Hammerjack (14 page)

Avalon allowed him to step through first. The way was still obscured by fog, augmenting the clink of his steps against the metal grate beneath his feet. By the time he reached the glass wall, the air had cleared enough for him to find his reflection in the surface—Avalon still partially obscured in the background, keeping the ever-present watch. Shifting his focus forward, Cray looked past the transparent barrier and into the secret the Collective had buried here—one so well kept, even the most skilled hammerjacks never caught scent of it.

There were seven sarcophagi—one for each man who found a sort of immortality here. They were reverently arranged in a perfect circle, an incandescent aura raining down on them from floodlights in the ceiling. A small team of specialists tended to the vessels, closely monitoring the faint life signs of what remained of the Assembly’s human bodies, pressure suits protecting them from the extremes of temperature and vacuum that existed inside the chamber.

“Why?” Cray asked.

“The Assembly decided this was the most efficient way to maintain consistency within the body of the Collective.”

“You mean the best way to make sure nobody new comes in and alters their plans,” Cray observed. “How long have they been like this?”

“This facility has been operating for just over a century. Before that, nobody really knows for certain.”

“And you managed to keep it a secret.”

“Knowledge is limited to the corporate boards and the few people who work here,” Avalon explained. “Induction into the
Yakuza
is mandatory for all of them—even the non-Asians. After that, they are required to take the oath of silence. Anybody who breaks it is subject to the usual penalties.”

Cray turned back toward her. “They make you do the same?”

“Nobody makes me do anything, Dr. Alden.”

Avalon walked past him, down a narrow gangway that wound its way to a control bunker for the cryofacility. As Cray followed, the nagging sliver of paranoia he had brought with him from the hotel began to rub him raw. He knew about
Yakuza
culture—he had seen more than his fair share of it in the Zone—and was aware of how those tentacles reached into the corporate world. It was why companies kept old bangers like Phao Yin around. But Cray had never imagined blood oaths taken in the boardroom.

That left him in a dangerous position. Cray was hardly a made man—and now he knew the Collective’s most guarded secret. They were bound to take steps to ensure that information never made it out to the street. The
Yakuza
were obligated.

Cray wished he had never come here.

A spiral staircase at the end of the gangway led down to the bunker. Sentry cameras followed Cray the entire way, laser range finders mapping the contours of his body for identification, comparison, and tracking. By the time he reached bottom, the computer had created a precise mathematical representation of him. From here on in, he was alive only as long as that construct remained active. If the computer determined he was a threat and terminated it, his death would follow a short instant later.

Entry to the control bunker was less sophisticated. Avalon simply knocked on the titanium alloy door and waited for someone inside to open it.

One of the technicians—a tall, gangly man with pasty skin—answered. His eyes had the dazed, detached expression of a person more accustomed to dealing with machines than people. He did, however, know Avalon.

“I thought you were kidding,” the man grumbled, glancing over her shoulder at Cray. “
This
is the hotshot everyone’s been talking about?”

“Evan,” Avalon said, “this is Dr. Alden.”

Evan stifled her with a wave of his hand. “The less I know about him the better,” he shot back. “Just get him in here so I can get the prep work done. We’re already behind schedule.”

“I’m afraid to ask,” Cray said. “What exactly does he have in mind?”

“He’s granting your request to meet with the Assembly.”

“What’s he going to do? Thaw them out?”

“No,” she answered. “He’s going to make a map of your mind.”

Evan hunched over the only virtual terminal in the control bunker, bony fingers moving across the input interface in a blur. The display showed a pair of EEG lines moving in almost perfect concert with each other. It was when they diverged—even in the slightest—that he showed his disgust with an irritated sigh.

“Tell him to try it again,” he said to Avalon.

“I heard you,” Cray spat back, already tired of the procedure. It was better than a direct interface, but not by much. “Just shut up long enough for me to get a little focus.”

He was laid out on a probe table, the top half of his skull under an electrochemical resonance imager. Evan transmitted a random series of three-dimensional images into the ERI, each time measuring Cray’s response to them. He then painstakingly traced the neural pathways in the cognizant areas of Cray’s brain, trying to match those impulses with the artificial ones generated by the Assembly’s imaging system. The technology was old—there had been little use for neural imaging since direct interface had become a working reality—but at least it was noninvasive.

“Okay,” Evan said, letting the lines play themselves out for a few more seconds. He didn’t sound at all satisfied—only resigned that this was as good as it would get. “It’s borderline synchronization, but I think it’s enough to make it work.”

The ERI retracted, and finally Cray could get up. “Did I pass?”

“Barely,” the technician retorted, turning back to Avalon. “I’m not guaranteeing the image won’t flake out. The whole thing could collapse while he’s in the imaging chamber.”

“Just hold it together as long as you can,” she told him, then went over to Cray. He stood in front of the virtual display, looking at the model that was his mind. The numbers seemed infinitely complex, deftly interwoven, surely the design of a higher power—but quantifiable nonetheless.

“You think that’s all there is to it?” he asked. “Just a bunch of figures, arranged in the right order?”

Avalon was quiet. The pause was enough to grab Cray’s attention, and when he turned to her he thought he saw
hesitation
there.

“Perception makes the reality,” she said. “Past that, it’s only chemicals and meat.”

Cray flashed a wry smile, then shot a look at Evan, jerking his thumb toward the mind model. “You’re gonna erase that thing when we’re done, right?”

The man snorted. “It ain’t going in my collection.”

“What a relief. So what’s next?”

Evan rolled his chair over to another control panel, wiping the dust off and flipping one of the switches. The panel lit up, and on the opposite end of the room Cray heard a hiss as yet another door opened. It led into a small vestibule, with room for only one person inside. The interior space was featureless, except for the photophores embedded in its walls. They glowed a multitude of colors as light bounced off, shifting as the viewing angle changed.

The technician smiled, showing off a mouth full of polished teeth.

“Step inside, cowboy,” he said.

When the door closed, Cray was in darkness.

The chamber filled with the sound of his breath, the smell of his sweat. He was accustomed to tight spaces, but the oppression of his body heat soon gave rise to the notion that the walls were closing in. Cray knew it was all psychological—maybe even a game run by his congenial host—but knowing that wouldn’t prevent the panic of sensory deprivation. Jerking his head back and forth, he searched the blackness for anything he could seize upon, his arms reaching out so that he could steady himself against the walls.

But nothing was there.

He felt just the opposite. The space
expanded,
the realization of it drowning Cray in a vertigo of empty space. The violent transition almost made him sick, and he found himself stumbling. He could have been running—Cray didn’t know, because he lacked the reference points to orient himself. He only knew that he wasn’t
floating
because of the tangible presence of ground beneath him.

Then sound: a steady thrumming, off in the distance.

Then light: barely a stab, a spearhead in the darkness.

Reality assimilated.

Cray expected a chorus of sensation exploding upon his plane of vision—but it was all just
there,
as if it had appeared under the most ordinary of circumstances. Light shimmered through water, his awareness fixating on a drape of bubbles—thousands of them—pushing their way upward in an endless stream, consciousness rising with them. Microcosm then shifted to macrocosm, a recession that dropped him into a larger world that materialized at the same pace he became aware of it, components pixelating into just the right proportions to create form out of the void. He found himself staring through the glass of a saltwater aquarium—tropical fish swimming through a tiny continuum of coral, a single sea fan waving in the gentle current. One of the fish stopped briefly to gaze at him, then realized its folly and moved on.

The thrumming he had heard continued: a pump motor in a reassuring drone. Cray’s first notion was that he might be
inside
the aquarium, but the idea quickly passed as he felt himself sitting down in a couch of plush leather.

Turning outward, Cray found himself in the waiting room of a small office. A coffee table snapped into focus in front of him, on which he saw a stack of old magazines. He stood, his eyes coming across several empty chairs, walls containing nondescript art, a few potted plants, and a lonely coatrack standing just inside a frosted-glass door.

Then another sound—different, chaotic, frenzied.

Tapping,
coming from behind him.

Cray spun around, and discovered that he was not alone in the room. A young woman—a secretary—was banging away on a typewriter, her attention intently focused on the page in front of her. Slowly, uncertainly, Cray walked over to her desk.

“Excuse me—”

She hit the wrong key and stopped typing. “
Shit,
” the woman said, ripping the sheet of paper out of the typewriter. “Goddamn carbon copies. Always happens when I get to the end of a document.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, whatever.” She looked up at him. “You here to see the Assembly?”

“That’s the idea,” Cray said, still trying to get his bearings. “Don’t know if I’m in the right place.”

The secretary was unimpressed. “Here,” she said, pulling out a clipboard with a sign-in sheet attached. “Name, address, and phone number—and don’t put down anything phony. That really pisses off the boss.”

Cray scribbled down the information and handed it back to her. She looked it over. “Out-of-towner, huh?”

“You could say that.”

“Most of them are.” The secretary reached into her desk and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lighting up as she hit the intercom buzzer. “Dr. Alden is here.” She exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.

“Wonderful,” came the reply. The voice was polite, with a strange accent. “Please send him in.”

The secretary pointed to the wooden door behind her desk. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” Cray told her, going over to the door and placing his hand on the knob. He glanced back before turning it. “Got any advice?”

The secretary took another long drag, leaving a smear of bright red lipstick on the butt of her cigarette. Her eyes were worn and wise, in spite of her youthful appearance. But that was all it was—an appearance.

“That’s what I thought,” Cray said, and went inside.

It was a frosty hell. Enough to bite straight through his clothes and singe his skin, tapering off to establish a kind of equilibrium—a shift as radical as when he first arrived, but when he looked down he stood upon different ground.

Gravel. Stone. No floor—only bare soil.

Weathered soil, having seen the abuse of the elements and the ages—the telltale signs of a forsaken place. Cray was aware that he no longer had a doorknob in his hand. Instead, his arm extended to a canvas tent flap fluttering above his head.

The welcoming ebb of a real fire brushed against his face, while a cold, harsh plume pushed against his back, ushering him into the tent. The howl of the wind outside told him it was a constant companion there—like a lonely, pained animal forever wanting to get in.

Cray studied the interior. He was in a large tent—too big for a single person, with piles of mountain gear strewn about the place. He noticed several tables littered with tin cups and dirty plates, leaving him to wonder if he had somehow interrupted lunch. Taking a walk through, Cray poked at the backpacks with his foot and examined the remnants of the meal to find any signs of recent activity—but he found only dust. Nobody had touched anything for some time.

But what about the fire?

The warmth emanated from a pipe stove at the center of the tent. Cray went over and warmed his hands, the licking flames and rising heat an alien presence—as alien as he was.

“Where
is
everybody?”

“We’re here,” somebody answered. “You just have to know how to look.”

The voice came from one of the corners of the tent—
appeared
was more like it, much like the man to whom the voice belonged. When he stepped forward, Cray was amazed at how he could have missed anyone of that size. The man wasn’t tall, but the breadth of his shoulders was easily twice Cray’s own. His arms looked as sturdy as steel ropes, folded in front of a barrel chest—the physique of a man who spent his life living at altitude.