Hex (7 page)

“Who is it?”

“I'm Bob Tarrell, of the Tarrell media corporation,” he told it, looking up at the security camera. Its light was turned on even though no image had appeared on the screen facing him. “I live in the Complex.” He waited a while and was about to speak again when the main door of the apartment slid smoothly open.

A girl was standing there. She was dressed in black, the color complementing her stark black hair and her black eyes, dark against her pale face. She was frowning as she looked at him.

“Have you come to complain about the music?” she asked, before he could speak.

“Definitely not,” he assured her. Then he extended his hand. “You must be Elizabeth Black. My daughter knows your cousin.”

“She does?” The girl raised her eyebrows, then abruptly smiled, taking his hand in a firm grasp. “I'm sorry, Mr. Tarrell. Please, come in.”

Inside she took a moment to key the music down to a barely audible hum and offered him a drink. He accepted the offer of sake and the girl collected two cups from the Nutromac, handing one to him.

“I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tarrell,” she told him. “Your corporation pretty much dominates the British media, and maintains a presence in the European Federation in general, I believe.”

“You flatter me, Miss Black.” Bob smiled. “It will be a while yet before the Tarrell corporation makes a real name for itself in Europe.”

“Elizabeth, please,” she told him, and he nodded.

“Elizabeth, I hear that you're a researcher for a US vidchannel. My daughter's friends met your cousin this afternoon at Arkade.”

“News travels quickly,” the girl replied, flashing him a quick grin.

“It does in the Belgravia Complex.” Bob smiled back. “And, seeing as we're in the same business, I was naturally interested. I'm afraid I haven't heard of AdAstra before though.”

“It's still only a small channel,” she replied smoothly. “But we hope to move on to bigger things. One of the reasons Kez and I are here is to investigate the possibility of a British connection. Do you think your corporation would be interested?”

“Perhaps,” Bob replied cautiously. “I'd certainly be interested in discussing it with you. But I'm not quite sure how well your style would succeed in Britain.”

“Ah, yes.” The girl stretched like a cat and studied him with dark, unreadable eyes. “How much do you know about my channel, Mr. Tarrell?”

“Only that it's centered on alternative rock of the late twentieth century. My daughter couldn't tell me much more. But even that seems a pretty radical approach.”

“In the present climate, the more radical a channel is, the better,” she stated seriously. “And AdAstra's following, although small, is very devoted.” She gestured at the stacks of lasdisks in the lounge. “This kind of music has a cult status. The mood of the late twentieth century was very dark and its music reflects that. A lot of people find it very addictive.”

“You are obviously one of them,” he said and Elizabeth inclined her head slightly in assent. “I think I'd like to know more about your channel,” he told her. “And particularly about this music.”

•  •  •

Bob Tarrell had intended to stay for only about fifteen minutes. He ended up staying for over an hour. During that time, Elizabeth had played him several tracks from her vast selection and given him a comprehensive induction into twentieth-century music. Of everything she told him it was the expression “cult” that had interested him the most. Alternative music with a cult status would be a new departure for him, but it was the kind of thing that might generate the interest he needed in his failing channel. By the time he finally left Elizabeth's apartment he had already decided how he would alter its format, with the help of AdAstra's young researcher. And he had invited both Elizabeth and her cousin to his get-together that weekend. He was almost certain that, by then, she would be his star guest.

•  •  •

Kez realized that something must have occurred to calm Raven down by the time he and Wraith got back to the apartment. The music was no longer painfully audible, and was playing at an acceptable level as they entered the door. Raven had been watching the vidscreen but she looked up as they came in. She looked as if she was gearing herself up to be angry again, but her expression changed as she saw Wraith's face.

“What happened?” she asked in surprise.

“The CPS took Rachel over a year ago,” Wraith told her levelly. “It seems my search is over.”

There was a silence in the room, broken only by the pulsating beat of the music, still playing in the background. With a quick flick of her wrist Raven turned it off.

“I want to know everything you've got on this adoptive family,” she told Wraith.

“Why?” Kez asked. “It won't do any good now.” Raven flickered a glance at him.

“Rachel never showed any signs of being a Hex when I knew her,” she said. “I want to know what made the CPS find her out.” She took the flat black disk Wraith was handing her and turned to the computer terminal. “And if she's dead, as you obviously think, I want to know exactly when and how she died.”

“How could you find out?” Wraith asked coldly, sitting down on the dark red couch. “And why do you need to? Everyone knows Hexes are exterminated when they're discovered.”

“I'm suspicious of things that everyone knows,” Raven said shortly. “And, as to how I intend to find out, I'm going to hack into the CPS's own records.” She smiled ferociously. “Believe me, Wraith. I'll find out the truth of what happened. Nothing can stop me now.”

Raven sank into the computer
like a swimmer into the sea, immersing herself in the electronic labyrinth. It was a maze to which only she had the key and she moved through it like a goddess, contemptuous of the pathetic attempts of human users to fathom its fascinating complexities. It was easy for her to be seduced by the glowing trails of information pathways, leading away from her in all directions, but she concentrated on the focus of her search—the name Rachel Hollis.

Raven did not move straight to the CPS's databases. Despite her confidence, she as yet had no idea how she would find those records. So her first action was to stream down the net toward the computer system of the British government. This was one of the most impressively shielded systems in the country, but no computer could hope to be secure from Raven. However, it put up an amusing resistance. As she entered the system an automatic watchdog program intercepted her.

> request authorization please? <
it demanded.

> correct authorization submitted—doubleplus priority user <
Raven informed it, snowing it with information. She had penetrated this system many times before and the challenge was decreasing exponentially with each attempt.

> authorization validated. pass user <
the watchdog replied and with that the system opened itself to her. Disgustingly easy, Raven reflected as she streaked through the access node; she could have designed a better security system in her sleep.

Deep inside the government system now, she paused a little and allowed fragments of her consciousness to snake out in all directions, searching according to the parameters she had already set. She relaxed, sinking into a semi-aware state, feeling her sphere of influence extending all around her. Suddenly there was a tweak at the end of one of her tendrils of thought. All the others raced to meet it. It was another access node, leading into a secondary system. Raven could not have explained how, but she knew that what she sought lay beyond that gate. Another watchdog approached. Raven didn't wait for it to question her. Instead she overwhelmed it with a stream of authorizations.

> open sesame <
The gate swung open at her command.

The new system felt darker, there were more shielded databases, security hung over everything like a fog. But none of this impeded Raven. It took her microseconds to identify the system as that belonging to the Security Services. One more microsecond and it was completely under her command. She hadn't entered this system before and therefore took slightly longer to explore it. She was reassured to find no record of her existence in the database; Wraith was equally invisible to the Seccies. A flicker to the edge of her search parameters informed her that Kez had two convictions for theft. A thought erased the data; Kez became invisible to the system. Then she found it. The contents of a datafile filled her mind. A Security Services team, accompanied by three CPS operatives, took into custody a ten-year-old Hex named Rachel Hollis on the fifteenth of March 2366.

Raven imprinted the contents of the file on her eidetic memory, but did not erase the original from the system. Among the threads of data that accompanied the file was a string of numbers and characters designed to execute a lead away from the government system to an alternative address. Raven dived through the net, information whirling above and beneath her. The location of the system she was heading for was more impressively shielded than anything she'd seen before and her search took her on a roller-coaster ride through the net. Any other hacker would have been shaken off long ago but Raven found it as exhilarating as the flitter ride she had forced Kez to take. She felt the same way about speed as she did about loud music—the more of it the better. Finally she crashed through four secured nodes in a row before coming to rest at the main entrance to the central system of the CPS.

The gates into the system were firmly shut; no watchdog program waited for her outside. With a mental shrug Raven exerted a little pressure and the security sprang to life with the most advanced question and answer routine she had ever encountered.

> ?who <

> accepted user <
she told it.

> ?authorization <

> authorization provided <

> password <

> correct password. <
Raven was disappointed. It was easier to fool this system than she had anticipated. It was designed to catch out an illegal access attempt by requesting certain responses. But Raven, deep in the heart of the net, need only tell the circuitry that she had provided the correct answers for it to believe her. In another few microseconds she had gone through an elaborate sequence of security protocols none of which put up the slightest resistance at all. Finally the system delivered itself up to her just as absolutely as the government system had.

> you may enter. database records/programs/operating specifications of this system are at your disposal. <
If Raven had been present in the flesh she would have laughed. The system of the main agency for exterminating Hexes had just thrown itself open to one of them without providing any resistance at all.

But entering the system did not automatically provide Raven with the answers she needed. It took her a while to find the entries for the date 15.03.2366. And more microseconds passed before she located the entry she wanted. It was three lines long.

> at 1400 hours three cps operatives (names appended) collected suspected hex—rachel hollis—from her place of residence. at 1530 hours the hex was delivered to dr. kalden. background trace results in database. <
Raven called up the database and discovered that the CPS had traced Rachel as far back as her adoption in 2361 by Carl and Vanessa Michaelson in Denver, Colorado, USA. They had even discovered the specific orphan asylum and it was at that point that Raven discovered the single most alarming line of data that had ever drawn her attention.

> ?siblings ?hexes. initial search = no results. ?indepth search <

For a moment Raven considered erasing the whole entry, the whole database if necessary. She would have been prepared to crash the entire system to protect herself. But a moment's thought assured her that this was unnecessary. Instead she appended an addendum to the file.

> indepth search completed. results negative. no siblings exist. results confirmed. no further investigation possible. <
Having achieved what she considered the most important point, concealing her own existence, Raven continued her investigation, centering in on Dr. Kalden.

She discovered something surprising. Raven had never bothered to think much about the CPS. Her priority had been to stay out of the sight of any official databases and out of the way of any security services. Gangers in Denver had considered that hiring Raven was worth the trouble of putting up with her difficult personality because she was so meticulous in keeping them out of the sight of the law. But now that Raven was actually inside the system of an agency devoted to exterminating Hexes, she found it was not exactly what she might have expected.

The European arm of the Center for Paranormal Studies was run by Governor Charles Alverstead, who was politically responsible only to the central parliament of the European Federation. But underneath him was a whole host of operatives who were responsible for the day-to-day running of the agency. From what Raven could discover they were apparently divided into three main categories. Two of these were what she might have expected. There were the administrators and investigators whose work was to track down suspected Hexes. Then there were the operatives who processed known Hexes to the death chambers where they were given lethal injections to exterminate them. All of this was what Raven had anticipated and she was unaffected by the cold-bloodedness of the operation. What had surprised her was the existence of a third area of the CPS where no other area should have existed. What else was there for an extermination agency to do?

References to this third area were obscure, mentioning only Dr. Kalden and results obtained by his department. Raven had to search through the files for over an hour of real time before she could piece together the fragments of information to get some kind of idea of the overall picture. Her conclusions were staggering.