‘That might be what they’ve turned out to be,’ she said. She spread her hands. ‘I didn’t even suspect they’d affect you. Honest.’
‘So why did you come here?’
She told him. He sat down again, with his head in his hands. After a minute he looked up.
‘Fucking great,’ he said. ‘You’ve put something in my head whose military applications alone are to die for.’ He grimaced. ‘So to speak. We are both in deep shit, lady. Deep-technology shit.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that! So let’s get out of here, get to Norlonto. We’ll be safe there—’
‘Safe from Stasis, sure.’ Kohn licked his dry lips, shivered. ‘Listen to me. Something I do need to tell you. It gets worse.’
‘How?’ She sounded like she was daring him.
‘You thought I was tripping. Hah. That’s what it felt like. Then I started mainframing as well.’
‘Why?’
‘It wanted—’ he stopped. ‘I wanted – oh, shit. First there was these, you know, patterns. They came in my head, then they came on this screen. And the gun. I’d left it in intrusion mode, looking for traces of your project.’
He smiled at the annoyance on her lips.
‘SOP, I’m afraid. You’re dealin’ with a ruthless mercenary here! Anyway. Then there was a trip. Weird stuff, but what d’you expect? A virtual environment. An electric animal. A sinister old woman, who turned me into a sinister young woman, for a while. Meeting the Old Man. In my case the figure of ancient wisdom happens to be Trotsky. A life-and-death struggle with a figure of evil, which the animal helped me to win.
‘After that it wasn’t normal at all. It was like I was communicating with another awareness. In the system, in the nets.’ He jerked his head to indicate the terminal.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Janis said in a jaded tone. ‘And then you talked to Gawd. Big white light, was it?’
He didn’t have to close his eyes, now, to see inside himself. He could hold it, just there, on the edge, watch all that furious activity and hold back from the urge to rush and push. Right now he could see the anger coming, like vats of molten lead being winched to a battlement. It was all right, it was all right.
‘Don’t patronize me,’ he said. ‘I know exactly the experience you’re talking about. I’ve had that. This was another trip entirely. Something different. I talked to an AI, and I woke it up. Something in the nets that wanted a piece of information from my memory. Wanted it bad. And because of your drugs, found it. It was like it knew about me. Knew me.’
He thought of what Catherin had said about computers that’ll remember us, and shivered again.
‘Why do you think it knew you?’
‘Something I remembered,’ he said. ‘I could remember everything then, but I can’t now. Not without—’ He realized he had everything still to learn about how to track down the memories he now knew were there. ‘There was something – just before. A memory from way back. From when I was a kid. The information it wanted was a piece of code that I saw on the screen of my father’s terminal. And there was a memory just before that. It came to me like being reminded of a phrase I’d overheard: the “star fraction.”’
He could see no sign that it meant anything to her – and his own mind slipped again and he remembered being asked what he remembered about the star fraction (no, it was a proper name, it was the ‘Star Fraction’), and he remembered that at the time he could remember nothing, tell nothing—
‘And then what happened?’ Janis asked. Kohn jolted back to the present.
If I could tell you, if I could make you see it.
‘Creation,’ he said.
She was facing away from him, looking at him sideways. His cheeks ached as if he’d been smiling for a long time.
‘As in “Let there be light”?’ she asked.
‘Yes!’
Janis took a deep breath. ‘Look, Moh, no offence, OK? You’re still telling me things that sound very like what would have happened if you’d just stuffed your face with magic mushrooms. We can find out if your memory’s been affected. I’m desperate to find out. Maybe you did fire up some wildcard AI. All the more reason to get the hell out of here. What I need to know right now is, are you fit to get us out?’
He thought about it. Strange things were still going on in his head, but the basic equipment was functioning as normal. He could tell; that was one of the things that was strange.
‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘If that’s a contract, lady, you’re on.’
Janis nodded.
Kohn disconnected the gun from the terminal and put his gear back on.
‘For a start,’ he said, ‘let’s mosey over to your lab and get your magic molecules to a safe place.’
Janis felt as if part of her mind were still way behind her body, running to keep up and not at all convinced about the direction she was running in. They walked back to the biology block through a brief flurry of black snow. Janis tried to flick off every flake that landed on her blouse, and got only grey smudges for her trouble.
In the lab she found a polystyrene box, and started chipping ice from the freezer compartment. Kohn loitered suspiciously in the doorway.
‘Funny,’ Janis said. ‘The ice is melting in here really fast.’
Kohn looked at her, frowning. His eyes widened.
‘Stop!’
He lunged forward and hauled her back from the fridge, then pushed her to the floor. There was a hiss and flash from the freezer.
Kohn toed the fridge door open and snatched the rack of test-tubes. The terminals began to smoke. More sputtering flashes, flames.
‘Time to go,’ he said.
A smoke alarm sounded, a needling beep. Then it too shorted out. Smoke crowded down from ceiling level as they retreated. Kohn shut the door and hit a fire alarm.
He and Janis joined the general evacuation, ignoring the occasional queer look. The snow had stopped. A few dozen people milled around in slush, waiting to be checked off by their safety marshals. A siren dopplered, approaching.
This time Janis had her jacket. She pulled it around herself and shivered. Kohn was swearing to himself.
She dammed his flood of obscenity. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Demon attack,’ Kohn said. ‘A logic virus that gets at the firmware of the power supply, timed or triggered to produce a nasty electrical fire. Something’s fighting back through the system. Defence mechanisms, all right! Set up like antibodies for just this contingency. Damn. I should’ve thought.’
‘But that’s my work,’ Janis said. She felt she was about to cry. ‘Up in smoke. And all the poor little mice.’
‘Near enough painless,’ Kohn said. ‘And the project’s over, don’t you see? It’s worked. You’ve built the monster. It’s roaming the countryside. That fire probably came from the cranks. High-tech version of the crowd of peasants with torches. What we have to worry about is the mad scientist, whoever that is.’
Janis thought about it as insurance-company firefighters ran past.
‘I thought I was the mad scientist,’ she said.
‘Nah,’ Kohn said. ‘You’re just Ygor.’
She pulled a face, hunched a shoulder.
‘And the monster?’
‘Me,’ he said.
‘I thought you meant this AI of yours.’
‘That too,’ Kohn said. ‘By now it’s probably blundering around in the milieu, the nets, triggering alarms and generally raising hell.’
Janis found herself grinning. ‘I can believe that,’ she said, ‘if it’s picked up anything from your personality.’
‘Still want to go with me?’
‘If you’re going to Norlonto, yes.’