A smartframe handled the telecom call-a program construct requiring only a modest amount of active memory. The moment the call was complete, the frame switched itself off.
By then, Piper was streaming down the datalines of the Secaucus Local Telecommunications Grid. The planar geography of the matrix here reflected the real-world terrain. System constructs like giant factories and massive towers rose toward the starry dark and the distant nebula of access nodes to the regional grid. Piper noted the hexadecimal addresses passing around her, then cut a hard left to the matrix equivalent of Executive Row.
Constructs like office towers and mansions soared up around her. The one she wanted looked like a small castle crowned with a decahedral globe, the insignia of Kuze Nihon, a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo. The castle itself and the computer systems it represented belonged to Maas Intertech, headquartered off West End Avenue in Secaucus.
Piper drove straight at it They wouldn't see her coming.
Once the slag in the suit departed, a pair of guards in crisp blue uniforms appeared hi front of the paired doors of the main entrance of Shiawase Compudyne. The obvious implication was that Shiawase had decided, for whatever reason, to tighten up security a little, or at least put on a nice show. The guards stood there like soldiers on parade. They didn't bother Rico one bit.
Tune to start breaking some laws. Rico didn't care much about the law, because the law worked for the corps and the people who wrote the laws, the ones with money and power. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Any man with morals knew what was right and what was wrong, and, with a little thought, could figure what had to be done about it. Sometimes it took a few busted laws to get things set the way they should be.
Whether the law agreed or disagreed was something for leeches like lawyers to argue about Bandit followed the last of the bags of gear into the hole. Dok, meanwhile, had dropped the big orange-and red-striped hose from the air compressor into the hole, then joined Filly in feeding a line like a heavy-duty extension cord into the hole. The air line and power cord were just stage dressing, making things look right, no less than Rico getting into and out of the stepvan numerous times and tapping the keys of the palmtop.
Five minutes more and Rico put his genuine C. L. P. hardhat on again and climbed down the metal rungs of the access shaft to the utility passage below.
The passage was almost three meters high, but little more than a meter across. That was just the available space. Cables, pipes, and conduits ran up one wall and down the other, making the ceiling maybe a half-meter lower than it otherwise would have been. Small lighting fixtures ran down the right-hand wall at intervals of about ten meters. These were lit.
At Rico's feet lay several black duffels. He picked up the one marked with a big numeral one and started up the tunnel. Even with the bag of gear, walking was no problem. Trying to run through a space this narrow would be another story, but Rico wasn't planning to do any running.
About a hundred and fifty meters up the tunnel, Shank had hung an IR blackout sheet from the ceiling. No one looking up the tunnel would see beyond that sheet, regardless of vision enhancements. Rico checked while approaching, shifting his Jikku eyes to IR. The sheet's only purpose was to prevent anyone who came down the manhole from immediately detecting what was happening beyond the sheet.
Another hundred meters further on, a second tunnel led off to the left at ninety degrees. Shank waited there at the corner, suited up and ready for action: ballistic mask, flak vest, Colt M22A2 assault rifle slung from his shoulder, Wallacher combat axe and other gear slung from belts and crossed bandoliers.
"Status," Rico said.
"Don't ask me," Shank grumbled. "All he's done is stand there like that."
Dressed in his black trench coat and wearing his sword, Bandit stood about five meters into the side passage. Maybe an arm's length in front of his face the tunnel ended in a brick wall. The pipes and conduits lining the tunnel passed right through the brick barrier.
The plan called for Bandit to use his shaman abilities to scan ahead into the tunnel beyond the brick barrier. Just as a precaution. Once sure the tunnel was clear, they would take down the brick barrier. Rico watched Bandit and wondered. The problem was being able to tell when the shaman was actually doing magic, when he was out of body, and when he was just staring, thinking, maybe working out some problem.
If there was a problem, Rico wanted to know about it now. "Bandit," he said.
Abruptly, Bandit shook his staff. The elaborately decorated head of the staff briefly rattled, then Bandit murmured something soft and low, his voice rising and falling like a song. The song descended into silence. Bandit stood stock-still for several moments, then swung his staff to the horizontal, and held it pointing at the brick barrier.
Nothing much seemed to happen. Rico waited till Bandit turned back and looked at him, then said, "Ready?" Bandit replied, "When you are."
The System Access Node had the look of a spacious lobby, enormously broad, fronted by transparent panes, and outlined in computer-simulated representations of sizzling neon.
Across the front of the SAN lobby, a hundred transparent doors slid open and shut as datapaks and message units in the form of green-uniformed messenger icons arrived via the rounded conduits of a hundred datalines.
Inside the lobby, the messenger icons waited on violet-shaded lines pulsing through the floor, leading to the service desk subprocessing unit at the head of the node lobby. White-uniformed control modules slaved to the SPU directing the messenger icons to the chrome-mirrored walls at the left and right of the lobby. The messenger icons moved briskly up the lines, then across the front of the service desk to the sides of the lobby, where they vanished into the mirrored walls.
All very orderly and precise.
Piper stepped forward, following the pulsing violet line in the floor. To the messenger icon directly ahead of her, she said, "Excuse me, please."
The messenger icon looked back over its shoulder, then stepped briskly put of her way, shunting to the violet line to their immediate right. The message icons there adjusted position so as to maintain then: proper intervals. Piper advanced. The other messenger icons ahead of her in line looked back and shunted out of her way as well, permitting her to walk directly to the service desk SPU at the head of the node. One of the white-uniformed control modules there watched her approaching and bowed.
Bowing in return, Piper announced, "Priority user requesting interface with Facility Engineering subprocessing unit."
A window framed in gleaming orange opened directly in front of her face. The enormous floating eyeball of a Watcher 7K access IC gazed directly at her. Standard U.M.S. iconology for Intrusion Countermeasures programs, as expected. Her own masking utility was already on-line. She wore the elaborate costume of a traditional Japanese geisha: makeup, hair, kimono, and sandals. Her kimono, a brilliant white, was decorated all over with the decahedral logo of Maas Intertech's parent unit, Kuze Nihon.
The giant eyeball of the Watcher IC retreated into its window. The window closed and vanished.
"Circuit twenty-two oh-five," said the white-uniformed control module behind the service counter, pointing left.
Piper turned and followed another gleaming violet line to the wall of mirrors, then stepped straight into the wall. Firing herself down another dataline and out across the amber-gridded night of the Maas Intertech computer network.
The run was on.
11
Rico motioned at the brick barrier.
Shank stepped forward, edged past Bandit, and attacked the brick with his Wallacher combat axe. The brick and mortar split and crumbled like an old plaster wall in some derelict tenement. After the first few blows, Shank began using his free hand to tug chunks out of the barrier, the pieces bursting into dust between his fingers. The noise level was minimal. Rico gave Bandit an approving nod, but the shaman didn't seem to notice.