Ragnarok (10 page)

“I don't serve blacks,” he grumbled and closed his kiosk window.

V team looked to one another briefly, then all to Varg. Varg shrugged, even online with one palm up and the other down. He walked up to the closed front and used one of his borrowed Alopex routines to force-start the portal. The old man was startled but more angry than afraid.

“Obsidian goddamn Order. I know about you! White knights in black armor. You
schwarzes Glas
always trot around the place and never buy.”

Varg replied quickly, “Today we're buying, Yoshi.”

He was surprised. “Who says my name is Yoshi?”

“Your sign and our pals in Deutschland GmbH.”

“I know a lot of Germans. Not many of 'em are my friends. Who sent you?”

“Think pickles.”

The old man lit up. “The game boys! Pickled Pints and Hungry Hungry Hobos! Always sent that same kid, KolossalKnockwurst69. How's he holding up? Didn't seem like the type to hang out with your order.”

“He died, I'm afraid. Skied off a cliff.”

Violet was growing concerned again. Varg had to get into the man's good graces, but they were on territory that could reveal an identity if they weren't careful. But then, Varg had to give him something. All he would buy was information. If Yoshi could be bought for outdated tales, it would be well worth the risk. She trusted Varg and said nothing. The old man was suspicious again.

“You kill him?”

“No. He was a good man. A strong man, and the world will miss his good looks, his singular wit, and his robust—”

“We need information,” interrupted Vibeke. “We need someone who can search the Black Crag for us.”

Yoshi considered the gravity of their request. He nodded solemnly. “I can climb the Crag. But for that kind of work and that kind of risk, you'd have to give me the kind of tips I can retire on.”

“What do the rich people need to know?”

“Three big questions people want to pay for today. Answer a couple, and I'll do your dirty work.”

“You got it.”

“Alright, first, whose probe's gonna get to Barnard's Star first?”

“UNEGA,” Vibeke stated without skipping a beat. “The propulsion system on GAUNE's probe had superior acceleration at first, but it's reached its top speed. UNEGA never gave a press release, but Pan Fleet intercepted a telemetry link that shows their probe is still accelerating, which is why they're neck and neck right now. UNEGA's will enter orbit in four years, six months ahead of GAUNE's. GAUNE knows it and can't do a thing. None of that should be public for another couple weeks, but if you're selling the information, you better be sure Pan Fleet isn't the one buying. They've killed two vendors already.”

Yoshi was very impressed. “Do you have a copy of the telemetry link?”

Vibeke held out her hand. Yoshi considered it for only an instant before accepting. Vibs transferred an ancient site map to him, one from the AleGel accounts where she had stored the telemetry before heading out. She had expected it would be the second top seller for information before they left, and the top seller they had access to. The top seller was something they didn't know, and it was to be Yoshi's second question.

“Where is Ellessey MacReedy?”

“We don't know,” she answered honestly. News of the YUP traitor was the highest commodity on that side of the globe. Valhalla analysis was almost certain that the pirate they'd once encountered was behind his defection. Most of the planet thought a Cetacean had something to do with the company's downfall, but nobody had any clue where they hid MacReedy. Valhalla had no reason to look into the matter, so the former human, now partway through underwater modification surgery, was going to stay on the loose.

“Alright. Third question,” Yoshi began. None of V team was sure which bit of intel he'd put third. Vibeke was banking on the identity of the Carson Robber. That was intel she'd be happy to deal out, having discovered the missing Carson Bank detector logs by accident while looking for Mishka. Varg and Veikko were both convinced he'd want to know whether Zaibatsu was going to purchase Nabisco from GAUNE. Months earlier Nabisco had unveiled Calabi-Yau Breakfast Cereal, the world's most technologically advanced cereal, which offered six dimensions of flavor, but they discovered too late it did so at the cost of quantum diarrhea. GAUNE made money in the end off the drugs to alleviate the problem, but with its stock lower than ever, many expected UNEGA to buy Nabisco at a low point and thus control a major part of GAUNE's food supply. Violet alone guessed what Yoshi would ask next. “Who stole the Skunkworks prototype?”

All four cringed to hear it. The question they knew the answer to but couldn't answer. Violet spoke quickly, she thought, because she wanted to offer something else. She couldn't admit to herself that she wanted to move on out of fear Vibeke would answer him.

“Can't say. But you can keep the software you use on the Crag. It's a Gullinkambi system that'll let you look through the entire Crag site code in seconds. It works on any website. You could strip bare this entire ring of the Undernet with it.” She produced the program in her hand to let him see. She had forgotten that Veikko designed their copy's icon: A blue rooster with a gold comb. Thankfully her avatar had no face to keep straight.

Yoshi looked at the blue rooster, one of Alopex's finest routines. H team had developed it a few years back to speed up searches in high risk areas. C team claimed to have used it on the Crag a year before. It would, to Yoshi, be one of the most valuable tools imaginable.

“Tempting…. But why can't you say who stole the prototype? You know who, don't you?”

“We can't say.”

“I'll tell you fine folks what I'll do. I'll take your blue bird and that juicy bit about Barnard and scale the Crag for you if you'll answer one more question. Just yes or no.”

“Deal,” stated Vibeke.

Yoshi looked directly at Violet's avatar. He might have looked because she was offering the Gullinkambi program. He might have looked at her randomly of the eight avatars present. But to Violet it felt like he knew exactly who she was and knew exactly what she'd done. His eyes narrowed, his wrinkles grew deeper, and he put the fate of the mission right into her hands.

“Was it you?”

Violet tried to think. She could say yes, and he'd find Mishka. She could say no, and he'd simply believe her and leave it at that, and do as they asked. But the way he looked at her, directly at her, the thief herself: he might have known already. It might be a mere test to see if she'd offer the truth or deceive him. She didn't have Alopex hiding her face, only an avatar this time, and who knew what programs Yoshi had to detect lies. She should lie to him either way and let the project fail if it must. But then Vibeke would never forgive her. Not for losing the last hope they had of finding Mishka. And what exactly would be lost if she told the truth? One man who sold—
sold
not gave away, not acted upon information—would know that the black avatars stole the thing. He'd sell it to Skunkworks of course, but what could they do about it? They'd already seen T team, and everyone knew the Obsidian Order online were a dangerous gang. But then again—

“Yes,” said Varg. And it was done. Yoshi smiled and laughed. He linked something to a faraway user, then closed his notation window.

“Don't worry, I won't tell the skunks. They don't pay well enough!” He turned to Violet. “Hand me your cock. I'll scour the mountain for your friend Mishka.” V team was stunned. Through their avatars he must have sensed it. He went on, “I deal in information, kids! Mishka told me who the Obsidian Order were in exchange for a tip on Birlacorp.”

He jumped out of his kiosk with a dexterity that mismatched his avatar. He took the blue rooster icon from Violet and integrated it into his net partitions. Then the back of his head popped open to reveal ocular hookup protocols. He let them see what he saw as he jumped down toward the next ring. The project was on course.

Looking through Yoshi's eyes, they could get a hint of the programs he was using. Beside the new blue Gullinkambi program, there were about fifty icons for net security. Some they recognized, others they didn't. It was rude to look around at the man's brain, but Violet couldn't resist peeking at some of the program specs he had running. One was an illegal log deletion protocol, another was an avatar speed alteration buffer so he could trick sites into letting him move at illegal paces to surprise or escape an enemy. One was a false contact barrier so he could pretend to let people in without doing so. He sensed her looking at it.

“That one doesn't work on the Crag, dearie. Nothing works on the Crag.”

Yoshi left the sack and hopped down to the airspace of ring nine, the lowest of the low, the anus of the entire net. Violet had never seen the place before from the common net. It was, in theory, a visual micro-weblog conglomeration. But she could make out no images. The ring cycled so fast she couldn't focus on any single thing. It was like a whirlpool over which Yoshi floated calmly toward the center. She could see how the board acted like a meat grinder, some of the avatars had programming to view the board, but at the cost of their sanity. It would have their brains functioning at impossible speed, doing severe nerve damage. It was a sort of drug for net users who had exhausted the rest of infinity and now needed the most extreme just to feel anything at all. The ring, it was rumored, contained as much information as the rest of the net combined, but it was all a waste. Whoever looked into the abyss would be devoured by it—the promise of all the knowledge in the world at the cost of the inability to use it. An eternity of heightened awareness as your body rotted away in a comatorium or died at home. A living death.

Yoshi came to the void, surest access point to the Black Crag. One could log on to the Crag itself, though they'd be killed instantly by whatever might be waiting for them. One could enter the void of the net from any access point and try to find the Crag, but the Nikkei Undernet point was situated directly over it. The Crag didn't respond to calls like common planetoid sites above, where one could simply state the address and the place would appear. It was a site that worked on its own terms, ones not understood by its own users. Nobody understood how it let people bypass contact barriers. In theory, no part of the net should have allowed it. The one inviolable rule of electronic communication was that nothing could be forced on you. Even in the void between sites, that rule was in force. But once a person set foot on the Crag, everything changed.

Yoshi set down, and they could see the netscape from his eyes. There were only a couple hundred users, visible ones at least. He put out a heavy array of feelers and detection routines so that if anyone approached, he'd know. The appearance was indeed that of a black rocky mountain, riddled with grottos and cells along a single spiral road climbing up the steep cliffs. The few avatars were like a line of parasites roaming across it. Yoshi was about to start up the Gullinkambi program when a large gargoyle avatar approached him. He kept his distance, as did the gargoyle. A standard assurance on the Crag. The gargoyle spoke in a high, weak voice.

“Would you like to buy some fresh baked cookies?”

“No, thank you, I'm just heading to the financial sector,” he replied. The gargoyle moved on, and Yoshi thought back to his watchers, “I assume you didn't want any local value pairs? They make fine souvenirs, but who knows what else he baked into them?”

V team didn't respond. Yoshi headed as promised to the financial sector, a short ways up the Crag. He glanced down at the rock, nothing like the colorful plastic and glowing cartoon labels of the rest of the net. It was meaty, flaking like dead skin. Its resolution was grainy but not low. The place wasn't cheap, cheap as in the Undernet just looked like a lack of textures and poorly assembled polygons. The Crag looked like it had been meticulously designed to feel gritty. More than that, it felt not so much like a mountain as a giant animal horn, owing to the swaying deformation of the road and the sinewy layout between the ingrown caves.

All the avatars kept their distance. Everyone on the Crag was cautious in the extreme to let others know they would do no harm, and wanted no harm done to them. Some were blanks, others were beasts. One avatar was a perfect likeness of Abraham Lincoln, another was just a mess of legs and eyes. But all were whisper quiet. It was oddly like the atmosphere of a library site. Though library sites lacked the glimpses Violet could see as Yoshi passed various grottos. One held a pharmaceutical meeting, clearly labeled as the KVH drug company meeting with members of the Janjuweed. Another held what looked like a classroom. All the student avatars were joining hands with a tentacled being, repeating a mantra, preparing for some unspeakable ineffable something.

The financial sector made more sense. There were mercenary ads. Any of them could be Mishka. They were as simple as “Have microwave, will travel” and complex as a total readout of available militaries and off-planet resources. Conventionally, one would have to reply to each ad to learn the identity of the poster. There appeared to be under fifty mercs so it was a possibility, but one to be avoided if they could find Mishka's ad, buy her services, and lure her into a trap. Or better yet, simply trace the origin and find her unannounced.

Yoshi produced the Gullinkambi and set it on the pathway so it would recognize the site to be hacked. Once activated he would be able to see names and providers behind each page. Yoshi would only need to log the results, return to safety, and V could handle the rest. He prepared to activate the little blue rooster.

Suddenly a bright flash illuminated the Crag. There was a
disturbance on the road nearby. A small avatar of a little green man with a giant wrinkly brain was destroying a larger troll avatar with something that manifested as lightning. Dozens of avatars looked on as the very lifecode of the troll was spewed onto the Crag for all to see. It wasn't like the scattered programming in a disarming protocol—it was brain code getting deleted. Incomprehensible strands of information that made up the user's consciousness and thoughts getting ripped to shreds. The troll avatar remained on the cliffs like a corpse, hollow now and transparent but lingering, sickly. Violet could almost smell it. The little green man wandered away, and the denizens of the Crag returned silently to their business. Yoshi activated the Gullinkambi.