“You mean they live beyond our zone.”
“Many of them live beyond any net whatsoever. Many don’t. This gateway I’m about to show you—as best as we can tell, it leads to conduits that constituted the center of this city’s power grid in the year 2060. It’s been buried a long time. We thought it no longer existed. And we might still be right. It might not be active anymore. In fact…”
He keeps on talking, but Haskell’s scarcely listening. At least not consciously. It hardly matters. What matters is that his words are confirming the glidepath down which her run’s going to slot. Visions burn through her brain: images, plans, recollections. The wrinkles of the old man’s face. The walls of that room. The surface of that sea. She sees once more those sterile corridors. Once again the codes course through her. The operating systems and the software of half a century back crystallize inside her mind. The parameters of the still-functioning nets of yesteryear echo through her head. They burn within her skull, flare behind her eyes; they course straight through her, and all the while that pale gaunt face keeps talking.
“See, Claire,” it says. “We’re not idiots. We’ve long suspected the Jaguars have a net of their own. That they’re not just coordinating between cities by means of couriers. And we’ve long suspected that net’s physical. Our jamming mechanisms are too good for them to use wireless in any but the most tactical of situations. Which means they run that net through wires that lie beyond our maps. But the problem is that what’s beyond those maps is also out of our control. As out of control as this city. If there were more of a government here, we could clean them up comprehensively. But outside our own fortresses, law’s a product of the street. That leaves a lot of net-fragments remaining for the Jaguars to exploit. We’ve shut many down. But there are many others. Some of them are linked. Some aren’t. Some are just islands. Maybe this one is too. We don’t know. We’ve been looking for a way in from our zone. We’ve been looking for a way in from any of the fragments we know about. So far we haven’t found one. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t one. As you well know.”
“I do,” says Haskell, and she does. She knows that when a layperson says zone, they think of something monolithic, something sleek and grey and all-encompassing. Something that couldn’t be further from the chaos of the truth. A tangle of interfaces, a web of trapdoors, mirrors, dead ends: layer upon layer of construction, some of it fitting evenly, much of it not, so much of it built at cross-purposes, or simply without coordination—as uncoordinated as the traffic that flows through it. All that data skating over all the ice that crusts above a sea of legacy. Rarely does anything go any deeper. Unless you’re talking about something that’s pretty covert. And you can pursue that covert data if you like, can dig in that sea’s own bed through the strata of bygone technology, back through quantum cables, back through fiber optics, back through copper wires, back through what’s abandoned—or at least uncharted. As uncharted as the link to an antique power grid might be…
“But we found it,” says Morat. “On the ninety-fifth floor. X marks the spot. We dug in the place where we were told, and we found it.”
“And now you want me to crawl in there.”
“And get on the trail of the Jaguars’ net. And if you find it—if there really is a link between these wires and their lairs—then come back without tipping them off.”
“Who I am coordinating with?”
“Me.”
“I mean what other razors? What other mechs? I’m assuming this is part of a combined operation?”
“Sure it’s a combined operation. But you can leave all that to me, Claire. The word’s come down from the old man himself. Both kinds of runners hit this city tonight. The razors work the wires and the mechanics kick in the doors. But the razors aren’t working the mechs’ leashes. Not this time, anyway. The whole thing’s too compartmentalized. And your part is crucial. What you’re crawling into could be the lair of the Jaguars. Or it could be nothing.”
“Or it could be a trap,” she repeats.
“Or it could be a trap. But if it’s not, we could end this war tonight. You could, Claire. We need someone who can get in there without triggering any alarms. Someone who can tell us where to strike. We need your talents, Claire. It’d be worth a lot to your future.”
“So would living,” she replies. “How secure is this perimeter?”
“As secure as I can make it. This place has been swept. Along with this whole block. It’s clean. If they have anything rigged, it’d be inside the zone itself.”
“Great. And if I find something?”
“Map out the physical locations of the executive nodes of that network. And then get out.”
“In that order?”
“In whatever order you can manage.”
“Right,” she says. She breathes deeply. She looks around her. “I’m ready to do this.”
“Excellent.”
“You’re acting like I have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, Claire.”
“Can we get out of this shaft?”
“We can.” He turns to the wall panel, adjusts the controls. They start to descend. They gain speed, hissing down through scores of floors. They slow. They halt. The door slides open.
Nothing. There’s nothing here. It’s as if there never was. Marlowe’s making his way down ladders and stairs and through trapdoors and it’s as if they’ve all just been dormant, waiting for his presence. Yet he can feel the presence of the ones he seeks close at hand. The force they have in here probably isn’t large enough to set up watch over the whole building. They’re probably keeping as low a profile as possible. But sooner or later he’s going to reach their perimeters.
Probably sooner. For now he’s reached apartments that are inhabited. Open doors give way to living quarters—laundry hung all about tiny chambers, kids squawking, mothers screaming. Marlowe moves through them like a ghost, his suit’s camo cranked up as far as it’ll go, letting him take on the ambience of wall, of doorway, of ceiling—whatever surface he’s in front of at whatever moment. The most trouble he gets is from a dog that won’t stop barking. It knows something’s up. But Marlowe ignores it, becomes one more thing in that animal’s life that’ll never reach the lives of the humans who feed it.
He descends through several more such levels. He steps over sleepers, moves past men and women engrossed in card games, drinking, laughing—he reminds himself it’s Saturday night, wonders how much it differs from all the other nights that go down in this city. Truth to tell, the cities up north aren’t that different. They’ve just got more money to blow on this kind of thing. Not to mention a better chance of surviving to see tomorrow’s parties.
But the lower he gets, the more the ones going on around him fizzle out. Finally he finds himself moving through deserted halls once more. Most of the overhead lighting’s gone. And now Marlowe’s circuits are humming. His heads-up’s giving him the alert: there are sensors in here. There are wavelengths brushing against him like cobwebs. But his suit’s camoed in more than just the visible spectrum. It’s state-of-the-art.