It was one of those occasions, Carl thought, when diplomacy took precedence over honest calculation. "Sure," he said, trying to sound as if he was the kind of guy who could handle anything. Then, more cautiously, he added: "At any rate, I'll do the very best I can."

It wasn't easy, he realized, to be the strong right arm of a man like Dr Zarathustra. But n.o.body had ever promised him that life was going to be easy, and even if they had, experience would soon have made it clear to him that it was a d.a.m.n lie.

3.

Pasco scowled at Carl Preston, and saw him look away uncomfortably. Pasco knew that he had a big advantage when it came to scowling, by virtue of the fact that half his face was a wreck. That was one of the reasons why he'd never had the wreck fixed up, apart from the artificial eyea"and he'd deliberately chosen a new eye which looked anything but natural. Synthoflesh patching was almost indistinguishable from the real thing, even on the face, and souped-up electronic eyes could be matched so closely that you could hardly tell them apart from real ones, but Pasco was a guy who liked to disconcert people. He liked to be frightening. It wasn't difficult, given that he was such a tall mana"he towered above Preston, who wasn't smalla"and such a hard-voiced one. The face just put the final finishing touch to his frightfulness.

"I'm taking my own team out," said Pasco levelly. "I'm sorry, but I can't take you along. I know you have experience, but it's not strictly relevant to this kind of work."

"It's what Dr Zarathustra wants," Preston replied, politely but firmly.

Pasco could see how uncomfortable Preston wasa"and he knew that it wasn't just the sight of his intimidating face which created that discomfort. Preston knew well enough what he was asking, and what Pasco's response to it was likely to bea"but he was Zarathustra's man and he had to speak with Zarathustra's voice.

Pasco had a bad feeling about this one. It was all very well for his division head to make vague promises about backing him upa"but he'd been sent to see the bioscientist all by himself, in order to be briefed before deciding what to do. The fact that the chief was staying clear probably meant that the job had a high foul-up factor: it was too likely to go wrong, in such a way as to wreck someone's career. The buck had stopped with Pasco, and he had none else to pa.s.s it toa"no one in SecDiv, at any rate.

He had cooled down after his unfortunate encounter with the horrorshow booth, and felt razor-sharp; he knew that he would need to be.

"Well," said Pasco carefully. "Dr Zarathustra is an important man, and I guess he can get his own way if he wants toa"but I'd have to go on record as saying that I think it's a bad move. I know what kind of world Kid Zero moves in, and you don't. I know the kind of places we may have to go to in order to root him out, and I need a combat team whose members know the ropesa"I can't take a pa.s.senger into that kind of shooting-match."

Pasco had started out as a bounty hunter way back in the early eighties, and had made quite a name for himself before GenTech had made him an offer to make the transfer into the big league. Kid Zero had been a babe in arms back then, but Pasco had done his share of hanging out in the places which were later to be frequented by the Kid. It would have been an exaggeration to say that he knew Kid Zero personally, but he certainly knew Ace the Ace, who ran the Low Numbersa"the gang of which the Kid had once been a membera"and he didn't think it was any exaggeration to say that he was an expert. He figured he knew what kind of animal Kid Zero was, and that he understood the species. He liked to think that he was still a loner at heart himself. But for the whims of fate, he thought, he might as easily have become a gangster as an Op.

"The Doc would like to avoid a shooting-match, if it's at all possible," said Preston doggedly. "We think that the Kid probably doesn't know what he's carrying, if in fact he has the disc at all. With Blay dead, it's probable that no one else knowsa"not even the people Blay was supposed to meet out there in the desert. Zarathustra's view is that if we can move swiftly and discreetly, we may be able to save the situation before it gets out of hand. He'll explain it to you himself when we get there."

"When we get there," said Pasco acidly, " I'll explain things to him."

The corridors through which they were walking were empty of people now, but there were cameras at every intersection which locked on to them automatically when they came into view. Every move they made and every word they spoke would be recorded, digitized and stored in a memory-bubblea"which n.o.body would ever bother to play back. Total security was, in effect, no security at all until after an event, when the relevant tapes could be pulled and inspected. Pasco knew the implications of that fact, but he wasn't overly surprised to learn that a guy like Doc Zarathustra didn't. Scientists and SecDiv men lived in worlds of their own, overlapping but distinct. Zarathustra's world was full of secrets; Pasco's was full of stray information which n.o.body could quite contrive to conceal.

That was the way the world was nowadays. A guy could do more or less anything he wanted to, and skipa"but he couldn't get away with it if somebody wanted to find out who did it, and punish him. All the data was there, somewhere, and it only needed a reason to make someone start chasing it. It was like that in every GenTech establishment, and getting like that in every PZ. Privacy wasn't quite dead, but it was a short-term thing, unless you were careful to use it wisely. Pasco knew that it would be the same with the affair of the disc. A bird had been blown up, and urgent messages had been shooting back and forth through the ether. The messages themselves had been scrambled, but the mere fact that they'd been sent would be enough to make people curiousa"and once they got curious, they'd have ways and means of figuring out what had happened.

Pasco knew that it was too late to try to keep things secret. The eyes and ears of the opposition would already be glued to the ground. Blay's employers must already know that there was a game ona"all the other potential players would soon know it too.

"You've run up against Kid Zero before, then?" asked Carl Preston hesitantly. He was presumably trying to be friendly.

"Not exactly," admitted Pasco. "But we have mutual acquaintances. I've kept an eye on his career."

"Homer Hegarty seems to think he's quite a guy."

"Homer Hegarty sucks," opined Pasco. "We ought to shut the scuzzbag down instead of giving him the prime spot on our network."

"ZBC isn't ours," Preston pointed out. "It takes sponsorship from all the corps."

"It's ours," Pasco contradicted him. "We pay for twice as much airtime as anyone else, and we own twice as many of its stations. We could close the freaker tomorrow if we wanted toa"only we don't, because its our loudest voice in America. That's why letting Hegarty operate makes it look like we approve of his s.h.i.t."

"It's very popular," Zarathustra's man pointed out mildly. Pasco knew that Preston could have argued that GenTech presumably did approve, for its own arcane reasons which mere hirelings like Pascoa"despite their free use of the word "us" when talking about the corpa"wouldn't be allowed to know, but he avoided the gambit. Pasco was glad; it showed that the other man was being diplomatic.

"It's popular with scuzzbags," said Pasco sourly. "It makes them think they're bigshots when they're just little pieces of s.h.i.t. All that c.r.a.p about true freedom and the frontier spirit makes me sick. It'll give me extra pleasure when I wipe out the Kid to think that I'm putting down one more of Homer's little pets."

"The Doc doesn't want Kid Zero killed," said Preston quickly.

Pasco looked at him stonily. "Out in the field," he said, "I do what I have to do. If the Kid surrenders, that's finea"but I won't take risks for the sake of Zarathustra's preferences."

"We're all working for GenTech," said Preston soothingly. "We're all on the same side. You can't blame the Doc for taking a keen interesta"he wants his data back."

"Once data's leaked, it's gone," Pasco said, positively. "All we can do is kick a.s.s, to encourage any other weasels in the works to keep their sticky fingers in their pockets. If the Doc wants me to do anything different, I guess he can make his wishes counta"but he'll have to take the responsibility if anything goes wrong." He avoided the temptation to wink at the camera whose eye was recording his performance. The corridor mikes would have picked up every word.

They reached Zarathustra's office then, and Preston opened the door for him. Zarathustra was sitting at his desk, looking impatient. Pasco stuck out his hand and said: "I'm Ray Pasco," watching all the while to see how the bioscientist reacted to the sight of his face.

Zarathustra extended his own hand to be shaken, and looked back at him perfectly calmly. Though the blond man had all of his face and wasn't overly tall, he was obviously well-used to intimidating people himself; his blue eyes radiated iciness.

"Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Pasco," said Zarathustra, with false mildness. "I hope Carl has explained to you how I want this matter handled."

"He has," said Pasco, taking a seata"though Preston continued to stand. "Unfortunately, I have to disagree. In my judgment, we need more strength in the field, and we need to be ready to lay down some heavy fire. We need to alert all our men in the field immediately to keep an eye out for the Kid. We also need to alert all our websters immediately, to look out for any sign of anyone trying to trade or transmit the data from the disc."

"We may be forced to those extremes," said Zarathustra, grudgingly. "But not immediately. What I've read in this person's file suggests that we may be able to pick him up quietly before he finds out what he has. Do you know a place called the Underground?"

"Yes I do," said Pasco, controlling his annoyance at the fact that the blond man was treating him like a stupe. "We've got men in there, including a first-rate wire-tapper called Carey Castle. If you hadn't insisted that we do nothing until this briefing I'd already have sent him instructions to look out for the Kid. With your permission, I'll do it as soon as possible, and alert our other field agents too. Then, I'll put three platoons on stand-by and move three more out to various points in the field. That way, we can move quickly if and when Castlea"or anyone elsea"reports any sign of the Kid. The Underground is a difficult nut to crack, thougha"it'll take some heavy firepower to clean it out, if the Kid does go there."

Pasco spoke rapidly, in order to get it all on record. In a way, he figured, it might be best to be over-ruled on every pointa"that way, no one could ever say for sure that his own plan wouldn't have worked.

"Is it really necessarya"or desirablea"to think in terms of open warfare?" asked Zarathustra silkily. "I understand that we have a controlling interest in the establishmenta"that we effectively own it."

Pasco scowled, but the bioscientist didn't even blink. "Not exactly, sir," he said, stressing the sir to make it clear that he didn't mean it. "We have some control over the part of it that's run as a recstop for truckers, but it's a big place. It's an old Air Force installationa"not strike force, just bunkers and storage. It's a real labyrinth. The recreational facilities are run by a gang called the Trapdoor Spiders, who buy liquor, food and a few other things from usa"but they get most of their machinery from Mitsu-Makema and Chromicon, so no one really owns them. We have half a dozen undercover men in the place, but the info-flow there is low-grade."

"If we have men already in there," said Zarathustra, "shouldn't they be able to handle Kid Zero quietly and efficiently? He's on his own, after all."

Pasco laughed derisively.

"Not quite," he said. "He's got the Atlas Boys in there, and what's left of the Low Numbers. They'll pitch in if anyone tries to go up against him, and even if the Spiders weighed in with our boys, there'd be an unholy mess. I really think you ought to trust my judgment, Dr Zarathustra. And we don't even know for sure that he'll go there."

"Where do you think he'll go, Mr Pasco?" asked the scientist bluntly.

Pasco shrugged. "The Underground has to be the favourite," he conceded. "Buta"

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to go there yourself?" said Zarathustra quickly. "That way, if your Mr Castle reports his presence, you'd already be on the road. Don't you think that you could handle this matter discreetly and efficiently, if you could only contrive to be in the right place? It's said that you're a highly efficient operative who knows the territory wella"aren't you capable of taking on Kid Zero without a legion of armed men at your side?"

Pasco could see well enough what the bioscientist was trying to do, but he wasn't about to start making guarantees while he was on the record. On the other hand, he wasn't going to confess incompetence.

"Maybe," he said guardedly. "But Security Division policy in the event of a leak is to deploy such force as is needed to ensure that the leak is sealed. It would be risky to go into the Underground without adequate backupa"and doubly risky to do so in the company of an untrained and inexperienced operative."

"Carl is a good man," said Zarathustra. "He has my complete confidence."

"I don't doubt it," Pasco countered. "But you'll forgive me if I say that I'd prefer to take men who have my complete confidence when the time comes for me to go out on the road. In the meantime, I'd rather put every man we have on the alert, so that we can spot the Kid wherever he chooses to go."

"I don't want you to do it that way," said Zarathustra forthrightly. "If you alert all our people, you'll alert everyone else in the world as wella"there's too much danger that our quarry would be seen and picked up by our rivals. So far, neither he nor our rivals know that he's carrying anything valuable."

"We can't be certain of that," said Pasco.

"It's an acceptable risk," insisted the blond man. "I want you to go quietly, at least for a little while. Eventually, I accept, we may have to throw in everything we havea"but in the meantime, while there's a slim chance of quietly capturing the boy and retrieving the disc, I think we should try for it."

"I can't agree, Dr Zarathustra," said Pasco. "This is SecDiv business, and I have to handle it my own way."

"I'm afraid that you're wrong about that," the scientist said smoothly. "Your division chief has a.s.sured me that I will have your full co-operation in this matter, and I must insist that you try to keep the matter secret for a little while longer. I'd like Carl to go with you, when you go to the Underground."

Pasco looked at his adversary as though he were studying a centipede that had just crawled out of his sandwich. It was not the first time in his career with GenTech that he had found himself up the creek without a paddle, but it was a sensation he was never going to get used to. He had antic.i.p.ated and planned for this, but he still didn't like it.

"I'll have to check that out," said Pasco tautlya"knowing as he said it that there wasn't any point except to demonstrate what a pro he was. "And I'd like to put it on record that you're acting against my advice."

"That's perfectly all right," said Zarathustra smoothly. "I understand your reservationsa"but in this particular matter you're answerable to me as well as to your division chief. I want that disc back, and if it's humanly possible I want Kid Zero and his pet snake alive. I'll take them dead if there's absolutely no other way, but this mission will not be counted a success unless they're alive and healthy. Nor will it be counted a success unless we can achieve this end quickly and quietly."

"I understand," was all that Pasco said in reply. He wished, fervently, that his scowl might begin to disconcert the other man, but Zarathustra met his unmatched eyes with perfect equanimity, and countered their baleful gaze with a uniquely disturbing stare of his own. Pasco felt suddenly very uncomfortable, and the memory of his disappointing experiment with the Mark XIII horrorshow came back into his mind, trailing its legacy of terror. No wonder there were guys who swore blind that Zarathustra was kin to the Devil.

"I know you do," said Zarathustra, smiling thinly. "And I know that you don't approve. But I have confidence in you, Mr Pasco. Your division chief a.s.sures me that you're a very capable man, and that if anyone can save this unfortunate situation from becoming a full-scale disaster it's you. If only our rival corporations can be kept in the dark about this, we may yet escape unscathed. It really is necessary to be discreet, I a.s.sure you."

Pasco glanced at Preston, who still looked extremely uncomfortable. Pasco judged that the scientist's minder knew as well as he did that Zarathustra's primary concern was for his own position. This hopeless insistence on secrecy had nothing to do with operational efficiency, and everything to do with Zarathustra's possible loss of face.

"The word will get out anyway," said Pasco grimly. "And if we miss Kid Zero because we don't have enough back-up, things could get much worse than they already are. But I can carry out orders as well as the next man."

"Carry out these," said the bioscientist, "and I'll fix your face for free. I'll throw in a new body, too if you like."

That, thought Pasco, was adding insult to injury. "I'll carry out my orders," he said, quietly. He dared not add anything more aloud, but silently he said: And if you have any complaints about the way I do it, maybe I can fix your face. I can throw in just as many bodies as you like, Dr Frankenstein.

"Please get them for me, Mr Pasco," said Zarathustra. "The Kid, the snake, the disca"I want them all, very badly. If you and Carl set out for the Underground right away, there may be a chance that you can close the whole affair down before it gets worse. You can alert Mr Castle, if you wisha"but do so discreetly, without alerting our compet.i.tors."

Pasco was touched by the fact that the Doc had finally seen his way clear to saying please, but he wasn't about to feel grateful. He was still the poor sap who had to carry the hot potato.

"Okay," he said, philosophically. "We'll play it your way. I only hope you're right."

And if you aren't, he added silently, hope that it isn't me who has to carry the can for you.

4.

Harriet the Hooker was busy dreaming when the knock on her door woke her up.

Harriet spent a lot of time dreaming, these days. She had never been able to work out exactly what function dreaming served, in terms of wetware maintenance, but she was content to let her brain get on with its own housekeeping, secure in the faith that the machine as a whole was a good deal cleverer than that absurdly arrogant subroutine which was her consciousness, her mind and her soul.

It was a key article of Harriet's faith that the brain had its reasons of which reason knew nothing. There were people who thought she was crazy, but she didn't give a d.a.m.n about thata"she figured that hookless people were a bunch of no-good know-nothings who couldn't see past the limitations of their own narcissistic software.

She was different. She had her hooks.

Once upon a timea"though she had difficulty believing it when she looked in a mirror nowadaysa"Harriet had been a hooker in the old sense of the word. That was twenty years earlier, when she was in her thirties and still had ninety-nine per cent of the flesh that her human heritage had given her. She was in her fifties now, and was down to seventy-five per cent tops. Nowadays, no one who knew her was in any doubt that she was only called "the Hooker" because of her hooks.

She had fourteen hooks in alla"seven finger hooks of the male/plug variety, eight neck-hooks of the female/socket variety.

Every one of Harriet's hooks was different in terms of its info-flow facilitiesa"but that wasn't quite as impressive as it sounded because the more hooks hackers tooled themselves up with the more hardware defences the machine-makers worked out. With fourteen hooks Harriet could do some interesting fishing in the net, but she still needed a houseful of supplementary equipment to catch anything more than tiddlers. Her room was so full of supplementaries that there was hardly any s.p.a.ce to move around, but she was still smalltime. That didn't matter; what mattered was that she was free, independent, and answerable to n.o.body. There weren't many people who could say that, in today's world. She was free to live her own life; free to dream her own dreams.

She dreamed ordinary people-type dreams sometimesa"the kind of dreams an aging lump of wetware probably needed in order to keep its failing memory-banks in some sort of order.

Sometimes, though, she dreamed better dreams than thata"dreams which came from the other aspects of her being: dreams of infinite cybers.p.a.ce within the web-of-all-webs, and the ecstatic life of the disembodied programme.

It was a item of Harriet's faith that there was a special afterlife reserved for the electa"the elect being those who sacrificed enough of their flesh in the interests of acquiring better hooksa"which would be lived in that earthly paradise which men called the datanet, as a FLIP: a free-living intelligent programme. She believed with all her heart that she could glimpse that afterlife in the best of her dreams, and she was therefore content to dream as long and as often as her body would permit.

Nowadays, when she wasn't actually workinga"and she counted all her hooked-in time as "working"a"she tended to be zonked out on downers. She was an addict, in at least two distinct senses of the word, but didn't think anything less of herself for that. She thought of her addictions as aids to freedom rather than oppressions. In any case, no matter how zonked out she was, she was always capable of responding to incoming informationa"even when said incoming information was as crude and ugly as a knock on her door.

She didn't get many knocks on her doora"there weren't many people who actually knew how to find her door, because it was in the Dead Zone of the Underground, where even the sandrats didn't often go any more, since they had caught and eaten all the real rats. These days, it was strictly creepy-crawly territory, except for deliverymena"who usually called to warn her that they were on their way. There were other hackers in the vicinity, of course, but they would never come knocking on her door.

When she had woken up completely, she listened. If the knocker was serious, he or she would knock again; if not, she could get back to her dream.

The knock came again. Three, one, one, three. All low numbers, but all odd. That was Kid Zero's signal.

Harriet forced herself to become more fully awake, and more sensibly alert. The Kid had been a good friend to her in times pasta"a good supplier. But he usually called first. He was a very polite boy.

She checked the spyhole, and was glad to see that the Kid had a gun in his hand. That meant that he was alone, and in control. She got to work on the locks. It took time to get the door open, but she knew that he wouldn't mind. The Kid liked his friends to be careful. Those who weren't always ended up dead.

As soon as he was inside, he said: "Is this place secure?"

"Sure," she told him. "The burrowers put a couple of new wires into my equipment last month, but I'm too smart for them. I just feed 'em garbage."

"What about ordinary bugs? Micromikes and fibre-eyes?"

Her little eyes couldn't take a lot of narrowing, but she squinted at him suspiciously. Her head wasn't quite straight, because of the fuzz which the last downer had left. "This is a low-level operation I run here, Kid," she said, "and I don't turn the kind of tricks anyone would want to watch. n.o.body would bother. What's the matter, Kida"you hotter than usual?"

"I'm not sure," he told her. "Maybe not, but it pays to be careful. Lady Venom's picking up bad vibes."

Harriet looked around when he said that, just in case Lady Venom had sneaked in while she wasn't looking. She knew that the rattler could be trusted while the Kid was around, but she still didn't like the snake. n.o.body did, except the Kida"who was presumably a very special person.

Harriet cleared a s.p.a.ce for the Kid on one of her dusty old armchairs, and he sat down. Then she cleared one of her hotrings and switched it on so that she could make coffee.

"Hungry?" she asked.

The Kid nodded, and she started looking round, wondering where she might have buried the food. Kid Zero was ent.i.tled to four-star hospitality; he had brought her a healthy percentage of her recently-acquired supplementaries, and though she'd paid him for all of them, she still figured that she owed him in the subtler currency of favours and goodwill.

"You need anything else," she asked casually, while she was rooting around, "or is this a social call?"

"I had to come to you first," he said cryptically. "I'm not quite sure where else I need to go. Maybe you can help me decide."

"You want me to go fishing for you?" she asked.