"Sure." Petra looked at Suzanne. "You following this?"
"I only speak French and English."
"You hang around with buddy boy long enough, you'll get fluent in Geek for sure."
"For God's sake," said Josh. "Now, a second pool with whose user ID?"
"Same as the first session pool. I log on, create a new pool, it picks up my user ID automatically."
Josh smiled. "Automatically is the keyword du jour. Substitute a subclass instance for the controller, and you can adopt chief security officer privileges."
"You're joking."
"If someone's installed a monitor, like some old Observer pattern – distributed across the net and with heavy use of proxies – then you're effectively screwing with its Observers list." Josh pushed a memory flake across the table. "That's all you need. There's another copy of the bot code, too."
"Good, cause I deleted the one you sent me. Just as well, since we had an internal audit including full phone scan today. Bastards."
Suzanne took a sip of air, realised she had finished her coffee, and put the cup down.
"Have you changed your mind, Petra? Before, you didn't want to help Josh with the search, and now you do, is that right?"
"Kind of. This monitoring shit doesn't add up."
"I don't really follow what you've been saying."
"That's just shooting the breeze about the security design and how to slip past it. You asked who's observing, and I said official authorities, but I really mean Five, or someone like them."
"Five?"
"MI5, sweetheart. The big boys, and the reason that doesn't add up is that if they were looking for young Richard, they'd have found him by now." Petra's cheekbones appeared to sharpen as her mouth tensed. "In whatever condition."
Oh, God.
"They've got a monitor on anything to do with Broomhall," said Josh. "He's flagged as need-to-watch. It's got all the signs, hasn't it?"
"Looks that way. Either he's been a naughty boy or he's crossed people in the corridors of power."
Suzanne did not see how this prevented people doing everything they could to search for one missing boy. Or perhaps she did. People saw intricate fictions all around them in the workplace, exactly as real and exactly as imaginary as the airborne chemicals in an ant nest that drove the behaviour of every member, including the socalled queen, who was a captive breeder more than a ruler, every ant existing in its place, carrying out its role in the emergent behaviour of the nest-as-a-whole.
"What are you thinking?" asked Josh.
"About ant nests, and the way people behave."
"Whoo." Petra raised her glass towards Josh. "She's too deep for you, mate."
"We're just… Never mind."
"So, you two are OK getting back by yourselves?"
"Sure."
"Then I'll see you."
Petra stood, tugging down her I FIGHT LIKE A GIRL sweatshirt, outlining her breasts. Perhaps it was a distraction for the men in the bar, because the memory flake was gone from the tabletop, though Suzanne had not seen Petra pocket it. Then Petra turned, revealing the back of her sweatshirt – another friendly message: CASTRATION? IT'S JUST LIKE SHELLING PEAS – and left.
"That was abrupt," said Suzanne.
"Just her way."
"But she's going to help."
"Because she likes my hack. First, it's elegant. Second, it exploits a ShieldIx feature she didn't know about. Hardly anyone knows."
"Really." Suzanne put her fingertips on the back of his hand, felt an electric fizz, and withdrew. "That's not why she's helping you. The word, I think, is smitten."
"Jesus, not you as well." Josh stared at the exit Petra had left by. "She happens to be gay, you know."
"Actually, I got that. I stand by smitten."
"Oh, please. Isn't there anyone who can rescue me?"
Suzanne tried not to think too much about the meaning of her response, knowing she could shut up, but saying it anyway.
"Maybe there is."
[TWELVE]
Trafalgar Square, early. Quite why he had walked here, Richard did not know. The atmosphere around the fountains was odd, just a few homeless people – people like me – sleeping on the benches, roused and rousted by cleaning staff. Commuters were waiting at the bus stops and streaming toward their offices; down here it was too early for tourists. It was as if the old statues and monument had a viscosity that slowed their passage through time, as if their awakening came later than the streets. Wanting to be different from the others groaning awake on the benches, Richard pulled off his garish sweatshirt, quickly replacing his cap on his head. With luck, he looked like someone on his way to school, not a vagrant. But he wondered, as he saw the grime on the clothes of those who had slept here overnight, how long he could pass himself off as normal, how long before he became invisible like these others.
"I'm sorry," a turbaned worker was saying to someone, no, two people, "but you have to move on. Here, this'll get you breakfast."
"You're very kind, young man."
"Why don't you pop over to the station for a cuppa? They'll let you sit a while."
The vagrants he was addressing were a white-haired couple, their clothes frayed but not stained, fragile faces clean but not fresh. They were rosy-cheeked from sunlight, and they smiled at the man for his kindness. Richard could only stand and watch them walk away toward Charing Cross, where they might have an hour or two sitting on hard metal seats before someone moved them on. As they walked, the woman slipped her hand into the man's, and they continued on with the delicate, heartbreaking sweetness of aged love.
It's not supposed to be like this.
There are no comfortable places to sit – or lie down – in the external world of stone and concrete buildings. Indoors, there are few places of refuge for someone who has no money to pay. Already he was learning the hardness of the world. He felt like a swimmer far from shore, face dipped beneath the surface for longer and longer periods of time; soon enough he would be under and sinking.
"It's not right, is it?" It was the man in the turban, addressing him. "An old couple like that."
"Er… No, sir."
"Which is why you work hard in school, isn't it? My daughter is top of her class."
"Oh. Good."
The man's smile was disconcerting in its warmth, shaming Richard for not revealing his true nature: a runaway, and worse. I'm a criminal now. Inside that college, he'd handed over contraband – drugs or who knew what – and if he hadn't dodged the cameras as well as he'd intended, then the police would be hunting him down. Maybe he should try to get away from London. But nowhere was under tighter surveillance than the railways.
"Hallo, Richie-boy," said a familiar voice.
"Jayce!"
"Vodka Mary saw you head across Vauxhall Bridge. Thought I'd follow."
"Who's-? Never mind."
The expression on the turbaned man's face seemed to be melting downward. Richard's stomach lurched with shame.
"I get ya," said Jayce. "Come on."
They moved through well-dressed crowds, heading along the Strand. In shop doorways, the destitute sat awake or still slept, under shabby blankets or cardboard boxes. Soon they would have to move as the businesses opened. At least one form was so still that it could be dead; but no one was checking. Richard felt sick as he kept pace with Jayce, because he was like the rest, doing nothing to help. From some doorways came "Spare any change?" – directed to those who had money, not toward two homeless youths encroaching on choice territory. Hard looks sent a message even Richard could read, however confusing he found this new world.
In the shops, glowglass windows doubled as display screens, reporting the morning's headlines: WEST MIDLANDS FLASH FLOODS, 22
DEAD; VIOLENT CLASHES BETWEEN CHINESE CONGLOMERATES IN AFRICA; PM
BILLY CHURCH GAINS 43% LEAD IN POLLS… He tuned it out, for they were meaningless signals, no more relevant to finding something to eat than the weather on Jupiter or the beating of pulsars beyond the galactic rim.