There was a moment of silence. "You know, lady," Beezle said admiringly, "you got a certain style."
"And that is all I have, at this point. But thank you."
"So . . . so we're okay to go ahead?" Ramsey still sounded as though he were a few streets behind. "Set off the . . . the smoke device?"
"The bomb. Yes. Why not?"
"We'll be careful, Olga. We've got the ventilation diagrams—we'll keep a close eye on everything. . . ."
"Please, Mr. Ramsey. Catur. Just do it before I lose my nerve."
"Right. Right." He took a breath. "Make it work, Beezle."
"Okay, here goes. Three, two, one—bingo!" He fell silent as though watching something. Olga could not help wondering what a software agent saw—shapes? Colors? Or did it just read raw data, letting it flow past and through like a sea anemone sifting the ocean currents? "Yep. We have ignition!" the agent said cheerfully. Olga closed her eyes and waited.
"Shouldn't I have been in one of the elevators already?" she asked as the door closed behind her. "To save time?"
"We got smoke on three levels now, boss," Beezle reported. "Moving up fast, too. Since they were marked on the diagrams, I disabled a couple of the seal-off valves."
"Too risky," Ramsey said, answering Olga's question. "That's also why we're starting you from close to the top. We don't want anyone paying any more attention than necessary, so we're waiting until we know the guards have already started the fire procedures. Any alarms yet, Beezle?"
"Yeah, a bunch. Sellars prepared some virals to confuse things, though—change the outgoing codes on the alarms and send 'em to the wrong authority or make 'em give the wrong location information. They haven't even gotten word to their own firefighters down on the military base yet. It'll take at least a quarter of an hour before anyone off the island figures out what's happening, maybe longer."
A blatting noise began to pulse through the walls, a sequenced honking of robotic terror as though the building itself had smelled the smoke and taken fright.
"Here we go," Ramsey said. "Key the floor number, Olga, and let's see if the changes to your badge work."
She did, then clapped her hands over her ears. The alarm had jumped a notch in volume. "I can hardly hear you!" She imagined the sound shaking the walls as smoke billowed through the lower levels, the weekend employees running in terror, the few remaining cleaners, janitors—poor, slow Jerome. . . ! "What's going to happen to the people down there?" she asked in sudden dismay. "You said it wasn't toxic, but how will they breathe if it fills up?"
"It won't fill up," said Beezle in his cabdriver's growl. "I'm venting—makes it look better, anyway. Security is getting calls from all over the island."
"You're moving," Ramsey said with relief as the elevator rose.
"I know."
"Sorry, of course. I'm just watching you here. Up, up, up." He sounded almost giddy. Olga felt as though she had left her stomach behind.
"Are there still guards in security?"
"Doesn't look like it," Ramsey told her. "They're probably already trying to get people out of the building."
"Lots of activity downstairs, no activity on the security floor monitors," Beezle said. "But when the door opens, don't go in right away, got me?"
I take orders from a toy, she thought. "Got you."
She waited in the elevator at the forty-fifth floor, feeling Ramsey and Beezle at her shoulders like invisible angels. The alarm was still blaring mindlessly. They don't need to get the alarm calls on the mainland, she thought. They will be able to hear this all over Louisiana.
"Still no movement," said Beezle. The door hissed open.
There was no one in the tastefully-lit reception area but the screentop desk had been hit by the automatic override and instead of woodland scenes it now displayed a map of the floor with the exits blinking red. The alarm was more distant here, as though the upper part of the building was built of some heavier, more soundproof material, but a secondary alarm whispered through the air, an irritatingly calm female voice instructing whoever was listening to "proceed directly to your designated escape location."
Some of us do not have designated escape locations, dear. The door at the back read her modified badge and pinged open. Even with Beezle's report, she still went through it like a trainer entering the cage of a particularly unpredictable animal.
The guard area was empty, the neon data-hieroglyphs on the plexiglass walls like cave paintings of a vanished race. The calm female voice kept urging her over and over to go to her escape location but Olga was finding it easier to disregard now.
She presented her badge to the reader set into the thick plastic. The door opened immediately, as though pleased by the visit. She quickly crossed the glassed-in area to the black fibramic shaft she had seen the first time. Sure enough, there was an elevator door set into it and a black reader plate beside the door. She took a breath and held up her badge. An instant later the door slid open, revealing an interior covered in some expensive kind of leather.
"It worked!" Ramsey sounded like he had been holding his breath.
"How can you tell? It didn't make any noise."
"Your ring. I've got the camera ring sending because we're going to need it. I saw the doors open."
But the doors in question had already closed again, this time with her inside, and the elevator was moving effortlessly upward. Three seconds, five, ten. . . .
"It's only supposed to be one floor up," she said. "Why is it taking so long?"
"Thick floors," said Beezle. "Just thought you might like to know, they're evacuating a buncha people out the front door now. Still no fire engines, nothing like that. I think Sellars may have had something else set up, too, to make sure everyone cleared out."
"What do you mean?" Ramsey asked.
"I'll tell you when I know."
The elevator stopped. The door opened into an airlock. Briefly, recorded messages about security and clean room procedures battled with the escape announcement, then gave up as the airlock door reader responded to her badge and the inner door hissed aside. Olga stepped out.
Her first thought was that she was watching a netflick, some science-fiction epic in full wraparound. It was harder work to convince herself it was real. The entire floor was one open room with only a few structural pillars to break what seemed like tens of thousands of square meters of floor space, and most of that space seemed to be covered with machines. The machine barn had no windows, only a continuous expanse of curving white wallscreen, currently painted with the escape route maps that had preempted the building's regular programming. The room was massive and, but for the quiet robot voice, as silent as a museum after closing. It was unreal.
But it was real.
". . . Directly to your designated escape location. Repeat, this is not a drill. . . ."
"Oh, God," Olga said. "It's huge."
"Lift the ring," Ramsey told her, his voice sharp with anxiety. "We can't see anything but the floor."
She made a fist and held out her hand, pointing it aimlessly down the rows of stacked, silent machines. She had thought the collection of machinery on the lower floor was imposing, but it was like comparing a toaster to the engine room of an ocean liner. "What . . . what do you want me to do?"
"I don't know. Beezle?"
"I ain't so good at reading visuals," the agent rasped. "Lotta translation effects, back and forth. But I'll give it my best shot. Just start walking. Give me a view side to side, will ya?"