et fire­works, he thought. Je­sus, what a con­cept.

They wouldn’t be qui­et to­day. In sec­onds, all hell would break loose. The griffins would wake, sur­round­ing Queen Kali­na and the prince re­gent. The evil arch­mage My­man­teus would set up­on them with ice bolts and mag­ic mis­siles. All the chil­dren in the crowd would start to scream. And then Ha­gen him­self would wade in­to the thick of things. Race on­stage, fight hero­ical­ly, die two min­utes lat­er. Three times dai­ly. Ex­cept at the end of this day, he’d die for the last time. Then hang up his shield, turn in his sword. And hope to get back to Cre­osote with­out get­ting fire-​hosed or oth­er­wise abused by his fel­low cast mem­bers.

The crews were re­al­ly sweat­ing now: the fog ma­chines were work­ing over­time, pour­ing rivers of gray mist out in­to the the­ater. The stage man­ag­er had armed the elec­tron­ic py­rotech­nic sys­tem, and now she punched the en­abling but­ton, nod­ding to the con­trol booth.

There was a tremen­dous, floor-​shak­ing crash, ac­com­pa­nied by yells and shrieks from the au­di­ence. The griffins were on the move. Thir­ty sec­onds. Low flick­ers of or­ange and red shone through the gauzy drapes and fire cur­tains. Now and then, a brighter flash cut through the murk: the laser ef­fects of the arch­mage’s spells. Olm­stead grinned again, nod­ded. Stage adrenaline be­gan to course through Ha­gen’s veins. A tech climbed a cat­walk at the far right wing, en­sur­ing the small laser-​fir­ing robot was on track and ready to go. The floor rum­bled again as the sub­woofer ar­ray be­neath the stage cut in. Ha­gen glanced up at a clock: 1:28. More flash­es, then a cack­le of evil laugh­ter: his cue.

The stage man­ag­er gave him the high sign. “Ha­gen! Go!”

With a deep breath, Ha­gen took a tight grip on his sword, raised the shield across his breast­plate, and be­gan lum­ber­ing for­ward. The as­sis­tant man­ag­er gave him a thumbs-​up. A stage­hand part­ed the black­out cur­tain, veils of smoke and cordite-​heavy fumes waft­ing be­tween the folds. And then he was on­stage.

He’d done the show maybe three hun­dred times be­fore. But on this, his last day, he tried to look at it again with fresh eyes: to im­plant the mem­ory of what it looked like, smelled like, felt like, to be on­stage at Grif­fin Tow­er.

Most ob­vi­ous was the noise. The scream­ing of the au­di­ence, the roar of the en­raged griffins prowl­ing the stage, the sharp crack­le of the arch­mage’s mag­ical bolts, pro­vid­ed a suf­fo­cat­ing, sur­round­ing pres­ence. As he stepped in­to the light, and the streams of mist and fog fell away, there was a fresh cheer from the au­di­ence.

Grif­fin Tow­er was a re­mark­able space: a vast, rect­an­gu­lar bai­ley that rose eight sto­ries, open all the way to its dis­tant ceil­ing. It smelled of mold and damp stone. Light flick­ered from flam­ing torch­es and bra­ziers set high in­to the walls. The air was alive with blasts of sear­ing col­or. Over­head, the arch­mage cack­led once again as—with the help of the ef­fects crew back­stage—he hurled fire­balls down up­on the ter­ri­fied queen and prince re­gent. One of the fire­balls hit the far wall of the tow­er: with a roar, a mas­sive piece of ma­son­ry cracked, split, then hur­tled down to­ward the au­di­ence on in­vis­ible truss rods, sheer­ing to one side at the last minute. There were shrieks of de­light.

Down­stage, poor Olm­stead was get­ting mauled by an en­raged grif­fin, right on sched­ule. Swing­ing Per­ilous above his head, Ha­gen raced for­ward to at­tack. One of the griffins turned to­ward him, its me­chan­ical eyes glow­ing bright red. Care­ful to keep the crea­ture be­tween him and the au­di­ence, Ha­gen gave a mighty thrust with Per­ilous, miss­ing the grif­fin by a good six inch­es. Off­stage, the han­dler worked his re­mote con­trol, and the me­chan­ical beast jerked and fell over, writhing on the ground, smoke dart­ing from its mouth. It was a very re­al­is­tic ef­fect, and the crowd cheered wild­ly.

Now, Ha­gen leaped over the body of his fall­en shield bear­er and raced to­ward the queen, dis­patch­ing a sec­ond grif­fin in the pro­cess. Al­ready it was get­ting hot in­side the ar­mor. Sweat was bead­ing on his fore­head. There was a bank of small mon­itors, con­cealed be­hind the foot­lights at the front of the stage, pro­vid­ing the ac­tors with views from the au­di­ence per­spec­tive. Ha­gen had learned to keep a care­ful eye on them. Even though his part last­ed on­ly two min­utes, it was easy to get dis­ori­ent­ed amid the smoke and laser light.

He came for­ward, plac­ing him­self be­fore the queen and rais­ing his shield to­ward the arch­mage.

“Var­let!” he cried. “By God­des herte, cease thy alche­my!”

The wiz­ard gave an­oth­er men­ac­ing laugh, gath­ered him­self for an­oth­er spell. The lights flick­ered, and the stage trem­bled as the sub­woofers cut in again. Ha­gen glanced down through his vi­sor to­ward the mon­itors, check­ing his place­ment, mak­ing sure he was half-​turned to­ward the au­di­ence. When My­man­teus launched his spell, a laser would bounce off Ha­gen’s hel­met, then car­om wild­ly around the set, synced to more ex­plo­sions. He’d fall, arms out­stretched, vic­tim of the evil arch­mage’s mind-​blast. It was a great ef­fect, a re­al crowd pleas­er. Ha­gen want­ed to get it right his last day on the job.

There was an un­earth­ly shriek­ing noise; the wiz­ard lift­ed his arms; a bluish beam shot from his out­stretched fin­gers. Ha­gen kept his eyes on the mon­itor. He nev­er tired of see­ing this.

On­ly this time, it looked dif­fer­ent. The wiz­ard’s beam did not re­flect off his hel­met, shim­mer­ing and cor­us­cat­ing in­to the smoke and haze. In­stead, the laser pierced the hel­met and lanced straight through Ha­gen’s head, emerg­ing out the oth­er side and head­ing stage left in an un­wa­ver­ing line. In the mon­itor, it looked as if a glow­ing knit­ting nee­dle had been thrust through his jaws. The crowd roared its ap­proval.

But Ha­gen did not hear them. There was no pain, re­al­ly: just a steady heat that re­fused to go away, and a pres­sure in­side his skull that grew, and still grew, un­til one by one the rest of his sens­es dropped away and he crum­pled to the stage.

 

MO­MENTS LAT­ER, THE cur­tain rang down to a thun­der­ous can­non­ade of fire­works that burst be­low the tow­er rooflines and threw del­icate trac­eries of col­or down to­ward the au­di­ence. The vi­olent echoes quick­ly gave way to clap­ping and wild cheer­ing as the crowd, with one mind, rose to its feet.

The oth­er side of the cur­tain was a scene of fre­net­ic ac­tiv­ity. Ac­tors trot­ted to­ward dress­ing rooms, high-​fiv­ing each oth­er; wardrobe as­sis­tants fever­ish­ly checked cos­tumes for wear and tear; en­gi­neers be­gan re­set­ting props for the next per­for­mance. All ig­nored the boom­ing wall of noise from be­yond the cur­tain. The fire­works spe­cial­ist ex­am­ined his deci­bel me­ter, jot­ted some notes. In a dis­tant cor­ner, one of the nan­nies was scold­ing the sen­net-​play­er—a waif no old­er than ten—for hold­ing his trum­pet im­prop­er­ly. On­ly Roger Ha­gen re­mained mo­tion­less, sprawled face­down across the boards of the stage.

Now Olm­stead, his shield bear­er, am­bled up. “Hey, no lay­ing down on the job,” he grinned, nudg­ing Ha­gen with a boot­ed foot.

When Ha­gen re­mained still, Olm­stead’s crooked grin widened. “What is this, Method act­ing?” he said. “I’m fresh out of Os­cars, pal.”

Still no re­sponse, and now the grin be­gan to fade. “Hey, Ralph, what’s the gag?” Olm­stead asked, kneel­ing be­side the mo­tion­less knight and shak­ing him gen­tly.

As he shook Ha­gen a sec­ond time, Olm­stead no­ticed some­thing. His gaze shift­ed to Ha­gen’s hel­met. He bent clos­er, sniff­ing, de­tect­ing an odor of cooked meat.

And then he leaped to his feet, his fran­tic shouts bare­ly au­di­ble over the un­ceas­ing roar of the crowd.

 

1:34 P.M.

BOB AL­LOC­CO, HEAD of Park Se­cu­ri­ty, had seen or heard just about ev­ery­thing in the six months since Utopia had opened. But he’d nev­er seen any­thing like this.

He stood in the mon­itor­ing sta­tion at the ex­it to Grif­fin Tow­er, watch­ing through pri­va­cy glass as the au­di­ence streamed out of the the­ater. There was laugh­ter, whistling, a lit­tle horse­play: the usu­al an­tics of a crowd keyed to fever pitch by the ex­cite­ment of a show. If any­thing, they seemed more en­thu­si­as­tic than usu­al. He snapped the mike chan­nel open to lis­ten to the ex­it chat­ter.

“Awe­some!” one kid was say­ing to an­oth­er. “You check out those cool-​look­ing drag­ons?”

“They weren’t drag­ons, lamer,” said the oth­er. “They were griffins. Don’t you know any­thing?”

An old la­dy passed by the hid­den door­way, fan­ning her­self with a guidemap. “Mer­ci­ful heav­ens,” she said to an even old­er wom­an at her side. “Those fire­works, prac­ti­cal­ly in my face…you know, I thought I’d have to leave, with my heart and all.”

“See how that knight died?” a man push­ing a ba­by stroller said to his wife. “Zap, right through the head. Won­der how they man­aged that?”

“That wasn’t so great,” the wom­an replied. “They can do any­thing with spe­cial ef­fects these days. But that big old chunk of tow­er prac­ti­cal­ly falling on top of us—now, that was some­thing else.”

Al­loc­co wait­ed, silent­ly run­ning a balm stick over his lips, as the last of the crowd filed out. Then he opened the door, nod­ded to the cos­tumed hosts and hostess­es, and stepped in­to the the­ater. The fall­en tow­er sec­tion was be­ing lift­ed back in­to po­si­tion with a whine of hy­draulics. Huge air scrub­bers were vent­ing the pall of smoke and gun­pow­der out through over­head ducts.

He stood be­tween the rows, glanc­ing up at the high walls of ar­ti­fi­cial stonework. He had a bad feel­ing, of course: but then, he al­ways seemed to have a bad feel­ing when­ev­er the Park was open. Al­loc­co liked Utopia best at 6:00 A.M.—the way it was meant to be seen, when staff was at a min­imum and no guests were around to sul­ly the il­lu­sion. Then he could walk through the cob­bled streets of Gaslight or the sky­ways of Cal­lis­to with­out wor­ry­ing about lost chil­dren, or poor health risks, or law­suit seek­ers. Or drunk­en frat boys.

Just last week, three mo­tor­cy­cle thugs had de­cid­ed to go skin­ny-​dip­ping in the Board­walk boat pond. It had tak­en eight se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers to con­vince them to put on their clothes and leave. The week be­fore, a Por­tuguese tourist ob­ject­ed to the two-​hour wait to get in­to Event Hori­zon and pulled a knife on the cast mem­ber work­ing the queu­ing line. Al­loc­co shook his head. Se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists were for­bid­den to car­ry weapons, even in self-​de­fense. No Mace, no bil­ly clubs—and sure as hell no firearms. They had to re­ly on their smiles, their pow­ers of per­sua­sion. Not ex­act­ly a match for a nine-​mil­lime­ter. A Por­tuguese-​speak­ing se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer had man­aged to talk the guy down—but it had been touch and go for a cou­ple of min­utes.

Al­loc­co walked down the car­pet­ed aisle to the front of the house, then climbed on­to the stage and ducked be­hind the cur­tain. Cast mem­bers were stand­ing around in small groups, still in cos­tume, speak­ing in low tones. Al­loc­co shooed them away. Then he walked to­ward a white-​clad fig­ure kneel­ing over the man in ar­mor, ly­ing mo­tion­less on the boards.

The knight’s hel­met had been placed to one side. Al­loc­co picked it up, turn­ing it over in his hands. Punc­ture holes, small and very pre­cise, had been drilled through each cheek­plate. Al­loc­co heft­ed the hel­met, sight­ing through the holes. There was re­mark­ably lit­tle blood. The hel­met smelled of scorched met­al and over­done ham­burg­er. He put it aside and turned to­ward the kneel­ing doc­tor.

“How is he?” he asked.

“The laser cut clean through both cheeks,” the doc­tor replied. “Skin abra­sions, tis­sue dam­age, mus­cle trau­ma. What you’d ex­pect. The tongue is scorched, and he’ll prob­ably lose two, maybe three teeth. And he’ll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up. But he’s lucky to be alive.” He glanced up. “If that beam had been a cou­ple of inch­es high­er, we’d need a body bag in­stead of a stretch­er.”

Al­loc­co grunt­ed.

“We can su­ture him up in Cen­tral Med­ical, but he’ll prob­ably need some cos­met­ic surgery down the road. Shall I call Lake Mead, get an am­bu­lance up here?”

Al­loc­co thought about John Doe. “No. Not yet. Just sta­bi­lize him down­stairs. Let me know if his con­di­tion changes.”

The doc­tor sig­naled to an or­der­ly hov­er­ing near­by, and Al­loc­co turned away. Down­stage, near the wings, the stage man­ag­er was watch­ing a cou­ple of techs bring some­thing down on a lad­der. As Al­loc­co drew clos­er, he could see it was a robot. It looked like a cart on wheels, topped by a long white tube—a laser head—with a lens at one end and a bun­dle of con­trol wires snaking out from the oth­er. The lens was shat­tered and hang­ing loose in its cou­pling. The top of the laser head had been peeled back like a zip­per, jagged ends of bare met­al charred and smok­ing.

The techs placed the robot gin­ger­ly on the ground.

“Which one of you is the laser safe­ty of­fi­cer?” Al­loc­co asked.

The taller of the two turned to­ward him. “I’m the LSO for Camelot, sir.”

“Want to tell me what hap­pened?”

“I don’t know, sir.” The LSO swal­lowed painful­ly. He looked very fright­ened. “It’s on­ly a thir­ty-​watt head, I can’t un­der­stand, it doesn’t make sense…”

“Slow down, son.” Al­loc­co point­ed at the robot. “Just tell me what went wrong.”

“It’s an ar­gon laser with a mul­ti­line air-​cooled head. We need­ed ar­gon be­cause the beam had to match the blue col­or of the arch­mage’s blasts.”

“Go on.” If he let the guy blab long enough, he might say some­thing im­por­tant.

“And we couldn’t use a stan­dard light-​show con­troller be­cause there’s no script to fol­low. You know?”

Al­loc­co nod­ded sym­pa­thet­ical­ly. He knew the pro­ce­dure. “It had to hit the knight, ev­ery time. But you couldn’t know pre­cise­ly where the knight would be stand­ing when the ef­fect went off.”

The man nod­ded. “There was an ex­tra bot hang­ing around. They used to use it for some main­te­nance du­ty and didn’t want it any­more. Some­body got a bright idea.”

The man’s look of fear grew even more pro­nounced. I can guess who that some­one was, Al­loc­co thought. He re­mained silent.

“Any­way, so they mount­ed an ar­gon head on it, fixed the bot to that over­head track, stage right.” He point­ed. “That wom­an in Robotics—Tere­sa? She mod­ified it to track an in­frared beam on the knight’s hel­met. At the trig­ger event, it fired the laser right down the IR sig­nal.”

“And how long has this been in op­er­ation?”

“Since a cou­ple weeks af­ter the show opened. Al­most three months now, four times a day. No prob­lems.”

“No prob­lems.” Al­loc­co point­ed at the ru­ined hous­ing. “What could make it over­load like that?”

“Nev­er seen any­thing like it, sir. It must have ex­ceed­ed its nor­mal out­put by a fac­tor of one hun­dred.”

Al­loc­co gave the man a side­long glance. “You know, OS­HA’s go­ing to want to eval­uate this in­ci­dent.”

The laser safe­ty of­fi­cer paled. For a mo­ment, Al­loc­co won­dered if he might faint.

“Your com­pli­ance chart is up to date?” Al­loc­co asked in a more sooth­ing tone.

The man nod­ded again. “We fol­low Z-136 like a book.” AN­SI Z-136 was the set of laser safe­ty stan­dards set by in­dus­try, re­search, and gov­ern­ment. “Week­ly eval­ua­tions, as spec­ified. Haz­ard zone re-​eval­ua­tion, main­te­nance, in­ter­locks—”

“Good boy. Now, I want you to take this thing down­stairs, do a post­mortem. Let me know what you find.”

He glanced to­ward the stage man­ag­er, who had been lis­ten­ing in si­lence to this ex­change. “No more lasers for the arch­mage, at least for the fore­see­able fu­ture,” he said. “Can you cob­ble some­thing to­geth­er for the 4:20?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?” The stage man­ag­er turned and fol­lowed the techs back­stage, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the dim tun­nel that led to­ward the dress­ing rooms.

Al­loc­co watched her leave. Then he plucked his ra­dio from his pock­et and spoke in­to it. “Com­mand Nine Sev­en, this is Thir­ty-​three.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pull up the Grif­fin Tow­er his­to­ry. Any in­tru­sion alerts over the last twen­ty-​four hours?”

“Just a mo­ment.” Al­loc­co wait­ed through the faint whis­per of stat­ic. “No, sir. One beam is open, oth­er­wise it’s clean.”

“One beam’s open? Where’s the in­ter­rupt?”

There was a tap­ping of keys. “Grif­fin Tow­er 206. West as­pect, cat­walk 4.”

“And what time did the beam trans­mit an open sig­nal?”

“About five min­utes ago, sir. You want me to send some­one up to clear it?”

“No, thanks. I’ll check it my­self. Ig­nore any more tow­er alerts un­til I ra­dio back.”

Al­loc­co re­turned the ra­dio to his pock­et and walked far­ther back­stage, look­ing thought­ful­ly up at the web­bing of spars and met­al beams that formed the skele­ton of Grif­fin Tow­er.

The pub­lic ar­eas of Utopia were sur­round­ed by net­works of in­tru­sion mats and more mod­ern in­frared beams. They en­sured that guests stayed safe­ly in­side their cars dur­ing rides; that they didn’t wan­der, in­ten­tion­al­ly or oth­er­wise, in­to po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous back­stage ar­eas. Some­body pass­ing by and in­ter­rupt­ing an in­frared beam would cause on­ly a tem­po­rary break. When a beam stayed open, it al­most al­ways meant hard­ware fail­ure.

Be­sides, what guest would climb up in­to those met­al rafters—avoid­ing all oth­er in­tru­sion sen­sors—and then sit, mo­tion­less, in the path of one?

Al­loc­co looked up at the met­al track the laser-​wield­ing robot had run along. Then he glanced back at the spot on the stage where the wound­ed knight had lain a mo­ment be­fore.

It was crazy. Yet Al­loc­co knew he had to check it out nev­er­the­less.

The gray-​paint­ed rungs of the met­al lad­der were cool to the touch. He pulled him­self up care­ful­ly, hand over hand. It had been a long time since he’d climbed a back­stage lad­der—or jogged, or swum, or done much phys­ical ac­tiv­ity oth­er than walk—and in less than a minute he be­gan to puff. He rose past var­ious stra­ta of back­stage gear: guy wires, cur­tain pul­leys, black con­duits of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pow­er lines.

It grew dark­er. The sounds of life from be­low—the mur­mur of voic­es, the brief tin­kle of a troubadour’s song—grew very faint. Over­head now, he could make out a cat­walk, the num­ber 2 sten­ciled on its un­der­side in white paint. He pulled him­self up on­to it, puff­ing more heav­ily. To one side was a spot­ter’s sta­tion, equipped with binoc­ulars and a tele­phone. Dur­ing per­for­mances, this span would be alive with ac­tiv­ity. Now, it was de­sert­ed. A nar­row band of flu­ores­cent lights was set in­to the wall above the cat­walk, en­sur­ing that the stage­hands would not run in­to each oth­er as they scur­ried to and fro.

Al­loc­co walked twen­ty feet along the cat­walk to the next lad­der. With a sigh, he grasped the rungs and be­gan to as­cend once again.

It was a longer climb to cat­walk 3. When he reached it, Al­loc­co swung him­self up, took a seat on the hard grill­work, and rest­ed his back against the walk­way rail­ings. He could feel the sweat on his back, damp where his shirt touched the met­al rail­ing. This was crazy. He should have let them send up a stan­dard se­cu­ri­ty team. Or, bet­ter still, just have Main­te­nance look in­to it. But he’d come this far, might as well fol­low through. God knew he need­ed the ex­er­cise.

He looked around, breath­ing heav­ily. He was now at the lev­el of the back­stage ceil­ing. The light was fainter here, but at the far end of the cat­walk he could make out a large bulk­head: hous­ing for the hy­draulics that dropped the break­away sec­tion of ma­son­ry to­ward the au­di­ence at the cli­max of the show. Above his head, the in­te­ri­or and ex­te­ri­or walls came to­geth­er: a nar­row ver­ti­cal chan­nel form­ing the fa­cade of Grif­fin Tow­er. Down cat­walk 3 he could see the base of an­oth­er lad­der, ris­ing in­to dark­ness over­head. He wait­ed a minute, then an­oth­er, catch­ing his breath. And then he pulled him­self to his feet. Too much to do to sit around here all day.

Climb­ing up in­side the skin of the tow­er proved much more dif­fi­cult. If he leaned out too far from the lad­der, his back would brush against the sur­face of the in­ner wall, the fake stonework coarse and nub­bly. He was forced to stay close to the rungs, us­ing his arms to pull him­self up. By the time the shad­owy out­lines of cat­walk 4 came in­to view over­head, the mus­cles of his arms were shak­ing. Gasp­ing for breath, he heaved him­self up­ward.

This cat­walk was on­ly used for main­te­nance and in­fre­quent safe­ty checks, and it was very dark. Hard to be­lieve that just on the oth­er side of the out­er wall were bright sun­light, strolling min­strels, the laugh­ter of tourists. Al­loc­co leaned against the lad­der, feel­ing the ham­mer­ing ca­dence of his heart. Great: he’d have a heart at­tack up here, and no­body would find him for at least a week.

Af­ter a minute, as his breath­ing slowed, he reached in­to his shirt pock­et and drew out a pen­light. It threw a puny, thread­like beam on­to the cat­walk over­head. Why hadn’t he thought to bring a re­al flash­light?

He climbed the fi­nal rungs, step­ping on­to cat­walk 4. It was nar­row, with a high rail­ing. Even though he could see on­ly dark­ness un­der his feet, Al­loc­co was all too aware of the great drop to the stage be­low. He felt un­pleas­ant­ly like a small in­sect, crawl­ing along the in­side rim of a Ma­son jar.

The cat­walk ran in both di­rec­tions, van­ish­ing in­to black­ness. West as­pect, they’d said. Al­loc­co took a mo­ment to ori­ent him­self, then moved for­ward cau­tious­ly, pen­light sweep­ing a path ahead of him.

Af­ter a mo­ment, his light picked up the tell­tale hous­ing of an IR sen­sor, fixed to the rail­ing about a foot above the ground. Art­ful­ly con­cealed, but still easy to find if you knew what to look for. Al­loc­co knelt be­side it, di­rect­ing his light over the face­plate. GT-205. That meant the de­fec­tive in­tru­sion sen­sor must be the next one down the line. Thank God. He rose to his feet and be­gan to move for­ward again.

Sud­den­ly, he stopped, limbs tense, lis­ten­ing. He opened his mouth to call out a chal­lenge, but some sixth sense told him to stay qui­et.

Then some­thing strange hap­pened: his right hand dropped to­ward his belt. On­ly to clutch emp­ty air.

Al­loc­co looked down at his hand with a numb kind of dis­be­lief.

Years be­fore—in an­oth­er life—he had been a mem­ber of the Boston po­lice force. He had not pulled a gun in the line of du­ty in a dozen years: what kind of atavis­tic im­pulse would prompt him to reach for one now?

He looked back down the cat­walk, shin­ing the pen­light in­to the dark­ness, search­ing for a flick­er of move­ment, a glint of met­al—any­thing that might rep­re­sent a threat. His heart was rac­ing, his in­stincts still go­ing off three-​alarm. But there was no sound, no hint of mo­tion, and af­ter sev­er­al min­utes he forced him­self to re­lax. With a sigh, he straight­ened up, reach­ing for his ra­dio, bring­ing it to his lips. Then he dropped it back in­to his pock­et. He was al­ready at the sen­sor. What good would it do to call in a back­up team now?

He shook his head at his own fool­ish­ness. He’d al­lowed John Doe to spook him. Thank God Sarah Boatwright couldn’t see him now. She hat­ed weak­ness of any kind. And here he was: sweat­ing, pant­ing, heart pound­ing in his chest like some rook­ie cop on his first taste of ac­tion. It was em­bar­rass­ing, un­pro­fes­sion­al. For all he knew, the guy was just a bull­shit artist. It was a game, like the pho­ny bomb threats they got so rou­tine­ly. What kind of ter­ror­ists, or thugs, or pro­fes­sion­al mer­ce­nar­ies, or what­ev­er, would as­sault a theme park? Utopia had noth­ing they want­ed.

Laugh­ing qui­et­ly to him­self, Al­loc­co eased for­ward once again, pen­light sweep­ing the cat­walk in search of the de­fec­tive sen­sor. There it was: near the ground, in the same po­si­tion as the last, maybe twen­ty feet ahead.

In­stant­ly, he could see the sen­sor was not de­fec­tive. There was some­thing there—some­thing in the path of the beam.

Al­loc­co crept for­ward, more slow­ly now. Then he drew in his breath with a sharp rasp.

“Je­sus Christ,” he whis­pered. He sank to his knees, eyes riv­et­ed to the floor ahead of him.

Now he knew—be­yond any trace of doubt—that, what­ev­er else was go­ing on here, it was most def­inite­ly not a game.

 

1:42 P.M.

SARAH BOATWRIGHT WATCHED as Al­loc­co care­ful­ly shut and locked the door to her of­fice. He jerked the blind cord, shut­ting out the view of the cor­ri­dor be­yond. Then he came for­ward, plac­ing a met­al case on the con­fer­ence ta­ble. Fred Barks­dale, who had been stand­ing on the far side of the room, stepped up. He was frown­ing, the aris­to­crat­ic curve of his lips com­pressed in­to a hard line.

Sarah leaned for­ward in her chair. “Okay, Bob. Let’s hear it.”

Al­loc­co’s face was red, and be­neath the suit jack­et his shirt was damp with per­spi­ra­tion. “I’ve got the laser safe­ty of­fi­cer ex­am­in­ing the unit. He thinks it over­charged. Fired at over three hun­dred watts in­stead of the rat­ed thir­ty. Ripped the hell out of it, the head’s to­tal­ly de­stroyed.”

“That’s not pos­si­ble. The Park on­ly us­es Class 2 lasers, and they’re not—” Sarah stopped. “Was the laser robot-​con­trolled?”

“Yup. Ran along a sus­pend­ed line, track­ing a sig­nal on the poor jerk’s hel­met.”

There was a brief si­lence.

“The Metanet again,” Barks­dale said in a low tone.

“I’m just get­ting start­ed,” Al­loc­co went on. “There were re­ports of some­thing trip­ping an in­tru­sion sen­sor in Grif­fin Tow­er. I checked it out. And found this.”

He snapped the locks on the case, swung it open, and heft­ed some­thing out by the edges. To Sarah, it looked like a plank of gray plas­ticine, wrapped in a clear mem­brane that was stamped with a se­ries of num­bers.

Al­loc­co placed the plank very care­ful­ly on the sur­face of the ta­ble. “C-4,” he said.

“C-4?” Sarah echoed, stand­ing up to take a clos­er look.

“High ex­plo­sive. Mil­itary grade. Five-​pound pack­age.”

Sarah froze mid­step. Then—slow­ly—she sat back down be­hind her desk, eyes on the gray brick.

“I found it on a cat­walk in the tow­er. It had been de­lib­er­ate­ly placed against the in­tru­sion sen­sor.”

“My God,” Barks­dale said. “They planned to blow up the tow­er.”

Al­loc­co shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“And why the bloody hell not?”

A strange lit­tle smile came across Al­loc­co’s face. “Be­cause look what I found stuck in it for a det­ona­tor.”

He dipped his hand in­to the breast pock­et of his jack­et and pulled some­thing out: a Toot­sie Pop, wrapped in pur­ple pa­per.

No­body spoke. Sarah stared at the round lit­tle lol­lipop, bal­anced on the end of its white stick.

“Grape,” she mur­mured.

“I talked to the stage­hands, the cat­walk jock­eys. No­body saw any­thing. But some­how, some­body man­aged to elude all the sen­sors, place the ex­plo­sive, and get away.”

“I’m afraid I don’t un­der­stand,” Barks­dale said.

“I think I do.” Al­loc­co laid the lol­lipop be­side the case. “He’s sim­ply telling us he can hurt peo­ple. De­stroy rides with im­puni­ty. In fact, now that I think about it, all these glitch­es we’ve been notic­ing may not have been glitch­es at all. We got our show: and I think our friend John Doe’s send­ing us a dou­ble mes­sage. That he con­trols both the ver­ti­cal and the hor­izon­tal.”

Barks­dale looked from Al­loc­co to Sarah, then back again.

“What Bob’s say­ing is they’ve got us both ways.” Sarah spoke slow­ly, care­ful­ly. She was aware of sev­er­al feel­ings—sur­prise, con­cern, anger—and she did not want any of them to cloud the de­ci­sions she had to make now. “They’ve re­pro­grammed some of the robots to wreak hav­oc around the Park—loosen the brakes on roller coast­ers, over­load lasers. But they’ve al­so got the means to blow us to hell and gone.”

“What was it John Doe told you he want­ed to do?” Al­loc­co said. “Dis­pel any lin­ger­ing doubts? Well, I’m a be­liev­er.” He walked to­ward the desk, picked up Sarah’s phone.

“What are you do­ing?” she asked.

“Or­der­ing a lev­el 1 phased evac­ua­tion of the Park,” he said, di­al­ing. “Then I’m go­ing to con­tact the state po­lice. My pals in Troop E will be very in­ter­est­ed to hear about this. We’ll need two, maybe three SORT teams, as well as plain­clothes fed­er­al agents trained in crowd dis­per­sal with­in a fire zone—”

Barks­dale stepped for­ward and abrupt­ly placed his hand over the phone’s switch hook. It was such an un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ges­ture for the CTO, so full of un­seem­ly haste, that Sarah stared at him in sur­prise.

“What the hell are you do­ing?” Al­loc­co roared.

“I might ask you the same ques­tion. Don’t you re­call why they gave us this demon­stra­tion? To warn us against mak­ing rash moves.”

Al­loc­co glared. With­out a word, he raised the hand­set again.

“Put down that phone,” Sarah said in­stant­ly.

Al­loc­co froze, look­ing at her, con­flict clear on his face. But Sarah’s tone of cold com­mand could not be re­sist­ed. The se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor re­leased his grip, let­ting the hand­set drop in­to its cra­dle.

“Be­fore we do pre­cise­ly what we were warned not to, we need to learn more about what we’re deal­ing with,” she said, soft­en­ing her voice slight­ly.

Al­loc­co was still look­ing at her. “What we’re deal­ing with? Let me tell you what we’re deal­ing with. I watched the guests leav­ing Grif­fin Tow­er af­ter the show. Guess what? They all had a great time. No­body knew—no­body had the faintest inkling—that some­body got hurt.” He waved his hand at the ex­plo­sive. “If that sem­tex had det­onat­ed, it would have blown away the in­side wall of the tow­er. Sent it crash­ing down in­to an au­di­ence of three thou­sand peo­ple. It would have brought the house down—lit­er­al­ly. And do you know what would hap­pen? They’d be lov­ing it—right up to the mo­ment it crushed the life out of them. Be­cause they’d just seen an­oth­er tow­er come crash­ing down on the oth­er side of the the­ater. A crash that was part of the show.”

He walked slow­ly around the ta­ble, then ap­proached Sarah’s desk again. “We have, what, 66,000-odd guests here to­day? And not one of them re­tains even an in­fant’s sense of self-​preser­va­tion. They checked their fight-​or-​flight in­stincts at the door. That’s what they’re pay­ing for. They see a fire, hear an ex­plo­sion, feel their roller coast­er be­gin to shear off its track—what are they gonna do? Laugh all the hard­er. Be­cause they think it’s part of the act. That makes ev­ery last one of them a sit­ting duck.”

He turned to Barks­dale. “How many robots do we have op­er­at­ing in the Park?”

Barks­dale thought a mo­ment. “Con­nect­ed to the Metanet, you mean? Af­ter last month’s cut­back, eighty, plus or mi­nus five.”

“Eighty, any one of them a po­ten­tial time bomb. Even if we could take them all off-​line with­out cre­at­ing ma­jor prob­lems, there’s no time to get to ev­ery one of them. But it’s not just the bots. We’ve giv­en this John Doe the per­fect play­ing field.” He leaned across the desk. “He plant­ed ex­plo­sives in the walls of Grif­fin Tow­er. But he could just as well have sab­otaged the gas lines for the flame ef­fects. Or—”

“And that’s pre­cise­ly the point!” said Barks­dale. “You said it your­self. We can’t check ev­ery­thing. These beg­gars hold all the cards. We’ve got our guests’ lives to con­sid­er. Right now, evac­ua­tion, call­ing in the po­lice, is not an op­tion.”

“Ex­cuse me, but that’s the on­ly op­tion. We’re not equipped to de­fend our­selves against this kind of threat.” Al­loc­co ges­tured at the plas­tic ex­plo­sive. “As for our guests, do you think the peo­ple who plant­ed this give a shit whether a bunch of tourists live or die?”

“Prob­ably not,” Barks­dale replied. “That’s pre­cise­ly why we can’t in­cite them.”

The two men turned to­ward Sarah, as if ap­peal­ing for a rul­ing. She re­turned their gazes: Al­loc­co, stone-​faced and res­olute; Barks­dale, dis­tress ev­ident on his pa­tri­cian fea­tures.

“We’re not call­ing in the po­lice,” she said.

Re­lief broke like a wave across Barks­dale’s face, while Al­loc­co flushed deeply. “What?” he said. “Are you sim­ply go­ing to lie down for this bas­tard?”

“No,” Sarah said. “I’m not go­ing to lie down for him.” As she spoke, she felt her jaw hard­en as cold anger dis­placed oth­er emo­tions. The ar­ro­gance with which John Doe had saun­tered in­to her of­fice, drunk her tea, made his de­mands. Ca­ressed her face. The way he was de­lib­er­ate­ly, al­most ca­su­al­ly, vi­olat­ing her Park, hurt­ing her peo­ple…He had as­sumed she would sim­ply roll over be­fore his threats. He had as­sumed wrong.

“John Doe told me he’s watch­ing the en­trances and ex­its,” she said. “He im­plied guests will be killed if we evac­uate. I have no rea­son to think he’s ly­ing. And flood­ing Utopia with cops isn’t the an­swer. We’ll deal with John Doe. But on our terms, and with our peo­ple.” She turned to­ward Barks­dale. “Fred, you said they hold all the cards. I don’t think so. This is our Park. And that gives us a home court ad­van­tage.”

Barks­dale raised his hand to protest. Then he dropped it again, drew back.

“But first things first. They im­plied they were watch­ing the mono­rail, so we can’t do a gen­er­al evac—not yet, any­way. So we’ll start with lim­it­ed bomb threat pro­ce­dures. Bob, put the se­cu­ri­ty leads on alert. But no de­tails. Round up the VIPs, get them in­to the hos­pi­tal­ity suite. Tell them the pres­ident’s com­ing, tell them any­thing, but get them there. Mean­while, I’ll put in a call to Ve­gas, can­cel the milk run. Fred, you’ll alert your fi­nan­cial pro­cess­ing staff?”

Barks­dale nod­ded. Al­though most fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions in the park went through the cred­it lines on the guests’ pass­cards, cash was still used in many places, par­tic­ular­ly at the casi­nos. The “milk run” was Utopia-​speak for the week­ly ar­mored car run from Las Ve­gas.

Sarah looked back at Al­loc­co. “We can’t close down the en­trances. But let’s start tak­ing the tick­et booths out of ser­vice a lit­tle ear­ly: say, four ev­ery half hour. We can move up the mono­rail sched­ule by a cou­ple of hours, in­crease out­flow.”

“We can take one or two A-​list at­trac­tions off-​line,” Al­loc­co said. “If peo­ple think they’ve seen ev­ery­thing, or if the lines start get­ting too long, they might de­cide to leave ear­ly.”

“Very well, but keep it low-​pro­file. And let’s get that robot as­sem­bly from Grif­fin Tow­er down to Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio’s of­fice. Dr. Warne should take a look at it. Maybe there’s some com­mon­al­ity we can use to find which oth­er bots have been tam­pered with.”

“I can do that right now.” Al­loc­co reached once again for the phone.

Barks­dale watched him, frown­ing. Then he turned to Sarah. “But if you want to keep things qui­et—”

“We won’t tell An­drew any more than we have to. But right now, we need his kind of help. Es­pe­cial­ly since…” She paused. “Es­pe­cial­ly since it looks like the Metanet may not be to blame, af­ter all.”

Barks­dale stood be­side her, smooth­ing his tie with an ab­sent hand, a trou­bled look on his face. Sarah felt a sud­den, un­ex­pect­ed throb of af­fec­tion. Then, quite con­scious­ly, she put it away. There would be time, lat­er.

“What’s on your mind, Fred?” she asked.

“I’m just hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty un­der­stand­ing this. If the Metanet isn’t dodgy, then what could be hap­pen­ing? How could these chaps be down­load­ing in­struc­tions to the bots? Our site’s to­tal­ly se­cure. There’s no way any­body on the out­side could…”

Barks­dale fell silent. The on­ly sound in the of­fice was Al­loc­co hang­ing up the phone.

Sarah watched Barks­dale’s face in­tent­ly. Fred­dy Barks­dale was the most pol­ished and charm­ing man she had ev­er met. But he was al­so a strange hy­brid: a youth of priv­ilege spent in En­glish pub­lic schools, a ca­reer spent in the up­per ech­elons of In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices. If there was a prob­lem, he turned, by in­stinct, to­ward ma­chine fail­ure. It would not oc­cur to him to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­ity of hu­man fail­ure or be­tray­al. That was not crick­et, not sport­ing. Sim­ply not the way it was done. But now, as she watched, Sarah could see some­thing dawn­ing in his eyes—the glim­mer­ings of some­thing she al­ready knew must be the truth.

“Fred­dy,” she said, low­er­ing her voice, “I want you to get me a list of ev­ery­body on your IT staff with the ac­cess and the skills to pull off this kind of thing. And which of them are on-​site to­day.”

Barks­dale stood still for a mo­ment, as if the mere thought had frozen him to stone. Then he nod­ded slow­ly.

“And I think you should do it now.”

Barks­dale turned to leave.

“And Fred? Keep qui­et. Keep as qui­et as the grave.”

Sarah watched the door close be­hind Barks­dale. Then she pulled her eyes away and turned to­ward Al­loc­co.

“I want you to do the same,” she said. “Get me a short-​list of se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel with ei­ther the means or the mo­ti­va­tion. Any­one with a beef about their job, a grudge against their boss. Any­one with a drug prob­lem, a mon­ey prob­lem.”

As Sarah said these last words, a far more sig­nif­icant look passed briefly be­tween them. Then Al­loc­co nod­ded.

“This tech of yours, Ralph Pec­cam. Has he found any­thing?”

“He’s still check­ing the video logs.”

Sarah paused, think­ing. “He couldn’t have staged that glitch in the Hive him­self, could he? When we lost the video tail on John Doe?”

“No. At least, not with­out ad­equate prepa­ra­tion.”

“You said he used to work in Sys­tems. You have com­plete con­fi­dence in him?”

“I’ll vouch for him per­son­al­ly. He wouldn’t be in­volved in this kind of thing. I know him too well for that.”

Sarah nod­ded. “Very well. Keep him on the logs, then.” She walked away from the ta­ble, to­ward a cut­away di­agram of the Park. “You’ve got my ear, Bob. If you can come up with a plan to end this pre-​emp­tive­ly, with­out un­due risk to our Park or our guests, I want to hear about it.”

She was in­ter­rupt­ed by a low buzzing noise.

For a mo­ment, Sarah didn’t rec­og­nize the sound. And then, with an elec­tric cur­rent of recog­ni­tion, she won­dered how she could have for­got­ten it, even for a mo­ment.

She reached in­to her pock­et and pulled out the small ra­dio.

“Ms. Boatwright?” came the pleas­ant, mild­ly ac­cent­ed voice of John Doe. “Sarah?”

Sarah glanced at Al­loc­co. The se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor dug in­to a pock­et, pulled out a mi­cro­cas­sette recorder, and tossed it to her.

“Sarah? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” she replied, snap­ping on the recorder and hold­ing it close to the ra­dio.

“Did you see our 1:30 show?”

“Not per­son­al­ly. I heard the re­views.”

“So we can get down to busi­ness with­out any fur­ther un­pleas­ant­ness?”

“Get on with it.”

“As you wish. I’ve got a lit­tle sto­ry to tell you. Please lis­ten very care­ful­ly. It isn’t long, and I think you’ll find it very in­ter­est­ing.”

 

1:45 P.M.

CAN I USE one of these ter­mi­nals to ac­cess the Net?” Geor­gia had beat­en the last Game Boy lev­el and was now sit­ting dis­con­so­late­ly on the floor, cross-​legged, throw­ing a wadded pa­per ball out for Wingnut to fetch. “I’d like to, maybe, down­load some Duke Elling­ton stuff.”

Across the lab, Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio was in­dus­tri­ous­ly spread­ing brown shrimp paste over a slice of yel­low man­go. “No can do, kid­do.”

Geor­gia looked around at the dozen va­cant com­put­er ter­mi­nals with a look that clear­ly said, What, you can’t spare even one of these?

Ter­ri caught the look and grinned. “It’s a sealed sys­tem, no por­tals to the out­side. Too big a se­cu­ri­ty risk. I’ve got a bunch of boot­legged Guns N’ Ros­es con­certs, though, if you’re in­ter­est­ed.”

“No, thanks.”

Warne had been star­ing at the Metanet ter­mi­nal. Now, he pushed him­self away and glanced bleari­ly over. “She went through her Cal­ifor­nia post­punk hard-​rock phase last De­cem­ber.” His eye fell on the man­go. “I’m sor­ry, but that looks re­al­ly dis­gust­ing.”

“You got off lucky. Some days, I bring din­uguan for lunch.”

“I’m afraid to ask what that is.”

“Pig’s head, heart, and liv­er, in a sauce of pig’s blood. And then there’s balun-​balu­nan, which—”

“Okay, okay.”

From her po­si­tion on the floor, Geor­gia made an elab­orate pan­tomime of stick­ing a fin­ger down her throat. Ter­ri’s grin widened.

Geor­gia tossed the wad of pa­per to­ward a far cor­ner of the lab. Im­me­di­ate­ly, the robot shot af­ter it, sen­sor swivel­ing away. Reach­ing the pa­per, Wingnut’s pan-​tilt head as­sem­bly bent for­ward, large, mouth­like pin­cers open­ing. It grasped the ball be­tween the pin­cers and rolled back to­ward Geor­gia at an alarm­ing speed—still man­ag­ing, how­ev­er, to drop the pa­per in­to her out­stretched hand with sur­pris­ing gen­tle­ness.

“Good boy, Wingnut!” Geor­gia cooed. The robot yipped ex­cit­ed­ly, spun in an awk­ward cir­cle.

“Look, he’s chas­ing his tail,” Ter­ri said. “Just like a re­al dog.”

Geor­gia let the pa­per fall to the ground, turned to­ward Warne. “Dad, aren’t you done yet? We’ve been here an hour, at least.”

“Half an hour, princess.”

“Don’t call me princess.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s al­most two o’clock.”

“Just a lit­tle longer.” He glanced at Ter­ri, then ges­tured to­ward the ter­mi­nal. “There’s noth­ing wrong with the Metanet. I’ve tried to break it ev­ery way I can think of. Mul­ti-​thread­ed down­links, miss­ing ar­gu­ments, ev­ery­thing. It al­ways crash­es grace­ful­ly.”

Ter­ri fin­ished the man­go, shrug­ging as if to say, I told you so.

“It’s like you said. All the Metanet changes have been be­nign.” Warne turned back to the ter­mi­nal and be­gan mous­ing his way down the screen. “What re­al­ly gets me are the in­ci­dent re­ports. I’ve checked al­most all of these robot glitch­es. You know what? Ac­cord­ing to the Metanet logs, none of those bots were ev­er even touched. The Metanet made no mod­ifi­ca­tions to their code. And that doesn’t make sense.”

He stared at the ter­mi­nal. He could see his own face—pale, a lit­tle drawn—star­ing back at him from the re­flect­ing glass. Just sit­ting at this ter­mi­nal brought back po­tent, bit­ter­sweet mem­ories. The last time he’d sat be­fore it, in his lab at Carnegie-​Mel­lon, he’d felt an al­most pa­ter­nal pride for the cre­ation that was about to be shipped off to Neva­da. The Metanet was to be the first in a se­ries of rev­olu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ments that would no doubt be emerg­ing from his lab. His the­ories about ma­chine learn­ing were the buzz of the robotics com­mu­ni­ty. And he’d found a pow­er­ful cham­pi­on in Er­ic Nightin­gale…

How dif­fer­ent things were for the face that stared back at him now. He closed his eyes, bowed his head. What’s hap­pened? he asked him­self. How could ev­ery­thing go so wrong, so quick­ly? It’s like I just can’t catch a break.

There was a whir of step­per mo­tors, a loud, metal­lic, clan­gor­ous yip­ping. Wingnut rolled back and forth across the cen­ter of the lab, as if search­ing for some­thing. Then he came to a stop be­low a bank of flu­ores­cent lights.

“What’s he do­ing?” Ter­ri asked.

“Recharg­ing his so­lar cells. Since his avatar—most re­cent­ly, that was Geor­gia—isn’t mov­ing, he’s in a wait state, do­ing back­ground tasks. Like lo­cat­ing the bright­est light source and mov­ing to­ward it. Re­mem­ber your grad­uate school cy­ber­net­ics? Grey Wal­ter’s tor­toise, its prim­itive light-​seek­ing, light-​avoid­ance be­hav­iors? Same idea.”

Ter­ri watched the robot, mo­tion­less be­neath the light. “He’s com­plete­ly au­tonomous. Right? If he’d been plugged in­to the Metanet, I’d have known about it.”

“Yup.”

“I as­sume he’s us­ing the A-​star al­go­rithm for pathfind­ing? How did you avoid the usu­al zigza­gs?”

“By adding some post­pro­cess­ing tweaks.”

“And his ar­chi­tec­ture—to­tal­ly re­ac­tive? Must be, giv­en all the ran­dom pro­cess­ing the poor thing has to do.”

“Right. But there’s a hi­er­ar­chi­cal core to give him some per­son­al­ity traits, make him seem more re­al. Not that they all work the way they’re sup­posed to, though. He can be an un­re­li­able lit­tle spud when he feels like it.”

He stole a glance at the wom­an. Clear­ly, she knew her stuff.

The robotics com­mu­ni­ty was split in­to two camps. The old­er camp be­lieved in cre­at­ing robots with “de­lib­er­ative” AI: high­ly struc­tured, hi­er­ar­chi­cal sys­tems with fixed in­ter­nal world mod­els and hard­wired as­sump­tions about that world. The new­er camp—of which Warne him­self was a con­tro­ver­sial lead­er—be­lieved that “be­hav­ior-​based” robotics was the way of the fu­ture: re­ac­tive sys­tems that based their ac­tions on what their sen­sors told them, rather than re­ly­ing on pre-​cod­ed in­struc­tions.

“There’s some­thing a bit un­set­tling about him,” Ter­ri said. “As if you nev­er knew what he was go­ing to do next. And why’s he so damn big?”

“When I first built him, com­po­nents weren’t as minia­tur­ized as they are now. Over the years I swapped out his in­nards for small­er, more pow­er­ful re­place­ments. That cut his weight in half, freed up space for big­ger mo­tors and ser­vos. That’s why he’s such a speedy brute, too.” Warne looked at her. “You sound as if you’d nev­er seen him be­fore.”

“On­ly from a dis­tance. It was sit­ting in a cor­ner of Sarah Boatwright’s of­fice. Or maybe Barks­dale’s, I can’t re­mem­ber.”

Warne sighed. Some­how, he wasn’t sur­prised.

“Tell me about Fred Barks­dale,” he said. “What’s he like?”

“Let’s see. He’s charm­ing, suave, cul­tured, debonair…if you like that sort of thing in a man, of course. Can quote Shake­speare for hours on end. All the wom­en in Sys­tems are mad­ly in love with him. Which is pre­cise­ly why I’m not.”

Warne chuck­led.

“Ac­cord­ing to the grapevine, he and Sarah Boatwright are quite the thing.”

Warne’s laugh died in his throat. He looked over at Ter­ri. He could have sworn there was the slight­est, teas­ing edge to her tone.

“Don’t wor­ry, Dr. Warne,” she said. “I know all about it. And you. Utopia’s even more fond of gos­sip than Pey­ton Place.”

He sighed, looked away. “That’s an­cient his­to­ry.”

“Not an­cient enough,” Geor­gia mut­tered.

Ter­ri let out a whoop of laugh­ter. “You know, I like this daugh­ter of yours.”

Geor­gia grinned, blushed.

Warne looked back at the screen, mov­ing the mouse from one code win­dow to an­oth­er. Once again, a mix of feel­ings washed over him: part fear, part des­per­ation. He was los­ing the Metanet; it was hap­pen­ing right be­fore his eyes. And yet there was noth­ing wrong with it—he’d just run ev­ery test he could imag­ine. But clear­ly, some­thing had to be wrong. The ac­ci­dent on Not­ting Hill Chase. And just this morn­ing, his own con­struct, Hard Place…It made no sense. He lift­ed his hand from the mouse, rubbed his bruised wrist ab­sent­ly.

There was a sud­den com­mo­tion near­by as Wingnut—bat­ter­ies now ful­ly recharged—dart­ed in, grabbed the mouse, then rushed away. There was a loud bang. Warne looked over at the hulk­ing robot, who was star­ing back at him, mouse be­tween his met­al jaws, sev­ered cord hang­ing down like a flac­cid tail, wait­ing for Warne to give chase.

“Wingnut, no chase,” he said in a tired voice. He turned to­ward Ter­ri. “Got an­oth­er mouse handy, by any chance?”

“Sure. Does he al­ways grab things like that?”

“He de­vel­oped a fond­ness for chas­ing cars, robots, any­thing with wheels. Don’t ask me where it came from. It got so bad I was forced to hard-​code a spe­cial in­struc­tion in­to him: ‘no chase.’ And it’s still hit-​or-​miss.” My ca­reer in a mi­cro­cosm, he thought as he stared rue­ful­ly at the robot. No won­der the thing had be­come a dusty rel­ic.

Ter­ri walked off to fetch a new mouse. Some­how, the nat­ural sway of her body was able to make even a lab coat look al­lur­ing. Warne glanced over at Geor­gia, rif­fling dis­con­so­late­ly through an in­dus­try jour­nal, then back at the screen.

There it was again: the sense that some­thing was wrong.

And then, sud­den­ly, he re­al­ized what it was. It was so sim­ple, so ob­vi­ous, that he’d nev­er made the con­nec­tion.

“Ter­ri,” he said. “If the Metanet mod­ified cer­tain bots for in­ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tions, why are there no in­ter­nal mod­ifi­ca­tion logs for any of them? I’ve ex­am­ined the Metanet’s logs. None ex­ist for any of the bots that went hay­wire.”

Ter­ri shook her head. “That couldn’t be.”

“And there’s the oth­er thing. In the meet­ing this morn­ing, Barks­dale said the prob­lems were in­ter­mit­tent. The bots would mis­be­have one day, be fine the next.” Warne paused. “If the Metanet in­struct­ed those bots to mis­be­have, who told them to be­have again?”

Ter­ri looked at him, dark eyes trou­bled. “On­ly the Metanet could do that.”

“Ex­act­ly. But there are no in­ter­nal logs show­ing ei­ther the in­tro­duc­tion or the cor­rec­tion of these glitch­es.” Warne pushed the in­ci­dent re­ports aside. “How many cas­es of in­ap­pro­pri­ate code have you ac­tu­al­ly seen with your own eyes?”

“On­ly one. Not­ting Hill Chase.”

“How did you de­ter­mine what went wrong?”

“Main­te­nance walked the ride, found the loos­ened safe­ty dogs. I found in­cor­rect be­hav­ior in the on­board code.”

“What kind?”

“The code had been al­tered to specif­ical­ly loosen, rather than tight­en, the safe­ty dogs.”

Warne winced in­vol­un­tar­ily. There were on­ly two ways for the bots to re­ceive such specious in­struc­tions. On­ly Ter­ri was au­tho­rized ac­cess to the Metanet ter­mi­nal. Ei­ther she had de­lib­er­ate­ly hand-​cod­ed the er­rant bots, or the Metanet had mod­ified their pro­gram­ming. The Metanet had caused the ac­ci­dent. He felt the sense of des­per­ation grow stronger.

“Dad,” Geor­gia spoke in­to the si­lence. “Come on. Please.”

“Geor­gia!” Warne turned sharply. Then he took a breath, mas­tered his an­noy­ance. “Look, I’m sor­ry, but I have to fin­ish this.” He glanced at the screen, con­sid­ered a mo­ment. Then he turned back to Geor­gia. “Tell you what. I’ll let you take in a few rides on your own. How about that? Give me an hour. No, nine­ty min­utes.”

“I don’t want to go by my­self,” Geor­gia said. “What fun is that?”

“That’s the way it has to be, sweet­ie. I’m sor­ry. Just nine­ty min­utes. I’ll meet you at…” He fished in his pock­et for a guidemap, un­fold­ed it. “At Guest Ser­vices in the Nexus. Quar­ter af­ter three. We’ll fin­ish up Board­walk to­geth­er. Okay?”

Geor­gia chewed her lip a mo­ment. Then she nod­ded, stood up. “Thanks for the Game Boy,” she said to Ter­ri. She tugged her head­phones on­to her ears, shoul­dered her back­pack, head­ed for the door.

“Geor­gia?” Warne asked.

She stopped in the door­way, turned back.

“No big coast­ers, no tall rides, okay? Save those for me.”

She frowned.

“Promise?”

She sighed. “Yeah.” Then she slipped around the cor­ner, clos­ing the door be­hind her.

A brief si­lence set­tled over the lab. Warne found him­self star­ing at the door.

“She’s a cute kid,” Ter­ri said. “As far as kids go.” And she smiled rogu­ish­ly.

Warne turned his gaze to her. “You don’t like kids?”

“It isn’t that. I guess I just nev­er had much use for them. Es­pe­cial­ly when I was one my­self.” Ter­ri shrugged. “Nev­er had a lot of friends my own age. Nev­er had many friends at all, ac­tu­al­ly. Some­how, I al­ways felt more com­fort­able around adults.”

“Sounds like Geor­gia. I wor­ry about that some­times. Since her moth­er died, it’s al­most like she’s pulled up the draw­bridge. I’m the on­ly one she’s re­al­ly close to.”

“At least she has a lov­ing fa­ther.”

“You didn’t?”

Ter­ri rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask. The Wicked War­lock of the East.”

Warne stretched, glanced back at the ter­mi­nal. “Let’s get back to it. There’s a mys­tery here that I don’t un­der­stand.” He waved at the stack of in­ci­dent re­ports. “On­ly the Metanet could have caused these glitch­es. But why did you ac­tu­al­ly see the al­tered code in on­ly one: the Not­ting Hill ride? What was dif­fer­ent about that par­tic­ular glitch?”

Ter­ri looked down. “There was a ca­su­al­ty,” she said.

For a mo­ment, Warne low­ered his eyes.

“And you shut the ride down,” he re­sumed. “When did you ex­am­ine the two Not­ting Hill bots?”

“The fol­low­ing morn­ing.”

“Were they con­nect­ed to the Metanet at that point?”

“Of course not. The whole ride was tak­en off-​line.”

“Nat­ural­ly.” Warne picked up the pile of in­ci­dent re­ports. “And the prob­lems with all these oth­er bots. When were they checked?”

“Usu­al­ly, the af­ter­noon fol­low­ing the day the re­ports were filed.”

“Were they ev­er checked ear­li­er?”

“If it was a high pri­or­ity, we’d check them first thing.”

“Which means?”

“Around 9:30. Right af­ter down­link.”

“Right af­ter down­link.” He glanced at her quick­ly. “That’s it. That’s why you on­ly saw the al­tered code in the Not­ting Hill ride. Not the oth­ers.”

“I don’t think I un­der­stand.”

“And I’ll bet if we ex­am­ined the in­ter­nal rou­tines on Hard Place, we’d see it, too. Je­sus, don’t you see? All the rest must have been—”

At that mo­ment, a rap sound­ed on the door.

“Come in!” Ter­ri called.

The door opened, and a tall, thin man in a lab coat stepped in, push­ing a met­al cart be­fore him. Sit­ting on the cart was a met­al box the size of a milk car­ton, mul­ti­col­ored wires stream­ing away: the cen­tral pro­cess­ing unit from Hard Case. Be­side it sat a low-​slung robot. Warne rec­og­nized the type: a late-​mod­el Au­tonomous Sys­tems con­troller as­sem­bly, fre­quent­ly used for sim­ple main­te­nance du­ties. This one’s up­per plate looked odd­ly scorched, though; al­most as if some­body had held a blow-​torch to it.

Wingnut turned his head ar­ray to­ward the new ar­rivals. He emit­ted a low, mut­ter­ing growl and be­gan rolling to­ward the cart.

“Wingnut, no chase,” Warne said in a warn­ing tone, enun­ci­at­ing the com­mand care­ful­ly. The crea­ture rolled to a stop.

“What are those do­ing here?” Ter­ri asked.

“Ms. Boatwright asked me to bring these to a Dr. Warne. Said I’d find him in your of­fice.” The slen­der man glanced over at Warne. He was pale, and shrank back ner­vous­ly from Wingnut’s at­ten­tions. “Would that be you?”

“The big one is Hard Place’s brain,” Warne said, nod­ding at the cart. “I told you how he went postal on me to­day. I had to hit his kill switch man­ual­ly. I don’t rec­og­nize the oth­er one.”

“It’s from the Grif­fin Tow­er show,” said Ter­ri. She turned back to the tech­ni­cian. “What’s it do­ing here?” she re­peat­ed, her low voice a lit­tle loud­er now.

The man licked his lips. “The laser went nuts dur­ing the 1:20 show.”

“What?”

The man nod­ded. “Over­load­ed. Shot right through a guy’s face.”

Hear­ing this, Ter­ri seemed to go gray. She moved to­ward the cart, then stopped, as if un­able to bring her­self to touch it.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “I pro­grammed that. I did that…” She glanced back to­ward Warne, a look of hor­ror on her face.

But Warne did not no­tice. His mind was far away.

 

1:47 P.M.

SARAH BOATWRIGHT WAIT­ED. Over the ded­icat­ed land­line, there was no sound: no dig­ital ar­ti­facts, no whis­per of stat­ic, noth­ing.

Then, at last, Chuck Emory’s grav­el­ly voice came again. “High ex­plo­sives.”

“That’s right, Mr. Emory.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“There’s a brick of it sit­ting on the ta­ble in front of me.”

“Ex­cuse me?”

“Bob Al­loc­co found it. With­out a det­ona­tor. Left there to send us a mes­sage.”

“Some mes­sage. And you’re sure it’s not a hoax?”

“Al­loc­co says it’s the re­al deal this time. And the glitch with the laser-​fir­ing robot, the ac­ci­dent on Not­ting Hill Chase—those cer­tain­ly weren’t hoax­es.”

There was an­oth­er si­lence. Wait­ing, Sarah felt am­biva­lent about bring­ing Emory in­to this. But she re­mind­ed her­self there was no way she could pro­ceed—one way or the oth­er—with­out talk­ing to Emory first.

If Er­ic Nightin­gale had been the cre­ative ge­nius be­hind Utopia, Charles Emory III was the man who had tak­en Nightin­gale’s idea and breathed life in­to it. In the wake of the ma­gi­cian’s death, Emory had quick­ly moved from chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer to CEO of the Utopia Hold­ing Com­pa­ny. He had man­aged to keep the cor­po­rate back­ers and ven­ture cap­ital­ists to­geth­er through the Park’s fi­nal de­sign and fab­ri­ca­tion. Many peo­ple cred­it­ed Emory with sav­ing the Park, for guid­ing its de­vel­op­ment in the face of un­ex­pect­ed tragedy. Oth­ers—Utopia purists, or peo­ple who, like An­drew Warne, had been drawn in by Nightin­gale’s orig­inal vi­sion—felt dif­fer­ent­ly. They be­lieved Emory sold out, took Nightin­gale’s dream and sul­lied it with com­mer­cial­ism. Emory had added thrill rides, con­ces­sion ar­eas, mer­chan­dis­ing tie-​ins. And, most con­tro­ver­sial of all, he had added the casi­nos. Nightin­gale had planned to have a sin­gle, small em­po­ri­um in Board­walk, where guests could play turn-​of-​the-​cen­tu­ry games of chance with buf­fa­lo-​head nick­els. Emory had re­placed this quaint Em­po­ri­um of Chance with four full-​blown casi­nos that catered in re­al mon­ey.

Sarah re­spect­ed Emory’s busi­ness sense. She knew that the en­trance fee cov­ered on­ly half the Park’s over­head. The rest came from food, bev­er­ages, sou­venirs, con­ces­sions, and most es­pe­cial­ly the casi­nos—a busi­ness re­al­ity that Nightin­gale had nev­er been able to ac­cept. To his cred­it, Emory had spot­ted new trends—like holo­graph­ic tech­nol­ogy—and been quick to lever­age them when there was a prof­it to be made. He ex­celled at man­ag­ing from a dis­tance, let­ting the Park’s cre­ative de­sign­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff run the day-​to-​day op­er­ations. But he seemed less good at han­dling crises. There had been on­ly one in re­cent mem­ory—a salmonel­la scare in Camelot that had proved to be un­found­ed—but his in­de­ci­sive­ness, at a time when prompt ac­tion had been called for, re­mained un­com­fort­ably strong in her mind.

There could be no in­de­ci­sive­ness, no hes­itan­cy, here. The longer she thought, the more con­vinced she be­came: bold ac­tion was re­quired.

“Do you know how many peo­ple are in­volved?” Emory asked.

“No. Judg­ing from ap­pear­ances, it’s a well-​planned op­er­ation. And they couldn’t have done it with­out help from in­side the Park.”

“Je­sus Christ. Do we know who?”

“Not yet. But it’s a good bet who­ev­er the in­sid­er is works in ei­ther Se­cu­ri­ty or Sys­tems.”

A pause. “What are these peo­ple? Fa­nat­ics? Some kind of cult?”

“I don’t think so. I just got off the ra­dio with their spokesman. He told me what it is they want.”

“And that is?”

“The Cru­cible, Mr. Emory.”

Once again, the line fad­ed in­to si­lence. Then Sarah heard—or thought she heard—a long, slow re­lease of breath.

“The Cru­cible,” the voice re­peat­ed.

“Yes. All the source code, im­age banks, ev­ery­thing.”

More si­lence.

“We can burn it all to a sin­gle, non­copy­able DVD,” she went on. “But first we’ll need three dig­ital keys—yours, mine, and Fred Barks­dale’s—to de­crypt the core rou­tines.”

“And have they told you what will hap­pen if we don’t com­ply?”

“He was very ex­plic­it about that. He claimed he would take out rides, blow up queu­ing lines, bomb restau­rants. In­jure, kill, hun­dreds of peo­ple.”

“Can we lo­cate the de­vices? Take the robots off-​line? Evac­uate the guests?”

“We’ve been warned that try­ing any­thing like that would bring prompt re­tal­ia­tion. He says the mono­rails are be­ing watched, and he im­plied that they have been rigged with ex­plo­sive charges. Be­sides, we have to de­liv­er the code to them in half an hour. There’s no time to put any kind of large-​scale plan to­geth­er.”

“I see. Who in the Park knows about this, be­sides you?”

“Se­cu­ri­ty heads have been put on gen­er­al alert. But on­ly Bob Al­loc­co and Fred Barks­dale know the whole sto­ry.”

“Let’s keep it that way as long as pos­si­ble.” Sarah heard the creak of a chair. “But, Sarah, I don’t get the an­gle. The Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy is too dis­tinc­tive. No­body would dare use it. If we saw holo­grams like ours pop­ping up in an­oth­er park, or some Ve­gas act, we’d know who the cul­prit was right away.”

“Fred Barks­dale has a the­ory about that. He doesn’t think these guys are go­ing to use the Cru­cible for en­ter­tain­ment at all.”

“I don’t fol­low.”

“Ac­cord­ing to Fred, the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy can be al­tered for oth­er us­es. Like re­pro­duc­ing the holo­grams used for an­ti­ta­mper seals on soft­ware and DVD movies. But Fred thinks maybe they’re af­ter some­thing much big­ger than that. Like maybe a new su­per­note.”

“Su­per­note?”

“That’s what they called the pho­ny hun­dred-​dol­lar bill found in cir­cu­la­tion a cou­ple of years back. Re­mem­ber? It was al­most in­dis­tin­guish­able from the re­al thing. No­body knew where it came from. But spec­ula­tion was it was so good that on­ly a medi­um-​size world pow­er, or a ter­ror­ist state, could have pro­duced it. It scared the U.S. Trea­sury so bad­ly they de­vel­oped the new cur­ren­cy. With, you know, an­ti­coun­ter­feit­ing safe­guards: col­or-​shift­ing inks, holo­graph­ic wa­ter­marks, se­cu­ri­ty threads. Ex­cept…” She paused.

“Ex­cept that the Cru­cible could be pro­grammed to re-​cre­ate it.”

“It’s a the­ory. Fred al­so thought they might want the Cru­cible for some kind of mil­itary use: cre­at­ing false heat sig­na­tures or radar im­ages to con­fuse smart bombs, that kind of thing. You know how ea­ger the gov­ern­ment has been to get their hands on our patents.”

“Did Fred tell you how dif­fi­cult it would be to pull this off?”

“It isn’t the cod­ing so much as the pro­cess­ing pow­er. Re­pro­duc­ing small holo­grams is rel­ative­ly triv­ial. But for the kind of stuff Fred’s talk­ing about, you’d need ac­cess to su­per­com­put­ers. Lots of them. You’d need the re­sources of a medi­um-​size pow­er.”

“Or a ter­ror­ist state.”

As Emory fell silent, Sarah could al­most hear the man’s mind work­ing its way through the op­tions. He was a mon­ey guy; he’d be putting it in fi­nan­cial terms. So much for the loss of the tech­nol­ogy, so much for the col­lat­er­al dam­age the loss might cause, so much for the death of a dozen, two dozen guests. When you thought about it, it re­al­ly wasn’t that com­plex an equa­tion, at all.

“This con­tact of theirs,” Emory said. “What kind of as­sur­ances did he give you if we hand over the source code?”

“No as­sur­ances. He just said that, if we did what he asked, no­body would die. They’d leave. The Park would be ours again.”

There was a long in­hala­tion of breath, an­oth­er squeak of the chair. “I’d like your thoughts on this, Sarah. You’re on-​site, you’ve talked to their spokesman. Is this on the lev­el?”

So Emory was ask­ing her opin­ion. Sarah did not know if this was a good sign or a bad one. “He’s brazen. He’s ar­ro­gant. He sat there in my of­fice, grin­ning like Br­er Rab­bit.” At the mem­ory, she felt hot anger swell once again. “He’s well fund­ed: at least, so far as we’ve seen. And that’s just the prob­lem Bob Al­loc­co and I have been dis­cussing.”

“Go on.”

“Our first re­ac­tion was knee-​jerk: he’s dan­ger­ous, give him what he wants. But then we start­ed to think. What have we seen? A gun, a stick of ex­plo­sive, a few ra­dios. Maybe they’re re­al, maybe they’re ex­pen­sive fakes. What we haven’t seen is the man­pow­er. We know he must have some­one on the in­side; there’s no oth­er way he could have ma­nip­ulat­ed the bots and the video feed. But that could still just mean a two-​per­son show. For all we know, we’ve al­ready seen ev­ery­thing he’s got. And he’s bluff­ing the rest.”

“Or else he’s dead­ly se­ri­ous.”

“Cor­rect. But the Cru­cible is the crown jew­el of this Park. What if it’s just two men, with an elab­orate scam? We can’t just give it away with­out a fight.”

There was a pause. “If there’s a fight, guests will be the ca­su­al­ties.”

“And that can’t be al­lowed to hap­pen. But even Br­er Rab­bit even­tu­al­ly met the Tar-​Ba­by. Al­loc­co’s de­vel­oped a plan to in­ter­cept John Doe at the drop point.”

“That’s a very dan­ger­ous game, Sarah. If things go wrong—”

“Bob will play it safe. He’ll have John Doe tailed, take him down as he leaves the Park. Re­cov­er the disc with the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy. If it turns out John Doe’s on the lev­el—there is a team, and they are heav­ily armed—we back off im­me­di­ate­ly, no­ti­fy the po­lice to in­ter­cept. But on­ly once they’re out­side, away from the Park.”

There was an­oth­er pause.

“There are on­ly two oth­er op­tions,” Sarah spoke in­to the si­lence. “Call John Doe’s bluff, refuse to give him the disc at all. Or give him the disc and just let him walk away. With our most cru­cial tech­nol­ogy in his pock­et.”

There was a sigh. “And you can trust Al­loc­co to do this? You get my drift?”

Sarah got his drift. Of all Utopia staff, on­ly she and Emory knew that Bob Al­loc­co had left the Boston po­lice force ten years be­fore be­cause of mon­ey trou­bles, a re­sult of com­pul­sive gam­bling.

“This op­er­ation will be my call, and my re­spon­si­bil­ity. But, yes, I trust Al­loc­co. What hap­pened, hap­pened a long time ago. Be­sides, at this point, I think we have no choice.”

This time the si­lence was so long, Sarah won­dered if the line had gone dead.

“We’ve on­ly got twen­ty-​six min­utes,” she said at last. “I’ll need your dig­ital key if we’re go­ing to cre­ate that disc.”

Still noth­ing.

“Mr. Emory? I need a de­ci­sion.”

Fi­nal­ly, the CEO of Utopia replied. “Give it to them,” he said. “But let Al­loc­co place his tar-​ba­by. And, for God’s sake, be care­ful.”

 

1:50 P.M.

AT THE ICE cream counter in the Big Dip­per restau­rant, a cast mem­ber in a cop­per-​col­ored flight suit was mix­ing a choco­late ba­nana malt. It was more crowd­ed now, in the ear­ly af­ter­noon, and a horde of hun­gry, dis­ap­point­ed on­look­ers were stand­ing on the con­course, star­ing per­plexed­ly at the counter, won­der­ing what could have hap­pened to the robot they had come to see. Over­head, the bulk of Jupiter filled the emp­ty dark­ness of space, the great red spot com­ing in­to view, roil­ing and turn­ing, bright as an an­gry boil. Cal­lis­to’s speak­er sys­tem, hid­den with­in air ducts and hol­low walls, pumped its own blend of low-​fre­quen­cy noise: am­bi­ent elec­tron­ic mu­sic, drowned by the chat­ter of adults and the de­light­ed cries of chil­dren.

At a large cir­cu­lar por­tal a hun­dred yards down the con­course from the ice cream counter, these cries were par­tic­ular­ly strong. This was the en­trance—“ac­cess port,” as the load­ing crews were re­mind­ed to call it—to Galac­tic Voy­age. It was a new­er at­trac­tion, de­vised by Utopia’s de­sign team af­ter Nightin­gale’s death. Most of Cal­lis­to’s rides were much too in­tense for younger chil­dren. Galac­tic Voy­age was the re­sult. It was a stan­dard amuse­ment park “dark ride,” in which small cars ran along an elec­tri­fied bus bar past a se­ries of mov­ing im­ages: as­ter­oid belts, horse-​head neb­ulas, su­per­novas.

In­fants loved Galac­tic Voy­age. Any­body old­er than five, how­ev­er, found the at­trac­tion par­alyz­ing­ly dull and gave it a wide berth. With young chil­dren and numbed par­ents as its on­ly pas­sen­gers, Galac­tic Voy­age boast­ed the low­est rate of se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dents in the en­tire Park. As a re­sult, there were no look­outs or cam­eras, no in­frared in­tru­sion beams. And since the ride prac­ti­cal­ly ran it­self, there was very lit­tle for the op­er­ators to do. This made Galac­tic Voy­age al­most as un­pop­ular with Utopia cast mem­bers as it was with adult guests.

Just about the on­ly em­ploy­ees who en­joyed work­ing the ride, in fact, were the ro­man­ti­cal­ly in­clined. Like all main­line rides, Galac­tic Voy­age had a large, labyrinthine back­stage area for ser­vice and main­te­nance. One par­tic­ular­ly re­mote spot was Fab­ri­ca­tion, where the dark mesh­ing and black velour that served as back­drops were sized and re­paired. Op­er­ators had found this an ide­al place to bring amorous fel­low em­ploy­ees, or im­promp­tu dates plucked from among the vis­itors. Fab­ri­ca­tion be­came so pop­ular a tryst­ing spot that its large cut­ting ta­ble was dubbed the “groan­ing board.” When man­age­ment learned of this, strate­gic shifts in per­son­nel were made. Now, Galac­tic Voy­age work­ers were most­ly wom­en in their fifties and six­ties. The ride had the old­est em­ploy­ee de­mo­graph­ics in Utopia, and its fab­ri­ca­tion area was now used on­ly—and in­fre­quent­ly—for its de­signed task.

Ex­cept that, at present, John Doe sat on the edge of the cut­ting ta­ble. His legs, crossed at the an­kles, swung ca­su­al­ly above the floor. It was dark, and the whites of his eyes glowed dim­ly with the sub­dued phos­pho­res­cence of out­er space. Like Sarah Boatwright in her of­fice far be­low, he was speak­ing in­to a tele­phone.

“That’s very in­ter­est­ing,” he said. “You did the right thing to in­form me. I’ll be ex­pect­ing the par­tic­ulars from you soon.” He lis­tened briefly. Some­thing must have struck him as fun­ny, be­cause sud­den­ly he burst in­to good-​hu­mored laugh­ter—al­though he was po­lite enough to put a hand over the mouth­piece as he did so. “No,” he said as echoes of the laugh died away. “No, no, no. I don’t think it’s cause for con­cern, let alone can­cel­la­tion. My dear fel­low, that would be un­think­able.” A pause. “I’m sor­ry? Yes, that was un­for­tu­nate, I agree. But we’re talk­ing lasers and high ex­plo­sives, not brain surgery, you know. They’re a lit­tle hard to pre­dict.”

He lis­tened again, longer this time. “We’ve had this con­ver­sa­tion be­fore,” he said at length. “As re­cent­ly as last week, I be­lieve.” His voice was calm, in­for­mal: a man of breed­ing, speak­ing to a re­spect­ed equal. “Let me re­peat what I said then. There is noth­ing to wor­ry about. The time we spent in plan­ning, in re­mov­ing bugs and iron­ing out the kinks, was well spent. Ev­ery pos­si­ble out­come has been an­alyzed, ev­ery con­tin­gen­cy planned for. You know that as well as I. One must keep up one’s nerve. ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fear­ing to at­tempt.’”

John Doe re­peat­ed the quo­ta­tion for the lis­ten­er’s ben­efit. He chuck­led. And then the tone of his voice abrupt­ly changed. It grew cold, re­mote, con­de­scend­ing. “You’ll re­mem­ber what else I said, no doubt. It was un­pleas­ant, and I’d hate to re­peat it. We have passed the point of no re­turn. We’re com­mit­ted. There has been too much ac­com­plished al­ready for you to wa­ver now. Re­mem­ber that a word in the right ear would be all it takes to ex­pose you, ar­rest you, lock you up the rest of your life with in­mates in need of—well—di­vert­ing com­pan­ion­ship. Not that things would ev­er get so far, of course. My own com­pan­ions would find much more rapid and per­ma­nent ways of ex­press­ing their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with you.”

As quick­ly as it had come, the omi­nous tone dis­ap­peared. “But that won’t hap­pen, of course. All your hard work is al­ready done. In fact, your as­sign­ment now is to not do some­thing. Isn’t that a de­light­ful irony?”

He switched off the cell phone, let it drop to the ta­ble be­side him. Then, reach­ing in­to a pock­et of his suit jack­et, he pulled out a ra­dio, punched in a code, se­lect­ed a fre­quen­cy. “Hard Case, this is Prime Fac­tor,” he said. The cul­tured ac­cent he had em­ployed for the pri­or call was now gone. “Mes­sage de­liv­ered at 1:45. Pick­up at 2:15, as sched­uled. How­ev­er, I’ve just learned of a slight prob­lem. There’s a fel­low in the Park to­day, one An­drew Warne. It ap­pears he built the Utopia Metanet, and they’ve brought him back to fix it. Wasn’t sched­uled to ar­rive un­til next week, but he’s here ear­ly. No, I don’t know why. But we can’t have him root­ing around, turn­ing over rocks with his snout and un­cov­er­ing bugs. Snow White is get­ting me a de­scrip­tion and most re­cent lo­ca­tion—I’ll pass them on. You do what’s nec­es­sary to re­move the threat. I’ll leave the cre­ative de­tails to you. Out.”

Mr. Doe low­ered the ra­dio, gaz­ing around the se­clud­ed room. In the dis­tance, he could hear the faint sounds of child­ish laugh­ter as a car made its way through the ride. Af­ter a mo­ment, he glanced down at the ra­dio, switched fre­quen­cies, and raised it to his lips once again.

“Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, this is Prime Fac­tor. You copy?”

There was a squawk, a brief crack­le of stat­ic. “Af­fir­ma­tive.”

“How’s the weath­er up there?”

“Sun­ny. Ze­ro per­cent chance of pre­cip­ita­tion.”

“I’m sor­ry to hear that. Lis­ten, we’re in busi­ness. You may lay the eggs when ready.”

“That’s a rog. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, out.”

The ra­dio fell silent. Mr. Doe slid it back in­to the pock­et of his linen jack­et, then crossed his arms and leaned back up­on the groan­ing board, swing­ing his legs with a sigh of con­tent­ment.

 

1:52 P.M.

THE MAN ON the es­carp­ment let the ra­dio drop slow­ly from his ear. This time, in­stead of re­turn­ing it to his belt, he placed it in­side his duf­fel, next to a thick, bat­tered pa­per­back. For a mo­ment, he let his eye linger on the book: vol­ume one of Proust’s Re­mem­brance of Things Past. Then on im­pulse he picked it up, fan­ning through the dirty pages to the dog-​ear he’d made mo­ments be­fore.

Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo was not, by na­ture, a read­er. Dur­ing his youth, there had al­ways been too much trou­ble that need­ed get­ting in­to, too lit­tle time for books. Once, in re­form school, a priest had giv­en a ser­mon. He’d told the boys that books were the door­ways to new worlds. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo had paid no at­ten­tion. But lat­er, as a ma­rine scout sniper—wait­ing end­less­ly in tiny hid­den blinds where there was noth­ing but time—he’d found him­self go­ing back to that ser­mon, won­der­ing about those worlds.

One thing about civil­ian work: you could read on the job.

He’d de­cid­ed that, if he was go­ing to read a book, it had bet­ter be a long one. He didn’t un­der­stand why some­body would go to all the time and ef­fort of read­ing some­thing, just to have it end af­ter a cou­ple of hun­dred pages. You’d have to start all over again with an­oth­er one. There’d be the trou­ble of learn­ing new names, fig­ur­ing out a new sto­ry. It was high­ly in­ef­fi­cient. It didn’t make sense.

So, af­ter some re­con in a Den­ver book­store, he’d set­tled on Proust. At 3,365 pages, Re­mem­brance of Things Past was cer­tain­ly long enough.

The cry of some desert bird roused him, and he re­turned the book to the duf­fel, pulling out a Bausch & Lomb spot­ting scope and the M24 sniper ri­fle in­stead. He turned in his shal­low gul­ly, swivel­ing the scope in the di­rec­tion of the huge dome of Utopia. He ranged across the count­less poly­gons of glass un­til at last he found the main­te­nance spe­cial­ist. The man had re­cent­ly crossed over in­to the fat, cres­cent-​shaped wedge of black­ness that formed the ceil­ing over Cal­lis­to.

Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo grunt­ed. That was good. Very good.

He put the spot­ting scope down and picked up the ri­fle, screw­ing the si­lencer in­to place, then fit­ting his eye to the tele­scop­ic sight and aim­ing to­ward the dome. The scope was a Le­upold M3 Ul­tra, with range-​find­ing ret­icle and a built-​in com­pen­sator for bul­let drop. He’d been care­ful to keep the sight against his can­teen in­side the duf­fel, and the met­al felt cool and fa­mil­iar against the or­bit of his skull.

He scanned the dome slow­ly. John Doe once told him that, in World War II, Japanese snipers had been known to climb palm trees with steel hooks, tie them­selves to the trunks, and stay up there for days at a time, wait­ing for a tar­get. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo could un­der­stand that. There was some­thing about scope work that was al­most com­fort­ing. You couldn’t re­al­ly ex­plain it to any­one who hadn’t done some them­selves. All of a sud­den, the world shrank to just that lit­tle cir­cle at the end of a tun­nel. If you’d done your set­up right, you could for­get about ev­ery­thing else. All you had to wor­ry about was that lit­tle cir­cle. It sim­pli­fied things enor­mous­ly.

He thought back to John Doe, how the man had re­cruit­ed him in a Bangkok joss house. When it came to team lead­ers, Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo was ex­treme­ly picky. But John Doe’s cre­den­tials had been im­pec­ca­ble. And his lead­er­ship and tac­ti­cal skills had been proven to Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo’s sat­is­fac­tion time and again since, over the course of half a dozen suc­cess­ful ops. For a civil­ian, he had a rare un­der­stand­ing of the kind of anonymi­ty a so­lo op­er­ator like Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo pre­ferred.

But then, John Doe had not al­ways been a civil­ian.

He shift­ed the ri­fle slight­ly and the spe­cial­ist jumped back in­to view, ten times nor­mal size. He was about a third of the way up the curve of the dome, mak­ing his way cau­tious­ly along the nar­row hor­izon­tal cat­walk, lift­ing his rub­ber-​soled feet and plac­ing them down again pre­cise­ly, like a cat. A palm-​sized da­ta en­try pad dan­gled from his belt. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo watched as he reached a ver­tex of win­dow­panes. Care­ful­ly, the man un-​hooked a teth­er, clipped it to a rail on the far side of the ver­tex, and stepped around. He moved for­ward again, paused, then reached for his da­ta pad and tapped in an en­try: per­haps he’d found a cracked pane. Then he moved on. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo watched him through the scope.

At the next ver­tex, a met­al lad­der in­ter­sect­ed the cat­walk, run­ning ver­ti­cal­ly up and down the curved sur­face of the dome. The man hooked his teth­er to the lad­der and be­gan climb­ing down­ward, hand over hand, be­tween the dark panes of glass. There was some­thing about the work­er that re­mind­ed Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo of Proust. Maybe it was the white jump­suit he was wear­ing. Some­where in the book’s in­tro­duc­tion, it had said Proust liked to dress in white.

He’d reached a point in vol­ume one where Proust was de­scrib­ing an el­der­ly aunt. The wom­an’s sphere of life had grad­ual­ly con­tract­ed un­til she kept her­self con­fined to just two rooms of her apart­ment. That, too, Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo could un­der­stand. He’d had a grand­moth­er who’d been like that. Of course, her shab­by ten­ement on­ly had two rooms. But when she grew old­er, she’d nev­er left them. It was as if the world be­yond her door had been a dif­fer­ent uni­verse, some­thing to be feared and avoid­ed. If peo­ple want­ed to see how she was—to check on her health, give her soup—they had to come to her.

Proust talked of vis­it­ing his aunt, mak­ing her lime-​blos­som tea. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo had vis­it­ed his own grand­moth­er, once or twice. Then he’d stopped vis­it­ing for good. He won­dered what lime-​blos­som tea tast­ed like.

When he’d first start­ed read­ing the book, it hadn’t made any sense to him. From what he could make out, it was just some French­man blab­bing about his child­hood. Who gave a shit how long it took the guy to fall asleep? But then Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo had found him­self on an op—a very long and te­dious op—near the Mex­ican bor­der. He’d giv­en the book an­oth­er chance. Bit by bit, mem­ory by mem­ory, Proust’s life be­gan to take on shape and struc­ture. And then he thought he un­der­stood. Maybe the priest was right: books re­al­ly were door­ways to oth­er worlds.

The work­er had stopped de­scend­ing the dome and was mak­ing his way along an­oth­er low­er hor­izon­tal cat­walk, on­ly thir­ty-​odd feet now above the sur­face of the es­carp­ment. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo set­tled him­self care­ful­ly in the gul­ly, spread­ing his legs wide, dig­ging his toes in­to the stony soil. He placed the ri­fle’s bi­pod against a small ledge of rock at the gul­ly’s edge, made sure it was firm. One hand slid for­ward to grip the ri­fle’s fore­arm, while the oth­er snicked off the safe­ty and set­tled around the trig­ger guard. He took a breath, then an­oth­er.

The work­er un­clipped his teth­er, moved around the met­al skin of the ver­tex to the next win­dow. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo timed his shot be­tween heart­beats, pulling the trig­ger just as the man was reach­ing for­ward to re­clip the teth­er to the cat­walk.

The man jerked his head up­ward as if some­one had called his name. Through the scope, Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo watched the red plume blos­som against the white cloth. Au­to­mat­ical­ly, he ran the bolt, still sight­ed in, ready for a sec­ond shot. But it was un­nec­es­sary: the slug had mush­roomed in­side the body as in­tend­ed, tak­ing out most of the vi­tal plumb­ing. The man was al­ready slid­ing, head­first, down the dark face of the dome.

Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo fol­lowed him with the scope, watch­ing as the man came to rest in a shal­low gul­ly at the dome’s base. He was al­most in­vis­ible there, one hand cradling a rock as if he’d stretched out for a cat­nap. Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo watched for a minute, then two. At last, he let the scope fall away from his eye. There had been noth­ing to see against the dark roof of Cal­lis­to, noth­ing to raise any alarm. It had all gone ex­act­ly to plan. And now, he was alone.

He slid the ri­fle back in­to the duf­fel, took a long swig of wa­ter from the can­teen. Then he pulled out a gov­ern­ment-​mod­el .45, which went in­to a shoul­der hol­ster. The ra­dio came next, fol­lowed by a load­ed back­pack. Last to emerge were two cam­ou­flaged util­ity belts, their over­size pock­ets bulging. Crouch­ing in the gul­ly, Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo snapped these around his waist. Then he turned back to the duf­fel. He hes­itat­ed a mo­ment, hand on the zip­per, look­ing down, a lit­tle re­gret­ful­ly, at the pa­per­back.

Then he tugged the zip­per closed, rose cau­tious­ly from the gul­ly, and be­gan mak­ing his way through the rocks to­ward the dome.

 

1:55 P.M.

SARAH BOATWRIGHT SAT be­hind her desk, mi­cro­cas­sette recorder cra­dled in one hand. Fred Barks­dale stood close be­side her. They were silent, lis­ten­ing to the calm, pleas­ant voice of John Doe.

“Pay at­ten­tion now, Sarah,” John Doe was say­ing. “At pre­cise­ly 2:15, you are to no­ti­fy Dis­patch at the Galac­tic Voy­age at­trac­tion to send five emp­ty cars through the ride. You will place the pack­age in the mid­dle car. When the cars reach the Crab Neb­ula turn, the op­er­ator is to stop the ride for nine­ty sec­onds. Nine­ty sec­onds. Then he can pro­ceed. In ev­ery oth­er way, busi­ness should con­tin­ue as usu­al. Once I’ve ver­ified the con­tents of the pack­age, you will hear from me again. If all goes ac­cord­ing to plan, that’s the last time you and I will speak.”

There was a brief si­lence in which Sarah heard the whis­pered rat­tle of the tape.

“Sarah, do you un­der­stand ev­ery­thing I’ve just said? It is very im­por­tant that you un­der­stand ev­ery­thing I’ve just said.”

“I un­der­stand.”

“Please re­peat what I told you.”

“At 2:15, send five emp­ty cars through Galac­tic Voy­age. Leave the disc in the mid­dle car. When the cars reach Crab Neb­ula, halt the ride for nine­ty sec­onds.”

“Very good. And—Sarah—I don’t need to re­mind you there are to be no tricks. This isn’t the time for clev­er­ness. All the source code, the lat­est it­er­ation. And no hero­ics. Un­der­stood?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Sarah. Now, you might want to get start­ed. You have a busy half hour ahead of you.”

Sarah snapped off the recorder and turned to place it be­side her teacup. As she did so, the faint scent of Barks­dale’s cologne reached her nos­trils. As al­ways, it re­mind­ed her, some­how, of tweed and hunt­ing hors­es. She turned to­ward him. He was star­ing at the recorder, a strange, far­away ex­pres­sion on his face.

“Are things set on your end?” she asked.

At the sound of her voice, Barks­dale rec­ol­lect­ed him­self. He nod­ded. “Once all three of our dig­ital keys are en­tered, the se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols will be sat­is­fied. We’ll be able to down­load a sin­gle de­crypt­ed copy of the core rou­tines on­to a glass mas­ter. Then I’ll trans­fer over the low-​se­cu­ri­ty files. I as­sume you want the disc ren­dered un­copy­able?”

“Of course.”

“Right, then. Burn­ing the in­ten­tion­al read er­rors takes a lit­tle time, but still we’re talk­ing about ten min­utes, I’d say.”

“What about the oth­er ques­tion?”

“I’m sor­ry? Oh, yes.” His blue eyes grew more trou­bled. “Clear­ly, who­ev­er’s be­hind this has an in­ti­mate knowl­edge of our sys­tems. And they have the ac­cess nec­es­sary to move around at will.”

“How many peo­ple on your staff are ca­pa­ble of that?”

Barks­dale reached in­to the jack­et of his suit and with­drew a fold­ed piece of pa­per. As al­ways, his move­ments had a ha­bit­ual, grace­ful econ­omy. “To hack the Metanet, over­ride in­tru­sion alerts, re­pro­gram pass­cards, ac­cess the Cru­cible’s se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols—eight peo­ple. Nine, in­clud­ing my­self. Here’s a list.”

Sarah glanced quick­ly over the names. “And how many are in the Park to­day?”

“Six. I’ve lo­cat­ed all of them ex­cept Tom Tib­bald. No­body’s seen him since this morn­ing.”

“Get a copy to Bob Al­loc­co, please. Ask him to put an alert out on Tib­bald, but qui­et­ly. And we should check the se­cu­ri­ty logs. But first, you’d bet­ter burn that disc. Emory’s stand­ing by in New York. Call when you’re ready for our dig­ital keys.”

Barks­dale nod­ded, brushed her cheek with the palm of his hand. The trou­bled look had not left his face.

“What is it, Fred?” she asked.

“It’s noth­ing, re­al­ly.” He hes­itat­ed. “I was go­ing to ask if you had the bot from Grif­fin Tow­er sent down to An­drew Warne.”

“Bob Al­loc­co was go­ing to see to it. Why?”

“It’s noth­ing, re­al­ly.” He stroked an eye­brow. “But putting that list to­geth­er made me think. Shouldn’t it wait?”

“What?”

“In­volv­ing Warne. This doesn’t seem at all the time. He has his own agen­da here, and it’s not the same as ours. Re­mem­ber Shake­speare’s words: ‘love all, trust a few.’ Not the oth­er way around.”

“You’re not sug­gest­ing he could some­how be in­volved in this? The Metanet’s his ba­by. You saw his face in this morn­ing’s meet­ing.” She looked at him side­long. Then—de­spite ev­ery­thing—she broke in­to a smile. “You know what, Fred­er­ic K. Barks­dale, Es­quire? I think you’re just a wee bit jeal­ous. The ex-​boyfriend, and all that.” She drew clos­er. “Am I right? Are you jeal­ous?”

He re­turned her gaze. “No. Not yet, any­way.”

She took his hand, ca­ressed it. “You’ve got a fun­ny sense of tim­ing.”

Barks­dale looked away a mo­ment. “Per­haps I was won­der­ing,” he said. “His com­ing back like this. If I wasn’t around—in the pic­ture, I mean—do you think the two of you might—”

Her fin­ger­tips froze in mid-​ca­ress. “How can you even ask that? I’ve got you now. I don’t want any­body else.” She took hold of his oth­er hand, drew him to­ward her. And still the trou­bled look did not com­plete­ly leave his face.

The door to the of­fice opened and An­drew Warne stepped in.

To Sarah he seemed like a specter, sum­moned abrupt­ly by their con­ver­sa­tion. His eyes went from her, to Barks­dale, to their joined hands. For a mo­ment, a look of pain lanced across his face. Al­most as quick­ly, it was gone.

“Didn’t mean to crash the par­ty,” he said from the open door­way.

“No par­ty,” Sarah said, ca­su­al­ly drop­ping Barks­dale’s hands and step­ping back. “Fred was just leav­ing. Fred, I’ll see you at the Galac­tic Voy­age pre-​show, ten min­utes af­ter two. Pre­cise­ly ten min­utes af­ter, okay?”

Barks­dale nod­ded again, then moved to­ward the door. Sarah watched the two men ex­change pass­ing glances.

Abrupt­ly, Wingnut rolled in­to the of­fice be­hind Warne, forc­ing Barks­dale to half leap, half sprawl in­to the cor­ri­dor to get out of its way. Be­hind the robot came Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio, short black hair swing­ing across her face. Nor­mal­ly, that face wore a pri­vate lit­tle smile, as if con­tem­plat­ing a prac­ti­cal joke. Right now, the smile was ab­sent.

“Sor­ry about that,” Warne said, ap­proach­ing Sarah. “In­ter­rupt­ing an in­ti­mate mo­ment, I mean.”

“It wasn’t all that in­ti­mate,” she replied, mov­ing back be­hind her desk.

“And such a nice man, too,” Warne said. “I’m so hap­py for you both.”

Sarah looked at him cu­ri­ous­ly. There was the same spec­ula­tive arch to the eye­brows she’d al­ways known. At Carnegie-​Mel­lon, he’d stood out like a wasp among moths: the bril­liant bad boy of robotics, with his con­tro­ver­sial the­ories and re­mark­able cre­ations.

But she had seen a dif­fer­ent Warne in the meet­ing this morn­ing: a man be­sieged, un­der fire. And this bleak sar­casm was some­thing new­er still.

“I don’t have time for this right now, Drew,” she said.

Ter­ri looked back and forth be­tween them. “I think I’ll go grab a cup of cof­fee in the staff lounge,” she said.

“No. Stay put. You of all peo­ple de­serve to hear this.” Warne pulled up a chair, col­lapsed in­to it with a laugh. He glanced back at Sarah. “You don’t have time for this right now? My God.”

The bit­ter words echoed in the chill air.

“Okay,” Sarah said. “Let’s hear it.”

“You lure me out here with a pho­ny sto­ry. Then you sit me down in a con­fer­ence room, give me a dog and pony show about how the Metanet’s mis­be­hav­ing. You even guilt me about it, make me feel re­spon­si­ble for that boy on Not­ting Hill Chase. You ask me to pull the plug.”

She watched him lean to­ward the desk.

“All that shit. And you didn’t even have the de­cen­cy to tell me what was re­al­ly go­ing on. In­stead of scal­ing up robotics de­vel­op­ment, you were cut­ting it to the bone. Com­pro­mis­ing the pro­gram, knock­ing Ter­ri’s legs out from un­der her.”

“I didn’t tell him to say that,” Ter­ri said.

Sarah’s eyes rest­ed on her a mo­ment, then re­turned to Warne.

“I’m not hap­py with the way you were brought here, An­drew. That was the de­ci­sion of the home of­fice. As for the robotics, it’s a shame, but this is a busi­ness, not a think tank. I told you as much right here, when I gave you Wingnut. It’s all about de­mo­graph­ics.” She raised her teacup, glanced at the clock: 1:57.

“De­mo­graph­ics, sure. Nightin­gale would turn in his grave if he knew how ac­coun­tants and poll­sters were run­ning his Park.” Warne laughed again, mirth­less­ly. “You know, in an­oth­er con­text this might al­most be fun­ny. Be­cause we’ve learned there’s noth­ing wrong with the Metanet, af­ter all. It’s your god­damn Park that’s bro­ken.”

Sarah low­ered the cup. She looked at him more close­ly. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, Barks­dale was part­ly right. The Metanet has been do­ing these things, chang­ing robot pro­ce­dures and the like. But he was al­so part­ly wrong. Be­cause the Metanet wasn’t trans­mit­ting its own in­struc­tions to the bots. It was trans­mit­ting some­body else’s.”

When Sarah was silent, he went on. “Here’s the way it must have worked. Some­body on the in­side—let’s call him Mis­ter X—would write a rou­tine in­struct­ing some bot to mis­be­have. He’d slip it in with the rest of the Metanet’s in­struc­tion set. The next morn­ing, the Metanet would make its reg­ular down­link to the bots. Ex­cept along with the usu­al pro­gram up­dates and firmware patch­es, Mis­ter X’s pro­gram would be sent to a par­tic­ular bot. And that par­tic­ular bot would act naughty. An in­ci­dent re­port would be du­ly logged. But Mis­ter X would make sure to slip that bot’s reg­ular pro­gram­ming back in­to the next morn­ing’s down­link. And cov­er his tracks by in­struct­ing the Metanet not to log ei­ther change. So when a team got around to in­spect­ing the mis­be­hav­ing bot, it would ap­pear nor­mal, the vic­tim of some phan­tom glitch.”

He glanced at Ter­ri. “How am I do­ing?”

She gave him a thumbs-​up.

“The on­ly time things didn’t hap­pen this way was with the Not­ting Hill bots. And that’s be­cause they were tak­en off-​line af­ter the ac­ci­dent. Cut off from the Metanet. There was no chance for Mis­ter X to re­store their nor­mal pro­gram­ming.”

He looked at Sarah. “Why don’t you look sur­prised by any of this?”

But Sarah was think­ing quick­ly. “Let’s ac­cept your hy­poth­esis for the mo­ment. You know the Metanet bet­ter than any­body. Could you search for a hack trail? Find out which robots have been—are be­ing—af­fect­ed?”

Warne didn’t look up. “Maybe. It would take some time. One of the things that clued me in was the lack of—” He stopped. Then he glanced up at her. “Wait a minute, I rec­og­nize that look. You know some­thing, don’t you? You’re hold­ing some­thing back.”

Sarah glanced down at Barks­dale’s list of pos­si­ble moles. Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio’s name was num­ber three.

“Sarah, an­swer me. What the hell’s go­ing on?”

Her mind raced through the pos­si­bil­ities. Warne was in a unique po­si­tion to help. Here was some­body who could strike back; who could hit these bas­tards where they live. Sarah glanced down at the list again. She could or­der Ter­ri from the room. But Warne would prob­ably tell her re­gard­less. And chances were, he couldn’t do this alone; not in time, any­way. He’d need help.

Sarah had al­ways dis­ap­proved of Ter­ri’s un-​Utopi­an at­ti­tude, her re­bel­lious streak, her habit of voic­ing her opin­ions whether so­licit­ed or not. But in her gut, Sarah didn’t think Ter­ri would be­tray the work she loved. And Sarah al­ways trust­ed her gut.

“Tere­sa, close the door,” she said qui­et­ly.

She wait­ed un­til Ter­ri re­turned. “What I am go­ing to tell you must be kept in strictest con­fi­dence. Strictest con­fi­dence. Do you un­der­stand?”

She watched the two ex­change glances. Then they nod­ded.

“Utopia’s be­ing held hostage.”

Warne frowned. “What?”

“There’s a team of op­er­atives in­side the Park. We don’t know how many. Re­mem­ber that man who en­tered my of­fice just as you were leav­ing? He calls him­self John Doe. He’s their lead­er. They’ve sab­otaged some of the bots, prob­ably in just the way you sug­gest. They al­so claim to have placed high ex­plo­sives through­out the Worlds. Maybe the threat is re­al, maybe it’s not. But we have to as­sume it is. We have to hand over the source code for the Cru­cible, our holo­graph­ic en­gine, or…”

Warne had gone pale. His eyes locked on hers.

“Or what?”

Sarah did not re­ply.

There was a mo­ment of sta­sis. Then Warne jumped to his feet.

“My God, Sarah. Geor­gia’s in the Park.”

“We’re mak­ing the hand­off in fif­teen min­utes. We’ve been promised that no harm will come to any­body. Drew, if you can use the Metanet to track down which bots have been af­fect­ed, maybe we can—”

But Warne wasn’t lis­ten­ing. “I’ve got to find her,” he said.

“Drew.”

“How the hell do I find her?” he cried, lean­ing across the desk. “There has to be a way. Help me, Sarah!”

She looked at him a mo­ment. Then she glanced again at the clock. Two o’clock.

“We can trace her tag,” Ter­ri said.

Warne turned abrupt­ly. “Trace her tag?”

“Ev­ery guest is giv­en an im­age­tag, a unique mul­ti­col­or stick­er, to wear while they’re in the Park. You’ve got one, too. It’s em­bed­ded in your pin.”

Warne glanced down at the styl­ized bird on his lapel. Then he wheeled to­ward Sarah. “Is this true?”

Sarah stared at him. She could feel this op­por­tu­ni­ty fad­ing, right be­fore her eyes.

She ex­haled in dis­ap­point­ment. Then she turned to her com­put­er. She’d have to do this fast.

“There are cam­eras through­out the Park, tak­ing pho­tographs of guests and Utopia per­son­nel,” she said as she be­gan to type. “Each night, af­ter the Park clos­es, we run pat­tern-​recog­ni­tion al­go­rithms against the pho­tos, iso­lat­ing im­age­tags of the guests. We pro­cess them to­geth­er with the cards peo­ple use to buy food, sou­venirs. Knowl­edge-​dis­cov­ery soft­ware helps us track at­trac­tion flow, pur­chas­ing pat­terns, the like.”

As Warne lis­tened, his tense look seemed to ease a lit­tle. “Big Broth­er does da­ta-​min­ing,” he said. “But I’m not com­plain­ing. Come on, let’s find her.”

Sarah typed ad­di­tion­al com­mands. “I’m bring­ing up the tag re­trieval ap­pli­ca­tion,” she said. “I’ll en­ter Geor­gia’s name.”

They wait­ed a mo­ment.

“Okay, there’s her tag. Now I’ll re­quest a chrono­log­ical break­down of cam­era sight­ings.”

There was an­oth­er wait, longer this time.

“What’s tak­ing so long?” Warne asked im­pa­tient­ly.

“I’m re­quest­ing a spe­cial job. It takes a lot of horse­pow­er. Nor­mal­ly, we on­ly run this in the evening, when the com­put­ers aren’t busy han­dling Park op­er­ations.”

Then her screen cleared and a new win­dow ap­peared, a short list in­side it. “Here it is,” Sarah said.

Warne and Ter­ri came up be­hind her, and to­geth­er they peered at the screen.

“I don’t un­der­stand all those ab­bre­vi­ations,” Warne said.

“She’s in Cal­lis­to. Four min­utes to two, Rings of Sat­urn.”

She swiveled to­ward him.

“That was five min­utes ago,” she said.

Warne looked at her for a mo­ment—an in­tense, hunt­ed look. Then he turned and raced away.

“Wait!” Ter­ri called af­ter him. “I’m com­ing with you.” And she, too, dis­ap­peared from the of­fice. Wingnut, tak­en by sur­prise, wheeled around quick­ly, then be­gan lurch­ing to­ward the cor­ri­dor.

“Wingnut, stay!” Sarah com­mand­ed. “Stay with me.”

The robot stopped. Then slow­ly, it backed in­to the of­fice with a loud bray of frus­tra­tion.

For a mo­ment, Sarah stared at the open door. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, mas­sag­ing them with her fin­gers.

There was a low beep from the com­put­er. She glanced over at the screen.

This was odd. Some­body else was us­ing the tag re­trieval pro­gram.

She stood up, sweep­ing John Doe’s ra­dio in­to her pock­et. There was no more time; she had to get to the Galac­tic Voy­age ride right away.

But still she lin­gered a mo­ment, cu­ri­ous.

She glanced back at the screen. Ex­cept for emer­gen­cies, no­body was au­tho­rized to run a tag re­trieval while the Park was open.

She low­ered her­self back in­to the chair. Plac­ing her hand on the mouse, she nav­igat­ed through a se­ries of menus, dis­play­ing the anony­mous re­quest on her own screen. Then she went rigid in sur­prise.

Who­ev­er it was, they were look­ing for An­drew Warne.

 

2:10 P.M.

THE ONE RIDE in Utopia with­out se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras,” Bob Al­loc­co said over the ba­bel of voic­es fill­ing Cal­lis­to’s main con­course. “Tell me that’s a co­in­ci­dence.”

They stood with­in a rest area of curved Lu­cite bench­es and alien-​look­ing pot­ted palms, a small oa­sis of rel­ative calm not far from the en­trance por­tal to Galac­tic Voy­age.

“Eleven min­utes af­ter,” Sarah said, glanc­ing at her watch. “Fred should be here by now.” On cue she spot­ted Barks­dale, jog­ging down the con­course, thread­ing his way be­tween strolling knots of vis­itors.

She mo­tioned to Peg­gy Salazar, a Cal­lis­to line man­ag­er who was stand­ing near­by. “Ev­ery­thing’s set?” she asked as the wom­an came over.

Salazar nod­ded. “I’ve ex­plained it to the cast mem­ber work­ing Load. He’s a lit­tle sur­prised.” She glanced at Sarah spec­ula­tive­ly.

“Just an im­promp­tu drill. The home of­fice wants to keep ev­ery­body on their toes. Prac­tice the same emer­gen­cy pro­ce­dures each week, and you grow stale.”

Salazar nod­ded slow­ly, as if di­gest­ing this.

Sarah took an­oth­er quick look around. The knowl­edge that John Doe was some­where near­by sharp­ened her sens­es, in­creased her heart­beat. She felt her hands balling in­to fists.

“Come on,” she said to Al­loc­co. “We’d bet­ter get in­side.”

They crossed the con­course, stepped through the Galac­tic Voy­age por­tal, and en­tered the pre-​show area. Salazar came in be­hind them, and they took up an in­con­spic­uous po­si­tion away from the queue line. Sarah watched as the dis­patch­er at the load­ing sta­tion ush­ered the next group—a wom­an and three small chil­dren—in­to a wait­ing car, then low­ered the grab bar over their waists. Al­though she couldn’t see the work­er’s face through his space hel­met, Sarah knew he couldn’t be too hap­py, work­ing un­der the gaze of his de­part­ment su­per­vi­sor and the head of Op­er­ations.

As with the oth­er main­line rides, the Galac­tic Voy­age “pre-​show” served two pur­pos­es: a queu­ing area for guests wait­ing to board, and a taste of what they could ex­pect when the ride be­gan. Ear­ly on, Utopia de­sign­ers had learned that it didn’t mat­ter how many warn­ing signs were placed around the en­trances to in­tense at­trac­tions like Moon Shot and Not­ting Hill Chase. Par­ents in­sist­ed on tak­ing young chil­dren on the rides, any­way—and then com­plained bit­ter­ly af­ter­ward about how ter­ri­fied their tod­dlers had been.

The an­swer had been to mod­ify the pre-​show ar­eas. Event Hori­zon, one of the worst of­fend­ers, was the first to get the treat­ment. In keep­ing with the Cal­lis­to theme, its orig­inal pre-​show area had looked like the load­ing dock of a warp-​ca­pa­ble space­ship. The Utopia de­sign­ers care­ful­ly de­tuned it, adding sub­au­di­to­ry rum­bles, spark­ing elec­tri­cal lines, and a floor that trem­bled omi­nous­ly un­der­foot. Af­ter this change, young chil­dren of­ten grew so alarmed on en­ter­ing that they de­mand­ed their par­ents take them on a dif­fer­ent ride. The tech­nique worked so well that the in­tru­sive, un-​Utopi­an warn­ing signs could be done away with en­tire­ly.

The Galac­tic Voy­age pre-​show could not have been more dif­fer­ent from Event Hori­zon’s. It was bright, cheer­ful, dec­orat­ed like a kinder­garten of the fu­ture: the jump­ing-​off point for a child’s field trip through the cos­mos.

Sarah’s gaze lin­gered on the queue. Some of the youngest chil­dren were doz­ing. Oth­ers pranced in place, im­pa­tient af­ter the wait yet ea­ger, now that they could see the ride ahead of them. Of­ten, there was on­ly one par­ent on hand: adults, es­pe­cial­ly those who’d been through Galac­tic Voy­age be­fore, weren’t ea­ger to re­peat the bland ex­pe­ri­ence.

In her mind, she could once again see the care­ful way Al­loc­co had placed that big brick of high ex­plo­sive on the con­fer­ence ta­ble. Sarah dropped her eyes, forc­ing the im­age from her mind.

Barks­dale came up be­side them. He nod­ded to Peg­gy Salazar, then reached in­side his jack­et and with­drew a slen­der jew­el case. Silent­ly, he hand­ed it to Sarah.

“What’s that?” Salazar asked.

“Part of the drill,” Sarah replied quick­ly. “Peg­gy, would you ex­cuse us for a minute?”

“Of course.” Salazar glanced cu­ri­ous­ly at the three of them, then walked over to the dis­patch­er.

Sarah glanced at the DVD with­in the jew­el case. It was hard to be­lieve that this slen­der lit­tle cir­cle of alu­minum and poly­car­bon­ate held the most pre­cious of all Utopia’s pos­ses­sions: the spec­ifi­ca­tions and soft­ware that made up the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy. The disc was brand­ed for in­ter­nal use on­ly, with the words Pro­pri­etary and Con­fi­den­tial stamped be­low the im­print of a nightin­gale, along with dire warn­ings in small­er type of what would be­fall any­one who put the disc to unau­tho­rized use. She hand­ed the case to Al­loc­co.

“Go over it one more time,” she said.

Al­loc­co ges­tured to­ward the ride en­trance. “Like I was say­ing, this guy’s a clever bas­tard. He picked Galac­tic Voy­age for the drop be­cause it has the least se­cu­ri­ty of any ride in the Park. But what he didn’t know was, right be­side the Crab Neb­ula turn—the spot where the cars will stop, where he’s mak­ing the pick­up—there’s a blind.”

“What’s this?” Barks­dale asked, sur­prise writ large on his face. “A blind?”

“A main­te­nance con­duit, big enough to con­ceal one man. My op­er­ative’s al­ready in place. He’ll see John Doe grab the pack­age. Then he can tail him. Or—if we get re­al­ly lucky—he can take him down.”

Sarah frowned. “We dis­cussed tail­ing John Doe out of the Park be­fore mak­ing an ap­pre­hen­sion.”

“This guy’s slip­pery. Re­mem­ber what hap­pened back in the Hive? If he seems to be work­ing alone, if we get any sig­nals that this is in fact just a ruse, we should snag him while we can.”

Sarah con­sid­ered this. John Doe’s threats could not be treat­ed light­ly. He had to be re­gard­ed as dead­ly se­ri­ous. Her first re­spon­si­bil­ity was to their guests. And yet the idea of sub­du­ing this threat—of neu­tral­iz­ing him now, rather than let­ting him roam through the Park like a loose can­non—was very at­trac­tive. Her sense of anger and out­rage ran steadi­ly, like a tur­bine. Her cheek burned where he had stroked it.

“It’s too dan­ger­ous.” Barks­dale spoke with un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ve­he­mence.

“My guy’s good, an ex-​cop like my­self. He’s tak­en down hun­dreds of perps over his ca­reer. He’ll be un­der strict or­ders not to do John Doe un­less there’s 100 per­cent cer­tain­ty of suc­cess. I’ve got an­oth­er man con­cealed near the ride ex­it.” Al­loc­co mo­tioned dis­creet­ly to­ward a plain­clothes se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist stand­ing by the load­ing dock. “And Chris Green, here, will be watch­ing from with­in the en­trance. They’re three of my best. To­geth­er, they’ll set up a three-​way tail. Or, if John Doe can be safe­ly con­tained, they’ll neu­tral­ize him, es­cort him to Se­cu­ri­ty.”

Al­loc­co nod­ded at the se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist named Green. The man nod­ded back, then slipped through a par­tial­ly con­cealed door be­side the load­ing dock. None of the guests in the queu­ing line so much as glanced in his di­rec­tion.

“This is ir­re­spon­si­ble,” Barks­dale went on. “We can’t take the chance.”

Sarah checked her watch again: six­ty sec­onds to make a de­ci­sion.

“Look,” Al­loc­co said. “You’ve ruled out a po­lice re­sponse, so it’s up to us to take ac­tion, while we still can. As­sume for a mo­ment this whole thing isn’t a ruse. Who knows what else they re­al­ly have in mind? Who knows what they’ll de­mand next, what hostages they’ll take? One thing we do know: John Doe’s the ringlead­er. If we can cut off the head, the body will die. This is the per­fect chance to take him with­out any ca­su­al­ties.”

“Do you want the re­spon­si­bil­ity for what hap­pens if we take him?” Barks­dale asked.

“Do you want the re­spon­si­bil­ity for what hap­pens if we don’t?”

Sarah looked from one to the oth­er. She hes­itat­ed briefly. And then she turned to Al­loc­co.

“Your op­er­ative is not to take John Doe un­less he’s ab­so­lute­ly pos­itive of suc­cess. On the first sign of trou­ble, any­thing un­ex­pect­ed—any­thing—you call your men off. Even if it’s just a tail. Agreed?”

Al­loc­co nod­ded vig­or­ous­ly. “Agreed.”

“Then get start­ed.” She turned to Barks­dale, who was look­ing at her with an ex­pres­sion akin to hor­ror. “Fred, come over here a minute. Please.”

She led Barks­dale a few steps away, to­ward the wall op­po­site the queue line.

“Sarah, don’t do this,” Barks­dale said. His in­tense blue eyes held hers al­most plead­ing­ly.

“It’s done.”

“But you don’t know what you’re deal­ing with, what you’re up against. Our first re­spon­si­bil­ity is to the guests. They’re pay­ing us not just to en­ter­tain them, but to keep them safe.”

Hear­ing Barks­dale echo her own thoughts brought an un­ex­pect­ed mix of emo­tions to Sarah: ir­ri­ta­tion, im­pa­tience, un­cer­tain­ty. She pushed them away. “Look, Fred­dy,” she said in an un­der­tone. “Do you re­mem­ber our first din­ner to­geth­er? At Chez An­dré, in Ve­gas?”

Barks­dale’s nar­row, hand­some face grew puz­zled. “Of course.”

“Do you re­mem­ber the wine?”

He thought a mo­ment. “Lynch-​Bages, ’69.”

“No, no. The dessert wine.”

Barks­dale nod­ded. “Château d’Yquem.”

“Right. Re­mem­ber how I’d nev­er even heard of a dessert wine be­fore? How I thought all sweet wine tast­ed like Man­is­che­witz?”

Barks­dale al­lowed him­self a brief, win­try smile.

“You ex­plained to me about Botry­tis ciner­era, re­mem­ber?”

Barks­dale nod­ded again.

“No­ble rot. It at­tacks the skin of the grape, en­rich­ing the sug­ars, cre­at­ing the best sweet wine in the world. I couldn’t be­lieve it when you told me—a fun­gus the grow­ers ac­tu­al­ly en­cour­aged. I made you ex­plain it twice.” She leaned clos­er, fin­gered his lapel. “Fred­dy, we have a rot in this Park. Here, to­day. And there’s noth­ing no­ble about it. If we don’t do some­thing—if we let our­selves look vul­ner­able, an easy tar­get—who’s to say it won’t hap­pen again? And again?”

Barks­dale looked at her silent­ly, jaw work­ing.

She ap­plied gen­tle pres­sure to the im­mac­ulate lapel. Then she turned away and walked back to­ward Peg­gy Salazar and Al­loc­co. Af­ter a few mo­ments, Barks­dale fol­lowed.

To­geth­er, the group ap­proached the load­ing dock. A His­pan­ic wom­an with twins was be­ing shown in­to a car.

Sarah wait­ed un­til Dis­patch had sent the car on its way. “Send on two emp­ty cars, and cue up a third,” she said to the load­ing at­ten­dant. He nod­ded, mid­dle-​aged face odd­ly mag­ni­fied by the Plex­iglas hel­met.

The two cars went bob­bing off in­to the dark­ness at the end of the ramp, and a third car shot up the bus bar from the un­load boost­ers. Al­loc­co stepped for­ward, leaned over to note the num­ber of the car, then placed the disc on its floor.

“Send it,” Sarah told the at­ten­dant, and the car trun­dled away. She watched un­til it dis­ap­peared from sight around a dark cor­ner, in­to the ride.

“Now, send on two more emp­ty cars,” she said.

Be­hind her, there was a dis­con­tent­ed mur­mur­ing from the par­ty wait­ing to board. Sarah turned, flashed them a smile, then told the load at­ten­dant to pro­ceed as usu­al.

A trip through Galac­tic Voy­age took just over six min­utes. The emp­ty cars would reach the Crab Neb­ula in four.

Sarah stepped back from the dock and looked around the pre-​show area. A ba­by was cry­ing some­where, its wails cut­ting sharply through the crowd chat­ter. A main­te­nance spe­cial­ist stepped out of one of the ride’s side por­tals. As al­ways in pub­lic ar­eas, he was in cos­tume: on­ly the col­or of the nightin­gale pin on his space suit in­di­cat­ed his oc­cu­pa­tion. Sarah scanned the faces in the line: ex­cit­ed, im­pa­tient, bored. The scene looked ut­ter­ly nor­mal. Ev­ery­thing was busi­ness as usu­al.

Ex­cept for the pack­age. And the per­son wait­ing for it, deep in­side the ride.

“Let’s get to the tow­er,” Al­loc­co said.

Still, Sarah wait­ed, scan­ning the bright space. Then she turned to­ward him and nod­ded.

 

THE CON­TROL TOW­ER for Galac­tic Voy­age was a cramped space even for the op­er­ator: with three ad­di­tion­al vis­itors crowd­ing in­side, Sarah found it dif­fi­cult just to draw breath.

“We don’t have a whole lot of lee­way,” Al­loc­co was say­ing. “The ride’s com­plete­ly com­put­er-​con­trolled. We’ll have to cut juice to the bus bar tem­porar­ily.”

He leaned over the dis­patch­er. “Keep an eye on the mim­ic di­agram. When car 7470 reach­es the Crab Neb­ula, I want you to shut it down.”

The tow­er op­er­ator looked un­easi­ly from Al­loc­co to Sarah and back again. He’d been eat­ing pis­ta­chios and read­ing Roque­fort for Dum­mies, and clear­ly hadn’t been ex­pect­ing man­age­ri­al com­pa­ny.

“Hit the E-​stop?” he asked.

“No, no. Not all the pow­er. Just do a ser­vice in­ter­rupt. As if there was an ex­it alert. Nine­ty sec­onds, no more, no less. Then put it on-​line again.” He took the ra­dio from his pock­et. “Thir­ty-​three to For­ward, you in po­si­tion? Very well. Do not, I re­peat, do not ap­pre­hend the sus­pect un­less you have 100 per­cent con­fi­dence.”

He glanced at Sarah. “I in­struct­ed the spot­ters near the en­trance and ex­it to main­tain ra­dio si­lence.”

For a minute, then two, the tow­er was qui­et as ev­ery­one watched the white call num­bers of the cars make their way along the flu­ores­cent curves of the di­agram.

“Ten sec­onds,” said the dis­patch­er.

Al­loc­co raised his ra­dio again. “For­ward, ac­qui­si­tion in ten sec­onds. Get ready.” This time he did not low­er the ra­dio.

Sarah watched the dig­ital la­bel num­bered 7470 con­tin­ue its slow progress along the di­agram. She re­al­ized that, un­con­scious­ly, she was hold­ing her breath.

“Springes to catch wood­cocks,” Barks­dale mur­mured be­side her. His voice was tight, strained.

“Now,” said the dis­patch­er, lean­ing for­ward with a red scat­ter of pis­ta­chio shells and punch­ing a but­ton on the tow­er con­sole. An alarm sound­ed. The cars stopped their progress along the mim­ic di­agram; the call num­bers turned red and be­gan to flash.

“Nine­ty and count­ing,” mur­mured the tow­er op­er­ator.

Sarah found her­self star­ing at car 7470, now mo­tion­less be­side a la­bel marked Crab Neb. Some­where be­yond the con­trol tow­er, in the ac­tu­al world of the ride, men were hid­ing in the black­ness sur­round­ing the emp­ty car. She took a deep breath. One way or an­oth­er, it would all be over in less than two min­utes.

“For­ward?” Al­loc­co said in­to the ra­dio. “Any­thing?”

“I’ve got a vi­su­al,” a voice squawked from the ra­dio. “There’s some­body in the car.”

“You mean, re­mov­ing some­thing from the car.”

“I re­peat, in the car. Sit­ting in the car.”

Al­loc­co turned to the dis­patch­er. “You sure you stopped the right car?”

“Pos­itive.” The dis­patch­er point­ed at the mim­ic di­agram as proof. “Fif­teen sec­onds.”

“For­ward? How many pas­sen­gers in the car?”

“Looks like one.”

“Roger. Come for­ward and ex­am­ine. Slow.”

Sarah put her hand on Al­loc­co’s arm. “No. Maybe it’s John Doe.”

“And just what the hell would he be do­ing? En­joy­ing the ride?”

“Wait­ing for a trap. To see if we’re go­ing to try some­thing.”

Al­loc­co looked at her a mo­ment. Then he spoke in­to the ra­dio again. “For­ward? Can­cel that. Re­main in po­si­tion.”

“Time,” the dis­patch­er said, push­ing an­oth­er but­ton. The car num­bers on the mim­ic di­agram stopped blink­ing, went white, and be­gan to move again.

“What just hap­pened?” Sarah asked.

Al­loc­co glanced up to­ward the mim­ic di­agram. “I think our boy messed with that board, just like the mon­itors in the Hive. Made us stop the cars in the wrong po­si­tion, or some­thing. No doubt the bas­tard’s al­ready nabbed the disc and left.” He raised the ra­dio. “Al­pha, Omega, this is Thir­ty-​three. Sub­ject may have al­ready ac­quired the item. Main­tain your po­si­tions. Re­port any sight­ings, but do not ap­pre­hend. Re­peat, do not ap­pre­hend.”

“Omega, roger,” came a voice.

Al­loc­co let the ra­dio fall to his side. “That disc is long gone,” he said, voice sud­den­ly weary.

“Let’s check un­load­ing,” Sarah replied. “Just to be sure.”

BY THE TIME they made their way through the back of the ride to the un­load­ing area, the wom­an with twins was al­ready be­ing helped out of her car. Sarah could hear the el­der­ly un­load at­ten­dant apol­ogiz­ing for the de­lay dur­ing the ride.

“Watch your­selves,” Al­loc­co said to Sarah and Barks­dale. “I don’t think John Doe is stupid enough to just come strolling out the ride. But at this point, noth­ing would sur­prise me.” The first two emp­ty cars came trundling along the bar, and he moved up the un­load­ing ramp to­ward them.

Sarah mo­tioned to Barks­dale, and to­geth­er they fol­lowed Al­loc­co up the ramp. Sarah, there are to be no tricks. This isn’t the time for clev­er­ness. She be­came aware of an emo­tion she had lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence with: un­easi­ness. She glanced over her shoul­der. Ex­cept for the wom­an with twins, the cor­ri­dor lead­ing back to the con­course was emp­ty.

As she turned back, the third car lurched in­to po­si­tion at the un­load­ing dock. A lone man was sit­ting with­in it, and for a mo­ment Sarah froze, think­ing it was John Doe. But the man was too short, too heavy­set. He was slumped for­ward, as if sleep­ing.

Sud­den­ly, Al­loc­co was run­ning to­ward the car. And Sarah rec­og­nized the man in­side as Chris Green, the se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist who’d ducked in­to the front of the ride.

The car eased to a stop. Green sagged for­ward heav­ily.

Ma­neu­ver­ing around the un­load at­ten­dant, Sarah came up be­side Al­loc­co. She glanced in­side the car, sud­den­ly flood­ed with a ter­ri­ble mis­giv­ing. Be­neath one foot of the se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist, she could see the jew­el case, crushed to pieces. Shards of the disc lay with­in and around it.

“Chris?” Al­loc­co said, putting his hand on the guard’s shoul­der. Green re­mained mo­tion­less, slumped for­ward.

Gen­tly, Al­loc­co pulled the guard up in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion. His head lolled back. Sarah felt her­self go cold with hor­ror.

“Oh, good Christ,” Al­loc­co groaned.

Chris Green’s eyes stared back at them: wide, sight­less. Be­low—where a large shard of the DVD had been thrust deep in­to his mouth—a sin­gle rivulet of blood traced a slow course down the chin, and along the neck, be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing out of sight against the dark shirt.

 

2:22 P.M.

THE BODY OF the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer had been moved dis­creet­ly to Med­ical and placed un­der locked quar­an­tine. No one, not even doc­tors, was al­lowed to ap­proach it un­til the po­lice could be sum­moned.

They had re­turned to the Hive and were run­ning through the video logs of the few se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras that mon­itored Galac­tic Voy­age: try­ing to make sense of what hap­pened, to piece to­geth­er what had gone so ter­ri­bly wrong.

“All right, stop it there,” Al­loc­co told his video tech, Ralph Pec­cam. These were the first words that had been spo­ken in sev­er­al min­utes. They’d just com­plet­ed a high-​speed re­view of the cam­era in the ride’s un­load­ing area. Noth­ing out of place. No sign of John Doe lurk­ing among the par­ents and chil­dren.

“What else we got?” Al­loc­co asked weari­ly.

Pec­cam con­sult­ed a ta­ble. “Just the cam­era in pre-​show,” he said, sniff­ing.

“Very well. Bring it up, same time ref­er­ence, two hun­dred frames a sec­ond.”

Pec­cam tapped in a few com­mands, then ad­just­ed a hat switch set in­to the over­size key­board. Sarah stared at the screen as the tourists, ac­cel­er­at­ed in­to lan­guid rivers, flowed around the bar­ri­ers and dropped, a few at a time, in­to the emp­ty cars that shot up to meet them. She knew she should feel some­thing right now: grief, anger, re­morse. But all she felt was an over­pow­er­ing numb­ness. The im­age of Chris Green—the star­ing eyes, the gleam of the jagged shard peep­ing from part­ed lips—re­fused to leave her. She glanced to­ward Fred Barks­dale, the con­tours of his face spec­tral in the ar­ti­fi­cial light of the Hive. He shift­ed his eyes to­ward her for a mo­ment, then turned back to the screen. He looked strick­en.

“All rou­tine,” Al­loc­co mut­tered bit­ter­ly as he, too, stared at the screen. “An­oth­er day in par­adise.”

Sarah was hold­ing a sealed plas­tic bag, con­tain­ing the frag­ments of disc left on the bot­tom of the car. They were crushed by what must have been a ter­ri­ble strug­gle. With­out re­al­iz­ing, she had been turn­ing the bag over and over in her hands. She thrust it in­to the pock­et of her jack­et.

On the left edge of the screen, there was move­ment as a hand­ful of fig­ures took up po­si­tions be­side the load­ing area.

“Slow to thir­ty,” Al­loc­co said.

Now the fig­ures to the left of the screen re­solved them­selves: Al­loc­co; the line man­ag­er; her­self. Sarah forced her­self to watch as the scene, not yet half an hour old, re­played it­self. Fred­dy walked in­to the pic­ture, disc in hand. A lit­tle dra­ma un­fold­ed as both he and Al­loc­co plead­ed their cas­es to her. She made her de­ci­sion; Chris Green, the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, van­ished through a door in­to the rear of the ride. Sarah watched her­self take Fred Barks­dale aside to ex­plain the wis­dom of launch­ing a pre­emp­tive strike against John Doe. To ex­plain why, in ef­fect, she had just con­demned a man to death.

On-​screen, they placed the disc, sent on the emp­ty cars, then van­ished from view, head­ing for the con­trol tow­er.

“Cut it,” Al­loc­co told Pec­cam. The mon­itor went blank. “That’s it. We’ve checked all five cam­eras. Noth­ing.”

A si­lence set­tled over the small, dark room.

At last, Al­loc­co spoke. “Chris Green was a stand-​up guy,” he said slow­ly. “The best thing we can do for him right now is try to fig­ure out what the hell hap­pened.” He sighed, turned to Pec­cam. “Ralph, bring up that last cam­era once again. Cue on the emp­ty cars as they en­ter the ride.”

Pec­cam re­stored the view of the pre-​show area. Once again, Sarah watched Al­loc­co place the pack­age in the emp­ty car. It trun­dled for­ward along the bus bar, then van­ished out of sight in­to the black­ness of the first turn.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Al­loc­co mut­tered, more to him­self than any­one else. “The Crab Neb­ula is deep in­side the ride. That’s where John Doe would have to be for the pick­up. But Chris Green was sta­tioned at the ride en­trance. Why would he en­counter John Doe there?”

The ques­tion hung in the air, unan­swered. All eyes re­mained on the screen.

“Stop!” Al­loc­co barked sud­den­ly. “Okay. Ahead fif­teen.” He point­ed at the mon­itor. “Look at that.”

Sarah watched as the main­te­nance spe­cial­ist she’d no­ticed in pass­ing stepped out of the side por­tal and am­bled, slow-​mo­tion, across the pre-​show area. Abrupt­ly, the numb­ness that had en­veloped her like a cloak fell away.

In the bulky hel­met and oblig­atory space suit, there was no way to be sure. And yet Sarah knew—in some in­stinc­tive way—that she was watch­ing John Doe.

From the ex­pres­sions around her, she re­al­ized the oth­ers had reached the same con­clu­sion.

“Shit,” Al­loc­co said. “The whole thing with the nine­ty-​sec­ond stop was a pho­ny. John Doe wasn’t wait­ing by the Crab Neb­ula turn. He was go­ing to pluck the disc from the car as soon as it en­tered the ride, then just walk away be­fore we even stopped the damn thing. But he ran in­to Chris Green in­stead.”

“You want me to track him?” Pec­cam asked.

“No. I mean, yes. But on your own time. No doubt he’s worked that out, too.” Al­loc­co glanced over at Sarah. “I’ll get Cos­tum­ing over there, run an in­ven­to­ry. See if any uni­forms are miss­ing.”

Sarah nod­ded. She al­ready knew ex­act­ly what they would find.

A low buzzing sound­ed from the ra­dio in her pock­et.

The con­trol room fell silent. All eyes turned to Sarah as she drew out the ra­dio.

She snapped it on, raised it slow­ly to her lips. “Sarah Boatwright here.” They were the first words she had spo­ken since en­ter­ing the Hive.

“Sarah.”

“Yes.”

“Why, Sarah?” It was John Doe’s voice, yet it sound­ed dif­fer­ent some­how. The tone of ban­ter­ing ci­vil­ity was gone. It was chill­ier now; more busi­nesslike.

“Why what?”

“Why did you set a trap for me?”

Sarah strug­gled to find words.

“Haven’t I al­ways been hon­est with you, Sarah? Hasn’t hon­esty been the ba­sis of all our deal­ings?”

“Mr. Doe, I—”

“Didn’t I take the time to vis­it you per­son­al­ly, to make your ac­quain­tance? Didn’t I spell out pre­cise­ly what you should and should not do?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t I go to the trou­ble of giv­ing you a demon­stra­tion? Didn’t I make ev­ery pos­si­ble ef­fort to make sure that, at the end of the day, there would be no deaths to weigh up­on your con­science?”

Sarah was silent.

“Oh, dear God,” Barks­dale mur­mured. “What have we done?”

“Mr. Doe,” Sarah be­gan slow­ly. “I’ll see to it per­son­al­ly that—”

“No,” came the voice. “You lost your chance to speak when you be­trayed my trust. I’m the teach­er now. You’re the stu­dent. And you will now at­tend to my lec­ture. Do you know what the sub­ject is? No, don’t speak—I’ll tell you my­self. It’s pan­ic.”

Sarah lis­tened, ra­dio pressed against her ear.

“Did you know, Sarah, that there’s an art to or­ches­trat­ing pan­ic? It’s such a fas­ci­nat­ing top­ic, I’ve been plan­ning a mono­graph on it. It would make me fa­mous, the Aris­to­tle of crowd con­trol. What’s es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ing is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for cre­ativ­ity. There are so many tools at one’s dis­pos­al, so many ways to pro­ceed, that choos­ing the most ef­fec­tive be­comes a re­al chal­lenge. Take—oh—fire, for ex­am­ple. Some­thing unique hap­pens to crowd dy­nam­ic dur­ing a fire, Sarah. I’ve stud­ied all the greats: the Tri­an­gle Shirt­waist fire, the Iro­quois The­ater, the Co­coanut Grove, the Hap­py­land So­cial Club. All very dif­fer­ent. And yet they all have some­thing in com­mon. Ex­treme­ly high mor­tal­ity rates, even with­out the ben­efit of ar­ti­fi­cial ac­cel­er­ants. Peo­ple bunch to­geth­er at the ex­its, you see. The closed ex­its.”

“Our ex­its are open,” Sarah mur­mured.

“Are they? But all this is be­side the point, and I’m get­ting ahead of my­self. I have to go. I’ll be in touch.”

“One per­son is al­ready dead—”

“One per­son is not even a sta­tis­ti­cal blip.”

“You’ll get your disc—”

“I know I will. But there’s some­thing I have to do first. You think your Park is fa­mous now, Sarah? I’m about to re­al­ly put it on the map.”

“No! Wait, wait—”

But the line had al­ready gone dead.

 

2:22 P.M.

GEOR­GIA WARNE LEFT the ex­it por­tal for the ride known as Eclip­tic and joined the crowds mov­ing along the broad con­course. She had just pur­chased Cal­lis­to’s ver­sion of cot­ton can­dy—an iri­des­cent rain­bow of spun sug­ar, shot through with car­bon­at­ed crys­tals that popped nois­ily on the tongue—and was de­vour­ing it with res­olute sin­gle-​mind­ed­ness. She did not hear the crack­ling of the crys­tals, or the hoots and laugh­ter of the guests pass­ing by her, or the faint back­ground wash of Utopia son­ics: she was wear­ing her head­phones, and the sur­round­ing land­scape was drenched in the call-​and-​re­sponse of Count Basie’s “Jumpin’ at the Wood­side.”

A group of old­er teenagers, sport­ing pur­ple hair and wear­ing Drag­on­spire T-​shirts, were mak­ing their rau­cous er­rat­ic way to­ward her, and Geor­gia veered to one side to let them pass. She hadn’t ex­pect­ed much from Eclip­tic—af­ter all, it was a Fer­ris wheel, get re­al—but it had turned out to be pret­ty cool. It re­volved around a plan­et with a ver­ti­cal ring, sort of like Sat­urn, on­ly set on end. Dark, like most of the rides in Cal­lis­to, but with this amaz­ing sense of depth, of be­ing in out­er space. And the holo­graph­ic rings had been so ut­ter­ly re­al she felt sure she could have touched them if she’d reached her hand out from the car.

But she’d been alone, so they’d stuck her with this squirmy, wrig­gling girl from a large fam­ily, who’d in­sist­ed on point­ing out ev­ery­thing in sight. She’d been too stupid to just shut up and en­joy the ride. So halfway through, Geor­gia had put on her head­phones and cranked the vol­ume.

She paused, scowl­ing at the mem­ory. Ahead and to the right, she could see a ramp curv­ing away from the cen­tral con­course, end­ing in a peo­ple-​mover that dis­ap­peared in­to a low tun­nel, arched over by bands of neon and flick­er­ing lasers. It was the en­trance to Dark Side of the Moon, a ride she’d read great things about on the Web. She pulled her home­made itinerary from her pock­et. Sure enough: a four-​star ride. She an­gled to­ward it. Then she stopped. She’d promised her dad no big coast­ers, no tall rides. Dark Side of the Moon sure fell in­to that cat­ego­ry. So did Eclip­tic, prob­ably; but what did Dad ex­pect her to do? She’d tried some of the kid­die rides, like Rings of Sat­urn, but she felt stupid crowd­ed in among six-​year-​olds.

She stared at the ride en­trance, her scowl deep­en­ing. Then she turned away un­will­ing­ly and con­tin­ued down the con­course un­til she reached a bench. She sat down, fished out her guidemap, glanced over it, put it back in her pock­et. Fin­ish­ing the last bite of the cot­ton can­dy, she turned to toss the long white tube in­to a trash re­cep­ta­cle. Then she paused, look­ing at the slen­der cone of pa­per in her hand.

Ear­li­er, she’d told her dad she had no mem­ory of the trip they’d tak­en, many years be­fore, to Ken­ny­wood Park. But that wasn’t quite true. She re­mem­bered the way her moth­er had sur­prised her there with a tall cloud of cot­ton can­dy, bal­anced pre­car­ious­ly on a white stick, just like this one. She re­mem­bered how the pink con­fec­tion had seemed im­pos­si­bly large to her eight-​year-​old eyes. She re­mem­bered the heat of the sun beat­ing down up­on them, the tanned lines of her moth­er’s face, her pale lip­stick, the way the edges of her eyes crin­kled up when she smiled.

She had oth­er mem­ories of her moth­er, too: tak­ing one of her boat pro­to­types out for a test sail; rid­ing ponies in a leafy park; sit­ting in a win­dow seat, smoth­ered in blan­kets, read­ing Kipling’s Just So Sto­ries to­geth­er. They were frag­men­tary mem­ories, pale and fad­ed like old pho­tographs, and she kept them to her­self, as if speak­ing of them—even to her fa­ther—would break a mag­ic en­chant­ment, cause them to van­ish for­ev­er.

She glanced at the pa­per cone for a mo­ment, turn­ing it around in her hands. Then she dropped it in the trash, stood up, and con­tin­ued down the con­course.

Ahead, she could see the Mind’s Eye gallery. Above it, a life-​size holo­gram of Er­ic Nightin­gale hov­ered, beck­on­ing peo­ple in­side with a wave of his silk top hat. A small knot of peo­ple crowd­ed around, star­ing at the por­traits in the gallery win­dow, point­ing at the im­age of the ma­gi­cian. Geor­gia slowed, star­ing cu­ri­ous­ly. She re­mem­bered Nightin­gale, too. He nev­er seemed to keep still, al­ways mov­ing, al­ways ges­tur­ing. She re­mem­bered how, even though he wasn’t very tall, even for a grown-​up, the room had al­ways seemed too small for him. There had been nights he’d vis­it­ed with her dad, where the men had talked around the kitchen ta­ble for hours and hours, it seemed. She re­mem­bered the smell of cof­fee, pipe to­bac­co. She’d crawled un­der the ta­ble and played there, lis­ten­ing to the voic­es, know­ing that if she didn’t call at­ten­tion to her­self she could stay up way, way past her bed­time.

“Jumpin’ at the Wood­side” end­ed. There was a brief mo­ment of si­lence on her dig­ital play­er, and the sounds of Utopia rushed in: hoots, a ba­bel of voic­es, a dis­tant echoey loud­speak­er, a child’s shriek of de­light. Then “Swingin’ the Blues” start­ed and the sounds were lost once again. Geor­gia stuck her hands in her pock­ets and moved on. She re­mem­bered how Nightin­gale had this way of look­ing at her when she talked, lis­ten­ing, as if what she had to say re­al­ly mat­tered. He wasn’t dumb, like most adults seemed to be. He didn’t say the same dumb things that ev­ery­body else did, like how pret­ty she was, or how much she had grown since he last saw her.

For some rea­son, Geor­gia’s thoughts turned to Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio. She didn’t seem dumb, ei­ther. She prob­ably even liked cot­ton can­dy. Usu­al­ly, Geor­gia had lit­tle in­ter­est in what adults had to say. But she found her­self very cu­ri­ous to hear Ter­ri’s opin­ions on things: what she thought about blue­grass or bop; what books she’d read as a kid; what col­ors she liked to wear; what her fa­vorite food was. She sure hoped it wasn’t that nasty, fishy-​smelling stuff. That could be a prob­lem.

By now, she had reached the end of the cen­tral con­course, and she stopped, hop­ping from one foot to the oth­er on the re­flec­tive pavers. Ahead, the thor­ough­fare widened in­to what looked like a vast, cir­cu­lar ter­mi­nal. This was the Cal­lis­to Sky­port, with half a dozen “em­barka­tion zones” lead­ing to some of the World’s most pop­ular rides. The space throbbed with chat­ter. Geor­gia glanced at her guidemap. Moon Shot, Event Hori­zon, Af­ter­burn. Ev­ery one an awe­some ride. And ev­ery one ex­act­ly the kind Dad didn’t want her to go on.

As usu­al, there were no clocks any­where. She glanced down at her watch. Forty-​five more min­utes un­til she was sup­posed to meet her dad.

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair. Just a cou­ple good rides that morn­ing. Then, noth­ing but dumb meet­ings and hang­ing around in labs. And it wasn’t any fun go­ing on rides alone. Es­pe­cial­ly when you couldn’t even go on any of the good rides.

Geor­gia sighed dis­con­so­late­ly and turned to re­trace her steps. As she did so, her eyes land­ed on an em­barka­tion zone la­beled Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark.

She stared up at the shim­mer­ing holo­graph­ic let­ters. She’d read all about this ride on the Web. It was mod­eled af­ter her fa­vorite scene in At­mos­fear, in which the young band of heroes es­capes Mor­pheus’s prison on the sea plan­et of Wa­ter­dark Four. The ride was new; no­body at her school had been on it. And it was es­pe­cial­ly cool for two rea­sons. It took place en­tire­ly in­side a world of wa­ter and rain. And it was sup­posed to be the first ride any­where to em­ploy low-​grav­ity tech­nol­ogy. And no fakes, ei­ther: re­al, live low-​grav­ity.

Geor­gia no­ticed that most of the peo­ple were walk­ing to­ward her, rather than away: they had al­ready been on the Sky­port rides and were stream­ing back in­to Cal­lis­to prop­er. Al­though these six rides were some of the most pop­ular any­where, the lines were short­er than the ones she’d wait­ed on al­ready.

The fanzines pub­lished by the Utopia fan clubs con­tained ex­haus­tive list­ings of ide­al times to vis­it spe­cif­ic rides: times at which, for no eas­ily ex­plain­able rea­son, lines seemed to be short­er. Geor­gia didn’t care about any of this. She on­ly knew she was sick of kid­die rides, sick of hang­ing around. And it looked as if she’d be able to get in­side Wa­ter­dark in un­der ten min­utes. Any­way, it wasn’t a coast­er—not re­al­ly. Her dad wouldn’t mind; not much, any­way.

She was abrupt­ly jos­tled to one side. She looked up: two lit­tle kids, hold­ing their moth­er’s hands, had passed her on their way to Wa­ter­dark. The moth­er was young, at­trac­tive, her tan dark against her red dress.

Geor­gia pulled the head­phones from her ears. Then she jogged for­ward, and—smirk­ing at the kids from over her shoul­der—took her place in the Wa­ter­dark line ahead of them.

 

2:26 P.M.

STOP SHOV­ING, DICK­BREATH.”

“I’m not shov­ing, scro­tum-​sack. You’re shov­ing. Do it again and I’ll pound ya.”

An­gus Poole lis­tened, with­out in­ter­est, to the pet­ty squab­bling of his cousin’s youngest boys. It had erupt­ed on ev­ery sin­gle line they’d wait­ed in. At first, Poole had been mild­ly in­trigued by the re­mark­able ar­se­nal of foul names the two boys had for each oth­er. In line for the Brighton Beach Ex­press, over in the Board­walk, he’d even start­ed count­ing. By the time they’d reached the very next ride, Scream Ma­chine, he’d giv­en up at fifty.

Thank God, at least this line was short.

Around him, the Sky­port was a vast echo­ing citadel of con­ver­sa­tion. From his place in line, Poole glanced around. The de­sign­ers had done an ex­cel­lent job of mak­ing the place feel like some fu­tur­is­tic trans­porta­tion ter­mi­nal, right down to the de­par­tures board and the steady drone of the dis­patch loud­speak­er. To­day it held an added ben­efit: with six rides all board­ing from the same con­ve­nient place, he could sneak off for a cool one and let his cousin deal with her own fam­ily for a while.

As if on cue, Sonya turned to­ward him. Three cam­eras slant­ed across her am­ple midriff, and atop her head the arch­mage’s cap had gone slight­ly askew. “What did you say the name of this ride was, An­gus?”

“Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark.” Nev­er mind that a holo­gram of the damn name was hov­er­ing right above their heads; she had to ask any­way.

“And where do we go next?”

“Well, there are five oth­er great rides you can catch from this spot. See? It’s sort of like a huge air­port, ex­cept each gate leads to a dif­fer­ent at­trac­tion. You should ride them all.” Please, ride them all.

“How about you?” Sonya asked.

“Af­ter Wa­ter­dark, I think I’ll go grab a beer at the Sea of Tran­quil­ity. It’s that bar out­side the casi­no—I point­ed it out from the con­course, re­mem­ber? You can meet up with me there.”

At the men­tion of beer, Sonya’s hus­band, the in­sur­ance read­juster, came out of his daze and glanced over at Poole: a brief, hunt­ed look.

Sonya and Mar­tin Klemm of Lar­doon, Iowa, and their three charm­ing boys. Un­til he’d knocked on the door of their mo­tel room this morn­ing, Poole hadn’t seen his cousin Sonya in at least a dozen years. But then, it had been the same with his sis­ter, Vic­ki, and his nephew Paul, or any of the oth­er rel­atives, near or dis­tant, who’d come out of the wood­work over the last six months. It was as if, in their minds, Utopia had fi­nal­ly giv­en him pur­pose in life. Strange Un­cle An­gus, who had moved to Las Ve­gas af­ter leav­ing the Corps and nev­er got­ten mar­ried. Odd cousin An­gus—or half-​nephew An­gus, or quar­ter-​sis­ter An­gus, or what­ev­er—who pro­fessed to work for a liv­ing, but do­ing what, no one seemed to have asked. And Poole had nev­er of­fered de­tails.

But now, by some un­spo­ken agree­ment of the ex­tend­ed fam­ily, he had been ap­point­ed tour guide to Utopia.

In a way, he didn’t mind. It wasn’t that he en­joyed the re­unions—he could have done with­out those—but, to his sur­prise, he be­came fas­ci­nat­ed with the Park. In ear­li­er years and ear­li­er lives, he’d been to Dis­ney­land, Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios, Busch Gar­dens. By and large, they had left him cold. But Utopia was dif­fer­ent some­how. And it wasn’t just be­cause it was slick­er, and new­er, and had cool­er toys. It was the im­mer­sive­ness, he guessed: some­how, you al­most found your­self be­liev­ing you’d been trans­port­ed back to nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Lon­don or me­dieval Camelot. Of course, you knew you were in the mid­dle of the Neva­da desert. But they’d done such a great job of in­te­grat­ing the rides and at­trac­tions in­to each sep­arate World that you en­joyed tak­ing part in the fan­ta­sy. And for some­one as unimag­ina­tive as him­self, that was say­ing some­thing.

But ev­ery fas­ci­na­tion has its lim­its. And, as of 2:26 P.M., Poole had of­fi­cial­ly achieved Klemm fam­ily sat­ura­tion.

“This low-​grav­ity stuff is a crock.” Now it was the old­est Klemm kid talk­ing. “It’s a trick. The ac­cel­er­ation due to grav­ity is 9.8 me­ters per sec­ond per sec­ond to­ward the cen­ter of the earth. To cre­ate a weight­less con­di­tion, you’d need to cre­ate a force op­po­site the force ex­ert­ed by grav­ity, and…”

Poole stared at the kid: buck­teeth, gan­gling, ade­noidal. All that was miss­ing was a plas­tic pro­tec­tor in his shirt pock­et. A walk­ing, talk­ing ar­gu­ment for in­fan­ti­cide if there ev­er was one. Be­sides, the kid didn’t know what the hell he was talk­ing about. He’d shut up once he got in­side the air lock.

With a yawn, Poole gazed around the Sky­port again. It was crowd­ed, of course, but not near­ly as bad as usu­al. There was the nor­mal sea of hap­py faces, pep­pered with an oc­ca­sion­al ha­rassed-​look­ing par­ent or im­pa­tient child. Char­ac­ters in space out­fits wan­dered about, work­ing the queue lines or pos­ing for pic­tures.

One dis­tant fig­ure stood out to Poole’s prac­ticed eye. Un­like ev­ery­one else, stand­ing in line or mov­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly from one des­ti­na­tion to an­oth­er, a lone man was rush­ing about, hel­ter-​skel­ter. Poole looked on in mild cu­rios­ity as the man dart­ed be­tween the throngs on the con­course be­yond: now rush­ing up to a con­ces­sion stand, now ap­proach­ing a queu­ing line, look­ing here and there, cran­ing his neck around as if search­ing for some­thing.

The man trot­ted off again, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the milling crowds, and Poole turned away. His own line had moved for­ward steadi­ly and they were al­most at the em­barka­tion air lock. Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark was the on­ly rea­son Poole wasn’t al­ready en­joy­ing a beer in the Sea of Tran­quil­ity. It was his fa­vorite ride in the Park. If the low-​grav­ity en­vi­ron­ment was faked, it was done so clev­er­ly that it didn’t mat­ter to him.

He won­dered, a lit­tle idly, what it was he found so ap­peal­ing about the ride. You couldn’t call it a thrill ride, like Moon Shot over there to the left, or Sta­tion Omega, at the top of that fu­tur­is­tic-​look­ing es­ca­la­tor. In fact—out­side of the first few jolts as the pods “es­caped” from Wa­ter­dark Prison and made their way up to the or­bit­ing moth­er­ship—you couldn’t call it thrilling at all. It was the ut­ter re­al­ism of the ride, prob­ably, that did it: you re­al­ly felt you were scram­bling up through the rain-​drenched sky to­ward out­er space. He’d have to pay clos­er at­ten­tion, this time, to ex­act­ly what sub­lim­inal but­tons they were push­ing; how they made it seem so re­al­is­tic. One thing he could re­mem­ber vivid­ly was the way, as they climbed high­er and high­er in­to the at­mo­sphere, the fat drops of rain that poured down around the pod seemed to slow, and then—as grav­ity’s hold grew fainter—prac­ti­cal­ly stood still out­side the cap­sule, float­ing and danc­ing in the dark­ness of space. He re­mem­bered how his gut had pressed against the lap bar as the moth­er­ship came in­to view, how his soft-​drink cup had seemed to rise out of its hold­er. Wait un­til the Klemm kid got a load of that.

Now, this was in­ter­est­ing: the man he’d seen run­ning around the con­course had blun­dered in­to the Sky­port and was stand­ing dead cen­ter, star­ing around. Be­side him was a young Asian wom­an. They ex­changed a few quick words. Then they sep­arat­ed, run­ning in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. No doubt about it, they were look­ing for some­body, and in a big hur­ry, too. Good luck find­ing any­one in this place, Poole thought to him­self. The rides in the Sky­port had no pre-​show ar­eas. Ev­ery­body was made to queue up in the Sky­port it­self—maybe to en­hance the il­lu­sion of a bustling tran­sit cen­ter—and there had to be at least a thou­sand peo­ple milling around. That didn’t seem to de­ter this guy, though: he broke away from the wom­an and head­ed to­ward Af­ter­burn, trot­ting along the ride’s en­trance line, obliv­ious to the looks he was get­ting.

Poole looked at the man more care­ful­ly, try­ing to type him. He didn’t seem to fit any ob­vi­ous pro­files: dark hair, light com­plex­ion, tall, medi­um build, ear­ly for­ties. No red flags, oth­er than the ob­vi­ous ag­ita­tion. Odd, though: this was the sec­ond time to­day he’d gone through this ex­er­cise. Dis­miss­ing this from his mind, Poole turned his at­ten­tion back to his own queue.

There were no more than four, maybe five groups wait­ing ahead of them now, and even his cousin’s kids had shut up in an­tic­ipa­tion. They’d def­inite­ly come at the right time—the lines be­hind them were at least twice as long as they’d been when he first ar­rived. If the brats rode all six rides here, he’d have at least two hours of blessed soli­tude in Sea of Tran­quil­ity: just him, Sam Adams, and the cross­word of the Las Ve­gas Jour­nal-​Re­view. It would be…

His thoughts were in­ter­rupt­ed by a se­ries of faint shouts. He glanced back. It was that man again. He was stand­ing at the head of the Af­ter­burn queue, call­ing out what sound­ed like a name, look­ing di­rect­ly at him. No, Poole re­al­ized in­stant­ly: not at him, but at some­body at the head of the line. Maybe it was that girl, the pret­ty one, who was just be­ing shown through the air lock in­to the ride. Now the man was rac­ing across the Sky­port to­ward them, dodg­ing guests as he ap­proached. In­stinc­tive­ly, Poole let his arms drop loose­ly to his sides, placed his feet apart. But the man’s eyes were fixed on the air lock. He raced up the line, el­bow­ing his way past the guests ahead of Poole. He be­gan speak­ing to one of the load­ing at­ten­dants, ges­tur­ing quick­ly, point­ing to­ward the air lock. The oth­er at­ten­dant, a tall fig­ure in a quick­sil­ver space suit, came over, plac­ing his hand so­lic­itous­ly on the man’s arm. The man shook it away.

“What do you sup­pose he wants?” Sonya asked.

Poole didn’t an­swer. For the briefest of mo­ments, he con­sid­ered in­ter­ven­tion. Then he re­laxed. Hell with it. This was va­ca­tion. The man had paid his sev­en­ty-​five bucks like ev­ery­one else; let him have his lit­tle scene.

 

2:26 P.M.

AN­DREW WARNE PAUSED on the re­flec­tive pavers of the con­course, breath­ing hard, look­ing around. It was a use­less ef­fort, try­ing to find his daugh­ter among the count­less guests. The chances of some­thing hap­pen­ing to her were min­imal. And yet the thought of spend­ing the time un­til their planned meet­ing, wait­ing, not know­ing, seemed un­think­able. They had been search­ing the queues and sou­venir em­po­ri­ums for twen­ty min­utes, hop­ing to catch a glimpse of Geor­gia’s slim fig­ure and chest­nut-​col­ored hair. So far, noth­ing. And it seemed that the more time that went by with­out find­ing her, the more anx­ious he be­came.

The look in Geor­gia’s face, just be­fore she had left Ter­ri’s lab, was burned in­to his mem­ory. I don’t want to go by my­self, she’d said. She was all he had left. And he’d sent her out here, in­to a theme park mined with high ex­plo­sive. It had been un­wit­ting, it had been well in­ten­tioned, but he had done it just the same.

Ter­ri trot­ted up be­side him.

“Any­thing?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I checked the en­trance and ex­it lines to Eclip­tic and At­mos­fear,” she pant­ed. “No sign of her.”

“She could be any­where.”

“I think we’ve just about searched ev­ery­where.”

Im­pa­tience and frus­tra­tion filled him. Could she have left Cal­lis­to al­ready, gone to one of the oth­er Worlds? They had reached the end of the con­course, and on­ly the Sky­port lay ahead.

He glanced at Ter­ri. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She paused. “But if it was my kid, I’d be do­ing the same thing.”

He ges­tured to­ward the Sky­port. “What’s in there?”

“Those are all thrill rides. She promised you she’d stay off those.”

“We’d bet­ter check them out, any­way. You don’t know Geor­gia.”

“Sure thing. I’ll take the rides on the far side of the de­par­tures board, meet you back here.” And she took off.

Warne watched grate­ful­ly as she jogged away. Most peo­ple would have brushed off his dis­tress, tried to talk him out of search­ing for Geor­gia. Not Ter­ri. Per­haps she couldn’t iden­ti­fy with a wid­owed fa­ther’s con­cern for his on­ly daugh­ter. But she’d vol­un­teered to help, searched as hard as he had.

Turn­ing, he trot­ted in­to the Sky­port, glanc­ing over the queue line for Af­ter­burn, the first ride he came to. As ex­pect­ed, noth­ing but the same cu­ri­ous or amused glances from the tourists he’d seen ev­ery­where else. He turned away. There were two oth­er rides on this side of the de­par­tures board. He’d try their lines next. Then he’d meet up with Ter­ri, and…

Abrupt­ly, he caught sight of Geor­gia.

Re­lief coursed through him. She was at the head of the line for—what was it?—Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark. Thank God, he thought as he shout­ed her name. If he’d looked over a mo­ment lat­er, she’d have al­ready van­ished through the em­barka­tion por­tal…

And then, al­most be­fore he re­al­ized what was hap­pen­ing, one of the load­ing at­ten­dants helped Geor­gia through. As he watched, the pearles­cent hatch slid closed be­hind her.

Re­lief fled in­stant­ly. See­ing her like this—know­ing she was about to en­ter one of the rides—gal­va­nized him.

He broke away from Af­ter­burn and raced across the Sky­port, head­ing di­rect­ly for the por­tal. He el­bowed his way to­ward the front of the line. A wom­an caught her breath in sur­prise, and he heard a man’s voice be­hind him, call­ing out, “Hey, bud­dy, what the hell?”

As he ran up, the load­ing at­ten­dant was ush­er­ing a wom­an in a red dress and two chil­dren in­side. Warne caught a brief glimpse of what lay be­yond—some kind of heavy pres­sure hatch bear­ing a sign that read Warn­ing: Low-​Grav­ity Area—be­fore the por­tal closed again.

He wheeled to­ward the at­ten­dant. “Stop it!” he cried.

The wom­an blinked at him through her hel­met. “Ex­cuse me?”

“I said, stop it! Stop the ride!”

The oth­er dis­patch­er came to­ward them. “I’m sor­ry, sir,” he said, plac­ing a hand on Warne’s arm, “ev­ery­one here’s in a hur­ry to es­cape from the prison, and I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn like—”

Warne yanked his arm away. “My daugh­ter just went in there. I’m get­ting her out.”

The sec­ond dis­patch­er—a tall, thin man—blinked back at him through his hel­met. Warne knew he was men­tal­ly re­view­ing his Guest Re­la­tions Hand­book, de­cid­ing which strat­egy to use with this dif­fi­cult vis­itor.

“It’s im­pos­si­ble for me to stop the at­trac­tion, sir,” he said in a low­er voice, drop­ping out of char­ac­ter. “I’m sure your daugh­ter is hav­ing a won­der­ful time. Ev­ery­body loves Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark. If you’d like to wait for her, the best place is the de­barka­tion area, over there.” He point­ed a sil­very glove. “The at­trac­tion lasts on­ly twelve min­utes, she’ll be out in no time. Now, if you’d kind­ly step away, we can con­tin­ue ac­com­mo­dat­ing oth­er guests.”

Warne stared at him a mo­ment. He’s right, he thought. This isn’t ra­tio­nal.

Mute­ly, he stepped back.

“Thank you, sir,” the at­ten­dant said. He turned to the group at the front of the line, ush­er­ing them for­ward: an over­weight cou­ple with a sin­gle child. The fa­ther glared bale­ful­ly at Warne.

The load­ing at­ten­dant turned to his con­sole, pressed a but­ton. The por­tal glid­ed open with a hiss of es­cap­ing air.

Warne stared at the open­ing. Then, abrupt­ly, he thrust his way past the at­ten­dant and dart­ed through.

In­side, the air­lock felt cool and dry. The bluish light was faint. He was sur­round­ed by a low rum­bling noise, like the mur­mur of gi­ant tur­bines. An emp­ty es­cape pod was wait­ing here, low and smooth­ly con­toured, hov­er­ing at his feet with­out any ob­vi­ous sup­ports. It had win­dows of clear plas­tic, but no roof. Be­yond it lay the far wall of the air­lock. A pon­der­ous cir­cu­lar door had been cut in­to it, se­cured by mas­sive met­al bolts, a sin­gle small win­dow of thick glass in its cen­ter. Through the glass, Warne could see the wom­an with the two chil­dren, as­cend­ing in­side their own pod. They were smil­ing. Faint­ly, he could hear a voice crack­ling over their pod’s comm sys­tem: Please re­main as still and qui­et as pos­si­ble. The less you move, the less chance there is of alert­ing the Wa­ter­dark guards. Once we’ve cleared the prison, we’ll be­gin to as­cend to­ward the moth­er­ship. As grav­ity de­creas­es, you’ll be­gin to feel some ef­fects of weight­less­ness. This is nor­mal. Full grav­ity will be au­to­mat­ical­ly re­stored as we dock with the moth­er­ship…

With a mut­tered curse, he re­al­ized there was no way he could reach Geor­gia. Even if he some­how man­aged to com­man­deer this wait­ing pod, it wouldn’t do him any good.

He whirled around, ex­it­ing the por­tal as quick­ly as he had en­tered it. There was a scat­ter­ing of ex­cit­ed voic­es. The male at­ten­dant was speak­ing in­to a ra­dio: “Tow­er, this is Load Two. We’ve got a Five One One, say again, a Five One One at the load­ing area.”

Warne paid no at­ten­tion. He ducked past them, left the plat­form, and head­ed in the di­rec­tion the at­ten­dant had point­ed to ear­li­er. He thread­ed his way through the Sky­port’s milling crowds, head­ing for the small holo­gram that read Moth­er­ship De­barka­tion, Ex­it On­ly. Ter­ri was nowhere to be seen.

The off-​load­ing ramp was a spare, neu­tral cor­ri­dor, car­pet­ed gray-​blue on walls, floor, and ceil­ing. He passed a small group of ex­it­ing rid­ers, smil­ing and chat­ter­ing, and fol­lowed the cor­ri­dor as it curved gen­tly up to a brushed-​met­al ac­cess port. The port whis­pered open to al­low an­oth­er group out on­to the de­barka­tion ramp, and he ducked in­side.

This was the moth­er­ship: a large, low-​ceilinged con­trol room ablaze with blink­ing lights. Along the low­er half of one wall ran a large, smoked-​glass tube. Al­most ev­ery oth­er ver­ti­cal space was ar­rayed with a ri­otous va­ri­ety of fu­tur­is­tic-​look­ing elec­tron­ics.

With a sud­den whoosh of air, a pod slid in­to view with­in the smoked-​glass tube, com­ing to a stop at a short plat­form. Wa­ter ran down its win­dows and en­gine cowl­ing. The lone at­ten­dant work­ing un­load ap­proached it, lift­ing the vi­sor of her hel­met. “Wel­come to the Cal­lis­tan moth­er­ship,” she said, un­fas­ten­ing an ac­cess pan­el in the side of the pod and swing­ing it open. “Con­grat­ula­tions on your es­cape from Wa­ter­dark.”

“Cool ride!” said a youth of about twelve, scram­bling out of the pod and star­ing around. His hands and arms were damp, and his eyes were shin­ing. “Can we go again?”

“That low-​grav­ity part was amaz­ing,” said the boy’s fa­ther. “How did you do that?”

“There was noth­ing to do,” the wom­an said, re­main­ing stead­fast­ly in char­ac­ter. “Weight­less­ness is part of space trav­el. But the moth­er­ship’s dock­ing at the Sky­port now, and you’ll find it main­tains a grav­ity equal to 100 per­cent of earth.”

“I heard they li­censed the tech­nol­ogy from NASA,” said the boy.

The un­load op­er­ator turned to open the ac­cess port and ush­er the fam­ily out of the ride. As she did so, she caught sight of Warne.

“You can’t en­ter this way, sir,” she said.

“Where’s the main­te­nance ac­cess?” he de­mand­ed.

The wom­an’s eyes nar­rowed. “I don’t un­der­stand,” she said. But as she spoke, her eyes made a be­tray­ing shift to­ward the wall be­yond Warne’s shoul­der.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, he turned, run­ning across the con­trol room in the di­rec­tion of her glance. The wall was a sol­id mass of er­satz tech­nol­ogy: teleme­try ma­chines, en­vi­ron­men­tal con­trols, cryo­genic mon­itors. He swept his hands over it all in frus­tra­tion.

The un­load­er ap­proached him. “Sir, I’m go­ing to have to ask you to leave,” she said.

As she spoke, Warne made out a faint rect­an­gu­lar out­line among the in­stru­men­ta­tion. He placed his hands along its edges and pushed. A door-​sized bulk­head swung back, re­veal­ing a dark walk­way be­yond. He ducked in­side, clos­ing the door be­hind him and shut­ting out the protests of the op­er­ator.

In­side the bow­els of the ride, it felt ut­ter­ly dif­fer­ent. The air was dense with hu­mid­ity, and from above came the im­pa­tient drum­ming of rain. There was a cat­walk here: the grat­ing dripped wa­ter, and its rail­ing was slip­pery to the touch. Warne glanced around in the dark­ness, try­ing to ori­ent him­self. As he looked up­ward, feel­ing beads of mois­ture gath­er­ing on his face, he could hear a cold lit­tle voice in the back of his head. This isn’t nor­mal be­hav­ior, pal, it said. What ex­act­ly can you do, any­way? Why don’t you just go wait out­side? She’ll be out in a cou­ple of min­utes.

But it didn’t mat­ter: ra­tio­nal or ir­ra­tional, he want­ed to be with his daugh­ter, right now. Just in case. He pushed the voice aside.

He kept to the pri­ma­ry cat­walk, which as­cend­ed in a broad spi­ral. To his right, along the in­ner edge of the spi­ral, the cat­walk hugged an end­less wall of black glass. To his left were banks of com­put­ers, heavy hy­draulics, a com­plex net­work of pipes that rose from be­low and dis­ap­peared over­head in the dark­ness.

He con­tin­ued to climb, grow­ing more and more con­fused. Where were the pods? They were sup­posed to rise through space to­ward the moth­er­ship—right? And yet the moth­er­ship was at the bot­tom: the ride­path seemed to come in from above. It didn’t make any sense, the ar­chi­tec­ture was all wrong. Was it pos­si­ble he’d be­come dis­ori­ent­ed and was mov­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion? What­ev­er the case, in a few min­utes Geor­gia would be ex­it­ing the ride—and he’d still be climb­ing around fu­tile­ly in here. The lit­tle voice came back again, loud­er this time. Maybe he should go back out, wait for Geor­gia to emerge, find Ter­ri, ex­plain his way out of this. He slowed to a walk, then stopped, hands on the slick rail­ing, in an agony of in­de­ci­sion.

Then he no­ticed, a few steps up the cat­walk, what looked like a break in the black wall: a low, nar­row arch­way, etched in the faintest yel­low glow. As he stared, he no­ticed small rib­bons of wa­ter driz­zling in. He ap­proached the open arch, cu­ri­ous, and crouched to peer through.

With a roar and a howl, some­thing dropped out of the dark­ness to hov­er six feet in front of him.

Warne fell back on­to the cat­walk, cry­ing out in sur­prise. He bare­ly had time to reg­is­ter what it was he was see­ing—a pod, full of laugh­ing, smil­ing faces—be­fore it lurched down­ward again, out of sight.

He picked him­self up off the cat­walk and crouched cau­tious­ly in the open­ing. Ahead of him, framed by the sur­round­ing wall of glass, lay a field of stars. On the far side of the arch­way was a nar­row plat­form, maybe two feet on a side. It was paint­ed black and al­most in­vis­ible against the swift­ly mov­ing starfield. It was sur­round­ed by a rail­ing, al­so black.

Warne wait­ed a mo­ment. Then, tak­ing a deep breath, he ducked through the open­ing and stepped out on­to the plat­form.

It was like walk­ing out in­to the vast­ness of space. He was sur­round­ed by stars, in­fi­nite and in­finite­ly far away, all rac­ing hell-​bent for the vor­tex be­neath his feet. For a mo­ment, the il­lu­sion was so over­pow­er­ing that he closed his eyes and swayed slight­ly, grasp­ing for the rail­ing. Dim­ly, he was aware that wa­ter was soak­ing through his clothes. He wait­ed, breath­ing slow­ly, fight­ing ver­ti­go, fo­cus­ing on the re­as­sur­ing so­lid­ity of the rail­ing. He wait­ed an­oth­er mo­ment, then opened his eyes again, squint­ing against the rain.

Grad­ual­ly, he be­gan to un­der­stand what he was look­ing at. He was stand­ing atop a plat­form on the in­side edge of a huge, hol­low cylin­der. Its curved sur­face was some sort of one-​way mir­ror, on­to which the count­less hurtling stars were re­flect­ed and re-​re­flect­ed, giv­ing an alarm­ing­ly re­al­is­tic sense of depth.

There was a rum­ble above him, which turned quick­ly in­to a roar. Glanc­ing up­ward, he saw an­oth­er pod de­scend­ing to­ward him at a sharp an­gle, wheel­ing through the rain. It seemed to be head­ing straight for him, and he shrank back to­ward the low arch­way. But then the pod curved and slowed, stop­ping be­side the plat­form. The roar sub­sid­ed to a whine as, against all rea­son, the di­rec­tion of the rain seemed to al­ter sub­tly. The mo­tion of the stars on the sur­round­ing walls slow­ly ceased, un­til they hung mo­tion­less in the void. In­side the pod, he could see a fam­ily of five, all wear­ing the same dazed, hap­py ex­pres­sions he’d seen in the pre­vi­ous car. They were clutch­ing their lap and shoul­der belts as if to keep them­selves from float­ing out of their seats. “At­ten­tion, please,” came a voice over the pod’s comm unit. “We’ve been giv­en clear­ance to ap­proach the moth­er­ship. Ini­ti­at­ing dock­ing se­quence now.”

One of the chil­dren, look­ing around, caught sight of Warne. For a mo­ment, she sim­ply stared, as if dis­be­liev­ing her eyes. Then she jabbed her moth­er and point­ed to­ward him.

The wom­an looked over, not see­ing him at first. Then her eyes seemed to fo­cus and her ex­pres­sion changed from won­der to con­ster­na­tion. At that mo­ment, the roar re­turned and the pod dropped away from the plat­form, en route to its fi­nal des­ti­na­tion.

Warne watched it drop out of sight as once again the stars went in­to mo­tion around him. Like ev­ery­thing else about the ride, the plat­form had clear­ly been de­signed to en­hance il­lu­sion and dis­guise re­al­ity. No doubt any spot­ter in po­si­tion here would be dressed in black, in­vis­ible from the per­spec­tive of the rid­ers in­side their pods.

He was be­gin­ning to ful­ly com­pre­hend the clever ar­ti­fice that lay be­hind Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark. The ride was built in­side this cylin­der—cone, ac­tu­al­ly, wider at the top than at the bot­tom. Al­though the pods ac­tu­al­ly de­scend­ed in a tight­en­ing spi­ral to­ward the moth­er­ship at the base, rid­ers in­side the pods would have the sen­sa­tion of ris­ing in­to space. Even at this ex­treme mo­ment, he was struck by the al­most brazen bril­liance of the con­cep­tion. In the ride, the pods were sup­pos­ed­ly fly­ing up from the cas­tle to the or­bit­ing ship. And yet the cas­tle dun­geon was the high­est phys­ical point of the ride: the moth­er­ship was at the bot­tom of the cone. Ev­ery­thing—the ut­ter dark­ness of space, the com­put­er-​con­trolled mo­tions of the pod, the wheel­ing of the stars, the di­rec­tion of the wind-​con­trolled puls­es of rain­wa­ter—was pre­cise­ly cal­ibrat­ed, syn­chro­nized, to al­low Utopia’s de­sign­ers to su­per­im­pose their own re­al­ity over the laws of physics. As the pods re­volved on their hid­den spokes, the rate of de­scent in­creased, cre­at­ing a false sense of low grav­ity. The an­gle of the pod was con­stant­ly ad­just­ed so the rid­ers re­mained un­aware they were trav­el­ing in de­scend­ing cir­cles. And he him­self was stand­ing on a spot­ter’s plat­form, used for covert ob­ser­va­tion of the pas­sen­gers, or per­haps in case of…

There was a whine over­head, the roar of an­oth­er es­cape pod de­scend­ing in­to its hold­ing po­si­tion. As it came in­to view, Warne’s train of thought dis­solved in­stant­ly. In­side sat Geor­gia, mouth open, wide de­light­ed eyes re­flect­ing the stars.

Warne did not stop to think. As the pod hov­ered, he dashed for­ward, reach­ing over the rail­ing and fum­bling with the ac­cess han­dle. Geor­gia looked over as he climbed over the rail and half jumped, half fell in­to the pod.

The look of won­der on her face changed quick­ly to alarm and con­fu­sion. “Dad? What are you do­ing here? How did you get here?”

“It’s okay,” he said, clos­ing the ac­cess door and kneel­ing on the floor of the pod, tak­ing her hand. “It’s okay.”

“Gross,” Geor­gia said. “You’re all wet.”

He sat a mo­ment, em­bar­rass­ment be­gin­ning to min­gle with the over­whelm­ing re­lief. He felt wa­ter rolling off his nose and ears, drip­ping on­to the mold­ed in­te­ri­or of the pod. Once they reached the moth­er­ship, he’d ex­plain ev­ery­thing. Well, not quite ev­ery­thing, he thought as he wait­ed for the pod to be­gin its fi­nal de­scent.

“What’s go­ing on, Dad? Why—?”

And then Geor­gia looked away from him sud­den­ly, her fine fea­tures back­lit by the starfield, dark brows knit­ting to­geth­er.

Then Warne, too, heard the voic­es—dis­tant at first, but com­ing clos­er.

“There he is. Plat­form 18.”

“Wa­ter­dark tow­er, I need an E-​stop. Re­peat, emer­gen­cy stop.”

There was a clat­ter­ing of feet, and then vague forms ap­peared on the plat­form be­side him. From in­side the pod, it was dif­fi­cult to make them out against the il­lu­sion of space, but Warne guessed they were se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

“Ex­cuse me, sir,” one of the men said, “but you’ll need to come with me.”

“No,” Warne said. “It’s okay. Ev­ery­thing’s okay now.”

“Sir, please ex­it the pod and step on­to the cat­walk,” the man said again, his voice a lit­tle hard­er this time.

Warne felt Geor­gia tight­en her grip on his hand.

It was all so ridicu­lous. He was with Geor­gia, she was safe now. Ev­ery­thing would be all right if they’d just get the ride un­der way.

He turned to ex­plain this to the men on the plat­form, but found he could not hear him­self speak. In fact, he could not hear any­thing, ex­cept for a sud­den harsh erup­tion of sound that seemed to come from ev­ery­where.

There was a flick­er of light over­head. He looked up just in time to see two huge spurts of or­ange-​col­ored flame lick down to­ward him. For a mo­ment, in the blind­ing il­lu­mi­na­tion, he glimpsed the se­cret ar­chi­tec­ture of the ride—the ex­pand­ing cone of glass, the cen­tral hub with its um­brel­la-​like sup­port­ing spokes—be­fore the glare, mag­ni­fied off the in­fi­nite mir­ror, over­load­ed his vi­sion. He jerked his head away, clos­ing his eyes. There were shouts of alarm and sur­prise from the plat­form. The pod gave a sud­den lurch to one side. The ter­ri­ble noise fad­ed, re­placed by the crash and shriek of rend­ing met­al.

“Dad­dy!” Geor­gia cried.

Warne turned to­ward her.

Then—with a sud­den, con­vul­sive in­stinct—he leaned for­ward, shield­ing the girl with his body as the pod gave an­oth­er sick­en­ing wrench and en­fold­ing dark­ness abrupt­ly claimed them.

 

2:40 P.M.

UTOPIA’S CEN­TRAL MED­ICAL Fa­cil­ity was lo­cat­ed on A Lev­el, di­rect­ly be­neath the Nexus. It had been de­signed so that, in case of calami­ty or nat­ural dis­as­ter, it could be reached from any area of the Park, pub­lic or pri­vate, in a min­imum amount of time. And it had been dili­gent­ly stocked with enough emer­gen­cy equip­ment to make a world-​class trau­ma cen­ter en­vi­ous: res­pi­ra­tors, ven­ti­la­tors, de­fib­ril­la­tors, in­tu­ba­tors, mon­itor­ing sys­tems, crash carts. Most of this high-​tick­et equip­ment stood silent and un­used with­in dark­ened bays and stor­age ar­eas, life­sav­ing ob­jets d’art that, in a non­ster­ile en­vi­ron­ment, would have been col­lect­ing dust. In the hec­tic seas of Utopia, Med­ical had al­ways re­mained an archipela­go of calm: soft-​voiced nurs­es tend­ing the oc­ca­sion­al scraped knee or sprained an­kle, or­der­lies stock­ing sup­plies, tech­ni­cians run­ning oblig­atory di­ag­nos­tics on ma­chines that rarely saw use.

But now, Med­ical had been trans­formed in­to a fran­tic triage op­er­ation. Cries of pain mixed dis­cor­dant­ly with calls for plas­ma. Paramedics dart­ed from room to room. Or­der­lies who would nor­mal­ly be do­ing drug in­ven­to­ries were shut­tling equip­ment be­tween op­er­at­ing the­aters. Guests clus­tered in wait­ing rooms, hud­dled around sob­bing fig­ures or sprawled in chairs, look­ing va­cant­ly at the ceil­ing.

Warne pulled the light blue cur­tains around the re­cov­ery bay, shut­ting out the noise as best he could. His left shoul­der throbbed as he dragged the rings along the over­head rail. As he turned back to­ward the bed, he caught sight of him­self in the mir­ror above the small basin: face drawn, eyes deep-​set. A gauze ban­dage on his tem­ple, dark with dry­ing blood, made him look like a brig­and.

Geor­gia lay in the bed, her breath­ing slow and reg­ular, eyes mo­tion­less be­neath parch­ment lids. Her mu­sic play­er was grasped in one hand. His arm still ached where that hand had held him. She had not re­leased her grip, not ev­er; not when the res­cue team brought them down from the crip­pled ride on a back­board, not when the elec­tric cart had sped them through the back­stage cor­ri­dors to­ward Med­ical.

Now her eyes flut­tered open, looked up at him.

“How do you feel?” he asked gen­tly.

“Sleepy.”

“That’s the De­merol. The shot the doc­tor gave you. You’ll rest for a while now.”

“Mmm.” The eyes slid shut again. He looked at her, at the ug­ly bruise com­ing up on one cheek­bone. He reached for­ward, stroked her hair.

“Thanks for com­ing to get me. Back there, I mean.”

“Sleep well, Geor­gia,” he replied.

She shift­ed slight­ly be­neath the cov­ers. “You didn’t call me princess,” she mur­mured.

“I thought you didn’t like be­ing called princess.”

“I don’t. But say it, any­way. Just this once.”

He leaned for­ward, kissed her bruised cheek. “I love you, princess,” he whis­pered.

But she was al­ready asleep.

He stood for a mo­ment, watch­ing the rise and fall of her chest un­der the thin hos­pi­tal blan­ket. Then he smoothed the cor­ners of the blan­ket be­neath her chin, eased the mu­sic play­er from her hand, plucked her small back­pack from a near­by chair, un­zipped it. As he stuffed the play­er in­side, some­thing fell to the floor. Plac­ing the back­pack on the chair once again, he knelt down, picked the ob­ject up. Then he stopped dead as recog­ni­tion burned its way through him.

It was a bracelet, made of a sim­ple chain of sil­ver. Dan­gling from its loops were half a dozen sail­boats: yawls, ketch­es, trim sloops. He turned it be­tween his fin­gers, feel­ing tears well up in his eyes. His wife had giv­en this charm bracelet to Geor­gia for her sev­enth birth­day. When­ev­er she had fin­ished a new boat de­sign, she’d giv­en Geor­gia a repli­ca to add to the bracelet. He’d for­got­ten about it, had no idea his daugh­ter had been car­ry­ing it around with her all this time.

His fin­gers found the grace­ful lines of Bright Fu­ture, the last boat his wife had de­signed. The boat she’d drowned in, that day off the Delaware coast.

“Char­lotte,” he said un­der his breath.

There was a sub­dued rustling noise, then a man’s face ap­peared at the edge of the cur­tain: mid­dle-​aged, bald­ing, small mus­tache over an even small­er mouth. Catch­ing sight of Warne, he stepped in­to the bay, an­oth­er man fol­low­ing be­hind. They did not wear the usu­al white blaz­ers of Utopia crew: in­stead, they wore dark, un­der­stat­ed suits.

“Dr. Warne?” asked the first man, con­sult­ing a met­al clip­board.

Warne rose, turn­ing away a mo­ment to wipe his eyes. He nod­ded at them.

“I’m sor­ry to dis­turb you,” the man with the mus­tache said. “My name’s Feld­man, and this is Whit­more. I won­der if we could ask you a few ques­tions.”

“And per­haps an­swer a few of yours, too,” the man named Whit­more said. He was tall, with a high, reedy voice, and his eyes blinked rapid­ly as he spoke.

Be­fore Warne could an­swer, the cur­tain part­ed again and Sarah Boatwright en­tered briskly, Wingnut whirring along in her wake.

Sarah’s eyes land­ed first on Warne, then on the men in suits. “Don’t both­er him,” she said.

The two men nod­ded at Boatwright and quick­ly left the re­cov­ery bay.

“Who were they?” Warne asked with­out much cu­rios­ity.

“Feld­man, Le­gal. Whit­more, Guest Re­la­tions.”

Warne watched as an in­vis­ible hand pulled the cur­tain shut from out­side. “Dam­age con­trol,” he said.

“Keep­ing the in­ci­dent con­tained.”

Warne nod­ded. “How much do they know?”

“They know what they’ve been told. That it was a mi­nor me­chan­ical glitch.” She came clos­er. “How are you feel­ing?”

“Like I had a close en­counter with a Pe­ter­bilt. What hap­pened in there?”

“I was go­ing to ask you the same ques­tion.”

“I don’t know.” Warne took a deep breath, re­mem­ber­ing. “There was this ex­plo­sion, a flash of light. The whole ride was buck­ing and shud­der­ing. I thought it was go­ing to come crash­ing down on us.” He stopped. “I shut my eyes, held Geor­gia close. That’s all I re­mem­ber un­til your emer­gen­cy teams ar­rived.” He looked back at her in­quir­ing­ly.

“I won’t lie to you, An­drew. It was a near thing. Some kind of ex­plo­sive was at­tached to the ride’s cen­tral shaft. That shaft is crit­ical to the struc­tural in­tegri­ty of the en­tire ride. If it had snapped, the pods would have all bro­ken free and plum­met­ed to the ground. But they mis­cal­cu­lat­ed when they set the de­vice. A re­tain­ing spar held, kept the shaft from col­laps­ing. It al­lowed us to evac­uate the guests.”

Mis­cal­cu­lat­ed. For the briefest of mo­ments, Warne felt some­thing al­most like re­lief. Who­ev­er they were, these bad guys weren’t in­vin­ci­ble, af­ter all. If they screwed up once, they might screw up again.

Sarah nod­ded to­ward the bed. “How’s Geor­gia?”

“A lit­tle banged up. The doc­tor says she’ll be fine. She’s a brave girl.”

Sarah stared down at the sleep­ing form for a mo­ment. Then she stretched out a hand, touched Geor­gia’s fore­head.

Warne fol­lowed her with his eyes, re­al­ly look­ing at Sarah for the first time since she’d en­tered the bay. There was an ex­pres­sion on the proud face that he didn’t re­mem­ber ev­er see­ing: a look of pain, al­most of vul­ner­abil­ity. He thought back to their last con­ver­sa­tion, in her of­fice. He re­al­ized, quite abrupt­ly, that she had nev­er asked for his help be­fore. This Park means ev­ery­thing to her, he thought, watch­ing her. Just like Geor­gia means ev­ery­thing to me.

A spasm of anger cut through him: anger at those who had done this, hurt the peo­ple he cared about.

“What can I do?” he asked.

Sarah looked up.

“In your of­fice, you asked for help. I’d like to help you, if I can.”

She hes­itat­ed, her eyes re­turn­ing to Geor­gia. “Are you sure?”

Warne nod­ded.

Af­ter a mo­ment, she let her hand slip from the girl’s fore­head. “We’ve been warned not to alert the po­lice. We don’t know what’s been touched, and what hasn’t. We know there’s at least one rot­ten ap­ple in­side the Park, but we don’t know who. All we know is that the Metanet was used to hack the op­er­at­ing code for some of the bots.”

“You can’t evac­uate?”

“They’ve rigged the mono­rail with ex­plo­sive charges. We’ve been told they’re watch­ing the emer­gen­cy ex­its, as well.”

“Do you know why they set off that ex­plo­sive charge in Wa­ter­dark?”

The pain grew stronger in Sarah’s face. “We—I—un­der­es­ti­mat­ed these peo­ple. We ar­ranged to give them the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy. But we were plan­ning to put a tail on John Doe, the lead­er, when he picked up the disc. He found out.” She fished her hand in­to a pock­et, pulled out a plas­tic bag con­tain­ing half a dozen sil­ver shards. She put it on the edge of the bed with a bit­ter smile. “A se­cu­ri­ty guard was killed in the strug­gle, and that’s all that re­mains of the Cru­cible disc. Wa­ter­dark was our pun­ish­ment. Now I’m wait­ing for them to con­tact me again, ar­range the de­liv­ery of a sec­ond disc.”

She met his gaze, held it.

“So what can I do?” Warne said af­ter a mo­ment.

“If you can use the Metanet to nar­row down which bots have been af­fect­ed, and how…Any­thing, any scrap, would be use­ful. If we know what they’ve done, maybe we can fig­ure out their next move. Pre­pare our­selves.”

She looked down. “Let’s hope to God it doesn’t come to that.”

There was a brief si­lence.

“I’ll do what I can. As long as—” He ges­tured to­ward the bed.

“I’ll per­son­al­ly make sure that Geor­gia’s looked af­ter. We’ve had se­cu­ri­ty teams sweep a few se­lect ar­eas—Med­ical, the VIP suites—for any signs of tam­per­ing. She’s safer here than any­where else in the Park.” She low­ered her voice. “There’s some­thing else you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Tere­sa Boni­fa­cio is on the short-​list of pos­si­ble sus­pects.”

“Ter­ri?” Warne said in­cred­ulous­ly.

“I don’t be­lieve it, ei­ther. But there are on­ly a hand­ful of peo­ple with the skills and the nec­es­sary ac­cess to pull this off. She’s one of them. Keep that in mind. And an­oth­er thing. You re­mem­ber how, in my of­fice, we traced Geor­gia from her im­age­tag? Well, I no­ticed some­body was trac­ing you, too.”

“Me?” Warne felt sur­prise, fol­lowed by an un­com­fort­able trick­le of fear. “Why?”

“No idea. But be care­ful. And maybe you’d bet­ter take off your tag. I’ll have some­body drop it in a trash can on the far side of the Park.”

Warne glanced down at his lapel, found it emp­ty. “Gone. Lost it in the ride, I guess.”

“Just as well. If any cast mem­ber stops you, show them your pass­card, tell them to talk to me.”

The cur­tain part­ed again, and a man in a white coat came in. “Ah, Sarah,” he said. “They told me I’d find you here.”

“Dr. Finch.” She nod­ded. “What’s our sta­tus?”

“A lot bet­ter than it could have been, thank heav­en. It was a mir­acle, that re­tain­ing spar catch­ing where it did. Kept the en­tire struc­ture from col­laps­ing. Oth­er­wise, we’d be need­ing a fleet of coro­ner’s vans. As it is, we’ve got some two dozen ca­su­al­ties, the worst be­ing the boy with two bro­ken legs.”

Sarah’s lips set in a tight line. “Keep me post­ed.”

The doc­tor left, and Sarah turned back to Warne. “You left some­thing in my of­fice,” she said. Tak­ing one of his hands, she strapped the echolo­ca­tor around his wrist. “Re­mem­ber?”

Warne’s skin tin­gled at the for­got­ten touch. “Is that why you brought him along?”

“He’s your dog. Re­mem­ber?”

Warne looked at the hulk­ing, ca­nine robot, which was look­ing back at him. His hand dropped un­con­scious­ly to the echolo­ca­tor. The mo­ment—with its shock, grief, anger—had tak­en on an al­most sur­re­al cast.

The cur­tain drew apart yet again. A short, heav­ily built man came in, nod­ding at Sarah. He car­ried him­self with an air of self-​as­sur­ance; his tanned face made his thin blond hair look al­most gray. “Is this him?” he asked Sarah.

“No, this is An­drew Warne,” she replied. “I think Poole’s in the next bay, with Feld­man and Whit­more.”

The man scowled. “The guy’s a damn hero. You shouldn’t let him be pestered by PR flaks.”

Warne turned to Sarah with a look of mute in­quiry.

“This is our head of Se­cu­ri­ty,” Sarah ex­plained. “He’s here to thank a guest named An­gus Poole. Seems Poole was on the ride a few pods be­hind Geor­gia. Risked his life to save the oth­er pas­sen­gers.”

Al­loc­co nod­ded, grunt­ed, then part­ed the cur­tains and dis­ap­peared.

“I think I’ll go pay my re­spects, too,” Sarah said.

Warne turned back to the sleep­ing Geor­gia. As he bent for­ward to kiss her cheek, he no­ticed Sarah had left the bag of disc shards on the edge of the bed. He scooped it up with one hand, and then—with a back­ward glance at his daugh­ter—turned to fol­low Sarah and Al­loc­co through the cur­tain.

A man sat on the bed in the next bay, wor­ry­ing at a fresh­ly-​dressed cut on his right wrist. He was clear­ly a guest: brown tweed cap, cor­duroy jack­et, black turtle­neck. Forty­ish, mus­cu­lar but not heavy. His lips seemed to be set in a fixed, dis­tant smile. In fact, his en­tire face seemed im­mo­bile save for the alert, fad­ed-​den­im eyes, which nev­er fell still, shift­ing from ob­ject to ob­ject with im­pla­ca­ble cu­rios­ity. Feld­man and Whit­more were nowhere to be seen.

The blue eyes shift­ed to Warne, then widened slight­ly in sur­prise. “You!” the man said.

Sarah stepped for­ward. “Mr. Poole, my name is Sarah Boatwright. And this is Bob Al­loc­co, head of Se­cu­ri­ty here at Utopia.”

“We want­ed to thank you for your brav­ery, back on the ride,” Al­loc­co said with an ap­prov­ing nod. “Help­ing those peo­ple safe­ly es­cape that bro­ken pod took guts.”

“Those peo­ple are rel­atives of mine,” the man named Poole said. Though he spoke to Al­loc­co, his eyes were still on Warne.

“We’re ter­ri­bly sor­ry this hap­pened,” Sarah said. “Utopia has the best safe­ty record of any park, but I’m afraid even the most strin­gent checks can’t guar­an­tee against ev­ery me­chan­ical—”

The man’s alert eyes dart­ed from Warne to her. “You’re in charge?” he asked.

“I’m head of Op­er­ations, if that’s what you mean. And I’d like to do some­thing for you, com­pen­sate you in what­ev­er small way I can, for what you did here.”

The dis­tant smile deep­ened slight­ly. “Ac­tu­al­ly, I thought I could do some­thing for you.”

Sarah frowned. “I don’t quite un­der­stand.”

The man looked at her in sur­prise. “Well, how many of them are there?”

“Them?” Sarah echoed.

“The bad guys. What kind of a force are we talk­ing about? Tac­ti­cal? Rogue cell?”

Warne watched as Sarah Boatwright and Al­loc­co ex­changed glances.

“Sir,” Al­loc­co said, “I think maybe you should re­join your fam­ily—”

Sarah mo­tioned him to be silent. “I’m sor­ry, we’re just a lit­tle con­fused.”

“By what?”

“By what you’re say­ing. There’s just been a se­ri­ous ac­ci­dent, and—”

The man named Poole laughed: a short bark al­most like a cough.

“It’s se­ri­ous, all right,” he said. “But it’s no ac­ci­dent.”

When no­body spoke, he con­tin­ued. “I can’t be­lieve you turned on all those lights,” he said, bari­tone voice al­most mourn­ful. “Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark was my fa­vorite ride. But now I know how it’s done. You ru­ined it for me.”

Once again, Warne saw Al­loc­co and Sarah ex­change glances. But they re­mained silent.

“I was up at the start of the ride when the thing went off. Af­ter I got my rel­atives out, I spent quite some time up there, wait­ing. And then, lat­er on, they low­ered me past that ru­ined spar. By then all the lights had come on, and I got a re­al good look. Quite a blast sig­na­ture. C-4, right? Three charges, placed lat­er­al­ly. What’s known as a club sand­wich. Re­mark­ably pre­cise work, re­al­ly. And clev­er­ly done, con­sid­er­ing the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment.”

There was a si­lence in the re­cov­ery bay.

“Keep talk­ing,” Al­loc­co said.

“Do I need to? Un­less you guys are in the habit of us­ing high ex­plo­sives for your spe­cial ef­fects, I’d say you’ve got some par­ty-​crash­ers on your hands. Or else one se­ri­ous­ly pissed-​off guest.” Poole waved his hand to­ward the cur­tain. “But where’s law en­force­ment? Why isn’t the crime scene be­ing sta­bi­lized? In­stead, there are all these suits rush­ing around, apol­ogiz­ing for the ac­ci­dent. The ac­ci­dent. Smells like a cov­er-​up to me. Some­one’s scar­ing you, bad. And I think I know who he is.”

“You do,” said Sarah.

Poole nod­ded. “Ear­ly this morn­ing, in the Nexus, I saw this fel­low talk­ing to him­self. That’s what caught my at­ten­tion first: it was like he was recit­ing po­et­ry or some­thing. He had a South African ac­cent, that was the sec­ond thing. And the cut of his suit—no tourist wears a five-​thou­sand-​dol­lar Ital­ian suit to an amuse­ment park. But what re­al­ly struck me was the way he was look­ing around. I rec­og­nized that look. As if he was cas­ing the joint. Or, ac­tu­al­ly, as if he al­ready owned it. As if there were no sur­pris­es left.”

Poole shook his head, chuck­led. “But it’s my day off, so I for­got about it. Un­til, sit­ting in that bro­ken pod, I start­ed to put two and two to­geth­er.”

“Are you a cop?” Sarah asked.

The man laughed again. “Not ex­act­ly.”

“What, ex­act­ly?”

“Armed guard. Per­son­al pro­tec­tion ser­vices. That sort of thing.”

Al­loc­co rolled his eyes. “And here I thought you were Sher­lock Holmes.” His tone had changed sig­nif­icant­ly in the last minute or two.

There was an­oth­er si­lence, longer this time.

At last, Sarah drew a deep breath. “You said you could do some­thing for us, Mr. Poole. What, ex­act­ly, did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. What do you need?”

Al­loc­co broke in abrupt­ly. “That’s enough,” he said. “Mr. Poole, would you ex­cuse us for a mo­ment, please?”

“Cer­tain­ly.”

Warne fol­lowed Sarah and Al­loc­co back in­to Geor­gia’s bay.

“What the hell are you do­ing?” Al­loc­co said, round­ing on Sarah. “He’s just some kind of guard for hire. And we’ve got work to do.”

“That’s the prob­lem,” Sarah whis­pered back. “What kind of work, ex­act­ly? Any­thing pan out on Barks­dale’s list of in­ter­nal sus­pects yet?”

“Noth­ing sus­pi­cious. The tech named Tib­bald logged out at a se­cu­ri­ty check­point ear­ly this morn­ing and hasn’t re­turned, so we haven’t been able to ques­tion him. And the video logs have checked out clean so far.”

“See what I mean? We don’t have any­thing to do but lick our wounds and wait for the phone to ring.”

Al­loc­co jerked a thumb over his shoul­der, to­ward the cur­tain. “For all we know, he’s one of them.”

“Come on, Bob. You know that’s crazy. His rel­atives were on that ride; he risked his life to save them.”

“So he’s a guest. That’s even worse. Do you know how this is go­ing to look? What he’s go­ing to say?”

“What do you think he’s go­ing to say if we tell him to get lost? We need all the help we can get. You send your se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists crawl­ing over ev­ery­thing, it’s go­ing to look sus­pi­cious. But this guy—a tourist in khakis and a tweed cap? Prob­ably not. He ob­vi­ous­ly knows what he’s talk­ing about. I’m in­clined to bring him on board. And last time I checked, this wasn’t a democ­ra­cy.”

Al­loc­co looked at her in dis­be­lief. He opened his mouth to protest. Then he shut it and gave his head a dis­gust­ed shake. “You’re right, it’s not. But I don’t want any­thing to do with him. And keep him the hell away from my peo­ple.”

“No promis­es.” Sarah mo­tioned them back in­to Poole’s cu­bi­cle.

“You’ve got some rel­atives here, Mr. Poole?” she asked as they reen­tered.

The man nod­ded. “My cousin’s fam­ily. Good, sol­id Iowa stock.”

“Are they all right? Af­ter the—the ac­ci­dent, I mean?”

“You kid­ding? The way your PR storm troop­ers have been pass­ing out meal vouch­ers and casi­no chips around here like they were can­dy? They’re al­ready back in the fray.”

“And you don’t want to join them.”

“It’s like I told you. My fa­vorite ride’s just been ru­ined for me.” Poole shook his head, the per­pet­ual smile droop­ing a lit­tle mourn­ful­ly. “Couldn’t en­joy a Sam Adams now.”

This was greet­ed by an­oth­er si­lence.

“You men­tioned per­son­al pro­tec­tion. You mean, like a body­guard?”

“That’s not the term we pre­fer. It’s on a case-​by-​case ba­sis. Busi­ness ex­ec­utives, for­eign dig­ni­taries, VIPs. That sort of thing.”

“Okay.” Warne watched Sarah wave in his di­rec­tion. “Mr. Poole, meet An­drew Warne.”

Poole nod­ded at him. “I saw you in the Sky­port. I thought you were just an­oth­er guest. Get­ting some jog­ging in, as I re­mem­ber.” He peered more close­ly at Warne. “Feel­ing okay, pal?”

“Well, he’s not just an­oth­er guest. Think of him as your VIP.”

The man con­sid­ered this. Then he nod­ded.

“And Mr. Poole?” Sarah said.

Poole rolled his fad­ed blue eyes to­ward her.

“Keep him alive for the rest of the day, and maybe you’ll get your life­time pass.”

Poole smiled.

 

2:40 P.M.

NOR­MAN PEP­PER SAT on a wide leather couch in the Ex­ter­nal Spe­cial­ists’ Lounge on B Lev­el, sip­ping a glass of so­da and read­ing the Na­tion­al Edi­tion of the New York Times. He’d just spent a de­light­ful half hour with the A sec­tion, and he in­tend­ed to spend an equal­ly de­light­ful half hour fin­ish­ing up the rest.

The day had gone even bet­ter than he’d hoped. The Utopia per­son­nel all seemed in­tel­li­gent, busi­nesslike, ea­ger to help. His pro­pos­al for the or­chid beds in the At­lantis athenaeum had been ac­cept­ed with­out ques­tion. In fact, they’d giv­en him an even big­ger bud­get than he’d re­quest­ed. And At­lantis it­self was re­mark­able. When it opened, he was sure it would be­come the biggest draw of all the Worlds. Call­ing it a wa­ter park didn’t do it jus­tice. It was al­most like an in­land sea, or some­thing, with those spe­cial boats that pro­pelled you be­tween the in­di­vid­ual rides and the half-​sunken city. But the best touch was the ac­tu­al en­trance to the World. Even in an un­fin­ished state it was out­stand­ing, out­stand­ing, un­doubt­ed­ly the clever­est por­tal in Utopia. And he, Nor­man Pep­per, had seen it be­fore any­body. Wait un­til his kids heard about this—they’d die. He felt a se­cret smug­ness, as if he’d been made privy to state se­crets. He chuck­led soft­ly to him­self.

And this lounge was just the ic­ing on the cake. Free food and drink, videos of all the Nightin­gale shows, show­ers, pool ta­bles, a small li­brary, pri­vate “break­out” rooms with tele­vi­sions and phones. Best of all, no­body seemed to use it. The place was dead. It was prob­ably the name, Pep­per guessed. “Ex­ter­nal Spe­cial­ists’ Lounge” con­jured up bus-​sta­tion im­ages: plas­tic chairs, year-​old mag­azines, in­stant cof­fee in Sty­ro­foam cups. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth, but what else could ex­plain why it was so de­sert­ed? There was on­ly one oth­er per­son in the lounge, and he’d just come in about five min­utes ago. Maybe the oth­er vis­it­ing spe­cial­ists were all out, tak­ing in the Park. But Pep­per didn’t want to rush that. He was sched­uled to vis­it Gaslight at six, to check on the prob­lems with the night-​bloomers. To­mor­row, more meet­ings, fi­nal­iz­ing the de­sign and in­stal­la­tion sched­ule. And then on Wednes­day, he’d do the Park. He’d do it right: nine to nine, soup to nuts, Camelot to Cal­lis­to. He sighed with sat­is­fac­tion and laid the pa­per aside to fill his glass with the dregs from his Dr Pep­per can.

Ev­er since child­hood, Pep­per had been teased about his choice of soft drink. He couldn’t help it; he just had a weak­ness for the stuff. No amount of teas­ing had ev­er changed his mind. Nowa­days, he liked to tell peo­ple that the Doc­tor had been his great-​great-​grand­fa­ther. Just a joke, of course. But, my, the mileage he got out of it. He took a huge swal­low and picked up the pa­per again, keep­ing the glass in his right hand as he did so. Now, this was liv­ing.

As he turned over the pages, he got a glimpse of the lounge’s oth­er oc­cu­pant. The guy was dressed in an out­landish get­up: In­ver­ness cape, tight wool suit with skin­ny lapels and lots of but­tons. One hand held a tall silk hat, the oth­er the brass head of a long walk­ing stick. The man had been wan­der­ing the lounge, peer­ing in here, glanc­ing around there. Now he ap­proached Pep­per.

“Very qui­et,” the man ob­served.

“Like the grave. You’re the on­ly one I’ve seen come in.”

The man nod­ded at this. “Been here a while, then?”

“Sure have,” Pep­per said. And what of it? he thought to him­self. He didn’t like the man’s tone. Af­ter all, he was an ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist, right? He had ev­ery right to be here. Which was more than he could say for this guy. In that get­up, ob­vi­ous­ly a cast mem­ber. What was he do­ing in the lounge? Snag­ging the free food, prob­ably.

Now the man was scan­ning the ceil­ing with his eyes. They were al­mond eyes, set in­to a wide, al­most heart-​shaped face.

With a care­ful, al­most del­icate mo­tion, the man placed his hat on a near­by ta­ble, then turned de­lib­er­ate­ly to­ward Pep­per. He was hold­ing the pol­ished wood­en stick in his right hand now, tap­ping its over­size brass head in­to his palm. Pep­per watched the sharp bright fer­rule wink­ing in the flu­ores­cent light. He low­ered the news­pa­per.

“You’re a dif­fi­cult man to track down, Mr. Warne,” the man said as he walked to­ward Pep­per. On­ly for some rea­son he didn’t stop in time. He kept right on walk­ing un­til his shins pressed against Pep­per’s knees.

Pep­per had be­come so lulled by the tran­quil, friend­ly at­mo­sphere of Utopia that, for a mo­ment, he felt mere­ly cu­ri­ous. Then re­al­ity set in, and he shrank back in­to the leather folds of the couch. His fin­gers went slack and the glass dropped, ice cubes and so­da spread­ing across the newsprint. What was this about? The man was vi­olat­ing his per­son­al space. More than that: his voice—what was that ac­cent? French? Is­raeli?—was clear­ly men­ac­ing. Pep­per had be­come so alarmed, so quick­ly, that it took a mo­ment for the man’s last words to sink in.

“Warne?” Pep­per bab­bled. He felt the cold so­da crawl­ing in around the seat of his pants, soak­ing the small of his back. “I’m not Warne. That’s not my name.”

The man took a step back. He low­ered the heavy cane to one side, wait­ing.

“Oh, no?”

“No. But wait, wait! I re­mem­ber now. Warne, sure. He was the guy on the mono­rail with me this morn­ing. I’m not Warne. I’m Pep­per. Nor­man Pep­per.”

The man’s eyes swiveled from Pep­per’s face to the so­da can.

“Of course you are,” he said with a smile. Then he came even clos­er.

 

2:55 P.M.

FROM HIS UN­COM­FORT­ABLE perch at Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio’s con­sole, Warne watched the man named Poole un­lock the lab­ora­to­ry door, open it cau­tious­ly, peer out in­to the cor­ri­dor, then close and lock it again. In his tweed cap, cor­duroy jack­et, and turtle­neck, he looked like a tourist play­ing at se­cret agent. It was not a re­as­sur­ing im­age.

“You know, I get ner­vous just watch­ing you,” Warne said.

Poole glanced over and showed his teeth, startling­ly white against the tan. “Good,” he replied. “Ner­vous is good. Keeps your peck­er at the ready.” He eased away from the door, then be­gan a slow turn around the of­fice, glanc­ing at the walls and ceil­ing tiles. Cir­cuit com­plete, he came over to stand be­hind Warne, arms fold­ed.

Warne shook his head. Hav­ing a body­guard seemed lu­di­crous. Okay: so per­haps the bad guys, who­ev­er they were, had learned of his pres­ence. But could they re­al­ly con­sid­er him much of a threat? Sure­ly, they’d be more wor­ried about se­cu­ri­ty. And who was this Poole, ex­act­ly? His own feel­ing of un­re­al­ity seemed to in­crease. There had just been too many sur­pris­es, too many trau­mas, over the last few hours.

“Shouldn’t you be stand­ing over there, be­tween me and the door?” Warne asked. “I mean, so you can take the bul­let for me, and ev­ery­thing?”

“I’d just as soon not take a bul­let on my day off. Just do what­ev­er it is you have to do.”

Warne glanced a mo­ment longer at the im­pas­sive face, then sighed heav­ily. “Do what I have to do,” he said, turn­ing to Ter­ri, seat­ed next to him. “Where to be­gin?”

Ter­ri was silent. She had even­tu­al­ly found him in Med­ical, as he’d been prepar­ing to leave, Poole in tow. When Warne ex­plained what had hap­pened in Wa­ter­dark—as well as what Sarah had told him was go­ing on in the Park—she’d paled vis­ibly. But now, as she re­turned his gaze, her dark Asian eyes were clear and steady. “If you’ve told me ev­ery­thing, it sounds like Sarah gave you two jobs,” she said af­ter a mo­ment. “Fig­ure out which bots have been af­fect­ed. Then learn who’s re­spon­si­ble.”

“Two jobs.” Warne rocked back and forth, star­ing at the ter­mi­nal screen. “And I think they’re con­nect­ed.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“Ev­ery thief—hack­er, in this case—leaves a trail. If we can learn how the bots were hacked, maybe we can use that to trace our way back to who­ev­er did this.”

“Then shouldn’t we talk to Barks­dale? I mean, it’s his de­part­ment that’s be­ing messed with. If any­body has the tools, he would.”

“The bad guys know that, too. They would have tak­en pre­cau­tions.” Warne paused. “The prob­lem is, this is all spec­ula­tion. We don’t have enough in­for­ma­tion.”

“So take the head shot,” Poole in­ter­ject­ed once again.

Warne looked at him in silent query.

“Take the head shot,” Poole re­peat­ed, as if it were ob­vi­ous. “First thing our CO taught us. You’re in a com­bat sit­ua­tion, you’ve got your choice of tar­gets. Which one do you shoot?”

No­body an­swered.

“The one who of­fers a clean head shot,” Poole an­swered his own ques­tion.

“Your CO,” Warne echoed. “So you were in the armed forces?”

“Sure, we were armed.”

Warne looked back at Ter­ri. “If we strip away the homi­ci­dal ve­neer, I think he’s sug­gest­ing we do the most ob­vi­ous thing first.”

“Find the af­fect­ed code.”

“Yeah. If we can pin­point how the Metanet’s been al­tered, maybe we can re­verse the pro­ce­dure, pin­point the af­fect­ed bots.”

“That means putting on our de­tec­tive’s hats.”

Warne nod­ded, sighed.

“De­tec­tive?” Poole echoed.

Warne’s left shoul­der throbbed, and this time he didn’t both­er to look back. Now, here was a body­guard who took an un­usu­al in­ter­est in his client’s do­ings.

“We dig through the sys­tem,” he replied. “Look for crumbs the bad guys left be­hind.”

Ter­ri jerked one thumb to­ward the met­al cart that con­tained pieces from the mis­be­hav­ing robots. “We could start with those,” she said. “Run a di­ag­nos­tic, get a dump of their most re­cent op­er­ations.”

“We could.” Warne shift­ed in his chair, looked at the jum­ble of wires and chips that made up the brain of what, un­til a few hours ago, had been Cal­lis­to’s pre­mier ice cream ven­dor. “You know, I’ve been think­ing about Hard Place.”

“What about him?”

“It just seems strange. Ob­vi­ous­ly, he was re­pro­grammed to go nuts, wreak hav­oc. But why did he go off when he did? It seems pre­ma­ture to me. I mean, this John Doe hadn’t yet made his play.”

Ter­ri thought a mo­ment. “Did you no­tice any­thing un­usu­al right be­fore it hap­pened?”

Warne shook his head. “Hard Place was act­ing just like he had in all the tri­als. He made a root beer float for Geor­gia. Then I gave him a spe­cial or­der that iden­ti­fied me as his cre­ator.”

“A spe­cial or­der?”

“Just a back door I built in. No big deal. A dou­ble pis­ta­chio choco­late sun­dae with whipped cream. When he hears that, a spe­cial pro­cess is ac­ti­vat­ed. He calls me Ke­mo Sabe, makes the spe­cial or­der. But right af­ter giv­ing me the ice cream, he went nuts. Start­ed break­ing up the place. I man­aged to ac­ti­vate the kill switch be­fore he did any re­al dam­age or hurt any­one. Ex­cept me.” He rubbed his wrist rue­ful­ly.

“Hm­mm. A back door.” Ter­ri glanced at him. “You can bet who­ev­er al­tered his code didn’t know about that. Even I didn’t know. Did you con­sid­er that, by ac­ti­vat­ing your back door code, you might al­so have ac­ti­vat­ed the rogue in­struc­tion set? Set him off ear­ly, so to speak?”

Warne looked at her in sur­prise. “No, I didn’t. And I’ll bet that’s what hap­pened. That’s bril­liant think­ing, Ter­ri.”

“Shucks. I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” But she was un­able to con­ceal the faint flush that rose in her cheeks.

“We can ver­ify it lat­er. But Hard Place and the oth­ers are still just in­di­vid­ual bots. I think we’d do bet­ter to in­spect the Metanet it­self.” Warne placed his hands back on the key­board. “In the meet­ing this morn­ing, Barks­dale said the Utopia In­tranet was a hard­ened sys­tem, en­tire­ly iso­lat­ed from the out­side world. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“So what­ev­er tam­per­ing was done, was done from the in­side. That means we can skip over ex­ter­nal hack­er steps like foot­print­ing, enu­mer­ation. We can as­sume he’s al­ready done a priv­ilege es­ca­la­tion. Right?”

Ter­ri nod­ded again.

“So we can move right to the fi­nal steps any hack­er would take. Do you archive di­rec­to­ry list­ings?”

“Ev­ery week.”

“Could you get me the last six months or so, please?”

“Sure thing.” Ter­ri slid off her chair and head­ed to­ward a par­tic­ular­ly high stack of pa­pers on a near­by ta­ble.

Poole had tak­en sev­er­al steps clos­er and was stand­ing be­side Warne, look­ing down at the screen. “What are you do­ing?” he asked.

“Tak­ing the head shot,” Warne replied.

Poole raised his bushy eye­brows.

Warne point­ed at the Metanet ter­mi­nal. “Some­body has com­pro­mised this com­put­er. They’ve used it to send bo­gus pro­gram­ming to the Park’s robots. But Utopia is a high­ly se­cure en­vi­ron­ment: a hack­er, even some­body on the in­side, couldn’t just take a seat and start typ­ing. They’d have to use a Tro­jan of some kind.”

“Wise pre­cau­tion these days. Ribbed, or reg­ular?”

“Not that kind. I mean a Tro­jan horse. It’s soft­ware that hides it­self with­in an­oth­er pro­gram, does its dirty work in se­cret.” Warne shrugged. “Of course, that’s just one sce­nario, but it’s the most like­ly one. So we’re go­ing to look for any signs of tam­per­ing in re­cent months.”

Ter­ri re­turned, a sheaf of yel­low­ing print­outs in one hand. “I thought you’d want hard copy,” she said. “Low-​tech, but more re­li­able.”

“Agreed.” Warne typed a quick se­ries of com­mands at the ter­mi­nal, and a win­dow opened, a de­tail list­ing scrolling with­in it. “Let’s com­pare these old print­outs to the cur­rent state of the Metanet. We’ll start with the most re­cent and work back.”

The two fell silent as they bent over the sheets. Poole watched for a mo­ment, then did an­oth­er cir­cuit of the room. Wingnut, idling be­side Warne, ob­served the man’s move­ments close­ly, rolling back and forth on his over­size wheels. In the back­ground, the ragged voice of Axl Rose strug­gled for suprema­cy over the fran­tic, soar­ing gui­tar lines of Slash.

“I don’t sup­pose I could con­vince you to turn that off,” Warne said, nod­ding at the CD play­er.

“Helps me think.” Ter­ri turned over a sheet. Then she gig­gled.

“What?”

“I was just think­ing. A dou­ble pis­ta­chio choco­late sun­dae with whipped cream. Sounds ab­so­lute­ly hideous.”

“That, com­ing from a wom­an who spreads brown shrimp paste on un-​ripened fruit.” He hes­itat­ed, then looked up from the print­outs. “It’s a fun­ny thing.”

“What is?”

“Here we’ve been talk­ing to each oth­er, ev­ery week, for just about a year. And all this time I thought, with a name like Boni­fa­cio, that you were Ital­ian.”

“I see. You had fan­tasies of Sophia Loren, bend­ing over the Metanet ter­mi­nal in a low-​cut blouse. In­stead, you’ve got lit­tle old me, the friend­ly Pa­cif­ic Is­lander. Dis­ap­point­ed?”

“No.” Warne shook his head. “Not in the least.”

Maybe it was some­thing in the heart­felt tone of his voice. But the broad smile this com­ment elicit­ed had none of the imp­ish irony of Ter­ri’s usu­al grins.

“Sheesh,” Poole said. He walked to the door and un­locked it. “I’m go­ing to check the cor­ri­dor,” he said. “Don’t let any­body in but me.”

Warne watched as the door shut be­hind him. Ter­ri locked the door, then re­turned to her chair. Their eyes met again.

“You think he’s some kind of plant?” she asked, her smile fad­ing.

“I don’t know. Any­thing’s pos­si­ble. Ac­cord­ing to Sarah, you’re a sus­pect, too.”

“Fig­ures.” Ter­ri rolled her eyes.

“But in my gut, I just can’t see Poole as one of the bad guys.”

“I know what you mean. Be­sides, what ter­ror­ist would dress like that?”

Warne re­turned to his print­out. Af­ter a minute he sighed, let it fall to the desk.

“What is it?” Ter­ri asked, putting her hand light­ly on his shoul­der.

“Have you ev­er wor­ried about some­thing you knew was crazy, on­ly to have it come true, af­ter all? Like just now. I knew that search­ing for Geor­gia was nuts. The chances of any­thing hap­pen­ing to her were mi­nus­cule. But then some­thing did. And now I can’t shake this feel­ing of dread.” He stopped. “Does that make sense?”

Ter­ri looked at him, dark eyes hold­ing his. Then she let her hand slip from his shoul­der, dropped her gaze to the print­outs. For a mo­ment, she stared at them in si­lence.

“When I was grow­ing up in the Philip­pines,” she be­gan, “my par­ents put me in a con­vent school. It was aw­ful, like some­thing out of Oliv­er Twist. I was the youngest, and the small­est, and I got picked on a lot. I don’t like be­ing bul­lied, so I al­ways fought back. But it seemed like I was the one who al­ways got pun­ished. The nuns used pad­dles. Some­times I couldn’t sit down for hours.” She shook her head at the mem­ory. “I could deal with that, though. What I couldn’t deal with was con­fes­sion. I hat­ed it. I hat­ed that lit­tle, dark space. I was sure that one day I was go­ing to get locked in, for­got­ten about. I don’t know why it both­ered me so much. I just knew if that ev­er hap­pened, I’d die. It scared me so much that, one day, I re­fused to go. It was un­heard-​of. As pun­ish­ment, the moth­er su­pe­ri­or locked me in a broom clos­et. A tiny room, with no lights.”

Al­though Ter­ri was still star­ing down at the print­out, Warne could see she had gone rigid at the mem­ory. “What hap­pened?” he asked.

“I col­lapsed. I guess I faint­ed. I don’t re­mem­ber any­thing, don’t even know how long I was there. I woke up in the con­vent in­fir­mary.” She shud­dered. “I was on­ly nine, but I was con­vinced I had died in that clos­et. The next day, I ran away. I’ve been claus­tro­pho­bic ev­er since. Can’t even go on the Park’s dark rides.”

At last, she looked up at him. “So I guess what I’m say­ing is, I do know how you feel. Even your cra­zi­est fears can come true some­times.”

The si­lence that fol­lowed was bro­ken by Poole’s whis­per at the door. Ter­ri rose, un­locked it. “Let’s get back to it,” she said as she re­turned.

It was a te­dious busi­ness: pick a file on the screen, note its date and size, then com­pare the same file to the old hard-​copy dumps, look­ing for any dis­crep­an­cies, any change in file size or date ac­cessed, that would sig­nal ex­ter­nal tam­per­ing. Warne fin­ished one list­ing, then an­oth­er and an­oth­er. It’s like look­ing for a nee­dle in a vir­tu­al haystack. I’ll…

Sud­den­ly, he stopped. “That’s odd,” he said, point­ing at a print­out. “Take a look.”

He was in­di­cat­ing a file named /bin/spool/upd_disply.ex­ec.

“I don’t rec­og­nize it,” Ter­ri said. “What’s it do?”

“Hmm. It’s a rou­tine to re­fresh the dis­play be­fore the morn­ing down­link to the bots.”

“Sounds pret­ty be­nign.”

“You aren’t think­ing like a hack­er. Are you go­ing to hide your code in a file named worm_in­fect_re­for­mat, or in some­thing bor­ing and in­signif­icant?” He jabbed at the pa­per. “The im­por­tant thing is that this is a main­te­nance file, part of the core rou­tines. There’s no rea­son for it to be al­tered. But look at the file size.”

Ter­ri looked clos­er. “Sev­en­ty-​nine thou­sand bytes.”

“But look at the same file as it ex­ists now on the Metanet.” He point­ed to­ward the list­ing on the com­put­er screen.

Ter­ri whis­tled. “Two hun­dred and thir­ty-​one thou­sand bytes.”

But Warne was al­ready flip­ping through the oth­er print­outs. “Look, the file size stays con­sis­tent all the way up to…” He turned over an­oth­er page. “Up to a month ago.”

They looked at each oth­er.

“What?” Poole asked.

Quick­ly, Warne took the print­out and ran his fin­ger down the list­ing, com­par­ing the files as they had ex­ist­ed a month be­fore to the way they ex­ist­ed now, on the screen. Ex­cept for a smat­ter­ing of tem­po­rary files, noth­ing else had changed.

“That’s it,” he mur­mured.

“Any chance we’re wrong?”

“Nope.”

“It’s a bi­na­ry file.”

“Tell me about it.”

Ter­ri rolled her eyes.

“What?” Poole asked again.

Warne dropped the print­outs, rubbed his face with his hands. “Some­body’s mod­ified one of our core rou­tines. It’s three times as big as it should be. It’s been turned in­to a ‘rogue ex­ecutable.’ Each time the Metanet runs, this file is do­ing things we don’t know about. And if we’re to have any hope of find­ing out what, we have to re­verse-​en­gi­neer it.”

“Re­verse what?”

“Dis­as­sem­ble. Take it apart at the ma­chine-​in­struc­tion lev­el, try to fig­ure out what it does. Not a fun thing to do.”

“And it takes time,” Ter­ri added.

“But I’ll bet this is what caused the bots to go na­tive. If we can fig­ure out what it does, maybe we can re­verse the tam­per­ing it’s done.” Warne pushed away from the ter­mi­nal. “Any rea­son not to pro­ceed?”

“On­ly the ob­vi­ous one,” Poole said.

They both turned to look at him.

“Go on,” Warne said. “Go on, drop the oth­er shoe.”

“The per­pe­tra­tors said no in­ter­fer­ence, right? Well, this sure sounds like in­ter­fer­ence to me. They’re not go­ing to be too hap­py.”

Warne held the man’s placid gaze for a mo­ment. Then he turned to Ter­ri. She was look­ing back at him: a search­ing, in­quir­ing look.

“On­ly if they find out about it,” Warne said. “And they won’t. Not un­less they’re even bet­ter coders than they are ter­ror­ists. Now, let’s get to work.”

And he turned back to the key­board.

 

3:12 P.M.

AL­MOST AS QUICK­LY as it had filled with clam­or, the Cen­tral Med­ical Fa­cil­ity fell silent once again. Ex­cept for a few small groups, hud­dled around cur­tained re­cov­ery bays, most of the guests had de­part­ed. While one or two had marched res­olute­ly to­ward De­barka­tion, threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion, a re­mark­able num­ber had seized up­on the free meal vouch­ers and casi­no chips and head­ed back in­to the Park.

Sarah Boatwright watched them leave with mixed feel­ings. Much as she hat­ed law­suits—an aver­sion shared by all Utopia cast and crew—she wished that more had de­cid­ed to head for the mono­rail. Watch­ing them all stream back up in­to the var­ious Worlds was al­most like watch­ing wound­ed sol­diers, wan­der­ing un­wit­ting­ly back in­to bat­tle.

She walked down the bright­ly lit cen­tral cor­ri­dor of Re­cov­ery, nod­ding at var­ious nurs­es as she passed. She stopped to con­fer with a se­cu­ri­ty tech. And then she con­tin­ued on, slip­ping at last be­tween the cur­tains of Geor­gia Warne’s bay. Dr. Finch had said the girl would be fine, but that the seda­tive would keep her asleep at least an­oth­er hour.

Sarah set­tled in­to a seat by the foot of the bed, fix­ing her gaze on the still form be­neath the cov­ers. Geor­gia was sleep­ing nat­ural­ly, hair spilled across her fore­head, lips part­ed slight­ly, the or­deal she had gone through on the Wa­ter­dark ride con­signed tem­porar­ily to obliv­ion.

Sarah sat, lis­ten­ing to the dis­tant mur­mur of voic­es at the nurs­es’ sta­tion. There were many things she could be do­ing: up­dat­ing Chuck Emory in New York; touch­ing base with the line man­agers, keep­ing up the pre­tense of busi­ness as usu­al. And yet, some­how, they seemed point­less. It was up to John Doe now. Ev­ery­thing was up to John Doe. She leaned back in the chair, will­ing her mus­cles to re­lax, feel­ing lit­tle sur­prise when they re­fused.

Her eyes turned back to Geor­gia, to the fresh bruise on her cheek, to the way the slen­der hands clutched the cot­ton blan­ket. Fun­ny, that her own feet should have tak­en her back to the bed­side of the first ma­jor fail­ure in her life.

When she’d moved in with An­drew Warne, she had been de­ter­mined to make Geor­gia like her, ac­cept her. Sarah knew that any prob­lem could be solved by a suf­fi­cient ef­fort of will. And yet it seemed the hard­er she tried, the more Geor­gia re­sist­ed.

Of course, if she was hon­est with her­self, she knew Geor­gia wasn’t on­ly to blame. It was true Sarah had ap­peared on the scene when Char­lotte Warne’s death was still fresh in the girl’s mind, and Geor­gia had been very pos­ses­sive of her fa­ther. But per­haps the girl had al­so sensed, with some child­ish in­stinct, that Sarah could nev­er have been a full-​time moth­er. Sarah her­self now un­der­stood that such a com­mit­ment would have been im­pos­si­ble. Her ca­reer was sim­ply too im­por­tant. Af­ter all, hadn’t she tak­en the Utopia job with­out a mo­ment’s hes­ita­tion? She could still re­mem­ber the look on An­drew’s face when she’d told him: he was so sure she’d be com­ing along to Chapel Hill, help him get his new tech­nol­ogy ven­ture off the ground. But the chance to run a place like Utopia was the dream of a life­time. Noth­ing could have kept her from tak­ing the job.

To run a place like Utopia…

She stirred rest­less­ly in her chair. Or­der was crit­ical to Sarah; she thrived on it. Utopia was the ul­ti­mate or­dered sys­tem; a com­plex, per­fect­ly knit closed sys­tem. And John Doe was the ran­dom el­ement that had in­tro­duced dis­or­der, even chaos.

She leaned for­ward, rest­ed her chin on her hands. “What should I do, Geor­gia?” she asked. “For the first time, it seems I don’t know what to do.”

Her on­ly re­ply was a stir­ring from the bed, a mut­tered sigh.

Sud­den­ly, Sarah found her­self wish­ing Fred Barks­dale were there. Nor­mal­ly, she would have re­ject­ed such an emo­tion as be­ing sen­ti­men­tal or weak. Not now. Fred­dy would know just the thing to say to help her through this.

When she first ar­rived at Utopia, ro­mance was the fur­thest thing from her mind. And the last per­son she could ev­er imag­ine falling for was Fred Barks­dale. She had al­ways gone out with men like Warne: charis­mat­ic in an as­trin­gent sort of way, a lit­tle ar­ro­gant, un­afraid to hang their bril­liance out for all to see. Fred­dy was just the op­po­site. Oh, there was no deny­ing his bril­liance—the way he had tak­en on the in­cred­ible IT chal­lenges of a place like Utopia, over­seen the con­struc­tion of its dig­ital in­fras­truc­ture, was a re­mark­able achieve­ment. But he was just too per­fect: his aris­to­crat­ic British man­ners, his movie-​star looks, his lit­er­ary eru­di­tion, were al­most a cliché of the ide­al man.

But then, one evening two months ago, they’d met, ac­ci­den­tal­ly, at a roulette ta­ble in the Gaslight casi­no. That had been short­ly be­fore the New York of­fice de­cid­ed man­age­ment at­ten­dance at Utopia’s gam­bling palaces should be dis­cour­aged. Barks­dale had just lost a lot more mon­ey than he’d in­tend­ed to, but had nev­er­the­less charmed her with some bons mots from Fal­staff on the evils of gam­bling. They’d end­ed up hav­ing a drink in near­by Mo­ri­ar­ty’s. The fol­low­ing week, din­ner at the best French restau­rant in Ve­gas. And Fred had been a rev­ela­tion. He’d spent twen­ty min­utes dis­cussing the wine list with the som­me­li­er. But it had not been mere pos­tur­ing or af­fec­ta­tion; he was gen­uine­ly in­ter­est­ed, and clear­ly knew a lot more about the châteaux of Saint-​Emil­ion than the wine stew­ard did. He’d passed much of the meal an­swer­ing Sarah’s ques­tions about Bor­deaux, ex­plain­ing grands crus and ap­pel­la­tions.

Sarah was all too fa­mil­iar with men who felt they need­ed to come on as strong as she was, act ma­cho, pos­ture like board­room com­man­dos. She hadn’t re­al­ized how much she sim­ply want­ed to be treat­ed like a wom­an: to be tak­en to an el­egant din­ner, told she was pret­ty, ad­mired for her mind, flirt­ed with, schooled in the good life, maybe put on a pedestal now and then. Was it re­al­ly on­ly three weeks ago that she had awak­ened one sun­ny Sat­ur­day morn­ing to re­al­ize her feel­ings for Fred Barks­dale were much stronger than she’d ev­er ex­pect­ed?

She sighed, sat up in the chair. Utopia and Fred­dy were now the two most im­por­tant things in her life. The on­ly things, in fact. She had to pro­tect them, at all costs.

Sarah stood up, walked to the head of the bed, com­pos­ing her­self. She should leave Med­ical briefly, show her face in a few choice spots. Then she’d lo­cate Bob Al­loc­co, talk dam­age con­trol…

There was a low rap­ping on the wall out­side the re­cov­ery bay. The cur­tain part­ed and Fred Barks­dale’s face ap­peared. His wa­tery blue eyes trav­eled along the bed, then met hers.

“Sarah!” he said. Then—dart­ing his eyes to­ward the sleep­ing form—he winced slight­ly and low­ered his voice. “Hul­lo. They told me you might be here.”

For a mo­ment, Sarah found speech dif­fi­cult. The sur­prise of his pres­ence, af­ter what had just passed through her mind, brought an un­ex­pect­ed swell of emo­tion. She stepped to­ward him.

“Fred,” she said. “Oh, Fred­dy. I feel bro­ken up in­side.”

He took her hands. “Why? What is it?”

“I’ve made ter­ri­ble mis­takes. I let my anger at John Doe cloud my judg­ment. Chris Green, what hap­pened at Wa­ter­dark—it’s my fault.”

“How can you say that, Sarah? John Doe’s the re­spon­si­ble par­ty here. Blame him, not your­self. Be­sides, the plan was Al­loc­co’s. You just ap­proved it.”

“Which makes me re­spon­si­ble.” She shook her head, re­fus­ing to be con­soled. “Re­mem­ber what you said out­side Galac­tic Voy­age? You said our plan was dan­ger­ous. Ir­re­spon­si­ble. That our first re­spon­si­bil­ity was to our guests. In my rush to take on John Doe, I for­got that.”

Barks­dale said noth­ing.

“I keep think­ing about the way he came in­to my of­fice, talked to me the way he did. I can’t ex­plain it. It was as if he knew me, some­how; knew what I want­ed to hear, knew what was im­por­tant to me. Me, per­son­al­ly. I know it sounds odd, but he talked like all he want­ed was the best for me—all the while slip­ping in the knife. And the odd­est thing was, I want­ed to be­lieve him.” She sighed. “Christ, who is this guy? And why did he pick us to tor­ment?”

Barks­dale did not an­swer. He looked strick­en.

“Fred­dy?” She was shocked to see how deeply he felt her dis­tress.

His pale eyes re­turned slow­ly to hers.

“Doesn’t Shake­speare have some­thing ap­pro­pri­ate to say, right about now?” she asked, forc­ing a smile. “Some­thing con­sol­ing, up­lift­ing?”

For a mo­ment longer, Barks­dale re­mained silent. Then he roused him­self. “Some­thing from, say, The Two Ter­ror­ists of Verona?” He re­turned her smile, wan­ly. “I can’t think of any­thing suit­able, ac­tu­al­ly. Save per­haps a ti­tle: All’s Well That Ends Well.”

He seemed to be in the grip of some pro­found in­ner tur­moil. “Sarah,” he added sud­den­ly. “What if we were to get away from here? Just leave this all be­hind?”

She looked back at him. “We will. When this is all over, you and I, we’ll go away. Some­place where there aren’t any tele­phones, where no­body wears shoes. We’ll pick a small spot of beach and claim it for our own. A week, maybe two. Okay?”

“No,” he be­gan. “That’s not what I meant. I—” Then he stopped. “Do you mean it, Sarah?”

“Of course.”

“No mat­ter what hap­pens?”

See­ing his dis­tress some­how re­stored her own strength. “Noth­ing’s go­ing to hap­pen. We’ll make it through this. I promise.”

“I bloody hell hope you’re right,” he said in a voice so low she bare­ly heard.

The mo­ment passed. Her eyes dropped to the bed.

“Warne’s daugh­ter, right?” Barks­dale said, fol­low­ing her gaze. “How is she?”

“Bruised, but oth­er­wise fine.”

He nod­ded. Now she freed one of her hands, stroked his face, leaned for­ward to kiss him.

“One way or the oth­er,” she said, “this will all be over soon. You’d bet­ter get ready.”

“Of course,” he said. He held her gaze a mo­ment, then turned to­ward the cur­tain.

“Re­mem­ber my promise.”

He hes­itat­ed. Then he nod­ded with­out turn­ing and slipped out of the bay.

She lis­tened as his foot­steps fad­ed in­to the back­ground hum. Then she straight­ened the cov­ers around Geor­gia, ca­ressed the girl’s fore­head, and turned to leave her­self. As she did, the cur­tain part­ed and a nurse stuck in her head.

“Ms. Boatwright,” she said. “Mr. Al­loc­co is on the phone at the ad­mit­ting desk. He says it’s im­por­tant.”

“Very well.” But as she be­gan to fol­low the nurse, the ra­dio in her pock­et buzzed soft­ly.

She stopped im­me­di­ate­ly, still in­side the re­cov­ery bay. Then she reached for the ra­dio, snapped it on.

“Sarah Boatwright.”

“Sarah.” John Doe’s voice was slow, al­most hon­eyed, af­fa­ble once again.

“Yes.”

“I hope you didn’t find the les­son too painful.”

“Some would dis­agree.”

“It was ac­tu­al­ly in­tend­ed to be much harsh­er than it was. Con­sid­er it a lucky break—in a man­ner of speak­ing.” A dry laugh. “How­ev­er, there will be no such luck next time.”

Sarah re­mained silent.

“I don’t mean that as a threat. I just want you to be ful­ly aware of the con­se­quences of any more ir­re­spon­si­ble ac­tions.”

Still Sarah re­mained qui­et, lis­ten­ing.

“You wouldn’t care to atone for your be­tray­al, would you?” John Doe asked mild­ly.

“What do you mean?”

“To make up for all the trou­ble your lit­tle wel­com­ing com­mit­tee caused. It would go a long way to­ward mend­ing fences be­tween us. You wouldn’t, say, like to give me An­drew Warne? He’s proven very elu­sive.”

Sarah’s grip tight­ened on the ra­dio, but she did not re­ply.

“I didn’t think so. You’re a charm­ing wom­an, Sarah Boatwright, but I weary of this dance. You will be giv­en one more chance to turn over the Cru­cible.”

“Go on.”

“The hand­off will take place in the Ho­lo Mir­rors, at pre­cise­ly four o’clock.”

She looked at her watch: 3:15.

“You will see to it that the place is emp­tied of all guests, cast, and crew mem­bers be­gin­ning at ten min­utes to four. Are you with me so far?”

“I am.”

“And Sarah? I’ve been think­ing. That nasty bit of busi­ness in Galac­tic Voy­age was your own idea, wasn’t it?”

Sarah did not re­ply.

“So this time, you’ll de­liv­er the disc per­son­al­ly. It seems the most pru­dent course of ac­tion. Giv­en the rap­port be­tween us, I mean.”

Si­lence.

“You un­der­stand, Sarah?”

“I un­der­stand.”

“En­ter the Hall as a guest nor­mal­ly would. I’ll be wait­ing in­side. Just your­self, now. I’m sure I don’t need to warn you about any more un­want­ed vis­itors.”

Sarah wait­ed, the hard un­fa­mil­iar line of the ra­dio against her cheek.

“I don’t need to warn you, do I?”

“No.”

“I knew I wouldn’t. But let me leave you with this part­ing thought. In The Soul of Man Un­der So­cial­ism, Os­car Wilde said any work of art cre­at­ed in hope of prof­it is un­healthy. In part, I dis­agree. You see, I’ve made Utopia my work of art. It is my in­ten­tion to prof­it, and prof­it hand­some­ly. But it will be un­healthy for any who stand in my way. Some­times art can be ter­ri­ble in its beau­ty, Sarah. Please re­mem­ber that.”

Sarah forced her­self to take a breath.

“I look for­ward to see­ing you again.”

 

3:15 P.M.

AS THE AF­TER­NOON length­ened, and the un­re­lieved blue hang­ing over the Neva­da desert be­gan to pale with the promise of ap­proach­ing evening, the es­ti­mat­ed crowd of 66,000 strolling the boule­vards of Utopia reached what Park psy­chol­ogists termed the “ma­ture” stage. The ini­tial peak of ex­cite­ment had crest­ed. The pace slowed slight­ly as par­ents—feet a lit­tle sore and limbs a lit­tle weary—sought tem­po­rary refuge in restau­rants, live per­for­mances, or shows like The En­chant­ed Prince, where they could re­lax in com­fort­able seats. A small per­cent­age of vis­itors, un­will­ing to face the park­ing lot de­lays at clos­ing, made an ear­ly start for the Nexus and the mono­rail, where they found a few more out­go­ing trains than usu­al. The vast ma­jor­ity, how­ev­er, stayed on, pre­fer­ring to re­turn yet again to a beloved ride, or per­haps tour a World not yet vis­it­ed, mark­ing time un­til 8:30. That was when Utopia’s biggest spec­ta­cle be­gan: four si­mul­ta­ne­ous in­door fire­works dis­plays, com­put­er-​syn­chro­nized and launched from spots with­in each of the Worlds, burst­ing with awe-​in­spir­ing bril­liance be­neath the dark canopy of the dome. This was fol­lowed by an even more mas­sive out­door dis­play, ris­ing high above the dome: a farewell gift to the guests as they left the Park and point­ed their cars to­ward Ve­gas or Reno.

One place where the midafter­noon slump was not ap­par­ent was in the queues out­side Utopia’s roller coast­ers and free-​falls. At main­line at­trac­tions like the Lin­ear In­duc­tion–pow­ered Event Hori­zon and Drag­on­spire, thick crowds con­tin­ued to mill, and the at­mo­sphere of ex­cite­ment and ap­pre­hen­sive glee was as heav­ily charged as ev­er.

This was es­pe­cial­ly true at the en­trance to Board­walk’s most no­to­ri­ous ride, the Scream Ma­chine. The Ma­chine, as it was uni­ver­sal­ly known, was a re-​cre­ation of the kind of roller coast­er made fa­mous on Coney Is­land in the 1920s. It looked like the con­sum­mate mid­way rel­ic: a vast, sprawl­ing for­est of spars and tim­bers, care­ful­ly dis­tressed by the Park’s il­lu­sion en­gi­neers to a dan­ger­ous­ly weath­ered ap­pear­ance. Just the sight of its near-​ver­ti­cal drops and cru­el corkscrew twists con­vinced many would-​be rid­ers to seek tamer di­ver­sions.

The Ma­chine, like all roller coast­ers, was more about psy­chol­ogy than en­gi­neer­ing. It was ac­tu­al­ly a tubu­lar steel ride, clev­er­ly dis­guised to look like a tra­di­tion­al wood­en coast­er. The met­al con­struc­tion al­lowed for sharp­er banks, tighter loops, and more “air time”—mo­ments of neg­ative grav­ity when rid­ers were ac­tu­al­ly lift­ed out of their seats. The com­plex tim­bered shell, on the oth­er hand, en­hanced the “pick­et fence” ef­fect of a wood­en coast­er: spars and beams, rush­ing past on­ly a few feet from rid­ers, made the fifty-​mile-​per-​hour speed seem sev­er­al times greater. And the ride’s de­sign­ers in­ten­tion­al­ly height­ened the sense of men­ace by plac­ing some very un-​Utopia warn­ings about the dan­ger­ous ef­fects of high-​G turns at its en­trance, in­stalling a full-​time nurse at the un­load­ing ramp. Small won­der that “I Sur­vived the Ma­chine” T-​shirts, avail­able on­ly in Board­walk, were one of the Park’s hottest-​sell­ing con­ces­sion items.

Er­ic Nightin­gale had man­dat­ed that the Scream Ma­chine boast the tallest first drop—290 feet—of any coast­er west of the Mis­sis­sip­pi. This proved a chal­lenge: at such height, the mon­umen­tal lift hill would have risen close enough to the dome to de­stroy the ar­ti­fi­cial per­spec­tive. En­gi­neers solved this prob­lem by con­struct­ing the ride so that the bot­tom of the first drop was be­low “street lev­el.” A por­tion of A and B Lev­els un­der­neath Board­walk was carved out and the dou­ble tracks of the Ma­chine fit­ted in­to place. Af­ter climb­ing the ini­tial hill, rid­ers on the Scream Ma­chine would plunge down a near­ly ver­ti­cal drop, its bot­tom sec­tion a tun­nel of com­plete dark­ness. The track would then rise abrupt­ly, bring­ing the rid­ers—gri­mac­ing un­der a “pull­out” of 3 Gs—back in­to the light and up over Board­walk again, nev­er re­al­iz­ing that, for a few sec­onds, they had ac­tu­al­ly been trav­el­ing be­neath the Park.

This so­lu­tion, how­ev­er, cre­at­ed a fresh prob­lem. The roar of the cars, pass­ing by at one-​minute in­ter­vals, was so in­tense that no Utopia em­ploy­ee work­ing in the Un­der­ground want­ed to be any­where near the ar­eas of A and B Lev­els clos­est to the tracks.

Once again, en­gi­neers found a so­lu­tion.

Dur­ing the Park’s con­struc­tion, the un­der­ground lev­els were awash in a sea of wires: the Tour Guide’s Man­ual stat­ed the back­stage ar­eas con­tained more wiring than two Pen­tagons or the town of Spring­field, Illi­nois. De­sign­ers de­cid­ed to use the no-​man’s-​land around the dip in the tracks as a hub for Utopia’s in­ter­nal wiring. They en­cased the dip in two lay­ers of sound­proof walls. Be­tween these sound­proof walls—in a nar­row com­part­ment forty feet high—lay Utopia’s cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. End­less rivers of ca­bling—coax, cat-5, light pipe, dig­ital—climbed the walls, punc­tu­at­ed by fiber-​op­tic cou­plings and elec­tri­cal junc­tions. The en­tire Hub was au­tonomous, re­quir­ing no main­te­nance be­yond month­ly in­spec­tions. As a re­sult, it was a “lights out” area, un­oc­cu­pied save for a lone san­ita­tion bot.

To­day, how­ev­er, the san­ita­tion bot had com­pa­ny.

In one cor­ner of the rout­ing Hub, a man sat on a fold­ing camp chair. He was dressed in the blue jump­suit of a Utopia elec­tri­cian, and his back rest­ed against an over­size util­ity case, strapped to a red hand­cart. With­in the open case sat a pow­er­ful mini­com­put­er. Di­ag­nos­tic lights on its front pan­el glowed like fiery pin­points in the dim light of the Hub. A dozen ca­bles of var­ious thick­ness­es led from the com­put­er to the near­by wall, where they were fixed by al­li­ga­tor clips and dig­ital cou­plers to trunk lines and da­ta con­duits. A key­board was on the man’s lap, and two small flat pan­el dis­plays were propped on the floor in front of him. As he typed, his eyes dart­ed from one screen to the oth­er. Be­neath the camp chair was a pro­fu­sion of lit­ter: crum­pled nap­kins, stained with peanut but­ter and jel­ly; emp­ty Slim Jim wrap­pers; a can of Cher­ry Coke, drained and dent­ed.

Be­hind the man, the in­ner wall of the Hub be­gan to vi­brate slight­ly. A sec­ond lat­er, a ter­rif­ic roar came from be­yond as the cars of the Scream Ma­chine hur­tled down, bot­tomed out in the light­less cube, then rose again up in­to the light and air of Board­walk. The man paid no at­ten­tion, typ­ing on as the din re­ced­ed, then van­ished. The pair of mil­itary grade noise-​sup­press­ing head­phones he wore can­celed out any sound over fifty deci­bels.

Now the typ­ing slowed, then ceased. The man pushed him­self for­ward, mas­saged his low­er back. Then he stretched out his legs, rub­bing first the left, then the right, forc­ing the cir­cu­la­tion to re­turn. He had been sit­ting here—mon­itor­ing Utopia’s video feeds, scram­bling se­lect­ed cam­era views, tap­ping In­tranet band­width—since ear­ly morn­ing. At last, his work was al­most done.

He glanced up, rolling his head from side to side, work­ing the kinks out of his neck. His eyes strayed to the two mon­itor­ing cam­eras, placed high on op­pos­ing walls. Even here, in the ten­ant­less Hub, se­cu­ri­ty was ev­er-​present. But the man’s glance was in­dif­fer­ent rather than anx­ious: he him­self had put both cam­eras in­to loop­ing rou­tines, patched in from week-​old video logs. To the surveil­lance spe­cial­ists in the Hive, these cam­eras showed a space that was shad­owy, ut­ter­ly emp­ty.

The man was young, no old­er than twen­ty-​five. And yet, even in the dim light, the dark nico­tine stains on his fin­ger­tips were clear­ly vis­ible. Smok­ing would have meant in­stant de­tec­tion, so the man chewed nico­tine-​laced gum in­stead, swap­ping pieces as a chain-​smok­er swaps cigarettes. Still mas­sag­ing his neck, he fished a spent piece of gum from his mouth and stuck it to a near­by ca­ble port. Sev­er­al dozen wads had al­ready been pressed in­to place be­side it, hard­en­ing in the still air of the Hub.

Lean­ing back against the util­ity case, he picked up the key­board and be­gan to type once more, check­ing the state of the var­ious se­cret pro­cess­es he was run­ning with­in the Utopia net­work. Then he stopped typ­ing and frowned, star­ing at one of the screens.

Ev­ery­thing had gone as planned, with­out a hitch or a hic­cup.

Un­til now.

As a pre­cau­tion, he had in­stalled keystroke mon­itors in a few of the most crit­ical Utopia ter­mi­nals. These mon­itors hid in the back­ground, se­cret­ly col­lect­ing ev­ery­thing typed on the key­board they were watch­ing. Once an hour, each mon­itor sent its cap­tured keystrokes, en­crypt­ed and dis­guised, over the Utopia In­tranet to his ter­mi­nal in the Hub.

So far, all the good lit­tle Utopia em­ploy­ees had been act­ing just like they were sup­posed to. With one ex­cep­tion: the com­put­er that con­trolled the Metanet. That was turn­ing in­to a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

The man scrolled back through the most re­cent keystroke file pil­fered from the Metanet ter­mi­nal. Some­one was us­ing that ter­mi­nal to go over old logs, ex­am­ine rou­tines and in­struc­tion sets. Clear­ly, this was not some ran­dom search: this was a de­lib­er­ate anal­ysis, done by some­body who knew what they were do­ing.

The man glanced over his shoul­der, down the cor­ri­dor of the Hub. It rose up in­to the dark­ness over­head, tall and nar­row as a gi­ant’s chim­ney, its walls cov­ered in a com­plex fil­igree of wires and ca­ble. Slow­ly, thought­ful­ly, he raised one hand to his head, pulling the head­phones away from his ears. He could hear the dis­tant tick of ma­chin­ery, the whir of the san­ita­tion bot’s propul­sion as­sem­bly, rum­bling in some far quad­rant.

Be­hind him, the sound­proof­ing on the in­ner wall be­gan to trem­ble again.

Plac­ing the key­board to one side, he glanced to­ward a ra­dio that stood be­side the mon­itors. It had a large am­ber blink­er fit­ted to its up­per edge, alert­ing him to in­com­ing trans­mis­sions if the head­phones were on. He picked up the ra­dio, punched in the de­scram­bling code, raised it to his lips.

“Crack­er Jack to Prime Fac­tor,” he said. “Crack­er Jack to Prime Fac­tor, do you copy?”

There was a brief hiss. Then the cul­ti­vat­ed voice of John Doe sound­ed over the speak­er, clear de­spite the dig­ital en­cryp­tion. “Crack­er Jack, your sig­nal is five by five. What’s your sta­tus?”

“Ex­cept for the pas­sives, an­oth­er ten min­utes and ev­ery­thing will be com­plete.”

“Then why the re­port?”

“I’ve been go­ing over the keystroke logs of the ter­mi­nals we’re shad­ow­ing. All seem nor­mal ex­cept for the Metanet’s mas­ter com­put­er. Some­body has been spend­ing quite a lot of time on it the last hour, dig­ging around.”

“With any re­sults?”

“Of course not. But who­ev­er it is seems to know his busi­ness.”

“Let me guess. B Lev­el, right?”

“Right.”

“It would ap­pear we missed our tar­get. Very well, I shall ar­range a vis­it. Out.”

The ra­dio fell silent. A mo­ment lat­er, with a fear­some shriek­ing noise, the cars of the Scream Ma­chine hur­tled past the far side of the in­ner wall. The floor of the Hub shook. Crack­er Jack cringed in­vol­un­tar­ily. Then he snapped off the ra­dio, plac­ing it where its am­ber blink­er would be clear­ly vis­ible. As the clat­ter of the coast­er fad­ed and si­lence once again set­tled over the Hub, the man re­placed the head­phones, dragged the key­board back on­to his lap, popped an­oth­er rect­an­gle of gum in­to his mouth, and be­gan to type.

 

3:15 P.M.

WHAT THE HELL is that thing do­ing now?”

It took An­drew Warne sev­er­al sec­onds to re­al­ize the ques­tion was di­rect­ed at him. Un­will­ing­ly, he pulled his gaze away from the mon­itor. Poole—who was sit­ting on a near­by ta­ble, arms propped on two stacks of print­outs—stared back with his usu­al look of mild in­quiry.

“Ex­cuse me?”

“I said, what’s that thing do­ing now?” Poole nod­ded at Wingnut.

The robot was mak­ing its way around the room with un­gain­ly, back-​and-​forth move­ments. It would ap­proach an ob­ject, back away, then ap­proach it again. Now and then it would move its head as­sem­bly for­ward, di­rect­ing a thin spray of col­or­less liq­uid on­to a bench or chair leg.

“He’s mark­ing his ter­ri­to­ry,” Warne said, turn­ing back to the mon­itor.

“What?”

Warne sighed. “It’s his be­hav­ior pro­gram­ming. He’s spent enough time in this place to con­sid­er it part of his world mod­el. He fig­ures he’s like­ly to be here again, so it’s worth the ef­fort to plot out a topo­log­ical map. Now that he’s op­ti­mized his routes through the room, he’s mark­ing them with ul­tra­vi­olet ink. Ac­tu­al­ly, I’m sur­prised the poor thing has any ink left.”

“Well, can you tell him to stop? He’s dis­tract­ing me.”

“Dis­tract­ing you?” Ter­ri asked. “From what?” She was sit­ting be­side Warne, a large print­out bal­anced on her knees.

“From my home­work.”

“Home­work.”

“Yup. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out ex­act­ly how many laws these guys have bro­ken al­ready.”

Ter­ri turned over a page of the print­out.

“So far, I’m up to thir­ty-​nine.”

Ter­ri looked up.

Poole be­gan tick­ing items off on his fin­gers. “First, there’s bur­glary in the third de­gree. Know­ing­ly and un­law­ful­ly en­ter­ing a build­ing or premis­es with in­tent of com­mit­ting a crime. Then there’s crim­inal pos­ses­sion of a dan­ger­ous weapon in the first de­gree. That’s pos­ses­sion of an ex­plo­sive sub­stance, with the un­law­ful in­tent of us­ing said sub­stance against a per­son or prop­er­ty. Next comes crim­inal pos­ses­sion of a weapon in the sec­ond de­gree—”

“I get the pic­ture,” Ter­ri said, rolling her eyes. “What kind of home­work is this?”

“Writ­ten tests for TEA.”

“TEA?”

“Trea­sury en­force­ment agent.”

“Well, it sounds to me like you’d ace it.”

Poole shrugged. “Passed ev­ery time.”

“Passed? As in, past tense?”

“Three times. Al­so the writ­ten and oral ex­ams for the Se­cret Ser­vice, the ATF, and the DEA.”

“So why aren’t you a fed­er­al agent by now?”

“Not sure. I think maybe it has some­thing to do with the poly­graph tests.”

Warne tuned them out. He was star­ing at the columns of hex­adec­imal num­bers crawl­ing up his screen.

He had ac­cessed Ter­ri’s ker­nel-​mode de­bug­ger and was at­tempt­ing to crack the hack­er’s hid­den code. But it was like thread­ing a nee­dle while wear­ing gloves. All he had to work with was raw as­sem­bly lan­guage: no sym­bol­ic names, no source-​code com­ments. He leaned for­ward, rais­ing an in­quir­ing hand to the ban­dage on his tem­ple. He won­dered what Geor­gia was do­ing right now; whether she was still asleep, what she’d think if she woke up and found he wasn’t there. She’d put on a brave front af­ter what hap­pened. Still, he should be with her, not sit­ting in a lab, mess­ing around with this jig­saw puz­zle. The in­tru­sion was far more com­plex and sub­tle than he’d ev­er imag­ined. He’d been crazy to think he could make a dif­fer­ence. Be­sides, the cri­sis might al­ready be over: for all he knew, the mys­te­ri­ous John Doe had got­ten what he want­ed and was at this very mo­ment rid­ing off in­to the sun­set.

Ter­ri’s voice in­trud­ed on his thoughts. “Any­thing?”

He dropped his hand from the ban­dage. “The bas­tard op­ti­mized his code. It’s as if he, or she, is mak­ing it as hard as pos­si­ble.”

“A rea­son­able as­sump­tion,” she said, imp­ish grin re­turn­ing.

“I’ve been able to re­con­struct lines here and there, but not enough to have any clear sense of what’s go­ing on.” He point­ed at the screen. “This rou­tine seems to add unau­tho­rized in­struc­tions to the dai­ly down­load.” He paused. “But there seems to be some­thing else. Some­thing be­yond just the Metanet hack.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know ex­act­ly. It looks like da­ta’s be­ing se­cret­ly chan­neled out in­to the main Utopia net­work. I’m try­ing to get a han­dle on it now.”

He re­turned to the key­board, set an­oth­er break­point, then stepped through a few dozen lines of as­sem­bly lan­guage in­struc­tions. The per­sons re­spon­si­ble for this had done more than in­fect the Metanet: by caus­ing its mal­func­tion, they had jeop­ar­dized his own cred­ibil­ity. Not un­less they’re even bet­ter coders than they are ter­ror­ists…He re­al­ized he’d been wrong about this hack­er. Who­ev­er had done this was high­ly skilled.

He glanced at Ter­ri. “It’s def­inite­ly trans­mit­ting some­thing to a port on the Utopia In­tranet.”

Ter­ri put the print­out aside and came up be­hind him, looked at the screen. “How?”

“They’ve hid­den a piece of hard­ware some­where in the sys­tem. They’re prob­ably us­ing it to sneak in­for­ma­tion past the Utopia fire­wall.”

“Can you pin­point it? Find its phys­ical lo­ca­tion on the net­work?”

The sub­tle scent of her per­fume drift­ed to­ward him. She was bend­ing close now, a few strands of her jet-​col­ored hair brush­ing across his cheek. With an ef­fort, he kept his mind on the prob­lem. “I’m try­ing, but the code is just too well pro­tect­ed. We’ll have to try a dif­fer­ent tack. Do you have ac­cess to a pack­et snif­fer? Or, bet­ter yet, a pro­to­col an­alyz­er?”

Ter­ri frowned. “Sure, up in Net­work Ad­min­is­tra­tion. Why?”

“If these guys have at­tached a router to the net­work, we should be able to scan for it. I’ve found enough crumbs here to give us a head start. Maybe we can track down which TCP/IP port it’s lis­ten­ing on.”

Ter­ri’s frown deep­ened. “No way.”

“Each type of router has its own unique hand­writ­ing. The one they’re us­ing might not match the rest of Utopia’s hard­ware. And even if it did, we could check for pack­et leak­age. Or send out a trac­er ping, see which node doesn’t send back the right kind of re­sponse.”

Ter­ri shook her head. “In­ay. Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Mis­spent youth. Hang­ing around the MIT com­put­er lab when I should have been cruis­ing for babes.”

She looked down at him du­bi­ous­ly. “Will it work?”

“Yes or no, we’d know in ten min­utes. It beats sit­ting here, bang­ing our heads against this code.”

The phone rang, startling­ly loud. Ter­ri reached for it. “Ap­plied Robotics. Yes. Yes, he’s here. Okay, sure, I’ll tell him.”

“It’s Sarah Boatwright,” she said as she hung up. “She wants to see you in the VIP suite. Right now.”

Poole, who had been silent through this ex­change, spoke up. “Where?”

“The VIP suite. I’ll take you.”

Warne stood, won­der­ing what could have drawn Sarah away from Med­ical.

“Okay,” he said. “But first, let’s spend a few min­utes with that pack­et snif­fer. We’ll stop by Net­work Ad­min­is­tra­tion, see if we can track down that unau­tho­rized router. Then we’ll head on to the VIP suite.”

They left the of­fice, Poole curs­ing ex­trav­agant­ly as Wingnut, in­ter­rupt­ed while mark­ing ter­ri­to­ry, shot past him in fran­tic ea­ger­ness to catch up to Warne. Ter­ri locked the door be­hind them and be­gan lead­ing the way down the cor­ri­dor.

“How far is Net­work Ad­min­is­tra­tion?” Warne asked.

“It’s on the way, ac­tu­al­ly. It’s just around the cor­ner, near the—”

Ter­ri’s voice was abrupt­ly drowned out by the squeal­ing of tires. Wingnut had caught sight of an elec­tric cart turn­ing in­to the cor­ri­dor ahead of them, and had tak­en off in fran­tic pur­suit.

“What’s he do­ing?” Ter­ri asked.

“It’s like I told you. He likes to chase things. Wingnut!” Warne yelled, break­ing in­to a trot. “No chase! No chase!” He jogged around a cor­ner and out of sight, Ter­ri and Poole at his heels.

 

THE SOUND OF Warne’s calls quick­ly fell away. For sev­er­al min­utes, the hall­way out­side Ap­plied Robotics re­mained qui­et. An oc­ca­sion­al Utopia crew mem­ber went past, hur­ry­ing from one Un­der­ground lo­ca­tion to an­oth­er. Then a cos­tumed fig­ure ap­peared at the end of the hall­way. He was clear­ly Gaslight cast: In­ver­ness cape, wool suit, heavy wood­en cane, but­toned black shoes. Al­mond-​shaped eyes moved from door to door, read­ing the la­bels as he moved down the cor­ri­dor.

Out­side the door to Ter­ri’s of­fice, the man stopped. He looked, quite ca­su­al­ly, in both di­rec­tions. Then, keep­ing out of view of the door’s win­dow, he put his hand to the knob. Turned it slow­ly and qui­et­ly. Found it locked.

He re­mained—hand on the door—for some time, lis­ten­ing for sounds from with­in. At last, he let his hand drop away from the knob. Then he walked away, with­out par­tic­ular hur­ry, dis­ap­pear­ing in the di­rec­tion from which he had come.

 

3:25 P.M.

THE VIP HOS­PI­TAL­ITY cen­ter looked more like an Ital­ian palaz­zo than the concierge suite Warne had been ex­pect­ing. In­tri­cate­ly-​carved al­abaster columns rose to­ward a high ceil­ing, paint­ed a blue and white trompe l’oeil sky. Be­tween the columns, baroque foun­tains bur­bled. The walls were dec­orat­ed with large land­scape oils in heavy gold frames. A dig­ni­fied-​look­ing string quar­tet played cham­ber mu­sic in a dis­tant cor­ner.

A knot of half a dozen se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists stood in­side the en­trance. Warne gave his name to the clos­est one, who—af­ter an un­easy glance at Wingnut—nod­ded and mo­tioned for them to fol­low. Warne made his way down the long, broad space, shoes ring­ing against the pink Car­rara mar­ble, Ter­ri fol­low­ing. Poole came last, head swivel­ing around cu­ri­ous­ly above the turtle­neck.

The room end­ed in a wide set of dou­ble doors, which led in­to a nar­row­er, car­pet­ed cor­ri­dor. The se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer es­cort­ed Warne through. Doors, most of them closed, lined both walls. From be­hind one of the clos­est, Warne could hear a wom­an’s voice, very British and very stern, raised in in­dig­nant protest. “We’ve been here an hour,” the voice was say­ing. “An hour, mind you! We’re guests, not pris­on­ers. My hus­band’s a peer. You can’t…”

The voice fad­ed away be­hind him. Then the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer stopped at one of the doors, knocked, wait­ed for it to open. A man’s face ap­peared on the far side and nod­ded to the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, who turned and walked back down the cor­ri­dor.

“What took you?” the man at the door said. “We were get­ting wor­ried.” Warne rec­og­nized the stocky fea­tures, deep sun­burn, and pale thin hair of Bob Al­loc­co, the se­cu­ri­ty chief.

“We made a de­tour on the way,” Warne said, step­ping in be­hind Al­loc­co. The room was small, but taste­ful­ly ap­point­ed. As else­where in the Utopia Un­der­ground, the ar­ti­fi­cial light was a close ap­prox­ima­tion of day­light to com­pen­sate for the lack of win­dows. A large-​screen TV stood in the near cor­ner, tuned to one of the Park’s closed-​cir­cuit chan­nels. Warne’s gaze trav­eled around the rest of the room, stop­ping when it reached Sarah Boatwright. She was kneel­ing be­side a chair, speak­ing in­tent­ly to a seat­ed man, his back to the door. See­ing Warne, she stopped talk­ing and stood up, her mouth set in a nar­row line. A look he had nev­er seen be­fore was on her face.

“What is it?” he asked, mov­ing to­ward her quick­ly. “Where’s Geor­gia?”

“You’re safe. Thank God. It’s okay, Dr. Finch is watch­ing Geor­gia per­son­al­ly. He says she’ll be asleep an­oth­er hour, at least.” She paused, glanced at Al­loc­co.

“What is it?” Warne asked again.

“Drew. Do you re­mem­ber meet­ing a Nor­man Pep­per this morn­ing?”

“Pep­per,” Warne mur­mured. The name was fa­mil­iar. “Pep­per…Sure. The or­chid spe­cial­ist. I rode in on the mono­rail with him.”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Warne asked in sur­prise. “How?” Heart at­tack, prob­ably, he thought. Fifty pounds over­weight, not used to all the ex­cite­ment. What a tragedy! The guy seemed so hap­py to be here. And he said he had kids, how aw­ful to…

“He was beat­en to death.”

“What?” A chill sud­den­ly en­veloped him. He looked mute­ly at Sarah.

“With a heavy, blunt in­stru­ment.” Al­loc­co’s grav­el­ly voice filled the small room. He nod­ded to­ward the chair. “This poor guy found him. Went in­to the Ex­ter­nal Spe­cial­ists’ Lounge hop­ing to find a cup of co­coa. Found Pep­per in­stead.”

The man in the chair turned around. He was bald, slight­ly built, with a tiny tooth­brush mus­tache be­neath and a thick pair of round spec­ta­cles above his nose. He looked even paler than Sarah. Still in shock, it took Warne a minute to rec­og­nize the man: Smythe, the ex­ter­nal con­sul­tant, fire­works or some­thing.

“Je­sus,” Warne mur­mured. He could see Pep­per in his mind, rhap­sodiz­ing about the Park, rub­bing his hands to­geth­er with al­most staged ea­ger­ness.

“Why?” he asked.

“That’s what we won­dered,” Al­loc­co said. He moved away from Smythe, and the oth­ers fol­lowed. “At first. He wasn’t robbed, his wal­let was still in his jack­et pock­et. But it was so soaked with blood we had a hard time get­ting a read­able ID. So we took the im­age­tag from his lapel and scanned it in­stead.”

The room fell silent.

“And?” Warne said.

Al­loc­co’s gaze shift­ed to Sarah. Warne turned to­ward her with mute in­quiry.

“He was wear­ing your tag,” she said.

The chill gave way to a sud­den gust of fear. Warne swal­lowed.

“My tag?” he asked in a dry, stupid voice. “How could that be?” But even as he spoke, he re­mem­bered: in the mono­rail, Pep­per had knocked the small white en­velopes to the floor, reached for them, hand­ed his back…

“Our tags were switched on the way in,” he said. “They must have been. That tag I lost in the Wa­ter­dark ride—my tag—it must have been Pep­per’s.”

Sarah took a step to­ward him. “I know,” she said. “This is a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble thing.”

A ter­ri­ble thing…In this mo­ment of ex­trem­ity, Warne could not get the im­age of Nor­man Pep­per out of his mind. That could have been me. That should have been me…

“What are you go­ing to do about it?” Poole asked.

“The on­ly thing we can do. Leave the body where it is, seal off the suite. Alert the po­lice.” Sarah ex­changed glances with Al­loc­co. “As soon as we can.”

There was a knock on the door. Al­loc­co opened it, and a young wom­an in a white blaz­er en­tered, bear­ing an over­size cup of tea, which she hand­ed to Sarah. She mur­mured her thanks, turned and of­fered it to Smythe, who de­clined with a quick lit­tle shake of his head.

“Of course, you re­al­ize you’ll need to stay here for the du­ra­tion,” Al­loc­co said, turn­ing to­ward Warne. “Or in the hos­pi­tal with your daugh­ter, if you’d rather. We’ve se­cured both ar­eas.”

Warne, still think­ing about Pep­per, was slow to ab­sorb this. “I’m sor­ry?” he asked.

“We al­ready knew they were look­ing for you. Now we know they want you dead.”

The fear made his limbs feel heavy and slug­gish. “But why? Why me? It doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes per­fect sense.” It was Ter­ri who spoke up, and all eyes turned to­ward her. She flushed slight­ly, as if sur­prised to hear her own voice. Then she took a breath, stuck out her chin. “It proves you’re right. About the Metanet, I mean, and that Tro­jan horse.”

“I don’t fol­low,” Al­loc­co said.

“Dr. Warne wasn’t sup­posed to ar­rive un­til next week. These guys, who­ev­er they are, couldn’t have planned for such a con­tin­gen­cy. And they wouldn’t be try­ing to kill him now un­less they knew he could hurt them.”

“Makes sense,” Poole said. He had moved to the cof­fee ma­chine and was pour­ing him­self a cup.

Al­loc­co glared at him, then mut­tered some­thing un­der his breath.

“I sup­pose that’s right,” Warne said slow­ly. Then he turned to­ward Sarah. “I can’t stay here. There’s some­thing I have to do.”

“Like what?” Al­loc­co asked sar­cas­ti­cal­ly. “En­joy a few rides? Take in a show?”

“I think I’ve found some­thing. Some­thing im­por­tant.”

Sarah said noth­ing, wait­ing, look­ing at him in­tent­ly.

Warne went on, try­ing to ig­nore the dry­ness of his mouth. “I think I’ve lo­cat­ed the port these guys are us­ing.”

“Port?” Al­loc­co said. “What are you talk­ing about?”

“You know, the port. The phys­ical node where they’ve tapped in­to the Utopia sys­tem.”

“Do you un­der­stand this?” Al­loc­co asked Sarah.

“How do you know?” Sarah was still look­ing at Warne.

“That’s why I was late get­ting here. Sarah, I found a Tro­jan horse hid­den in the Metanet. It’s trans­mit­ting in­for­ma­tion from Ter­ri’s ter­mi­nal out in­to your net­work. I was able to re­con­struct part of an in­ter­nal ad­dress; not much, but enough for a start. Us­ing that, we went to Net­work Ad­min­is­tra­tion, ran a snif­fer over the net­work, look­ing for anoma­lous ac­tiv­ity—you know, pack­et leak­age, any­thing that might be­tray tam­per­ing—” He stopped. “Look, I can ex­plain af­ter­ward. The point is we found an unau­tho­rized router, lis­ten­ing over a port in the”—he turned to Ter­ri—“what’s that place called?”

“The Hub.”

“It might be noth­ing. Chances are, it’s just an im­prop­er­ly con­fig­ured switch. But if the de­vice was placed by these peo­ple, we ought to ex­am­ine it, fig­ure out what it’s do­ing.”

“Let me get this straight,” Al­loc­co said. “We just told you ‘these peo­ple’ are try­ing to kill you. Some­body has al­ready been killed in your place. And you want to go out there and take them on?”

“I’m not tak­ing any­body on. I’m just track­ing down a piece of hard­ware.” Warne looked around the small room, at the faces star­ing back at him. Then he turned back to Sarah. “You asked for my help, re­mem­ber? Don’t get me wrong, I’m scared as hell. Fact is, I’m too scared to just sit here on my hands, do­ing noth­ing. At least out there I’ll be a mov­ing tar­get.”

“This router, or what­ev­er,” Al­loc­co said. “Could it be what’s play­ing hav­oc with our video surveil­lance?”

“Very like­ly.”

Al­loc­co glanced at Sarah. “What do you think?”

Sarah’s eyes re­mained on Warne. “An­drew, I want you to lis­ten to me. These peo­ple aren’t afraid to kill to get their way.” Her voice was re­mark­ably steady; Warne won­dered how she was man­ag­ing to keep her­self to­geth­er un­der such ter­ri­ble pres­sure. “John Doe him­self told me we’d been lucky on that ex­plo­sion in the Wa­ter­dark ride. They’ve killed an in­no­cent man think­ing it was you. Do you un­der­stand what I’m telling you?”

I think you’re telling me that Geor­gia’s al­ready lost one par­ent. You need my help. But you don’t want to be the one re­spon­si­ble for sac­ri­fic­ing me. Aloud, he said, “Yes.”

“And?”

“And if some­body’s go­ing to do this, it might as well be me.”

Al­loc­co sighed deeply. “Christ. Well, I’ll send a se­cu­ri­ty de­tach­ment with you.”

Warne shook his head. “No. I’d rather you send them to watch my daugh­ter in­stead.”

“Good,” Poole said from the cof­fee ma­chine. “A se­cu­ri­ty de­tach­ment would just at­tract at­ten­tion. We need a small team for this job.”

“Did I ask your opin­ion?” Al­loc­co said, his voice tight with ir­ri­ta­tion.

“These in­di­vid­uals you’re deal­ing with are clear­ly well pre­pared,” Poole went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “We can as­sume they’re well armed, too. They see a pha­lanx of se­cu­ri­ty drones, in pro­tec­tive for­ma­tion around a sin­gle civil­ian…” He shrugged, took a sip of cof­fee. “All it would take is one low-​pres­sure grenade. The M433A1 Du­al Pur­pose would be my choice: forty-​five grams of com­po­si­tion A5, with a base-​det­onat­ing fuse. Toss one of those in­to the group, and boom! Their whole day is ru­ined.”

Al­loc­co scowled, not an­swer­ing.

“This is a re­con job. You’ll want a small team. Get the right man, have him ride shot­gun.”

“The right man,” Al­loc­co echoed dry­ly. “Right. Who would that be?”

Poole smiled de­mure­ly, tugged on his tweed cap.

Al­loc­co scoffed. “You trust this guy?” he said to Warne.

“At least we know he’s not a mole. He’s a guest, not a Utopia em­ploy­ee. A ran­dom el­ement.”

“Ran­dom, you say.” Al­loc­co drew Sarah and Warne to one side.

“And how do you know he’s not one of them?” he asked Warne.

“Be­cause if he want­ed to kill me, I’d al­ready be dead.” Warne hes­itat­ed. “Look, I’m no hero. But I’m the best qual­ified to check this thing out.”

Al­loc­co seemed to con­sid­er this a mo­ment. Then he let his hands drop to his sides and stepped back.

“I want you to take my man, Ralph Pec­cam,” he said. “He’s my top video tech, and he’s trust­wor­thy. He’s al­so the on­ly guy in Se­cu­ri­ty who re­al­ly knows what’s go­ing on. If this de­vice is mess­ing with our feeds, I want him to see it.”

Warne nod­ded.

“I’ll call Fred Barks­dale,” Sarah said. “Get a net­work tech to ac­com­pa­ny you, as well.”

“Okay,” Warne said. “No, wait a minute. That’ll take too long. Ter­ri here knows the net­work in­side and out.” He turned to her. “You will­ing to come along?”

She shrugged with at­tempt­ed non­cha­lance. “Prob­ably safer than sit­ting around in my lab.”

Warne watched as Sarah looked at each of them in turn. Then she un­fas­tened the turquoise im­age­tag from her own lapel and fixed it to Warne’s jack­et.

“This is a man­age­ment tag,” she said. “You shouldn’t be stopped or ques­tioned while you wear it.”

She turned away from Warne, to­ward the man in the chair. “Mr. Smythe, why don’t you just rest here for the time be­ing. Take it easy, lie down if you’d feel bet­ter. All right?”

The man named Smythe nod­ded silent­ly.

Warne glanced at the robot by his feet. “Wingnut, stay,” he com­mand­ed stern­ly. The robot swiveled its stereo cam­eras at him, as if beg­ging for a re­peal of the or­der. When none was forth­com­ing, he emit­ted a bray of dis­sat­is­fac­tion and rolled back­ward slow­ly, re­luc­tant­ly, to­ward a near­by cor­ner.

Sarah turned back to Warne. “I’ve got to de­liv­er the sec­ond disc to John Doe at four o’clock, at the Ho­lo Mir­rors. Af­ter that, I’ll stay with Geor­gia, su­per­vise things from Med­ical un­til you re­turn. Be care­ful, don’t do any­thing that might pro­voke re­tal­ia­tion. But let me know what you find, and if there’s some way we can—”

“Wait a minute,” Warne in­ter­rupt­ed. “You have to de­liv­er the disc?”

Sarah nod­ded. “He specif­ical­ly re­quest­ed it. To en­sure there were no tricks this time.”

“Je­sus.” Warne lapsed briefly in­to si­lence. Then, im­pul­sive­ly, he em­braced her. “Be care­ful.”

“I could say the same to you,” she replied. She kissed his cheek and pulled away. From over her shoul­der, Warne saw Ter­ri’s dark eyes re­gard­ing them in­tent­ly.

 

3:30 P.M.

WHAT IS THIS Hub, ex­act­ly?” Warne asked. They were walk­ing along a wide cor­ri­dor on B Lev­el, past the com­plex of of­fices that made up the Casi­no Op­er­ations Di­vi­sion.

“It’s Utopia’s cen­tral rout­ing sta­tion,” Ralph Pec­cam an­swered. “You do robotics at, where, Carnegie-​Mel­lon?”

“I did.”

“The net­work guys have a wiring clos­et there?”

“Of course.”

“Well, think of the Hub as a wiring clos­et. On­ly sev­er­al or­ders of mag­ni­tude larg­er.”

The man sneezed, bury­ing his face in the el­bow of his busy-​look­ing sports jack­et. “Man” was a bit of ex­ag­ger­ation, Warne thought: with his big shock of red hair and gen­er­ous scat­ter­ing of freck­les, Pec­cam looked more like a kid on his way to al­ge­bra class than Utopia’s top video tech. Just look­ing at him made Warne feel old.

His thoughts re­turned to the VIP suite and the ex­pres­sion on Al­loc­co’s face as he’d looked at him. It hadn’t been that far re­moved from scorn. We just told you these peo­ple are try­ing to kill you, he’d said. And you want to go out there and take them on?

Warne knew, from the tight­ness in his chest and from the quick thud of his heart, that was the last thing he want­ed to do. But he al­so knew he couldn’t just sit in the VIP suite, eat­ing cof­fee cake and watch­ing At­mos­fear re­runs. And he couldn’t stay in Med­ical, pac­ing, wait­ing for Geor­gia to wake up, wait­ing for the next flood of ca­su­al­ties to pour in. The scene with­in Wa­ter­dark re­played it­self again in his head: the sud­den, wrench­ing jolt; the ag­onized screams tum­bling out of the dark­ness above; and, most of all, the look in Geor­gia’s eyes.

He felt an up­welling of anger at the peo­ple who were caus­ing all this suf­fer­ing. If he could dis­cov­er any­thing, learn any­thing, that might help save Sarah’s Park, he’d do it. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

“What can we ex­pect to find in­side?” Poole was ask­ing.

“Net­work switch­es,” Pec­cam replied. They had come to an in­ter­sec­tion, and he led them around a cor­ner and down a nar­row­er, util­itar­ian hall­way. “T-1 and T-3 con­nec­tors. Elec­tri­cal junc­tions. Lots and lots and lots of wires. It’s ba­si­cal­ly a big, nar­row wrap­per around an un­der­ground dip in the Scream Ma­chine coast­er. A box out­side of a box. No­body ev­er goes in there ex­cept for Main­te­nance. I even had trou­ble find­ing some­body with an ac­cess card.” He bran­dished the plas­tic rect­an­gle that hung from a cord around his neck. “And dark, too, I hear. I hope some­body brought a flash­light.”

Poole’s eyes dart­ed from Pec­cam, to Warne, to Ter­ri. “Damn,” he mut­tered. “And what are we look­ing for, ex­act­ly?”

“A router,” Ter­ri said. “A gray box, prob­ably about a foot long and four inch­es tall. In­stalled there il­lic­it­ly at some point.” She waved a fold­ed set of pa­pers. “I’ve got the net­work ar­chi­tec­ture here, so I know the ap­prox­imate lo­ca­tion. Once we’re in­side, we can run a trace on it.”

“There’s prob­ably a hun­dred routers in the Hub,” Pec­cam said. “What makes you think this par­tic­ular one is unau­tho­rized?”

“I did an in­ter­nal sweep across your net,” Warne replied. “Its ban­ner didn’t match the rest.”

Now it was Pec­cam’s turn to look stumped. “How do you mean?”

“Ev­ery piece of net­work hard­ware has an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ban­ner it’ll an­nounce if you ping it right. I stum­bled on one ban­ner that didn’t match the stan­dard con­fig­ura­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Ter­ri’s schemat­ics, it’s a router in the Hub.”

“Mmm,” said Pec­cam, his tone laced with pro­fes­sion­al skep­ti­cism.

Warne glanced at him, his ten­sion falling away be­neath an up­swell of un­cer­tain­ty. He was prob­ably lead­ing them all on a wild-​goose chase. What had seemed such a clever idea in Ter­ri’s lab now seemed fool­ish. They’d prob­ably search for an hour and find some mal­func­tion­ing cir­cuit board. They should be back in the lab, work­ing that code, try­ing to track down and dis­con­nect the er­rant bots.

The cor­ri­dor end­ed in a small door with no sign ex­cept a red la­bel that read Warn­ing: High Volt­age. Unau­tho­rized En­try For­bid­den.

“This is it,” Pec­cam said, lift­ing the cord over his head and rais­ing the pass­card to­ward the ac­cess read­er.

Abrupt­ly, Poole grabbed his wrist.

“What are you do­ing?”

“We haven’t set the rules of en­gage­ment.”

“Rules of en­gage­ment?” Pec­cam sniffed. “It’s just a ca­ble room.”

“I don’t care if it’s a char­ity tea at the Ladies’ Lun­cheon So­ci­ety. To fail to plan is to plan to fail.” Poole waved at the locked door. “Lis­ten to a trained pro­fes­sion­al here. We have to treat this as an in­fil­tra­tion. Once in­side, we’ll do a quick re­con. If it’s safe, you can pro­ceed with lo­cat­ing this…this router.”

“Damn,” Pec­cam said. “If I knew I’d be play­ing G.I. Joe, I’d have worn my cam­mos.”

Poole looked him up and down. “It might have helped,” he said dis­dain­ful­ly.

Pec­cam swiped the pass­card through the read­er.

There was a click and the door sprang ajar. Poole mo­tioned them to wait. He looked over his shoul­der once. Then, keep­ing him­self pressed against the door frame, he nudged the door open with a fin­ger. Warne no­ticed the door was un­usu­al­ly thick, padded on the in­side with what ap­peared to be sound­proof­ing.

With a quick, snake­like move­ment, Poole twist­ed his head around the door­way. For a mo­ment, he re­mained mo­tion­less. Then he ducked his head back out, nod­ding for the rest to fol­low.

In­side, it was poor­ly lit. Ca­bles and wires of all thick­ness­es, col­ors, and de­scrip­tions crawled up the walls on both sides of a nar­row cor­ri­dor. Warne felt like he was with­in the walls of some mon­strous, night­mar­ish house. He looked up, squint­ing in the gloom, try­ing to make out the ceil­ing. Com­mu­ni­ties of tiny lights blinked and flick­ered ev­ery­where. Twen­ty feet down the cramped pas­sage­way, a met­al lad­der rose to a cat­walk run­ning along the out­er wall. Cir­cuits and re­lays rus­tled and clicked in the dark­ness like me­chan­ical in­sects, and un­der­ly­ing ev­ery­thing was a low, trem­bling sound, al­most be­neath the thresh­old of hear­ing.

Gaz­ing around at the end­less elec­tron­ics, Warne’s heart sank. The con­vic­tion al­ready grow­ing with­in him in­ten­si­fied. This was a point­less ex­er­cise, they’d nev­er find the router in all this…

The low trem­bling sud­den­ly grew loud­er, ris­ing in pitch as well as vol­ume un­til it filled the Hub with a ban­shee­like keen­ing. The walls seemed to dance around him.

“Sweet sis­ter Sadie!” Poole shout­ed against the noise. “What’s that?”

“The Scream Ma­chine,” Pec­cam called back. He pulled a tis­sue from his pock­et, blew his nose, re­placed the tis­sue. “Its tracks dip be­neath the Park, just on the far side of that.” He jerked his thumb to­ward the in­ner wall. “This Hub is like a skin­ny box wrapped around that dip. Why do you think they put all this wiring in here? No oth­er use you could put this space to.”

Warne winced, turn­ing his face away from the noise. Above the din, he thought he could hear shout­ing, de­light­ed screams.

The group wait­ed, mo­tion­less, as the sound eased, then died away com­plete­ly. In the wake of the ter­ri­ble roar, the re­turn­ing qui­et seemed all the more pro­nounced.

Warne glanced back at Ter­ri. Her eyes were wide and pale, her lips com­pressed. Her white lab coat seemed to gleam in the dim light.

“Didn’t you say you were claus­tro­pho­bic?” he whis­pered.

She nod­ded. “Sub­ways. Tun­nels. I won’t even go on any of the rides.”

“So how can you stand it in here?”

“It’s dark. Some­body’s got to hold your hand.”

They made their way down the walk­way, sin­gle file.

The Hub was laid out in the shape of a square: four long, nar­row cor­ri­dors, each meet­ing at a nine­ty-​de­gree an­gle. At the first bend, Poole stopped. Slow­ly, he peered around the cor­ner.

In the still­ness, Pec­cam sneezed ex­plo­sive­ly.

Poole lunged back from the cor­ner, glar­ing at the tech­ni­cian and putting a re­prov­ing fin­ger to his lips.

Warne felt his breath­ing quick­en. He re­mind­ed him­self the place was emp­ty. At most, they’d find some un­in­vit­ed met­al box full of cir­cuit boards and rib­bon ca­bles—and they’d be lucky to find even that. Yet some­how, ten­sion with­in the group was ris­ing so quick­ly it was al­most pal­pa­ble. Part of it was Poole’s do­ing: Poole with his ha­bit­ual cau­tion, his ab­surd paramil­itary pos­tur­ing. Part of it was the si­lence, which in this dark­ness was al­most a pres­ence: watch­ful, hos­tile. And the sud­den roar of the coast­er had set his nerves on edge. What­ev­er the rea­son, the group that fol­lowed Poole around the cor­ner and deep­er in­to the elec­tron­ic thick­et had be­gun mov­ing as stealthi­ly as pos­si­ble.

They en­coun­tered a san­ita­tion bot, mov­ing slow­ly along the out­er wall. A minia­ture vac­uum brush, mount­ed be­neath a long eye­stalk, moved gen­tly over the num­ber­less cou­plings. Warne slid past, mak­ing a men­tal note to check its pro­gram­ming with Ter­ri lat­er.

Halfway down this sec­ond leg of the square, the far­away rum­ble re­turned: an­oth­er coast­er was hurtling down to­ward them from above. This time, Warne didn’t wait. He turned away from the in­ner wall, ducked his right ear to­ward his shoul­der, cov­ered his left with one palm. He watched as Ter­ri did the same. The rum­ble trans­formed in­to a roar; the trem­bling grew, then even­tu­al­ly re­ced­ed; and again the group moved for­ward.

In less than a minute, they reached the next cor­ner. Once again, Poole snuck a look around. Why both­er, Warne thought to him­self: the light was so dim one couldn’t see more than twen­ty feet ahead. He fol­lowed Poole around the cor­ner and down the third leg of the square, shiv­er­ing. Christ, it was cold in here. Just one more cor­ner, one more cor­ri­dor, and they’d be back where they start­ed. Then maybe this point­less re­con­nais­sance would end and they could get on with the busi­ness of find­ing the router. As­sum­ing, of course, that…

En­grossed in his thoughts, Warne walked di­rect­ly in­to Poole’s back.

The man had stopped dead in his tracks, mo­tion­less in the dark­ness. Slow­ly, Poole ex­tend­ed his right hand, palm for­ward. Warne could hear Ralph Pec­cam’s la­bored breath­ing be­hind them. He strained to see through the thick murk.

There seemed to be a form ahead, vague and dream­like, at the point where vi­sion failed. Warne squint­ed, lean­ing for­ward. Poole’s cau­tion was in­fec­tious, and he felt his nerves tight­en. He was sure of it now: a fig­ure, squat­ting near the floor, crouched over some­thing.

Poole took a cau­tious, cat­like step for­ward, arm still raised in warn­ing. Warne fol­lowed. The fig­ure be­came more dis­tinct: a slen­der man in a blue jump­suit, seat­ed on a stool, his back against some kind of cart. Head­phones cov­ered his ears, and his head was an­gled away from them. He seemed to be typ­ing, star­ing at a small screen be­tween his knees.

The low tremor of an­oth­er ap­proach­ing coast­er be­gan to vi­brate through the Hub.

Very slow­ly now, Poole ges­tured to Warne, in­di­cat­ing he should fall back. The rum­ble of the train grew, the shriek of wheels against met­al clear through the sound­proof walls.

At the end of the cor­ri­dor, the man looked up.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Poole froze. Warne saw the man scan the dim hall­way, saw the sheen of his eyes as his gaze locked up­on them. As he stared, the man be­gan to type again: slow­ly at first, then more quick­ly.

Poole took a step for­ward.

The man in the jump­suit con­tin­ued to stare at them. He typed, hit the re­turn key, typed again. Then, quite ca­su­al­ly, he moved one hand to­ward a near­by util­ity case, fin­ger­ing some­thing with­in. The roar of the pass­ing train filled the chim­ney­like space with an al­most phys­ical pres­ence.

Poole took an­oth­er step for­ward.

In­stant­ly—with un­ex­pect­ed, ter­ri­fy­ing speed—the man was on his feet, key­board spin­ning away be­hind him. Poole was yelling but Warne couldn’t hear him over the clam­or. The man looked around for a mo­ment, as if search­ing for some­thing. Then he dipped his hand in­to his jump­suit, with­drew it.

Poole spun around, push­ing Warne rough­ly to the floor. As he fell, Warne saw a sud­den flash bright­en the vague out­lines of the cor­ri­dor. Im­me­di­ate­ly, Poole shot down the walk­way in a scut­tling, crab­like mo­tion. The man in the jump­suit point­ed some­thing, and again the flash came. There was a whin­ing sound above Warne’s ear, and as the sound of the coast­er re­ced­ed, he heard the echo­ing crack of gun­fire. He shrank back in­stinc­tive­ly, shoul­ders press­ing in­to the sharp edges of cir­cuit boards. He turned to­ward Ter­ri, pulled her head down pro­tec­tive­ly.

Poole and the man in the jump­suit were now locked in a des­per­ate strug­gle. As Warne looked back, Poole raised a fist, el­bow cocked high, and drove it against the man’s face, once, twice. The man stag­gered, shak­ing his head as if to clear it. Then he lunged for­ward sud­den­ly, rais­ing his gun hand: Poole chopped at the man’s wrist with the edge of one palm and the gun went clat­ter­ing to the floor. The man reared back in­to a mar­tial arts stance, then swung around with great ra­pid­ity, aim­ing a round­house kick at Poole’s stom­ach. Poole tum­bled back­ward, the man fol­low­ing, aim­ing vi­cious kicks at his head. Poole rolled in­to a crouch and the man broke away, rac­ing around the cor­ner, van­ish­ing abrupt­ly.

“Je­sus!” Ter­ri cried.

Warne con­tin­ued to stare, hug­ging Ter­ri tight­ly against his chest, dumb­struck, ears ring­ing. The fight had been so brief, so un­ex­pect­ed, he won­dered if he had re­al­ly seen it at all. Though it had last­ed less than ten sec­onds, it had been bru­tal, hor­ri­fy­ing­ly de­lib­er­ate. This was a pro­fes­sion­al con­fronta­tion, each man work­ing as fast as he could to in­ca­pac­itate the oth­er. For all his mil­itary airs, Poole had al­ways seemed an un­threat­en­ing, even faint­ly lu­di­crous, fig­ure to Warne. But in less than a minute, his opin­ion had changed ut­ter­ly.

Poole dis­ap­peared around the cor­ner, in the di­rec­tion the man had tak­en. Now he reap­peared, ges­tur­ing for them to come for­ward. Be­side him, the stranger’s util­ity case was flick­er­ing bright­ly, as if lit from with­in. A stream of smoke bil­lowed out­ward.

Warne slow­ly re­laxed his grip on Ter­ri and stood up, leg mus­cles quiv­er­ing. He took her hand and to­geth­er they moved cau­tious­ly down the pas­sage, Pec­cam fol­low­ing.

Poole had snugged the fall­en hand­gun in­to his waist­band. “Stop there,” he said as they ap­proached the cor­ner. Then he mo­tioned Pec­cam for­ward.

“Where does that door lead?” he asked, breath­ing heav­ily.

Peer­ing around the cor­ner, Warne made out a small door­way on the in­ner wall of the Hub. The door was open, block­ing the view of the cor­ri­dor be­yond. In­stead of a card scan­ner, it had an old-​fash­ioned met­al hasp for a lock.

“The tracks of the Scream Ma­chine,” Pec­cam said. “It’s what the Hub is built around.”

“Any oth­er way out of there?”

“Not un­less you walk up the coast­er’s railbed. But that dip is in­cred­ibly steep. Safe­ty in­spec­tors are roped when they walk that track.”

Poole hes­itat­ed. The acrid smoke from the util­ity case waft­ed to­ward them, sting­ing Warne’s eyes. Then Poole reached over to a near­by rack of equip­ment and, with a grunt, yanked out a re­tain­ing rail.

“I want you to bar that door be­hind me,” he said, hand­ing the piece of met­al to Pec­cam. “Don’t open it un­less you hear me tell you to. If I’m not out in five min­utes, go for help. All of you. Stay to­geth­er, don’t split up.” He pulled the pis­tol from his waist­band, racked the slide, then be­gan walk­ing quick­ly but de­lib­er­ate­ly down the pas­sage.

Warne be­gan to fol­low au­to­mat­ical­ly, then stopped as his foot hit some­thing heavy. He looked down. It was a large duf­fel, al­most in­vis­ible be­neath a low rack. This must have been what the man in the jump­suit was look­ing for. From the end of an open zip­per gleamed the muz­zle of a large weapon.

There was move­ment be­side him, and Warne turned. It was Pec­cam. He, too, had seen the duf­fel. For a mo­ment, they stared at the weapon to­geth­er in si­lence.

“I’d bet­ter take that,” Warne said, a lit­tle un­cer­tain­ly.

Pec­cam looked at him. “No, I think I’d bet­ter.”

“I saw it first.”

“I’m a Utopia em­ploy­ee.”

“But I’m the one they’re try­ing to kill—”

“Hey!”

Both men looked over. It was Poole.

“Don’t touch any­thing. Just bar the door be­hind me.”

He slid up to the open door, pis­tol raised. Then he nod­ded at them, ducked around the door frame, and dis­ap­peared with­in.

 

3:33 P.M.

POOLE STEPPED FOR­WARD in­to the gloom, shrink­ing from the dim rect­an­gle of light that slant­ed in the open door­way. Dim as the Hub was, this cube it en­cir­cled was black­er still. He slid back against the wall, breath­ing slow­ly, wait­ing. The rect­an­gle of light at­ten­uat­ed, then dis­ap­peared as the door shut. Poole heard the rat­tle of met­al as Pec­cam slid the rail through the hasp.

He crept a few steps along the wall, gun at the ready. He didn’t be­lieve the man in the jump­suit had an­oth­er weapon, but he wasn’t go­ing to take a chance. Years of train­ing, half-​for­got­ten, re­assert­ed them­selves. He took a se­ries of long, slow breaths, scan­ning the in­dis­tinct perime­ter.

Grad­ual­ly, his vi­sion adapt­ed. He was in­side a vast box, bound­ed on all sides by the walls of the Hub be­yond. Be­fore him stretched a for­est of steel pil­lars, ris­ing from an­chors in the con­crete floor to a com­plex ar­chi­tec­ture of spars and beams. Some­where far above hov­ered a nar­row cir­cle of light: the thin open­ing through which the de­scend­ing coast­er shot briefly be­neath the Park. As he stood, back to the wall, he thought he could hear song or laugh­ter float­ing down from Board­walk. Here in the black­ness, it seemed im­pos­si­bly far away: a dream king­dom imag­ined, not seen.

He turned his eyes from the faint light. Right now, he need­ed the dark­ness.

He be­gan to move stealthi­ly along the wall, muf­fling each foot­fall, scan­ning the monochro­mat­ic land­scape be­fore him. He wasn’t sure why the man in the jump­suit had run in here. No doubt their ar­rival had tak­en him by sur­prise. Even so, he’d con­tin­ued to work as he watched them ap­proach. That had tak­en balls: clear­ly, this was one hack­er that was no slope-​shoul­dered wimp. Poole won­dered what could be so im­por­tant that the guy would de­lay his own ex­it just to type some­thing in.

But right now, that didn’t mat­ter. The im­por­tant thing was, this guy wasn’t the type who’d pan­ic. He had come here for a rea­son.

Poole con­tin­ued edg­ing along the wall. If he heard the squawk of stat­ic, or any­thing that sound­ed like a ra­dio, he’d have no choice but to take sud­den ac­tion. Oth­er­wise, the best op­tion was to keep to the shad­ows and wait un­til…

With bru­tal sud­den­ness, bed­lam de­scend­ed up­on him. The steel beams shiv­ered, and a wave of over­pres­sure tore at his eardrums. He crouched, shield­ing his face. The roar was like an en­gine of God. He was abrupt­ly sur­round­ed by a cor­us­ca­tion of sparks; screams and hap­py shouts pep­pered the walls as the coach­es of the roller coast­er bot­tomed out above his head, then rose again, trail­ing cries and yells and curs­es as it shot up the ramp.

Once more, si­lence set­tled over the black­ness. Poole raised him­self, then stood mo­tion­less. Why the sparks? Must be some spe­cial ef­fect of the un­der­wheels. What­ev­er the case, six­ty sec­onds and an­oth­er coast­er would come through, bring­ing light as well as noise. He’d have to find a place where he couldn’t be so eas­ily spot­ted.

Eas­ing him­self from the wall with his el­bows, he crept for­ward, duck­ing from pil­lar to pil­lar, gun raised. Some­thing crunched be­neath his feet and he cursed, duck­ing back be­hind a sup­port­ing col­umn. Over­head, the gi­ant dou­ble tracks of the Scream Ma­chine swooped down­ward. The rails gleamed dul­ly in the heavy air.

From a van­tage point be­hind the col­umn, Poole looked around, lis­ten­ing in vain. What the hell was the guy up to?

He tried to put him­self in the man’s shoes. The hack­er wouldn’t have ex­pect­ed them to show up like that. There was no way the hack­er could have known they were as sur­prised as he was to find some­body there. So he’d have to as­sume they were track­ing him de­lib­er­ate­ly. He couldn’t know how many were con­fronting him, whether or not they were com­ing from both sides.

That had to be it. The guy thought he’d been sur­round­ed. So he ducked in here.

But this was a dead end. If the guy in the jump­suit was go­ing to get out, he was go­ing to have to climb…

This time, Poole was ready when the trem­bling came. Shrink­ing back against the col­umn, he turned his eyes down­ward, away from the ap­proach­ing cars. Once again, the shriek­ing fell up­on him like a heavy man­tle of sound. Man­ufac­tured sparks shot from the wheels, and for a brief in­stant, Poole saw the floor around him light up. He start­ed in sur­prise. He was sur­round­ed by a dense lit­ter of ob­jects: ear­rings, hair­pins, caps, glass­es, coins. A set of false teeth gleamed with­in a small pool of lu­bri­cat­ing oil. At first, Poole as­sumed it was all trash. Then he re­al­ized: all these things had been jolt­ed from the rid­ers of the pass­ing coach­es.

As the coast­er mount­ed the tracks again and the hor­ri­ble over­pow­er­ing noise be­gan to re­cede, he glanced up­ward. The flick­er of sparks died away, and he saw—or thought he saw—a fig­ure close by. Its hands were above its head. As the faint light died away, the fig­ure fell still, hands locked in po­si­tion.

Poole fell back be­hind the col­umn. It was the man in the jump­suit, all right. Hard at work at some­thing.

And what­ev­er he was do­ing, the man need­ed light to do it.

Poole wait­ed, count­ing the sec­onds un­til the next train would hur­tle down to­ward them. He al­lowed him­self no move­ment, not even the mer­est flick­er of an eye­lid: here, be­tween trains, the man in the jump­suit would be watch­ing, too.

There it came again: the tremor that seemed to start in the gut, then spread out­ward to­ward fin­gers and toes. A low rum­ble grew all around him. And then came the de­scend­ing roar of the train.

As the noise reached its crescen­do, Poole peered around the edge of the steel col­umn. There was the man, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the pass­ing glare. His hands were once again over his head, and his fore­arms were ro­tat­ing, as if he was screw­ing some­thing in­to place.

As Poole watched, the man fin­ished, drop­ping his hands and duck­ing out of sight.

But Poole had al­ready rec­og­nized the move­ments. Now he knew—all too clear­ly—how the man planned on get­ting out.

With­out an­oth­er thought, he tucked the gun in­to his waist­band and sprint­ed for­ward, rac­ing to­ward the spot where the man had been stand­ing. Rais­ing his own arms, he felt his way up the rail­ings, his fin­gers spread­ing in a des­per­ate search. There it was: the cool, rub­bery tex­ture of plas­tic ex­plo­sive. En­clos­ing it in his hands, Poole gin­ger­ly swept his fin­gers in­ward, pal­pat­ing, search­ing.

There was a sud­den, ter­ri­ble blow to his tem­ple, and he sagged to one side, feet giv­ing way be­neath him. The gun came free of his belt and fell to the floor, spin­ning as it slid away out of sight. The man in the jump­suit leaped for it, scrab­bling in the gloom. Pulling him­self up, Poole raised his hands once again, found the C-4, searched as quick­ly as he dared for the det­ona­tor. His fin­gers closed over it.

There was a pat­ter­ing be­hind him.

Slow­ly, al­most lov­ing­ly, Poole pulled the tube loose from the charge, catch­ing his breath as the end bobbed free. He turned, toss­ing the det­ona­tor out in­to the gloom.

The roar of an­oth­er car; and over the trac­eries of sparks he caught sight of the man in the jump­suit, on his hands and knees a few feet away, still search­ing for the gun. Poole launched him­self to­ward the man, who rolled away. Then they were both on their feet and dash­ing from beam to beam.

Poole raced af­ter the sound of re­treat­ing foot­steps, ca­reer­ing first off one steel truss, then an­oth­er. The faintest glimpse of a form to one side—black against black—and Poole veered to­ward it, catch­ing the man by the knees, both of them tum­bling to the floor in a dis­or­ga­nized heap. The man kicked fierce­ly but Poole kept to one side, arc­ing a blow down in­to the face once, twice, three times. The man moaned, then lay still.

“Tag,” Poole gasped, lean­ing back against a sup­port.

In the dis­tance, there was a sharp crack, then a flash and a puff of smoke as the det­ona­tor fired. Poole did not both­er to turn. The coast­er de­scend­ed again, fill­ing the space with sound and fury. Poole paid it no heed. He leaned against the col­umn, tak­ing one deep breath af­ter an­oth­er, un­til at last blessed si­lence re­turned once again.

 

3:40 P.M.

TO WARNE, THE an­te­room of Utopia’s Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex looked more like an el­emen­tary school than a law en­force­ment sta­tion. The mold­ed-​plas­tic chairs in bright pri­ma­ry col­ors, sparkling tile floor, large ana­log wall clock be­hind a wire mesh, all sent a mes­sage of cheery in­sti­tu­tion­al so­lid­ity. Even the posters on the walls—tout­ing the Park’s safe­ty record, or di­agram­ming the near­est fire ex­its—played their part. Like ev­ery­thing else about Utopia, it was care­ful­ly planned. Most of the peo­ple who found their way to Se­cu­ri­ty, af­ter all, would be pay­ing guests: vic­tims of pick­pock­et­ing, par­ents look­ing for miss­ing chil­dren, youths picked up for horse­play. It was im­por­tant that Se­cu­ri­ty present a be­nign, re­as­sur­ing ap­pear­ance. It nei­ther ex­pect­ed nor was built for hard-​core crim­inals.

Warne pulled his gaze from the walls, glanc­ing back at the sur­round­ing chairs. Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio was sit­ting be­side him. To her right, Pec­cam was gin­ger­ly sort­ing through the heavy duf­fel they’d brought back from the Hub. Be­yond, Al­loc­co was talk­ing to Poole.

Warne put his arm around Ter­ri’s shoul­der. “You okay?”

“Me? I’ve been ac­cused, ac­cost­ed, stalked, shot at. And the day’s still young. Why shouldn’t I be okay?”

He drew her to­ward him af­fec­tion­ate­ly. “This is my fault. I’m sor­ry you had to get in­volved in this.”

“Hey, don’t fool your­self. It’s more ex­cit­ing than pro­gram­ming ser­vos and do­ing code re­views.” She smiled, but the usu­al imp­ish gleam was miss­ing.

Warne turned back to­ward Al­loc­co. He knew that he should be lis­ten­ing. But it was as Ter­ri just im­plied: the whole af­ter­noon had tak­en on such a sur­re­al cast that he seemed set free from any nor­mal script. As in a dream, he felt he could do, or say, any­thing, no mat­ter how un­ex­pect­ed or out­ra­geous, and the sit­ua­tion around him would ad­just it­self to…

There: it was start­ing again. He forced him­self to lis­ten.

“You’re telling me this punk set the thing him­self?” Al­loc­co was say­ing.

“Af­fir­ma­tive. There was al­ready a hefty shaped charge in place be­neath the rails of that big old coast­er of yours. One of sev­er­al, no doubt, they’d pre­vi­ous­ly dis­tribut­ed around the park. With me so far?”

Al­loc­co had turned a lit­tle gray, but nod­ded. “Go on.”

“Well, when this guy found him­self am­bushed, he ran in­side, where the track sup­ports were. He’d dropped his weapon, didn’t have time to grab an­oth­er. But he did have a det­ona­tor. He planned to set the charge, then take cov­er un­til it blew. Once the next set of cars came plum­met­ing down the track…” Poole shrugged, waved one hand. “Well, he’d es­cape in the af­ter­math.”

“Je­sus, that’s cold,” Al­loc­co said in a tone of dis­be­lief. “Those Scream Ma­chine trains hold a hun­dred and twen­ty peo­ple each.”

There was a brief si­lence as the lit­tle group di­gest­ed this.

Al­loc­co glanced at Warne. “Maybe this thing still has me a lit­tle loopy. But I thought you said you were search­ing for a piece of equip­ment. Were you just feed­ing us bull­shit? You knew we wouldn’t let you go if you told us the truth?”

Warne shook his head. “No. It was very clever. He’d set up a re­mote com­mand post, con­ceal­ing it as a sim­ple hard­ware router. One of a thou­sand. No­body look­ing for an in­trud­er would have ev­er found him. If I hadn’t picked apart his code, known what to look for…” He paused. “Even so, it was most­ly luck.”

“We’ll see how lucky we are when John Doe finds out we’ve nabbed one of his goons. If he doesn’t al­ready know.”

Warne shot Al­loc­co a glance. “What do you mean?”

“Be­cause, while you were play­ing hide-​and-​seek in the Hub, we lost our video feeds.”

“Lost? What do you mean, lost?”

“As in all our surveil­lance cam­eras. In the Park it­self, the Un­der­ground, ev­ery­where. The on­ly places not af­fect­ed are the casi­nos, which have their own closed-​cir­cuit surveil­lance, and C Lev­el, be­low us. We’re ba­si­cal­ly blind.”

“Sweet sis­ter Sadie.” Poole gave a low whis­tle.

“I think our touch-​typ­ist friend can be thanked for that,” Warne said. He thought back to the dark­ness of the Hub, and how the man had just stared at them, fin­gers still mov­ing across the key­board. “He en­tered some­thing on his key­board af­ter he spot­ted us.”

“You’ve got to hand it to him,” Poole said. “Quite a cool cus­tomer.”

“The on­ly thing I’m hand­ing him is a one-​way tick­et to Neva­da Cor­rec­tion­al,” Al­loc­co said. “So, what scraps did he leave us? Can we ap­pro­pri­ate his equip­ment, re­verse the dam­age, fig­ure out what he was up to?”

Warne shook his head. “He had a state-​of-​the-​art mini­com­put­er con­cealed in an equip­ment box. But it was rigged some­how. When he ran away, he set it off. Torched it.”

“A ther­mite charge,” Poole added. “Fused ev­ery­thing sol­id.”

“I see. So these boys are still two steps ahead of ev­ery­thing we do.” Al­loc­co turned to Pec­cam. “What have you got, Ralph?”

The youth’s hands were deep in­side the satchel. “Let’s see. There’s a spare ra­dio”—he brought it out with a sniff, plac­ing it on a low ta­ble—“but with a scram­bler, just as use­less as the one in the Hub. Var­ious clips and ca­bles and what­not. And some very high-​end net­work­ing equip­ment. About fifty packs of Nicorette gum. Some of these things, I don’t know what they are.” He held up a small strand of ca­ble­like ma­te­ri­al.

“Det cord,” Al­loc­co and Poole said in uni­son.

“Det cord. A cou­ple of peanut but­ter and jel­ly sand­wich­es.”

Poole reached over and with­drew one, un­wrapped the waxed pa­per, peeled apart the bread. “I’d guess Jif, chunky style. Ex­cel­lent choice.”

“Get on with it,” Al­loc­co growled, run­ning a balm stick over his lips.

“Then there’s this.” Pec­cam held up a black plas­tic ob­ject with three but­tons: two gray, one red. It looked like an over­size tele­vi­sion re­mote.

“What’s that?”

“It’s an in­frared trans­mit­ter. Boost­ed for long-​range trans­mis­sion.” Pec­cam fell silent, an odd ex­pres­sion on his face.

“Go on, go on.”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense. Boost­ing in­frared for long range, I mean.”

Al­loc­co sighed. “Just ex­plain it, please.”

“Well, there’s ba­si­cal­ly two kinds of re­mote con­trols: in­frared and ra­dio fre­quen­cy. Nor­mal­ly, RF is prefer­able be­cause of its longer range.” He heft­ed the black cylin­der. “But this in­frared trans­mit­ter has been boost­ed well be­yond any RF range. Half a mile, at least. Very ex­pen­sive giz­mo. But like I said, it doesn’t make sense. Be­cause RF can trans­mit through walls, around cor­ners. But with an in­frared like this, you can go much far­ther, but you need a clear line of sight. So why both­er mak­ing such an ex­pen­sive, pow­er­ful trans­mit­ter when you have to see what it is you’re aim­ing at?”

In the si­lence that fol­lowed, Warne caught Poole’s eye. The man looked grave.

“Thanks for the les­son,” Al­loc­co said. “Any­thing else?”

“No. Oh, yes, one oth­er thing.” Pec­cam reached in­to the bag and gin­ger­ly pulled out a weapon: a short, low-​slung sub­ma­chine gun, with a wood­en stock and a heavy mag­azine. Its bar­rel was ob­scured with­in a cone-​shaped piece of met­al.

“Heck­ler & Koch MP5SD,” Poole said, nod­ding his ap­proval. “Note the in­te­grat­ed si­lencer. As long as you use sub­son­ic am­mo, it’s so silent there’s prac­ti­cal­ly no bul­let re­port—all you hear is the click of the bolt. If you hear any­thing.”

For a mo­ment, no­body replied. They sat mo­tion­less, star­ing at the weapon. Fi­nal­ly, Al­loc­co rose from his seat.

“I’d bet­ter get back to our friend,” he said. “Though I doubt he’s said any­thing since I left. Not ex­act­ly a talkative kind of fel­low.”

“I’d like to come along,” Poole said.

Al­loc­co looked back at him. “Why?”

“Why not?”

Al­loc­co made a scoff­ing noise. Then he turned to the video tech. “Pec­cam, put that stuff away. And keep an eye on these civil­ians for me.”

Poole watched the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor’s re­treat­ing back. “Com­rade Al­loc­co doesn’t seem to like me very much,” he said mild­ly as he stood. “I won­der why.”

So do I, Warne thought. He rose au­to­mat­ical­ly to fol­low. Then he glanced over his shoul­der at Ter­ri. She was sit­ting up­right, hands pressed against the white knees of her lab coat.

“You don’t mind wait­ing here?”

“Are you kid­ding? I hate jail cells even more than I hate locked clos­ets.”

“We’ll be back soon.” He turned away, leav­ing her with Pec­cam, who—very care­ful­ly—was re­plac­ing the sub­ma­chine gun in the duf­fel.

 

UTOPIA HAD ON­LY one high-​se­cu­ri­ty hold­ing cell, at the end of the lone, util­itar­ian cor­ri­dor that led away from the an­te­room. Even this was not es­pe­cial­ly se­cure: a small room, with a heavy door and a sin­gle cot bolt­ed to one of the padded walls. A group of se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists stood in the open space out­side it.

“You searched him again, right?” Al­loc­co asked.

“Yes, sir,” one of the guards—a black-​haired youth—replied. A small bronze rect­an­gle with Lind­bergh stamped on it was pinned to his left pock­et. “No wal­let, no mon­ey, no ID, noth­ing. He’s clean.”

“Good. Open up, please.”

Warne, com­ing up be­hind, peered cu­ri­ous­ly and a lit­tle cau­tious­ly over Poole’s shoul­der. The hack­er—so he had be­gun to call him—was loung­ing on the lone cot. He was still wear­ing the blue jump­suit, but the elec­tri­cian’s pin had been re­moved from the col­lar. He was wiry and young, with a dark com­plex­ion and long black hair gath­ered in­to a pony­tail. To Warne, he looked South Amer­ican. His legs were crossed at the an­kles, and his nico­tine-​stained fin­gers were laced be­hind his head. Sev­er­al ug­ly bruis­es were com­ing up on his face, shiny pink just be­gin­ning to give way to mot­tled yel­low and blue. He gazed up at the group with­out in­ter­est.

Al­loc­co stepped for­ward, plant­ing his feet apart, cross­ing his arms. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try it again. What’s your name?”

Si­lence.

“Where are the rest of your men?”

Si­lence.

“How many ex­plo­sive de­vices have you plant­ed, and what are their lo­ca­tions?”

The man on the bunk closed his eyes, shrug­ging him­self in­to a more com­fort­able po­si­tion.

Al­loc­co rocked back on his heels, ex­hal­ing in frus­tra­tion. “The po­lice are on their way. You’re in deep, deep shit. You co­op­er­ate with us, maybe you can climb out of that shit. Now, let’s start again. Where are the rest of the ex­plo­sive de­vices?”

This ques­tion re­ceived the same re­sponse as its pre­de­ces­sor.

Al­loc­co turned away.

“Mind if I have a try?” Poole asked.

Al­loc­co glanced at him. “What are you plan­ning? Match­es un­der the fin­ger­nails? Cat­tle prod?”

“Just want to talk to him, that’s all.”

Al­loc­co sighed again. Then he mo­tioned Poole for­ward.

Warne watched as Poole smoothed his jack­et, ad­just­ed his tweed cap. But he didn’t step for­ward. He stayed where he was, speak­ing across the cell to the man on the bed.

“Sor­ry about that lit­tle dust­up back there,” he be­gan. “But you know how it is. I just couldn’t let you go around break­ing things, spoil­ing ev­ery­body’s fun. What kind of an Ea­gle Scout would I be then?”

The man was silent, eyes still shut.

To Warne, the sur­re­al at­mo­sphere had sud­den­ly in­creased dra­mat­ical­ly. A few min­utes be­fore, these two had been at­tack­ing each oth­er with mur­der­ous fe­roc­ity. Now one was ly­ing mo­tion­less on a cot while the oth­er was speak­ing in mild, al­most un­der­stand­ing tones.

“Shy about your name, I take it?” Poole went on. “Then I’ll call you Rogue Twelve.”

The man’s eyes flit­ted open, fo­cus­ing on the ceil­ing.

“It’s just a name. But you’re clear­ly not Rogue One, or even Rogue Two. In fact, I’d guess you’re low man on the totem pole. So how many of you are there? Twelve?”

The eyes slid away, then closed again.

“No, I don’t think so. Your lead­er seems smart, I’ll bet he’d use a small force. Five op­er­atives, maybe half a dozen. Utopia’s so big, peo­ple wouldn’t be ex­pect­ing that. A small, ex­pe­ri­enced group: you’d have your script in place and you’d walk it through. But it would have to be a very good script, care­ful­ly planned. You’d get all your place­ments in ad­vance. But not too far in ad­vance: couldn’t take the chance of any­body stum­bling ac­ci­den­tal­ly over one of your lit­tle presents, could we?”

The eyes opened again, slid to­ward Poole.

Poole laughed. “How am I do­ing?”

The eyes slid away again, but re­mained open, star­ing at the wall.

“Of course, you wouldn’t be ex­pect­ed to work the sys­tem alone. You’d have some­body on the in­side. No—on sec­ond thought, if I were do­ing it, I’d have two. There’d be a grunt, some­body you’d bought and turned, to do the run­ning and fetch­ing. And then there’d be some­body high­ly placed, I think.” Poole nod­ded to him­self, one hand stroking the col­lar of his turtle­neck as he spoke. “Yes. That would be your knight in shin­ing ar­mor. He’d know how ev­ery­thing ticks, how to cir­cum­vent in­tru­sion sys­tems, by­pass the Park’s nat­ural de­fens­es. But he—or she—wouldn’t need to get their hands dirty. Pay no at­ten­tion to the man be­hind the cur­tain, all that kind of thing.”

The man stared back at the wall, his mouth set in an un­mov­ing line.

Poole shook his head. “It’s too bad, re­al­ly. Be­cause, at the end of the day, it’s al­ways Rogue One who walks away clean. And Rogue Twelve who gets the shaft. You feel­ing it yet?”

The room fell silent. Poole glanced over at Warne, winked. The si­lence dragged on.

“Well, well,” Al­loc­co said at last, a touch of sar­casm lac­ing his im­pa­tient tone. “Ev­ery­body else has weighed in. You got any ques­tions, Lind­bergh? Or you, Dr. Warne?”

At this, the man on the cot un­der­went a re­mark­able trans­for­ma­tion. He had been ly­ing, seem­ing­ly at ease, obliv­ious to the ques­tions. Sud­den­ly, he sat up on the cot. His eyes trav­eled around the group in the door­way, light­ing on Warne.

“Warne!” he barked. “You! You’re the one who fucked this up. Med­dling prick!” And he leaped to his feet.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Poole shot for­ward, push­ing the hack­er bru­tal­ly back with his shoul­der, slam­ming him against the wall of the cell, one el­bow across his throat. The man ut­tered a stran­gling sound and Poole re­leased his hold, let­ting him slide back down to the cot.

For a mo­ment, the man sat there, hand at his throat, cough­ing. Poole took a step away, mo­tion­ing Warne to stay be­hind him.

The hack­er glanced over at Warne. The fit of anger passed as quick­ly as it had come, and now his lips part­ed in a dis­dain­ful smile. The teeth were shock­ing­ly yel­low.

“I know all about you,” the man said. “I watched you, tap­ping away, try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened to your lit­tle shit pro­gram.” He laughed dry­ly. “Which, by the way, was pa­thet­ical­ly cod­ed. Who­ev­er taught you to write in-​line as­sem­bler did a piss-​poor job.”

As he lis­tened, Warne was re­mote­ly aware that, though the man’s fea­tures looked Mayan, his ac­cent was dis­tinct­ly Amer­ican.

“You don’t have a clue to what’s go­ing on. But there you were, tap­ping away. As if you could make a dif­fer­ence.” He laughed again: cold, mirth­less. “Well, guess what? You’re fucked. Ev­ery last one of you is fucked.”

Then he tent­ed his fin­gers be­hind his head, closed his eyes, and would not speak again.

 

3:40 P.M.

THE CALL CAME as Sarah Boatwright was dis­miss­ing the line man­agers from a hasti­ly called im­promp­tu meet­ing. They’d filed in bare­ly three min­utes be­fore: some im­pa­tient and pre­oc­cu­pied, oth­ers flus­tered and un­cer­tain. Sarah had can­celed the nor­mal lunchtime State of the Park meet­ing, and ru­mors had been fly­ing rapid­ly among the up­per ad­min­is­tra­tive ech­elons ev­er since. What had hap­pened at Grif­fin Tow­er dur­ing the 1:20 show? What went wrong with the Wa­ter­dark ride? And what was this about some kind of se­cu­ri­ty alert? She had brushed aside all ques­tions with what she hoped looked like dis­tract­ed lack of con­cern: the usu­al crises, noth­ing too far out of the or­di­nary. Then she’d asked for any new ac­tion items, hold­ing her breath, ex­pect­ing omi­nous harbingers of new mis­chief by John Doe. But all re­ports were be­nign and re­as­sur­ing­ly com­mon­place. Un­san­itary con­di­tions in the ladies’ room at Poor Richard’s, the Camelot night­club. Com­plaints about an overzeal­ous ride op­er­ator on the Steeplechase coast­er. And park­ing at­ten­dants had, once again, spot­ted a par­tic­ular­ly both­er­some lawyer, trolling for po­ten­tial plain­tiffs at the mono­rail un­load­ing zone.

Sarah lis­tened, then po­lite­ly shooed the group away, plead­ing an un-​sched­uled meet­ing. She watched as they gath­ered up their fold­ers and clip­boards and left her of­fice. It had been pa­thet­ical­ly easy to re­as­sure them. They’d want­ed to be­lieve, be­cause the al­ter­na­tive was al­most un­think­able. For Utopia’s su­per­vi­sors, a smooth­ly run­ning park was near­ly as im­por­tant as life it­self. She won­dered how she’d ev­er find a way to tell them the truth, if and when this night­mare ev­er end­ed.

Grace, her ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tant, stuck her head in the door­way. “Mr. Emory’s on the line, Ms. Boatwright. And I have your tick­et at my desk.”

Emory, Sarah thought. She had just up­dat­ed him half an hour be­fore, what could he want now, when the ex­change hadn’t yet…She re­al­ized her as­sis­tant was still stand­ing in the door­way.

“I’m sor­ry? What about tick­ets?”

“Your plane tick­et. For San Fran­cis­co.”

“Of course. Thank you, Grace.” She smiled, wait­ing for the door to close. She’d for­got­ten all about the en­ter­tain­ment con­ven­tion.

Her smile van­ished as the door clicked shut. She picked up the phone. “Mr. Emory?”

“I’m here, Sarah,” came the CEO’s voice. “There’s some­thing you need to know. These new de­vel­op­ments you in­formed me of—well, the board is be­side it­self.”

“The board, Mr. Emory?”

“Af­ter our last con­ver­sa­tion, I had the board con­vene in emer­gen­cy ses­sion.”

She wait­ed, lis­ten­ing. It was just like Emory. Un­able to make a cri­sis de­ci­sion him­self, he’d called in the board to back him up. Now, in­stead of just Emory, there would be twelve of them, all run­ning around fran­ti­cal­ly, mak­ing long-​dis­tance judg­ments, is­su­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry or­ders, in­flam­ing the sit­ua­tion.

“They had to know, Sarah. You may be the one in the trench­es—and I’m sor­ry as hell it has to be you—but ul­ti­mate­ly the board is go­ing to be held re­spon­si­ble for what hap­pens. For what has hap­pened. Frankly, I’m sur­prised at Bob Al­loc­co. Are you still ab­so­lute­ly pos­itive he isn’t—”

“Yes. Mr. Emory, it was my call, and—”

“No need to ex­plain, Sarah. What’s done is done. I know you were act­ing in the Park’s best in­ter­ests. But with this de­lay, those in­juries—and es­pe­cial­ly, the two deaths—they’re de­mand­ing ac­tion. They can’t be seen as just sit­ting around, let­ting this go down.”

“But, Mr. Emory, I ex­plained it to you. We’re not just sit­ting around. The ex­change is set for four o’clock. We’re so close to re­solv­ing this sit­ua­tion. John Doe said—”

“I know. But this John Doe seems er­rat­ic, maybe un­sta­ble. With the loss of surveil­lance, se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty are se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. We can’t take any more chances.”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest. But it was part­ly due to her that Emory had tak­en this step. She re­mained silent.

“There’s no unan­imous po­si­tion of the board, I’m afraid. But this is the ma­jor­ity de­ci­sion. We’ll go ahead, use our back­up ac­cess codes to burn a sec­ond disc. But we can’t wait more than an­oth­er half hour. If Park in­tegri­ty isn’t ful­ly re­stored by then, we’re call­ing the feds.”

“The feds?”

“The longer this goes on, the more dan­ger­ous it be­comes. It’s the board’s feel­ing that, un­less the sit­ua­tion is re­solved im­me­di­ate­ly, Utopia will pass a point of no re­turn. And there will be no way to con­tain bad press. If there’s a calami­ty, bet­ter to let the cops share the rap. Am I clear?”

Sarah bit down on her low­er lip. “All too clear, sir.”

“Half an hour, Sarah. Be care­ful. And may God pro­tect you all.”

And the line went dead.

 

3:45 P.M.

JOHN DOE SAT be­neath an awning at Chum­ley’s, Gaslight’s out­door café, his slen­der hands turn­ing the pages of a fresh­ly print­ed 1891 edi­tion of the Lon­don Times. He was in high good hu­mor; so much so that he found him­self un­able to keep from greet­ing the guests that passed by along the cob­bles. Most of these were mov­ing be­tween So­ho Square, the up­scale shop­ping dis­trict up the lane, and May­fair Fol­lies, the live show play­ing just a few doors down. “Hel­lo!” he would say, smil­ing at them from be­hind his sun­glass­es. “Hel­lo!” A few mere­ly gave him blank looks and moved on more quick­ly. But the ma­jor­ity smiled and re­turned the greet­ing. It was re­mark­able, re­al­ly, the trans­form­ing pow­er of Utopia. It was al­most like a drug.

Yes, it was a de­light­ful spot, this out­door ter­race; just the place to re­lax with a sooth­ing cup be­fore an ap­point­ment. Chum­ley’s tea proved dis­ap­point­ing, so he’d switched to cof­fee, which was bet­ter. He would have to ask Sarah Boatwright which restau­rant served that de­light­ful jas­mine tea. Short­ly, he’d have the chance.

His wait­er, a tall fel­low in tweeds and over­size four-​in-​hand, ap­proached the ta­ble. “An­oth­er cup­pa, then?”

“Glad­ly,” John Doe said, sigh­ing con­tent­ed­ly as he turned a page.

The wait­er re­gard­ed him, an amused smile on his face. “You look chip­per, mate.”

“Oh, I’m just a man who loves his job.”

John Doe watched the wait­er thread his way back among the white table­cloths. The fel­low’s ac­cent was quite good, though a true Cock­ney, born with­in earshot of Bow Bells, would prob­ably ob­ject to some of the phras­ings. Still, it was more than ac­cept­able. The fact was, Gaslight suit­ed John Doe more than any of the oth­er Worlds. Camelot was all gaudy cos­tumes and mar­tial clam­or, while Cal­lis­to had a bur­nished post-​mod­ern sheen that grat­ed on him. Ex­cept, of course, for the dis­taste­ful Pic­cadil­ly, with its T-​shirt shops and trin­ket em­po­ri­ums, Gaslight seemed more civ­ilized. And this lit­tle café was a re­al find. Un­pre­ten­tious, cozy, and just a short walk from the Ho­lo Mir­rors. As he glanced around, he spot­ted first one, then two, well-​con­cealed surveil­lance cam­eras. Both cur­rent­ly in­ac­tive, alas. John Doe’s good hu­mor in­creased.

The wait­er was al­ready re­turn­ing with a fresh cup of cof­fee. “Right,” the man said, plac­ing it on the table­cloth with a flour­ish. “Get that down your gre­go­ry.”

“Thank you,” John Doe said, look­ing up from his pa­per. “And a right nice caff you have here,” he said, slip­ping in­to a sim­ilar ac­cent. “Not like some of the chip­pies down the way.”

The man smiled. “Oh, ek, we do all right.”

John Doe took the cup in both hands. “Lit­tle bit taters, though, with the rain and all.”

“You fan­cy a ta­ble in­side, then?”

“Nah, it’s Un­cle Tom Cobleigh and all in there. Wouldn’t half mind a peek at your menu, though.”

“Right you are. Fan­cy a Jim Skin­ner? Or just some af­ters, p’raps?” The man’s smile widened, en­joy­ing the chal­lenge. “Un­less you’re to­tal­ly bo­racic? No pic­tures of the queen about you?”

“No, I’m hold­ing the fold­ing. Just give us a butch­ers, that’s a good lad.”

“Good as done.” And the man went off for a menu.

John Doe took an­oth­er sip, greet­ed a few more passers­by, re­placed the cup in its saucer. Be­yond the awning, the rain was start­ing again. Ac­tu­al­ly, it wasn’t rain so much as a fine mist, bare­ly enough to damp­en the streets, give the sur­round­ings a mel­low sheen. John Doe knew that the rains in Gaslight were not timed, but rather set off by a com­plex set of con­di­tions: crowd flow; am­bi­ent tem­per­ature of the air; the qual­ity of light in the “re­al” sky above Utopia’s dome, now ob­scured by the thick Lon­don fog. He watched as peo­ple rushed un­der cur­tains or door­ways, wait­ing for it to pass. It nev­er seemed to last more than nine­ty sec­onds. Al­ready, in fact, the gen­tle pat­ter was ceas­ing, and peo­ple were eas­ing back in­to the lane, shak­ing the damp from their shoul­ders, chat­ter­ing and laugh­ing.

The truth was, this had all been dis­ap­point­ing­ly easy. Even this hic­cup he’d just learned of was not an im­por­tant fail­ure. Con­tin­gen­cies were in place. He sighed, feel­ing a trace of re­gret. This was his last job; he’d hoped that it would have proved more chal­leng­ing, of­fered some re­al sur­pris­es. At least, that would have giv­en him a chance to ex­er­cise his in­tel­lect. Some­thing in­ter­est­ing to con­tem­plate in his re­tire­ment. But no; that par­tic­ular de­light had been de­nied him. He watched the peo­ple mov­ing by, chat­ter­ing, obliv­ious. Like cat­tle. If he had not been in such a fine mood, he would have felt con­tempt for them all: con­tempt for hu­man mores, hu­man frail­ties, hu­man suf­fer­ing, hu­man good­ness. Es­pe­cial­ly hu­man good­ness.

Time to ar­range the con­tin­gen­cy. Putting the pa­per aside, he slipped a cell phone from his suit jack­et and di­aled.

“Ah,” he said when a voice an­swered. “There you are.”

The voice on the oth­er end was sub­dued, furtive. And yet the ner­vous­ness, ir­ri­ta­tion, un­cer­tain­ty it car­ried were un­mis­tak­able. “It’s high time you called. This isn’t work­ing out as planned, and I for one don’t like it.”

“Not as planned? How, ex­act­ly?”

“I al­ready told you.” The voice was now bare­ly more than a whis­per. “That busi­ness in Grif­fin Tow­er, or in Wa­ter­dark. No­body was sup­posed to get hurt. And that se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist, back­stage at Galac­tic Voy­age—my God, did you have to kill him?”

“I’m afraid there was no choice.”

“There’s just been too many nasty sur­pris­es. And Tib­bald nev­er re­turned from the drop. I’m con­cerned he might have gone na­tive on us.”

John Doe took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee, ac­cept­ed the menu from the wait­er, watched the man walk away. “I wouldn’t wor­ry about Tib­bald. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

“And what’s this about the sec­ond hand­off? It’s en­tire­ly un­ac­cept­able, it was nev­er in the script—”

“Per­haps it was. Per­haps it wasn’t. That’s not im­por­tant right now.” And here John Doe’s voice lost a bit of its good hu­mor. “What is im­por­tant is that Crack­er Jack has stopped trans­mit­ting.”

“Why? What’s go­ing on?” The un­cer­tain over­tone in the voice grew more pro­nounced.

“I’m not sure. Per­haps some­body’s get­ting frisky. Per­haps it’s the work of our un­ex­pect­ed guest, An­drew Warne, who’s been pok­ing about where he’s not wel­come. Or per­haps there was some un­fore­seen cir­cum­stance. What­ev­er the case, Crack­er Jack killed the surveil­lance feeds.”

“I know.”

“That’s a sig­nal his work up­stairs is done, but that we can’t count on him for the, ah, base­ment prepa­ra­tions. You’ll have to hold up your end. Per­son­al­ly. Do you un­der­stand?”

“I got start­ed once I heard about the video go­ing down. I’ll be fin­ished in a few min­utes.”

“Good.” Con­tin­gen­cy ar­ranged with—as ex­pect­ed—al­most de­press­ing ease. “We’ll move up cer­tain events to com­pen­sate for any loss of con­trol. But this still leaves one open item. Your friend, Warne. Crack­er Jack tracked him down ear­li­er, and we went to have a talk with him. But it ap­pears some­body else was wear­ing Warne’s im­age­tag. And we tried that lab you men­tioned, the robotics lab, but it was emp­ty.”

“I’ve been down here the last half hour. I don’t know where he’s got to.”

“Then we need to learn where. This is the fi­nal act of our lit­tle per­for­mance. We have to con­vince him it’s in his best in­ter­ests not to med­dle fur­ther.”

There was a pause on the oth­er end of the line. “You promise not to hurt any­one else?”

“Of course.”

“Be­cause I won’t take blood mon­ey. There’s no sense go­ing for­ward if there’s go­ing to be more vi­olence.”

“No sense?” And here John Doe’s voice be­came quite dif­fer­ent: low, dis­dain­ful, men­ac­ing. Even the ac­cent shift­ed sub­tly. “I warn you, don’t sport with my in­tel­li­gence. Ex­pres­sions of al­tru­ism make my gorge rise. Ev­ery­thing we do, we do out of self-​in­ter­est. You, my friend, are no ex­cep­tion. As­ser­tions to the con­trary would be mere self-​delu­sion. Need I re­mind you whose idea this was to be­gin with? Who con­tact­ed who? Need I re­mind you, again, of the con­se­quences of de­vel­op­ing an eleventh-​hour con­science? Re­mem­ber who I’ll be meet­ing, just a few min­utes from now.”

There was an­oth­er pause, longer this time.

“In a few min­utes,” John Doe said, his voice mel­low­ing, grow­ing silken, “we will have ev­ery­thing we came for. Will you?”

At last, the si­lence on the oth­er end was bro­ken. “Warne has a daugh­ter,” came the stran­gled voice. “Her name’s Geor­gia. She’s down in Med­ical.”

John Doe’s eye­brows shot up. “In­deed? That’s very in­ter­est­ing.”

“Re­mem­ber your promise.”

“And re­mem­ber yours. Screw your courage to the stick­ing place. An­oth­er forty-​five min­utes, and we’ll all be gone.” And with that, John Doe re­turned the phone to his pock­et, picked up the cup of cof­fee, and con­tin­ued his pe­rusal of the news­pa­per.

 

ON THE OTH­ER end of the line, in a large but aus­tere of­fice far be­low Chum­ley’s Café, the phone rat­tled slight­ly as it was re­placed in its cra­dle. The hand that dropped it pressed against the hand­set for a mo­ment, as if to sti­fle any fur­ther sound. Then it moved across the desk to a fresh­ly burned disc, shim­mer­ing like pale crys­tal in­side its pro­tec­tive hous­ing. The hand paused there for a mo­ment, fin­gers drum­ming anx­ious­ly. And then it reached for a near­by com­put­er key­board, dragged it clos­er, and be­gan typ­ing, hes­itant­ly at first, then faster and faster.

 

3:45 P.M.

LET ME GET this straight,” Warne said. “This was your im­por­tant stop?”

Poole stopped a pass­ing host­ess. “Sam Adams, all round.”

“Make mine a min­er­al wa­ter, please,” Warne sighed. The host­ess nod­ded, then closed the vi­sor of her hel­met and glid­ed away be­tween the ta­bles.

Warne turned back to Poole. “You know, Pec­cam isn’t go­ing to be pleased when he learns we gave him the slip just to grab a cool one.”

Poole mere­ly shrugged, smiled his dis­tant smile.

They were in the Sea of Tran­quil­ity lounge, a large, cir­cu­lar space, dim­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed in black light. Guests chat­tered at near­by ta­bles, sip­ping drinks and munch­ing ex­ot­ic-​look­ing bar snacks. Warne could hear shouts and laugh­ter float­ing in from Cal­lis­to’s main con­course: from the rear came the clink­ing of coins and whirring of slot ma­chines with­in the ad­join­ing casi­no. Over­head, end­less galax­ies glit­tered against a mid­night sky. The floor was made of some dark com­pos­ite, through which gleamed a vast, ap­par­ent­ly bot­tom­less starfield. De­spite his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion, Warne found him­self mar­veling at the il­lu­sion: it re­al­ly ap­peared as if the ta­bles around them were float­ing in an in­fin­ity of space. It was an un­nerv­ing sen­sa­tion.

Ter­ri hung her lap­top on the side of her chair. “It’s against pol­icy for Utopia cast and crew to vis­it the casi­nos while work­ing.” It was meant as a joke, but her voice was strained.

“Who’s vis­it­ing?” Poole said. “The casi­no’s over there. And be­sides, who’s work­ing?”

“We should be work­ing,” Warne replied. “That’s the prob­lem.”

“Oh, yeah?” Poole asked. “At what?”

“At that Tro­jan horse. Dis­as­sem­bling it, try­ing to learn which bots have been mod­ified.”

Poole shook his head. “You don’t re­al­ly want to go back to that of­fice, do you? It’s safer here—a pub­lic place, dim­ly lit. Be­sides…”

He fin­ished the sen­tence with a mere wave of the hand, but it was enough. These guys have run rings around you, that wave said. More com­put­er time’s not go­ing to get you any­where.

It was some­thing Warne had not cared to ad­mit. But now he found his thoughts re­turn­ing to the hack­er, in the hold­ing tank of the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex. The way he’d lunged, sneered at him. His words, drip­ping with scorn and de­ri­sion, echoed in Warne’s head. I know all about you, your lit­tle shit pro­gram. Pa­thet­ic. You don’t have a clue to what’s go­ing on. The code had been far clev­er­er than he cared to ad­mit. It had been sheer chance they’d caught the guy at all.

You don’t have a clue to what’s go­ing on.

He shift­ed rest­less­ly in his seat.

The host­ess re­turned with their drinks, plac­ing them on the ta­ble with sil­ver-​gloved hands. Al­though the three of them must have been a sight—scuffed, ban­daged, bruised—the wom­an mere­ly smiled through her vi­sor and walked away.

There was a sud­den burst of laugh­ter near­by, and Warne looked over. Two youths—teenagers, by the look of them—were guz­zling tall, bright­ly col­ored frozen drinks at an ad­join­ing ta­ble. One was wear­ing a long wiz­ard’s cape, ob­vi­ous­ly pur­chased in Camelot, over his T-​shirt and frayed shorts. It was a fash­ion state­ment that would have looked hi­lar­ious­ly in­con­gru­ous any­place but Utopia.

From the cor­ner of his eye, he saw Poole tilt the beer in­to his glass, raise it to his lips, take a long pull. The red-​spot­ted gauze ban­dage flut­tered loose­ly at his wrist.

Ter­ri broke the si­lence. “You still haven’t told us why you’re do­ing all this.”

Poole put down his glass and wiped his lips with an odd­ly dain­ty mo­tion.

“That’s right,” Warne added. “You could have been here all this time, re­lax­ing. In­stead of get­ting kicked at, shot at, God knows what else.”

Poole smiled. “Think of the peo­ple who spend thou­sands of bucks on those pho­ny mys­tery week­ends at ho­tels. This is much bet­ter. And the price is right.”

“You act like it’s just part of the en­ter­tain­ment.”

“Isn’t it?” Poole’s smile widened. “Be­sides, it gives me a chance to keep my hand in, sharp­en up the old skills.” And he took an­oth­er sip of his drink.

Warne looked at him with a sigh of res­ig­na­tion. He didn’t think he’d ev­er met any­body quite so hard to read.

“You’ve got a point about that lab,” he said. “So then if it’s all the same to you, Ter­ri and I will go vis­it my daugh­ter.” He start­ed to rise.

“What’s your hur­ry? In an­oth­er fif­teen min­utes, John Doe will get his disc. And then he’ll walk in­to the sun­set, the house­lights will come up, the mu­sic will swell. Hap­py end­ing, right?” Poole said this in an ex­ceed­ing­ly un­con­vinc­ing tone of voice.

“What?” Ter­ri said. “What are you get­ting at?” She took a sip of the beer, made a face, pushed it away.

“I said this was an im­por­tant stop, right? And I meant it. But much as I want­ed a beer, it was the stop that was im­por­tant.”

Warne sat down again. He shook his head. “You’re speak­ing in rid­dles.”

“No, I’m not. Re­mem­ber who I am here. I’m the ob­serv­er, the out­sider who doesn’t re­al­ly know what’s go­ing on.” He took an­oth­er sip. “That means, while you all have been rac­ing around like head­less chick­ens, I’ve watched. I’ve lis­tened.”

Warne glanced across the ta­ble at Ter­ri. She shrugged in re­ply.

“What’s your point?” he asked.

Poole picked up the bot­tle of Sam Adams, scratched idly at the la­bel with a fin­ger. “Haven’t you no­ticed a pat­tern here?”

“No.”

Poole con­tin­ued to scratch. “They tell you to keep ev­ery­one in the dark about what’s go­ing on. And then they run you ragged, keep you reel­ing from one thing to an­oth­er, nev­er give any­one time to draw breath. To stop and ask a few ba­sic ques­tions.” He set down the bot­tle. “Be­cause this whole thing is like a jig­saw puz­zle. You find the right piece, you see the whole pic­ture. And they can’t al­low you to do that.”

“Ba­sic ques­tions?” Warne asked. “What kind, ex­act­ly?”

“Here’s one. If these guys are so good, why did they screw up on Wa­ter­dark? They in­tend­ed to blow the whole ride, teach a les­son. What luck that re­tain­ing spar broke the way it did, keep­ing the ride from col­laps­ing. But I dis­agree. I saw the blast sig­na­ture from that charge, re­mem­ber? Who­ev­er set it was a god­damn artist. If they’d want­ed to de­stroy that ride, they’d have done it.”

So there was no mis­cal­cu­la­tion, af­ter all, Warne thought to him­self gloomi­ly.

Ter­ri shift­ed im­pa­tient­ly in her seat. “Okay. Call me dumb, but I’m not get­ting some­thing here.”

“These guys want to bang up some peo­ple, cause a lot of hand-​wring­ing. But de­spite what John Doe says, they don’t want a pan­ic. Not now. That wouldn’t fit in­to their plans. We have to as­sume that ev­ery­thing these guys do hap­pens for a rea­son. The ex­plo­sion in Wa­ter­dark? It was set to break ex­act­ly the way it did.”

There was a brief si­lence while this was di­gest­ed.

“If you ask me, that sounds nuts,” Ter­ri said. “But here’s an­oth­er ques­tion. You said ev­ery­thing these guys do hap­pens for a rea­son. Re­mem­ber how Al­loc­co said that hack­er in the Hub killed the video feeds? He shut down ev­ery­thing but the casi­nos and C Lev­el. The casi­nos make sense, they have their own sys­tems. But C Lev­el is part of the cen­tral surveil­lance net­work. Why wasn’t it shut down, too?”

“I don’t know,” Poole said. “What’s down there?”

“Pow­er plant. Laun­dry. En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices, Trea­sury Op­er­ations, Food Ser­vices. Ma­chine shops, at­trac­tion re­pair, da­ta pro­cess­ing. Back-​of­fice stuff.”

“That pow­er plant you men­tion,” Poole said. “It isn’t nu­cle­ar, is it?”

Ter­ri rolled her eyes.

Poole shrugged. “One hears ru­mors.”

For a few mo­ments, the ta­ble was silent.

“You called it a jig­saw,” Warne said. “But we don’t have any pieces. What kind of puz­zle do you call that?”

“You’re for­get­ting we have a crit­ical piece,” Poole replied. “Our friend in the cell. And he said some­thing very in­ter­est­ing.”

“What’s that?”

“You re­mem­ber how he re­act­ed when he learned who you were? That, at least, wasn’t a put-​on. He want­ed your throat. But it doesn’t fol­low.”

“Of course it does,” Ter­ri said. “An­drew here rained on his pa­rade. Wrecked ev­ery­thing for him.”

“Maybe. But do you re­mem­ber why he was rip­shit? Think back to what he said. It was your mess­ing around with the sys­tem that re­al­ly riled him.”

“So?” Warne asked.

“Why wasn’t he mad about the trap they set in, what’s it called, Galac­tic Voy­age? That was their re­al prob­lem. If it wasn’t for that, they’d have got­ten their disc and all been gone long ago. Right?”

Warne paused, think­ing.

“In­ay,” Ter­ri mut­tered be­side him.

The shat­tered disc. He’d for­got­ten all about it. Warne reached in­to his pock­et, pulled out the Zi­ploc bag Sarah had left in the med­ical bay.

“What’s that?” Poole asked.

“Shards from the Cru­cible disc,” Warne said. “Crushed in the scuf­fle.” He laid it on the ta­ble. “So what are you say­ing, ex­act­ly?”

“I’m say­ing this whole thing sounds like a stall. A care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed, care­ful­ly con­cealed stall.”

“But why?” Ter­ri asked, pick­ing up the bag, turn­ing it over cu­ri­ous­ly in her hands. “What are they wait­ing for?”

“Yes. That’s the mil­lion-​dol­lar ques­tion, isn’t it?”

And in the si­lence that fol­lowed, he drained his glass and set it on the ta­ble with a sigh of sat­is­fac­tion.

 

3:50 P.M.

AL­THOUGH THERE WERE no clocks on dis­play in the pub­lic ar­eas of Utopia, the time was pre­cise­ly ten min­utes to four.

In Gaslight, a large crowd had gath­ered out­side the en­trance to the Ho­lo Mir­rors. This was not the at­trac­tion’s re­al name: on guidemaps, and on the or­nate sign above the pre-​show area, it was promi­nent­ly la­beled Pro­fes­sor Crip­ple­wood’s Cham­ber of Fan­tas­tic Il­lu­sion. It was a next-​gen­er­ation hall of mir­rors, us­ing Utopia’s Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy to ren­der life­like holo­grams from se­cret­ly tak­en pho­tographs of those who stepped in­side. The holo­grams were pro­cessed to look like mir­ror im­ages, then dis­played in re­al time through­out the cham­ber’s dim­ly lit maze. Ac­tu­al mir­rors were used as well, cre­at­ing a fiendish­ly baf­fling en­vi­ron­ment. Vis­itors, stum­bling through the twist­ing cor­ri­dors, were con­stant­ly con­front­ed by im­ages of them­selves and oth­er guests in the maze: yet they could nev­er be sure if these were ac­tu­al re­flec­tions, or holo­graph­ic ren­der­ings of them­selves, tak­en at ear­li­er points in the cham­ber. Guests emerged dis­ori­ent­ed, fright­ened, fas­ci­nat­ed. Ho­lo Mir­rors—as it was uni­ver­sal­ly known—was such an un­usu­al ex­pe­ri­ence that it had the high­est same-​day re­peat per­cent­age of any at­trac­tion in Gaslight.

On­ly the crowd cur­rent­ly out­side was not full of the usu­al ex­pec­tant ea­ger­ness. There were cries of frus­tra­tion from guests who had wait­ed in line near­ly an hour, on­ly to learn that the at­trac­tion was be­ing tem­porar­ily shut down due to op­er­ational dif­fi­cul­ties. At­ten­dants in crino­lines and fore­men in frock coats worked the line, sooth­ing tem­pers with re­turn vouch­ers and casi­no chips. To one side of the brick-​front en­trance, Sarah Boatwright stood, arms fold­ed, al­most in­vis­ible in the mist. She was watch­ing the milling crowd. One hand was pressed pro­tec­tive­ly against a disc in her jack­et pock­et.

 

FAR OVER­HEAD, IN the piti­less Neva­da sun, the cool moist fog of Gaslight was like a dream of a gen­tler world. The man known as Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo had fin­ished his work and now sat in a gul­ly, rest­ing in the shad­ow cast by the smooth curve of the Utopia dome. A two-​way ra­dio lay be­side one knee, a plas­tic wa­ter bot­tle by the oth­er. The copy of Proust was in his lap, and he was read­ing with slow, care­ful de­lib­er­ation. From time to time, how­ev­er, he raised his eyes from the book and gazed over the rocky lip of the es­carp­ment, down the long dusky road far be­low that snaked away from staff park­ing and van­ished in­to the dry table­land of Yuc­ca Flats.

 

FIF­TEEN MILES AWAY, be­yond the lim­its of vi­sion, two ve­hi­cles were head­ing north­west along High­way 95. The rear ve­hi­cle was a late-​mod­el sedan, an am­ber flash­er on its dash­board and a bulky take­down light fixed out­side the driv­er’s win­dow. Long whip an­ten­nas bobbed on ei­ther side of the trunk. The car was paint­ed white, but was now brown as a wren from the miles of dust thrown up by the ve­hi­cle in front of it.

The for­ward ve­hi­cle was an ar­mored car, Ford mod­el F8000, paint­ed red with white ac­cents around the muz­zle ports and win­dow cowl­ings. The ten-​speed diesel rum­bled un­hap­pi­ly, la­bor­ing un­der the weight of the quar­ter-​inch bal­lis­tic steel that cov­ered the body pan­els, lat­er­als, and roof. A lone guard sat in the pay­load com­part­ment, back against the wall, boot­ed feet on the frag­men­ta­tion blan­ket that cov­ered the floor. A pump-​ac­tion shot­gun rest­ed be­tween his knees. Man and gun swayed to­geth­er, jounc­ing in time to the heavy sus­pen­sion.

In the for­ward com­part­ment, the line-​haul driv­er guid­ed the ve­hi­cle up the grade. Be­yond the dash­board, the browns, yel­lows, and greens of the high desert land­scape looked slight­ly un­earth­ly, their col­ors shift­ed by the bul­let-​re­sis­tant trans­par­ent ar­mor that made up the wind­shield.

The driv­er ad­just­ed his head­set, spoke in­to it. “Utopia Cen­tral, this is AAS trans­port Nine Echo Bra­vo, over.”

The head­set crack­led. “Utopia Cen­tral con­firms.”

“We’ve left 95, on ap­proach. Ex­pect ar­rival at 1610 hours.”

“Nine Echo Bra­vo, 1610, un­der­stood.”

The head­set crack­led once more, then fell silent. The ar­mored car turned on­to the un­marked high­way ex­it that led to the ac­cess road; the grade steep­ened; and the driv­er ran the gears, ac­cel­er­at­ing the big truck to­ward the main­te­nance en­trance of Utopia.

 

3:50 P.M.

KYLE COCHRAN STOOD out­side the Sea of Tran­quil­ity lounge, re­splen­dent in the vi­olet and black cape of My­man­teus the Arch­mage. Al­though the light of the con­course was sub­dued, the bar had been dark­er still, and he wait­ed while his eyes ad­just­ed. Be­side him, Tom Walsh, a lit­tle taller and much slim­mer, sti­fled a belch. They’d just pound­ed down four Su­per­novas each. That would make a new school record. The fact that the drinks were non­al­co­holic didn’t re­al­ly lessen the achieve­ment: Su­per­novas were huge, mul­ti­hued, crushed-​ice con­coc­tions, and Kyle’s stom­ach had long since gone numb in in­dig­na­tion. As al­ways, it was a lit­tle an­noy­ing that he wouldn’t be able to take a le­gal drink for an­oth­er year. But at a place like Utopia, it was prob­ably just as well. They had a dorm bud­dy, Jack Fis­ch­er, who’d smug­gled in a fifth of bour­bon, got­ten wast­ed, and then vom­it­ed all over his fel­low rid­ers on the Scream Ma­chine, just a few weeks be­fore.

Walsh belched again, loud­ly this time, turn­ing the heads of sev­er­al passers­by.

“Nice one,” Kyle said, nod­ding ap­prov­ing­ly at his friend.

Com­ing to UCSB as a fresh­man, Kyle had heard hor­ror sto­ries of col­lege room­mates from hell: the par­ty an­imal who cranked death met­al on his stereo un­til dawn, the slob who changed his un­der­wear once a week. Tom Walsh had proved a pleas­ant sur­prise. The two shared many in­ter­ests: track and field, ska mu­sic, dirt bikes. Tom was a whiz in the hard sci­ences, while Kyle wrote de­cent pa­pers and spoke flu­ent French, and they’d helped each oth­er through what could have been a rough first year. As sopho­mores, their paths had di­verged, but they still re­mained close friends. Tragedy struck at Christ­mas, how­ev­er, when Tom’s old­er broth­er was killed in a mo­tor­cy­cle ac­ci­dent. Through­out the win­ter, Tom re­mained moody and with­drawn, and Kyle had been half-​sur­prised when his friend took him up on the idea of spend­ing spring break in Las Ve­gas. But, very grad­ual­ly, Tom was at last re­turn­ing to his old self. At first it had seemed al­most a con­scious ef­fort, as if he were just go­ing through the mo­tions of hav­ing a good time. But at Utopia es­pe­cial­ly, Tom had lapsed in­to easy ban­ter, and his smiles were gen­uine. He’d even talked about ap­ply­ing here for a sum­mer job.

Kyle yawned, stretched. “So, dude, what now?”

Tom pat­ted his stom­ach. “I don’t know. I was think­ing, maybe, Sta­tion Omega?”

Kyle looked at him again, this time in dis­be­lief. “You’re shit­ting me. Af­ter down­ing four Su­per­novas? Get re­al.”

Tom’s on­ly an­swer was a crooked grin.

Kyle con­sid­ered this as he stood on the con­course, heed­less of the streams of chat­ter­ing guests sur­round­ing them. Sta­tion Omega was Cal­lis­to’s “free-​fall,” a rel­ative­ly new breed of ride in which guests were al­lowed, quite lit­er­al­ly, to drop from a great height. Com­mon­ly, rid­ers were strapped in­to place, as if rid­ing a ver­ti­cal roller coast­er. But Utopia’s de­sign­ers had tak­en the stan­dard free-​fall con­cept and made it their own. Guests would board an es­ca­la­tor at Cal­lis­to’s Sky­port and en­ter an el­eva­tor-​like com­part­ment that would—so the sto­ry­board went—be trans­port­ing them to a wait­ing shut­tle. But as soon as the el­eva­tor doors closed, some­thing would go ter­ri­bly wrong. There was a lurch, then a shud­der. Omi­nous crack­ing nois­es would be heard. The lights would wink out, smoke would be­gin to fill the com­part­ment. And then—with­out warn­ing—the guests would hur­tle straight down­ward a hun­dred feet be­fore the lights came on, brakes were ap­plied, and the el­eva­tor slowed to a quick but re­mark­ably gen­tle stop.

It was a short ride, but ef­fec­tive; so ef­fec­tive that Sta­tion Omega had some of the most re­stric­tive rid­er­ship re­quire­ments in Utopia.

And Kyle and Tom had al­ready tak­en the drop six times that day.

Now Kyle glanced down the con­course, to­ward the crowds milling around the Sky­port. Six drops in Sta­tion Omega was al­ready a UCSB record. It looked pret­ty crowd­ed down there. And the line for their last ride had been their longest of the day.

Still, sev­en times would ce­ment their achieve­ment. Es­pe­cial­ly af­ter knock­ing back those four Su­per­novas.

Be­sides, Tom had been the one to sug­gest it.

Kyle looked over, gave the thumbs-​up. And Tom’s grin widened in­to a gen­uine smile.

“Come on,” Kyle said, swing­ing his cape with a flour­ish. “Let’s go for it.”

 

3:50 P.M.

WAIT A MINUTE,” Ter­ri said. “Some­thing’s wrong here.”

Warne lift­ed his head and looked across the ta­ble at her. An­gus Poole, too, low­ered his beer and looked over, drawn by some­thing in her tone.

She’d opened the plas­tic bag and was hold­ing one of the larg­er shards in her hand, turn­ing it over and over. “This disc,” she said. “It’s blank.”

“What?” Warne replied. “That’s im­pos­si­ble. It’s the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy, they were hand­ing it over to John Doe.”

“I’m telling you, it’s blank. Look, un­der this black light you can tell.” She hand­ed him the shard. “See? If da­ta had been burned to this, you’d see the pits and lands in the poly­car­bon­ate. But noth­ing. Na­da.”

Poole took the bag. “I don’t see any­thing.”

She looked at him sar­don­ical­ly. “Lis­ten to a trained pro­fes­sion­al here.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Warne said. “Why would we give him a blank disc?”

“Maybe we didn’t,” Ter­ri replied.

Warne shut up abrupt­ly, grap­pling with this fresh sur­prise, strug­gling to un­rav­el John Doe’s clever lit­tle knot. What was it Poole had said? Stop and ask a few ba­sic ques­tions.

And then, sud­den­ly, he had an idea.

“Ter­ri,” he said. “That worm we found was in­sert­ed in­to your com­put­er a month ago. Is there any way it could have been plant­ed re­mote­ly, over the Net?”

“Nope. All Utopia ter­mi­nals are in­di­vid­ual­ly fire­walled. I can’t even re­ceive mail on that ma­chine.”

“It’s iron­clad?”

“No hack­er could get through it.”

“Ex­ter­nal or in­ter­nal?”

Ter­ri shook her head.

“Then that can mean on­ly one thing: the worm had to be phys­ical­ly copied on­to your ma­chine. From in­side your of­fice.” Warne paused. “Now, think care­ful­ly. Who could have had ac­cess to your ter­mi­nal around that time?”

“No­body.”

“Not cowork­ers? Not your boss?”

“I would have known.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure.”

Warne sat back. The spec­ula­tion that had been gath­er­ing dis­solved abrupt­ly in­to dis­ap­point­ment.

Then he had an­oth­er thought. “What about you, then? Did you in­stall any­thing? Any new pro­grams, OS up­grades?”

“Noth­ing. They’re very strict about pro­duc­tion sys­tems. No soft­ware gets in­stalled with­out pri­or ap­proval from IT. But there hasn’t been any­thing, not since the Metanet it­self. And that was close to a year ago.”

Warne slumped fur­ther in his chair. Around him, the Sea of Tran­quil­ity was abuzz. The two row­dy youths at the next ta­ble had left, on­ly to be re­placed by a fam­ily of six. The chil­dren were drink­ing root beer floats and play­ing with foam-​rub­ber swords.

“Wait a minute.”

At the sound of Ter­ri’s voice, he sat up quick­ly.

“There was some­thing. Just over a month ago.”

Warne looked at her.

“But it’s not the smok­ing gun you’re look­ing for. In fact, it’s just the op­po­site.”

“Tell me.”

“Re­mem­ber how we said the en­tire Utopia sys­tem was re­cent­ly white-​hat­ted?”

“Yup. By KIS, the same out­fit that did Carnegie-​Mel­lon.” Barks­dale had men­tioned this in the morn­ing meet­ing.

“White-​hat­ted?” Poole asked, drain­ing his beer.

“Hack­ers for hire,” Warne ex­plained. “Le­git­imate snoops. Big firms em­ploy them to try to break in, un­cov­er se­cu­ri­ty loop­holes.” He turned back to Ter­ri. “Go on.”

“Well, we got a good re­port card. They said our net­work was de­cent­ly hard­ened. But they did dis­tribute a sys­tem patch for some of the high-​se­cu­ri­ty ter­mi­nals. To fix a bug in Unix that could po­ten­tial­ly be lever­aged by hack­ers, they said.”

“A sys­tem patch? For how many ter­mi­nals?”

“Not many. A dozen or two.”

“And yours was one of them.” It was a state­ment, not a ques­tion.

Ter­ri nod­ded.

For a mo­ment, Warne re­mained mo­tion­less. Then he stood up, the chair skid­ding back across the trans­par­ent floor.

“Where’s the clos­est phone?” he asked.

“The pub­lic phones are in the Nexus. We’ll have to go down the con­course and—”

“No,” he in­ter­rupt­ed. “We need to find a phone. Any phone. Now.”

Ter­ri stared at him in si­lence. Then she, too, stood up, mo­tion­ing for them to fol­low.

Warne dropped some bills on the ta­ble and they half walked, half jogged to­ward the rear of the lounge, in­to a wide pas­sage lead­ing to Cal­lis­to’s casi­no. Ter­ri walked di­rect­ly to­ward one wall, opened a well-​dis­guised door. It was lined in the same dark ma­te­ri­al as the wall, in­vis­ible save for the gray rect­an­gle of cor­ri­dor that lay be­yond it. He ducked through, fol­lowed by Poole.

Clos­ing the door be­hind them, Ter­ri led the way down a met­al stair­case and along a ser­vice cor­ri­dor, turn­ing in­to a large of­fice la­beled Com­pli­ance. A bank of sec­re­taries sat in car­rels along the far wall, typ­ing. One or two looked up briefly, then turned back to their screens.

Ter­ri point­ed to a phone on an emp­ty desk. Warne picked it up, pressed the but­ton for an out­side line, di­aled.

“Di­rec­to­ry as­sis­tance? I need a list­ing in Marl­bor­ough, New Hamp­shire. Key­hole In­tru­sion Sys­tems.”

A mo­ment lat­er, he was di­al­ing again.

“KIS,” a wom­an’s voice said on the oth­er end of the line.

“Give me Wal­ter El­li­son’s of­fice, please.” Warne men­tal­ly crossed his fin­gers. It was al­most four. As he re­mem­bered, Walt El­li­son was a worka­holic. There was a very good chance he’d be there, if he wasn’t at a client’s. Pick up, damn you, pick up…

“El­li­son here,” came the voice he re­mem­bered: loud, nasal, Bosto­ni­an.

“Walt, this is An­drew Warne. You test­ed our sys­tem at Carnegie-​Mel­lon last year. Re­mem­ber?”

There was a si­lence on the oth­er end, and for a sick­en­ing mo­ment he feared El­li­son had for­got­ten him. Then he heard a lazy laugh.

“Warne, sure. Robotics, right?”

“Yes.”

“How’s that ice cream ven­dor of yours, what’s its name—”

“Hard Place.”

“Hard Place, right. Sheesh. What a piece of work.” An­oth­er laugh.

Warne leaned in­to the phone. “Walt, lis­ten. I need a fa­vor. It’s about a KIS client.”

“You mean Carnegie-​Mel­lon.”

“No.”

El­li­son’s tone grew a lit­tle dis­tant. “Hey, Dr. Warne, you know I can’t dis­cuss oth­er clients.”

“If I’m right, you won’t have to. See, I don’t want to know about work you’ve done. Just about work you haven’t done.”

There was a pause. “I don’t fol­low.”

“Re­mem­ber who I was build­ing Hard Place for?”

“Sure, the theme…I mean, yes, I re­mem­ber the en­ti­ty.”

“Good. And you know I do work for that, ah, en­ti­ty?”

“I gath­ered as much.”

“Then you shouldn’t mind an­swer­ing one last ques­tion. Has KIS ev­er done a se­cu­ri­ty au­dit for them?”

The line was silent.

“Look,” Warne said ur­gent­ly. “I have to know.”

Still, si­lence.

“It could mean life or death, Wal­ter.”

There was a sigh. “Guess it’s no se­cret,” El­li­son said. “We’ve nev­er worked for them. Would be a peach of a job, though. Could you swing it, you think? Put a bug in the right ear?”

“Thanks a lot,” Warne said, hang­ing up. Then he turned to face Ter­ri and Poole.

“KIS nev­er came to Utopia,” he said.

Dis­be­lief rushed in­to Ter­ri’s face. “That’s im­pos­si­ble. I saw the team my­self. They were here for the bet­ter part of a day.”

“What you saw was John Doe’s ad­vance guard.”

Ter­ri didn’t an­swer.

“And those sys­tem patch­es they hand­ed out? Stealth soft­ware. When you ran the patch, you in­stalled their Tro­jan horse on your own sys­tem.”

“You mean—” She hes­itat­ed. “You mean the whole thing was a ruse?”

“A very clever, very brazen one. To in­fect cer­tain Utopia sys­tems, pave the way for what’s hap­pen­ing to­day.”

“But that can’t be. KIS is a re­al com­pa­ny, you said so your­self. It can’t be a ruse.”

Ter­ri was speak­ing quick­ly. She’s be­gin­ning to un­der­stand, Warne thought to him­self. And she doesn’t like where this is lead­ing.

“Yes, it is a re­al com­pa­ny. John Doe knew that. Utopia would nev­er have fall­en for a pho­ny. But the peo­ple who showed up—who did the se­cu­ri­ty au­dit, gave you those sys­tem patch­es—were im­pos­tors, not KIS em­ploy­ees. In­stead of clos­ing loop­holes, they were cre­at­ing them.”

“Sira ulo,” Ter­ri mut­tered. “No.”

“KIS was nev­er here.” Warne ges­tured to­ward the phone. “I just got it from the horse’s mouth.”

“But we would have known,” she said. “Fred ar­ranged the whole thing him­self. He would have smelled a rat, he would have known if some­thing—”

She fell silent. Warne took her hands.

“Ter­ri,” he said. “Fred Barks­dale is the rat.”

“No,” she re­peat­ed.

“He’s the one. John Doe’s man on the in­side. He gave John Doe ev­ery­thing he need­ed to com­pro­mise your sys­tems. No­body else had the ac­cess, the au­tho­riza­tion. No­body else could have set it up.”

With an aw­ful, pierc­ing kind of clar­ity, Warne saw the lay­ers of de­cep­tion peel away one by one. No doubt, ear­ly on, John Doe had had his men try half­heart­ed­ly to break in­to Utopia’s com­put­er net­work from the out­side. That would have giv­en Barks­dale le­git­imate rea­son to con­tact Key­hole In­tru­sion Sys­tems. On­ly it wasn’t KIS who showed up to check Utopia’s de­fens­es, it was John Doe’s team. Un­wit­ting­ly, Utopia had not on­ly al­lowed its sys­tems to be hacked—it had even in­vit­ed the hack­ers in. Those strange glitch­es Sarah had men­tioned ear­ly on, the dis­as­ter on the Not­ting Hill ride, must have been by-​prod­ucts of the in­stal­la­tion pro­cess—or, per­haps, cold-​blood­ed field tests by John Doe. And yet even now, with proof star­ing di­rect­ly at him, he did not want to face the con­se­quences of such a com­plete, such a dev­as­tat­ing be­tray­al. No, not Barks­dale, he knows too much about…

As he fin­ished the thought, he felt his heart be­gin to beat wild­ly with­in his chest.

Ter­ri stared at him, a strange ex­pres­sion on her face. Then, slow­ly, her eyes fell away. She shook her head, not speak­ing.

“I know. It’s a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble thing. I don’t un­der­stand it any more than you do.” Warne tight­ened his grip on her hands. “But right now we don’t have time to fig­ure it out.”

He turned to Poole. “You’ve got to find Barks­dale. Get him to Se­cu­ri­ty, stop him be­fore he caus­es any more dam­age.” He fished in his pock­et. “Here’s my pass­card. I’ve got Sarah’s tag, I won’t need it.”

Poole re­mained mo­tion­less. “Find Barks­dale. And what if he hangs tough? You think they’ll take my word over his?”

“You’re the war hero, you fig­ure some­thing out. Tell them what I just told you.”

With a grunt, Poole took the card, slipped it in­side his jack­et. When the hand came back out, it held an au­to­mat­ic pis­tol.

Warne glanced at it in sur­prise. Then he re­mem­bered how the hack­er had fired at them, back in the Hub; how the man had dropped his weapon in the scram­ble that fol­lowed. Fun­ny he’d for­got­ten about it all this time.

“What about you?” Poole asked, check­ing the weapon, re­turn­ing it to his jack­et. “I still want that life­time pass.”

“I’ll be okay. I’ll meet you in the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex. Just get Barks­dale.”

“You take care.” And Poole ducked out in­to the cor­ri­dor.

Warne turned back to Ter­ri, still silent and white-​lipped. “Do you un­der­stand what this means? If that disc is blank, they must have plant­ed it there. They have the good disc. They al­ready have the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy. Why is John Doe ask­ing Sarah to de­liv­er an­oth­er one, and de­liv­er it her­self? He wants her. Why, I don’t know. But I do know she’s in dan­ger.”

Even as he spoke the words, an­oth­er, even more ter­ri­ble im­age flashed across his mind: Barks­dale, that morn­ing, sug­gest­ing Ter­ri take Geor­gia for a so­da. Barks­dale knows about my daugh­ter. But does John Doe?

Ter­ri was watch­ing him in­tent­ly. Sud­den­ly, her eyes grew wide. It was as if her own thoughts had raced to the same ques­tion.

Warne spun away, clench­ing and un­clench­ing his fists. He was in an agony of in­de­ci­sion. Sarah Boatwright was in grave dan­ger. She was walk­ing—un­wit­ting­ly—in­to John Doe’s hands. On the oth­er hand, Geor­gia might be at risk her­self. Per­haps it wasn’t like­ly. But if they’d been search­ing for him…if they had al­ready killed some­body, be­liev­ing it to be him…and if John Doe learned…Geor­gia, his on­ly fam­ily…

He could not reach them both. There was on­ly time for one. One in cer­tain dan­ger; the oth­er in pos­si­ble dan­ger. One loved, one once loved. He pressed his face in­to his hands. It was an aw­ful, un­think­able dilem­ma.

He felt a hand fall on his shoul­der. “I’ll go,” came the voice.

He turned back to Ter­ri. “I’ll go,” she re­peat­ed in her low, un­in­flect­ed voice. “I’ll watch Geor­gia.”

He let his hands drop to his sides. “You will?”

She nod­ded.

For a mo­ment, the surge of re­lief was so strong that Warne felt phys­ical­ly weak. “You know where she is, right? Still in the Med­ical Fa­cil­ity, in a re­cov­ery bay.” He thought quick­ly. “I want you to take her some­place where the two of you can hide. Get her to Se­cu­ri­ty, if you can, but get her some­where you’ll be safe. Just to be sure. Will you do that?”

Ter­ri nod­ded again.

“Thank you, Ter­ri. Thank you. Thank you.”

He em­braced her, held her close against him for a mo­ment, then pulled away. Ter­ri’s eyes did not leave his face as he head­ed for the door.

A mo­ment lat­er, he was once again in the cor­ri­dor, run­ning now, head­ing back to­ward the pub­lic spaces of Utopia.

 

3:55 P.M.

CEN­TRAL WARDROBE WAS a sprawl­ing war­ren of rooms on B Lev­el. Though its halls were al­ways teem­ing with cast mem­bers, Wardrobe seemed to grow par­tic­ular­ly busy as four o’clock ap­proached. Roy­al dukes and knight-​er­rants from Camelot, go­ing off-​shift, but­ted el­bows with street ven­dors in straw skim­mers and seer­suck­er suits, bound for Board­walk and the evening fes­tiv­ities. Courtiers in wim­ples and flow­ing dress­es chat­ted with in­ter­stel­lar ex­plor­ers wear­ing pres­sur­ized flight suits. Dressers, milliners, cos­tume con­sul­tants, tai­lors, and speech train­ers wan­dered through the hall­ways, ad­just­ing and in­struct­ing. It was a bizarre, noisy, dis­con­cert­ing mix of old and new, past and fu­ture.

The dor­mi­to­ry-​sized men’s lava­to­ry was sand­wiched be­tween Cos­tume Stor­age and Cos­met­ic Prep. In­side, a lone male stood be­fore a bank of sinks. He was wash­ing his hands care­ful­ly, tak­ing time to re­move some caked ma­te­ri­al from be­neath his fin­ger­nails. That ac­com­plished, he pulled a pa­per tow­el from a near­by dis­penser, glanc­ing up at a mir­ror as he did so. A pair of tac­iturn, al­mond-​shaped eyes stared back.

The door opened and a group of jug­glers in bright­ly col­ored mot­ley en­tered, laugh­ing and chat­ting. Toss­ing away the tow­el, the man left the lava­to­ry and thread­ed his way past dress­ing rooms and the Camelot prop repos­ito­ry—long ranks of swords, lances, mail suits, shields, pen­nants, and breast­plates gleam­ing un­der flu­ores­cent lights—to Men’s Chang­ing. Find­ing his lock­er, he spun the di­al, lift­ed the latch, opened the gray met­al door. He had al­ready re­placed his malac­ca cane—new­ly cleaned and pol­ished to shiny per­fec­tion—on a rack of fifty iden­ti­cal spec­imens in Gaslight Prop. He’d de­posit­ed the In­ver­ness cape and woolen suit in­to one of the nu­mer­ous met­al hatch­es of the HPLR, the high-​pres­sure laun­dry re­moval sys­tem that lined the walls of Cen­tral Wardrobe. Now he peered in­side his lock­er, ex­am­in­ing the shiny, al­most iri­des­cent suit of a Cal­lis­tan shut­tle pi­lot that hung on a hook, next to a set of dark blue cov­er­alls.

There was a brief, muf­fled chirrup. The man glanced around, mak­ing sure he was un­ob­served. Then he plucked a ra­dio from his pock­et. He leaned ca­su­al­ly against the ad­join­ing lock­ers, shield­ing him­self with the open door, snapped the ra­dio on, and en­tered the de­scram­bling code.

“Hard­ball,” he said in­to the mi­cro­phone.

“Hard­ball, this is Prime Fac­tor,” came the voice of John Doe. “Any cu­ri­ous on­look­ers?”

“Nega­to­ry.”

“Your work in Gaslight?”

“We’re all set.”

“So to speak.” A dry laugh sound­ed over the ra­dio. “Lis­ten close­ly, there’s been a change of plans. Once you’ve com­plet­ed the fi­nal as­sign­ment in Cal­lis­to, you’ll need to make one more stop on the way down to C Lev­el. Re­mem­ber our eva­sive friend, An­drew Warne?”

“Af­fir­ma­tive.”

“Turns out he brought his im­ped­imen­ta to the Park along with him. His daugh­ter’s down in Med­ical. Re­cov­er­ing from the late un­pleas­ant­ness at Wa­ter­dark, it ap­pears. Her name is Geor­gia.”

“Un­der­stood.”

“You’re to bring her to the re­group­ing way­point. She may prove use­ful.”

“Un­der­stood.”

“There’s still no word from Crack­er Jack. I’ve got the back­up trans­mit­ter, so that’s not a con­cern. But I’m trou­bled by the way this Warne fel­low keeps giv­ing us the slip. Still, per­haps you’ll find him with his daugh­ter. That would make things eas­ier. Ei­ther way, you can ex­pect com­pa­ny.”

The man called Hard­ball glanced down in­to the lock­er. A pi­lot’s flight bag lay there, gleam­ing faint­ly sil­ver in the re­flect­ed light. “Not a prob­lem.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be. But time is of the essence. I’ve got an ap­point­ment to keep. And you’ve got a few of your own. Ready to light the can­dle?”

“Just dress­ing for it now.”

“In that case: fire in the hole.” There was a pause. “I’ve al­ways want­ed to say that.”

John Doe’s chuck­le died away as the al­mond-​eyed man dropped the ra­dio back in­to his pock­et. Then he took an­oth­er look around, re­moved the pi­lot’s suit from the hang­er, and be­gan shrug­ging in­to it.

 

4:00 P.M.

THE QUEUE HAD been sur­pris­ing­ly, mer­ci­ful­ly short, and the last Su­per­no­va was still cold in his bel­ly when Kyle Cochran saw the bar­ri­er rope draw away from the base of the es­ca­la­tor. It wasn’t a rope, ac­tu­al­ly, but some kind of holo­gram: a slick, high-​tech re-​cre­ation of those thick vel­vet cords you saw hang­ing across old the­ater lob­bies. It bright­ened briefly, cor­us­cat­ing bands of pur­ple flar­ing to yel­low, then seemed to evap­orate in­to thin air. A near­by shut­tle at­ten­dant came for­ward, smil­ing and ges­tur­ing for the head of the line to step on­to the es­ca­la­tor. As Kyle wait­ed, he felt him­self jos­tled from the rear by his friend, Tom Walsh.

“Easy, big fel­lah,” he said with a laugh.

Even the es­ca­la­tor was cool: the handrails glow­ing a sub­dued blue neon, the mov­ing steps made of some semi­trans­par­ent sub­stance. It was slow, but silky smooth, af­ford­ing an ev­er-​ex­pand­ing view of the Sky­port falling away be­neath. Kyle turned around to look, drink­ing it all in. It was the sev­enth time he’d seen it that day, but it was a view that didn’t get old: lines of guests snaking across the il­lu­mi­nat­ed sta­tion floor; lasers and ex­ot­ic light­ing ef­fects throw­ing the mas­sive ar­chi­tec­ture in­to bold re­lief; the vast dome of stars arch­ing over all. The on­ly ride with­out a queue line was Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark, mys­te­ri­ous­ly closed for main­te­nance dur­ing the peak at­ten­dance pe­ri­od.

Sev­en drops on Sta­tion Omega. God­damn.

At the top of the es­ca­la­tor, an­oth­er at­ten­dant guid­ed the guests in­to a hall­way la­beled Trans­port Ap­proach. Tom walked along with the crowd, cran­ing his head over the peo­ple ahead of him. There it was, doors wide open at the far end of the cor­ri­dor, pale walls shim­mer­ing faint­ly: the shut­tle trans­port. The so-​called shut­tle trans­port. A one-​way tick­et, straight down. The in­te­ri­or was il­lu­mi­nat­ed a pale crim­son, and it re­mind­ed him of a vast open mouth. He shud­dered pleas­ant­ly.

A third at­ten­dant wait­ed at the end of the pas­sage. “Trav­el time to the shut­tle will be ap­prox­imate­ly five min­utes,” she said as she guid­ed peo­ple in­to the wait­ing trans­port. “Please have your board­ing pass­es ready. The shut­tle is due to leave space­dock in twen­ty min­utes, so please move quick­ly once ex­it­ing the trans­port.”

As he al­lowed him­self to be herd­ed in­to the cham­ber, Kyle grinned to him­self. He loved be­ing one of the in­sid­ers, lis­ten­ing to all this care­ful­ly prac­ticed de­cep­tion. It was like watch­ing the skilled mis­di­rec­tion of a mas­ter ma­gi­cian. He glanced around at the oth­er oc­cu­pants. Sev­er­al of them were al­so grin­ning know­ing­ly.

For vet­er­an rid­ers of Sta­tion Omega, the drop it­self was on­ly half the fun. The oth­er half was watch­ing the re­ac­tion of fel­low rid­ers. De­spite the no­to­ri­ety of the ride—the mag­azine ar­ti­cles, the web­sites de­vot­ed to Sta­tion Omega triv­ia—there were al­ways a few pas­sen­gers who weren’t in on it. They tru­ly be­lieved they were about to take a ride on a shut­tle, and that this over­size el­eva­tor was mere­ly trans­porta­tion to the re­al at­trac­tion. Kyle’s prac­ticed eye roamed over the six­ty-​odd guests crowd­ed around him, fer­ret­ing out the ig­no­rant. That Japanese tour group, chat­ting an­imat­ed­ly to one side: maybe. That pair of ado­les­cent love­birds in the cor­ner, more in­ter­est­ed in grop­ing each oth­er than in their sur­round­ings: an­oth­er maybe. The mid­dle-​aged cou­ple in match­ing shirts and hats, won­der­ing out loud how long the shut­tle ride would be: def­inite­ly. Kyle nod­ded smug­ly to him­self. When all hell broke loose, those two would be the ones to watch.

Out­side, in the ac­cess cor­ri­dor, Kyle could see the third at­ten­dant, talk­ing to a white-​haired cou­ple in a low, ur­gent voice. The cou­ple wasn’t all that old—maybe six­ty, maybe a lit­tle more—but the at­ten­dant was ob­vi­ous­ly turn­ing them away. Utopia took no chances. Kyle knew, from the web­sites he’d vis­it­ed, that the shut­tle at­ten­dants at Sta­tion Omega were more than just a glo­ri­fied board­ing crew—they were med­ical­ly trained staff, on the look­out for any­one even re­mote­ly un­fit for a free-​fall drop. He watched the two move grudg­ing­ly away, fresh casi­no vouch­ers in hand. They could have been his own par­ents. A part of him was glad they wouldn’t be go­ing on the ride.

He glanced over at Tom, nudg­ing him in the ribs and nod­ding to­ward the tourists in the match­ing out­fits. Tom glanced over, rolled his eyes. Yup, his ex­pres­sion seemed to say. Vic­tims.

Kyle grinned. In ad­di­tion to a mount­ing sense of ex­pec­ta­tion, he was aware, far back in his mind, of an­oth­er feel­ing: a feel­ing very close to re­lief. Tom was act­ing like his old self again. Maybe it was just a one-​day blip. But then again, maybe he was, at last, be­gin­ning to see some light at the end of the tun­nel.

The trans­port cham­ber was al­most full now, and peo­ple were shuf­fling back and forth, cre­at­ing small oases of space, in the un­con­scious way they did in sub­way cars and el­eva­tors. In a few mo­ments, it wouldn’t mat­ter: ev­ery­one would be scream­ing, clutch­ing at who­ev­er was clos­est, per­son­al space for­got­ten in the ter­ri­fy­ing plunge in­to dark­ness.

Once again, Kyle won­dered, a lit­tle idly, how it was done; how they man­aged to keep ev­ery­one up­right and lev­el dur­ing the drop. In free-​fall rides at oth­er parks, peo­ple were strapped in­to cars like they were wear­ing straight­jack­ets. But here—where the el­ement of sur­prise was ev­ery­thing—seats and straps would have been a dead give­away. He knew some­body, a grad­uate stu­dent at UCSB’s en­gi­neer­ing school, who had a the­ory; some­thing about the use of com­pressed air. Kyle made a men­tal note to pay care­ful at­ten­tion this time. But it was dif­fi­cult: the fall was so abrupt, so brief and wrench­ing, that al­most be­fore you drew in breath to scream it was over. And then there was…

His thoughts were cut short as the trans­port doors whis­pered shut, seal­ing the crowd­ed car from the cor­ri­dor be­yond. He heard a loud clang from out­side, then a voice came over an in­vis­ible in­ter­nal speak­er. Trans­port un­der way to shut­tle dock. You may feel a small vi­bra­tion as we leave the air­lock.

A small vi­bra­tion, Kyle thought to him­self. Yeah, right.

This was the mo­ment he loved most: the last few sec­onds be­fore the bot­tom dropped out of the world. He felt his nerve ends taut with an­tic­ipa­tion. He caught Tom’s eye, gave him a thumbs-​up. Then he glanced at the faces around him—some smil­ing con­spir­ato­ri­al­ly, some bored and bliss­ful­ly un­aware—be­fore set­tling at last on the cou­ple with the match­ing hats.

There was a hum­ming noise out­side the com­part­ment, as if an en­gine had en­gaged. The hum rose in in­ten­si­ty as pow­er in­creased. A sen­sa­tion of gen­tle move­ment.

Then a sud­den lurch.

“Shit!” came an in­vol­un­tary mut­ter.

Abrupt­ly, the sen­sa­tion of move­ment stopped. There was an­oth­er jolt, stronger this time, and the lights flick­ered briefly. Kyle watched as the cou­ple in match­ing out­fits ex­changed glances of mild sur­prise. Naked fear would fol­low soon enough.

The whine of the en­gines in­creased; grew ragged; then cut out. In the sud­den si­lence, tick­ings and creak­ings of met­al sound­ed out­side the trans­port. There was a crack, loud­er this time, and yet an­oth­er jolt. And then, sud­den­ly, the lights snapped out.

There was a mo­ment of pitch-​black­ness. Then a bank of emer­gen­cy light­ing, thin and blood-​red, came on near the floor. Kyle liked this touch es­pe­cial­ly: the light rose up, rather than down, throw­ing ev­ery­body’s fea­tures in­to grotesque re­lief.

At­ten­tion, came the voice over the in­ter­com. We are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties with the main propul­sion sys­tem. We will be un­der way short­ly. Do not be alarmed.

Please, do be alarmed, Kyle thought, sneak­ing an­oth­er glance to­ward the match­ing cou­ple. Their eyes were wide and star­ing now, their faces set.

An­oth­er, rend­ing crack sound­ed from out­side, fol­lowed by the brit­tle hiss­ing of sparks. And then, right on cue, came the smoke.

Kyle tensed. This was it: this was the drop.

He wait­ed, half-​ea­ger, half-​ap­pre­hen­sive, for that in­de­scrib­able mo­ment when you sud­den­ly re­al­ized there was no longer any floor be­neath your feet, and you were hurtling down­ward in­to the void. He took one breath, then an­oth­er.

And then some­thing very strange hap­pened. The red emer­gen­cy lights winked out.

Kyle wait­ed, lis­ten­ing to the rum­blings and hiss­ings out­side the trans­port. He felt him­self jos­tled gen­tly as the bod­ies around him shuf­fled in ut­ter dark­ness. He didn’t re­mem­ber the emer­gen­cy lights ev­er go­ing out be­fore—not com­plete­ly, any­way. Had he just failed to no­tice be­fore in the ex­cite­ment?

Around him, he could feel his fel­low guests stand­ing in place, some tense with an­tic­ipa­tion of the drop, oth­ers mys­ti­fied. He didn’t re­mem­ber this long a wait, at all. Maybe he’d just grown too used to the ride.

But there was some­thing else. Ev­ery place he’d been in Utopia had been cool, al­most chill. That went for the rides as well as the boule­vards and con­cours­es. It was some­thing you took for grant­ed, nev­er even no­ticed. But it seemed hot in­side this trans­port: hot, and get­ting hot­ter.

There were voic­es around him now, talk­ing in low, ur­gent tones.

“What’s up?” he heard some­body ask.

“When are we go­ing?” came a plain­tive voice.

“Are we on our way to the shut­tle now?” asked a third.

Kyle tugged at his shirt, pluck­ing it away from his chest. The cape around his shoul­ders seemed suf­fo­cat­ing­ly heavy. Christ, it was get­ting hot.

He felt him­self jos­tled again, more force­ful­ly this time, and as he flung a hand out to re­store his bal­ance, he felt the back of his arm slide along a man’s face, sweaty and stub­bled. He shrank away. Prob­ably some kind of god­damn break­down, he thought with a mix­ture of an­noy­ance and con­cern. The kind of mon­ey you spend to get in­to this place, you’d think this wouldn’t hap­pen.

In the dark­ness, a small voice start­ed to cry.

The mur­mur of voic­es be­gan to rise, notes of ten­sion un­mis­tak­able now. Kyle glanced around, eyes wide against the dark­ness; but the dark­ness re­mained, un­vexed by any light. It was an un­fa­mil­iar and some­how aw­ful thing, ab­so­lute dark­ness. On­ly once be­fore had he been com­plete­ly with­out light, on a spelunk­ing trip with some fel­low UCSB stu­dents. As a joke, the lead­er had all the cavers turn off their hel­met lamps when they reached the bot­tom of the cav­ity. But that had been for just a mo­ment. And they’d all had flash­lights. And they’d been able to get out.

Why did we have to make it sev­en? he asked him­self as the in­cor­po­re­al forms around him grew more rest­less, the voic­es more ag­itat­ed. Why couldn’t we have left it at six? This would ru­in ev­ery­thing.

Ut­ter dark­ness was ter­ri­fy­ing. You felt de­fense­less, help­less, dis­ori­ent­ed. And how much worse to be here, in an over­size shoe box, sweat­ing your balls off, hang­ing sus­pend­ed over a drop that…

With an ef­fort, Kyle mas­tered him­self. Maybe this is in­ten­tion­al. They prob­ably mon­itor the fan sites on the Web, watch­ing for guests get­ting too com­pla­cent, rides get­ting too fa­mil­iar. Maybe they’ve changed the ride. To keep re­peat rid­ers guess­ing, keep things from get­ting stale. That would be their style.

Even if it was some kind of break­down, he rea­soned, there was noth­ing to wor­ry about. The whole place was crawl­ing with en­gi­neers and me­chan­ics. It had to be. A few more sec­onds and they’d go in­to free fall; he knew they would. And he’d have even more of a sto­ry to tell back at the dorm…

As if in re­sponse to his thoughts, the car gave an­oth­er lurch. There was a tense, ex­cit­ed burst of chat­ter as six­ty-​odd peo­ple tried to keep their bal­ance in the black­ness. Here we go, Kyle thought. And the re­lief that flood­ed through him was al­most over­whelm­ing.

But they did not go. And now, as he wait­ed in the swel­ter­ing, op­pres­sive dark­ness, Kyle re­al­ized some­thing must be ter­ri­bly wrong. It was too hot, too sti­fling, for the close quar­ters, the crush of bod­ies, to ac­count for by them­selves. He could feel the smoke con­tin­ue to tum­ble down up­on them, but it wasn’t like the fake smoke of the pre­vi­ous drops. That had been cool, moist, scent­less, even re­fresh­ing. This was hot, al­most scald­ing.

“I can’t breathe!” some­body cried. There was a sud­den, wild scuf­fling to his right.

Kyle tried to gulp air. His lungs felt parched. He wheeled around in con­fused des­per­ation.

“Get us out of here!” cried an­oth­er voice.

“We’re trapped! Help, help!”

It was as if a dam had sud­den­ly burst. In a sin­gle, gal­van­ic ac­tion, dozens of pan­icked bod­ies turned to­ward the doors that had closed be­hind them just min­utes be­fore, cry­ing, plead­ing, pound­ing fran­ti­cal­ly against the un­yield­ing walls. Kyle felt him­self buf­fet­ed, knocked back and forth by hys­ter­ical un­seen forms. A heavy blow spun him around, sent him reel­ing to­ward the floor.

He fought des­per­ate­ly to keep his bal­ance, grab­bing at limbs, pulling him­self up­right. Even in this ex­trem­ity, he could hear some in­ner voice qui­et­ly re­mind­ing him that to fall would mean be­ing tram­pled re­lent­less­ly un­der­foot. The scorch­ing air was full of screams, curs­es, ragged cries. He could hear a dif­fer­ent voice com­ing over the speak­er now—a male voice, quick and ur­gent—but it sound­ed dis­tant, im­pos­si­bly faint over the bed­lam that sur­round­ed him.

Some­thing scream­ing ran in­to him with ter­rif­ic force. Kyle felt hands tug­ging at his hair, nails rak­ing across his face. He fell back­ward, knock­ing against slip­pery bod­ies and, de­spite a supreme ef­fort, found him­self slid­ing down, down in­to a re­gion in­hab­it­ed by boots and shoes and san­dals. The floor was like a grid­dle and he turned over, try­ing to rise to his knees, but the press was too close around him and he was un­able to strug­gle against the over­whelm­ing pres­sure. He could hear the hor­rif­ic im­pact of flesh on bone as peo­ple fought and clawed their way to­ward the closed doors. Some­thing heavy hit him in the face—once, twice—and sud­den­ly the pan­ic, the con­fu­sion, even the blis­ter­ing heat, seemed to fade away. Vague­ly, he won­dered what had hap­pened to Tom. And then peo­ple were falling up­on him, crush­ing him with their weight, and as con­scious­ness be­gan to flick­er and his limbs re­laxed in­vol­un­tar­ily he re­al­ized he was sink­ing, sink­ing, like an old leaf, com­ing gen­tly down to rest on earth.

 

4:00 P.M.

AN­GUS POOLE SAT on a desk in the large out­er of­fice of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy, arms crossed, whistling a jaun­ty if off-​key ar­range­ment of “Knock Me a Kiss.” He was sur­round­ed by at least three dozen oth­er desks, most of them oc­cu­pied. On each desk sat a key­board and flat-​screen mon­itor, set at the same pre­cise an­gle. De­spite its size, the room seemed qui­et, and Poole’s whistling eas­ily over­rode the qui­et mur­mur of con­ver­sa­tion, the tap of keys, the jin­gling of tele­phones.

At the far end of the room sat a brace of win­dow­less green doors. Above them was a sign, its cau­tion­ary lan­guage leg­ible even at Poole’s dis­tance: Au­tho­rized Sys­tems Per­son­nel On­ly Be­yond This Point. Use of Reti­nal and Hand-​Ge­om­etry Scan­ners Re­quired for Ac­cess. On the far side of those doors lay the vast com­put­ers that were the brains of Utopia: a metropo­lis of sil­icon and cop­per that su­per­vised the rides, robotics, py­rotech­nic ef­fects, holo­graph­ic dis­plays, live shows, surveil­lance, casi­no op­er­ations, elec­tri­cal dis­tri­bu­tion, trash pro­cess­ing, fire-​sens­ing de­vices, mono­rail, chilled-​and hot-​wa­ter fa­cil­ities, and count­less oth­er sys­tems nec­es­sary to keep the Park op­er­ational. It seemed in­con­gru­ous that such a place of won­ders would hide be­hind a fa­cade as bland and col­or­less as this out­er of­fice.

As Poole wait­ed, some­body stood up from a near­by desk and be­gan to ap­proach him. He glanced over: fe­male, Cau­casian, late twen­ties, slight build, five six, 110, green eyes cam­ou­flaged by tint­ed con­tacts. He con­tin­ued whistling.

She came for­ward, a lit­tle ten­ta­tive­ly, eye­ing Warne’s pass­card clipped to his jack­et. Clear­ly, she was un­used to see­ing ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ists with­in the sa­cred halls of Sys­tems.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked.

Poole shook his head and smiled. “No, thanks,” he said. “Al­ready been helped.” And he re­sumed his whistling.

The wom­an stared at him for a mo­ment. Then she nod­ded, turned away, and—with a sin­gle back­ward glance—re­turned to her desk.

Poole watched her go. Then he looked down at his watch. Four o’clock pre­cise­ly. His whis­tle slow­ly segued to a hum.

As he hummed, he was think­ing quick­ly. This was a dis­taste­ful­ly in­el­egant op­er­ation, and it was tak­ing longer than it should. Still, un­der the cir­cum­stances, it would have to do.

Warne’s plan—not that, to Poole’s way of think­ing, it de­served to be called a plan—con­tained a num­ber of an­noy­ing loop­holes. To be­gin with, Warne’s case against this Fred Barks­dale seemed cir­cum­stan­tial, dif­fi­cult to prove. But more to the point, Poole him­self had no idea where to find the man, or even what he looked like. Luck­ily, Utopia had an in­ter­nal tele­phone di­rec­to­ry. And just as luck­ily, Poole’s call—made from an emp­ty of­fice at the end of an ad­join­ing cor­ri­dor—had been an­swered on the first ring. Now, as he wait­ed, Poole’s eyes light­ed on a small black at­taché case, stuck be­neath an un­oc­cu­pied desk about a dozen yards away. Glanc­ing around, Poole slid off the table­top, walked ca­su­al­ly over to the desk, and grabbed the brief­case. It would make an ap­pro­pri­ate prop.

Some­thing was mov­ing in his pe­riph­er­al vi­sion, ap­proach­ing with quick, de­lib­er­ate steps. Turn­ing, Poole saw a tall, thin man with blue eyes and a thick sheaf of blond hair, thread­ing his way be­tween the desks. He had come from the di­rec­tion of the green doors. Al­though his well-​tai­lored suit was im­mac­ulate, and his tie knot­ted be­yond re­proach, to Poole’s eye he had the air of a suc­cess­ful man caught dur­ing an un­ex­pect­ed­ly stress­ful day.

Poole ex­tend­ed his hand. “Mr. Barks­dale, right?”

The blond man shook hands au­to­mat­ical­ly. His grip was dry and very brief. “Yes.” Poole rec­og­nized the same British ac­cent he’d just heard over the phone. “You’ll for­give me, but I’m rather busy. Now, what’s this about—?”

Barks­dale stopped abrupt­ly as he no­ticed the pass­card clipped to Poole’s jack­et. He frowned. “Just a minute. Over the phone—”

“Par­don me,” Poole in­ter­rupt­ed. “But would you mind if we talked out here?” As he spoke, he placed one arm smooth­ly be­neath Barks­dale’s el­bow and be­gan guid­ing him to­ward the out­er door—not enough pres­sure to push the man against his will, but enough to make re­sis­tance awk­ward. It was im­por­tant to get Barks­dale off his turf, in­to neu­tral ter­ri­to­ry.

Grasp­ing the con­tra­band brief­case in his oth­er hand, Poole led Barks­dale out of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy and in­to the wide cor­ri­dor of B Lev­el. Barks­dale al­lowed him­self to be guid­ed, clear­ly an­noyed but oth­er­wise silent. He was a Utopia big­wig: un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, Poole fig­ured, he would have raised a fuss at this un­ex­plained in­ter­rup­tion. But if Warne was right—if Barks­dale was dirty—then the man couldn’t risk a de­lay at this point in the game. He wasn’t a pro­fes­sion­al at this kind of work: he’d be feel­ing wor­ried, out of his depth, fear­ful of un­ex­pect­ed com­pli­ca­tions. He’d have no choice but to go along. And he was go­ing along. Poole’s in­stinc­tive skep­ti­cism be­gan to ebb.

A few min­utes be­fore, when scout­ing the area, Poole had no­ticed a break room a hun­dred feet down the cor­ri­dor. Now, he led Barks­dale in­to the de­sert­ed lounge. Smil­ing, he in­di­cat­ed a bank of couch­es along one blue-​paint­ed wall.

Barks­dale freed him­self from Poole’s grasp. “Now, look, I’m afraid I don’t un­der­stand. Over the phone, you said you were one of Camelot’s me­chan­ical en­gi­neers.”

Poole nod­ded.

“You said there was a prob­lem with the gov­er­nors on one of the rides. Sys­tems tam­per­ing, you said. Sus­pi­cion of sab­otage. You didn’t want to speak to any­body but me.”

Again, Poole nod­ded. That had been the bait: to lure Barks­dale out with pre­cise­ly the kind of red flag he wouldn’t dare ig­nore.

Barks­dale point­ed to the pass­card. “But you’re an ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ist. Not Utopia staff at all. So what, pre­cise­ly, is go­ing on?”

Poole in­clined his head. “You’re right, of course. I’m not Utopia staff. I’m sor­ry about the phone call, but you’re such a hard man to reach. I just wasn’t mak­ing any head­way through the usu­al chan­nels.”

Barks­dale’s blue eyes nar­rowed. Poole read a mix of emo­tions be­hind them: an­noy­ance, un­cer­tain­ty, anx­iety.

“Who are you?” Barks­dale asked.

Poole smiled dep­re­cat­ing­ly. “I’m a sales con­sul­tant for an ex­ter­nal ven­dor. Fact is, my boss said I had to see you, no mat­ter what it took.”

“You’re a—what, you’re a bloody sales­man?”

Poole smiled again, nod­ded.

The mix of emo­tions left Barks­dale’s face, leav­ing on­ly in­dig­na­tion in their wake. “How did you get in here?”

“That’s not im­por­tant, is it? The fact is, I’m here, and I’m here to help you.” Poole pat­ted the brief­case. “If you could just sit down for a minute, I’d like to give you a brief demon­stra­tion of our—”

“I will not,” Barks­dale said. “In fact, I’m go­ing to call Se­cu­ri­ty.” And he turned away.

“If you could just sit down a mo­ment.” And with that, Poole’s hand shot out, grasped Barks­dale’s shoul­der, and pushed him on­to the near­est so­fa.

Barks­dale’s face dark­ened, but he re­mained where he was.

“Thank you. I promise I’ll just take a minute.” Poole went through an elab­orate pre­tense of turn­ing the brief­case, as if prepar­ing to open it. “As head of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy for this fine Park, you must be aware of the dan­gers of, ah, out­side in­fil­tra­tion.”

Barks­dale re­mained silent, star­ing at him.

“The more au­to­mat­ed, the more com­put­er­ized, our in­fras­truc­tures be­come, the more sus­cep­ti­ble we are to at­tack.” Poole went on in the singsong rhythm of a canned recita­tion. “It’s a sad com­men­tary on the times we live in. How­ev­er, com­put­er-​based pro­tec­tion has be­come a busi­ness ne­ces­si­ty. There are out­side el­ements who would like noth­ing more than to pen­etrate your sys­tems, Mr. Barks­dale. And that’s where we can help.”

As quick­ly as it had come, the col­or drained from Barks­dale’s face.

“The firm I rep­re­sent can di­ag­nose your sys­tems, check for weak­ness­es, sug­gest reme­dies. And to­day, to­day on­ly, we’re of­fer­ing a spe­cial two-​for-​one sale. Can I sign you up?” Poole reached in­to his pock­et for a pen.

“What firm did you say you worked for?” Barks­dale’s voice was as dry and thin as old parch­ment.

“Oh, I’m sor­ry, didn’t I say? Key­hole In­tru­sion Sys­tems.”

A hunt­ed look came in­to Barks­dale’s face. He looked sharply left, then right.

Any doubts Poole had now dis­ap­peared. He held the pass­card up in front of Barks­dale, close enough for the man to read An­drew Warne’s name im­print­ed along its edge.

“Gotcha,” he said light­ly.

Barks­dale leaped to his feet, spun away from the couch, and be­gan to sprint out of the lounge.

“Mr. Barks­dale!” Poole said in a com­mand­ing tone.

Some­thing in Poole’s voice made Barks­dale stop in mid­flight. He turned around slow­ly. Poole had dipped two fin­gers in­to his cor­duroy jack­et and with­drawn the butt of the hack­er’s pis­tol.

“It’ll be much less messy if we do this my way, Mr. Barks­dale,” he said.

Then, with an en­cour­ag­ing smile, he re­laxed his fin­gers and let the pis­tol slip back out of sight.

 

4:00 P.M.

TER­RI BONI­FA­CIO WALKED down the broad hall­way, arms at her sides, eyes straight ahead. It was four o’clock, and—in the wake of the changeover from Red Shift to Blue Shift—the Utopia Un­der­ground had grown crowd­ed with cast mem­bers. More than once she was ac­knowl­edged by a wave, a nod, a smile. Ter­ri did not re­spond. She was lost in thought.

What had start­ed as a nor­mal day had turned in­to a kind of wak­ing dream. Ac­tu­al­ly, wak­ing night­mare was more like it.

And to think it had start­ed with a pleas­ant sur­prise—Dr. Warne’s ar­rival a week ear­ly. Day af­ter day, as she’d mon­itored the Metanet, watched it sub­tly im­prove it­self and the bots un­der its care—and as she’d re­layed this in­for­ma­tion to Warne in count­less phone con­ver­sa­tions—she had grown in­creas­ing­ly in­ter­est­ed in its cre­ator. Here was a man who shared her fas­ci­na­tion with ma­chine in­tel­li­gence, who’d ac­tu­al­ly made fun­da­men­tal con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­ci­pline. Some­one she could learn from. A wit­ty, bril­liant some­one, with a wry sense of hu­mor to boot. As gos­sip about his breakup with Sarah Boatwright sur­faced, she’d even gone so far as to day­dream about a fu­ture col­lab­ora­tion: Warne as the icon­oclas­tic ge­nius, her­self as the tech­ni­cal wiz­ard who could im­ple­ment, com­ple­ment, his vi­sions, bring them in­to the main­stream. Hand in hand.

The sur­pris­es that fol­lowed, how­ev­er, had been far less pleas­ant.

And the fi­nal rev­ela­tion, Barks­dale’s treach­ery, left her stunned. Even now she could scarce­ly be­lieve it. Could it all be some ter­ri­ble mis­take? Could Warne have made some pro­found er­ror in judg­ment?

The dou­ble doors of the Cen­tral Med­ical Fa­cil­ity were closed, bright lights shin­ing be­hind the frost­ed-​glass win­dows. Ter­ri slowed as she ap­proached.

Even now…And what about now? What­ev­er the truth about Barks­dale, she’d seen that strug­gle in the Hub, the duf­fel full of am­mu­ni­tion. And now she was head­ed for Med­ical, vol­un­teer­ing for bat­tle. Sure, let me help. Let me save some brat­ty kid from an army of mer­ce­nar­ies. Nice go­ing, Ter­ri.

She shook this thought away. The chances were a thou­sand to one against any­one com­ing af­ter a four­teen-​year-​old girl. Even if they knew of her ex­is­tence—which was un­like­ly—they had far bet­ter things to do. She was just mak­ing sure. For An­drew.

She took a deep breath, pushed the doors open.

Ter­ri had on­ly been in Med­ical a few times—once for a flu shot, once when she’d dropped a propul­sion sys­tem on her foot—and each time it had been near­ly emp­ty. The fa­cil­ity was laid out in the shape of a square, its two wide cen­tral cor­ri­dors form­ing a gi­ant plus sign where they in­ter­sect­ed. She imag­ined all too clear­ly the scene that was about to greet her: half a dozen nurse prac­ti­tion­ers, stand­ing around pa­tient­less, would im­me­di­ate­ly de­mand to know her busi­ness. But as she passed by the doors, she found some­thing very dif­fer­ent. A sin­gle nurse stood at the nurs­es’ sta­tion—an open area ahead and to the left, at the in­ter­sec­tion of the two long cor­ri­dors—fran­ti­cal­ly bal­anc­ing a phone on each shoul­der while scrib­bling notes. Oth­er nurs­es were run­ning back and forth, push­ing crash carts or gath­er­ing med­ical sup­plies.

Ter­ri walked to­ward the nurs­es’ sta­tion, look­ing around cu­ri­ous­ly. Now a group of doc­tors ap­proached her, heads to­geth­er, talk­ing rapid­ly. As they passed, Ter­ri strained to lis­ten. It seemed there had just been some kind of freak ac­ci­dent on one of the rides in Cal­lis­to. Nu­mer­ous ca­su­al­ties were re­port­ed, and the burn unit was on full alert.

Ter­ri felt a chill course through her. Not again…

She caught sight of two se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists. They were stand­ing at the junc­tion of the two main cor­ri­dors, across from the nurs­es’ sta­tion, talk­ing in low tones.

Ter­ri slowed her pace, forced her­self to think. There were two ways she could do this. The first way was to be hon­est and up-​front. She’d ap­proach a nurse, or one of the guards, and say, Hi, I’m Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio, from IT. You’ve got a ca­su­al­ty, Geor­gia Warne, re­cu­per­at­ing here? Well, we’re not sure she’s safe here, and her fa­ther wants me to hide her some­place else, so…

Ter­ri dis­missed this op­tion with­out play­ing it out any fur­ther. She’d have to try the oth­er way.

She walked for­ward and, as non­cha­lant­ly as she could, reached out and slipped a clip­board from the sort­ing tray on the near end of the nurs­es’ sta­tion. She was still wear­ing her white lab coat; it could dou­ble as a med­ical uni­form in a pinch. Tug­ging the lapels tight­ly around her neck, and hold­ing the clip­board in promi­nent view, she walked along the sta­tion to the cor­ri­dor junc­tion. Ahead lay the op­er­at­ing the­ater and the ICU. To the right were the ex­am­ina­tion rooms and lab fa­cil­ities. To the left lay the re­cov­ery rooms and sup­port ar­eas. And lin­ing the walls of the trans­verse cor­ri­dor were the pa­tient bays, their pri­va­cy cur­tains drawn back, beds and chairs open to view. In a few of them, she could see or­der­lies chang­ing linens, smooth­ing down sheets. It was as if they were ex­pect­ing a flood of ca­su­al­ties. Per­haps they were.

She thought quick­ly, ig­nor­ing the beat­ing of her heart. Geor­gia’s in­juries were mi­nor, Warne had said, but the med­ica­tion would keep the girl asleep a while longer. She was in one of the re­cov­ery bays. Ter­ri glanced up and down as she ap­proached the in­ter­sec­tion. But all the bays were va­cant, their cur­tains drawn back…

…ex­cept those few down the trans­verse cor­ri­dor, to her left.

As she passed the se­cu­ri­ty guards, she looked down at the clip­board, turn­ing left in­to the in­ter­sect­ing cor­ri­dor, keep­ing her move­ments as ca­su­al as pos­si­ble. The guards glanced at her, but did not pause in their con­ver­sa­tion.

She head­ed to­ward the closed bays. There were three to­geth­er, jut­ting out from the right wall, light blue cur­tains shut tight­ly around each, shield­ing the beds from sight. As she came clos­er, she re­al­ized with a sink­ing feel­ing that all three were in clear view of both the guards and the nurs­es’ sta­tion. God­damn it, she thought, I’ll nev­er get away with this. She felt ridicu­lous, ex­posed.

Pro­pelling her­self for­ward by a con­scious act of will, she ap­proached the emp­ty bed clos­est to the three closed bays. She turned her back to the drawn cur­tains, placed her clip­board on the bed, and pre­tend­ed to check the place­ment of a blood-​oxy­gen me­ter at its head. As she did so, she took a covert glance to­ward the in­ter­sec­tion. No­body was watch­ing. She slipped be­hind the cur­tain.

Ter­ri turned around, then drew in her breath sharply.

An old man lay in the bed, blan­kets tight around his chin, eyes un­fo­cused and rheumy. Liv­er-​spot­ted hands trem­bled as they clutched the sheet. A mon­itor beeped monotonous­ly be­side him. She worked her way around the foot of his bed, care­ful not to jos­tle the cur­tains or in any way be­tray her move­ment to those out­side.

On the far side of the bed, she paused to draw an­oth­er deep breath. Then, turn­ing away from the el­der­ly man and stay­ing close to the wall, she pulled back the cur­tain sep­arat­ing him from the next bay.

Emp­ty: the bed fresh­ly made, the in­stru­men­ta­tion screens dark. This is a wild-​goose chase, Ter­ri thought. She could be any­where.

There was one more bay to try. Af­ter that, she’d head down to Se­cu­ri­ty. No­body, not even An­drew, could say she hadn’t tried. Be­sides, she thought as she made her way around the emp­ty bed and stealthi­ly pulled the cur­tain from the far wall, Geor­gia’s prob­ably safer here than any­where. Prob­ably. Tak­ing an­oth­er deep breath, she slipped in­to the third bay.

Geor­gia was still peace­ful­ly asleep, chest­nut hair spilled across the pil­low. For a mo­ment, Ter­ri stood there, the world around her for­got­ten as she stared down at Warne’s daugh­ter. From this an­gle, she could see some­thing of him, younger and fore­short­ened, in the face: the high fore­head, the deep-​set eyes, the ris­ing swell of the mouth.

Then she forced her­self to think once again. An­drew had asked her to take Geor­gia back to Se­cu­ri­ty, if she could. Even if that proved im­pos­si­ble, there were plen­ty of oth­er op­tions: a place where she wouldn’t be looked for, a place un­like­ly to at­tract un­want­ed at­ten­tion. There were dozens of in­nocu­ous-​look­ing of­fices, labs, util­ity spaces, all with­in a two-​minute walk. At the far end of this hall­way was an emer­gen­cy ex­it that would take her out of Med­ical in­to a ser­vice cor­ri­dor. Find­ing a hid­ing place would be the easy part.

But get­ting Geor­gia out un­no­ticed—that might prove im­pos­si­ble.

She stepped away from the bed, look­ing around the bay, hes­itat­ing. This is nuts. What am I go­ing to do, car­ry her out on my shoul­der un­der the noses of the guards? She should just sit here, wait for Geor­gia to wake up. What was go­ing to hap­pen, any­way?

She turned back, look­ing down at the sleep­ing form, at the fresh, an­gry-​look­ing bruise com­ing up on one cheek­bone. Some­thing about the girl re­mind­ed Ter­ri of her­self. It was not a phys­ical sim­ilar­ity: she knew she wasn’t as pret­ty, and she lacked Geor­gia’s nat­ural grace, so rarely found at the awk­ward age of four­teen. It was some­thing in her man­ner; some­thing in the way she pre­sent­ed her­self to the world. At that age, Ter­ri re­mem­bered, she’d been qui­et, with­drawn. New­ly moved to the States, she was the brainy Asian, short­est kid in her class. Adults might have seemed stupid to her, but they were prefer­able to her teas­ing, bul­ly­ing peer group. Four­teen was a tough age.

She felt her will hard­en­ing as she stared at the girl. The chances might be a mil­lion to one that she was in any dan­ger. But it didn’t mat­ter; she’d find a way to guar­an­tee her safe­ty. She’d do it for Geor­gia—and for her fa­ther.

Mov­ing swift­ly to the far side of the bed, Ter­ri part­ed the cur­tains and looked out to­ward the end of the cor­ri­dor, hop­ing for a gur­ney, a cart, any­thing on which she could wheel the sleep­ing girl. See­ing noth­ing, her heart sank.

Then her eyes light­ed on a col­lapsed square of shiny met­al: a fold­ed wheelchair, lean­ing against the near wall.

Gin­ger­ly, she pulled back the cur­tain and eased out in­to the hall­way, care­ful to keep the cur­tain of the re­cov­ery bay be­tween her­self and the view of the in­ter­sec­tion. She could hear voic­es, the quick pat­ter of foot­steps; but thank­ful­ly, the hall­way, with its emp­ty bays and sup­port ar­eas, re­mained qui­et. Grasp­ing the wheelchair, she pulled it back in­to the bay as qui­et­ly as she could, pulling the cur­tain closed be­hind her. She yanked the han­dle­bars down­ward, lock­ing the chair in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion.

Now she turned to­ward the bed, breath­ing hard. She had to do this quick­ly, with­out giv­ing her­self time to think about how crazy it might be.

She ma­neu­vered the wheelchair to­ward the bed, then pulled the cov­ers away from Geor­gia and—as gen­tly as pos­si­ble—raised her from the mat­tress.

“God, kid­do,” she grunt­ed. “You’re as heavy as I am.”

With an ef­fort, Ter­ri set­tled her in­to the wheelchair. Geor­gia sighed, mut­tered. Ter­ri grabbed a pil­low from the bed, propped the girl up as com­fort­ably as she could, then cov­ered her with a light hos­pi­tal blan­ket.

She was al­most there; she couldn’t let her will fail now.

Mov­ing around the bed, she part­ed the cur­tains just enough to glance to­ward the cor­ri­dor junc­tion and the nurs­es’ sta­tion. The buzz of ac­tiv­ity had less­ened slight­ly, but the two se­cu­ri­ty guards re­mained, still talk­ing be­tween them­selves.

They weren’t look­ing her way. It would be the work of thir­ty sec­onds to wheel Geor­gia out of the bay, down the far end of the cor­ri­dor, and out the emer­gen­cy ex­it. The guards would nev­er know. If she kept close to the right wall, the closed cur­tains of Geor­gia’s bay would shield her from view for part of the dis­tance. Chances are, even if the guards looked to­ward her, she wouldn’t arouse at­ten­tion: just an­oth­er nurse, wheel­ing a wheelchair.

Come on, Ter­ri. Shake a tail feath­er.

Grip­ping the han­dles of the wheelchair tight­ly, she drew aside the far cur­tain and pushed Geor­gia firm­ly out in­to the cor­ri­dor. The wheels wob­bled, squeak­ing as they moved back and forth, and Ter­ri bit down on her lip, re­mind­ing her­self that, in a minute, she’d be out the door and gone.

And yet it was a longer walk than she’d thought. Push­ing the wheelchair took ef­fort, and the emer­gen­cy ex­it seemed al­most to re­cede in­to the dis­tance, as if taunt­ing her. Jaw set, she tried to quick­en her pace.

It was then that she heard a new, loud­er voice be­hind her.

Some­thing was hap­pen­ing back at the nurs­es’ sta­tion. Was the first of the ca­su­al­ties ar­riv­ing? Ter­ri didn’t dare look around to see. She felt naked, vul­ner­able. She was per­haps halfway to the ex­it—too far to re­turn to the re­cov­ery bay. But she didn’t dare go on with­out know­ing what was hap­pen­ing be­hind her, with­out know­ing if some­one was watch­ing her head for the emer­gen­cy door. Now you’ve gone and done it. She felt her nerve be­gin to fail. Her eyes dart­ed back and forth.

There: to the right she spot­ted a door, marked Laun­dry Clos­et.

No, no.

But it was the on­ly door near­by. They could hide in­side un­til what­ev­er it was had passed. Then she could ease back out in­to the hall­way and guide the wheelchair through the ex­it.

Old fears, half-​sup­pressed pho­bias, roared back. No, please. Not a clos­et.

The room would be small. It would be dark. It would be so much eas­ier just to keep go­ing, to gam­ble on not be­ing no­ticed. But a clos­et…

More voic­es, loud­er now, be­hind her.

Strug­gling to mas­ter the pan­ic that boiled up with­in her, Ter­ri an­gled the wheelchair to­ward the laun­dry door. She could feel her hands shak­ing as she opened it and guid­ed the wheelchair through.

In­side, the on­ly light came from a sin­gle bank of flu­ores­cent bulbs. Ter­ri looked around, breath­ing fast. It was a large space—thank God—but it was dark, so dark. Green scrubs, white nurse’s uni­forms, and gowns of var­ious sizes hung from rods or lay with­in count­less wood­en cub­by­holes. The rear sec­tion of the room was dom­inat­ed by a huge tube of met­al and PVC plas­tic that ran hor­izon­tal­ly from one op­pos­ing wall to the oth­er. Rows of small­er tubes ran across its sur­face like veins. Two large hatch­es were riv­et­ed to the main tube, bolt­ed in place and fit­ted with brass han­dles. This was the HPLR, the high-​pres­sure laun­dry re­moval sys­tem that thread­ed its way through­out the un­der­ground ar­eas of Utopia. All day—but pri­mar­ily at the end of the two main shifts—cos­tumes, uni­forms, tow­els, nap­kins, table­cloths, and bed sheets were whisked by pneu­mat­ic pres­sure from hun­dreds of hatch­es to the cen­tral laun­dry ser­vice on C Lev­el. Ter­ri could hear the sys­tem work­ing now, a faint hol­low thrum­ming that echoed and whis­tled along the over­size tube.

She was breath­ing faster, hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing. The dark walls seemed to crowd in on her. Forc­ing back the pan­ic, Ter­ri bent to­ward the wheelchair, ad­just­ing the blan­ket and the pil­low. Then she re­turned to the door, opened it slight­ly, and peered out.

A man was stand­ing at the nurs­es’ sta­tion. He was of medi­um height, mus­cu­lar, and even from her dis­tant van­tage point his eyes looked some­how ex­ot­ic. He was wear­ing dark-​col­ored cov­er­alls, and as he spoke to the du­ty nurse he looked around, slow­ly, as if dis­in­ter­est­ed­ly tak­ing in the sur­round­ings. His gaze seemed to light on the laun­dry door, and Ter­ri ducked back. Then she leaned for­ward again, try­ing to catch the words.

“I’m here to see a pa­tient,” the man was say­ing. He had an ac­cent al­most as ex­ot­ic as his eyes.

“Name of—?” the nurse asked. Her head was down, star­ing at a com­put­er ter­mi­nal be­hind the desk.

“Geor­gia Warne.”

Ter­ri felt her grip on the han­dle stiff­en.

“And who might you be?” the nurse asked, still look­ing at her ter­mi­nal.

“I’m Mr. Warne. Her fa­ther.”

“Of course.” The nurse con­sult­ed a chart. “She’s in—no, I take that back, it ap­pears she’s been moved. You’ll find her in re­cov­ery bay 34. It’s down the cor­ri­dor to the left, the last set of closed cur­tains, Mr. Warne.”

It’s Doc­tor Warne! Ter­ri want­ed to cry out. Doc­tor, not Mis­ter! But the nurse had al­ready trot­ted away, head­ed in the op­po­site di­rec­tion, and the man had round­ed the sta­tion and was walk­ing along the cor­ri­dor. As he came ful­ly in­to view, she could see, through the crack in the door, that he was hold­ing a bulky duf­fel bag. It shim­mered sil­ver in the flu­ores­cent light.

Com­mon sense screamed at her to shrink away. And yet Ter­ri found her­self un­able to move from the door­way and its ver­ti­cal crack of light, to creep back in­to the dark­ened, en­fold­ing, sti­fling laun­dry clos­et.

Je­sus, Mary, and Joseph, pro­tect me from all harm. Je­sus, Mary, and Joseph, pro­tect me from all harm. Ter­ri had not prayed since con­vent school. But now she found her­self say­ing, un­der her breath, the once-​fa­mil­iar, once-​com­fort­ing words: I be­lieve in God, the Fa­ther Almighty, Mak­er of Heav­en and earth…

Be­hind her, in the wheelchair, Geor­gia stirred. The man came clos­er.

O my God, I am hearti­ly sor­ry for hav­ing of­fend­ed Thee, and I de­test all my sins, be­cause I dread the loss of Heav­en and the pains of hell, but most of all be­cause they of­fend Thee…

The man came clos­er.

 

4:00 P.M.

OUT­SIDE PRO­FES­SOR CRIP­PLE­WOOD’S Cham­ber of Fan­tas­tic Il­lu­sion, gaslights re­flect­ed fit­ful­ly off the damp cob­ble­stones. The wait­ing guests had dis­persed, car­ry­ing tick­et vouch­ers guar­an­tee­ing their en­try start­ing prompt­ly at 4:30. A thick pur­ple rope, bro­cad­ed and tas­seled, had been stretched across the or­nate brick-​front en­trance. For the next half hour, the Ho­lo Mir­rors would be off-​lim­its.

Twelve feet be­low the street, in the low-​ceilinged spaces of Imag­ing Fab­ri­ca­tion, Sarah Boatwright rubbed her arms against the chill. It was, in­cred­ibly, even cold­er here than in her of­fice. She glanced around at the for­est of out­size dis­play sys­tems and con­trol hous­ings, each brand­ed with its own red iden­ti­fi­ca­tion la­bel: acous­to-​op­tic mod­ulat­ing ar­ray no. 10, su­per­po­si­tion stream pro­ces­sor, fringe en­coder A. A small city of pro­pri­etary hard­ware, en­sur­ing that the holo­graph­ic hall of mir­rors above worked its mag­ic with­out hitch. Nor­mal­ly, five hun­dred peo­ple passed through the Hall ev­ery half hour. But right now, it was emp­ty. And she was to be the sole vis­itor.

No—that wasn’t quite right. John Doe would be there, too.

She turned to glance at Bob Al­loc­co. The se­cu­ri­ty chief’s bulky form oc­cu­pied a nar­row space be­tween two high-​res­olu­tion mod­ula­tors. Well be­hind him stood Rod Al­len­by, the Gaslight line man­ag­er, and Car­men Flo­rez, at­trac­tion su­per­vi­sor for the Ho­lo Mir­rors. Anx­ious looks were on both faces.

“Think he’s al­ready in­side?” Sarah asked.

Al­loc­co shrugged. “No way of know­ing, with the cam­eras all out. He’s a sneaky bas­tard. There’s at least four ser­vice en­trances to the Hall from down here, and Imag­ing Fab­ri­ca­tion has ac­cess to both A Lev­el and the Park.” He glanced side­long in her di­rec­tion. “You specif­ical­ly said no guards were to be post­ed. In­side the Hall or out.”

“Look what hap­pened last time. This time, we’ve got to do it his way. I give him the disc. No tricks. And then he leaves. And we start to pick up the pieces.”

“Pick up the pieces. Nice im­age.”

“Come on, Bob. It’s John Doe’s game now. And we’ve on­ly got a few min­utes left to play.” In the back of her mind, Sarah could hear Chuck Emory’s voice, mourn­ful, re­signed. We can’t wait more than an­oth­er half hour. If park in­tegri­ty isn’t ful­ly re­stored by then, we’re call­ing the feds.

“It may be John Doe’s game, but that doesn’t mean he’s hold­ing ev­ery last card.” Al­loc­co plucked some­thing out of his pock­et and hand­ed it to her: a pair of glass­es, the frames dark blue, the eye­pieces thick as ski gog­gles.

“What’s this?”

“Mod­ified night-​vi­sion gog­gles. They sense heat, and they al­so fil­ter out holo­graph­ic im­ages. The ride en­gi­neers use them for trou­bleshoot­ing the Ho­lo Mir­rors. Once you’re in­side, put them on. The pow­er switch is here.” Al­loc­co paused, look­ing at her. “We’ve got the tech­nol­ogy, for God’s sake. We might as well use it. You know how con­fus­ing that place is. With these, at least you have an edge.”

“Very well.” She looped the glass­es around her neck, glanced at her watch. “It’s time. I’ve got to go.”

“One more minute, please.” Al­loc­co held out a ra­dio. “Keep this on the open chan­nel. I’ll be mon­itor­ing it the en­tire time you’re in­side. You’re fa­mil­iar with the lay­out?”

Sarah took the ra­dio. “More or less.”

“Glass­es or no, it’ll be dis­ori­ent­ing in there, so don’t daw­dle. Give him the disc and get out. One word from you will bring the cav­al­ry.”

“I don’t want the cav­al­ry. I want a hands-​off op­er­ation. If we’re go­ing to save my Park, we have to get him the hell off the grounds as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

Al­loc­co sighed. “Yes, ma’am. But this one goes on your rap sheet, not mine.”

Sarah nod­ded, turned away.

“Watch your ass all the same.”

She waved the ra­dio in ac­knowl­edg­ment, then be­gan thread­ing her way through banks of ren­der­ers and holovideo dis­play units, mak­ing for a stair­case in the far wall.

Imag­ing Fab­ri­ca­tion filled the en­tire space be­neath the Ho­lo Mir­rors. Each dis­play unit here drove pre­cise­ly one holo­gram in the Hall above. By Sarah’s or­ders, the com­plex had been cleared of all but a skele­ton staff, and, as she fol­lowed the twist­ing route to the stair­case, she al­ready found her­self feel­ing more and more alone.

She reached the stairs, put her hand on the frigid rail­ing. Then she paused. She placed her oth­er hand against the breast of her jack­et, as­sur­ing her­self the disc was still there. Glanced at her watch again.

These were need­less, de­lay­ing ac­tions. Why had he asked for her, specif­ical­ly? She re­al­ized, with a sense of dull sur­prise, that she re­al­ly, re­al­ly did not want to climb those stairs. She did not want to lose her­self in the Hall’s con­fus­ing maze of dis­plays and re­flec­tions. But most of all, she did not want to see John Doe again; see those bi­col­ored eyes star­ing back at her, that strange­ly in­ti­mate smile fram­ing the close­ly trimmed beard. Not here. Not alone.

Then her grip tight­ened on the rail­ing. Look what hap­pened last time, she’d told Al­loc­co. They’d been ag­gres­sive, re­ac­tive. It cost them a dead se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist and a whole lot of in­jured guests. And it had been her call. Per­haps John Doe was telling the truth when he said he want­ed her to de­liv­er the disc to en­sure no more snags. Prob­ably he was. But it didn’t mat­ter. Be­cause—af­ter what went wrong at Galac­tic Voy­age—this was her re­spon­si­bil­ity. Hers; no one else’s.

Squar­ing her shoul­ders, set­ting her jaw, Sarah climbed res­olute­ly up the stair­case, grasped the door han­dle, and pulled it open.

Be­yond was a large room, rich­ly ap­point­ed in Ed­war­dian ex­cess. Tex­tured pa­per lined the walls, vast swirls of crim­son pais­ley ris­ing to­ward the ceil­ing. Or­nate gas jets in cut-​glass bowls sprout­ed be­tween gilt-​framed oils, bathing the space in a rich, mel­low light. The floor was dec­orat­ed in a par­quet mo­sa­ic of many-​col­ored woods that formed a com­plex, spi­ral labyrinth. This was the pre-​show area of the Ho­lo Mir­rors. Nor­mal­ly, it would be full of ea­ger, chat­ter­ing guests, wait­ing for the cos­tumed at­ten­dants to let the next group en­ter sin­gle file in­to the Hall. Now it was still and emp­ty. Long, gaunt shad­ows stretched across the floor. The cor­ners of the room were con­sumed by dark­ness.

Sarah took a step out in­to the room, let­ting the door to Fab­ri­ca­tion close qui­et­ly be­hind. Her step res­onat­ed against the wood­en floor, and she halt­ed, lis­ten­ing. She could hear the hiss of the gas lamps, the tick of the half dozen grand­fa­ther clocks lin­ing the walls of the an­techam­ber. To her left, faint­ly, she could make out the sounds of the Park be­yond the closed dou­ble doors: laugh­ter, snatch­es of song. To her right—where the en­trance to the maze it­self yawned wide—there was noth­ing but si­lence. Some­where in­side, John Doe wait­ed.

She knew she should head for that en­trance, walk in with busi­nesslike stride, an­nounce her pres­ence. And yet some­thing in the lis­ten­ing si­lence seemed to de­feat her best in­ten­tions, par­alyze her will. Through­out her adult life, Sarah had nev­er al­lowed her­self to fear any­thing or any­one. But now, stand­ing alone in the watch­ful hall­way, the metal­lic taste in her mouth was un­mis­tak­able.

She took a deep breath, then an­oth­er. And then, qui­et­ly, she stepped to­ward the open door­way, ra­dio gripped tight­ly in one hand. She had ac­cept­ed it in pass­ing, with­out thought: now, it seemed al­most like a kind of life­line.

No more stalling. She crossed the thresh­old, went through the door­way, and passed in­to the Hall.

It was sub­tly lit, but not dark. The gaslights of the an­techam­ber gave way to hid­den, in­di­rect light­ing that threw the pas­sage ahead of her in­to soft fo­cus. The walls were lined with large mir­rored pan­els, framed in dark wood. As she stepped for­ward, Sarah watched her re­flec­tion fol­low on both sides.

The first sec­tion of the Hall, she knew, was com­prised en­tire­ly of mir­rors. But she al­so knew that, hid­den with­in the mold­ings and be­hind one-​way glass, cam­eras were scan­ning her im­age—send­ing it to the com­put­ers in Fab­ri­ca­tion—which would in turn pro­cess it, per­form a se­ries of com­plex dig­ital con­ver­sions, and send the re­sult to the holo­graph­ic ren­der­ers for dis­play in oth­er parts of the Hall. Sen­sors in the ceil­ing would take note of her ap­proach, de­ter­mine which di­rec­tion to dis­play the new­ly cre­at­ed holo­grams, even ren­der their mo­tion in re­al time as she came clos­er to them. The deep­er you pen­etrat­ed the Hall, the less clear it be­came what you were see­ing: an im­age in a mir­ror or a holo­gram of your­self or an­oth­er guest. It was a clas­sic hall of mir­rors, with a twen­ty-​first-​cen­tu­ry twist. She won­dered again why John Doe had cho­sen this, of all places, to make the trans­fer.

As she moved for­ward, Sarah could now make out an im­age of her­self, ap­proach­ing: the cor­ri­dor clear­ly took a sharp bend up ahead, so she must be look­ing at a mir­ror, block­ing her path. She came clos­er, star­ing at the im­age that stared back. A wom­an, ra­dio in one hand, mouth set. She raised her arm, the dop­pel­gänger’s arm ris­ing in slav­ish im­ita­tion. She pressed her fin­gers against the hard cold glass.

The mir­ror im­age of her­self was care­ful­ly de­tuned, fuzzy. Mir­rors in the Hall were in­ten­tion­al­ly blurred, to more close­ly re­sem­ble holo­grams and thus height­en the il­lu­sion. Drop­ping her hand, Sarah turned away, head­ing down the new cor­ri­dor. Once again, she felt im­ages of her­self fol­low­ing on both sides. In her hand, the ra­dio made a faint squawk, then set­tled back in­to si­lence.

Abrupt­ly, the cor­ri­dor opened in­to a small, six-​sid­ed room. All around her, oth­er Sarah Boatwrights re­turned her gaze. She thought back, try­ing to re-​cre­ate in her mind the plan of the Hall. Three of the six walls were mir­rors, she re­mem­bered; one was the cor­ri­dor she had just passed through; the oth­er two were holo­grams, con­ceal­ing oth­er cor­ri­dors.

She looked more care­ful­ly at the sur­round­ing im­ages. All of them were hold­ing a ra­dio, arms at the sides of her tan-​col­ored suit. She raised her arms, and three of the im­ages fol­lowed her lead. That meant the oth­er two were holo­grams. She could pass through those im­ages, down one of two new hall­ways. But which one?

She con­sid­ered stop­ping here, wait­ing, let­ting John Doe make the next move. Per­haps he was there, in the next cor­ri­dor. Or per­haps this was all a ruse, and he and his cronies were al­ready miles away, speed­ing down High­way 95. What­ev­er the case, it was eas­ier to keep mov­ing than to stay here, lis­ten­ing, wait­ing.

Sarah took a step to­ward the clos­est holo­gram of her­self. It stared back at her. Abrupt­ly, it raised one arm. She stopped in­stinc­tive­ly at the move­ment. Now she un­der­stood: a cam­era had been hid­den be­hind the mir­ror at the end of the ear­li­er hall, record­ing her own act of lift­ing fin­gers to the glass.

Gin­ger­ly, she stepped through the holo­gram. It warped and dis­tort­ed around her as she passed. On the far side, an­oth­er mir­ror-​lined hall­way marched away in­to the dis­tance. She paused, wait­ing for a sound, a sign of move­ment. There was none, and af­ter a few sec­onds she moved for­ward once again.

She was deep­er in­to the maze now, and it was in­creas­ing­ly pos­si­ble that the walls to her left and right were no longer mere glass, re­flect­ing her im­age. Some would be holo­grams, re-​cre­ations of her­self pass­ing by ear­li­er mir­rors. Be­yond the first junc­tion, her mem­ory of the lay­out grew fuzzy. It was eas­ier in some ways, be­ing the on­ly per­son in­side the Hall: nor­mal­ly, the mir­rors would be cap­tur­ing im­ages from groups of twen­ty dif­fer­ent peo­ple, not just a sin­gle per­son. That made it even more dif­fi­cult to tell what was a pro­ject­ed holo­gram, what was a mir­ror im­age, and what was a liv­ing body. Even so, her sense of dis­ori­en­ta­tion was grow­ing.

Then she re­mem­bered the glass­es hang­ing around her neck. She switched on the bat­tery, raised them to her eyes. The view of the cor­ri­dor sud­den­ly shift­ed: ahead of her, the holo­grams be­came dim, ghost­like. Now, she could tell il­lu­sion from re­flec­tion. A surge of re­newed con­fi­dence passed through her.

The cor­ri­dor took a sharp jog, then opened in­to a “Y.” Sarah looked down the two hall­ways an­gling ahead of her, their mir­rored sur­faces wink­ing. She hes­itat­ed, then on im­pulse chose the left-​hand bend. As she start­ed down it, her ra­dio crack­led in­to life.

“Sarah, do you read?” Al­loc­co’s am­pli­fied voice seemed un­bear­ably loud in the hushed pas­sage.

She quick­ly turned down the gain. “Yes.”

“What’s go­ing on?”

“Noth­ing. No sign of him. Why the trans­mis­sion? We should main­tain—”

“Lis­ten, Sarah. There’s been some kind of ac­ci­dent over in Cal­lis­to.”

“Ac­ci­dent? What kind of ac­ci­dent?”

“I don’t know. With our video links down, we’re slow get­ting a han­dle on ex­act­ly what hap­pened. But some­thing ap­pears to have gone wrong on Sta­tion Omega. I’ve”—the voice dis­ap­peared in a brief wash of stat­ic—“re­ports of 904s.”

Sarah felt her­self go cold. In Utopia’s emer­gen­cy-​traf­fic code, a 904 meant guest ca­su­al­ties.

“Sarah? Sarah, you there?”

“I’m here. You sure about this? It’s not a false alarm?”

“I’ve had two in­de­pen­dent re­ports. It looks se­ri­ous. Crowd con­trol might be­come an is­sue.”

“Then get over there and sta­bi­lize the sit­ua­tion.”

“I can’t do that. You’re—”

“I’m fine. Your re­spon­si­bil­ity is to the guests. Alert Med­ical, get a vic­tim-​re­cov­ery op­er­ation un­der way if nec­es­sary. De­ploy Se­cu­ri­ty and In­fras­truc­ture to the site. Get Guest Re­la­tions start­ed on any pe­riph­er­al con­tain­ment.”

“Very well. I’ll hand the ra­dio over to Flo­rez, tell her to mon­itor this fre­quen­cy.” There was a pause. “Re­mem­ber what I said, Sarah.”

With a soft squawk, her ra­dio went dead. Sarah turned up the gain once again, then stuffed it in­to a jack­et pock­et.

With Al­loc­co gone, there’d be on­ly the skele­ton crew man­ning the Hall, all ig­no­rant of her mis­sion. Al­though Car­men Flo­rez would have the ra­dio, she, like the rest, had been kept in the dark.

Now, Sarah re­al­ly was alone.

De­spite what she’d told Al­loc­co, she was not fine. She hes­itat­ed in the left-​hand fork of the pas­sage. An­oth­er ac­ci­dent, fol­low­ing so soon on the heels of what had hap­pened at Es­cape from Wa­ter­dark. There was no way this was a co­in­ci­dence.

Then what was hap­pen­ing? Was this all part of John Doe’s plan? And if so, why? They’d agreed to his de­mands. They’d burned a sec­ond disc, she was here to de­liv­er it. Was it pos­si­ble he thought she hadn’t shown up—that Sta­tion Omega was some kind of re­tal­ia­tion? But that was im­pos­si­ble—if Al­loc­co was just learn­ing of it now, this must have been set in mo­tion be­fore four o’clock.

For all she knew, it could have been set in mo­tion hours be­fore.

Ei­ther way, John Doe had clear­ly meant for it to hap­pen all along.

She stood mo­tion­less in the glit­ter­ing hall­way. Anger, frus­tra­tion, ap­pre­hen­sion com­pet­ed with­in her. What had gone wrong? How many ca­su­al­ties? Was Cal­lis­to now the scene of mass pan­ic?

As anger got the bet­ter of her, she start­ed down the left-​hand fork, heed­less of the rap of her heels against the floor. At least she had the gog­gles; that gave her an ad­van­tage. She’d find that bas­tard, find him and—

As quick­ly as she’d start­ed mov­ing, Sarah stopped again. Up ahead, at an­oth­er bend in the maze, stood John Doe.

At least, she thought it was John Doe—in the glass­es, the im­age was so faint it was hard to tell. She let the glass­es fall away. Im­me­di­ate­ly, the holo­gram blos­somed in­to life.

She drew in her breath. It was the first time she’d seen him—ac­tu­al­ly seen him—since he’d dropped by her of­fice, perched on her desk, drunk her tea, ca­ressed her cheek. She felt the mus­cles of her jaw hard­en. He looked even more re­laxed now than he had then: slen­der hands at his sides, ex­pen­sive suit draped im­pec­ca­bly over his frame, the small self-​amused smile dis­play­ing per­fect teeth.

“Sarah,” came the voice. “How good of you to come.” The voice was still dis­tant—the re­al John Doe was some­place deep­er in the maze.

She wait­ed, mo­tion­less, star­ing at the im­age.

“I love the way you’ve dec­orat­ed this place. It ap­peals to the nar­cis­sist in me.”

Still she wait­ed.

“Have you brought the disc, Sarah?”

Slow­ly, gin­ger­ly, she walked up to the im­age. He was stand­ing, his strange bi­col­ored eyes glanc­ing first left, then right. Per­haps one of the cam­eras had caught him paus­ing at a junc­tion, won­der­ing which way to go.

“I said, do you have the disc?” The lips on the Doe-​im­age did not move.

“Yes,” she replied. Sud­den­ly, she did not want to see that face any­more. She placed the gog­gles over her eyes, and the holo­grams around her grew faint and spec­tral once again.

“Good. Then we can pro­ceed.”

“What did you do, Mr. Doe?”

“Ex­cuse me?”

“The Cal­lis­to at­trac­tion, Sta­tion Omega. What did you do?” She could hear her voice shak­ing with emo­tion.

“Why?” came the voice, laced with the faintest hint of mock­ery. “Is some­thing wrong?”

“I’ve done ev­ery­thing you asked!” she shout­ed. “I trust­ed you. Don’t fuck with me!”

“My, my. And to think I be­lieved you well bred.”

Sarah gasped, felt her fists balling in­vol­un­tar­ily.

“We’re al­most done here, Sarah. Let’s fin­ish our busi­ness, then you can at­tend to that un­pleas­ant­ness your­self, and—just a minute, just a minute, I’m see­ing a new im­age of you now. What’s that fash­ion ac­ces­so­ry you’re wear­ing? Ah, I un­der­stand. Those glass­es don’t do any­thing for you, Sarah. They’re much too heavy for your del­icate fea­tures. We’ll have to do some­thing about that.”

There was a brief si­lence. Then—from some­where deep in the shroud­ed dark­ness—there came a click­ing noise.

For a mo­ment, noth­ing changed. Then Sarah no­ticed a green glow along the edges of her gog­gles. In the cor­ri­dor ahead, the holo­grams that a mo­ment be­fore had been al­most too dim to see now be­gan to glow: green wraiths that grew brighter and brighter. Sarah blinked, turn­ing away from the painful glare. As she moved her head, bright heat trails streaked green across her vi­sion.

With an ex­as­per­at­ed cry she tugged the gog­gles from her eyes and lift­ed the ra­dio. “Car­men?” she spoke in­to it.

There were a few sec­onds of si­lence. “Yes, Ms. Boatwright,” the ra­dio crack­led.

“Car­men, is some­thing hap­pen­ing down there?”

“A few sec­onds ago, the gain on the holo­graph­ic gen­er­ators sud­den­ly quadru­pled. They’re over­heat­ing, all of them.”

“Can you stop it?”

“Yes, but it’ll take time. Ev­ery­thing’s un­der com­put­er con­trol. We’ve got to fig­ure out where the com­mand’s com­ing from. Un­til we’ve pin­point­ed it, I don’t even dare pull the plug on the gen­er­ators.”

“Keep on it.” Sarah low­ered the ra­dio. He was pre­pared for the gog­gles, too. He’s pre­pared for ev­ery­thing. Ev­ery­thing we can think of, he’s thought of al­ready.

“See what I mean, Sarah?” came the smooth, dis­tant voice of John Doe. There was an­oth­er dis­tant click­ing noise. “How can you speak of trust when you dis­play none your­self? Just de­liv­er the disc to me, and I’ll be out of your life for­ev­er.”

Sarah did not an­swer. There was noth­ing more to say. All at once, she felt de­feat­ed.

“What post are you at now, Sarah?”

She did not re­spond.

“Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“What post are you at?”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“Look at the frame of the mir­ror near­est to you. The left edge of the up­per cross­piece. You’ll see a num­ber brand­ed on the un­der­side.”

Wood­en­ly, Sarah looked over. It took her a minute to spot, but then she saw a small se­ries of num­bers, burned in­to the wood.

“Sev­en nine two three,” she mur­mured.

“I’m sor­ry?”

“Sev­en nine two three, I said.”

“Very good. Now lis­ten, Sarah. I’m go­ing to guide you to where I’m wait­ing. We’ll keep in voice con­tact at all times. Un­der­stood?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You should be…you should be in a left-​hand cor­ri­dor, fol­low­ing a Y-​in­ter­sec­tion. Fol­low the cor­ri­dor to the end. Let me know when you’re there.”

Sarah moved for­ward un­will­ing­ly, watch­ing her re­flec­tions move along­side. Sud­den­ly, the im­age of John Doe reared up to her right. She froze: an­oth­er holo­gram, dif­fer­ent this time. He was hold­ing what looked like a set of plans, glanc­ing up, then down, up, down, in a con­tin­uous-​loop bal­let.

“I’m at the end of the cor­ri­dor,” she said.

“Look up at the mir­ror on your left. Is the num­ber you see 7847?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Now take an­oth­er left and pro­ceed down the cor­ri­dor. A hall will lead off from the right, con­cealed by a holo­gram. Watch for it.”

Sarah turned down the hall­way, her step slow and re­signed. John Doe was not lost, not un­cer­tain of his way. If any­thing, he knew the Hall even bet­ter than its de­sign­ers. He knew about the trou­bleshoot­ing gog­gles. He had the plans for ev­ery­thing, right down to the num­bers of the in­di­vid­ual mir­rors lin­ing the hall­ways.

All her bet­ter in­stincts shout­ed at her not to go on. But there was no oth­er choice: she had to give John Doe the disc. No mat­ter what.

Sud­den­ly, she stopped again. Her own im­age—some­times a re­flec­tion, some­times a holo­gram cap­tured ear­li­er—was all around her. But up ahead and to the left, there was a dif­fer­ent im­age: the im­age of a man. And it was not John Doe.

She stepped clos­er, star­ing hard, as the framed im­age came in­to fo­cus.

It was An­drew Warne.

She whirled around. An­drew? Here?

There was no time to think, on­ly to re­act. She was sup­posed to be un-​ac­com­pa­nied. If Warne was here, there had to be a rea­son—a press­ing rea­son. He must be some­where be­tween her­self and the en­trance. Since John Doe was deep­er in the maze, it would take a lit­tle more time for the im­age servers be­low to re­lay Warne’s im­age to him.

Quick­ly, she re­traced her steps to the last in­ter­sec­tion, then veered right, head­ing back in the di­rec­tion she’d come. From some­where ahead came the pat­ter of ap­proach­ing foot­steps.

“Sarah?” She heard Warne’s voice: a fierce, im­pa­tient whis­per. “Sarah?”

The voice grew fainter for a mo­ment, then came again, clos­er this time: “Sarah? Where are you?”

“Here!” she whis­pered back.

A fig­ure loomed in­to view at the fork of the Y-​in­ter­sec­tion. And this time it was not a holo­gram, not a re­flec­tion in a mir­ror. It was An­drew Warne, ban­dage hang­ing loose on his fore­head, anx­iety clear in his gaze. And then he caught sight of her. He frowned a mo­ment, as if try­ing to tell re­al­ity from ar­ti­fice. She stepped to­ward him. Im­me­di­ate­ly, his fea­tures cleared.

“Sarah,” he said, rush­ing to­ward her, clasp­ing her hands. “Thank God.”

For a mo­ment, the touch of an­oth­er, sym­pa­thet­ic hu­man be­ing over­whelmed ev­ery­thing else. She closed her eyes.

Then, with a start, she pushed her­self away.

“What are you do­ing here?” she whis­pered fierce­ly. “How’d you get in?”

“I had to stop you,” he whis­pered back. “You’re not safe here.”

“You can’t be here. I have to give John Doe the disc, alone. I—”

Warne grabbed her arms. “It’s a trap.”

Hear­ing him echo her own worst fears, Sarah went numb. “How do you know?”

She felt his grip tight­en. “This isn’t go­ing to be easy for you. Sarah, we’ve dis­cov­ered the mole. John Doe’s in­side man.”

She wait­ed, not dar­ing to breathe.

“It’s Barks­dale.”

Sarah’s first im­pulse was to slap Warne’s face. She yanked her­self away.

“Liar!”

Warne stepped for­ward again. “Sarah, please. You must lis­ten, lis­ten quick­ly. There nev­er was any out­side se­cu­ri­ty check. KIS nev­er vis­it­ed Utopia. Barks­dale made it all up. Those tech­ni­cians who came to check Utopia’s fire­walls last month were John Doe’s men. That’s how they in­fil­trat­ed your sys­tem, set their traps.”

She shook her head vi­olent­ly. It couldn’t be true. It was im­pos­si­ble. There had to be some oth­er ex­pla­na­tion.

“No,” she said. “I don’t be­lieve you.”

“I’m not ask­ing you to be­lieve me. I’m just ask­ing you to leave this place now, right now, learn the truth for your­self. That disc you found, crushed be­neath the guard’s foot? It was blank. That means John Doe took the re­al disc, sub­sti­tut­ed a blank of his own. It was all a set­up. Why do you think John Doe wants a sec­ond one? Why do you think he asked for you specif­ical­ly? You have to—”

“Sarah?” came John Doe’s voice.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Warne fell silent. He glanced sharply at Sarah; she put a fin­ger to her lips.

“Sarah, I told you to re­main in voice con­tact. Why have you stopped?” The voice was more dis­tant than be­fore. Among the re­flec­tions along the hall­way, a new one flick­ered in­to view: John Doe, plans now at his side, ear cocked, as if lis­ten­ing. Mute­ly, she watched the ho­lo im­age re­peat its brief vi­su­al loop, over and over.

“Sarah, you know what I think? I think we’re no longer alone.”

Sarah wait­ed.

“In fact, now I know we’re no longer alone. I see a third holo­gram, Sarah: it isn’t you, and it isn’t me. Who is that man?”

The Hall was silent.

“I think I can guess. It’s the trou­ble­some Dr. Warne. The med­dle­some Dr. Warne. Am I right?”

Sarah glanced at Warne. He was star­ing back at her.

“This was not part of our ar­range­ment, Sarah. First the gog­gles, now this. I’m se­ri­ous­ly dis­pleased.”

The holo­gram of John Doe wa­vered, then changed, as the ren­der­er up­dat­ed the dis­play with a new­er im­age: John Doe once again, a snub-​nosed pis­tol hang­ing loose­ly in one hand.

From deep in­side the maze came the sound of run­ning feet.

“He’s com­ing for us!” Warne whis­pered ur­gent­ly.

Beck­on­ing for him to fol­low, Sarah raced head­long down the cor­ri­dor, past the re­flec­tions and the holo­grams, away from the sound of John Doe’s voice. Dim­ly, she could see im­ages of her­self dart­ing by as she passed. The sound of their heels against the floor, the in­take of breath, filled the nar­row hall­way. She turned one cor­ner, then an­oth­er.

And then she halt­ed again.

“Stop,” she heard her­self or­der Warne.

Some­thing with­in her was chang­ing. Maybe it was the shock of Warne’s un­be­liev­able tale; maybe it was the sight of John Doe’s gun. But the storm of emo­tions was clear­ing, leav­ing on­ly a strong, steely anger be­hind.

She pulled the ra­dio from her pock­et. “Car­men?” she spoke in­to it, breath­ing hard. “Car­men, are you there?”

“Yes, Ms. Boatwright,” came the an­swer. “Can you please tell me what’s go­ing on?”

“Lat­er. Can you do some­thing for me? I need you to cut the lights in­side the Hall.”

“Cut the lights?”

“All of them. Right now. Can you do that?”

“Yes…Yes, I can.”

“Then do it.”

She slid the ra­dio back in­to her pock­et. Then, lean­ing to­ward the near­est mir­ror, she took note of the num­ber burned in­to its frame. Tak­ing the fresh disc from her pock­et, she placed it against the mir­ror’s base. Then, mo­tion­ing Warne to fol­low, she led the way back, more slow­ly now, to the six-​sid­ed room. From here, she knew she could find her way out. Even in the dark.

She took a deep breath. Then she turned and spoke in the loud­est, most com­mand­ing tone she could muster.

“Mr. Doe! Stop! If you want that disc, stop right where you are.”

She stopped to lis­ten, but the on­ly an­swer was si­lence.

“You once told me that I be­trayed your trust. Well, this time you’ve be­trayed mine.”

“In­deed,” came the voice. It was clos­er now. “I’m in­trigued.”

“You’ve sab­otaged an­oth­er ride, hurt more peo­ple. For no rea­son. I’ve fol­lowed your or­ders, I’ve brought the disc. So why the gun?”

Si­lence.

“I can an­swer that!” Warne said sharply. “You were plan­ning to take the disc and Sarah as well. As a hostage. Or maybe you’d just kill her, es­cape in the pan­de­mo­ni­um. Right? So much for your el­ement of sur­prise.”

“Sur­prise, Dr. Warne?” came the silky voice. “I’m not out of sur­pris­es quite yet.”

“Then sur­prise me by do­ing the un­ex­pect­ed. Just let her go. Show us you can adapt.”

Abrupt­ly, the lights snapped out, plung­ing the cor­ri­dor in­to dark­ness. Sarah grasped Warne’s el­bow.

“Mr. Doe!” she called as she be­gan back­ing away. “Lis­ten to me! The disc is here. It’s at post 6942. Hear me? Post 6942. You’ll find it at the base of the frame. But I’m leav­ing now. You’ve bro­ken the rules, and I’m not go­ing to play any­more. It may take a lit­tle while in the dark, but I’m sure you’ll find it. And I’ll keep the Hall clear for an­oth­er twen­ty min­utes. So do as you promised. Take the disc and get the hell out of my Park. Or I’ll hunt you down and kill you my­self.”

At this, a laugh came out of the black: slow, cyn­ical, amused. “Now, that’s my kind of game, Sarah. Count me in.”

If there was more, Sarah didn’t hear it. Be­cause they had turned down the hall­way lead­ing out to the an­te­room of Pro­fes­sor Crip­ple­wood’s Cham­ber of Fan­tas­tic Il­lu­sion, and all she could hear was their feet, rap­ping against the dark­ness, run­ning for the stair­well that would take them away from this haunt­ed place.

 

4:03 P.M.

TER­RI STOOD IN the shad­ow of the door frame, par­alyzed by fear and in­de­ci­sion, as the man in the jump­suit ap­proached. Al­ready, he was pass­ing the first of the closed re­cov­ery bays. An­oth­er mo­ment, and he’d reach Geor­gia’s bay, re­al­ize the emp­ty bed was still warm, and…

“Ex­cuse me! Mis­ter!”

It was one of the se­cu­ri­ty guards. Ter­ri cracked the door open a lit­tle wider, cran­ing for a view. She felt her heart ham­mer­ing against her ribs. The guards had stopped talk­ing and were look­ing to­ward the man in the jump­suit. He stopped, hand on the cur­tain of the third bay, and turned slow­ly back to face them.

“I’m sor­ry, sir, your name was—?” one of the guards asked as the two be­gan to move down the cor­ri­dor to­ward him.

Ter­ri watched, re­lief surg­ing with­in her. Per­haps the guards had been specif­ical­ly told to watch for any­body com­ing to see Geor­gia. They’d snag this bas­tard. Ev­ery­thing would be all right now.

Be­hind her, she heard Geor­gia stir again. Ter­ri looked around, and her heart gave a huge lurch. The girl was awake and sit­ting up, blink­ing at her in­quir­ing­ly.

Quick­ly, Ter­ri forced her­self away from the door and ran to the wheelchair.

“Lis­ten, Geor­gia,” she whis­pered, kneel­ing be­side her. “I’m here to take you to your dad. Okay? We have to wait here a minute—just a minute. Then we can go.”

Geor­gia stared back, con­fused eyes lu­mi­nous in the dim light.

Ter­ri gave her hand a re­as­sur­ing squeeze. Then she re­turned to the door.

The guards had sur­round­ed the stranger now. “Very well, Mr. Warne,” one of them was say­ing as he eyed the man’s cov­er­alls cu­ri­ous­ly. “But be­fore you can take your daugh­ter, we’ll need to see some ID.”

“ID?” the man asked. As he spoke, he ca­su­al­ly drew aside the cur­tains of the third bay, peered in­side.

“If you please.”

The man peered in­side the bay—Geor­gia’s bay—for what seemed a long time. Then he with­drew, let­ting the cur­tains fall back to­geth­er. “May I ask why?” he said. He spoke slow­ly, as if con­sid­er­ing some­thing.

“I’m sor­ry, sir,” the first guard said. “Or­ders. Check the ID of all guests or ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ists en­ter­ing or leav­ing Med­ical.”

Shit, shit, shit. So they weren’t look­ing out for Geor­gia, af­ter all. They were just at a height­ened state of alert. Of course. Oth­er­wise they’d have been keep­ing a clos­er eye on Geor­gia’s bay, seen you en­ter it, come out with a wheelchair. Dolt. Now you’re stuck here, stupid with claus­tro­pho­bia, in this clos­et, with—

Her thoughts fad­ed as the stranger swiveled around, glanc­ing quick­ly up and down the cor­ri­dor. Once again, it seemed as if his gaze fell di­rect­ly up­on her. She shrank back.

“Very well, gen­tle­men,” he said, swing­ing the duf­fel up around his shoul­der and eas­ing his way be­tween them. “If you in­sist.”

And he be­gan to walk, with the same easy, con­fi­dent step, to­ward the laun­dry room door.

Ter­ri half walked, half stum­bled back­ward in­to the room. She piv­ot­ed, glanc­ing around in fresh des­per­ation. Oth­er than the banks of fold­ed clothes, hang­ing uni­forms, piles of tow­els, and a few small ta­bles, the room was emp­ty. There was on­ly one chance for con­ceal­ment: the dim, cramped re­cess­es be­hind the HPLR tube.

The thought of hid­ing in such a con­fined place made her faint with ter­ror. But there was no oth­er choice.

She turned back to the girl. “Lis­ten to me, Geor­gia,” she said as calm­ly as she could. “Lis­ten very care­ful­ly. There’s a bad man out there, a very dan­ger­ous man. We have to hide here un­til he goes away.”

Geor­gia stared at her mute­ly, as if in shock. From the hall came the ap­proach­ing clat­ter of feet, voic­es raised in protest.

“Can we do that, Geor­gia?”

Still the girl stared.

“Can you help me? Please?”

“All right,” Geor­gia mur­mured slow­ly.

Ter­ri ma­neu­vered the wheelchair to­ward the back of the room, an­gling it un­der the huge white tube and push­ing it in­to the dark­est cor­ner she could find. Then she crouched down be­side it, clasp­ing Geor­gia to her side.

“Be very qui­et now,” she whis­pered. “Don’t make a sound un­til they’re gone. No mat­ter what hap­pens.”

The HPLR tube now lay di­rect­ly in front of her: three feet wide and three feet high, it ran com­plete­ly across the room, heavy brass rings sur­round­ing it at the points where it dis­ap­peared in­to the walls. She could hear the hum of pres­sur­ized air whistling dry­ly through it.

Then the door opened, flood­ing the room with light from the cor­ri­dor. Ter­ri crouched even fur­ther be­low the tube, hug­ging Geor­gia. Her heart beat faster and faster. She could see shad­ows strip­ing the walls as first one man, then an­oth­er and an­oth­er, stepped in­to the room.

“What’s this?” one of the guards was say­ing.

“It’s a big nui­sance, is what it is,” the man replied in his strange ac­cent. “Hav­ing to show ID to vis­it my own daugh­ter. My wal­let’s at the bot­tom of my duf­fel. I need a place to put it down, sort through my equip­ment.”

There was a clump as some­thing heavy land­ed on one of the ta­bles. Lean­ing cau­tious­ly to one side, Ter­ri strained for a look.

“We’re sor­ry, Mr. Warne,” came the voice of the first guard, “but as I told you, our or­ders—”

“I doubt if your or­ders in­clud­ed ha­rass­ing one of your vis­it­ing sci­en­tists. Bad enough that my daugh­ter end­ed up here in the first place, due en­tire­ly to Park neg­li­gence, no doubt. I plan to take this up with your su­pe­ri­ors.”

An­gling her head, Ter­ri could now see: the se­cu­ri­ty guards had again sur­round­ed the al­mond-​eyed man, who had placed his duf­fel on a ta­ble and was tug­ging open the zip­per.

“That’s cer­tain­ly your right, Mr. Warne,” the first guard said again. “But I must in­sist that we con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion back at—”

With a smooth, flu­id move­ment, the man reached in and slid some­thing out of the bag. For a mo­ment, Ter­ri did not rec­og­nize it: long and slen­der, a sharply an­gled cone at one end. Then the man swung the thing at the guards. Flame spurt­ed from its end. The first guard jerked sharply back, gouts of blood arc­ing from holes in his uni­form. Ter­ri sti­fled a gasp, cov­ered Geor­gia’s eyes.

Piv­ot­ing in front of the door and clos­ing it with the heel of his boot, the man swung the ma­chine gun to­ward the sec­ond guard. There was a stut­ter­ing, stitch­ing noise. Dust and bits of plas­ter fell from the wall, rain­ing down up­on Ter­ri and Geor­gia. The guard fell back silent­ly, fin­gers scrab­bling at his own throat, bil­ly club and ra­dio spin­ning away across the floor.

The wheelchair squeaked as Geor­gia stiff­ened, clutch­ing one of Ter­ri’s hands in her own. Ter­ri held her still more tight­ly, star­ing, trans­fixed by hor­ror.

The man took a step to the side. Then he an­gled his weapon down­ward and sprayed fire over the in­ert guards. Their bod­ies twitched in time to the spurt­ing flame. There was no noise; she could not un­der­stand why there was no noise. Had the shock, the pan­ic, deaf­ened as well as par­alyzed her? The on­ly sound was a stiff me­chan­ical click­ing—the clat­ter of an in­fer­nal sewing ma­chine—and the ring­ing of met­al on con­crete as emp­ty car­tridges rained down.

And then it was over. Si­lence re­turned to the room as a pall of gun­pow­der curled to­ward the ceil­ing. Ter­ri watched, un­able even to breathe, as the man low­ered the smok­ing weapon and gazed down at the car­nage. With swift, pro­fes­sion­al mo­tions, he re­placed the gun in the duf­fel, then cracked the door open—as she her­self had done scarce mo­ments be­fore—and peered out in­to the hall­way.

Be­side Ter­ri, the wheelchair creaked again. Geor­gia gave a sob of ter­ror.

Ter­ri low­ered her hand, cov­er­ing the girl’s mouth as the man turned back, his gaze fol­low­ing the con­tours of the room. In the poor light, his eyes glowed pale as a cat’s.

There was a sigh of es­cap­ing air, the clink­ing of met­al, as one of the guards jerked, then ex­pired, among the scat­ter of spent car­tridges. Ter­ri saw the twin gleams as the man’s eyes swiveled to­ward the body.

The hoarse chat­ter of stat­ic sud­den­ly sound­ed in the room. The man closed the door, reached in­to his duf­fel, pulled out a ra­dio. “Hard­ball,” he said.

“This is Prime Fac­tor,” came a gar­bled voice. “Po­si­tion?”

“Med­ical.”

“Con­di­tion?”

“The girl’s gone.”

“Where?”

“Un­known.”

There was a pause.

“We can’t af­ford any more time,” came the voice over the ra­dio. “There’s a prob­lem with Snow White, I need you back at the ral­ly point. Right away. Un­der­stood?”

“Roger.” The ra­dio snapped off.

The man stepped away from the door, rolling the bod­ies back be­neath the ta­ble with the toe of his boot. Then, reach­ing up to one of the over­hang­ing shelves, he top­pled a stack of tow­els on­to the floor, cov­er­ing the spread­ing pools of blood in a care­less heap of linen. As Ter­ri watched, still press­ing Geor­gia to her, the man peeled out of the jump­suit, ex­pos­ing the sil­ver and plat­inum out­fit of a Cal­lis­to shut­tle pi­lot. It matched the duf­fel per­fect­ly. The jump­suit went care­less­ly on top of the tow­els.

With a fi­nal look around, the man picked up the duf­fel and slung it, zip­per still half-​open, around his shoul­der. Then he grabbed the door han­dle, pulled the door open, and stepped in­to the hall­way.

There was a gen­tle click as the door closed, and the bright light fad­ed away once again. For a mo­ment, all was silent. Then, with a low trundling noise, a se­ries of gar­ments came down the HPLR tube, rolling and tum­bling on their way to Cen­tral Clean­ing. In their wake came the hiss of com­pressed air. At last, this sound, too, fad­ed away. Ter­ri felt her limbs be­gin to shake: faint­ly at first, then vi­olent­ly. In her arms, Geor­gia made no sound, did not cry. She sim­ply held on to Ter­ri’s hand; held on so very tight that it seemed she would nev­er, ev­er con­sent to let it go.

 

4:03 P.M.

AS THE MAIN en­trance to the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex came in­to view, Poole stopped abrupt­ly. It took Fred Barks­dale, walk­ing in front, a mo­ment to re­al­ize this. Then he, too, came to a halt.

“Now, lis­ten.” Poole walked up be­hind Barks­dale and spoke qui­et­ly in­to his ear. “We’re go­ing to do this nice and easy. Don’t say any­thing un­less I tell you. And don’t try any­thing. If I have to, I’ll shoot you first and sort out the red tape lat­er.”

If Barks­dale heard, he gave no sign. He be­gan mov­ing for­ward again. Word­less­ly, Poole swung in­to step be­hind him.

So far, ev­ery­thing had gone smooth­ly. The brief dis­play of force, the sight of the gun, had been enough. Poole had seen the ef­fect be­fore, es­pe­cial­ly with peo­ple who were in­to some­thing over their heads. Young rebel sol­diers—un­fa­mil­iar with au­to­mat­ic weapons, par­alyzed with fear at the thought of com­bat—some­times seemed al­most re­lieved by cap­ture. Barks­dale had re­act­ed the same way, sub­mit­ting with­out strug­gle. At least, that’s the im­pres­sion he’d giv­en. But the hard­est part lay ahead: con­vinc­ing Al­loc­co and his mer­ry men that Fred­er­ick Barks­dale, sys­tems over­lord for all of Utopia, was in league with the en­emy. If Barks­dale want­ed, he could make this very messy. It would be his word against that of a med­dling guest. Poole frowned at the blond head be­fore him: the head that looked res­olute­ly, wood­en­ly for­ward. He won­dered what was go­ing on in­side of it.

 

LESS THAN AN hour be­fore, Se­cu­ri­ty had been a scene of fre­net­ic ac­tiv­ity. At least a dozen spe­cial­ists had been bustling around the com­plex: en­ter­ing in­ci­dent re­ports, an­swer­ing phones, peer­ing in cu­ri­ous­ly at the un­usu­al sight of a de­tainee in the hold­ing cell. But now—as Poole opened the doors and led Barks­dale across the bright, cheer­ful­ly col­ored an­te­room—he was sur­prised by what he saw. The place was al­most emp­ty. On­ly three guards could be seen, and they were all be­hind the main desk, speak­ing at once: two in­to tele­phones, one in­to a ra­dio.

Tuck­ing one hand be­tween the but­tons of his cor­duroy jack­et and plac­ing the oth­er on Barks­dale’s el­bow, Poole pro­pelled the En­glish­man firm­ly to­ward the desk. The quick­er he did this, the bet­ter. He rec­og­nized one of the guards from his ear­li­er vis­it: Lind­bergh, a kid with black hair, pale gray eyes, and the lega­cy of a bad case of ac­ne. The guard ob­vi­ous­ly rec­og­nized him, too; Poole could see it in his eyes, the way he put down the phone as they ap­proached. The man opened his mouth to speak.

“Where’s Al­loc­co?” Poole in­ter­ject­ed.

“He’s in Cal­lis­to,” Lind­bergh said, look­ing from Poole to Barks­dale and back again. “At the ac­ci­dent site.”

“Ac­ci­dent?”

The guard nod­ded. “One of the at­trac­tions at the Sky­port. Sta­tion Omega.”

“What about it?”

“Don’t know the de­tails. Some­thing mal­func­tioned.”

“Sweet sis­ter Sadie.” Poole thought of his cousin, Sonya Klemm; her hus­band, Mar­tin; their three foul­mouthed boys. He’d sent them back to the Sky­port, urged them to try the oth­er rides. The chances were small, van­ish­ing­ly small…but he had to ask nev­er­the­less. “Any ca­su­al­ties?”

“Lots, I un­der­stand. It’s pan­de­mo­ni­um up there.”

Poole turned to Barks­dale. “Hear that, you bas­tard?” he mut­tered, yank­ing bru­tal­ly at the man’s el­bow. “You know about this?”

But Barks­dale had gone death­ly pale. He made no re­ply, not even a ges­ture. It was as if he had gone some­place far, far away.

Poole turned back to Lind­bergh, who was still shift­ing his gaze be­tween the two of them. “I need to speak to Al­loc­co.”

The guard con­tin­ued to stare, but gave no oth­er re­sponse.

“I said, let me talk to Al­loc­co.”

This time, Lind­bergh turned to­ward the guard on the ra­dio. “Hey! Who’re you talk­ing to?”

“Tan­nen­baum.”

“Tell him to put Mr. Al­loc­co on a mo­ment.”

The sec­ond guard spoke in­to the ra­dio, then hand­ed it to Lind­bergh. “Make it fast,” Lind­bergh said, pass­ing it over the desk. “They’re kind of busy up there.”

Poole took the ra­dio.

“Christ, what is it now?” he heard Al­loc­co boom. There was a ri­ot of back­ground noise: cries, sobs, in­co­her­ent shouts. “Suit up! Suit up!” some­one was call­ing.

“Mr. Al­loc­co, it’s Poole. An­gus Poole. You re­mem­ber?”

“Yeah. I can’t talk, Poole.”

“What hap­pened? What went wrong?”

A fresh storm of noise drowned Al­loc­co’s first words. “…don’t know, not yet. It’s like a slaugh­ter­house up here.”

“A what? You mean, peo­ple are, are dead? How many?”

“We’re still count­ing. Med­ical’s just com­ing on-​scene now.”

“Look, there’s a chance I may have had rel­atives on that ride. A wom­an wear­ing a wiz­ard’s cap, a man in a green T-​shirt, three boys—”

“I don’t have time for this,” Al­loc­co in­ter­rupt­ed, grav­el­ly voice tight with ex­as­per­ation. Poole heard a huge sigh. “Look, I haven’t seen any­thing like that, okay? I’ll let you know if I do. Is that why you called?”

“No. Not ex­act­ly.” Poole hes­itat­ed, think­ing. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have Fred Barks­dale here, and—”

“I know all about that.”

Poole stopped again at this fresh sur­prise. “You do?”

“Yeah. An­drew Warne tracked me down by ra­dio a few min­utes ago, on my way over here. Told me all about it.”

“And?”

“And it sounds crazy to me, but I don’t have time to sort it out now. Keep Barks­dale con­fined un­til I get back, we’ll work it out then. Heav­en help you if you’re wrong.”

“You’ll give those in­struc­tions to your men here? It would be bet­ter, com­ing from you.”

“Pass the ra­dio over. Hur­ry up, man. Hur­ry.”

Poole hand­ed the ra­dio back to Lind­bergh. “This is Er­ic Lind­bergh,” the man said.

Poole could hear Al­loc­co’s tin­ny bark sound­ing in Lind­bergh’s ear. As the guard lis­tened, his gray eyes widened. He stared at Barks­dale again.

“Yes,” Lind­bergh said. “I un­der­stand. Very well, sir.”

He low­ered the ra­dio, then slow­ly hand­ed it back to the sec­ond guard. All the time, he kept his eyes on Barks­dale.

“You heard the man?” Poole said.

Lind­bergh nod­ded.

“Then you know what you have to do. Put him in the hold­ing cell, just to be sure.”

The guard nod­ded again. He looked al­most as dazed as Barks­dale.

Turn­ing, Poole pulled Barks­dale away from the desk, then pro­pelled the man brusque­ly be­fore him. Ges­tur­ing for one of the oth­er guards to fol­low, Lind­bergh picked up a ba­ton and walked around the desk, open­ing a door in the front of­fice and com­ing out to meet them.

Out of the pub­lic ar­eas of the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex, the bright col­or scheme and com­fort­able so­fas gave way to gray brick walls and linoleum-​tiled floors. “You’ll get a chance to see a bud­dy of yours,” Poole said, giv­ing Barks­dale an­oth­er push as they made their way down the cor­ri­dor that led away from the an­te­room. “It’ll be like Old Home Day, a reg­ular re­union.”

The cor­ri­dor gave on­to a rect­an­gu­lar room, sur­round­ed on all sides by doors. One of the doors to the left was dif­fer­ent from the rest: heavy steel, with a small meshed-​glass win­dow set in­to it. The sec­ond guard ap­proached the door, peered through the win­dow, then un­locked the door and opened it gin­ger­ly. Lind­bergh took up a po­si­tion on the oth­er side of the door, palm rest­ing on the han­dle of his ba­ton. Poole glanced in­side. The young hack­er was still ly­ing on the cot. At the sound of the lock turn­ing, he had leaned for­ward on his el­bow, looked dis­in­ter­est­ed­ly up at the door.

As they walked, Barks­dale had re­mained de­tached, seem­ing­ly in shock. The mo­ment the cell door opened, how­ev­er, a change came over him. He glanced in­side, saw the oc­cu­pant, and start­ed vis­ibly. The pris­on­er sat up on the cot, a crooked smile com­ing over his bruised and swollen face.

“Get in there,” Poole said, push­ing Barks­dale through the door. He stepped away as the sec­ond guard slammed the door shut, twist­ed the lock, and re­moved the key.

The sys­tems chief wheeled back to­ward the small win­dow. “I don’t want to be locked up!” he called from in­side. “Please!”

“Don’t wor­ry,” Poole said. “I’m go­ing to be right here, watch­ing. I’ll be watch­ing like a hawk.”

He stepped back from the door, cross­ing his arms and keep­ing his eye on the wired glass. The two guards stepped away al­so. In his pe­riph­er­al vi­sion, Poole caught them ex­chang­ing glances.

It would be in­ter­est­ing to watch Barks­dale’s re­ac­tion to the rogue hack­er. Their in­ter­ac­tion might pro­vide more clues. As it was, the en­tire busi­ness had been much eas­ier than he’d ex­pect­ed, es­pe­cial­ly Al­loc­co’s hav­ing al­ready heard the sto­ry from Warne. Things might have been very tricky oth­er­wise. That was clever of Warne; it showed fore­sight. Per­haps he’d been un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the man, af­ter all.

Now Barks­dale was anx­ious­ly pac­ing the far wall of the cell, dart­ing oc­ca­sion­al glances to­ward the hack­er. Poole watched through the glass with amuse­ment. He’d be en­joy­ing this if it weren’t for the nag­ging seed of doubt in the back of his mind. The chances of his cousin or her fam­ily be­ing any­where near Sta­tion Omega were close to nil. And there was noth­ing he could do about it ei­ther way. Still, he wouldn’t rest en­tire­ly easy un­til he’d heard that…

“Hey!”

It was the third guard. He was halfway down the cor­ri­dor from the front desk, mo­tion­ing with one hand.

“Are you Poole?”

“That’s right.” Poole turned from the win­dow, Barks­dale tem­porar­ily for­got­ten.

“There’s some­one on the ra­dio for you, here at the desk.”

Poole walked back to the an­te­room, then took the ra­dio that was hand­ed over the desk. “Poole here,” he said.

He lis­tened for a mo­ment to the an­guished, in­co­her­ent voice that came cry­ing over the trans­mit­ter.

“Who is this?” he said. “What? Calm down, calm down. Ter­ri, where are you ex­act­ly? Are you hurt? No, stay put—I’ll be right there.”

Poole spun around, let­ting the ra­dio drop to the desk. He dashed to the door, yelled down the cor­ri­dor. “Lind­bergh! Lind­bergh!”

The mop of black hair ap­peared. “Yes?”

“Lis­ten, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Guard those two, you hear? Guard them.”

Lind­bergh scratched his face per­plexed­ly. “I’ll do that,” he replied. “Mr. Al­loc­co said—”

But Poole was al­ready gone.

 

4:08 P.M.

THE WORST THING, strange­ly enough, was the mu­sic: the ster­ile, ethe­re­al New Age mu­sic that seeped from hun­dreds of hid­den speak­ers, suf­fus­ing Cal­lis­to with its promise of a tran­quil fu­ture. Nor­mal­ly, it was bare­ly au­di­ble be­neath the clam­or of num­ber­less guests. But there were no longer any guests in the Sky­port. The queue lines had all been dis­persed, the would-​be rid­ers asked to re­turn to Cal­lis­to’s oth­er at­trac­tions. A sil­ver cur­tain—part of a sys­tem for iso­lat­ing sec­tions of the Park in civ­il emer­gen­cies—now hung at the end of the con­course, shield­ing the Sky­port from out­side view. Though it looked ethe­re­al, light as gos­samer, it was com­plete­ly opaque, heav­ily re­in­forced with lay­ers of sound­proof­ing. Two se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists, dressed in Cal­lis­to’s twen­ty-​sec­ond-​cen­tu­ry uni­forms, stood guard be­fore it.

Bob Al­loc­co walked across the Sky­port, hear­ing the rap of his shoes against the re­flec­tive blue pavers, the icy ca­dences of the am­bi­ent mu­sic. It was cru­el­ly, di­abol­ical­ly out of place here, and he wished he could get it out of his head. He wished, too, that he could get the oth­er thing out of his head—his first glimpse of what had once been Sta­tion Omega—but he knew al­ready that was one sight that had been seared in­to his mem­ory for­ev­er.

At night, when the Park was closed and there were no lines of guests, the walk across the Sky­port al­ways seemed long. To­day it seemed even longer. Al­loc­co glanced over, saw a se­cu­ri­ty fore­man trot­ting to­ward him.

“Sta­tus?” Al­loc­co was al­ready ask­ing as the man came up.

“We’ve com­plet­ed an­oth­er sweep, sir,” the fore­man said, pant­ing slight­ly. “No guests any­where. The Sky­port’s to­tal­ly se­cure.”

Af­ter what he’d seen in Grif­fin Tow­er, Al­loc­co no longer be­lieved any place in Utopia was to­tal­ly se­cure. But he grunt­ed his ap­proval. Un­der the cir­cum­stances, the evac had gone re­mark­ably smooth­ly. There had been no pan­ic, no out­raged re­fusals to leave the Sky­port. All the guests—on line, en­ter­ing or leav­ing the rides—had seemed to buy the sto­ry of a fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed emer­gen­cy drill. The bar­ri­er cur­tain had come down un­ob­tru­sive­ly, the post­ing guard set up. Such a pro­ce­dure had on­ly been sim­ulat­ed in the past, and the best evac time in the drills had been four min­utes. To­day, the re­al thing had tak­en per­haps four and a half. On an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, Al­loc­co might have been pleased.

But none of this ef­fi­cien­cy would be of any help to the rid­ers on Sta­tion Omega.

“I want three rov­ing pa­trols, six men each,” he told the fore­man. “Is the for­ward com­mand post es­tab­lished?”

“By the en­trance to Moon Shot.”

“Good. Have the teams keep in ra­dio con­tact with the post, ten-​minute call-​ins. Keep run­ning them through the Sky­port un­til mop-​up’s com­plete.” He glanced around. “Did any­body see any­thing un­usu­al be­fore this hap­pened? Any­thing out of the or­di­nary?”

The se­cu­ri­ty fore­man shook his head. “One of the load­ing at­ten­dants saw a cast mem­ber she didn’t rec­og­nize. That’s about it.”

Al­loc­co pounced on this. “She didn’t rec­og­nize? What made her re­mem­ber?”

“She just said it was fun­ny, see­ing a cast mem­ber in a shut­tle pi­lot’s suit leav­ing the off-​load­ing area.”

“What’s this at­ten­dant’s name?”

“Piper, sir. She’s still back there, with…with the oth­ers.”

Al­loc­co thought a minute. “I want plain­clothes teams dis­patched through the rest of Cal­lis­to. All the oth­er Worlds, as well. Small groups, low pro­file, two teams to a World. At­lantis, too.”

“The oth­er Worlds, sir?” The fore­man looked sur­prised. “Look­ing for what?”

“Any­thing. I’ll take their re­ports in thir­ty min­utes, then we’ll reeval­uate.”

As he veered off in the di­rec­tion of Moon Shot, Al­loc­co glanced at his watch: 4:09. My God, was it pos­si­ble he had been here on­ly sev­en min­utes? He felt as if he’d aged at least a year.

When he’d first ar­rived on the scene, rac­ing up the main­te­nance stair­way, the ex­it area of Sta­tion Omega—out of sight from the main Sky­port, thank God—had been a pan­de­mo­ni­um of fran­tic ac­tiv­ity: des­per­ate res­cue work­ers, off-​load spe­cial­ists ei­ther cry­ing or shocked in­to sense­less­ness. But it had been dif­fer­ent then, of course: peo­ple still thought there was a chance to save lives. Now, over the course of just sev­en min­utes, the at­mo­sphere had changed com­plete­ly. A kind of grim, spec­tral pall lay over the Sky­port.

Ex­cept, of course, for that damned mu­sic.

A small group had gath­ered at the hasti­ly con­struct­ed for­ward com­mand post. As he ap­proached, Al­loc­co saw rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Guest Re­la­tions, Op­er­ations, Hu­man Re­sources. All hov­er­ing out here, away from the ac­ci­dent scene, like wallflow­ers at a frat par­ty. They all wore the same ex­pres­sion of white-​faced dis­be­lief. When Sarah got here, she’d…

He re­al­ized he’d for­got­ten all about Sarah and the Ho­lo Mir­rors, and felt a mo­men­tary stab of con­cern for her. Then it van­ished as sev­er­al phones on one of the portable desks be­gan ring­ing at once and Mal­colm Griff, head of Guest Re­la­tions, plucked at his sleeve.

“Yes?” Al­loc­co said, turn­ing to him.

“I’ve got that re­port on the con­tain­ment ac­tiv­ities,” the man said over the ring­ing of the phones.

“Let’s have it.”

“The emer­gen­cy-​drill sto­ry seems to be work­ing. I haven’t got­ten word of any siz­able hot spots.”

“Good.” While he lis­tened, Al­loc­co’s eyes were con­stant­ly on the move. He watched se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists an­swer­ing the phones, watched an­oth­er spe­cial­ist un­roll a large spool of fiber-​op­tic wire, watched the fore­man dis­patch the first rov­ing pa­trol.

“With the help of Op­er­ations, we’re en­cour­ag­ing out­flow from Cal­lis­to to the oth­er Worlds. We’ve slowed in­bound traf­fic at the por­tals. Just to speed up wit­ness dis­per­sal, re­tard any ru­mor clus­ter­ing.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Wit­ness dis­per­sal, ru­mor clus­ter­ing. Guest Re­la­tions used more fan­cy in-​speak than a so­ci­ol­ogy con­ven­tion. And yet Al­loc­co sensed the man was keep­ing some­thing back. He brought his rov­ing eyes back, hom­ing in on Griff.

“What else?”

The man hes­itat­ed. “We plant­ed some of our peo­ple in the ex­it lines as the guests left the Sky­port. To lis­ten, you know: gauge the mood, what peo­ple were say­ing.”

“Go on.”

“One of our spe­cial­ists over­heard two guests talk­ing. Ap­par­ent­ly, some tourist was wan­der­ing near the back­stage ar­eas, look­ing for a bath­room. She caught a glimpse in­side the Sta­tion Omega ex­it cor­ri­dor be­fore the off-​load­ing site was clois­tered.”

“A glimpse?”

“Um, yes. From what our spe­cial­ist over­heard, it sound­ed pret­ty ac­cu­rate.”

Je­sus Christ. Just what we need. “You get a de­scrip­tion of this wit­ness?”

Griff shook his head.

“Any oth­er sim­ilar re­ports?”

“No, just the one.”

Al­loc­co’s eyes were on the move again. He spot­ted Tom Rose, In­fras­truc­ture chief, emerg­ing from the Sky­port back­stage. “We’ll have to hope it doesn’t spread. Peo­ple are al­ways hear­ing things like that—with any luck this will be chalked up as an­oth­er shag­gy-​dog sto­ry. But have your peo­ple keep min­gling with the guests, keep their ears open. I want to know if this sto­ry pops up again some­where else.”

Griff nod­ded, then turned and walked quick­ly to­ward the bank of tele­phones.

Tom Rose was com­ing to­ward him. He was walk­ing slow­ly, his face pal­lid. The col­lar of his shirt was dark with sweat.

“Tom,” Al­loc­co said, nod­ding in solemn greet­ing.

The In­fras­truc­ture chief sim­ply looked back in re­ply.

“Any idea yet how this could have hap­pened?”

Rose chewed his lip, seem­ing to think about this. “I’ve got ride in­spec­tors and en­gi­neers look­ing at it right now,” he said. Then he stopped. Al­loc­co stood, wait­ing for him to con­tin­ue.

“They’re not sure ex­act­ly what it was yet. But it has noth­ing to do with the heat ef­fects, like we thought it might. It seems to be re­lat­ed to the safe­ty de­sign.”

“The safe­ty de­sign?”

Rose nod­ded. It looked as if the man was about to burst in­to tears.

“You know the hy­draulic re­tard­ing sys­tem on Sta­tion Omega, how it kicks in af­ter a hun­dred feet of free fall? It’s mas­sive­ly ov­erengi­neered; it has to be, be­cause of the way the drop is pro­pelled by the in­jec­tor mech­anism.” Rose was talk­ing faster now, as if he want­ed to get the painful ex­pla­na­tion over with.

“I’ve seen the specs. Go on.”

“Well, nor­mal op­er­ation seems to have been re­versed. The re­tard­ing sys­tem didn’t kick in at the bot­tom of the ride, like it was de­signed to. It came on at the be­gin­ning, at the top, just as the in­jec­tor was try­ing to launch the ride com­part­ment.”

“And?”

“Well, there was all that pres­sure push­ing the com­part­ment down, and all that pres­sure try­ing to re­tard it at the same time…It gen­er­at­ed tremen­dous heat.”

“How much heat?” As soon as it was out, Al­loc­co was sor­ry he’d asked the ques­tion.

Rose looked sor­ry, too. “My en­gi­neers es­ti­mat­ed about 500 Cel­sius. And it vent­ed…it vent­ed—” He stopped abrupt­ly.

“In­to the ride com­part­ment,” Al­loc­co fin­ished for him.

There was a brief, ter­ri­ble si­lence.

“But how could that hap­pen?” Al­loc­co asked.

Tom Rose’s lips trem­bled. “We en­gi­neered that ride to be fail-​safe. Ev­ery­thing was done to triple the orig­inal specs.”

“So?”

“Can’t you un­der­stand? Our main con­cern was safe­ty. We de­signed the ride to be as safe as pos­si­ble. Not as tam­per­proof as pos­si­ble.”

Sud­den­ly, Al­loc­co un­der­stood what it was Rose didn’t want to say di­rect­ly. The ride’s own safe­ty de­sign had been used against it. It was a di­abol­ical irony.

“How could such a thing be done?” he asked.

“If some­one knew ex­act­ly what to do, it would be rel­ative­ly easy. Re­verse half a dozen switch­es, change the wiring in one of the con­trol pan­els. The work of a minute, maybe two. But the safe­ty gov­er­nor would have to be in over­ride mode. That’s a sys­tems job, and much more com­pli­cat­ed. You need high priv­ileges, all sorts of things. That would have to be done re­mote­ly.”

Al­loc­co took a step back­ward, his jaw work­ing. In his mind he saw John Doe, thumb­ing through pil­fered en­gi­neer­ing di­agrams, de­ter­min­ing just which ride could be most con­ve­nient­ly sab­otaged against it­self. And he saw some­thing else: the unau­tho­rized per­son in a shut­tle pi­lot’s out­fit, the one the load­ing at­ten­dant had wit­nessed walk­ing away from Sta­tion Omega just be­fore the calami­tous drop. And he re­mem­bered what Poole had told him about the hack­er; about how he’d just sat there in the Hub, typ­ing, as they ap­proached. As if he’d had to fin­ish some­thing im­por­tant be­fore…Dim­ly, he re­al­ized Tom Rose was ask­ing him a ques­tion.

“Sor­ry?” he said, turn­ing.

Now, Rose was cry­ing. “Who?” he asked in a whis­per. The tears were cours­ing down his cheeks unchecked. “Who would do such a thing? And why?”

Al­loc­co could not bear the plead­ing look on that face. He turned away again.

John Doe had said to keep things qui­et. But it was John Doe who had done this. So fuck John Doe.

“My friend,” Al­loc­co said qui­et­ly, “we’ve got some very bad peo­ple in the Park to­day.”

When he turned back, Rose had gone.

Al­loc­co sighed, blinked, wiped his arm across his fore­head. Un­til Sarah showed up, he was in charge of line op­er­ations. For at least the fifth time, he went through the emer­gen­cy pre­pared­ness drill in his head. He’d just touched base with Se­cu­ri­ty, In­fras­truc­ture, Guest Re­la­tions. That still left Med­ical and Emer­gen­cy Re­sponse.

But that would mean go­ing back to the scene. Al­loc­co had al­ready been there once. And he re­al­ly, re­al­ly did not want to go back.

He sighed again, took a balm stick from his pock­et, ran it over his lips. Then he looked around, slow­ly, as if try­ing to take com­fort in the de­cep­tive­ly calm Sky­port around him. And then he left the com­mand post, worked his way along the perime­ter to Sta­tion Omega’s ex­it cor­ri­dor, and stepped back in­to hell.

 

THE EX­IT COR­RI­DOR smelled like a pig roast. A large, long tent of clear plas­tic had been hasti­ly erect­ed around the base of the drop shaft, con­ceal­ing the spot where—once the fail-​safe mech­anisms had fi­nal­ly been over­rid­den and the pow­er cut—the ride known as Sta­tion Omega had come drift­ing down to earth and at last opened its doors. Al­loc­co was grate­ful for the tent. The mu­sic was fainter here, and he was grate­ful for that, too. In­vol­un­tar­ily, he thought back to the first mo­ment he’d seen those open el­eva­tor doors, the con­tents of the trans­port ex­posed piti­less­ly to view: the riv­er of tum­bled limbs, grotesque against the singed lines of shirts and pants and shoes…

As the im­age lanced its way across his mind, he stopped. Then he forced him­self for­ward once again, in the di­rec­tion of the tent. It would be bet­ter now. There would be some sem­blance of or­der.

To one side of the tent’s en­trance, he could see a wheeled rack, hasti­ly ap­pro­pri­at­ed from Cos­tum­ing. Dozens of heavy plas­tic gar­ment bags, black and over­size, hung from its up­per bar. Al­ready, the rack was half-​emp­ty.

Large banks of life-​sup­port equip­ment stood to one side. Be­side them were sev­er­al wheelchairs, emp­ty, un­nec­es­sary. A video spe­cial­ist passed him, walk­ing quick­ly away from the site, face set in a green­ish cast, ev­idence cam­era and video recorder swing­ing from his shoul­ders. Small knots of peo­ple were scat­tered around the off-​load­ing area: ride at­ten­dants, me­chan­ical en­gi­neers, se­cu­ri­ty guards. There was sob­bing, of course, but less than be­fore. Most of the Sta­tion Omega crew were sit­ting to­geth­er, heads bowed. Al­loc­co rec­og­nized Dick­in­son, the tow­er op­er­ator, and Stevens, the ride fore­man. A knot of se­cu­ri­ty guards sur­round­ed them. He made a men­tal note to track down the at­ten­dant named Piper, lis­ten to her sto­ry be­fore he left. As he passed, Al­loc­co could hear some­one talk­ing. It was the young wom­an who’d been work­ing off-​load. She was still re­count­ing the same sto­ry he’d heard al­ready, over and over, bro­ken-​voiced, as if un­able to stop her­self. He glanced over. A nurse was kneel­ing by the wom­an, wip­ing her hands and face with a cloth.

“It was qui­et, so qui­et, as it came down,” she was say­ing. The metal­lic cloth of her sleeve had been rolled up, a blood pres­sure cuff placed around her arm. “There was noth­ing, noth­ing, af­ter all that scream­ing, and I couldn’t un­der­stand it, I just knew that some­thing ter­ri­ble had hap­pened. And then the doors opened, and…and they were stacked up so high against it they just tum­bled out, past me, past me, and there was no sound but they just kept com­ing and…Oh, God…” and she lapsed in­to silent, rack­ing sobs. The nurse stroked her bent head, whis­pered to her. One mem­ber of the group stood up and be­gan walk­ing, stiff-​legged, to­ward a far cor­ner of the off-​load area. Retch­ing sounds reached Al­loc­co’s ears.

Jaw set, he walked past the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, put out a hand to pull the tarp away, and stepped in­to the med­ical tent.

Here, in this plas­tic long­house, the smell of burned flesh was much stronger. Stretch­ers and gur­neys had been set up in two rows, al­low­ing for the pro­cess­ing of corpses to be han­dled as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble. When Al­loc­co had first ar­rived on the scene, this ef­fort had been slow to get start­ed: Med­ical, un­der the as­sump­tion a mas­sive in­flux of ca­su­al­ties was on its way down from the ride, was be­ing prepped for triage. But now the doc­tors, med­ical at­ten­dants, or­der­lies, and nurs­es who’d been ready to save lives were up here, help­ing to ar­range the dead with as much dig­ni­ty as pos­si­ble.

Dr. Finch, head of Med­ical, was at the near end of the left-​hand row, bend­ing over one of the over­size plas­tic bags. Like the oth­ers, he wore la­tex gloves and a dou­ble set of sur­gi­cal masks. Al­loc­co walked to­ward him, care­ful to keep his eyes away from the vast, odd­ly mound­ed tarp that cov­ered the floor at the far end of the tent, where the ride doors lay open.

“How do we stand, Doc­tor?” he asked as he ap­proached.

Dr. Finch zipped the bag closed, made a no­ta­tion on a chart, and turned to­ward him. “We’ve got mede­vacs fly­ing in from Columbia Sun­rise and Lake Mead.”

“Due when?”

Above the mask, the doc­tor’s eyes were al­ready hag­gard, red-​rimmed. “They’re about twen­ty-​two min­utes out.”

Even if they were here now, it wouldn’t make any dif­fer­ence, Al­loc­co thought. What we need is a fleet of coro­ners.

“We’ve con­tact­ed the sher­iff’s of­fice and the Clark Coun­ty ME,” the doc­tor said, as if fol­low­ing his thoughts. “They’re due in the next half hour, forty min­utes, tops.”

Al­loc­co nod­ded. He won­dered what John Doe would think when he saw half the uni­formed of­fi­cials in Neva­da de­scend­ing up­on the place. He re­al­ized he didn’t much care.

“What’s the pro­ce­dure here?” he asked, wav­ing his hand along the rows of stretch­ers. Al­though Utopia’s emer­gen­cy pro­ce­dures man­uals were ex­haus­tive, there were no guide­lines for any­thing quite like this.

“We’re just sta­bi­liz­ing the site, or­ga­niz­ing the bod­ies for the MEs to iden­ti­fy.”

“Got a count yet?” The au­to­mat­ic counter showed that six­ty-​one peo­ple had en­tered Sta­tion Omega be­fore the doors were shut, but there was al­ways a hope the count was wrong, that there were ac­tu­al­ly few­er peo­ple on the ride than they thought.

“No. Not in the state that’s in.” The doc­tor made the mer­est mo­tion of his head to­ward the huge, lumpy tarp that cov­ered the rear­ward floor of the tent. “So far, we’ve pro­cessed twen­ty-​sev­en.”

Twen­ty-​sev­en, Al­loc­co thought. Through­out the 1990s, there had been a to­tal of twen­ty-​one deaths at all amuse­ment parks across all fifty states. Last year, there had been on­ly five. Here, in one in­com­pre­hen­si­ble tragedy, the num­ber was more than ten times as large. It would go down in his­to­ry, for­ev­er haunt the Park. Peo­ple would al­ways be won­der­ing, when the doors of some thrill ride whis­pered shut around them, if the same thing might hap­pen again: the sud­den stop, the dark­ness, the pan­ic, the in­de­scrib­able mer­ci­less heat…

He shook him­self back. “Thank you, Doc­tor. Don’t let me keep you. Un­til we get an of­fi­cial pres­ence here, I’ll be mon­itor­ing the sit­ua­tion from the com­mand post out­side. If you need any­thing at all, just let me know.”

The doc­tor glanced at him a mo­ment, then nod­ded and re­turned to his chart. Al­loc­co turned away, let­ting his gaze fall across the tent. At the far end, a man wear­ing an A-​lev­el haz­mat suit was lift­ing a zip­pered bag from one of the stretch­ers. The bag was clear­ly light, maybe forty or fifty pounds. As Al­loc­co watched, the man backed away, piv­ot­ed, then care­ful­ly laid the bag at the end of a long row of sim­ilar bags. Then he turned to­ward the mas­sive tarp cov­er­ing the mouth of the ride, held out a heav­ily gloved hand, lift­ed an edge to reach be­neath. Al­loc­co caught a fleet­ing glimpse of some­thing—glis­ten­ing, bright as boiled lob­ster—be­fore he turned away and ducked back out of the tent.

 

4:10 P.M.

IT SEEMED HE had been pac­ing—down eight steps, turn, eight steps back—for an hour. Prob­ably it hadn’t been more than five min­utes. As he’d paced, Fred Barks­dale had tried very hard not to think. Think­ing would be too painful. And yet de­spite his best ef­forts, shame and rage, fear and baf­fle­ment and mor­ti­fi­ca­tion, had be­gun to set­tle over his shoul­ders like a cloak.

The oth­er oc­cu­pant of the hold­ing cell had lain down again, closed his eyes. Al­though they’d met for plan­ning ses­sions half a dozen times, Barks­dale did not know the man’s name. He was sim­ply Crack­er Jack. But then, he didn’t know any of their names—they were just alias­es, like Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, Can­dy­man, or that re­al­ly fright­en­ing chap, Hard­ball. Barks­dale had al­ways felt re­as­sured by this anonymi­ty, as if his ig­no­rance were a kind of pro­tec­tion. Now, he didn’t feel so sure.

When that strange un­known fel­low in the cor­duroy jack­et had ap­peared out of nowhere—trick­ing him with that fraud­ulent KIS sto­ry, show­ing him the gun—Barks­dale had sim­ply shut down. The ag­ita­tion that had been grow­ing in­side him over the past week had abrupt­ly dis­solved in­to, strange­ly enough, a kind of re­lief. It was over. For bet­ter or worse, at least it was over.

But by the time they’d en­tered the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex, this numb­ness had giv­en way to a ter­ri­ble in­ner con­flict. He hat­ed him­self for hav­ing start­ed all this; for let­ting things spi­ral out of con­trol, for let­ting John Doe al­ter­nate­ly charm and threat­en him to such an undig­ni­fied con­clu­sion. And the talk of ca­su­al­ties in Cal­lis­to, vague as it was, felt like a dag­ger pierc­ing his heart. And yet he’d tried hard to sup­press his sur­prise when they opened the cell door and re­vealed Crack­er Jack on the cot with­in: any signs of recog­ni­tion would on­ly work against him. De­spite his pain and self-​loathing, Barks­dale knew that he was still hop­ing to beat the rap.

Crack­er Jack opened his eyes, took in the pac­ing, “So, how ’bout them Lak­ers?” he asked.

This drollery re­ceived no re­ply. Barks­dale sim­ply quick­ened his pace, back and forth, back and forth.

“I am a man whom For­tune hath cru­el­ly scratched,” he said to him­self, too qui­et­ly for Crack­er Jack to hear.

He hadn’t been en­tire­ly truth­ful with Sarah, back in Med­ical. A line of Shake­speare’s had, in fact, come to mind. All may be well. But it had been spo­ken at such an in­ap­pro­pri­ate time, and by such an in­ap­pro­pri­ate per­son—Claudius, mur­der­er of Ham­let’s fa­ther—that he could not bring him­self to ut­ter it.

O, my of­fense is rank—it smells to heav­en…

He pushed these thoughts away. There would be no con­so­la­tion in Shake­speare to­day.

How had it all gone wrong? It had seemed so sim­ple. All the pieces had slipped so eas­ily in­to place, al­most as if some­body else were as­sem­bling the puz­zle for him.

But then again, some­one had—if he’d on­ly seen it. And that some­one was John Doe.

It had all start­ed with a great anger. De­spite be­ing an ide­al can­di­date, he’d been passed over for head of Op­er­ations. Even more galling, the pow­ers-​that-​be had hired some­one from Carnegie-​Mel­lon in his place. Sarah Boatwright’s im­pec­ca­ble cre­den­tials—po­si­tions as ex­ec­utive ad­min­is­tra­tor at Busch Gar­dens and VP of ad­min­is­tra­tion at a Sil­icon Val­ley mi­crochip man­ufac­tur­er—hadn’t mat­tered to the out­raged Barks­dale. The point was that they had hired out of the Park. Chuck Emory, ar­ro­gant swine of a CEO, had nev­er re­al­ly liked him. Barks­dale had al­most quit in dis­gust.

But then, some­thing had oc­curred to him. Some­thing bet­ter than quit­ting.

At first, it was just an idea he liked to toy with; an in­tel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge he found in­ter­est­ing to solve. It was on­ly af­ter he re­al­ized just how clever, how per­fect­ly sim­ple, the so­lu­tion was—and how he, as head of Sys­tems, was the on­ly one in a po­si­tion to im­ple­ment it—that he be­gan to think more se­ri­ous­ly.

The an­swer lay in the high de­gree to which ev­ery pro­cess with­in Utopia was au­to­mat­ed. Au­toma­tion was all-​per­va­sive: from the move­ment sen­sors that tracked crowd dis­per­sal through­out the Park; to the com­put­ers that mon­itored and read­just­ed light, tem­per­ature, hu­mid­ity, wa­ter pres­sure, and count­less oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal vari­ables; to the sys­tem that ran the col­lec­tion and pro­cess­ing of mon­ey.

This last—the Fi­nan­cial Pro­cess­ing Sys­tem—was a beau­ti­ful sys­tem in­deed. As he spear­head­ed its de­vel­op­ment, su­per­vised the im­ple­men­ta­tion, he’d used as his mod­el the net­works of Ro­man roads that once strode across Eu­rope and Asia. He re­mem­bered be­ing fas­ci­nat­ed by these roads as a child in gram­mar school. Straight, paved, uni­form—the Domi­tian Way, Au­re­lian Way, Ap­pi­an Way, count­less oth­ers—and all lead­ing back to the mil­liar­ium au­reum, the Gold­en Mile­stone, at the Fo­rum in Rome.

Utopia, with its im­age­tags and Park cred­it cards for guests, had tried to dis­pense with pa­per mon­ey as much as pos­si­ble. But there were still count­less places through­out the Park—the food ven­dors and sou­venir sell­ers, holo­graph­ic pho­to gal­leries, T-​shirt em­po­ri­ums, cash-​on­ly Em­barka­tion booths—that ac­cept­ed it. And, un­like oth­er theme parks, Utopia had some­thing else: four vast casi­nos, whose slots, video pok­er ma­chines, black­jack ta­bles, and roulette wheels had proved in­sa­tiable mag­nets for cash.

Barks­dale’s Fi­nan­cial Pro­cess­ing Sys­tem drew mon­ey from count­less far-​flung sites across the Park, chan­neled it with­out hu­man in­ter­ven­tion to a va­ri­ety of col­lec­tion and pro­cess­ing sub­sta­tions, and ul­ti­mate­ly de­posit­ed it in the cen­tral vault on C Lev­el: Utopia’s own fi­nan­cial Fo­rum Ro­manum. And from there, once a week like clock­work, it was tak­en off-​site by an es­cort­ed ar­mored car. It all hap­pened au­to­mat­ical­ly, au­tonomous­ly, un­der sys­tems con­trol. In fact, noth­ing could in­ter­rupt this week­ly cy­cle of col­lec­tion and de­liv­ery but the head of Op­er­ations. On­ly a call from Sarah Boatwright could can­cel an ar­mored car pick­up. And she would on­ly make such a call if there was a per­ceived threat to the in­tegri­ty or sta­bil­ity of the Park.

But what—Barks­dale had won­dered to him­self—if an ar­mored car came any­way?

The reg­ular truck from Utopia’s cho­sen car­ri­er, Amer­ican Ar­mored Se­cu­ri­ty, might be can­celed by Sarah Boatwright. But it was Barks­dale’s re­spon­si­bil­ity to can­cel the in­ter­nal pro­cess­ing, the ac­tu­al fi­nan­cial dis­bur­sal. If it was done clev­er­ly, the sys­tems per­son­nel on C Lev­el would nev­er know that the re­al ar­mored car had been can­celed. Be­cause Barks­dale would not act on, or pass on, Sarah’s or­der. Knowl­edge would stop with him. And when a re­place­ment ar­mored car rolled in, it would be filled with­in min­utes, as usu­al, and sent on its way, as usu­al—with what, over the last two months, was av­er­ag­ing a stag­ger­ing hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars a week…

Barks­dale paused in his pac­ing. A hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars. If he was com­plete­ly hon­est with him­self, he had to ad­mit that it wasn’t just a no­ble anger that mo­ti­vat­ed him. It was the mon­ey as well.

The fa­cade he had al­ways pre­sent­ed to staff and su­pe­ri­or alike—Fred­er­ick Barks­dale, born to the first wa­ter of En­glish no­bil­ity, rid­er to hounds—was a sham. He’d grown up in a mis­er­able semide­tached house in Clapham, read­ing molder­ing books, fan­ta­siz­ing that he was one of the priv­ileged lads at­tend­ing Eton, or Har­row, or Sand­hurst. The idea of work­ing for a liv­ing seemed dis­taste­ful, be­neath him. His re­al call­ing, sure­ly, was to tread the boards as a Shake­speare­an ac­tor, like Giel­gud or Olivi­er. Of course, his par­ents had no mon­ey for such a child­ish in­dul­gence, de­spite his ob­vi­ous flair for act­ing. So he got a schol­ar­ship to Can­ter­bury Tech­ni­cal Col­lege, where he soon found he had an­oth­er ap­ti­tude—an ap­ti­tude for com­put­er de­sign. Af­ter grad­ua­tion, he se­cured a sys­tems man­age­ment po­si­tion in the States, and his star rose quick­ly. He soon learned he had yet an­oth­er ap­ti­tude: to don the af­fec­ta­tions of an up­per-​class En­glish­man. With his gift for voic­es, his in­bred love for the finest things in life, it was easy. The per­sona de­vel­oped sub­tly. No­body ev­er ques­tioned him. In time, Barks­dale stopped ques­tion­ing him­self. And he be­gan to in­dulge him­self in the way he’d al­ways known he de­served.

This turned out to be very ex­pen­sive. Debt mul­ti­plied with fright­en­ing ra­pid­ity. And yet the things he most want­ed—the kind of lux­ury, the civ­ilized life he mer­it­ed—still re­mained out of his grasp.

A hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars.

Of course, it could nev­er be done. Not re­al­ly. Barks­dale couldn’t be seen mess­ing with his own sys­tems. And be­sides, it wasn’t a job for one man. It would re­quire a skilled team, men who knew where to pro­cure such things as uni­forms, the truck, ev­ery­thing else. Things that Barks­dale him­self wouldn’t have the first clue about.

Al­though Barks­dale was en­ter­pris­ing, rather des­per­ate for mon­ey, and full of righ­teous in­dig­na­tion, he was not par­tic­ular­ly brave. The dis­creet, cryp­tic ad­ver­tise­ments he placed in the Times of Lon­don, Punch, and a few oth­er jour­nals known to be read by ex-​MI5 mem­bers were more a pri­vate joke with him­self than any­thing else. Un­usu­al in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty. Suc­cess­ful can­di­date will have per­formed with dis­tinc­tion in one of the Spe­cial Branch­es. Sangfroid, high or­ga­ni­za­tion­al and lead­er­ship skills nec­es­sary. Small ini­tial in­vest­ment, large re­turn pos­si­ble. The faint­heart­ed and moral­ly scrupu­lous need not ap­ply. Barks­dale’s ad­ver­tise­ment had sat­is­fied his sense of out­rage: look what I could do if I want­ed to, it said.

But then, the ad was an­swered. And one thing led to an­oth­er. And now he was here, in­side this cell.

In­side this cell…

There seemed to be some kind of ac­tiv­ity go­ing on be­yond the door. Barks­dale paused in his pac­ing to lis­ten. Ap­par­ent­ly, still more guards were be­ing called away to deal with what­ev­er had hap­pened in Cal­lis­to. The guard that had been vis­ible through the small meshed-​glass win­dow was no longer there. At the thought of Cal­lis­to, of the se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist named Chris Green, Barks­dale felt a fresh stab of pain. No­body was sup­posed to get hurt. That was the promise.

Crack­er Jack, too, was in­trigued enough by the noise to get up from his bunk. He walked to­ward the win­dow, took a look around. Then he rapped on the door. “Hey!” he yelled.

No­body an­swered.

“Hey!” he yelled, more loud­ly this time.

The youth­ful, ac­ne-​scarred face of Lind­bergh, the guard, ap­peared in the win­dow.

“Where’s the bath­room?” Crack­er Jack asked.

“Lat­er.”

“Fuck lat­er, man. I got­ta go now. What are you go­ing to do, make me shit my pants?”

On the far side of the win­dow, Lind­bergh looked first left, then right. A key jan­gled in the lock, the door opened slow­ly.

“Keep your hands in front of you,” Lind­bergh said. He was hold­ing his bil­ly club at the ready. “And don’t try any­thing. I don’t want to use this on you, but if I have to, I will.”

Barks­dale watched the door shut again, heard the rasp of the lock. He turned away with a sigh. Un­like Crack­er Jack, he was un­aware that Lind­bergh was now the lone re­main­ing guard in Se­cu­ri­ty.

Barks­dale re­sumed his pac­ing. Now he could see that the ease with which things had come to­geth­er—the way the plan had al­most as­sem­bled it­self—was il­lu­so­ry. It was like that ter­ri­ble kind of dream where one seem­ing­ly in­no­cent event leads nat­ural­ly in­to an­oth­er, and then in­to an­oth­er, and you go along with­out think­ing un­til sud­den­ly you’re locked in­to a night­mare from which wak­ing is the on­ly free­dom. A night­mare that had been care­ful­ly, de­cep­tive­ly en­gi­neered by John Doe.

Abrupt­ly, Barks­dale stopped again in his pac­ing. Turn­ing to­ward the wall, he touched his head to it gen­tly, once, twice. If on­ly he could wake up now.

And yet it should have worked. Ev­ery lit­tle prob­lem that cropped up, ev­ery po­ten­tial snare, had been quick­ly solved. The man who had an­swered the ad­ver­tise­ment, who called him­self John Doe—mys­te­ri­ous and elu­sive though he was—proved supreme­ly shrewd and clever. He was clear­ly of good breed­ing, high­ly cul­tured, stu­dent of Bach and Raphael and Shake­speare, a man that Barks­dale could un­der­stand. John Doe seemed to gen­uine­ly sym­pa­thize with him. As plan­ning went on, John Doe as­sumed greater and greater con­trol, telling Barks­dale pre­cise­ly what sys­tems need­ed fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion or what schemat­ic he want­ed copies of. He’d tak­en care of re­cruit­ing, lur­ing, Tom Tib­bald on board for the lighter in­side du­ties. And it was John Doe who had seen the re­al po­ten­tial, be­yond any­thing Barks­dale had ev­er dreamed of. At first, it had been just about the mon­ey. But soon it grew in­to much, much more. John Doe showed him how the very ruse that would con­vince Sarah Boatwright to in­voke emer­gen­cy pro­ce­dures—to, among oth­er things, call AAS and can­cel the ar­mored car run—could be used to pro­cure the Cru­cible, a tech­nol­ogy worth even more than the cash it­self. It would all be quick, al­most ef­fort­less. Best of all, it could be ac­com­plished with­out vi­olence.

In fact, by that point, Barks­dale’s on­ly reser­va­tion didn’t in­volve the plan at all. It in­volved Sarah Boatwright, the wom­an he had so re­sent­ed for land­ing the job as head of Op­er­ations. He’d nev­er planned on lik­ing her. He wasn’t even sure how, ex­act­ly, it had hap­pened. She wasn’t his type, at all—so sure of her­self, so Amer­ican. He hadn’t tried to charm her, par­tic­ular­ly; he had mere­ly been him­self. Odd­ly enough, that was what did it. It was fun­ny, the way their re­la­tion­ship seemed to have de­vel­oped in lock­step with his own plans for the Park. If ei­ther one had come marked­ly first—his feel­ings for her, or his scheme to en­rich him­self—the oth­er would prob­ably nev­er have come about. As it was, he grew in­creas­ing­ly con­flict­ed. But ev­ery time he de­cid­ed to call it off, John Doe would rea­son with him, ca­jole him, re­mind him just how huge his cut of the take was, show him the fal­la­cy of his fears. And Barks­dale would re­al­ize the man was right. Per­haps, when it was all over, he’d find a way to con­tact Sarah, to ex­plain. Per­haps—he liked to be­lieve—he could even con­vince her to join him. Madeira was a beau­ti­ful spot, a green nugget of par­adise in an azure sea, and…

But here the train of thought grew very painful. Barks­dale shook his head, re­sumed his pac­ing.

He’d al­most told her, back there, by Geor­gia Warne’s bed­side. He’d come with­in a heart’s beat of ask­ing her to for­give him, come with him. But now, here in this stark cell, he re­al­ized he’d been de­lud­ing him­self. Sarah would nev­er be able to for­give his be­tray­al: of her, and per­haps to her mind even worse, of her Park. He could on­ly hope that she’d be able to find hap­pi­ness else­where—per­haps, de­spite her de­nials, with An­drew Warne.

He thought back to what she’d said about John Doe; about the way he’d seemed to see in­to her soul, say pre­cise­ly what she want­ed to hear. The same thing had hap­pened to him. John Doe had come across as the well-​bred British­er Barks­dale had al­ways se­cret­ly ached to be. His cre­den­tials had been im­pec­ca­ble. He’d treat­ed Barks­dale as an equal, in so­cial class as well as in­tel­li­gence. How sur­prised Barks­dale was to fi­nal­ly learn that this chameleon-​like per­for­mance was as fraud­ulent as the cre­den­tials were gen­uine.

Oth­er sur­pris­es were to fol­low. The boy who got hurt on Not­ting Hill Chase—that wasn’t sup­posed to hap­pen. John Doe had been con­trite, as­sur­ing him no oth­er such glitch would oc­cur. But the biggest sur­prise of all had come to­day, when An­drew Warne showed up a week ear­ly.

Warne’s ar­rival was a giv­en, of course. The very na­ture of the plan as­sured he’d be show­ing up, soon­er or lat­er, to de­bug the Metanet. It had been Barks­dale’s idea: to use John Doe’s team, pos­ing as KIS op­er­atives, to in­sert rogue soft­ware in­to the Utopia Net. And John Doe had come up with the clever scheme of hav­ing Crack­er Jack pose as an out­side hack­er, feel­ing around Utopia’s fire­wall, try­ing half-​heart­ed­ly to break in. His at­tacks had been un­suc­cess­ful—of course—but they’d had the de­sired re­sult of a sud­den de­mand among Utopia’s board for in­stant ac­tion. That had al­lowed Barks­dale to in­volve KIS—or, rather, the pho­ny KIS—at some­body else’s be­hest. It kept him above sus­pi­cion. And the board’s ha­bit­ual se­cre­cy al­lowed him to make all the nec­es­sary con­tacts him­self. Utopia had a ten-​week billing cy­cle, and even­tu­al­ly some­body would ques­tion why KIS nev­er sent a bill for their ser­vices. But by that time the op­er­ation, and Barks­dale’s own role in it, would al­ready be well known. And Barks­dale would be far, far away.

Warne was sup­posed to ar­rive a week from to­day. But in­stead, he’d shown up this morn­ing, the very worst time for a sur­prise. And that was when the first feel­ings of re­al fore­bod­ing had be­gun to crawl up Barks­dale’s spine. But by now, of course, John Doe was al­ter­nat­ing his af­fa­ble re­as­sur­ances with rather ter­ri­fy­ing threats. He made lit­tle at­tempt to dis­guise, any longer, his true con­tempt for Barks­dale. Even the man’s own al­lu­sions to Shake­speare had tak­en on a cyn­ical, taunt­ing edge. So there was noth­ing for it but to con­tin­ue the op­er­ation, de­spite his feel­ings of…

There was a noise in the hall­way. It was Crack­er Jack, on his way back from the bath­room. Spent quite some time in there, Barks­dale thought dis­in­ter­est­ed­ly. The key rat­tled in the lock, the door opened. Barks­dale turned to see Lind­bergh framed in the door­way, one hand on his bil­ly club, the oth­er grasp­ing the door han­dle. Be­side him stood Crack­er Jack. This time the hack­er’s hands were not in front of him, but be­hind his back.

As Barks­dale watched, Crack­er Jack quick­ly swept his arms for­ward, rais­ing them above Lind­bergh’s head. A thin piece of met­al wire was stretched tight­ly be­tween his hands. It glis­tened briefly in the light, as if it had been fresh­ly washed. Star­ing, time sus­pend­ed, Barks­dale had the sud­den clear re­al­iza­tion that he did not want to spec­ulate on where the wire had been hid­den.

And then Crack­er Jack’s hands jerked down­ward and the wire dis­ap­peared in­to the flesh of Lind­bergh’s neck.

The guard in­stinc­tive­ly raised his hands, rasp­ing and chok­ing. His ba­ton fell to the floor, rolling across the tiles and com­ing to rest half in­side the cell. Barks­dale watched in frozen hor­ror. The guard lurched one way, then the next, but Crack­er Jack stayed close be­hind him, one palm crossed over the oth­er as he sank the gar­rote deep­er in­to Lind­bergh’s neck.

Then he eased back on the pres­sure slight­ly. The guard’s fin­gers dropped and he gasped for breath, cough­ing and retch­ing.

Keep­ing his hands against Lind­bergh’s neck, Crack­er Jack leaned in to­ward the man’s ear. “Where’s my duf­fel?” he asked.

“Lock­er…” Lind­bergh wheezed. “Lock­er.”

“Where?”

Lind­bergh rolled his eyes to­ward the end of the cor­ri­dor.

“Locked?”

The pur­plish face nod­ded al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly.

“Keys?”

“…Pock­et…”

“Take it out.”

The guard low­ered one hand to­ward his pock­et. He was un­able to look down, and it took him a mo­ment. Barks­dale watched, thun­der­struck, as the fin­gers twitched and jerked their way along the line of the belt. Fresh hope, all the sweet­er for be­ing un­ex­pect­ed, surged with­in him. He was go­ing to get away, af­ter all. He was go­ing to make it.

Lind­bergh had found his key chain, hold­ing it out be­tween his thumb and in­dex fin­ger. The keys rat­tled nois­ily in his trem­bling hand.

“Which one?”

With an ef­fort, Lind­bergh raised the chain to his eyes, sort­ed through them, held up a small, bronze-​col­ored key.

Crack­er Jack took a good look at it. “You wouldn’t be bull­shit­ting me now, would you?”

The guard gave his head a sin­gle shake.

“Good.” And with a grunt of ef­fort, Crack­er Jack tight­ened the gar­rote once again.

Lind­bergh be­gan strug­gling wild­ly, his hands tear­ing at his neck, his feet skid­ding across the floor. Crack­er Jack fought to keep him­self lev­el, arch­ing the guard’s body back­ward un­der the pres­sure of the wire. The air was filled with a ter­ri­ble wet rat­tle.

Barks­dale stared, root­ed in sur­prise and hor­ror. “No,” he mur­mured.

Crack­er Jack tight­ened re­lent­less­ly, his face con­tort­ing with the ef­fort. Lind­bergh had jerked him­self around now to face the open door of the cell. He looked in, mouth open and full of blood, eyes wide and plead­ing.

“This isn’t right,” Barks­dale said, more loud­ly now.

Lind­bergh’s eyes rolled up in­to his head, ghast­ly white with­in crim­son sock­ets.

“No!” Barks­dale shout­ed. And bare­ly know­ing what he was do­ing, he leaped for­ward, grasped the ba­ton, and, ris­ing, sent it on a long, loop­ing swipe across the side of Crack­er Jack’s head.

There was an ug­ly noise of wood against bone, and the ba­ton shiv­ered out of Barks­dale’s hands, clat­ter­ing to the floor. For a ter­ri­ble mo­ment, Crack­er Jack’s grip held tight. Then he slumped to the ground. Lind­bergh im­me­di­ate­ly col­lapsed on top of him, arms sprawled out, fin­gers twitch­ing spas­mod­ical­ly.

Barks­dale knelt be­side the guard, rolled him gin­ger­ly to one side. The gar­rote had sunk so deeply in­to the guard’s neck that it had re­mained fixed in place even af­ter he fell. It was slip­pery with blood, hard to get a grip on. Barks­dale peeled it away, loos­ened the man’s col­lar, stroked his fore­head.

“Come on, old fel­low,” he mut­tered, shak­ing him gen­tly. “Come on. You’ll make it.”

There was a sud­den blow to the small of his back, and pain ex­plod­ed in his spine like a mor­tar round. Barks­dale fell to one side, cry­ing out. Crack­er Jack was get­ting to his feet, a lit­tle un­steadi­ly. The man looked around. Barks­dale fol­lowed his glance, but by the time he re­al­ized the hack­er’s in­ten­tions, Crack­er Jack had al­ready spot­ted the bil­ly club. He dove for it, push­ing Barks­dale’s reach­ing hand out of the way. Then he rose a sec­ond time, much more quick­ly now. He glanced down at the guard, spot­ted the keys, moved to scoop them up.

Barks­dale took a scram­bling step back­ward, across the floor. At the move­ment, Crack­er Jack turned to­ward him again. He lift­ed a hand to the side of his head, winced. Barks­dale saw the man’s knuck­les whiten as they gripped the ba­ton.

“Moth­er­fuck­er,” he mut­tered, step­ping quick­ly to­ward the re­treat­ing Barks­dale.

 

4:12 P.M.

AS THE AR­MORED car and its es­cort sedan ground up the long ap­proach route to Utopia, the ex­it traf­fic pass­ing them slow­ly in­creased. Huge semis, tall-​sid­ed re­frig­er­at­ed vans, and pro­duce trucks shot past, lighter now, their loads fer­ried away in­to the end­less war­rens of the Park’s un­der­bel­ly. The trucks were joined by a pro­ces­sion of cars, SU­Vs, and pick­ups: Red-​Shift Utopia cast and crew, leav­ing for the day. The faces looked hap­py, un­fet­tered, head­ing back for the north Ve­gas sub­urbs or the near­by par­ty com­mu­ni­ty of Cre­osote.

Now, as the last curve was turned and the mas­sive rear wall of Utopia came in­to view, the line-​haul driv­er glanced at his watch: 4:12. Right on the mon­ey.

He reached in­to a re­in­forced com­part­ment and pulled out a ra­dio. One eye on the road, the oth­er on the ra­dio’s key­pad, he punched in a de­scram­bling code, then lift­ed the trans­mit­ter to his lips.

“Prime Fac­tor, this is Can­dy­man, do you read?”

He let his fin­ger slip from the trans­mit but­ton, lis­ten­ing. Af­ter a mo­ment, a voice replied, reedy and ar­ti­fi­cial through the wash of stat­ic: “I read, Can­dy­man. Do you have a vi­su­al?”

“Com­ing in sight now.”

“Ex­cel­lent.” The re­ply was still faint, but it would soon get stronger. “Pro­ceed with con­tact. We’ll meet you at the ral­ly point.”

“Out.” The man put the ra­dio to one side. For a mo­ment, he con­sult­ed a small list of type­writ­ten com­mands that had been taped be­neath the dash­board. Then he pressed his oth­er hand to a but­ton on his ra­dio head­set. “Utopia Cen­tral, this is AAS trans­port Nine Echo Bra­vo, over.”

A very dif­fer­ent voice came crack­ling over the head­set. “Utopia Cen­tral.”

“We’re on fi­nal, re­quest­ing an en­trance au­tho­riza­tion.”

“Nine Echo Bra­vo, stand by.”

The head­set went silent and the driv­er slowed, work­ing his way down the gears. The shift change was over now, and the pro­ces­sion of cars was ebbing. Ahead, past the guard sta­tion, the road widened in­to an end­less ocean of black­top. The ve­hi­cles of Utopia cast and crew stood to one side, in long, shin­ing, un­bro­ken rows. To the oth­er was a mot­ley as­sort­ment of trucks and oth­er ser­vice ve­hi­cles. Far to one side sat a win­dow­less van, brown against the piti­less sun. Ex­ot­ic Bird Train­ers of Las Ve­gas had been paint­ed on its side in palm-​leaf let­ters. As if in ad­ver­tise­ment, a large buz­zard sat on its roof, wings out­spread and drain­pipe neck erect. Once or twice it tapped its beak, in­quir­ing­ly, against the van’s roof.

Be­yond the staff park­ing and the main­te­nance ports rose the end­less bulk of Utopia. Of­fi­cial­ly known as the Ser­vice and Ad­min­is­tra­tive Zone, it was a sight not shown in any tourist brochures or videos, and on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly seen in covert pic­tures tak­en for fan mag­azines and web­sites. Yet it was awe-​in­spir­ing in its own way. The Park’s rear fa­cade curved gen­tly from one canyon wall to the oth­er like the face of a vast dam, un­bro­ken save for a scat­ter­ing of tiny win­dows. Above it arched the grace­ful lines of the dome, glit­ter­ing in the late af­ter­noon sun. The dome’s mon­strous shad­ow was just be­gin­ning to fall over the left­most edge of the lot.

“Utopia Cen­tral con­firms,” came the voice over the head­set. “You may pro­ceed. Ap­proach cor­ri­dor be­ing cleared now.”

“Nine Echo Bra­vo con­firms,” the driv­er said. “Thanks. Out.”

At the check­point, the lone guard waved the ar­mored car through. The driv­er re­spond­ed with a chuff of air brakes, then trun­dled across the tar­mac to­ward an over­size bay set in­to the base of Utopia’s main struc­ture be­tween twin load­ing docks. The let­ter B was sten­ciled above it in six-​foot-​high black paint. Though the bay was large enough to fit the truck eas­ily, it looked like lit­tle more than a mouse hole in the wall that rose above it.

The es­cort sedan peeled away from the truck and drove to one side of the bay, where it wait­ed, en­gine idling, am­ber blink­er on its roof turn­ing idly. The line-​haul driv­er looked in his rearview mir­ror, caught the eye of the mes­sen­ger guard in the rear com­part­ment. The guard re­turned the glance, grasped his shot­gun, nod­ded.

This en­trance had to be done right the first time: any mis­takes or de­vi­ations from the norm would be im­me­di­ate­ly no­ticed. But it had on­ly been eigh­teen months since he’d stopped driv­ing ar­mored cars for the com­pa­ny, and it had be­come sec­ond na­ture again very quick­ly. Be­sides, the ma­neu­ver had been prac­ticed dozens of times, be­tween lines of cones in the ar­royos and dry wash­es of Es­mer­al­da Coun­ty, and there was no hes­ita­tion. The driv­er ap­proached the bay, then pulled the wheel over hard and brought the big Ford in­to a slow turn. Then, slid­ing the trans­mis­sion in­to re­verse, he smooth­ly guid­ed its rear to­ward the bay. As the end of the truck slipped in­to the bel­ly of Utopia, the growl of the en­gine, the in­sis­tent bleat of the back­ing tone, grew harsh and echo­ing.

Slow­ly, the blue sky dis­ap­peared and the roof of C Lev­el came for­ward to take its place. Now the ar­mored car was ful­ly in­side, back­ing care­ful­ly down the wide, gen­tly curv­ing pas­sage­way. As the driv­er passed by the guard sta­tion, the man in­side nod­ded.

“Check the oil and tires, willya?” the driv­er shout­ed through the gun-​port.

The guard smiled, gave him a thumbs-​up, and ges­tured him on.

 

4:15 P.M.

THEY HALF WALKED, half ran through B Lev­el, Sarah strid­ing for­ward, Warne strug­gling to keep up. Sarah looked straight ahead, mouth set, eyes rarely blink­ing. A ra­dio, ap­pro­pri­at­ed from Car­men Flo­rez in Imag­ing Fab­ri­ca­tion, swung in her right hand. Ap­proach­ing cast and crew, catch­ing sight of the ex­pres­sion on her face, gave the Park chief a wide berth.

“Tell it to me again,” she said brusque­ly, over her shoul­der.

“There’s no more to tell,” Warne pant­ed. “I don’t have all the an­swers. I just knew that, with that disc you found be­ing blank—”

“How do you know?”

“Ter­ri told me.”

“Well, Ter­ri must be mis­tak­en.” The con­fused, un­cer­tain look he’d seen on Sarah’s face in the pale glow of the Ho­lo Mir­rors was now gone.

“If she’s right, that means John Doe al­ready has one disc. Why would Barks­dale give you a blank disc—es­pe­cial­ly since he’s in­volved? That’s when it oc­curred to me that maybe it wasn’t just an­oth­er disc John Doe was af­ter. It was you.”

“Me?” Sarah’s voice was tight, laced with skep­ti­cism.

“He clear­ly need­ed you, for some rea­son. You’re the Park chief, af­ter all. No doubt he in­tend­ed to kid­nap you—or worse. A con­fus­ing place like that, a maze, was the per­fect spot. Why would he let you see him, face-​to-​face, up close, in your of­fice? He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to leave such a loose end be­hind.” This con­ver­sa­tion wasn’t go­ing the way he’d planned. Warne re­al­ized, with an un­com­fort­able hol­low feel­ing, that he had been act­ing im­pul­sive­ly; that, re­al­ly, he couldn’t prove any of this at all. But noth­ing else made sense.

“And why now, of all times?” Sarah asked skep­ti­cal­ly as they turned down a new cor­ri­dor.

“Maybe this is a crit­ical point in their plans. Some­thing must be hap­pen­ing we don’t know about. They must need di­ver­sions. Why else would they dam­age that ride—what’s it called, Sta­tion Omega—af­ter you’ve agreed to de­liv­er the sec­ond disc?”

“Yes, why would they?” The way she put it, it didn’t sound like a ques­tion. “Af­ter we locked up one of their crew, thanks to you? That’s where I should be right now, by the way: Sta­tion Omega. In­stead, I’m on this wild-​goose chase.”

Warne felt ag­itat­ed. Un­til this fusil­lade of ques­tions, Sarah had said lit­tle since they left Gaslight. “Why do you call it that?” he asked.

“Be­cause that’s what it is. Your lit­tle the­ory has one prob­lem: Fred’s guilt. With­out that, ev­ery­thing falls apart. And I don’t buy it. Not for a minute.”

“But I ex­plained about KIS, about how there was no—”

“Yes, yes. I heard. I could see you were jeal­ous of him, An­drew, but this is com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able.” She quick­ened her pace. “I’m go­ing to stop by Se­cu­ri­ty just long enough to hear Fred’s ex­pla­na­tion. And then I’m go­ing to or­der him re­leased, of course. And get back to what I’m sup­posed to be do­ing: run­ning this Park. In about five min­utes, Chuck Emory will be phon­ing the feds. And when they get here, all your lit­tle the­ories are go­ing to be­come aca­dem­ic.” She gave Warne a brief, bale­ful glare.

Warne’s ag­ita­tion deep­ened. He’d been feel­ing re­lieved, even—if he dared ad­mit it—a lit­tle pleased with him­self. He’d fig­ured it out, un­rav­eled the knot. He’d saved Sarah from an un­known fate at the hands of John Doe. The on­ly con­cern he’d felt had been over Geor­gia’s and Ter­ri’s where­abouts. This with­er­ing blast of anger and dis­be­lief was the last thing he’d ex­pect­ed.

Ahead, the dou­ble doors of the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex had come in­to view. She’s in de­nial, he told him­self. She can’t ac­cept what Barks­dale’s done. But there was that oth­er voice in his head, qui­eter, but cold­er and more in­sis­tent: What if you got it wrong? What if there’s some oth­er ex­pla­na­tion you’ve been miss­ing? Did you let your feel­ings cloud your judg­ment?

Sarah pushed through the doors, stepped in­side. Then she stopped, frown­ing.

The an­te­room was emp­ty. The bright­ly col­ored plas­tic chairs were un­oc­cu­pied; the long front desk, pol­ished and gleam­ing, was va­cant. A strange, watch­ful still­ness seemed to hang over the room. In the dis­tance, a tele­phone was ring­ing.

“What—?” Sarah be­gan. She stepped for­ward, look­ing around.

Warne fol­lowed. Where was Poole? Why hadn’t Ter­ri re­turned here with Geor­gia? Was it pos­si­ble they were all wait­ing in one of the rear of­fices?

He opened the door be­side the front desk and looked down the cor­ri­dor be­yond. No sign of any­one, no sound or move­ment. Mys­ti­fi­ca­tion be­gan to turn to alarm.

He start­ed down the cor­ri­dor. Still noth­ing. The tick of a clock, the low rum­ble of air-​con­di­tion­ing. The phone be­gan ring­ing again. At the far end of the cor­ri­dor, one of the doors was open. In­side, Warne could see a bank of large steel lock­ers. One had swung open, key dan­gling from its lock.

Then Warne stopped mov­ing. It had been in­stinc­tu­al, that sud­den halt.

On the wall of the cor­ri­dor, some­thing glis­tened. He ap­proached it cau­tious­ly. It was a spray of blood, still wet, bright red against the gray brick.

Heart thump­ing in the back of his throat, Warne crept for­ward, peered in­to the open area ahead. There was more blood here, spat­tered across chairs and a du­ty desk, climb­ing the walls in nar­row trac­eries.

Had John Doe come for the pris­on­ers? What ter­ri­ble thing had hap­pened?

Still, no sound. And then, the pat­ter­ing of feet from be­hind.

Warne had for­got­ten about Sarah. He turned, saw her ap­proach quick­ly.

“Sarah!” he said, try­ing to keep her back. “No!”

Duck­ing around him, she ran in­to the open area. She stopped when she saw the blood.

“Oh, Je­sus,” she mut­tered.

Warne looked around once more, strug­gling to mas­ter him­self. His eye land­ed on the door of the hold­ing cell. It was ajar. Blood was pooled be­fore it.

Slow­ly, al­most me­chan­ical­ly, he ap­proached, put his head to the se­cu­ri­ty win­dow, gazed in.

Two bod­ies lay mo­tion­less, face­down, on the floor. Through the win­dow he could see heads, shoul­ders, lit­tle else. They both wore the black blaz­ers of se­cu­ri­ty guards.

They’ve es­caped, he thought. Both of them, Barks­dale and the hack­er. They killed the guards and es­caped.

But Poole? Was his body stashed else­where? And where—he felt a sud­den, ter­ri­ble chill—where were Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio and Geor­gia?

Sud­den­ly, he felt him­self pushed to one side. Sarah peered through the win­dow. As she did so, Warne could hear her gasp. Then she threw open the door and went in­side. Im­me­di­ate­ly, she cried out in what sound­ed like phys­ical pain. With­out an­oth­er thought, Warne ducked around the door to fol­low.

Sarah was down on her knees be­side one of the guards. On­ly now, Warne re­al­ized the man wasn’t a guard. He was wear­ing a light-​col­ored suit, but the top half of the jack­et was so dark­ened by blood it looked black. Sarah leaned for­ward to cra­dle the fig­ure and a blond head lolled back.

It was Barks­dale.

For a mo­ment, Warne stood still, root­ed in hor­ror.

Sarah turned to­ward him vi­olent­ly. “Help me, for God’s sake!” she screamed. “Get some wa­ter, get a cloth. Call Med­ical!”

Stung in­to ac­tion, Warne wheeled away, run­ning down the cor­ri­dor to­ward the front desk.

In the an­te­room, he saw move­ment. It was Poole, arm around Ter­ri. He was lead­ing her gen­tly through the dou­ble doors with one hand, guid­ing a wheelchair with the oth­er.

Warne’s gaze fell on the wheelchair. There was Geor­gia, eyes closed, a hos­pi­tal blan­ket around her shoul­ders.

For a mo­ment, re­lief over­whelmed all oth­er emo­tion. Then Warne looked at Ter­ri. She was pale be­neath her bronze skin. Her eyes caught his, dart­ed away. And then, with an ef­fort, re­turned. Her right hand was slick with blood.

“Are you hurt?” he asked in­stant­ly.

“She’s okay,” Poole said. “There was blood on the ra­dio she used to con­tact me.”

“What hap­pened?”

“We were hid­ing,” Ter­ri said. “In the clos­et.” There was a tremor in her voice, and she strug­gled to main­tain her com­po­sure.

“We’ll get to that lat­er,” Poole in­ter­ject­ed. “I think it’s more im­por­tant you tell me what’s go­ing on here.” And, sig­nif­icant­ly, he let his gaze fall to­ward the ground.

Fol­low­ing it, Warne saw that his own shoes were cov­ered in blood; that a bloody trail led back through the door and down the cor­ri­dor. He mo­tioned Poole to one side.

“Barks­dale’s back there,” he mur­mured in the man’s ear. “I think he’s dead. He and one of the guards. And the hack­er’s gone.”

With a sin­gle, blis­ter­ing ex­ple­tive, Poole moved past him, rac­ing back to­ward the cell.

Warne went to Ter­ri, put an arm around her shoul­der.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He stroked her cheek, lift­ed her eyes to­ward his. Tried to keep her from look­ing down at the trail of foot­steps.

She nod­ded. “I’m okay.”

“And Geor­gia—?” Some­thing in Ter­ri’s eyes would not let him con­tin­ue.

“She woke up. Briefly. She’s asleep again.”

The dou­ble doors opened and a very young man stood framed be­tween them. Warne rec­og­nized him as Pec­cam, Al­loc­co’s video tech.

“Where have you been?” Pec­cam de­mand­ed. “I’ve been look­ing all over for you. All hell broke loose in Cal­lis­to, and this place emp­tied out, so I…” He stopped at the sight of the bloody foot­steps.

“Poole’s back there,” Warne said, point­ing over his shoul­der. “He’ll fill you in. Maybe you can be of some help. Mean­while, I’ve got to make a call.”

As Pec­cam moved away, Warne guid­ed Ter­ri in­to the area be­hind the front desk. There were two small­er rooms here, an of­fice and a bath­room. He gen­tly wheeled Geor­gia in­to the of­fice. She was rest­less, stir­ring in her sleep. She cried out once and he stroked her hair sooth­ing­ly, kissed the warm fore­head. She mut­tered some­thing, seemed to grow calmer.

“I love you, princess,” he mur­mured. Then he stepped out­side and re­turned to Ter­ri.

Ter­ri raised her eyes to him. “She didn’t cry,” she said. Her voice was a mono­tone, still full of shock. “Af­ter that man with the gun left. It was dark there, so dark, where we hid. She dozed again. I think it’s the—I think it’s the med­ica­tion.”

“Thank you,” Warne said in al­most a whis­per, tak­ing her hand. “I’ll nev­er for­get what you’ve done for me to­day.”

Ter­ri looked at him.

“Can you do one more thing?” Warne stared at her close­ly, try­ing to read the emo­tions on her face, won­der­ing how best to say this. He de­cid­ed to tell her ev­ery­thing. “Two men have been hurt here, very bad­ly. One’s a se­cu­ri­ty guard. The oth­er is Fred Barks­dale. Could you please call Med­ical, have them send a doc­tor down right away?”

At the sound of Barks­dale’s name, Ter­ri flinched, seemed to grow even paler. But with­out an­oth­er word she turned away, to­ward the cen­tral desk. She lo­cat­ed a phone, picked it up. It trem­bled slight­ly in her hand.

Duck­ing in­to the bath­room, Warne grabbed half a dozen tow­els and damp­ened them in the sink. Then he ran back down the cor­ri­dor.

With both Sarah and Poole kneel­ing be­side Barks­dale, the hold­ing cell was cramped. Mute­ly, Warne hand­ed a cou­ple of the tow­els to Sarah, then re­tired to the door­way, stood be­side Pec­cam. The guard had been rolled over on­to his back—prob­ably by Poole, check­ing his con­di­tion. The man’s face was grotesque­ly swollen, the tip of a black­ened tongue peep­ing al­most coy­ly be­tween part­ed lips. Sarah, still cradling Barks­dale in her arms, be­gan gen­tly swab­bing his face. The En­glish­man was so bad­ly bat­tered his fine fea­tures were al­most un­rec­og­niz­able.

“Ter­ri’s call­ing Med­ical,” Warne said.

Poole took the rest of the tow­els from him, ex­changed them for Sarah’s bloody ones. “He’s still alive,” he told Warne. “Bare­ly.”

Care­ful­ly, with in­fi­nite gen­tle­ness, Sarah dabbed at the face. Barks­dale stirred and moaned slight­ly.

“Fred­dy,” she said, draw­ing clos­er. “It’s me, Sarah. I’m here.”

Barks­dale stirred again.

“Just re­lax.”

Barks­dale’s mouth twitched. “Sarah.” The voice was slurred, bare­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble.

“Don’t try to talk. Ev­ery­thing’s go­ing to be fine.”

“No. Must talk. Sarah—so sor­ry…”

The tow­els were now ex­haust­ed, and Warne re­treat­ed to get more. At the front desk, Ter­ri was speak­ing in­to the phone in low, ur­gent tones. Warne root­ed through a few cab­inets, look­ing for a first-​aid kit. Un­suc­cess­ful, he went to the bath­room for the fresh tow­els. Then he head­ed back down the cor­ri­dor. To his sur­prise, he was met halfway by Poole and Ralph Pec­cam.

“I thought you should know,” Poole said. “He’s con­fessed.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much, yet. He’s in an aw­ful lot of pain.”

“Let’s go.” Warne start­ed back down the cor­ri­dor, but Poole put a re­strain­ing hand on his arm.

“What is it?”

“Look. I’m not a doc­tor, but it doesn’t take one to see that guy isn’t go­ing to make it.”

Warne looked at him. “What are you say­ing?”

“I’m say­ing, let’s give her a cou­ple of min­utes’ peace with him.”

Warne hes­itat­ed a mo­ment.

“What­ev­er he says, she’ll tell us when she’s ready. If it’s any of our busi­ness.”

“You’re right.” Warne turned, be­gan walk­ing slow­ly back to­ward the an­te­room. Pec­cam stood, blink­ing stupid­ly, stunned mo­tion­less.

Ter­ri was re­plac­ing the phone as Warne re­turned. In the over­size leather chair, she looked small, vul­ner­able. Her eyes were red, but dry. Al­though he wasn’t sure what had hap­pened in Med­ical, the blood on her hand made guess­ing all too easy. Warne felt a stab of guilt. Some­how, he would try to make it up to her.

He knelt be­side the chair, us­ing the tow­els to clean the spat­tered blood from her hand. He felt a pres­sure on his shoul­der as she leaned her head against him. He raised his oth­er arm, pressed her close. Her shoul­ders be­gan to shake in silent, rhyth­mic sobs.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “Ev­ery­thing’s over now.”

He knelt there, hold­ing the wom­an in his arms. Min­utes passed, he wasn’t sure how many. He felt her slow­ing sobs, smelled the clean scent of bal­sam in her hair. It was over. For bet­ter or worse, it was over. It had to be.

That’s when he heard the voice—Sarah’s voice—shout­ing his name. “An­drew! An­drew!”

As gen­tly as he could, Warne de­tached him­self from Ter­ri. Then, giv­ing her cheek a fi­nal ca­ress, he turned away and raced for the cell.

Poole was there be­fore him, crouched once again be­side Barks­dale, lis­ten­ing.

“The ar­mored car,” Sarah was say­ing as she stroked Barks­dale’s hair. “That was the re­al tar­get. That, and the Cru­cible tech­nol­ogy. Ev­ery­thing else, the glitch­es with the bots, were just rus­es to keep us off bal­ance.”

As Sarah spoke, she rocked back and forth slight­ly.

“To keep you from see­ing what was re­al­ly go­ing on,” Poole said to Sarah, nod­ding. There was a sym­pa­thet­ic ex­pres­sion on his face. “What’s this about an ar­mored car?”

“It makes one run a week, on Mon­days.” Sarah did not look at ei­ther Poole or Warne. Her eyes were on Barks­dale, her voice a mono­tone. Blood had soaked the sleeves of her jack­et, mak­ing them cling to her fore­arms. “The whole pro­cess is au­to­mat­ed. On­ly my­self or Chuck Emory in New York can can­cel it. Which we’re sup­posed to do if there’s an emer­gen­cy, or a threat to pub­lic safe­ty. I can­celed the milk run this morn­ing, but the word was nev­er passed on by Fred­dy. The peo­ple in Vault Con­trol down­stairs still ex­pect a truck. And he says one’s com­ing. Where’s that god­damned doc­tor?”

“On his way,” said Warne.

“What time is the truck due?” Poole asked.

“Right now.”

“Now?” Poole echoed in sur­prise. He glanced at Warne. “That would ex­plain why they didn’t kill the video cam­eras on C Lev­el: couldn’t let the boys in the sub­base­ment get too sus­pi­cious. And it would ex­plain what just hap­pened at that ride in the Sky­port. One fi­nal di­ver­sion. No fool­ing around this time, ei­ther.”

Sarah turned abrupt­ly. “Fred­dy didn’t know about that,” she said, drilling him with a glare. “He was tricked. There weren’t sup­posed to be any ca­su­al­ties. He just told me so.” She turned back to the un­re­spon­sive Barks­dale.

There was a brief si­lence.

“That’s not why I called you back here.” A qua­ver came in­to Sarah’s voice, but she quick­ly mas­tered it. “They’ve rigged the dome with ex­plo­sives.”

The small room filled with sound as both men spoke at once.

“What?” Warne cried.

“How do you know?” said Poole, ris­ing to his feet.

“That bas­tard left Fred­dy for dead. But he heard him, talk­ing over a ra­dio. They’re all meet­ing up at the pho­ny ar­mored car.”

There was a mo­ment of sta­sis, of hor­ri­fied in­creduli­ty. And then Poole ducked out of the cell, mo­tion­ing Warne to fol­low.

Pec­cam, who was stand­ing out in the hall­way, came over at Poole’s im­pa­tient sig­nal.

“Re­mem­ber that high-​pow­ered trans­mit­ter we found in the duf­fel?” Poole said to Pec­cam. “The one you couldn’t fig­ure out?”

Pec­cam nod­ded.

“It could send a sig­nal over a rel­ative­ly long dis­tance, you said.” Poole turned to Warne. “But to do that, it need­ed a clean line of sight. It couldn’t go through walls.”

“Right, right, I re­mem­ber.”

Poole leaned away with a look of sur­prise. “Well, don’t you see?”

Warne had to work to keep his fo­cus. “No.”

“Once they’re clear of the build­ing, they’re go­ing to use the trans­mit­ter to im­plode the dome. Bring the whole thing down on top of the guests, then es­cape un­de­tect­ed in the af­ter­math.” A strange kind of smile came across his face. “They must have in­tend­ed to do it from the very be­gin­ning. Se­cu­ri­ty, any ar­riv­ing law en­force­ment, will have their hands full cop­ing with the car­nage. Now, that’s what I call a re­al di­ver­sion.”

Briefly, Warne’s sense of re­al­ity wa­vered. Blow up the dome? He strug­gled with this fresh sur­prise.

“You al­most act as if you ad­mire it,” he said.

Poole shrugged. Then he turned away, duck­ing back in­to the cell. Warne fol­lowed. He still felt numb. Blow up the dome… For a mo­ment, his on­ly pan­icked thought was to grab Geor­gia and Ter­ri and run for safe­ty. But just as quick­ly he re­al­ized that, even if he knew where to run, there sim­ply wasn’t time.

“What else did he say?” Warne heard Poole ask Sarah.

“That’s it. He’s rest­ing now.” And Sarah rocked Barks­dale’s ru­ined head soft­ly in her arms.

“What’s the turnaround time for load­ing the ar­mored car?”

“I don’t know. Trea­sury Op­er­ations was, is, Fred­dy’s area. Ten min­utes, some­thing like that.”

Poole looked at Warne. “Ten min­utes. We’re in deep kim­chi, broth­er.”

He raced out in­to the an­te­room, Warne and Pec­cam at his heels. Poole looked around a mo­ment, then grabbed an in­ter­nal di­rec­to­ry and be­gan leaf­ing through it. “Vault Con­trol,” he mur­mured un­der his breath. “Vault Con­trol.” Find­ing the num­ber, he reached for a wall phone, di­aled. A mo­ment lat­er, he hung up with a curse. “It won’t let me con­nect,” he said. “Of course.”

“But Ter­ri was able to call Med­ical just now.”

“Is that so sur­pris­ing? John Doe’s ob­vi­ous­ly cut phone com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the vault.”

“But we know about the ar­mored car now. We can stop it.”

“The op­er­ative word in that sen­tence was ‘ar­mored,’ pal. They’ve got guns, re­mem­ber? Lots of nice, big guns. I’ve got a pis­tol with a few rounds left.”

“What about Al­loc­co?” Warne could hear the des­per­ation in his own voice.

“Can’t get him down here in time.”

“Se­cu­ri­ty guards?”

“It would take us more time than we have just to con­vince them. Be­sides, Utopia’s guards are un­armed. What do you sug­gest? Spit­balls? A hu­man chain?”

“We’ve got to do some­thing,” Warne round­ed on him. The sense of un­re­al­ity was gone, leav­ing on­ly a grim de­ter­mi­na­tion be­hind. “We can’t let that ve­hi­cle get out of the Park. What­ev­er it is, we’ll have to do it our­selves.”

“You’re fill­ing me with con­fi­dence.”

“Pec­cam here said that trans­mit­ter needs a clear line of sight,” Warne con­tin­ued. “Right? That means they have to be out­side the Park. So if we can stop the ar­mored car be­fore it leaves the build­ing, they won’t be able to use the trans­mit­ter. That’s the key. They’re not go­ing to bring down the dome un­til they’re clear, un­til they can get away safe­ly.”

Poole con­sid­ered this. “Makes sense. But I’m not throw­ing my body down in front of an ar­mored car in hopes it’ll stop. Why don’t you get that me­chan­ical dog­gy of yours to nip it to death?”

“Maybe I will.” Warne thought quick­ly. “What do you know about ex­plo­sives?”

“Uh-​oh. I know where this is lead­ing.”

“An­swer the ques­tion. What do you know about ex­plo­sives?”

“What do you think? A hell of a lot more than your grand­moth­er does.”

“Leave my fam­ily out of this. Why don’t you go up there, see if you can defuse them?”

“I can give you about forty rea­sons why. Be­cause that’s the num­ber of charges it would take to bring down that big old dome. I don’t know the ar­chi­tec­ture, the de­liv­ery sys­tem, the—”

“It beats stay­ing here.”

“I don’t know about that. At least it’s safe down here.”

“Safe?” Warne cried. “What makes you so sure that col­lapse wouldn’t pan­cake the Un­der­ground? Be­sides, you’re the one who signed on for body­guard du­ty, re­mem­ber? On­ly now it’s not just me. It’s about sev­en­ty thou­sand peo­ple. In­clud­ing a few I think you know.”

Poole glanced at him sharply. “Okay. You’ve got a point.” He paused. “If they’re us­ing stan­dard shape charges, I might be able to pull enough det­ona­tors to desta­bi­lize the pat­tern, keep the dome from col­laps­ing. But it’s a bal­anc­ing act. You’ll need to find a way to slow down that ar­mored car.”

Warne nod­ded.

“They’re not go­ing to set off the charges un­til the car is clear of the build­ing. You have to keep it from leav­ing. Ev­ery­thing de­pends on how much time you can buy me. Un­der­stand?”

Warne nod­ded again.

“Good. Be­cause if you screw up your end of the job and I get blown sky-​high, my ghost is go­ing to haunt your ass for all eter­ni­ty.”

“Fair enough.”

“In that case, we’re wast­ing time talk­ing.”

Poole trot­ted through the an­te­room. At the far door, he paused to look back. “You watch your­self, friend.”

“You, too,” Warne replied.

Then the doors closed be­hind Poole and he was gone.

Warne turned to Pec­cam. “Wait here for me a minute, please,” he said.

More quick­ly now, he walked around the front desk. The leather chair was va­cant, and he felt a brief surge of fear. But then he saw Ter­ri, through the open door­way of the of­fice be­yond. She was stand­ing be­side Geor­gia.

As he en­tered the of­fice, she turned, no­ticed in­stant­ly that some­thing was wrong. “What is it?” she asked.

He hes­itat­ed, just for a mo­ment. “I was wrong when I said it was over. There’s some­thing I have to do.”

Ter­ri swal­lowed painful­ly, gripped the han­dle of the wheelchair. At the sound of their voic­es, Geor­gia sighed, shift­ed.

He placed his hand on Ter­ri’s shoul­der. “Lis­ten,” he said. “I need to lean on you one more time. You’ve got to be strong, just once more, for me.”

Ter­ri re­turned his gaze but said noth­ing.

“Stand guard here, while I’m gone. There’s no time for you to get out of the Park, but I think you’ll be safe here.” He hes­itat­ed. “Ter­ri, I love my daugh­ter more than any­thing, more than life. It’s so hard for me to leave her now, you can’t know how hard. But re­mem­ber what I told you ear­li­er—how afraid I was some­thing would hap­pen to Geor­gia, on­ly to see that some­thing did? Well, I’m not afraid now. And I can leave, be­cause I know I can trust you to look af­ter her. There’s no one I’d trust more. So will you do this for me—look af­ter Geor­gia, look af­ter each oth­er, no mat­ter what? Will you do that?”

Ter­ri nod­ded again, brown eyes not leav­ing his face.

“You un­der­stand me, right? No mat­ter what?”

She brought her face to­ward his. He hugged her, closed his eyes, whis­pered a prayer.

Then he ran back to the an­te­room, where Pec­cam was wait­ing.

“I need you to take me some­where,” Warne told him. “Can you show me the fastest way?”

“Where?” Pec­cam asked as they, too, ducked out in­to the cor­ri­dor. The door swung closed be­hind them, and the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex fell in­to deep si­lence.

 

4:15 P.M.

FOUR-​FIF­TEEN P.M., moun­tain stan­dard time.

 

IN NEW YORK, Charles Emory III, chair­man and CEO of the Utopia Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, had picked up the phone and was di­al­ing the Las Ve­gas field of­fice of the FBI. His ac­tions were slow and au­to­mat­ic, and his nor­mal­ly tanned face looked gray and very old.

IN THE HIGH desert south of Nel­lis Air Force Base, atop the sand­stone es­carp­ment that sur­round­ed Utopia, the man known as Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo lay in shad­ow. He had seen their ar­mored car come up the rear ap­proach, right on sched­ule. Tak­ing his eyes off the hori­zon for a mo­ment, he glanced over his shoul­der, up at the moun­tain of glass and steel that rose in a per­fect log­arith­mic curve be­hind him. The charge place­ments were not vis­ible at this dis­tance, but in his mind he re­con­struct­ed the blast pat­tern, search­ing the de­sign once again for hid­den faults or struc­tural weak­ness­es. The dome had been ex­cep­tion­al­ly well built, the load per­fect­ly dis­tribut­ed across its mem­bers. Nor­mal­ly, he would have pre­ferred a three-​tiered de­sign, fired bot­tom-​to-​top at quar­ter-​sec­ond in­ter­vals. That had al­ways served him well in tak­ing down steel-​re­in­forced bridges, whether he’d been work­ing for Chechen rebels or the Con­golese. But giv­en the size of this par­tic­ular job, and the lim­it­ed amount of C-4 he’d been able to car­ry in, he’d striv­en for max­imum ef­fi­cien­cy. A sin­gle ring of twen­ty charges spaced even­ly along the base would break the dome’s back; a sec­ond set of el­lip­ti­cal charges, placed in a small­er ring about halfway up, would ex­plode si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, col­laps­ing the crown, im­plod­ing it in up­on it­self.

He took a swig from his can­teen, sim­ulat­ing the ge­om­etry of the ex­plo­sion at high speed in his mind, drop­ping the dome, re­build­ing it in re­verse, up, down, up, down. The de­sign was per­fect. He grunt­ed, pleased. De­mo­li­tion was an art form, beau­ti­ful in its own way. It was like re­verse ar­chi­tec­ture. And, like snip­ing, it was a soli­tary art, suit­ed to soli­tary peo­ple.

He looked away from the dome, lo­cat­ing his ra­dio. John Doe would be call­ing any mo­ment. He re­placed the can­teen in his can­vas duf­fel, fol­low­ing it with the copy of Proust. Then, hun­ker­ing back in­to the shad­ow, he re­turned his eyes to the hori­zon, watch­ing, wait­ing.

 

FAR BE­LOW, IN the cav­ernous spaces of the Cal­lis­to Sky­port, Bob Al­loc­co stood be­hind the makeshift se­ries of desks com­pris­ing the for­ward com­mand post. In one hand, he held a tele­phone; in the oth­er, a two-​way ra­dio. He was talk­ing in­to both. As the re­cov­ery and in­ves­tiga­tive op­er­ation ma­tured, the teams of med­ical, se­cu­ri­ty, and en­gi­neer­ing per­son­nel had swelled to ev­er-​larg­er num­bers. And yet, de­spite the dozens of work­ers clus­tered around the en­trance and ex­it ar­eas of Sta­tion Omega, the vast Sky­port seemed emp­ty and echo-​haunt­ed. Al­loc­co fin­ished talk­ing and re­placed the phone, but al­most as quick­ly as he had done so, an­oth­er be­gan to ring.

Amid the fren­zy, he had com­plete­ly for­got­ten about Sarah Boatwright.

 

NOT FAR AWAY, in the cool ce­les­tial twi­light of the con­course, lin­gered John Doe. He was lean­ing against a lu­mi­nes­cent pil­lar, one of many that lined the en­trance to At­mos­fear. The lines here had grown much longer since the Sky­port had been so abrupt­ly closed down. Fold­ing one arm over the oth­er, he leaned in to­ward the queue line to catch the chat­ter of the guests.

“I heard it was a bomb,” some­body was say­ing. “A neu­tron bomb, placed by ter­ror­ists.”

“I heard it was a gas at­tack,” said some­body else. “Like that place in In­dia. Killed three hun­dred peo­ple. They’re still ly­ing in there.”

“That’s crazy talk. This is Utopia, no­body dies here. If some­thing had re­al­ly hap­pened, you think the rides would still be open, we’d still be here?”

“I don’t know. Hey, see those peo­ple head­ing for the ex­it por­tal? They look wor­ried, they’re prac­ti­cal­ly run­ning. Maybe they know some­thing. Maybe we’d bet­ter leave, too. It’s af­ter four al­ready, and it’s a long drive back to the ho­tel.”

“No way. I’ve been wait­ing to watch this holo­movie all day. It’s just some bull­shit ru­mor. Prob­ably Fan­ta­sy World em­ploy­ees, get paid to come over here and spread that kind of talk.”

John Doe smiled broad­ly as he lis­tened. Bombs and ex­plo­sions had their place: there was noth­ing quite like the loud re­port, the sud­den sight of scorched clothes and vis­cera, to stir im­me­di­ate pan­ic. But ru­mor could be so much more in­sid­ious. It was won­der­ful to see it at work. It was like plac­ing a sin­gle drop of blood on the smooth, placid sur­face of a pond. The rip­ples spread out, slow­ly but un­stop­pably. Ex­act­ly as in­tend­ed.

He glanced over as a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail trot­ted down the con­course, head­ing in the di­rec­tion of the strange-​look­ing star­ry cur­tain that had been low­ered over the en­trance to the Sky­port. They were in plain clothes, of course, but to a prac­ticed eye they stood out like eu­nuchs in a Turk­ish harem. What tourists frowned like that, or walked prac­ti­cal­ly in lock­step? He’d seen a num­ber of pub­lic­ity flaks, too: cruis­ing the crowd, ob­serv­ing, tak­ing notes. As ru­mors be­gan to spread and guests grew more rest­less, they’d have more on their hands than they knew how to han­dle. That’s what made it all so per­fect. You could con­tain an ex­plo­sion. But con­tain a ru­mor? Like try­ing to shack­le a moon­beam.

Ev­er since his first in­quir­ing lit­tle tap—back when he’d en­coun­tered the guard on first en­ter­ing the Un­der­ground—Se­cu­ri­ty had re­spond­ed with pre­cise­ly the knee-​jerk re­ac­tion he’d hoped to see. In ev­ery in­ci­dent that fol­lowed—the ex­plo­sion in­side Wa­ter­dark, the loss of se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, the un­pleas­ant­ness at Sta­tion Omega—his con­fi­dence in their zomb­ified ded­ica­tion to go­ing by the book had grown. He glanced at his watch. In a few min­utes, Al­loc­co’s min­ions would have a far, far larg­er job on their hands: and thus, un­wit­ting­ly, en­sure that his own de­par­ture was wor­ry-​free.

He pushed him­self away from the pil­lar and eased out in­to the throngs of pass­ing guests. There it was again: that sense of some­thing al­most like dis­ap­point­ment. In the end, ev­ery­thing had worked out pre­cise­ly as ex­pect­ed. He’d done his re­search ex­haus­tive­ly, in­ter­act­ed im­pec­ca­bly, shown a dif­fer­ent face to at least half a dozen peo­ple. He smiled to him­self. If they on­ly knew the truth, knew the re­al John Doe. Now, there would be a shock, in­deed.

His walk slowed. Ac­tu­al­ly, pre­cise­ly as ex­pect­ed was not com­plete­ly true. He glanced to­ward the Big Dip­per, where the ab­sence of Hard Place con­tin­ued to dis­ap­point guests. Dr. Warne had caused more than his fair share of trou­ble. Much more, in fact. No doubt he was re­spon­si­ble, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, for Crack­er Jack’s tem­po­rary in­car­cer­ation. But the way he’d ar­rived out of nowhere and spir­it­ed Sarah Boatwright away from the Ho­lo Mir­rors had been even more an­noy­ing.

John Doe had been par­tic­ular­ly proud of Sarah Boatwright. Over the course of nu­mer­ous con­ver­sa­tions, Fred Barks­dale had, quite un­wit­ting­ly, pro­vid­ed a very de­tailed char­ac­ter anal­ysis of the Park chief. John Doe knew the type: head­strong, over­achiev­ing, ter­ri­to­ri­al, a lit­tle de­fen­sive. He felt cer­tain that—if he pushed just the right but­tons—he could pro­voke her in­to pre­ma­ture ac­tion. And he’d been right. Her plac­ing se­cu­ri­ty guards in the Galac­tic Voy­age ride had al­lowed John Doe to re­act, show righ­teous anger, plant the fake disc and take the re­al one. More im­por­tant, it meant he did not have to in­vent rea­sons for the nec­es­sary de­lay—such as, say, claim­ing the disc was gar­bled. They would think he had no disc; they would nev­er think to refuse a sec­ond hand­off. Best of all, it meant Sarah would blame her­self for what hap­pened—and thus cer­tain­ly agree to meet him for the sec­ond hand­off.

John Doe had count­ed on her death—at his own hand, fit­ting­ly, in the dark pas­sages of the Ho­lo Mir­rors—to add the fi­nal dol­lop of con­fu­sion, a cri­sis of lead­er­ship, that would fur­ther ease his own ex­it from the Park. But An­drew Warne, fly in the oint­ment, had spoiled this beau­ti­ful piece of ma­nip­ula­tion.

Of course, in the larg­er scheme of things, it made no dif­fer­ence. Now that Crack­er Jack was back in op­er­ation, the team’s ca­su­al­ty count was once again down to ze­ro. True, Fred Barks­dale had ex­pired a bit ear­li­er than ex­pect­ed, but that sim­ply saved trou­ble down the road. Quite lit­er­al­ly; John Doe was nev­er one to share his hard-​got­ten gains. And they al­ready had two discs, two price­less glass mas­ters which—thanks to Imag­ing Tech­nol­ogy’s copy-​pro­tec­tive over­burn­ing—could not be du­pli­cat­ed. That meant two sales of the Cru­cible, twice as much prof­it. And speak­ing of prof­it, the ar­mored car was ap­proach­ing the vault at that very mo­ment.

John Doe stared down the con­course, sigh­ing once again. He re­al­ized he was re­luc­tant to leave the place. Af­ter all the prepa­ra­tion, the plan­ning and ex­ecu­tion, the suc­cess­ful end of an op al­ways seemed an­ti­cli­mac­tic. The dif­fer­ence here, of course, was that—for the first and on­ly time—he was act­ing as his own client. And putting to­geth­er this re­tire­ment pack­age would be his last piece of work.

Al­though, if he found re­tire­ment too con­fin­ing, he might just come back long enough to pay An­drew Warne a vis­it. Re­ward him for his un­in­vit­ed con­tri­bu­tion to the day’s events. Time would tell.

He lin­gered an­oth­er mo­ment, drink­ing in the crowds, the cos­tumed cast mem­bers, the oth­er­world­ly air of the place. Then he turned away and en­tered a near­by rest room.

Ap­proach­ing the bank of sinks, he washed his hands care­ful­ly, wait­ing for the sole oc­cu­pant to leave. Then he walked to a main­te­nance door in the rear wall. He punched in the day’s ac­cess code and the lock clicked open. Reach­ing in­to a pock­et, he with­drew a pass­card and a fresh im­age­tag—cour­tesy of Tom Tib­bald, now de­ceased—and fixed them to his jack­et. Then he opened the door and walked through, clos­ing it tight­ly be­hind him.

The con­crete-​lined main­te­nance cor­ri­dor be­yond was cool and smelled faint­ly of re­frig­er­ant. Paus­ing in the emp­ty space, John Doe glanced first left, then right. Then he pulled his ra­dio from a jack­et pock­et, tapped in a fre­quen­cy.

“Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, this is Prime Fac­tor,” he said in­to the mike. “Come in.”

He wait­ed a mo­ment, lis­ten­ing.

“Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo, over.”

“How’s the view?”

“Out­stand­ing. Rolled in right on time.”

“So I heard. Any­thing since? Ar­rivals of a more of­fi­cial va­ri­ety, per­haps?”

“Nega­to­ry. Just rou­tine de­liv­er­ies.”

“Very well. Your job’s done there. Meet us at the way­point, dou­ble time.”

“Roger, out.” Any ar­rivals af­ter this point—and there were sure to be ar­rivals, soon­er rather than lat­er—would make no dif­fer­ence. Ten min­utes, and they would be driv­ing away from Utopia at sev­en­ty miles an hour, in the safest means of trans­porta­tion pos­si­ble.

John Doe re­placed the ra­dio. As he did so, he no­ticed that the trousers of his linen suit had be­come creased. It must have hap­pened in the Ho­lo Mir­rors. An an­noy­ing de­vel­op­ment. Then again, it didn’t re­al­ly mat­ter: he’d be burn­ing the suit in the ho­tel in­cin­er­ator that evening, any­way.

He turned and, with jaun­ty step, made his way down the main­te­nance pas­sage to­ward the stair­well to A Lev­el.

 

4:16 P.M.

WILLIAM VERNE YAWNED, then leaned back in his chair, stretch­ing lan­guorous­ly. He had bare­ly moved for the past hour, and he could feel the joints in his shoul­ders shift and pop. He re­al­ized—at some dis­tant, bare­ly con­scious lev­el—that his move­ments were be­ing cap­tured on a se­cu­ri­ty mon­itor. But it didn’t mat­ter. An oc­ca­sion­al stretch wasn’t ex­clud­ed from his job de­scrip­tion. Be­sides, the whole busi­ness had be­come so damn rou­tine he doubt­ed any­body was watch­ing. And if any­body was, they’d be look­ing at the truck, not him.

Lean­ing for­ward again, he swept his eyes across the con­trol board. As al­ways, ev­ery­thing was green. Vault sta­tus okay, de­liv­ery cham­ber okay, ac­cess cor­ri­dor okay, fi­nan­cial mon­itor­ing sys­tem okay. Okay, okay, okay. Some­times he al­most found him­self wish­ing some­thing would go wrong. At least it would be a change.

Five months had gone by since Verne had been lured away from his job as a soft­ware de­vel­op­er in Pa­lo Al­to. The po­si­tion had sound­ed too good to pass up. Not on­ly would he be work­ing at Utopia, and not on­ly would he be work­ing in their New Tech­nol­ogy de­part­ment, but the job had some hush-​hush high-​se­cu­ri­ty as­pect that in­trigued him. He’d had to sign all sorts of waivers and nondis­clo­sure forms, sub­mit to an ex­ten­sive back­ground check. What a sur­prise, then, to find him­self do­ing the same kind of work here at the Park as he’d done in Pa­lo Al­to. Sys­tems de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance was the same, it seemed, whether you worked for a theme park or a small start-​up com­pa­ny. More mon­ey here, cool­er toys, but much less cre­ative re­spon­si­bil­ity.

And the “high se­cu­ri­ty” por­tion of the job? It con­sist­ed of watch­ing a con­trol board, sniff­ing diesel fumes, and star­ing at the ass end of an ar­mored car for about sev­en min­utes, once a week.

There was a low tone, then a buzz as some­body out­side Vault Con­trol ac­ti­vat­ed the reti­nal scan­ner. The heavy door clicked open and Tom Pritchard, rep­re­sent­ing the Au­dit­ing and Con­trols de­part­ment, stepped in­side.

Verne looked over at him with­out in­ter­est. “How’re we do­ing?”

“Locked up tighter than your sis­ter’s chasti­ty belt,” Pritchard said as he closed and locked the door. He’d just re­turned from the oblig­atory vi­su­al in­spec­tion. Dur­ing the few min­utes that the ac­tu­al ex­change took place, the sec­tion of C Lev­el sur­round­ing the vault and the ac­cess cor­ri­dor was closed off from the rest of the Utopia Un­der­ground.

“Good. Let’s get this over with.” From the cor­ri­dor be­yond, Verne could hear the in­sis­tent chirp of the ar­mored car’s warn­ing tone as it backed the three hun­dred feet down the cor­ri­dor to­ward them. He hit a switch, en­gag­ing the pow­er­ful ex­haust fans that would send the en­gine fumes back in­to the desert where they be­longed.

“Where’s our ba­by-​sit­ter?” Pritchard asked as he stepped to­ward the ob­ser­va­tion win­dow. Al­though on­ly two crew mem­bers were re­quired for the trans­fer—a Trea­sury Op­er­ations spe­cial­ist and a li­ai­son from Con­trols—nor­mal­ly at least one se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist sat in dur­ing the ex­change.

“Guess we’re on our own to­day,” Verne replied. “They’re prob­ably all back at that damn ma­chine again.” The week be­fore, one of the se­cu­ri­ty grunts had won eight grand on a high-​stakes video pok­er ma­chine in the Board­walk casi­no. The mon­ey had been con­fis­cat­ed, and the guard dis­ci­plined for gam­bling while on du­ty, but it had caused a huge stir among the ju­nior se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists.

“Maybe they’re all at that ac­ci­dent scene in Cal­lis­to. What­ev­er it was.”

“If it was, you mean. That’s the third ac­ci­dent sto­ry I’ve heard to­day. Won­der who makes them all up.” Of course, even if it was true, they prob­ably wouldn’t hear about it for days, stuck down here in the damn bilge. Verne had once read a sto­ry by Joseph Con­rad in which these two En­glish­men were strand­ed, work­ing in some re­al­ly re­mote out­post in dark­est Africa. Even­tu­al­ly, they couldn’t take it any­more, went crazy, and killed each oth­er. That’s how he re­mem­bered it, any­way. It had al­ways seemed pret­ty far-​fetched to him. But maybe it wasn’t, at that.

“I don’t know, it sound­ed like the re­al thing to me. I heard some­body died.”

“Hey, who knows? Maybe a hun­dred died.”

“Stop mess­ing around. I even heard talk of ter­ror­ists.”

“You’re al­ways hear­ing talk about ter­ror­ists,” Verne said, look­ing at him de­ri­sive­ly. “You’re in the wrong end of this busi­ness, pal, you know that? You should be work­ing with the ride de­sign­ers and cre­ative en­gi­neers. Any­way,” he went on in a more pla­cat­ing tone of voice, “if there was any­thing re­al­ly wrong, His Lord­ship would have can­celed the run.”

“His Lord­ship” was how much of the sys­tems staff re­ferred to Fred Barks­dale, who was known as a hard­work­ing and tal­ent­ed boss but al­so as a stick­ler for pro­to­col. Barks­dale had de­signed much of the fi­nan­cial con­trol sys­tem and al­ways took per­son­al con­trol of the week­ly ex­change be­tween Utopia’s au­to­mat­ed vault and the ar­mored car. Dur­ing ori­en­ta­tion, Verne had been told of the pre­cise chain of com­mand. If any­thing went re­al­ly wrong, Barks­dale would no­ti­fy them that the week­ly pick­up had been can­celed. But noth­ing had ev­er gone re­al­ly wrong, and Barks­dale had nev­er called to can­cel. He’d called for plen­ty of oth­er rea­sons—to crit­icize a slow or slop­py ex­change, for ex­am­ple—but nev­er to can­cel.

The ra­dio speak­er set in­to the con­trol board crack­led. “Utopia Cen­tral, this is Nine Echo Bra­vo.” It was the voice of the ar­mored car driv­er. “I have a vi­su­al on the cham­ber.”

Verne leaned to­ward a goose­neck mi­cro­phone. “Utopia Cen­tral con­firms. We’re green for the ex­change.”

He glanced at his watch: 4:18. Right on time. At least Barks­dale wouldn’t be call­ing to com­plain to­day.

Verne stood up and joined Pritchard at the ob­ser­va­tion win­dow. Down the gen­tle curve of the ac­cess cor­ri­dor, the rear of the ar­mored car could be seen ap­proach­ing at a slow, steady pace. Amer­ican Ar­mored Se­cu­ri­ty was em­bla­zoned in large gold let­ters on its flanks. Verne stared with­out in­ter­est. Al­ready, Vault Con­trol was be­gin­ning to stink of diesel fumes, fans or no fans. And the smell would re­main for at least twen­ty min­utes af­ter the truck had gone. He won­dered if diesel fumes were car­cino­genic. Maybe he could put in for haz­ard pay.

The truck drew lev­el with the con­trol room, then stopped with a sharp protest of brakes. It sat there a mo­ment, as it al­ways did, the in­vis­ible oc­cu­pants go­ing through their check­lists. Then the driv­er worked the door re­lease and the heavy pas­sen­ger-​side door swung open. A man stepped down light­ly, shot­gun in one hand and clip­board in an­oth­er. He turned to­ward their win­dow and waved.

Verne pressed a but­ton, and a small door fac­ing the ac­cess cor­ri­dor popped open. He pushed the door open and de­scend­ed the ten steps in­to the high-​ceilinged cor­ri­dor. The grind­ing noise of the diesel was much worse here, and he wished fer­vent­ly that they’d turn it off. But no; that was against reg­ula­tions.

The armed guard was ap­proach­ing him now. Verne looked at him, frown­ing slight­ly.

“How’s it go­ing?” the guard asked. He was in his late thir­ties, smil­ing, with a short cop­pery mus­tache and a deep tan. He had an easy, as­sured Texas drawl that matched his de­meanor.

“It’s go­ing,” Verne said.

The man smiled, nod­ded. He was chew­ing gum.

“You’re not the reg­ular driv­er,” Verne said.

The man kept smil­ing. “Nope. I’m Earl Crowe, route su­per­vi­sor for AAS. I con­duct runs my­self some­times, make sure ev­ery­thing’s op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cient­ly, the cus­tomers are hap­py. And, damn, you’re our biggest cus­tomer.”

He passed the clip­board over. Verne took it, still look­ing at the man.

“John­ny’s here, ac­tu­al­ly,” the man named Crowe went on. “Out­side. Some of the boys were out helling around late last night, and he got him­self pret­ty drunk. So I had him drive the es­cort car in­stead of the truck to­day. Noth­ing like eat­ing forty miles of dust to sober a body up, right?”

At this, Verne fi­nal­ly chuck­led. He plucked a pen from his pock­et, glanced down at the form with­out read­ing it, scrib­bled his name.

“Are you hap­py with the ser­vice?” Crowe asked as Verne re­turned the clip­board. “Any prob­lems or con­cerns I should take up with se­nior man­age­ment?”

Verne, so used to be­ing on the re­ceiv­ing end of or­ders, was sur­prised and pleased by this. “Well, no,” he replied. “Noth­ing I can think of.”

“I’m re­al pleased to hear that. You be sure to tell us, though, if there’s any lit­tle thing we can do to serve you bet­ter.”

“I’ll do that, thanks,” Verne said, man­ag­ing to sound a lit­tle more man­age­ri­al. “If you’re ready, I’ll open the de­liv­ery cham­ber now.”

He stepped back in­to Vault Con­trol, hasti­ly clos­ing the door against the noise and fumes. As the door clicked shut, a red light on the pan­el blinked back to green. He turned to Pritchard, who’d been watch­ing the ex­change through the ob­ser­va­tion win­dow. They nod­ded to each oth­er: the vi­su­al “hand­shake” with the truck was com­plete.

“En­gag­ing the de­liv­ery cham­ber,” Pritchard said, typ­ing a se­ries of com­mands on a key­board. Mov­ing to an­oth­er key­board on the far side of the con­trol pan­el, Verne typed in a sep­arate ac­cess code.

There was a brief hum of ma­chin­ery, and be­yond the con­trol room wall the door of the vault be­gan ro­tat­ing on its silent bear­ings. Both Pritchard and Verne moved to a small­er win­dow in the side wall to ob­serve. For Verne, this was the one part of the job that nev­er grew stale.

From the mo­ment that mon­ey was re­ceived by Utopia’s Fi­nan­cial Pro­cess­ing Sys­tem—whether it was at a casi­no counter in Gaslight, a hot dog ven­dor in Board­walk, or a sell­er of wim­ples in Camelot—it re­mained un­touched by hu­man hands. Whisked away to col­lec­tion sta­tions, scanned and sort­ed, count­ed, taped and bagged, and ul­ti­mate­ly de­liv­ered to the vault, it was al­ways un­der ma­chine con­trol, hu­man han­dlers kept far out of temp­ta­tion’s path. Now the heavy curved door moved aside, seal­ing off the cor­ri­dor that led deep­er in­to Utopia and ex­pos­ing the de­liv­ery cham­ber and the vault be­yond to the armed guards. There was a boom as the door came to rest on the far side of the cor­ri­dor.

Verne looked through the small win­dow. Nor­mal­ly, the vault was sealed off from hu­man eyes by the huge semi­cir­cu­lar door. But once their twin set of com­mands had been en­tered, the door re­volved nine­ty de­grees, turn­ing the ac­cess cor­ri­dor in­to a closed tube. Now day­light lay at one end, and vast sums of cash at the oth­er. And in be­tween sat the ar­mored car.

The two men watched as Crowe stepped through the de­liv­ery cham­ber in­to the vault, two emp­ty can­vas bags in his left hand. He reap­peared maybe twen­ty sec­onds lat­er, the bags now bulging, slung over his shoul­der. The stacks of mon­ey had been sort­ed by ma­chines in­to brown-​wrapped bun­dles ex­act­ly eighty bills high: the ide­al size, Verne had learned dur­ing ori­en­ta­tion, for han­dling and trans­port­ing by the au­to­mat­ed sys­tem.

Now Crowe was com­ing back for an­oth­er load. He was mov­ing quick­ly, clear­ly ex­pe­ri­enced at this work. Pret­ty tan for a man­ag­er, Verne thought ab­sent­ly. Must get in plen­ty of golf time. Or maybe he punch­es cows, with an ac­cent like that. Though Verne could not see him be­hind the trans­par­ent ar­mor, he knew that the driv­er of the truck would be watch­ing Crowe care­ful­ly, main­tain­ing vi­su­al and ra­dio con­tact at all times.

Crowe re­turned with an­oth­er load, dis­ap­peared in­side the truck, came out again, shot­gun still tucked un­der his right arm. Verne glanced in­dif­fer­ent­ly at the shot­gun. It was a nice lit­tle set­up, very neat, very clean. The Utopia crew nev­er han­dled the mon­ey, nev­er han­dled the guns. They could hire out­side spe­cial­ists for that, seal them­selves her­met­ical­ly away dur­ing the en­tire trans­ac­tion. No doubt the in­sur­ance ad­justers loved it.

Yet again, Crowe reap­peared. Even at his en­er­get­ic rate, it would take sev­er­al min­utes to move a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars. Cu­rios­ity wan­ing, Verne moved away from the win­dow, sat down heav­ily in his chair be­hind the con­trol pan­el, and stretched lux­uri­ous­ly once again.

 

EARL CROWE STEPPED up in­to the ar­mored car, ducked in­to the rear com­part­ment, and let the heavy can­vas slide off his shoul­ders. The driv­er, who was wait­ing in the rear, over­turned the bags, let­ting dozens of iden­ti­cal­ly wrapped pack­ages spill across the steel and rub­ber floor. It was not ex­act­ly stan­dard pro­ce­dure—the driv­er should have re­mained at the wheel, su­per­vis­ing the load­ing, keep­ing a vig­ilant eye out for po­ten­tial rob­bers or hi­jack­ers—but in­side this sealed, ten­ant­less cor­ri­dor they were hid­den from view.

Crowe swung the now-​emp­ty bags back on­to his shoul­der, then turned to watch the driv­er as he hasti­ly stacked the brown pack­ages in­to the car’s side-​mount­ed com­part­ments. “So, you like driv­ing ar­mor again?” he asked.

The driv­er nod­ded with­out paus­ing in his work. “Damn straight. And for the first time, I get to keep what I’m driv­ing.”

Crowe gave a low chuck­le. Then he turned away, trot­ted down the steps, and head­ed back to­ward the vault.

 

4:16 P.M.

THE PHA­LANX OF se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists at the VIP Hos­pi­tal­ity Cen­ter had dwin­dled sig­nif­icant­ly since Warne’s last vis­it. As he ap­proached, he could see on­ly two: one watch­ing the en­trance, the oth­er in­side, in the shad­ow of an al­abaster col­umn, hands be­hind his back. The thought­ful, melan­choly strains of the string quar­tet sound­ed from still deep­er with­in.

The guard at the en­trance glanced at the man­age­ment tag on Warne’s lapel, nod­ded, and ush­ered them through.

“What are we go­ing to do, ex­act­ly?” Pec­cam said as they trot­ted across the mar­ble floor.

“I don’t know,” Warne said. “Ask me again in five min­utes.”

But in fact he did know. At least, he hoped he did.

Poole’s words came back to him over the sounds of the quar­tet, the low whis­per of the foun­tains, the chat­ter of a few rest­less guests sit­ting on leather di­vans: That high-​pow­ered trans­mit­ter we found in the duf­fel? It needs a clear line of sight, it can’t go through walls. Once they’re clear of the build­ing, they’re go­ing to im­plode the roof. Bring the whole thing down, es­cape in the af­ter­math.

Per­haps Poole could get to the charges in time, dis­able enough to keep the dome from col­laps­ing. But they couldn’t count on that. And that meant there was on­ly one oth­er thing to do. Stop the ar­mored car from leav­ing the Utopia Un­der­ground.

Once again, Poole’s voice sound­ed in his head. They’ve got guns, re­mem­ber? Lots of nice, big guns. Utopia’s guards are un­armed.

It was true. Utopia had no weapons to use against the ar­mored car. But maybe—just maybe—they had some­thing else.

Warne pushed his way through the dou­ble doors and down the car­pet­ed cor­ri­dor, try­ing to re­con­struct the lay­out of the place in his mind. He’d been rushed, then as now, and the mem­ory of his pre­vi­ous vis­it was a blur. This is the door. I think. Not both­er­ing to knock, he grasped the knob, turned it, pushed the door open.

In the room be­yond, the short, slight­ly built man named Smythe turned at the sound of their en­trance. The thick spec­ta­cles hung down on his nose, and the thin strands of hair—so care­ful­ly combed and bril­liantined on the mono­rail that morn­ing—were askew. He had been pac­ing, ap­par­ent­ly for quite a while.

There was a rustling sound, then a blur of move­ment from be­hind the ta­ble that held the cof­fee ma­chine. Wingnut emerged, pan­ning his head as­sem­bly around. Fas­ten­ing twin cam­eras on his mas­ter, the robot lurched for­ward, emit­ting a loud, belch­like bark. Warne pat­ted the head ar­ray, re­lieved to see him. And the man was still here, too: thank God.

“Mr. Smythe,” he said, “I’m An­drew Warne. Do you re­mem­ber me?”

The short man frowned be­hind his spec­ta­cles. “Ah, yes. You were on the mono­rail with me this morn­ing. And then again, here, I be­lieve. Ms. Boatwright called you af­ter I…af­ter I…” He stopped.

“That’s right,” Warne said hasti­ly. “And this is Ralph Pec­cam. He works as a video tech­ni­cian for Se­cu­ri­ty, re­port­ing to Bob Al­loc­co. You met him here, too.”

Ten min­utes, the cold lit­tle voice whis­pered in his head. You’ve got ten min­utes, maybe less. This small talk, this cor­dial round of in­tro­duc­tions, was agony. But it was vi­tal: if there was the least chance of this work­ing, Warne knew he need­ed Smythe’s trust.

“Mr. Smythe,” he went on, “I hope you’ll for­give me. We’re in a bit of a hur­ry here. I won­der if you could help us out with some­thing.”

The man took off his spec­ta­cles and be­gan pol­ish­ing them with the end of his tie. With­out glass­es to shield them from the out­side world, his pale blue eyes looked ex­posed, star­tled.

“Of course,” he said. “If I can.”

“Mr. Smythe, can you tell me…well, can you tell me what kind of fire­works are stored here at the Park?”

Smythe went on pol­ish­ing. “Oh, the usu­al sort. You know. Class B.”

“Class B?”

“Of course. Or­ange Book clas­si­fi­ca­tion 1.3.” When this was greet­ed by si­lence, Smythe added, “That’s one of the U.N. clas­si­fi­ca­tions for dan­ger­ous goods. One point three. Fiery pro­jec­tiles. Dis­play grade, not con­sumer grade, nat­ural­ly.” He seemed shocked at such gross ig­no­rance.

“Are there many?”

“Many? Oh, you mean fire­works? Oh, my, yes. You’d be sur­prised at the num­ber they go through, with the co­or­di­nat­ed shows ev­ery evening. Es­pe­cial­ly the gerbs, comets, and—”

“I see. What kind ex­plode?”

The wip­ing slowed, then stopped.

“Ex­plode?” Smythe asked. He had an an­noy­ing habit of re­peat­ing the last word of a ques­tion. “Well, let’s see. All fire­works ex­plode, that’s their na­ture.” He be­gan ex­plain­ing in the slow, pa­tient tone one might use with a small child. “There are two kinds of black pow­ders, of course: the unglazed meal pow­der you use for lift, and the one for burst—”

“No, no,” Warne in­ter­rupt­ed. “I mean, what kind blows up?”

“Blows up? Well, that de­pends on what you mean by blow­ing up. We have cros­settes and tour­bil­lions, which you know are mov­ing dis­plays. They blow up, down, side­ways. Or the kind of col­ored foun­tains that—”

“No!” With an ef­fort, Warne con­trolled him­self. “What kind does dam­age?”

Smythe looked shocked. He re­placed his glass­es. “I would have to say that, ah, most of them do. Or would, if im­prop­er­ly used.” He hes­itat­ed, look­ing more close­ly at Warne. “But the out­door aeri­al dis­plays, the mul­ti-​break star shells and ma­roons, would prob­ably…” His voice ta­pered off.

“And where are they kept?” Warne asked, al­most pranc­ing now with im­pa­tience.

“In the stor­age mag­azines on C Lev­el.”

“You’ve got ac­cess?”

“Nat­ural­ly. I su­per­vised their in­stal­la­tion.”

Warne glanced back at Pec­cam, who had been lis­ten­ing to this ex­change with in­creas­ing dis­be­lief. Then he turned once again to Smythe.

“Look,” he said. “We re­al­ly need your help. It’s re­lat­ed to the—what you found back in the Spe­cial­ists’ Lounge. Could you please show us these stor­age mag­azines?”

Smythe hes­itat­ed again, longer this time.

“Please, Mr. Smythe. It’s vi­tal­ly im­por­tant. I’ll ex­plain on the way. We have to hur­ry.”

At last, Smythe nod­ded.

“Come on, then,” Warne said, tak­ing Smythe by the arm and al­most pro­pelling him to­ward the door. “As quick­ly as pos­si­ble, please.”

Then he stopped, looked back. “And Wingnut,” he said briskly. “Heel.”

With a klax­on call of de­light, Wingnut shot for­ward, fol­low­ing the group out of the room.

And as Warne hur­ried down the hall, he mas­saged Wingnut’s echolo­ca­tor thought­ful­ly, turn­ing it round and round on his wrist.

 

4:20 P.M.

AN­GUS POOLE TOOK the nar­row met­al stairs two at a time, pulling him­self up by both handrails. It had been too many years since he’d done forced march­es in full kit, and he was more out of breath than he cared to ad­mit. To his left, the con­crete wall of the stair­well curved away out of sight over­head, flu­ores­cent lights bolt­ed to its face at a ris­ing an­gle. To the right, be­yond one-​way ob­ser­va­tion glass, the green lawns and par­ti-​col­or tents of Camelot fell away be­low, a lush tapestry of bat­tle­ments and pen­nants and gaudy me­dieval spec­ta­cle. Poole paid no at­ten­tion.

It had tak­en longer than it should have to find the ac­cess stair­well: he’d had to sweet-​talk a cast mem­ber from Camelot, bluff his way past a se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist with the aid of Warne’s pass­card. As he climbed, he didn’t want to think about how many min­utes had al­ready been wast­ed.

He al­so didn’t want to think about how crazy all of this sound­ed. The idea that the mas­sive dome was rigged to im­plode—to scat­ter count­less shards of glass and chunks of steel down over the in­te­ri­or of the Park—seemed too ex­treme for even a piece of work like John Doe. Poole won­dered if the wom­an, Sarah Boatwright, had un­der­stood what Barks­dale’s bro­ken mouth was say­ing. Or if Barks­dale could even be be­lieved. Maybe he was rav­ing, delu­sion­al. Or maybe it was some ploy of his to es­cape, get them to leave him alone in Med­ical. But in his gut, Poole didn’t be­lieve this. Barks­dale had been des­per­ate to talk, gar­gling on his own blood in an ef­fort to warn the Park chief about what was go­ing to hap­pen. Just mov­ing those shat­tered jaws must have been agony. The man had to be telling the truth.

The cor­ri­dor an­gled around a gen­tle bend, the spec­ta­cle of Camelot van­ished, and up ahead the stairs end­ed in a met­al door. A thin line of sun­light traced a rect­an­gu­lar out­line against the dark frame. An in­fras­truc­ture work­er in a beige jump­suit was com­ing down the stair­case to­ward him, over­size duf­fel in one hand. He glanced over briefly as Poole ran past. Poole re­turned the glance but kept climb­ing as quick­ly as he could: the last thing he want­ed now was to stop and play twen­ty ques­tions with some drone. Thank­ful­ly, there was no shout­ed warn­ing, no de­mand to stop, and Poole kept climb­ing to­ward the door, his thoughts bent on the task ahead.

If the dome re­al­ly was rigged, what ex­act­ly could he do about it in the few min­utes left? You’re run­ning in the wrong di­rec­tion, jerkoff, ev­ery self-​pre­serv­ing in­stinct shout­ed with­in him. These guys were ob­vi­ous­ly pros—what­ev­er await­ed him up there, it sure as hell wasn’t go­ing to be a fer­til­iz­er bomb wired to a windup clock. This was a job for a dis­pos­al team with first-​class re­sources and time to spare…

And then he thought of his cousin and her fam­ily—an ob­nox­ious fam­ily to be sure, but fam­ily all the same—and the count­less thou­sands of oth­er guests that packed Utopia, bliss­ful­ly ig­no­rant, smil­ing and chat­ter­ing as they walked be­neath the shad­ow of that vast dome…and Poole found him­self re­dou­bling his speed as he climbed to­ward the door.

Per­haps it wasn’t that hope­less. This wasn’t a war zone; they prob­ably had on­ly one or two grunts to lug up the ex­plo­sives and equip­ment; there wouldn’t be mul­ti­ple re­dun­dan­cies. And if there was a trans­mit­ter, that meant there al­so had to be a re­ceiv­er some­where. Find­ing it would be faster, sur­er, than dis­man­tling a few of the det­ona­tors in hopes of sav­ing the dome. The re­ceiv­er would be on the rear side some­where, fac­ing the main­te­nance road that led away from the Park—he was sure of that. That tech with the head cold, Pec­cam, had said the trans­mit­ter need­ed a clear line of sight.

Four more steps—two—and he was at the door. For a sick­en­ing mo­ment he feared it would be im­pass­able, that it would have some kind of hand-​ge­om­etry read­er like the door he’d con­vinced the cast mem­ber to open, but with re­lief he saw it had on­ly a sim­ple steel knob. A sav­age kick was enough to burst the lock and open the door.

Blind­ing light and bak­ing heat rushed for­ward to em­brace him. For a mo­ment, Poole hes­itat­ed, face turned away and eyes tight shut, stunned af­ter the cool dark­ness of the stair­case. He took one step for­ward, and then an­oth­er, as the painful white glare re­ced­ed and the scene came in­to fo­cus around him.

The ac­cess stairs end­ed in a small met­al shed, set down like a child’s toy atop a vast, flat es­carp­ment. Sparse high-​desert veg­eta­tion, ju­niper and strag­gly sage, clung to the fis­sures and gul­lies that ran away through the sand­stone be­fore him. The red­dish sur­faces looked wound­ed and gouged, as if scarred by some ter­rif­ic bat­tle. This was the mesa top sur­round­ing the cir­cu­lar bowl that held Utopia. And ahead, arch­ing over that bowl, rose the dome, the roof of the Park, steel ribs and hexag­onal glass pan­els shim­mer­ing like drag­on­fly wings in the sun­light.

See­ing it, Poole stopped dead once again. It was so mas­sive—the smooth curve of its sur­faces so pre­cise, so aching­ly reg­ular above the pocked un­even sand­stone—that it seemed to pos­sess the dis­tant oth­er­world­li­ness of a dream-​tow­er. Poole forced him­self to look away, glanc­ing to­ward the sky to ori­ent him­self. Then, with a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort, he trot­ted for­ward.

As he ap­proached the dome, he made out a net­work of cat­walks and lad­ders, cun­ning­ly set in­to the sup­port­ing ribs and cross­pieces. There was no sign of tam­per­ing, no sus­pi­cious-​look­ing em­place­ments. He al­most grunt­ed with re­lief: per­haps Barks­dale had been wrong, af­ter all…

And then he saw the det cord.

It had been strung be­neath the low­est walk­way, fol­low­ing the met­al as it curved around the base of the dome. Poole came up to the cat­walk, knelt be­neath it, reach­ing to turn the plas­tic-​coat­ed cord gin­ger­ly be­tween his fin­gers. It was pro­fes­sion­al grade, thin and light but very re­li­able. He re­sist­ed the urge to cut it, cer­tain it was rigged in such a way that any tam­per­ing would set off a pre­ma­ture ex­plo­sion.

He rose again and, with a sink­ing feel­ing, ran along the base of the dome, fol­low­ing the cord. Af­ter fifty feet or so, he reached the first charge: a small mound of plas­tique, ex­pert­ly shaped around the base of a truss. At an­oth­er time, he would have ap­pre­ci­at­ed the sub­tle beau­ty of the place­ment. The field agent in him ap­proved of the econ­omy of ma­te­ri­al. The de­mo­li­tions ex­pert—for Poole no longer had any doubt that such a per­son was re­spon­si­ble—had clear­ly opt­ed for a sur­gi­cal at­tack, em­pha­siz­ing pre­ci­sion over sheer vol­ume of ex­plo­sive.

He con­tin­ued along the base of the dome, to­ward the rear of the Park. He came across an­oth­er charge, then an­oth­er, all ex­pert­ly placed to do the max­imum amount of struc­tural dam­age with the min­imum amount of ex­plo­sive. One man had done this; two at most. It was a high­ly dis­ci­plined job. All too dis­ci­plined: there would be no shod­dy work­man­ship here, no weak­ness­es to ex­ploit. The sink­ing feel­ing grew stronger.

As he ran, Poole had kept his eyes on the line of det cord as it snaked be­neath the cat­walk. Up ahead now, low along the curve of the dome, he could see a larg­er con­trol box, lines of det cord at­tached to it. Must be the re­ceiv­er, he thought with a fresh surge of hope.

Sud­den­ly, an ob­ject came in­to view in the bot­tom of a shal­low gul­ly be­fore him, and he swerved to avoid it. Then he stopped, turn­ing back quick­ly to kneel be­side it.

“Sweet sis­ter Sadie,” he mut­tered.

It was the body of a man: late thir­ties, tall, wear­ing the uni­form of a main­te­nance work­er. His rub­ber-​soled shoes were drawn up be­neath him, and some kind of elec­tron­ic de­vice dan­gled from his util­ity belt. A large blood­stain was splashed across the white fab­ric of his work suit. Poole reached out a fin­ger to touch the fab­ric: it was stiff, the fa­tal wound hours old.

On the un­der­side of the cat­walk, not five feet from where the dead man lay, an­oth­er shaped charge had been care­ful­ly mold­ed in­to po­si­tion. Poole leaned in for a clos­er look.

Move­ment reg­is­tered in his pe­riph­er­al vi­sion. Old, half-​for­got­ten re­flex­es took over, and Poole im­me­di­ate­ly flat­tened him­self in the rocks be­side the corpse. He glanced up cau­tious­ly, us­ing the body as cov­er.

At first, he saw noth­ing: the gnarled, wiz­ened sur­face of the mesa top seemed ut­ter­ly still. And then the move­ment came again. It was a man, out in the sun­light be­yond the vast shad­ow cast by the dome. He was hug­ging its base, mov­ing slow­ly, on­ly the left side of his body vis­ible from Poole’s an­gle. He wore the beige jump­suit of an in­fras­truc­ture work­er, and Poole cursed un­der his breath as he rec­og­nized the man he’d passed on the stair­way. He’d been so wrapped up in the prob­lem at hand, it hadn’t even oc­curred to him to ques­tion who would be com­ing down those ac­cess stairs. He’d as­sumed all of John Doe’s men would have re­grouped by now, ready to leave in the ar­mored car. But he should have known bet­ter: John Doe was thor­ough; he’d have kept a spot­ter watch­ing the es­cape route un­til the last pos­si­ble minute. Nev­er as­sume, they’d taught him. Al­ways ques­tion. Take noth­ing for grant­ed.

Mo­tion­less be­hind the corpse, he watched the man slow for a mo­ment, glance around, then come for­ward once again. Poole rec­og­nized the halt­ing, de­lib­er­ate move­ments: the man was stalk­ing some­one. And it was all too clear who it was.

As the man ap­proached the line of shad­ow, he stepped briefly away from the dome to avoid some un­seen ob­sta­cle. His right side came in­to view, and as it did, sun­light glint­ed off the bar­rel of a heavy ri­fle.

Poole cursed again fer­vent­ly un­der his breath. A weapon like that changed the rules of the game en­tire­ly. He couldn’t af­ford to go one-​on-​one against a sniper. He’d have no choice but to take a de­fen­sive pos­ture, try to avoid be­ing picked off at a dis­tance. Be­sides, there wasn’t any time for fun and games.

There was on­ly one thing to do—sur­prise the man, get him in close enough so that the ri­fle wouldn’t give him any ad­van­tage.

He glanced up again: the man in the jump­suit was about to cross out of the sun­light and in­to the shad­ow of the dome. Quick­ly, while he still had the ad­van­tage of con­ceal­ment, Poole ducked fur­ther be­hind the corpse, mold­ing him­self to its stiff­en­ing curves. The man knew there’d be a body here: no doubt he’d been re­spon­si­ble for its pres­ence in the first place. He wouldn’t be ex­pect­ing to find a sec­ond body be­hind it.

Reach­ing in­to his jack­et, Poole care­ful­ly drew out the hack­er’s pis­tol. Keep­ing his move­ments to a min­imum, he did a press-​check to make sure a car­tridge was in the cham­ber. Then, bring­ing his arm back across his chest, he wait­ed, ly­ing be­low the lip of the gul­ly, lis­ten­ing. He couldn’t re­ly on his eyes any­more: the man was in shad­ow now, too, and if Poole raised his head, the man would no­tice the move­ment. So he wait­ed in the gul­ly, wait­ed to hear the tell­tale sound of ap­proach­ing foot­steps. Sharp stones dug in­to his back, and the smell of the dead man’s cheap af­ter­shave filled his nose. Nice choice, Poole, he thought. You could have been hav­ing an­oth­er beer in the Sea of Tran­quil­ity right now. In­stead, you’re snug­gled up next to a stiff, about to get your ass ei­ther shot off or blown up…

There was the sound of foot­steps. They slowed, stopped, then be­gan again, mea­sured, com­ing clos­er. Poole wait­ed, breath­ing slow­ly. Five sec­onds. And then the shad­ow of an ap­proach­ing fig­ure loomed over the gul­ly.

As the fig­ure’s head came in­to view, Poole raised the pis­tol, bring­ing his left arm up to steady his gun hand. “Hold it,” he said.

The man stopped abrupt­ly, then slow­ly al­lowed his up­raised boot to set­tle back to the ground. Poole lay there, in the hard­scrab­ble gul­ly, his gun point­ed to­ward the man’s head. For a long mo­ment, the two sim­ply looked at each oth­er.

“Nice day if it don’t rain,” Poole said at last.

If the man heard, he made no re­sponse. He was pow­er­ful­ly built, with short hair that fell across his tem­ples and down the back of his head in tight, cor­ru­gat­ed waves. The ri­fle was in his right hand, held away from his body, flash hider on the bar­rel point­ed earth­ward.

Now, very de­lib­er­ate­ly, Poole rolled for­ward and rose to his feet, keep­ing the pis­tol aimed at all times. He could feel the peb­bles falling away from his back. He took a cou­ple of rear­ward steps, plant­ing his feet care­ful­ly, mak­ing sure he did noth­ing to up­set his bal­ance. Then he nod­ded to­ward the M24.

“On­ly one kind of per­son I know fa­vors that par­tic­ular ri­fle. Were you in the Corps?”

The man looked back with­out re­ply­ing.

“Nine­ty-​Sixth Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit my­self,” Poole went on. “At least un­til they tired of my com­pa­ny, I was. Sto­ry of my life.”

Still, the man re­mained silent, star­ing back at him im­pas­sive­ly.

Poole sighed. “Well, if you can’t car­ry on a civ­il con­ver­sa­tion, why don’t you just drop the weapon in­stead?”

The man re­mained mo­tion­less, and af­ter a sec­ond or two Poole jerked his gun down­ward, to­ward the man’s legs. No more time for pleas­antries: he’d take out a kneecap, in­ca­pac­itate his op­po­nent, then get the in­for­ma­tion he need­ed.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the man’s right hand re­laxed, let­ting the ri­fle slip, butt-​first, to the ground. Poole smiled. The man had read his eyes: very clever.

“That’s a start,” he said. “Now, put your hands over your head, spread your fin­gers, and tell me the fastest way to de­ac­ti­vate all this busy­work of yours.”

With in­so­lent slow­ness, the man be­gan to raise his arms. Poole was about to com­plain when he saw the right arm jerk back­ward with the speed of a strik­ing snake, dis­ap­pear­ing be­hind the man’s back.

Poole raised his gun and im­me­di­ate­ly fired. There was no crack of ex­plo­sion, just a low, dry click, and by the time Poole re­al­ized the round was a dud and racked the slide to clear the cham­ber, the man’s hand was in view again, filled with a .45, and then the big gun was ob­scured by a gout of flame and Poole felt some­thing like the burn­ing hoof of a horse pass through his gut and his own gun went off but he was al­ready falling back­ward, the black curve of the dome and the blue of the sky wheel­ing dizzy above him, and then the cru­el un­yield­ing rock of the es­carp­ment rose to meet his shoul­ders and all the breath fled from his lungs and ev­ery­thing went abrupt­ly dark.

 

4:20 P.M.

THE HEAVY STEEL door was la­beled High Se­cu­ri­ty Area: Au­tho­rized Per­son­nel On­ly. Warne stood be­side it, steal­ing a ner­vous glance up and down the hall­way, while the man named Smythe typed a code in­to the ad­join­ing key­pad, un­clipped a pass­card from his jack­et and swiped it through a scan­ner, then placed his palm in a ge­om­etry read­er. There was an au­di­ble click and the door sprang open. Dry air whis­tled out. Warne no­ticed that the edges of the door were coat­ed in stripes of rub­ber.

“Seems de­sert­ed down here,” Warne said. The re­mark sound­ed inane even as he made it, but he felt a need to say some­thing, any­thing. He’d evad­ed most of Smythe’s ques­tions on the way down, say­ing mere­ly that the Park was in grave dan­ger; that Smythe was the on­ly one now who could help them. Bet­ter to fill the si­lence with idle chat­ter than face more ques­tions. On the far side of the door, Pec­cam wait­ed. The look of dis­be­lief had been slow to leave his face.

“The area’s off-​lim­its while the ar­mored car is in the build­ing,” Smythe said. “On­ly spe­cial­ists or crew mem­bers with lev­el 2 se­cu­ri­ty or high­er have ac­cess.” He stepped in­side, Warne and Pec­cam at his heels.

The room seemed large, re­mark­ably so: its length and rel­ative empti­ness re­mind­ed Warne of a gym­na­si­um. The floor was cov­ered with squares of black rub­ber mat­ting. The walls were bare, save for a va­ri­ety of posters and warn­ing signs: No Syn­thet­ic Cloth­ing. Min­imize Bare Skin. Com­plies with APA 87-1. In the cen­ter of the room, spaced per­haps twen­ty me­ters apart, stood a long line of met­al con­tain­ers. They were iden­ti­cal, each about sev­en feet high by fif­teen feet long, bolt­ed to a con­crete plat­form that ran the length of the room. Heavy pad­locks were fas­tened to their front faces. Be­side each sat a small green plas­tic trash can, Live Waste sten­ciled in black let­ters.

“Are those the stor­age mag­azines?” Warne asked, point­ing to the con­tain­ers.

Smythe nod­ded. “As you can see, they meet the sep­ara­tion dis­tance man­dat­ed by the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co and Firearms. In fact, ev­ery­thing here meets or ex­ceeds all reg­ula­to­ry stan­dards. Ex­cept for one thing.” He walked over to a small door on the far side of the room and jig­gled its han­dle. “See?” he said, frown­ing, as he re­turned. “Locked.”

“So?”

“It’s locked elec­tri­cal­ly. A se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure while the ar­mored car is be­ing load­ed. And a fla­grant vi­ola­tion of OS­HA’s mul­ti­ple ex­it re­quire­ments. I’ve com­plained about it on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, but I’m al­ways told it’s on­ly for ten min­utes, once a week. Once the vault’s closed and the car is on its way, the elec­tric lock is cut off. But it’s a vi­ola­tion, nonethe­less.” Smythe looked over at Warne sud­den­ly, as if a new thought had hit him. “Maybe you can put in a word about this to the right peo­ple, hey?”

So the car’s still here, Warne thought. He turned to­ward Smythe with re­newed ur­gen­cy. “Show me the mag­azines, please. The ones with…”

“High-​lev­el shells,” Smythe com­plet­ed the sen­tence for him.

Warne nod­ded. Smythe pursed his lips dis­ap­prov­ing­ly, but led the two men across the rub­ber floor to­ward the line of stor­age mag­azines. Wingnut fol­lowed in their wake, mov­ing more cau­tious­ly than usu­al, cam­eras pan­ning around the walls and ceil­ing as his pro­ces­sors con­struct­ed a topo­log­ical map of the vast space.

Smythe stopped at the fourth con­tain­er, dig­ging in­to his pock­et for his keys. There was a wet-​mat on the ground be­fore the con­tain­er; a wa­ter­proof GFI light switch on its face; and a large or­ange plac­ard on its side pan­el that read Ex­plo­sive 1.3g.

Open­ing the pad­lock, Smythe switched on the light, then wrenched open the heavy met­al door and stepped in­side. Warne ducked in af­ter him. A hy­grom­eter sat on the floor, and strips of wick­ing pa­per hung from the ceil­ing. Tall wood­en plat­forms ran along both walls of the mag­azine. On their shelves sat dozens of card­board box­es, stamped with iden­ti­cal la­bels: Fire­works UN 0771. Han­dle Care­ful­ly—Keep Fire Away. Long se­ries of num­bers had been scrawled on­to the side of each box in black Mag­ic Mark­er. At the far end of the mag­azine, Warne could see count­less tubes of what looked like thick black card­board. The top of each tube had been paint­ed a unique col­or, ac­cord­ing to height.

Smythe turned to a near­by shelf, ran his fin­ger down the se­ries of hand­writ­ten num­bers on one of the box­es. Then he pulled a box down from the shelf, placed it on the floor, and opened it care­ful­ly. In­side, sealed in in­di­vid­ual plas­tic bags, were sev­er­al spher­ical-​shaped parcels wrapped in brown pa­per. “These are the out­door fire­works,” Smythe said. “For the above-​the-​dome dis­plays we shoot at Park clos­ing.” He re­moved one of the parcels and gin­ger­ly freed it from the plas­tic wrap­ping. He held it up to the light, turn­ing it around in his hands, as if in­spect­ing for tears or im­per­fec­tions. Then he held it out to Warne.

It was sur­pris­ing­ly heavy. As he heft­ed it, Warne no­ticed that a fuse of twist­ed pa­per was fas­tened to its side by white string. Sev­er­al small la­bels had been glued to the cas­ing. Warn­ing, one read: Ex­treme­ly Dan­ger­ous. For Pro­fes­sion­al Use On­ly.

“It’s a gold­en wil­low,” said Smythe. “Not es­pe­cial­ly bright, but very high—ris­es a thou­sand feet be­fore it re­leas­es its com­po­si­tion—and quite spec­tac­ular. It’s got a heavy lift charge, needs at least a ten-​inch mor­tar for all that black pow­der.”

Hasti­ly, Warne hand­ed it back. Smythe placed it on the floor be­side the box, then walked deep­er in­to the mag­azine. “And here we’ve got dou­ble chrysan­the­mums, very large shells, usu­al­ly used with cakes and il­lu­mi­na­tors dur­ing a fi­nale.” He moved to the op­po­site bank of shelves, point­ed to a stack of box­es. “And these are sil­ver drag­ons, full of alu­minum or mag­ne­sium flash pow­der. Mag­ne­sium in par­tic­ular is re­mark­ably bright; the com­po­si­tion burns at an in­cred­ible tem­per­ature. A per­fect ac­com­pa­ni­ment to ma­roons.”

“Ma­roons,” Warne re­peat­ed. “You men­tioned those be­fore.”

Smythe blinked at him, wiped his glass­es. Then, mo­tion­ing them to fol­low, he stepped out of the stor­age mag­azine and walked down the line. Stop­ping out­side an­oth­er mag­azine, he un­locked the pad­lock and let them in. Wingnut re­mained out­side, mut­ter­ing elec­tron­ical­ly, rolling rest­less­ly back and forth.

The walls of this con­tain­er were lined in pan­els of wood. There were no plat­forms or shelv­ing. In­stead, rows of heavy met­al am­mu­ni­tion box­es sat on the floor, two deep.

“Ma­roons,” Smythe said, open­ing the near­est box. “Salutes, as you Amer­icans usu­al­ly call them. Made en­tire­ly of gun­pow­der. No stars, no il­lu­mi­na­tors, just a huge bang. Very bru­tal and pow­er­ful. A fa­vorite of Span­ish py­rotech­nists, you know.”

“Gun­pow­der,” Warne said, look­ing down at the cylin­dri­cal pack­ages ly­ing in­side the box. “Pure gun­pow­der.”

“Or flash pow­der, yes.”

At that mo­ment, a low beep­ing noise sound­ed through the room.

“That’s the vault tone,” Smythe said. “It means the vault’s sealed again, and our es­cape route’s un­locked. We’ll hear the all-​clear in a cou­ple of min­utes, I imag­ine. Once the ar­mored car has left the Un­der­ground.”

Warne spun around. “Left?” Then he point­ed at the open am­mu­ni­tion box. “We’re go­ing to have to bor­row some of these.”

Smythe blinked through his glass­es. “I beg your par­don?”

“And some of the shells in that oth­er mag­azine, just in case. The gold­en wil­lows, the mor­tars.”

“Bor­row,” Smythe re­peat­ed, still blink­ing.

“Hur­ry, man! Hur­ry!”

Smythe care­ful­ly scooped a few salutes out of the box, then left the mag­azine, trot­ting back in the di­rec­tion from which they had come.

Warne turned to­ward Pec­cam. “How long do we have un­til the ar­mored car’s gone?”

Pec­cam re­turned the gaze. “I don’t know, re­al­ly. Not long. If the vault’s been sealed, that means the car’s al­ready on its way out.”

“Shit!” For a mo­ment, Warne felt de­spair wash over him. “Look. You know what I’m plan­ning to do. Right?”

Pec­cam’s eyes nar­rowed. “I think so.”

“And you agree we’ve got no oth­er choice?”

Pec­cam nod­ded slow­ly.

“I’ve got to go with Smythe, see that he gets what I need. There may still be time, we have to pray there’s still time. Mean­while, there’s some­thing I need you to do.”

He un­fas­tened the echolo­ca­tor from his wrist. “This is a hom­ing de­vice for Wingnut,” he said, hand­ing it to Pec­cam. “If I or­der him to, he’ll head for it, wher­ev­er it is.”

The se­cu­ri­ty tech took it, a lit­tle gin­ger­ly, al­most as if Warne had hand­ed him one of the ex­plo­sives from the am­mu­ni­tion case. Wingnut wait­ed out­side, watch­ing the trans­fer with great in­ter­est.

“You know what to do with it?”

Pec­cam nod­ded.

“Then go ahead. Run. Don’t put your­self in any more dan­ger than you need to. I’ll get Smythe to show me where to set up. If there’s still time, if we’re not too late, I’ll see you there.”

Pec­cam nod­ded once again. His face was pale, his ex­pres­sion grim but de­ter­mined. He turned and, with­out an­oth­er word, ran from the mag­azine, head­ing for the emer­gen­cy ex­it.

Warne stepped out of the mag­azine. “Come on, boy,” he said gen­tly to Wingnut.

He glanced at his watch. It was twen­ty-​four min­utes past four.

 

4:24 P.M.

THE LAST CAN­VAS bag of brown-​wrapped bills had been stowed in the bel­ly of the ar­mored car; the check­list was com­plete and the trans­fer amount ver­ified; and smil­ing, mus­tached Earl Crowe had giv­en the go-​ahead to the mon­itors in the con­trol room. Verne waved back. Crowe clam­bered up through the pas­sen­ger-​side door of the truck; the door slid closed with a heavy thud; and—af­ter a se­ries of com­mands had been en­tered on the vault con­trol board—the vast semi­cir­cu­lar door of gleam­ing steel rolled back in­to place, open­ing the cor­ri­dor while seal­ing off the de­liv­ery cham­ber and its now-​emp­ty vault from hu­man ac­cess. The low chime of the vault tone was lost in the growl­ing of the diesel.

With a fi­nal wave, the driv­er put the truck in gear and slow­ly eased back down the ac­cess cor­ri­dor. Fifty yards ahead, out of sight around the gen­tle curve of the pas­sage­way, lay a sin­gle in­ter­sec­tion. An­oth­er fifty yards ahead was the guard check­point. And be­yond that, the tar­mac of the crew park­ing lot; the main­te­nance road that led down off the plateau to U.S. High­way 95; and an in­fin­ity of pos­si­bil­ities.

But the truck did not con­tin­ue down the cor­ri­dor. Af­ter a few more yards, it stopped. Then it crept for­ward again, very slow­ly, un­til it cut off the view of two near­by se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras. Then it stopped once again.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, an elec­tri­cal ac­cess pan­el opened in the near­by wall. It banged soft­ly against the body of the truck. The door of the ar­mored car cracked open with a chuff of air.

John Doe emerged first from the ac­cess pan­el. He looked both ways, smoothed his shirt, then climbed up the stairs and in­to the truck. And then, an­oth­er fig­ure emerged from the elec­tri­cal ac­cess. It was Hard­ball, once again wear­ing the leather jack­et he’d worn when he met Tom Tib­bald in the van that morn­ing. He, too, glanced first one way, then an­oth­er, al­mond-​shaped eyes veiled and ex­pres­sion­less. He mount­ed the steps, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the ar­mored car. Last to ap­pear was the young hack­er, Crack­er Jack. His face was puffy with bruis­es, and the knuck­les of one hand were gashed and bleed­ing, as if cut on a sharp ob­ject or—per­haps—teeth. He hoist­ed out a duf­fel, then closed the pan­el be­hind him. He fol­lowed the duf­fel up the three steps, and the pas­sen­ger door closed once again.

In­side, John Doe ma­neu­vered his way past Earl Crowe in­to the back of the truck. Crowe watched as John Doe opened one of the side pan­els, ran first his eyes, then his hands, over the stacks of even­ly wrapped bills, four deep, that filled the shelves with­in.

“As George Bernard Shaw said, lack of mon­ey is the root of all evil.” John Doe closed the pan­el. “This should keep us all good lit­tle boys for a long, long time.”

“Got the discs?” Crowe asked.

John Doe nod­ded, pat­ting the pock­et of his linen jack­et ab­sent­ly. He looked at his watch. “Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo didn’t show up at the ral­ly point. Has he ra­dioed?”

The driv­er, Can­dy­man, shook his head. A squawk came over his head­set, and he raised one hand to the trans­mit but­ton.

“AAS Nine Echo Bra­vo, over.”

“Nine Echo Bra­vo, this is Utopia Cen­tral. We show you stopped in the ap­proach cor­ri­dor. The vault tone’s sound­ed, and we’re wait­ing to give the all-​clear. Re­port na­ture of your de­lay, over.”

“Utopia Cen­tral, noth­ing ma­jor. The mo­tor’s seiz­ing a bit. I think the air in­take is clogged. Try­ing to clear it now.”

“Nine Echo Bra­vo, un­der­stood. If the prob­lem con­tin­ues, re­quest you con­tin­ue ex­am­ina­tion on the out­side, re­peat, on the out­side.”

“Utopia Cen­tral, I say again, noth­ing ma­jor. We should be rolling any sec­ond.”

Can­dy­man switched off the ra­dio head­set, glanced back in­to the pay­load com­part­ment.

“I’ve been on the scan­ner, mon­itor­ing the in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty chat­ter,” he said. “Word of Sta­tion Omega’s fil­ter­ing down through C Lev­el. The na­tives are get­ting rest­less.”

“Not to wor­ry,” John Doe said. “We’ll give Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo a few min­utes more. Then we leave.”

“Shall I get out, open the hood?” Crowe asked.

John Doe shook his head. “Don’t both­er. The cam­eras are neu­tral­ized. Right?”

The driv­er looked out the trans­par­ent ar­mor of the win­dow. He peered in­to the over­size rearview mir­ror, then in­to the con­vex mir­ror on the cowl­ing above the front wheel well.

“That’s af­fir­ma­tive,” he said. And then he looked away again, glanc­ing back to­ward the scan­ner mon­itor­ing Utopia’s se­cu­ri­ty traf­fic.

As a re­sult, he did not see a man—lit­tle more than a youth, re­al­ly: freck­led, scared, with rheumy eyes and a nose al­most as red as his hair—creep ner­vous­ly out of an emer­gen­cy ex­it be­hind the truck, af­fix some­thing re­sem­bling a watch­band to the un­der­side of the rear bumper, then creep back out of sight once again.

 

4:24 P.M.

WARNE MOVED DOWN the cor­ri­dor as quick­ly as he dared. Be­neath one arm, he held half a dozen emp­ty mor­tars: resin-​bond­ed black tubes, with sten­ciled num­bers on their ends des­ig­nat­ing charge ca­pac­ity. Be­neath his oth­er arm were a va­ri­ety of aeri­al shells, en­cased in their clear plas­tic wrap­ping. He hugged them pro­tec­tive­ly against him­self: Smythe had warned him, in un­pleas­ant de­tail, about what could hap­pen to Goex pow­der or flash com­po­si­tion if it was rude­ly dropped on­to a con­crete floor.

Be­hind him came Smythe him­self, arms full of bulky, brown-​wrapped ma­roons and a va­ri­ety of oth­er things Warne didn’t rec­og­nize. And be­hind Smythe came Wingnut, mov­ing for­ward with short, swift jerks. Four heavy salutes had been taped to his lo­co­mo­tion ar­ray, long fus­es of tight­ly wrapped tan-​col­ored pa­per trail­ing away be­hind.

The cor­ri­dor was de­sert­ed. In an ab­sent, de­tached kind of way, Warne no­ticed that the doors they were pass­ing—props for sea­son­al per­for­mances, holog­ra­phy and video stor­age, wa­ter fil­tra­tion sub­sta­tion—were all in­fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed ar­eas not in­con­ve­nienced by be­ing sealed off dur­ing the week­ly ar­mored car runs. Since the vault tone had sound­ed, Smythe’s high-​se­cu­ri­ty pass­card had al­lowed them ac­cess to the re­strict­ed area. But it wouldn’t be un­til the all-​clear was giv­en that the bulk of Utopia’s cast and crew would be al­lowed back in­to these cor­ri­dors.

“You’re sure this is the way?” Warne called over his shoul­der.

Smythe, who was out of breath and strug­gling to re­tain a tight hold on his bur­den, did not re­ply. Warne glanced back. The py­rotech­nist’s face held a va­ri­ety of emo­tions: dis­may, dis­ap­proval, con­cern. He won­dered what the guy would have done if he’d ex­plained his plan in de­tail. Would he have agreed it was the on­ly pos­si­ble way? Or would he have re­fused point-​blank?

As they ran, an odor was grad­ual­ly in­tro­duced in­to the cool, nor­mal­ly un­scent­ed air of the Un­der­ground: the stench of diesel fumes. Are we too late? he won­dered with a sud­den spasm of anx­iety. Too long a time had passed, the all-​clear should have sound­ed. John Doe and his boys would have been ea­ger to leave. If they al­ready had the mon­ey, why would they still be here?

And then he heard some­thing over the echo­ing clat­ter of their foot­steps: the sound of an idling diesel. It was a low, throaty growl, in­tense­ly out of place in these con­crete cor­ri­dors. He re­mem­bered what Aman­da Free­man had told him dur­ing his en­trance pro­cess­ing: The on­ly non­elec­tric ve­hi­cle al­lowed is the ar­mored car that makes a week­ly pick­up.

Warne slowed. Up ahead, the hall­way dead-​end­ed in an­oth­er, wider cor­ri­dor that ran away in op­po­site di­rec­tions. To the left, Warne saw, or thought he saw, the faintest hint of day­light il­lu­mi­nat­ing the con­crete walls.

He turned back to­ward Smythe, point­ing, ask­ing a word­less ques­tion. Smythe nod­ded in re­ply. That was it: the ac­cess cor­ri­dor.

Warne con­tin­ued to­ward the T-​in­ter­sec­tion at a much slow­er pace. The idling of the diesel was clear­ly com­ing from the right side of the ac­cess cor­ri­dor. That meant the ar­mored car would have to pass di­rect­ly across Warne’s line of sight in or­der to ex­it the Un­der­ground.

A strange rush of feel­ings passed through him. One was re­lief: against all hope, they’d ar­rived in time. An­oth­er was naked fear. And still an­oth­er: what was he—rebel the­oreti­cian of sym­po­sium and lab­ora­to­ry—do­ing here? Right now he should be try­ing to re­sus­ci­tate a sink­ing ca­reer: writ­ing for a sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal, do­ing lab re­search. Why was he here, of all places?

He’d asked him­self the ques­tion be­fore. And again, the same an­swer came back. He shouldn’t be here. But there was no­body else. He was the on­ly one who had any chance of stop­ping these peo­ple from im­plod­ing the dome. And to do that, he had to keep them from leav­ing the Un­der­ground.

A hun­dred feet from the in­ter­sec­tion, he stopped. Kneel­ing, fin­gers trem­bling slight­ly, he set the tubes on the ground. Wingnut wait­ed near­by, his nor­mal see­saw mo­tion sub­dued. He seemed to be still try­ing to ad­just his move­ments to the added weight of the four large cakes of black pow­der, wrapped in car­tridge pa­per and strapped to his back. If he could have looked un­hap­py, he would have.

Warne placed the shells be­side the mor­tars. “What comes next?” he asked Smythe as calm­ly as he could.

The lit­tle man was plac­ing his own bur­den care­ful­ly on the ground. “Well, in a man­ual­ly fired show, you’d sand­bag the mor­tars. Check each shell in the dis­play for loose pow­der. If there are bro­ken sus­penders, you’d need to re­pair them so the lead is se­cured to the end of the shell.”

Warne lis­tened, grit­ting his teeth. The stink of the diesel ex­haust, the growl of the in­vis­ible truck, seemed to in­ten­si­fy. And yet he sensed there was no way to rush this: Smythe had to ex­plain.

“And how do you an­gle the shell?” he asked.

Smythe looked at him, smooth­ing his tiny mus­tache with the fin­gers of one hand. “Par­don me?”

“I said, how do you an­gle the shell? Say you want to shoot it hor­izon­tal­ly, not ver­ti­cal­ly.”

“But that’s just not done.” Smythe looked sur­prised, al­most af­front­ed, as if the idea had nev­er oc­curred to him be­fore. “These shells have pro­pelling charges that lift them hun­dreds of feet in the air. That’s the equiv­alent of sev­er­al sticks of dy­na­mite. No fire mar­shal would al­low it. Why, the sep­ara­tion dis­tance, the fall­out area, would be ex­po­nen­tial­ly greater than a nor­mal—”

“Mr. Smythe,” Warne in­ter­rupt­ed. “We’re not deal­ing with any­thing nor­mal right now. Tell me how it’s done.”

Smythe’s fin­gers froze, but the look of sur­prise re­mained. “Well, I sup­pose the pro­ce­dure would be about the same. Low­er the shell in­to the mor­tar, make sure it slides freely. Make sure the shell rests square­ly on the bot­tom. Then you would—” Smythe stopped, and a sour ex­pres­sion came over his face. “Then you would place the mor­tar on its side. Not di­rect­ly hor­izon­tal, of course. That would…” He shook his head, cluck­ing to him­self at the thought.

“I see.” Warne point­ed to one of the largest shells. “Show me, with that one there. The—”

“Gold­en wil­low.”

“Gold­en wil­low, right.”

Smythe care­ful­ly tore the plas­tic wrap­ping from the shell, checked the heavy lift­ing charge fixed to its base, un­tied the twist hold­ing the quick­match fuse, un­looped it. And then, hold­ing the shell by the end of its fuse, he low­ered it gin­ger­ly in­to one of the large black mor­tars, raised it again, low­ered it. Sat­is­fied with the fit, he draped the end of the quick­match over the side. Then he took one of the small­est mor­tar tubes, lay it per­pen­dic­ular­ly on the ground, and—much more slow­ly—low­ered the charged mor­tar so it was rest­ing at an an­gle atop the lit­tle tube.

Warne nod­ded. “I see. Now, how do you light it?”

“Light it?”

Warne nod­ded. The roar of the diesel was loud­er now, the driv­er revving his en­gine.

“Why would you want to know?”

“Be­cause I’m go­ing to fire it, Mr. Smythe.”

The py­rotech­nist’s look of sur­prise deep­ened abrupt­ly. “Fire it? But why?”

There was time on­ly for a brief ex­pla­na­tion or a threat. Warne chose the for­mer.

“Be­cause some very dan­ger­ous men are about to come down that pas­sage­way. In an ar­mored car. If we let them es­cape, they’ll blow up the dome over Utopia. De­stroy the Park. We’re not go­ing to let them es­cape.”

Be­hind them, a main­te­nance hatch­way opened and Pec­cam ap­peared. He glanced down the hall in both di­rec­tions, then came for­ward to join them. There was dust on his knees and a hunt­ed look in his eyes.

Smythe didn’t both­er to look over. “You’re go­ing to fire a gold­en wil­low—in here?”

“If I have to, Mr. Smythe. That, and the, the what­ev­er you call it, the dou­ble chrysan­the­mum, if nec­es­sary. But first I’ve got Wingnut here, load­ed to the gills with black pow­der, as you can see. I’m go­ing to send him in­to the truck.”

Smythe’s eyes had grown wide. “So you mean…” he be­gan. “You mean that this might be dan­ger­ous?”

Warne shut up. The look of shock and dis­be­lief on the py­rotech­nist’s face was lu­di­crous, in­de­scrib­able. Per­haps the man had been fool­ing him­self in­to think­ing this was all some kind of emer­gen­cy drill. Or maybe he thought it was some un­der­cov­er test by Utopia man­age­ment. What­ev­er the case—with his heart ham­mer­ing dou­ble time in his chest, the stink of diesel fumes swirling around the ex­haust vents, the grind­ing of the truck around the cor­ner—Warne sud­den­ly be­gan to laugh. He laughed un­til the sound echoed off the walls of the Un­der­ground, drown­ing even the noise of the idling diesel. And then, as the laugh­ter died away, a sin­gle, chok­ing sob took its place.

“Yes, Mr. Smythe,” he said, dab­bing at his eyes. “I guess it might be dan­ger­ous, at that.”

Pec­cam came up be­hind the py­rotech­nist. “Just show him how to light these be­fore you run away,” he said.

Smythe looked back at Pec­cam, then at Warne. He nod­ded quick­ly sev­er­al times, word­less­ly, then re­moved his glass­es and be­gan wip­ing them un­steadi­ly with his shirt­tail.

“You okay?” Warne asked Pec­cam. “The echolo­ca­tor’s in place?”

Pec­cam nod­ded.

“Okay.” Warne moved to­ward Wingnut, flipped a bat­tery of switch­es on the robot’s pro­cess­ing pan­el. Then he stepped back. “See those but­tons on Wingnut’s up­per hous­ing? When I give the sig­nal, press the sec­ond switch from the left. Nor­mal­ly, he’s pro­grammed to fol­low his avatar. That’s me. But I’ve just mod­ified things so that press­ing that switch will over­ride the pro­gram­ming, go right to the firmware. He’ll home in on the echolo­ca­tor, wher­ev­er it is. Those heavy charges on his back are what will take out the ar­mored car; we’ll just use the fire­works to keep any­body in­side from es­cap­ing. Got it? So when the car—” He stopped as he no­ticed the ex­pres­sion on Pec­cam’s face. “What is it?”

Pec­cam ges­tured down the cor­ri­dor, to­ward the in­ter­sec­tion. “It won’t take that ar­mored car more than a sec­ond or two to pass by our field of view. How are you plan­ning to do all this in such a short space of time?”

Warne stared back, aghast. In the fran­tic burst of plan­ning, he’d nev­er even stopped to con­sid­er this.

“We’ve got to find some way to stop the thing, then,” he said. “Make it stop for a mo­ment when it reach­es the in­ter­sec­tion.”

But, with a ris­ing de­spair, he re­al­ized there was no way to make it stop. Poole’s words came back to him: I’m not throw­ing my body down in front of an ar­mored car in hopes it’ll stop. He’d been right. There wasn’t any—

And then, sud­den­ly, he re­mem­bered some­thing.

“Stay here,” he told Smythe. Then he turned to Pec­cam and beck­oned ur­gent­ly. “Come with me.”

Warne ran back down the cor­ri­dor, Pec­cam at his heels. He came to a stop be­fore the door he’d no­ticed ear­li­er: Holog­ra­phy and Video Stor­age. He grasped the knob. It was locked; Pec­cam swiped his pass­card through the near­by read­er and the door clicked open. Warne dart­ed in­side, flick­ing on the light and fran­ti­cal­ly scan­ning the crowd­ed stor­age room. They’ve had the up­per hand all day, he thought. We’ve nev­er had a chance. Once, just once, cut us a break.

There it was: the low black cylin­dri­cal hous­ing he’d hoped to find. It was sit­ting in a far cor­ner, be­side two oth­ers just like it—a portable holo­graph­ic dis­play unit, like the one Ter­ri had demon­strat­ed to him in her of­fice that morn­ing.

He ran up to it, then rolled it for­ward on its large wheels. Pec­cam watched him cu­ri­ous­ly, eyes nar­rowed. They widened sud­den­ly as un­der­stand­ing dawned.

“Do we have time?” he asked.

Warne stopped to lis­ten. The diesel was fainter here, but he could hear that it was still idling. “We’ve got to try,” he said.

“But if that truck starts to move be­fore—”

Warne made a si­lenc­ing mo­tion with his hand. “One thing at a time. Let’s go.”

And, push­ing the low cylin­der ahead of him as quick­ly as he could, he led the way out of the room and back down the cor­ri­dor.

 

4:25 P.M.

TER­RI PACED THE small front of­fice of the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex. She re­al­ized that, un­con­scious­ly, she was clench­ing and un­clench­ing her fists. She forced her­self to stop. Where was An­drew? What was go­ing on? Was he all right? It was ag­oniz­ing, this wait­ing, this un­cer­tain­ty. She glanced out of the of­fice, over the front desk, to­ward the door lead­ing out in­to the cor­ri­dors of C Lev­el. The doc­tor had left it wide open when he’d come rush­ing in a few min­utes ear­li­er. She felt her fists balling again. Then she glanced back at Geor­gia, stir­ring rest­less­ly in the wheelchair.

No mat­ter what, she re­mind­ed her­self. No mat­ter what.

A minute be­fore, maybe two min­utes, the cry­ing had start­ed. It was faint, muf­fled by the in­ter­ven­ing walls. Al­though Ter­ri could not pic­ture the Park chief shed­ding tears for any­one, she knew the voice could on­ly be Sarah’s. Her ag­ita­tion in­creased, and she quick­ened her step.

There was a rustling be­hind her, and she looked over. Geor­gia was stand­ing up, sup­port­ing her­self with the wheelchair. The girl blinked once, twice, stupid­ly. Still grog­gy, Ter­ri thought. Whether from the seda­tive or the shock of the day’s events, she didn’t know.

Geor­gia took a shuf­fling step for­ward, then an­oth­er. She was head­ed to­ward the door of the of­fice. To­ward the sound.

Ter­ri put a gen­tle hand on her arm. “Where are you go­ing, Geor­gia?”

“I’m look­ing for my dad. I thought I heard his voice.”

“Your dad’s not here right now.”

Geor­gia looked at her for the first time. The eyes were grow­ing clear­er, the fog­gi­ness be­gin­ning to lift. “Where is he?”

Ter­ri licked her lips. “I’m not sure, ex­act­ly. He—he’s gone to take care of some­thing.”

Still look­ing at her, Geor­gia blinked.

“He left a mes­sage for you. He said he’ll be back soon. He said that we’re sup­posed to take care of each oth­er un­til then.”

Sud­den­ly, Sarah’s voice cut through the dead air: “Fred­dy, you can’t leave. Do you hear me? Stay, Fred­dy. Please.”

Geor­gia’s head perked up. “Who is that?”

Ter­ri was silent as the cry­ing recom­menced.

“It sounds like Sarah.” Geor­gia turned back. “Is that Sarah? What’s the mat­ter?”

Still, Ter­ri hes­itat­ed. What should I say? She had no idea how Warne would have re­spond­ed, what he’d want her to do.

If it was me, I’d want to know the truth.

With a slight pres­sure on the girl’s fore­arm, she turned Geor­gia to­ward her. “Do you re­mem­ber that meet­ing this morn­ing, with the oth­er grown-​ups?”

Geor­gia nod­ded.

Ter­ri reached out for Geor­gia’s oth­er arm. “You re­mem­ber the man, the one with the ac­cent?”

Geor­gia nod­ded again.

“Well, he’s been hurt, bad­ly. Sarah is up­set. She’s try­ing to take care of him.”

“Shouldn’t we help them?”

“I think Sarah needs to be left alone right now. But it’s nice of you to of­fer like that. I know she’d ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

From the rear of the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex, the cry­ing in­creased. It was a har­row­ing sound: in­con­solable, ut­ter­ly alone. Geor­gia lis­tened a mo­ment. Then she turned back, raised her eyes to Ter­ri’s, alive with a look Ter­ri did not ful­ly un­der­stand. Slow­ly, her eyes dropped to­ward the ground.

Through ev­ery­thing, even the or­deal in the med­ical laun­dry, Geor­gia had main­tained an out­ward sto­icism. But now, the beau­ti­ful face sud­den­ly crum­pled. Her lips trem­bled, then part­ed. Tears welled in her eyes.

Im­pul­sive­ly, Ter­ri drew the girl close—much as Warne had done for her, in this same spot, not long be­fore. And then, abrupt­ly, Geor­gia dis­solved in­to tears. It was as if a dam, long un­der pres­sure, had fi­nal­ly giv­en way. For a minute, per­haps two, she sim­ply let Geor­gia sob, stroking her hair light­ly.

“Grown-​ups aren’t sup­posed to cry,” the girl said at last.

“Grown-​ups cry, too,” Ter­ri replied, still stroking her hair. “Haven’t you seen—I don’t know—your dad cry?”

Geor­gia an­swered with more sobs. “Once.”

The room fell silent, save for Geor­gia’s slow­ing sobs, the dis­tant cry­ing.

“Do you have any sis­ters?” Geor­gia asked with a sniff.

The ques­tion was so un­ex­pect­ed that, for a mo­ment, Ter­ri stopped stroking Geor­gia’s hair. “Nope,” she said af­ter a mo­ment. “I’m an on­ly child. Not too com­mon in a coun­try as Catholic as the Philip­pines, ei­ther.”

“I al­ways want­ed to have a sis­ter,” Geor­gia mur­mured.

Ter­ri’s on­ly re­sponse was to re­sume stroking her hair.

“What was it my dad told us to do?” Geor­gia asked a few mo­ments lat­er.

“To stay here. Watch each oth­er, stand guard. Pro­tect Sarah.”

Geor­gia pulled away. “Stand guard?” The fear had come in­to her damp eyes so quick­ly that it could nev­er have been far. “Do you think he’s go­ing to come back—that man with the gun?”

Ter­ri drew her close once again. “No, hon­ey. I don’t think so. But we need to stand guard, just the same.”

Geor­gia stirred in the em­brace. “Don’t you think we should close the door?”

Ter­ri glanced over. In her own lin­ger­ing shock, she had for­got­ten the doc­tor had left the main en­trance to Se­cu­ri­ty open.

She nod­ded. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

Gen­tly, she de­tached her­self from Geor­gia, made her way out in­to the wait­ing area.

“Maybe…maybe you should lock it, too.”

Ter­ri walked across the sparkling tile floor of the an­te­room, stuck her head war­ily out the door, glanced up and down the cor­ri­dor. It was de­sert­ed. Some­where far away, an alarm was ring­ing. She closed the door, locked it care­ful­ly, made sure it was se­cure.

The sounds of cry­ing had ceased, and as she made her way back to the front of­fice, a shroud of deep si­lence lay over the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex.

 

4:25 P.M.

OCEAN: PRO­FOUND­LY BLUE, deep in­vi­olate azure, trou­bled on­ly by in­fre­quent flecks of white. It was serene­ly still, the dis­tant sound of surf ris­ing and falling in an age­less mon­ody: that per­fect beach ev­ery dream­er knows lies at the an­tipodes of the earth, ours for the pos­sess­ing if we could on­ly find it.

Then Poole’s eyes flut­tered in­to fo­cus and the il­lu­sion fled far away.

For a mo­ment, he was sor­ry to see it go. There was no tran­quil ocean; on­ly the blue-​black dome of Utopia, curv­ing away above him, ver­tices along its bulk shin­ing in the af­ter­noon sun. The call of surf was his own blood, rush­ing through the por­tals of his ears. There was no al­abaster beach; on­ly the hard ridges of un­for­giv­ing sand­stone press­ing in­to his back and the hol­low of his neck. In­stead, there was a fierce, throb­bing pain at his tem­ples, and an­oth­er—deep­er, more per­va­sive—in his gut.

And then he re­mem­bered ev­ery­thing. Abrupt­ly, he tried to sit up.

Pain lanced through his ab­domen like a spear of fire. With a groan, he fell back­ward again.

He’d been played for a suck­er. A side arm tucked in­to the small of the back was the old­est trick in the book. He’d used it him­self on more than one oc­ca­sion. He was get­ting too old for this game.

But there was no time to lie around, mop­ing.

Ris­ing again, Poole crawled back­ward through the gul­ly, pro­pelling him­self with his feet and the palms of his hands. The pain in his bel­ly grew un­bear­able, and with a sound be­tween a gasp and a sob he threw him­self at last be­tween two mas­sive bolts at the base of the dome, be­neath the low­est cat­walk. A shaped charge had been placed here; no­body would dare shoot him if he could keep him­self close enough to it.

Grasp­ing the cat­walk over­head, he pulled him­self slow­ly up­ward. Black spots danced across his vi­sion, and un­con­scious­ness threat­ened, but it was crit­ical that he know.

Lean­ing against the side of the dome, he glanced around. He saw the dead work­man, ly­ing in the gul­ly a few feet away. Be­yond the gul­ly, the man in the in­fras­truc­ture uni­form—the one with all the weapons—lay sprawled on his back. Over the pro­ject­ing brow of the rock, Poole could on­ly see the legs, the out­flung right arm. But none of the limbs were mov­ing. He must have hit the de­mo­li­tions ex­pert as he fell back­ward from the im­pact of the shot.

He tried to think through the fog of pain. There might be oth­ers. The first thing he had to do was arm him­self. But to do that, he’d have to move.

Get a vi­su­al, he re­mem­bered an in­struc­tor once say­ing at an ad­vance camp’s train­ing tent. Learn the ex­tent of the wound. A slide had flashed on the screen: a black-​and-​white of an old bat­tle­field, sol­diers ly­ing in trench­es, lit­tle hats and fun­ny boots and lay­ers of clothes in dis­ar­ray. Look at those dead Con­fed­er­ates, the in­struc­tor had said. Why do you think their shirts are all torn up like that? It’s not bat­tle­field loot­ers, it’s the grunts them­selves, look­ing for en­trance or ex­it holes. They knew that if they’d been gut-​shot, they’d die. Get a vi­su­al. Learn the ex­tent of the wound. And take it from there.

All this went through Poole’s mind in a tenth of a sec­ond.

Tak­ing short, chop­py breaths, Poole glanced down. His cor­duroy jack­et seemed un­touched save for the gray dust of the mesa top. Then he saw the neat lit­tle hole a few inch­es above the left pock­et. Grit­ting his teeth, he took hold of the jack­et and very care­ful­ly peeled it away from his body.

The first thing he saw was blood: lots of blood. It had soaked the low­er part of his shirt, and for a mo­ment the sight made him light-​head­ed. He bit down on his low­er lip, forc­ing him­self to con­cen­trate. He un­but­toned his shirt, plucked it gen­tly away from his flesh. As he did so, a fresh tor­rent of blood welled out.

He could see the wound now, a ragged lit­tle hole in the low­er left quad­rant. It seemed to have missed any vi­tal or­gans, but it was bleed­ing freely. The ex­it wound, he knew, would be much big­ger. And it hurt like a sono­fabitch: Poole had been trained in gun­shots, told what to ex­pect. But he’d nev­er ex­pect­ed such re­lent­less, over­whelm­ing pain.

His hand fell away from the wound as he slid back to the ground. Once again, he thought back to the field in­struc­tor. If you’re in a hot-​war sit­ua­tion, he’d said, there’s no ly­ing down and wait­ing for a medic. You’ve got to work through the pain. Pain is your friend. It means you’re not so far gone that you’re use­less. So put your pain in­to a box. Lock the box, throw away the key. Then you put that box in­side a big­ger box. Lock that one, too. Throw away the key. Then put that box in­to a still big­ger box. Lock it up, but this time don’t throw away the key. Put it in your pock­et. And then put that box aside. You’ll un­lock it lat­er, when there’s time.

Poole re­mained still a mo­ment, pant­ing. Then he raised his right hand, checked his watch: 4:27.

Grasp­ing the cat­walk again, he pulled him­self first to his knees and then, with a supreme ef­fort, to his feet. The world tilt­ed around him dan­ger­ous­ly, and he closed his eyes, grasp­ing the cat­walk tight­ly, wait­ing for things to steady. Af­ter a few sec­onds, he opened his eyes again.

Here in the shad­ow of the dome, the hol­lows and ridges of the mesa top seemed shal­low labyrinths of brown and gray. He looked for his pis­tol, but all he could spot in the monochro­mat­ic land­scape was the M24 sniper ri­fle, ly­ing where he’d told the man to drop it. Twist­ing his neck to the right, he could see, maybe fifty feet far­ther along the curve of the dome, the small square shape of the con­trol box he’d seen ear­li­er, just be­fore dis­cov­er­ing the corpse in the gul­ly.

He took a step for­ward, then an­oth­er, clos­ing his eyes once again to steady him­self as the world reeled. Slow­ly, like an old man, he knelt to re­trieve the ri­fle. The pain bent him dou­ble, and he bit down hard on the in­vol­un­tary cry of pain. Black­ness threat­ened to wash over him again and he wait­ed, in the shad­ow of the gul­ly, for it to pass. Then he rose un­steadi­ly to his feet and, ri­fle at the ready, ap­proached the man in the in­fras­truc­ture uni­form.

He lay spread­ea­gled, right arm flung wide, left arm across his chest. There was no sign of any wound. For a mo­ment, Poole won­dered if this was all some weird fig­ment of his imag­ina­tion: if in fact he was the one still ly­ing in the gul­ly, dy­ing, re­al­ity long since fled far, far away.

And then he no­ticed the red-​rimmed hole where the man’s right eye had been; no­ticed the small dark stain pond­ing be­neath the head, flow­ing in­to the dry fis­sures of stone.

Poole turned away, his breath com­ing short and shal­low, try­ing hard to lock the pain away. He knew he was still bleed­ing freely, but there was no time to wor­ry about it. The ri­fle was heavy, use­less in his hand. What he re­al­ly need­ed was to de­ac­ti­vate that con­trol box.

He moved slow­ly back to the base of the dome. Grasp­ing the rail of the low­est cat­walk, he pulled him­self for­ward, one ag­oniz­ing step af­ter the oth­er, fol­low­ing the line of det cord as it snaked its way to­ward the box. Di­rect­ly ahead of him now, about thir­ty yards from the base of the dome, he could see the top of the rear wall of Utopia. Be­hind it, a long, flat, con­crete roof swept from one edge of the canyon to the oth­er. Ven­ti­la­tion tubes, smokestacks, dis­play launch­ing plat­forms, el­eva­tor hous­ings, and aeri­al masts pocked its sur­face, cre­at­ing a man-​made for­est of spars and booms. Be­yond the rear edge, and per­haps two hun­dred feet be­low, lay the cast park­ing lot. And, far­ther still, the ac­cess road that curved its way down the des­olate high-​desert plains to­ward High­way 95.

Poole gave all this mere­ly a cur­so­ry glance. His eyes were on the con­trol box, now just a few feet ahead. He tried not to think about the time; about the fact that, at any mo­ment, the ar­mored car would emerge from the Un­der­ground, John Doe or one of his co­horts would ac­ti­vate the trans­mit­ter, and peo­ple would be pick­ing up lit­tle pieces of An­gus Poole for a long, long time. If he could just get to the con­trol box, neu­tral­ize it, they might have a chance.

The unit was fas­tened se­cure­ly to the low­er rail of the cat­walk, del­icate fin­gers of det cord stream­ing away in sev­er­al di­rec­tions. Poole tried to kneel be­side it, but a fresh whiplash of pain sent both him and the ri­fle sprawl­ing in the dust. He pulled him­self up, will­ing the agony away just long enough to reach up, pluck out the re­ceiv­er, and de­ac­ti­vate the in­fer­nal de­vice.

His fin­gers pawed use­less­ly over a slick, smooth sur­face. Forc­ing his eyes in­to fo­cus, he looked more close­ly at the box.

It was not a re­ceiv­er, at all. It was mere­ly a re­lay box, a split­ting junc­tion for the leg wires.

Poole blinked, numbed by sur­prise and dis­be­lief.

A few feet away, an ac­cess lad­der had been bolt­ed above the cat­walk. A line of thin­ner wire led away from the re­lay and curled up­ward along one of the lad­der’s rails. Poole’s eye fol­lowed the wire, trav­el­ing slow­ly up the dome…And there, leer­ing down at him, sat the re­ceiv­er he’d been search­ing for. The de­mo­li­tions ex­pert had strapped it to the un­der­side of a sec­ond cat­walk, cir­cling the dome some fifty feet above the first, en­sur­ing a clear line of sight for John Doe’s trans­mit­ter.

Poole’s knees gave way and he fell back on­to the rocky ground. “Christ,” he moaned. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”

Fifty feet up the lad­der, but it might as well have been five thou­sand. There was no way he could climb. He closed his eyes. It was too late: too late to reach the re­ceiv­er, too late to defuse the trig­ger­ing mech­anism, too late to at­tain safe dis­tance. Too late, in fact, for any­thing.

 

4:28 P.M.

IN THE DRIV­ER’S seat of the ar­mored car, Can­dy­man had one hand pressed against his head­set. There was a puz­zled ex­pres­sion on his face. Af­ter a few mo­ments, he dropped his hand and shook his head slow­ly.

“What is it?” asked Earl Crowe, sit­ting be­hind him.

“I don’t know. I could have sworn I heard some­body laugh.”

Crowe ex­changed glances with Hard­ball and Crack­er Jack, then shrugged dis­mis­sive­ly.

Sit­ting alone at the rear of the pay­load com­part­ment, John Doe had re­moved one of the count­less stacks of cur­ren­cy and was mak­ing origa­mi cranes from the con­tents. The in­frared trans­mit­ter lay ready at his side. He glanced at his watch.

“Still no word from Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo?”

Can­dy­man shook his head.

“We’ll give him six­ty sec­onds more.”

A si­lence set­tled over the in­te­ri­or of the ar­mored car. John Doe fin­ished fold­ing the crane, put it care­ful­ly to one side, pulled a sec­ond note free, and fold­ed an­oth­er. A minute ticked by. Then he glanced for­ward.

“All right, let’s move,” he said. “Wa­ter Buf­fa­lo can walk back to Ve­gas.”

Can­dy­man ad­just­ed his head­set, spoke in­to it. “Utopia Cen­tral, this is Nine Echo Bra­vo. Prob­lem re­solved. Re­peat, prob­lem re­solved. Rolling now.”

“Utopia Cen­tral con­firms,” came the re­spond­ing crack­le. “About time. Re­port when you’re in the 95 driv­eline. Over and out.”

Reach­ing over­head, Can­dy­man turned on the high-​and low-​band po­lice scan­ners. Then he glanced to­ward a pan­el to his right, pressed a yel­low switch marked load man­ag­er. The truck went in­to high idle, bring­ing ad­di­tion­al elec­tri­cal pow­er to bear. He dis­en­gaged the park­ing brake and gave an­oth­er look back.

“We’re rolling, gen­tle­men,” he said.

THE SOUND OF the diesel changed just as Warne and Pec­cam were run­ning back to­ward Smythe. It grew low­er, throat­ier. Air brakes chuffed and hissed; there was a protest­ing squeal. A clutch re­leased, gears knocked their way through a trans­mis­sion. Warne and Pec­cam ex­changed quick glances.

For a mo­ment, the on­ly sounds were the roar of the en­gine and Pec­cam’s noisy breath­ing.

“Are we re­al­ly go­ing to do this?” the video tech asked.

“I don’t know. I guess so.” Warne turned to Smythe. “So how do we fire?”

Smythe’s mouth was work­ing, but the words were in­audi­ble. Warne leaned clos­er.

“No sup­ply ten­der,” Smythe was say­ing to him­self, shak­ing his head. “No fire sup­pres­sion equip­ment. No load­ing per­son­nel. No spot­ters, no mon­itors.” He seemed to be count­ing some­thing on his fin­gers; per­haps it was all the lo­cal, state, and fed­er­al reg­ula­tions that were about to be bro­ken.

The en­tire cor­ri­dor seemed alive with the rum­ble of the ap­proach­ing ve­hi­cle. Any minute and the ar­mored car would come in­to view.

“Smythe! Show me how!”

Smythe looked at him, star­tled. “You re­move the pro­tec­tive cap from the quick­match.”

Warne tore the per­fo­rat­ed ends away from the fus­es trail­ing be­low the mor­tars.

“You light the fuse with a port­fire. At full-​arm ex­ten­sion. There’s a very short de­lay, per­haps a half sec­ond, so be sure to get well away. Turn away from the glare. It’s like­ly to blind you—”

“You light the fuse with a what?”

“A port­fire.” Smythe waved his hand at a bun­dle of small, red, flare­like ob­jects. Warne grabbed one, turned it over in his hands.

“It’s not lit,” he said stupid­ly.

Smythe blinked at him.

“It’s not lit!” Warne cried over the grow­ing roar.

“Of course not. You wouldn’t light the port­fire un­til you’re ready to launch a shell, would you?”

“Then give me the match­es. I’ll light it my­self.”

Smythe looked at him blankly.

A sud­den, ter­ri­ble fear came over Warne. “The match­es, Mr. Smythe.”

Smythe blinked again. He spread his hands as if to say, Why should I be car­ry­ing match­es?

Warne went cold. Oh, God. Af­ter all this…

He slumped back against the con­crete. His vi­sion seemed to dim. And then he felt some­thing be­ing placed in his hand.

It was a plas­tic cigarette lighter.

He looked over to see Pec­cam, with­draw­ing back in­to po­si­tion be­side Wingnut. The video tech shrugged, laughed ner­vous­ly. “I like the oc­ca­sion­al cigar,” he said.

Warne crouched over the end of the port­fire, hold­ing it just above the lighter’s small flame. The port­fire came to in­stant life, spark­ing and flick­er­ing with an an­gry hiss. He tossed the lighter to Pec­cam, turned back to the line of mor­tars just as the nose of the ar­mored car came in­to view.

Against the back­drop of the tun­nel it seemed im­pos­si­bly huge, ele­phan­tine, in­vul­ner­able. Bands of heavy, red-​paint­ed steel sur­round­ed the wheel wells and gun­ports, the trans­par­ent ar­mor of the win­dows. Tall steel rods, topped with white, rose from the re­in­forced bumper. Am­ber lights on its roof, the roar of its en­gine, drenched the cor­ri­dor in light and sound. Warne stared, port­fire dan­gling from his hand. The driv­er’s com­part­ment ap­peared, re­flect­ing green in the flu­ores­cent lights. Warne held his breath, wait­ing. Now the en­tire in­ter­sec­tion was filled by the truck’s bulk. For a mo­ment, he was afraid some­thing had gone wrong; that the truck would keep go­ing. But then, with a shrill protest of brakes, it ground to a halt and sat, idling, the en­tire frame shak­ing.

“Shall I light?” Pec­cam yelled from be­hind Wingnut.

Warne glanced over. Wingnut held the re­al charge: four huge cakes of black pow­der. He’d had to guess at the fuse length; for all he knew, it might well go off too ear­ly. But there was no time to wor­ry about that now. He nod­ded, watched as Pec­cam lit the fuse, then pushed the but­ton on Wingnut’s pro­cess­ing pan­el. The head of the robot panned around, search­ing for the echolo­ca­tor’s sig­nal. Then it froze, aimed di­rect­ly at the ar­mored car.

Warne watched it. De­spite ev­ery­thing, he felt a pang of re­gret and guilt that he had to sac­ri­fice the robot like this. “Good-​bye, Wingnut,” he mur­mured. “I’m sor­ry.”

For a mo­ment, Wingnut re­mained still, head as­sem­bly point­ed at the ar­mored car. Warne had the strange thought that per­haps it knew what was about to hap­pen; that at some deep, atavis­tic lev­el it would refuse to obey a com­mand tan­ta­mount to sui­cide. And then, with the deep purr of its pow­er­ful mo­tors, it shot for­ward, head­ing for the dis­tant bumper.

And, just as quick­ly, it came to a stop again, the fuse still spik­ing and sput­ter­ing be­hind it.

Warne stared at the robot in hor­ror, try­ing to de­ter­mine what had gone wrong. Was it pos­si­ble that he was right? That Wingnut would refuse to fol­low his pro­gram­ming? And then—as he lift­ed his gaze to the end of the cor­ri­dor—he un­der­stood.

Be­neath the rear end of the shud­der­ing truck, some­thing that looked like a huge plas­tic watch lay on the con­crete floor, bro­ken in­to pieces. The shak­ing of the ve­hi­cle had jarred the echolo­ca­tor loose. It had shat­tered in the fall. And now Wingnut was strand­ed in the cor­ri­dor, ten pounds of heavy ex­plo­sive on his back, with no in­struc­tions on how to car­ry out his di­rec­tive.

 

“WHAT IS IT?” John Doe asked from the rear com­part­ment. Lean­ing back against a met­al lock­er, he threw his arms be­hind his head. As he did so, his suit jack­et draped open to re­veal an el­egant silk lin­ing, the hol­ster snugged be­neath one arm.

“There’s some­body up ahead in the cor­ri­dor,” the driv­er replied. “He came in­to view as I round­ed the bend.”

“Well, give him a minute, he’ll get out of the way.”

“He’s not mov­ing.”

“Give him a bit of the horn.”

Can­dy­man com­plied. “Still there. He just doesn’t want to move.”

John Doe let his arms drop to his sides and leaned for­ward. “Is he deaf?”

“The guy’s look­ing right at us.”

“Is he a guard?”

“No. Just some civil­ian in a suit.”

John Doe frowned at this. “Is it pos­si­ble, even con­ceiv­able, that—” He rose and, hold­ing an over­head rail for sup­port, peered for­ward, out through the wind­shield.

“I’ve seen that man be­fore,” he mur­mured. And then, sud­den­ly, his fea­tures con­tort­ed with anger and sur­prise.

“It’s Warne!” he cried. “Step on it! Run him down, now, now!”

 

AS THE EN­GINE revved and the driv­er threw the truck in­to gear again, Warne dropped his eyes from Wingnut to the can­is­ters propped on the ground be­fore him. He leaned his port­fire to­ward the fuse of the gold­en wil­low. With Wingnut frozen, lack­ing in­struc­tions, he knew what he had to do: fire a shell at the truck him­self. And yet, a strange las­si­tude filled his limbs. For a mo­ment, time hung sus­pend­ed.

A pa­rade of im­ages flashed through his head, an ac­cel­er­at­ed mag­ic-​lantern show: Nor­man Pep­per on the mono­rail, ges­tur­ing ex­pan­sive­ly, smile im­pos­si­bly broad as he rubbed his hands to­geth­er. Sarah, wide-​eyed, in the hall of mir­rors. Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio, sob­bing against his shoul­der in the Se­cu­ri­ty Com­plex. Geor­gia stand­ing in Meta­mor­phoses, star­ing at the mag­ical­ly aged im­age of her­self. And then, lat­er, in the re­cov­ery bay in Med­ical…

In a sin­gle stroke, Warne moved for­ward and touched the port­fire to the fuse.

There was a brief white light as the fuse caught, and then the flame trav­eled up the line of the quick­match with sur­pris­ing ra­pid­ity, spark­ing and spit­ting. At the last mo­ment, Warne re­mem­bered to avert his eyes. There was a strange noise, like com­pressed air be­ing re­leased un­der­wa­ter. And then, with a fe­ro­cious hiss, the shell shot from the tube. Warne looked back to watch it cor­us­cat­ing down the cor­ri­dor at un­be­liev­able speed, a comet of light with an in­tense smok­ing tail that car­omed from wall to wall un­til it hurled it­self in­to the ceil­ing above the ar­mored car.

For a mil­lisec­ond, there was noth­ing. And then the world turned white.

With a ter­ri­fy­ing, shat­ter­ing re­port, the re­main­der of the lift charge ex­plod­ed. A hun­dred tongues of gold­en com­po­si­tion jet­ted down the cor­ri­dor, hiss­ing and snaking along the walls and ceil­ing, curl­ing around the ar­mored car in a fiery ca­ress. There was an in­cred­ible fusil­lade of sound, like count­less grenades ex­plod­ing in rapid se­quence. The white light be­came ob­scured by a strange smoky coro­na of gold, awe-​in­spir­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing at the same time. Warne ducked as fiery ten­drils shot over his head, grow­ing brighter and brighter be­fore at last fad­ing in­to noth­ing.

As the echoes died away, Warne could hear an­oth­er sound: the dis­tant clam­or of warn­ing sirens. Now the ragged cur­tain of smoke be­gan to drift away, and Warne strug­gled to see past it.

The front end of the ar­mored car had been knocked to one side by the blast. As he watched, Warne could see the tires rolling, the driv­er work­ing des­per­ate­ly to get the truck back on course.

His aim had been far too high, and the shell had ex­plod­ed over the truck.

Warne glanced over his shoul­der. Smythe, the py­rotech­nist, was ly­ing on the floor be­hind him, curled up in a ball, arms wrapped pro­tec­tive­ly over his head. Pec­cam crouched near­by, frozen dis­be­lief on his face.

Warne turned back. The spent mor­tar lay be­side him, smok­ing. Wingnut still stood a few yards down the cor­ri­dor, the fuse grow­ing alarm­ing­ly short. He saw its big head piv­ot back to­ward him, as if in in­quiry. At the end of the cor­ri­dor, the truck was still try­ing to align it­self, the diesel roar­ing as the driv­er rocked the big ve­hi­cle back and forth. An­oth­er mo­ment and it would dis­ap­pear down the cor­ri­dor.

He dropped his eyes to the re­main­ing mor­tars. The sup­port tube had been knocked away by the fe­roc­ity of the launch, and the cylin­ders lay at an­gles across the floor. He would not be able to pre­pare an­oth­er in time for a sec­ond shot. Even if he could, aim­ing with any ac­cu­ra­cy had proved al­most im­pos­si­ble. He glanced ahead at Wingnut. If on­ly there was some way to reach him, to al­ter his pro­gram­ming. But there was no time. And so the robot sat there, the charge they need­ed to dis­able the ar­mored car about to ex­plode on his back, with no di­rec­tives to fol­low…

Ahead, at the in­ter­sec­tion, the snout of a ri­fle poked through one of the gun­ports of the ar­mored car.

Warne ducked down. A sud­den thought had oc­curred to him. Maybe there was a di­rec­tive Wingnut could fol­low. It was no com­mand he had ev­er been giv­en be­fore; in fact, it went against ev­ery­thing he had been taught. And yet maybe…

“Wingnut!” he barked, point­ing at the ar­mored car. “Chase!”

Wingnut re­mained mo­tion­less.

“Chase!” Warne cried again. “Chase!”

Still the robot hes­itat­ed, as if try­ing to pro­cess this un­fa­mil­iar com­mand. Then it be­gan to move for­ward, slow­ly at first, but quick­ly gain­ing speed. Warne sat up, speech­less. The fuse glowed and sparked be­tween the robot’s knob­by rear wheels. As Warne watched, Wingnut seemed to gain pur­pose as well as speed, mov­ing faster and faster as it ap­proached the huge truck.

Warne shut his eyes, turned away.

There was a blind­ing light that scorched his eye­balls even through the closed lids, fol­lowed by a vi­olent thun­der­clap that seemed to shake Utopia to its very foot­ings. Warne felt a wave of over­pres­sure boil past him. He gasped, tried to raise him­self up. For a mo­ment, his mus­cles re­fused to obey. And then, with an ef­fort, he stag­gered back on­to his hands and knees.

He could see that the ar­mored car had been thrown on­to its side, the ra­di­ator grille guard ir­re­versibly wedged in­to one wall of the cor­ri­dor. The up­per­most wheels were turn­ing lazi­ly, run­flat in­serts go­ing round like drunk­en tops, the com­pos­ite of the side pan­els black­ened and steam­ing. He could see that the heavy ar­mor that cov­ered the truck’s un­der­side had been torn and petaled, peeled away in one sec­tion like alu­minum foil. The sprin­klers at the end of the cor­ri­dor had gone off, and cur­tains of wa­ter rained down through the rolling palls of gun­pow­der.

Warne crouched, star­ing, his breath com­ing in sharp gasps. For a long mo­ment, there was on­ly the la­bored sound of his breath, the dis­tant pat­ter of the sprin­klers on met­al and con­crete, the drone of the fire alarms.

And then the door of the ar­mored car shift­ed.

Warne stared, won­der­ing if he’d been mis­tak­en; if the sheets of wa­ter, the roil­ing stream­ers of smoke, were play­ing tricks with his eyes. But then the door moved again, as if pushed up from be­low.

Some­one was try­ing to get out.

Warne’s breath came even faster. He looked at the mor­tars ly­ing be­fore him, their con­tents scat­tered and askew, quick­match fus­es trail­ing away like tails. He tried to force his brain in­to ac­tion. He made out the dou­ble chrysan­the­mum, the heavy, cake­like lift­ing charges. What had Smythe said about them? The equiv­alent of sev­er­al sticks of dy­na­mite.

The door of the ar­mored car flew up­ward, bang­ing against the rear wall of the cor­ri­dor. Warne saw a man’s head emerge, then the up­per part of a tor­so, clad in a tight leather jack­et. The man was forc­ing him­self up, strug­gling against the crazy tilt of the ve­hi­cle. In his hands was a stout, ug­ly-​look­ing sub­ma­chine gun.

Warne fell back, look­ing around des­per­ate­ly. The port­fire lay to one side, still spark­ing and sput­ter­ing, flar­ing crim­son against the con­crete floor.

There was no time to think, no oth­er op­tions to con­sid­er. He grabbed it, then reached wild­ly for the near­est mor­tar, dropped in a lift­ing charge, then an­oth­er, fran­ti­cal­ly tug­ging their quick­match fus­es in­to po­si­tion. The man raised the gun, steady­ing him­self against the frame of the door. A gout of flame erupt­ed from the muz­zle; some­thing whined past Warne’s head.

Gasp­ing, he dropped the huge chrysan­the­mum shell in­to the mor­tar, then an­gled it away and held the port­fire to the end of the fus­es, his fin­gers stupid, re­fus­ing to work. An­oth­er stut­ter­ing flash from the gun, an­oth­er whine of bul­lets, con­crete chips fly­ing across his face and sting­ing Warne’s eyes, but the fus­es were lit now, and—hold­ing the mor­tar as far in front of him as pos­si­ble—he aimed it di­rect­ly to­ward the shoot­er.

There was an­oth­er an­gry hiss, and then smoke boiled back from the mor­tar tube and a bru­tal re­coil knocked him to the floor. An­oth­er comet of light, brighter than the first, ar­rowed down the hall­way, swerv­ing first up, then down, a sear­ing shaft of bril­liance that sped di­rect­ly to­ward the open door of the ar­mored car. Warne fell to the floor, cov­er­ing his ears, shield­ing his head with his arms.

For a mil­lisec­ond, si­lence. And then there came a ter­rif­ic dou­ble re­port; a con­cus­sive blast of in­cen­di­ary col­or; a sud­den flow­er­ing of fire—one with­in an­oth­er—that stretched out in­to bril­liant pin­points of light, in­can­des­cent red and yel­low and turquoise, a hun­dred tiny suns too bright and ter­ri­ble to look up­on. Warne felt al­most vi­olat­ed by light. He tried to rise, but the bru­tal shock wave forced him back to the floor, where he lay a mo­ment, stunned. Next he felt—or thought he felt—con­fet­ti land­ing around him, falling gen­tly to earth. He lay still, trem­bling, eyes tight shut, afraid to move.

For a mo­ment, he could hear noth­ing but a harsh buzzing in his ears. As that fad­ed, oth­er sounds came slow­ly back: the rolling thun­der of the salute as it echoed and ree­choed deep­er through the halls of C Lev­el; the dis­tant sound of a hun­dred car alarms blar­ing out in the em­ploy­ee park­ing lot. “I can’t see!” Pec­cam was cry­ing be­hind him. “I can’t see!”

More sprin­klers came on now, wa­ter run­ning through Warne’s hair, down his neck, in­to the hol­low be­tween his shoul­der blades. And then, at last, Warne pulled him­self up the side of the wall, opened his eyes, and looked ahead.

The truck lay as it had be­fore, wheels slow­ly spin­ning, wa­ter trick­ling down its flanks in spi­dery streams. The stench of gun­pow­der and phos­pho­rus hung heavy in the air. Shreds of mon­ey lay ev­ery­where, cov­er­ing the sides of the truck, the floors and the walls, dark­en­ing as wa­ter soaked it. The man with the sub­ma­chine gun had van­ished. The truck’s open door was now awash in blood and mat­ter, and a cur­tain of blood ran up the wall be­hind it, fan-​shaped and huge. Warne watched as the sprin­klers traced clear lines of wa­ter through the crim­son.

He sank back against the wall, too numb to feel any­thing: no re­lief, no fear, on­ly an un­com­fort­able sen­sa­tion in his hands. He looked down and no­ticed with a kind of de­tached sur­prise that his hands were raw, the skin burned away by the heat of the shell. He let them fall to his sides, then looked back down the cor­ri­dor, his mo­tions slow and dream­like. There was Pec­cam, sit­ting against the wall of the cor­ri­dor, hands clasped over his eyes. Smythe was nowhere to be seen.

Warne ex­haled slow­ly, let­ting his head come to rest against the cool wall of the cor­ri­dor. The port­fire lay in his lap, soaked through, spent. The pain in his palms was be­com­ing more in­tense, but he felt very tired. The bleat­ing of the alarms, the trick­le of wa­ter down his face, seemed very far away. Maybe, if he closed his eyes, he could sleep.

He let his gaze fall once again on the ar­mored car. And abrupt­ly, as if gal­va­nized by an elec­tric cur­rent, he sat up, port­fire rolling from his lap and across the floor.

John Doe was clam­ber­ing out over the hood of the ar­mored car. His face was black­ened, his hair burned. Steam rose from the shoul­ders of his linen suit. Blood was run­ning freely from his nose and ears. He seemed not to no­tice Warne, or the scat­ter­ings of cur­ren­cy, or any­thing else. His gaze re­mained locked on the tun­nel ex­it.

Warne stum­bled to his feet, star­ing at John Doe’s hands. One held a pis­tol; the oth­er, the black ob­long of the long-​dis­tance trans­mit­ter.

Warne looked around wild­ly. His hands were too burned to light an­oth­er fuse. Even if he could, there was too much wa­ter; noth­ing would light. He had noth­ing, could do noth­ing.

He looked back to­ward the truck in des­per­ation. But John Doe had al­ready slid off the front grille and van­ished out of sight down the tun­nel.

 

4:32 P.M.

JOHN DOE WALKED down the cor­ri­dor, away from the smoke and wa­ter and con­fu­sion and the in­de­scrib­able hor­ror that lay with­in the ar­mored car. His gait was un­steady, but his grip on the trans­mit­ter re­mained firm. Fire, smoke, and emer­gen­cy alarms were go­ing off but he did not hear them: both eardrums had burst in the third shell’s ex­plo­sion. Blood and gore cov­ered the front of his suit, but most of it was not his and he paid no at­ten­tion.

A guard was run­ning down the cor­ri­dor to­ward him, his face a mask of shock and con­cern. He was mouthing some­thing—What the hell just hap­pened? Are you all right?—and John Doe raised the gun and shot him. His eyes were bleed­ing and pow­der-​burned, but he was still able to make out the semi­cir­cle of sun­light that lay at the end of the ac­cess cor­ri­dor. Not much far­ther now.

An­oth­er guard came down the hall and John Doe raised his arm, fired again, and moved on. He passed the se­cu­ri­ty check­point—de­sert­ed—just a few more steps—and then he was out on the tar­mac, the vast rear wall of Utopia ris­ing above and be­hind him. The shad­ow of the dome lay across the lot, but even so, the light was al­most too much for his dam­aged eyes. He stag­gered for­ward, feel­ing the blood trick­ling from his ears. Some crew mem­bers, who’d raced from the load­ing docks at the sound of the ex­plo­sions, stopped and stared at him. He walked on, not both­er­ing to glance at them. One or two ve­hi­cles were mov­ing across the tar­mac, vague in­dis­tinct shapes, but he was in­ter­est­ed in on­ly one: the es­cort car that would take him away from this place, from the dead­ly con­fu­sion he was about to rain down up­on the Park. What was that line of Vish­nu’s quot­ed in the Bha­gavad Gi­ta? I am be­come death, the de­stroy­er of worlds. At least, that’s how he be­lieved it went: his mind was not as clear as it should have been.

There was no hard cash, of course, but he had the discs; that was more than com­pen­sa­tion enough. Ahead now he could make out the vast, curved line that marked the edge of the dome’s shad­ow. He gripped the trans­mit­ter more tight­ly. When he reached that point, he’d turn around. He’d have all the an­gle he need­ed from there.

Not much far­ther now.

 

BALLING HIS SEARED palms, An­drew Warne clam­bered painful­ly over the hood of the ar­mored car and be­gan stag­ger­ing down the hall­way. He did not know what he planned to do: he knew mere­ly that he had to stop John Doe any way he could.

The portable holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tor he and Pec­cam had placed to stop the truck lay on its side in the pas­sage, knocked over by the ex­plo­sions. It was still pro­ject­ing a holo­gram of him­self: feet apart, arms crossed, sprawled drunk­en­ly against the ceil­ing. He passed be­neath it quick­ly. Ahead, there was a guard ly­ing mo­tion­less in the pas­sage­way, shot; and then an­oth­er. To the rear he heard a con­fu­sion of shouts, the sound of run­ning feet. He moved on, past the check­point, past the roar­ing fans of the air pu­rifi­ca­tion sys­tem, and out in­to Cast Park­ing.

He stopped for a mo­ment, look­ing around, try­ing to spot John Doe. And then to his hor­ror he saw him di­rect­ly ahead, per­haps a hun­dred yards away, his nar­row form bi­sect­ed by the shad­ow line of Utopia’s dome as it fell across the tar­mac. How had he moved so fast?

He saw the blood-​drenched arm swing up slow­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly.

“No!” Warne cried, tak­ing off at a dead run. But even as he ran, he saw the trans­mit­ter aim to­ward the sky, saw the emp­ty, glassy smile on John Doe’s face, and he knew he was too late.

And then, quite abrupt­ly, John Doe’s head dis­in­te­grat­ed in a cloud of blood and brain mat­ter.

The body fell back­ward, trans­mit­ter clat­ter­ing across the as­phalt. On­ly then did the crack of the shot reach Warne. It echoed across the lot, rolling and rum­bling above the blare of car alarms, tossed back and forth like a ball be­tween the op­pos­ing canyon walls.

He ran up to the trans­mit­ter, stamped it in­to frag­ments with his heel. Then he turned back, his gaze trav­el­ing up the broad con­crete pos­te­ri­or of Utopia. Far above at the roofline, sil­hou­et­ted against the shad­ow of the dome, a fig­ure in a tweed cap and cor­duroy jack­et leaned against a long-​bar­reled ri­fle. He waved once, weak­ly, down at Warne. And then he sat down very abrupt­ly, the ri­fle falling away out of sight.

Warne, too, sat down, the tar­mac in shad­ow now but still hot from the day’s ex­po­sure to the sun. A few yards away lay John Doe’s body, ru­ined, mo­tion­less.

Warne glanced around, arms across his knees, blink­ing stupid­ly. Not far away, a late-​mod­el sedan with a flash­ing am­ber light was peel­ing rapid­ly away, head­ing for the in­ter­state. Warne ig­nored it. His gaze was fixed on a more dis­tant point: the scrib­bled red line of the hori­zon, where a row of squat shad­ows was ap­proach­ing above a thin rib­bon of cloud. If he lis­tened close­ly, he thought he could hear a throb­bing mur­mur, like the beat­ing of gi­ant wings against the air. The cav­al­ry had ar­rived.

 

EPI­LOGUE

WARM SUN­LIGHT SPLASHED over the canyon walls, dap­pling the sand­stone with a pro­fu­sion of reds, yel­lows, and ochers. Warne sat alone in a win­dow seat, en­joy­ing the re­flect­ed warmth on his face. This time, he’d re­mem­bered the dark glass­es. The gen­tle rock­ing of the car was com­fort­ing, al­most fa­mil­iar some­how, like cra­dle mem­ories of ear­ly child­hood. The canned speech com­ing over the speak­ers was the same mel­low, so­phis­ti­cat­ed voice, on­ly now a pitch had been added for the Cal­lis­to Sky­port, re­opened with new rides just two weeks be­fore.

Some­body was speak­ing over his shoul­der, and he roused him­self from the en­shroud­ing fog of mem­ories and looked around. It was a man in his mid-​for­ties, with thin­ning hair and a florid com­plex­ion.

“I’m sor­ry?” Warne asked.

“I said, is this your first trip here?”

Warne shook his head, re­call­ing the last time he’d viewed these red walls: from with­in a mede­vac chop­per tear­ing back to­ward Ve­gas, his hands packed in ice, a uni­formed man shout­ing ques­tions at him. For a mo­ment, the rock­ing of the car grew less com­fort­ing.

“It’s mine. My first trip, I mean. And I still can’t be­lieve I’m ac­tu­al­ly here.” The man’s words seemed to tum­ble out in a breath­less rush. “And it’s all be­cause of that ar­ti­cle I wrote.”

The feel­ing passed, and Warne forced the mem­ories aside. “Re­al­ly?”

“For the Epi­cure­an Quar­ter­ly Re­view. On me­dieval cui­sine. I’m a food his­to­ri­an, you know?”

“Food his­to­ri­an.”

But the man need­ed no en­cour­age­ment. “Yes. And so last week I get this call from Lee Dun­wich, head of Food Ser­vices Utopia—can you be­lieve it, Lee Dun­wich him­self, gave up that three-​star Paris restau­rant and ev­ery­thing to come to the Park? Any­way, he want­ed me to come and re­view some of the Camelot menus, you know, they’re open­ing those two new restau­rants, and ap­par­ent­ly guest sam­pling showed peo­ple weren’t hap­py with some of the dish­es, you know, me­dieval food tends to be a lit­tle…Oh, my God, there it is!”

The mono­rail had swung around a nar­row curve in the canyon, and up ahead lay the vast cop­per-​col­ored fa­cade of Utopia, wink­ing and shim­mer­ing in the sun­shine like some mon­umen­tal mi­rage. The flow of words halt­ed abrupt­ly, and the man stared at the spec­ta­cle be­fore him.

Watch­ing that look, Warne smiled de­spite him­self. “Have your­self a good time,” he said.

 

IN­SIDE THE NEXUS, all the clocks read 0:50. The long, echo­ing gal­leries seemed to be wait­ing, as if hold­ing their breath against the sud­den in­flux of guests. Warne stood on the off-​load­ing ramp, gaz­ing around at the vast con­fla­tion of brushed met­al and blond wood, the emp­ty restau­rants and bou­tiques, the grace­ful blue band of the dome arch­ing far over­head. He took a slow breath, then an­oth­er. The food his­to­ri­an—Warne had al­ready for­got­ten his name—was hur­ry­ing down the ramp to­ward the line of white-​blaz­ered hosts, all stand­ing as if for a mil­itary re­view. The line be­gan to break up as the ex­ter­nal spe­cial­ists and as­sort­ed VIPs ap­proached, and Warne watched a young wom­an step to­ward the his­to­ri­an. He thought he rec­og­nized her as Aman­da Free­man, the wom­an who had pro­cessed his own en­try nine months be­fore.

Then—as he turned to fol­low—he saw, to his sur­prise, that Sarah Boatwright was com­ing briskly up the ramp to­ward him.

At first he was struck, as usu­al, by the sim­ple, strong lines of her face. But as she drew near­er, he no­ticed some­thing else. The way the cor­ners of her mouth drooped ev­er so slight­ly, the faint dark lines be­neath her eyes, seemed to speak of a deep and pri­vate sor­row.

In the weeks that fol­lowed his re­turn to Pitts­burgh, he had spo­ken to count­less law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, ATF agents, Utopia guest re­la­tions flaks. More re­cent­ly, he’d had dozens of phone con­ver­sa­tions with park de­sign­ers and sys­tem techs. But this would be the first time he’d spo­ken to Sarah Boatwright. The last time he’d seen her, she had been on the floor of the hold­ing cell, cradling the dy­ing Fred Barks­dale.

He de­bat­ed em­brac­ing her, of­fered his hand in­stead. “Sarah. What a nice sur­prise.”

She shook his hand, her grip brief but firm. “I saw your name on to­day’s list of vis­it­ing spe­cial­ists. I thought I’d greet you my­self.”

“Don’t you have to be some­where?” he asked. “That morn­ing meet­ing, what’s it called—?”

“The Pre-​Game Show? They can han­dle one with­out me.”

They start­ed down the ramp, fol­low­ing the line of spe­cial­ists and their white-​jack­et­ed charges fan­ning out through the Nexus. Warne caught a glimpse of an­oth­er clock. It read 0:48.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, it’s kind of nice to get away for once,” Sarah said. “Things are fran­tic, what with the plans for the sec­ond an­niver­sary cel­ebra­tion. And there’s all this new red tape. If it isn’t one func­tionary, it’s an­oth­er. Neva­da Health and Safe­ty Code, en­vi­ron­men­tal as­ses­sors, in­dus­tri­al hy­gien­ists. Some­times it feels like we’re play­ing bu­reau­crat of the week.”

“That bad?”

“Worse. But it hasn’t hurt busi­ness. Park at­ten­dance is up 15 per­cent over the last quar­ter. We’re now third in over­all draw.”

There was some­thing com­fort­ing in this chat­ter, Warne knew: this quo­tid­ian talk of num­bers and ra­tios. Some­thing was dif­fer­ent about Sarah, some­thing be­yond the bit­ter­sweet eyes, but he was un­able to quite iden­ti­fy it.

They walked be­tween a brace of foun­tains, past the holo­graph­ic At­trac­tions board and the en­trance por­tal to Camelot. Cast and crew mem­bers trot­ted by, emerg­ing from hid­den doors or dis­ap­pear­ing through ac­cess pan­els, in­tent on last-​minute du­ties. Far­ther ahead, near the en­trance por­tal for Cal­lis­to, a mu­si­cian in a mer­cury-​col­ored jump­suit was car­ry­ing an in­stru­ment that looked some­thing like a fu­tur­is­tic cel­lo. “Come on,” Sarah said, break­ing a si­lence that was just threat­en­ing to be­come awk­ward. “I’ve got some­thing I think you’ll want to see.”

They walked past a clus­ter of em­po­ri­ums and the Mind’s Eye gallery, and then Sarah di­rect­ed them to­ward the far wall of the Nexus and a mas­sive, hexag­onal por­tal. The word At­lantis stood over it in let­ters that seemed to ebb and flow, like wa­ter. Of course, Warne thought as he glanced at it.

At the sight of their ap­proach, a group of por­tal at­ten­dants stood aside, smil­ing and nod­ding at Sarah. The two passed through a wide, low-​ceilinged pas­sage­way, then emerged in­to what looked to Warne like an equa­to­ri­al beach. A vast ar­chae­olog­ical project was un­der way here; he stared in sur­prise at the grids and balks, the bar scales and base­plate com­pass­es, the care­ful­ly strat­ified soil pro­files: all the trap­pings of a large, pro­fes­sion­al ex­ca­va­tion. At this ear­ly hour, it was de­sert­ed.

“What is all this?” Warne asked.

Sarah looked at him cu­ri­ous­ly. “You didn’t see the con­cept ren­der­ings?”

“Just brief de­scrip­tions. I was busy go­ing over the tech­ni­cal specs.”

“It’s mod­eled af­ter the cur­rent digsite at Akrotiri. It’s an ac­tu­al work­ing ar­chae­olog­ical dig, right down to the pho­togram­met­ric record­ing. The idea is, guests first have to pass through this mod­ern-​day ex­ca­va­tion of At­lantis. That’s the ‘de­com­pres­sion.’ Then a por­tal will take them back in time, to the city’s gold­en age. We’ve tried to make this par­tic­ular im­mer­sion as re­al­is­tic as pos­si­ble. Fab­ri­ca­tion’s com­plete; we just de­layed the open­ing a month to make a cou­ple of…re­fine­ments.” She shot him a glance.

“The de­lay wasn’t my fault,” Warne replied.

“I didn’t say it was. We’re com­plet­ing phase-​three test­ing, you know, and all the re­ports we’re get­ting are in­cred­ibly en­thu­si­as­tic.” She beck­oned. “Let me show you the World it­self. If you haven’t even seen the col­or boards yet, you’re in for a treat.”

At the far end of the digsite, they en­tered one of sev­er­al large, cylin­dri­cal com­part­ments. As the doors closed around him, Warne found him­self briefly in dark­ness. Then side pan­els opened on both sides of the cylin­der, and he re­al­ized they were sur­round­ed by wa­ter. Re­flect­ed light danced, green­ish blue, off the ceil­ing and floor. There was a hum, then a sub­tle shud­der, and bub­bles teased up the sides of the cylin­der in tiny storms as they be­gan to de­scend.

Warne turned to Sarah. “We’re not re­al­ly mov­ing, are we?”

“Qui­et. You’re spoil­ing the il­lu­sion.”

Far be­low, on what looked like the ocean floor, Warne could make out in­dis­tinct shapes just com­ing in­to view. He pressed his face to the Plex­iglas win­dow. It was the spires and minarets of a fan­tas­tic city, lights wink­ing like tiny jew­els, dis­tort­ed and mis­shapen in the deep cur­rents. The light grew dim­mer and the im­age van­ished. Warne stepped away.

Then, with a gen­tle lurch, the cylin­der came to a stop. With a whis­per of air, the door on its far end slid open.

“Come on,” said Sarah, beck­on­ing him on with a small smile. And Warne stepped out in­to par­adise.

At least, it oc­curred to him that—had he ev­er stopped to imag­ine what par­adise would be like—this would be his vi­sion.

They were stand­ing on a wide quay of pearles­cent white. Sur­round­ing them, lap­ping gen­tly be­fore their feet, was the edge of a tran­quil sea: a sea of such an in­tense, rich blue Warne want­ed to dip a paint­brush in­to it. Wide, gra­cious walk­ways of the same pearles­cent ma­te­ri­al fanned out in myr­iad di­rec­tions, arch­ing gen­tly over the wa­ter, curv­ing to­ward larg­er clus­ters of build­ings, tow­ers and sil­very ram­parts, ex­tend­ing back in­to what seemed a lim­it­less dis­tance. Ex­ot­ic palms and knots of bright­ly col­ored flow­ers lined the verges. A clus­ter of wood­en boats bobbed at an­chor near­by, prows tall and grace­ful, carved in­to the sem­blance of swans. Here and there, small sil­ver fish leaped from the wa­ter, sun­light glint­ing off their scales. And over all curved the dome and the clear emp­ty sky be­yond.

Word­less­ly, Sarah led him to a near­by mar­ble bench, set be­neath a spread­ing palm.

Warne sat, en­tranced by the vi­sion that lay around them. There was a fresh breeze blow­ing, cool and brac­ing, that some­how car­ried on it the scent of in­fi­nite promise. It seemed to him al­most as if this time­less city had risen out of the sea as his pri­vate gift.

“What do you think?” he heard Sarah ask.

Warne shook his head. “It’s mag­nif­icent. It’s per­fect.”

Sarah smiled, clear­ly pleased by the com­pli­ment. “That’s good, see­ing as you’ll be spend­ing most of the week here. No ex­pense was spared. Some of the wa­ter ef­fects our en­gi­neers have cre­at­ed must be seen to be be­lieved. One wa­ter ride, Last Mo­ments of Pom­peii, is ex­pect­ed to be the biggest sin­gle draw in Utopia. Maybe you’ve heard about it. They’ve lever­aged the portable holo­gram tech­nol­ogy to put an im­age of Er­ic Nightin­gale in­to ev­ery sin­gle pas­sen­ger car, and—”

There was a sud­den com­mo­tion in the wa­ter be­fore their feet. A storm of bub­bles erupt­ed on the sur­face, and then a long, nar­row head emerged, foam stream­ing down its scaly sides. Lid­less yel­low eyes stared, un­blink­ing, back at them.

Warne grinned. “There you are,” he said.

The sea crea­ture looked at­ten­tive­ly at him, rais­ing it­self still far­ther out of the wa­ter, foot up­on foot, tall and sleek as a gi­ant snake. It glis­tened with an iri­des­cent plat­inum sheen, mir­ror­ing the sparkling sur­face be­low. Gem­like drops fell from the web­bing of me­chan­ical fins that ran down its sides. For a mo­ment longer it re­mained still, bal­anc­ing on the foam. Then in a flash it turned away, pin­wheel­ing and ca­vort­ing across the sur­face.

Warne shook his head. He’d on­ly been able to test the crea­ture in the dou­ble Olympic pool at Carnegie-​Mel­lon, over the protests of the swim­ming coach. See­ing it here, in this vast ex­panse of wa­ter, was a rev­ela­tion. Build­ing an aquat­ic robot im­pres­sive enough for At­lantis—with the in­tel­li­gence of a dol­phin, the flu­id­ity of an eel—had been his great­est chal­lenge yet. At least he’d had the as­sis­tance of a very help­ful col­league. Still, there had been more false starts, more late-​night cod­ing marathons, than he’d care to ad­mit. But the end re­sult—La­dy Mac­beth, as this pro­to­type had been named—had been his most suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion of ma­chine learn­ing yet. And see­ing it in this en­vi­ron­ment made all the work worth­while.

Abrupt­ly, the robot stopped its ca­per­ing and dis­ap­peared be­neath the sur­face. For a mo­ment, all was qui­et. Then at a dis­tance it shot far out above the wa­ter, jaws opened to ex­pose rows of jew­el-​like teeth. With a roar, it spewed a long tongue of pur­ple flame. Then it dove back in­to the wa­ter once again, leap­ing sev­er­al times up in­to the warm sun­light be­fore at last re­turn­ing to their bench, bal­anc­ing on the foam, look­ing at them as if await­ing ap­proval. Thin streams of smoke rose from its nos­trils.

“What would At­lantis be with­out sea ser­pents?” Warne mur­mured. He turned to Sarah. “Has she been be­hav­ing her­self?”

“She’s been in be­ta-​test ev­er since you sent her. From what I hear, the hourly per­for­mances have all gone off with­out a hitch. There’s been one bad habit, though.”

“Bad habit? What’s that?”

Sarah nod­ded at the ser­pent. “Keep watch­ing. You’ll see soon enough.”

Warne frowned. “Hmm. Any­way, the first two pro­duc­tion mod­els are wait­ing at the air­port. They ar­rived yes­ter­day, on a car­go plane. Af­ter I see them in­stalled, I’ll take La­dy Mac­beth here down to the lab, check for leaks or anoma­lous be­hav­iors.”

He fell silent. When he stopped to think, it seemed im­pos­si­bly strange to be here again, in Utopia, be­side Sarah. Last time, he’d been sum­moned to re­move the Metanet, to lobotomize his mis­be­hav­ing robots. But oth­er events had in­ter­vened. And now, iron­ical­ly, things had come full cir­cle. He’d made tan­gi­ble progress in his work on ma­chine learn­ing. His the­ories, once con­sid­ered rad­ical, were mov­ing in­to the main­stream. And to­day, he was back to in­stall new­er, bet­ter, more in­tel­li­gent robots.

He cleared his throat, waved his hand over the glit­ter­ing cityscape. “Well, it’s tru­ly amaz­ing, Sarah. You should be proud.”

Sarah nod­ded. “We’ve cre­at­ed a state-​of-​the-​art cir­cu­la­tion sys­tem that pu­ri­fies and dis­tributes 200,000 gal­lons of wa­ter a minute—the city of Venice has asked for a mono­graph. When At­lantis opens next month, ev­ery oth­er wa­ter park in the world will im­me­di­ate­ly be­come ob­so­lete.”

She paused, look­ing around, brown hair stir­ring in the gen­tle breeze. “We’re go­ing to be fine,” she said in a very qui­et voice.

Warne turned to look at her. The smile re­mained on her face; the sad, strong eyes were clear. And now he re­al­ized what it was that seemed dif­fer­ent. Since the first day he’d met her, Sarah had al­ways ex­ud­ed an in­stinc­tive, al­most ag­gres­sive self-​as­sur­ance. He could still feel it now, like heat ra­di­at­ing from a bra­zier; but it seemed to have been tem­pered, veiled, as if by bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence.

On the trip from Pitts­burgh, he’d won­dered just what he would say when this mo­ment came. Some­how, here in this wa­tery splen­dor, on­ly the sim­plest words found their way to his lips.

“But how are you, Sarah?” he asked.

She con­tin­ued look­ing out to­ward the spires of At­lantis. “I’m okay. Not at first. But I’m okay now.”

“When I didn’t hear from you ear­ly on, when you didn’t re­turn my calls, I was afraid that—” He stopped for a mo­ment. “Well, I was afraid that you couldn’t for­give me. For Barks­dale.”

“I couldn’t, Drew. At first, I couldn’t. But I do now.”

At last she turned to look at him. “I mean, you helped save all this. This Park is my life now, I should be grate­ful. But it’s hard, you know. Some­times, it’s very hard…”

She turned away. Warne watched her, then turned back to the wa­ter, to the leap­ings and div­ings of La­dy Mac­beth.

“You know,” he said, speak­ing slow­ly, “it wasn’t me who saved Utopia, in the end. It was Wingnut.” He stopped, re­play­ing in his head the fi­nal scene in the cor­ri­dor of C Lev­el.

Sarah threw him a ques­tion­ing glance.

“Pec­cam must have ex­plained the sit­ua­tion to your peo­ple. The ex­plo­sives on Wingnut’s back, the echolo­ca­tor we’d placed on the ar­mored car for him to home in on.”

Sarah nod­ded.

“But the echolo­ca­tor stopped trans­mit­ting. And Wingnut stopped dead when he lost its sig­nal. The whole plan was jeop­ar­dized. Al­most with­out think­ing, I or­dered Wingnut to ‘chase.’ And that’s just what he did. He chased the ar­mored car. And he stopped it.”

Sarah nod­ded again.

“But, Sarah, Wingnut was nev­er taught a ‘chase’ com­mand. It was just the op­po­site: I hard­wired him to obey the com­mand ‘no chase.’ Yet some­how he was able to parse the di­rec­tive on his own, de­ter­mine the ac­tion that had to be tak­en. I couldn’t un­der­stand it. Was it my tone? My ges­ture? Or had the ad hoc abil­ity been there all along, lack­ing on­ly some un­known pre­cip­itant? So I got cu­ri­ous. When I learned that Hard Place wasn’t go­ing to be re­ac­ti­vat­ed, I asked Ter­ri to send his log­ical unit to me in Pitts­burgh. See, I as­sumed that the rea­son he abrupt­ly turned dan­ger­ous was that he’d been in­fect­ed with John Doe’s rogue code, which I pre­ma­ture­ly trig­gered. Luck­ily, I’d man­aged to turn him off be­fore he could hurt me or any­body else at the ice cream counter. Or so I thought.”

“Go on,” Sarah said.

“When I ex­am­ined his in­ter­nal logs, I found I was right about the rogue code. It did ex­ist, it had been trig­gered pre­ma­ture­ly. But I was wrong about some­thing else. Sarah, I nev­er switched him off. The kill switch hadn’t been ac­ti­vat­ed. And yet that made no sense. Hard Place couldn’t just shut him­self off. He didn’t have the ca­pa­bil­ity.”

“But he could over­load his neu­ral net,” Sarah replied. “Force a shut­down. He re­al­ized what he was do­ing was wrong, out of line with his orig­inal pro­gram­ming. And he took cor­rec­tive ac­tion. In oth­er words, he learned.”

Warne stared at her. “You knew?”

“I read the con­fi­den­tial white pa­per you sent us on the sub­ject—and your trade ar­ti­cle, ‘Ma­chine Learn­ing Un­der Per­ceived Stress.’” She nod­ded at La­dy Mac­beth. “That’s why we wouldn’t have con­sid­ered ask­ing any­one else to build her.”

“Yeah? And all along I thought it was that cov­er sto­ry on me in Robotics Jour­nal.”

Sarah smiled briefly.

Warne stretched out his feet, put his hands in his pock­ets. Out in the still wa­ter, a school of fish passed by. La­dy Mac­beth gave a great belch of fire and took off af­ter the fish, which scat­tered in all di­rec­tions.

“What was that?” Warne said, shocked. “That’s not part of her pro­gram­ming.”

“It’s the one glitch the techs have logged,” Sarah replied. “The bad habit I told you about. She likes to chase fish.”

THE BLOND AND chrome space of the Em­barka­tion Build­ing was fill­ing up with guests, milling around im­pa­tient­ly be­yond the tick­et win­dows, wait­ing for the mag­ic hour of nine to ar­rive. Warne moved among them, Sarah at his side, scan­ning the crowd, look­ing for Geor­gia. Abrupt­ly, he spot­ted her, stand­ing be­side a met­al col­umn near the ex­it doors. She was swing­ing one leg back and forth, look­ing around, head­phones bob­bing in time to some un­heard rhythm.

Stand­ing be­side her was Ter­ri Boni­fa­cio. The bright sun­light, stream­ing in from the sky­lights over­head, gave a gilt fin­ish to the rich dark shine of her hair.

Out of the cor­ner of his eye, Warne saw Sarah pause. She, too, had seen them.

Sarah walked up to Geor­gia with her swift, pur­pose­ful stride. “Hi, Geor­gia,” she said, plac­ing a hand on the girl’s shoul­der. “How are you?”

“Not good,” came the re­sponse.

“Why not?”

“Be­cause I’m out here. My dad wouldn’t let me go in­side.”

Sarah glanced in­quir­ing­ly at Warne.

“I thought we ought to take it slow the first day back,” he said. “You know, test the wa­ters, go on­ly as far as Em­barka­tion. Turns out I needn’t have wor­ried. So we’ll come back to­mor­row, do it right.”

Sarah turned back to Geor­gia. “If you get some free time, look me up. If I’m not in a meet­ing, I’ll show you At­lantis.”

Geor­gia glanced at her with in­ter­est. “Dad’s been telling me about it. Sounds cool.”

Sarah al­lowed her hand to linger on Geor­gia’s shoul­der as she turned to Ter­ri.

“It’s nice to see you,” she said. “How’s the new job?”

“Carnegie-​Mel­lon’s throw­ing me more work than I can han­dle,” Ter­ri replied, with a smile that seemed to lend a glow to the rest of her face. “I love it. An­drew’s got me up to my—up to my chin in re­search.” Warne felt her give his hand a small, pri­vate squeeze. “If on­ly there were casi­nos and a mid­way near­by, I’d be in sev­enth heav­en.”

“Well, you can’t have ev­ery­thing.”

“I know. So I’ll set­tle for three free pass­es to the Park to­mor­row.”

“You’ve got them.”

Warne watched this in­ter­play in­tent­ly. But there was no sense of awk­ward­ness be­tween the wom­en.

Now Sarah turned back to­ward him, smil­ing. “I ought to put the dogs on you, help­ing Carnegie-​Mel­lon steal Ter­ri away from us like that.”

“You could al­ways steal her back.”

“I’ll re­mem­ber that,” she said, look­ing at them close­ly. “Give us time.”

 

ON THE TAR­MAC out­side the Em­barka­tion Build­ing, the lot at­ten­dants were al­ready in mo­tion, chore­ograph­ing the park­ing of a hun­dred cars a minute. Ar­madas of yel­low trams snaked their way be­tween the rows, leav­ing their load­ing docks emp­ty, re­turn­ing full of smil­ing, sun­glassed faces. Sarah walked them to­ward the rental car, chat­ting with Geor­gia. It was that rarest of Neva­da days, pleas­ant­ly warm but not hot.

Warne pulled Ter­ri to him as they walked. “You added that chase rou­tine to La­dy Mac­beth when I wasn’t look­ing, didn’t you? Naughty girl. You’re get­ting a spank­ing when we re­turn to the mo­tel.”

“Promis­es, promis­es. Be­sides, Wingnut wouldn’t have want­ed it any oth­er way.”

Warne turned to look at Sarah. “You know,” he said in a loud­er voice, “I nev­er did hear from Poole.”

“I did.”

“You did?”

“Got a post­card a few months ago. No name, no re­turn ad­dress, just a Juárez post­mark. He want­ed to know if that life­time pass was still good.”

Warne laughed, shook his head.

“You’d bet­ter sit in back,” Geor­gia called out to Ter­ri as they ap­proached the car. “I’m not fin­ished.”

“Fin­ished what?” Warne asked.

“Mak­ing Ter­ri ride the Scream Ma­chine with us to­mor­row.”

“No way,” Ter­ri said in­stant­ly.

“You’ve got to. It won’t be any fun if you don’t.”

“I told you, I can’t stand roller coast­ers.”

“Come on.”

Ter­ri hes­itat­ed, glanced side­long at the girl. “You’ll give me back that Brubeck CD you ‘bor­rowed’ three months ago?”

“Okay.”

“And the Art Tatum?”

Geor­gia made a face. “Okay.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Sarah laughed, held the door for Geor­gia. She watched the girl strap her­self in, then ducked in­side and hugged the girl tight­ly.

“Bye, Geor­gia,” she said.

“You mean it?” Geor­gia asked. “About At­lantis, I mean?”

“Of course. Stop by Guest Ser­vices. Your dad has my ex­ten­sion.”

Now Sarah came around the car, leaned against Warne’s open win­dow. She wore no make­up, and the bright sun­light turned her eyes a pale jade.

“Good luck with the in­stall,” she said.

He bent to­ward her, kissed her cheek. “See you round the Park.”

She smiled, straight­ened. Nod­ded.

And as he pulled away from the lot—head­ed for the in­ter­state and Las Ve­gas—Warne could still see her in the rearview mir­ror, mo­tion­less as a gild­ed shad­ow, framed against the low Art De­co lines of Em­barka­tion, arm raised in farewell.

 

PUB­LISHED BY DOU­BLE­DAY

a di­vi­sion of Ran­dom House, Inc.

DOU­BLE­DAY and the por­tray­al of an an­chor with a dol­phin are reg­is­tered trade­marks of Ran­dom House, Inc.

All of the char­ac­ters and lo­cales in this book are fic­ti­tious. Any re­sem­blance to ac­tu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, is pure­ly co­in­ci­den­tal.

Map il­lus­tra­tion by Lau­ra Mae­stro

Li­brary of Congress Cat­aloging-​in-​Pub­li­ca­tion Da­ta

Child, Lin­coln.

Utopia: a nov­el / Lin­coln Child.

p. cm.

1. Amuse­ment parks—Fic­tion. 2. Crim­inals—Fic­tion. 3. Robots—Fic­tion. I. Ti­tle.

PS3553.H4839 U86 2002

813'.54—dc21     2001059869

eIS­BN: 978-0-385-50669-4

Copy­right © 2002 by Lin­coln Child

All Rights Re­served

v2.0