He had tried giving it natural language commands, but either the system was not set up that way or it was pretending not to understand. All the pain he could inflict on it had not made it communicate, which had left him only able to reshape things that already existed—mutation gradients, sim replacement algorithms. Such limitations were frustrating, and the need to work with the vagaries of a network that should have been his like a cheap whore offended him.
One thing was clear: if he wanted to find Renie Sulaweyo and Martine Desroubins and the others, he needed to be able to use the system in a more sophisticated way. Jongleur's own agents were hopelessly flawed, based on what was happening in the bugworld. Dread was also beginning to think nothing else in this virtual world could be nearly as interesting as getting his own hands on the real people who had defied him. And he would take such magnificent revenge when he did! Something fabulous and inventive and achingly slow. Surely the mind that had imagined flaying the leading citizens of Rome, then turning their skins into hot air balloons set aloft with their families clinging to the bottomless baskets—surely a mind of such artistry could deal with his few remaining enemies in a way that would be truly awesome, even . . . beautiful?
Dread slipped into a half-sleep, floating in his white palace, chasing ideals of pain and power that others could not even imagine.
The elevator seemed to take a long time to go down ten floors. Anger made him tight all over, hot and full of pressure. When the door at last whispered open, Paul thought he might explode out into the reception area like boiling blood out of a hemorrhaging artery.
There was no one at the reception desk, which was just as well—he didn't much like the pale, angular young woman who usually sat there, and didn't want her to see him screaming like a maniac. He walked around the curved room, just composed enough not to trip over any of the stylish and expensive Rostov Modern furniture, and laid his hand on the door panel.
His first reflexive thought at seeing them huddled close together at the desk, the small neat head almost touching the shiny bald one, surprised even him.
They know all the secrets. All the bad secrets.
He stood in the doorway, suddenly aware of his own breach of propriety, his own relative powerlessness, and the self-righteous fury cooled. But there was another side to his upset, the silly, embarrassing part of him that believed all those childhood ideals, the ones he had dragged with him through school like a ragged coat despite manifest evidence that it was going to lose him more friends than it gained. No sneaking, no grassing—he still believed it. Duty and fair play. All that high-minded public school nonsense, which the children who had been born to it had discarded while they were still in short pants, but which to a scholarship boy like himself was exotic and precious.
He looked at the two of them, silent and oblivious to the intruder, undoubtedly communing through some cordless connection—Paul himself didn't even have a neurocannula, further proof of his old-fashioned hopelessness—and could not help feeling exactly like a schoolboy again. He had come to scold the older boys for not playing fair, but now that he was alone with them, he knew that what he was going to get was a terrible beating.
Don't be stupid, he told himself. Besides, they don't even know I'm here. I can just turn around and come back later. . . .
The eyes of the small one came up, flashing behind the spectacles, giving the lie to his self-reassurance.
"Jonas." Finney stared at him as though he had arrived naked. "You are in my office. The door was closed."
His companion Mudd was still oblivious, staring at nothing, a grin of disturbing pleasure stretching his lips.
"It's just. . . ." Paul realized he was short of breath, his heart beating now not from anger but from something closer to fear. "It's . . . I know I should have phoned first. . . ."
Finney's face was so pinched with disapproval that Paul actually felt his anger smoldering up again. This wasn't school. Nobody was going to thrash anyone. And he had a bone to pick with this little shrew-faced man.
Mudd abruptly surfaced, touching his hand to his neck and then turning his piggy eyes toward Paul. "Jonas? What the hell are you doing down here?"
"I've just talked to a friend of mine." Paul stopped to take a breath, then realized he was better off forging ahead while his courage held. "And I have to say, I'm very upset. Yes, very upset. You had no right."
Finney tilted his head as though Paul were not only naked but frothing. As the angle changed, the nearly invisible overhead lights turned his spectacles into two blank bars of white. "What on earth are you babbling about?"
"My friend Niles Peneddyn. He was the one who recommended the job to me." Paul took another breath. "He said you contacted him."
One of Finney's eyebrows rose, thin as a fly's leg. "He recommended the job to you? That's droll, Jonas. He recommended you to us—and a good thing, because Mr. Peneddyn, unlike yourself, is of a well-known family and has excellent connections."
It was a line of insult he knew well. He did not let it distract him. "Yes. Yes, that's him. He said you contacted him."
"So?"
Mudd leaned his huge hip against the desk like an elephant scratching its hide on a tree trunk. "What exactly is your problem, Jonas?"
"I just talked to him. He was very concerned. He said you told him there was a problem in my relationship with my pupil."
"He recommended you to us. We wanted to make sure there was no mistake—that he had not simply done a favor for someone he didn't really know."
"What problem?" Paul had to struggle not to shout. "How dare you do that? How dare you call my friend and suggest that there's something . . . irregular in my conduct?"
If the moment had not been of such high seriousness, Paul would have almost thought Finney was hiding a laugh. "Oh, and that upset you?"
"You're damn right it upset me!"
A few moments went by. In the silence, Paul's memory of his own voice grew louder and louder, until he began to suspect he had actually shouted at his multtzillionaire employer's right-hand man.
"Listen, Jonas," Finney said at last, all trace of humor certainly gone now. "We pay close attention to all our responsibilities—Mr. Jongleur is a very, very bad man to displease. And we happen to believe that there are . . . tendencies in your relationship with your pupil we don't like."
"What tendencies are you talking about? And what are you basing this on?"
Finney ignored Paul's second question. "There seems to be too great an emotional attachment developing between you and Miss Jongleur. We don't approve, and rest assured, her father would most definitely not approve either,"
"I . . . I have no idea what you're talking about." he shook his head, but his courage was flagging. They must know something about the secret meetings, he felt sure—he should never have let himself get into such a position. Damn his own tendency to let things happen to him! But if they guessed even a little bit of what was going on, wouldn't their response be far more draconian than simply a call to Niles. . . ?