No treehouse ever had a view like this. Through the twelve square, recessed windows that ringed the room’s circular walls could be seen the entire cityscape of St. Louis, from the weblike streetlights of the western suburbs, to the long dark patch of Forest Park in the center of the northern plain, to the lighted skyscrapers of the downtown area, with the Gateway Arch rising in the distance as a giant silver staple against the eastern horizon. Even if the camper lamps had been switched off, the observation deck would have been bright with the city’s nocturnal shine.
Yet there were other lights inside the observation deck as well. Two portable computers arranged next to each other on the floor beneath the eastern windows emitted a frail blue glow that silhouetted a figure seated before them.
The man turned around to look at us as we entered the cupola, then he grunted as he pushed himself off the floor and walked into the lamplight.
“Mr. Rosen-” he began.
“Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.”
The man whom I had first seen a couple of days earlier at the reception didn’t seem to be insulted. “My friends usually call me Dick,” Richard Payson-Smith said sotto voce as he proffered his hand. “I trust you’ve met my loyal assistant Igor.”
“We’ve talked.” I reached out and grasped his hand. Oxford accent and all, Richard Payson-Smith wasn’t quite what I had expected. I had anticipated meeting a priggish, humorless academician, the stereotypical British scientist. Payson-Smith, firm of handshake and gawky of build, resembled a weird cross between King Charles and Doctor Who.
“Sorry to have put you out so much,” he went on, releasing my hand and stepping back a little, “but it’s important that you see what’s going on right now.”
“And that is …?”
He idly scratched at his bearded chin as he turned toward the two computers on the floor. “Well,” he said in a thoughtful drawl, staring at their screens, “if we can get our friend Ruby to cooperate, we’re trying to plumb the eidetic memory of the world’s first fully functional artificial life-form, ruin my former employer, bring down a powerful conspiracy within the United States government, and save our arses.”
“That’s all?”
“Hmm. Yes, quite.”
Morgan and I chuckled as Dick shrugged beneath his dirty fisherman’s sweater and glanced back at me. “Not necessarily in that order, of course,” he added, “but who’s counting? Want some coffee?”
“Thanks, but I brought my own.” I pulled the still-unopened can of beer Chevy Dick had given me out of my jacket pocket. Morgan watched with frank envy as I popped the top and took a swig.
“Suit yourself.” Payson-Smith walked across the room, knelt beside the propane stove, and picked up an aluminum pot from the grill. “I’ll settle for this bitter swill … as if I haven’t had enough already.”
I watched as Tiptree’s former chief cyberneticist poured overheated coffee into two paper cups. Dr. Frankenstein or not, the man looked skinny and vulnerable in the dim lamplight. He was clearly uncomfortable, locked away in a cold, dark castle that vaguely resembled the Bloody Tower. “So,” I said after a moment, “what’s with the setup here?”
“Hmm? The computers?”
“Uh-huh.” I walked over to the two laptops on the floor. The one on the left was a new Apple, the other an old, heavy-duty Compaq; they were hardwired together through their serial ports. An external hard drive and a small HP Deskjet printer were tucked between them. “I take it you’re interfaced with Ruby.”
“We are.” Payson-Smith stood up, handed one coffee to Morgan, then walked over to join me. “We’re linked with Ruby Fulcrum through cellular modem … and, by the way, we’ve got them running off the tower’s electrical current, in case you’re wondering … and we’ve been running two programs since we moved in here.”
He lowered himself to the floor in front of the two laptops; I squatted on my haunches next to him. “This one,” he said, pointing to the Apple on the left, “is running a search-and-retrieve program through all the government databases it can access … ERA, other federal and state agencies, municipal government files, subcontractors to Tiptree, whatever it’s been able to burrow into.”
I looked closer; page after page of computer files flashed rapidly across the screen, pausing only long enough for a black cursor to skim through the lines. Every so often, the cursor would pause and enclose a particular word or phrase within a blue box before moving on again. “We’re using a hypertext feature,” Richard went on. “Ruby has been taught to look for certain key words and names. When she finds occurrences of these words or names, she copies the file containing them in a subdirectory elsewhere in her network and adds a coded prefix next to it. Later on, Jeff and I sort through those documents and find the ones pertinent to our interests.”
“Which are …?”
Richard took another sip from his coffee and scowled. “Damned stuff tastes like ink,” he muttered and put the cup aside before looking at me again. “We’re collecting evidence of the conspiracy, including tracking down as many participants as we can find. When we’ve compiled enough documentation, we’ll edit the whole thing and have Ruby e-mail it to as many news agencies and public interest groups as we can.”
“Such as newspapers, TV networks?”
He nodded quickly. “All that, yes. We’re also sending copies to the ACLU, Public Citizen, the Rainbow Coalition, the three major political parties, various other nongovernment watchdog organizations, and so forth.”
“And the Big Muddy,I hope.”
Payson-Smith smiled. “And your own paper, of course. In fact …”
He pointed to the stack of printout I had noticed earlier. “In fact, you’re going to get the scoop on this before anyone else. That’s the first batch from our search. Everything we’ve found about ERA’s involvement in St. Louis, including the development of Ruby Fulcrum itself and the Sentinel program … it’s all in there, or at least as much as we’ve printed so far.”
He frowned as he glanced at the printer. “Just as well, I suppose. The blamed ink cartridges are beginning to run out on us …”
Who cared? I would have settled for dry impressions on paper. I started to stand up, but Payson-Smith grabbed my arm, stopping me from diving into the stack. “Look at it later,” he said. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg.”
I wrenched my eyes away from the printouts, gazing again at the Apple laptop. More documents flashed across its screen; I caught a glimpse of the ERA logo at the top of one page. “ERA doesn’t know what you’re doing?”
Payson-Smith shook his head regretfully. “Unfortunately,” he said, “since they’re aware of Ruby’s very existence, they must know what we’re up to. She’s already informed us of a number of virus hunter/killers that have been introduced in the net during the last twenty-four hours. Ruby has no trouble tracking them down and deciphering their source codes, but we’re still afraid that the opposition may get wise and develop a program she can’t defeat.”
“ERA shut down a few nodes within the last few hours,” Jeff Morgan said.
He stood at a window behind us, peering down at Grand through the eyepiece of a Russian-made night-vision scope; no wonder he had been able to see me coming through the park. Morgan was probably the serious camper who had outfitted this hideout, considering all the outdoors supplies they had up here.
“They’ve also gone dark on several frequencies,” Morgan went on, watching the street intently. “They figured out that Ruby can scan cellular channels, so they’ve been using some other means of communication we can’t intercept.” He shrugged. “Semaphore, sign language, I dunno what, but they’ve got to be getting desperate by now.”
“Sure sounds like it.” I thought for a moment before the obvious question occurred to me. “If you’re using cellular modem, can’t they trace the signal?”