For a moment the room was out of focus.
"Are you all right?" Michelle asked. She'd got up to stand beside the bed, looking concerned.
Josep lifted his foot, taking the pressure off the wound. The pain eased immediately. "I'm fine."
She gave him a tentative smile. Josep waited. But for once she didn't rush over and embrace him. He wondered what was wrong with her. Did she think he was seeing another girl? Please, not that, not now, he prayed.
He gave her a quick kiss. There wasn't much of a response. "There's a problem," he told her. "I have to talk to Ray. Get the stuff, will you? I'm going to move it out of here."
"Why? What's happened?"
"Nothing to worry about." He sat down on the bed and pulled the desktop pearl toward him. There was still nothing from his d-written neurons, just that faint background buzz. That made him pause. What the hell could knock them out of kilter for so long? Every other enhancement d-written into his body seemed to be working fine.
"What is it?" Michelle insisted.
"Okay, look, the controller called me. Z-B has been sending askpings into the university network, checking up on student files. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, but we have to be careful. I'm going to move out for a few days."
"I don't like it."
"Neither do I. I'm sorry, but we have to be safe. You'll be fine. Now just get the stuff, please." He requested his Prime from the desktop pearl's memory blocks. The pane flashed up an invalid request icon.
The remote spoke the command with its associated code, but the desktop pearl didn't respond. An invalid request icon appeared in the pane.
Josep stared at it, not understanding. "Damn it!" Where had the Prime gone? If he could just interface directly ... He wondered if he should call Raymond without using Prime protection. Michelle was still standing behind him, watching.
"Are you going to get the stuff or not?" he asked.
"I don't want you to go."
"Damn it." He told the desktop to call Raymond.
* * *
Simon's DNI was giving him a comprehensive display of the Durrell datapool architecture, the graphics generator riding on the AS's monitor program. He saw the placement ping flash across the entire datapool. Josep's call was to a personal portable address. Wherever the individual was, the nearest datapool node would route the call straight to them. A node in the Silchester District started to establish the link. The entire Silchester datapool crashed.
"What happened?" Simon asked.
The AS reported that its monitor program had been discovered and identified by an unknown program. The Silchester District had crashed immediately.
Simon was impressed. All the gadgets they'd taken from Josep had self-destructed as soon as Z-B's technicians had started to examine them, vaporizing evenly from the surface inward. An analysis of the gas residue had revealed some extremely unusual and complex molecules. It would seem their software was equally sophisticated.
The desktop flashed up a receiver-not-found icon. Josep regarded it with growing concern. Even if the datapool couldn't make the link, Ray's Prime would have intercepted the call placement ping and responded.
"That shouldn't happen."
"Perhaps he's switched off his bracelet," Michelle said.
"Maybe." Josep looked round the room, deeply uneasy. Something was wrong. Why couldn't he get any kind of interface with a Prime?
"Did Ray call?"
"No."
That wasn't right, either. Ray would have known within an hour at most that the break-in had gone wrong. One of the first things he'd do was call Michelle.
He stood up and faced her. She returned his gaze levelly.
Michelle would never do that. She'd either blush or grin happily, lovingly.
"You still haven't got the stuff," he said lightly.
"I told you, I don't want you to go."
"Oh hell," Adul said. "He's suspicious."
"It was always going to happen," Simon said. "Just a question of when." He looked over at Josep. They'd suspended him in a total reality immersion suit, not too dissimilar to Skin: a tactile emitter layer surrounded by artificial muscle to stimulate all levels of physical contact from the water splashed on his hair to the feel of the shirt fabric. It hung from the center of a gimbaled circular frame, allowing them to orientate him to match his personal inclination within the world created by the AS—though the jump had taken it right up to the limit of its replicant ability. Fiber-optics had been inserted through his corneas and pupils to shine directly on the retinas. The projection had zero-zero resolution: perfect.
The big pane on the wall in front of Simon showed the simulation that the AS had fabricated. So far the illusion had been flawless. Josep had believed completely in the spaceport administration block and the journey through Durrell. Even Michelle's room was exact, thanks to the data from the hominoid remote; not just the colors and proportions, but the texture and temperature of the bed and desktop pearl as well. Duplication of inanimates was always easy.
It was where the subject interacted with other people, especially unknowns, where problems and errors began to creep in. If it was someone the AS had no background profile for, their behavior and responses had to be estimated from context. Once a mistake was made, the effect would rapidly multiply until the entire environment simply became unsustainable. And in this case the AS had to try to realize both Michelle and the strange software in a believable fashion from the absolute minimum of data.
Nonetheless, Simon was content with the procedure. After witnessing for himself how extraordinary the intruder was, he had been convinced that a standard interrogation would prove useless—a decision that was endorsed by the subsequent cellular-level scan of their unconscious prisoner. Doctors and biotechnicians had been fascinated by the profound changes made to his body and were completely unable to explain how any of them had been performed. The number and nature of exotic microparticles was astonishing. Some of the experts were still debating whether he was a human who had been improved, or an alien that had been modeled into human form.
For all the prisoner's physical prowess, Simon had glimpsed enough of his mind to see the human emotions within. It was enough for him to launch the attempt at virtual chicanery.
As far as he was concerned, it had now paid off handsomely. They had garnered several vital leads, especially the girl, who was definitely an ordinary human.
"Where is the stuff?" Josep asked softly. "In fact, what stuff?"
"Don't," Michelle said. "Please."
"Who?"
"What?"
"Who? Who am I?'
Her expression crinkled up into misery. "What are you doing?"
"What's my name, Michelle?"
"Just stop this. It's not nice."
"Uh-huh? You know, for someone who's only been away for an afternoon, I'm very hungry." He bent down and picked up an old pizza delivery box. There was still a sliver left inside. He put it in his mouth and started to chew.
Simon's magnetic sense caught the emotional content washing through the prisoner's brain. It was changing rapidly, confusion giving way to a tide of bitter resentment.