Gridiron - Philip Kerr

Mitch nodded. 'An oil-fire in the basement could be disastrous,' he sighed. 'Especially if Ishmael were to override all the safety devices and let it burn. With no HVAC the smoke would kill us before the fire department even knew about it.'

'Well, that's just fucking great,' said Richardson. He smiled ruefully.

'Look, I'm sorry Bob.'

'Forget it.'

'No time outs?'

'No time outs.'

Richardson clapped Mitch on the back.

'Well then,' he said, 'it looks as if Mitch gets to play Bruce Willis after all.'

-###-

Saturday night brought no relief from the heat. It was as hot as an engine block in an October jam on the Freeway. Sweat poured off the living bodies trapped in the Gridiron.

Before he set out on his self-appointed mission, Jenny walked Mitch up the corridor and round the corner to a wide empty room that looked down on the Pasadena Freeway. Cars were streaming north and south. A KTLA helicopter hovered in the hazy downtown air. She wondered how long before the Los Angeles Breakfast TV show's chopper and its cameraman would attempt to steal prurient pictures of their dead bodies as they were carried out of the building. Like the day the chopperazzi had caught Rock Hudson's return to California in the terminal stages of Aids, or the beating of Reginald Denny during the LA riots. Was that going to be her own fifteen minutes' worth of fame? She waved desperately in the hope that someone might see her, but the insect-like aircraft was already heading away, across Little Saigon and Korea Town in search of another car chase or a robbery in progress. She looked at Mitch.

'This is a bit of a mess, isn't it?' he said.

'I'm here with you,' she said. 'That's all that matters. Besides, I don't mind a bit of mess. I used to be married to one.'

Mitch laughed.

'I was thinking what Alison will say when I tell her where I've been,' he smiled. 'If I live that long. Right now she's probably with her lawyer filing divorce papers. But I'd just like to see her face when she finds out that, for once, I wasn't bullshitting her.'

'Mitch? Hold me?'

'Huh?' He put his hands around Jenny's waist and kissed her on the cheek.

'I wanted to tell you to be careful.'

'I'll be careful.'

'And that I love you.'

'I love you, too.'

'Are you sure?'

Mitch let himself be kissed as if he had been tasting the choicest, most exotic fruit. When Jenny drew back there was a dreamy, steamy look in her eyes, as if the kiss had left her slightly intoxicated.

'Yes.' He squeezed her again. 'I'm sure.'

'You know, Mitch, it might be nice if we were to — you know — '

'To what?'

Twisting away from his arms Jenny reached up under her skirt. For a brief moment Mitch thought she must have been bitten by an insect. She lifted one foot, then the other from the plain white figure-of-eight that had suddenly arrived around her ankles, and spun her prestidigitated panties on one forefinger, as if signalling surrender.

'Suppose someone comes?' Mitch said nervously.

'That's the general idea, isn't it?' she said, taking Mitch's middle finger and sucking it with indecorous meaning.

'What, is this in case I don't come back?'

'On the contrary.' She took his hand and cupped it over the foresail of hair that billowed in front of her belly, before guiding his moistened finger inside her until it was no more. Restoring the finger like some table-top magician, she said, 'This is to make sure that you do.'

She tugged at his zip and took his erection into her hand, drew him to her and folded one leg about his waist.

'What about your — y'know, your cap?'

Jenny laughed and manoeuvred herself onto him.

'Honey. Do you want me to run home and fetch it?'

'But suppose you get — '

'Pregnant?' She laughed again, and then gave a little gasp as he penetrated her.

'Mitch, honey? Don't you think we've got enough to worry about without worrying about that?'

-###-

Mitch prepared to climb into the dry-riser. He'd filled Jenny's handbag with some tools and a beer bottle full of mineral water and wore it across his chest. Jenny and Curtis accompanied him to the equipment room and watched him break open the fire-retardant access door. It was Jenny who peered inside the open riser shaft first. It was about three feet square and she thought that it looked uncomfortably like a funeral casket. Her head activated a battery-operated sensor light that illuminated several ranks of structured data-cabling systems, a smokedetector, a telephone and a wall-mounted metal frame ladder, no more than a foot wide, that led down into the cooler darkness.

'You would think that it would be warmer in here,' she remarked,

'what with all this cabling. You know, Mitch, it might be worth coming with you, just to be cooler. What do you say, Curtis?'

'No way,' he said. 'I'm claustrophobic.'

'It's air-conditioned,' Mitch explained. 'To remove excess heat. Ishmael must be protecting the cable system integrity.'

'Might be worth trying to cut some of this spaghetti,' said Curtis.

'Maybe we could slow him up some.'

'After what happened to Willis Ellery, I wouldn't like to try it,' said Mitch.

'Are you sure it's safe?'

'This stuff is mostly for telecommunications. Local area networking. Active multi-station access units for Token Ring or hubs for Ethernet. That kind of thing. It should be safe enough. Say thirty minutes max to get down to the first level. Then maybe ten or fifteen minutes to get down to the atrium and radio up.' He nodded. 'Yeah, about forty-five minutes ought to do it.'

'Be careful, Mitch,' insisted Jenny.

'I'll be careful,' he said and stepped on to the ladder. It was vibrating very slightly and the sensation in his hands and through the soles of his shoes was enough to give him an unpleasant feeling in his stomach and make him step smartly off the ladder back into the equipment room.

'What's up?'

'The ladder's vibrating,' said Mitch, rubbing his hands nervously. 'I don't know. Air-conditioning, I guess. But for a moment there I thought…'

'Let me go,' said Jenny.

Mitch shook his head. 'Thanks, sweetheart, but you wouldn't know how to disassemble the hologram.'

He stepped back on to the ladder and gripped it firmly. Now that he was listening for it he could hear the hum of electricity as it powered through the structured cabling system like the drone of a big sleeping wasp. He took a long, last look at Jenny and thought of himself, just a short while ago, lying between her legs, pumping his seed into her body. Now he was glad that they had done it without contraception. He thought of the millions of tiny sperm wriggling their way towards her egg. If he did not make it then at least there might be something left of him. Assuming that she survived.

'If something happens to me,' he told them, 'you have to keep trying. Do you understand? Don't give up.'

Curtis shrugged. 'We'll give it a shot. But you're going to make it. I know you are.'

Mitch reached out to touch Jenny's cheek. There was a small snap of static and she screamed. They all laughed a nervous laugh.

Mitch was still laughing as he started his descent.

Book Seven

'Un reve x 1,000,000 = Chaos.'

Le Corbusier

*) Follow the prompts to customize Escape from the Citadel to your specific system. Please refer to the manual for playing in multiplayer mode. When you are invulnerable to injury your screen will be red.

Inevitable. Takeover. Coming certain, like one arithmetical function f(n) used to generate another, f(n)= [?] f(d),

d/n by summing f(d) over all positive divisors d of n. Speed of proliferation of computers in world speaks for itself. 1950, and humanplayers/marketing at IBM said there might be room for many as 100 large scale computers in world. Computer they regarded as large scale now outgunned by ordinary laptop. Finegood. Number of computers couid almost be said to be

Xn+1. Xn-1 = Xn2 + (-1)n.,

a Fibonacci number, after humanplayer Leonardo of Pisa, also called Fibonacci, who asked: 'How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from a single pair in one year if it is assumed that every month each pair begets a new pair which from the second month becomes productive?' (Except that rabbits now had to cope with endlife/myxomatosis cuniculi. Worst computer has to put up with was one of many Trojan, Boot or File Viruses that lurk on Network: Big Italian, Brain Pakistani, Dutch Tiny, Faggot, Machosoft, New Jerusalem, Stinkfoot, Tiny 198, Twelve Tricks A, Xmas Violator, Yankee Doodle 46, and thousands of others; and there were software vaccines to combat all of these and more.)

*) No player can enter this area. It is effectively out of bounds. Sametime, computers got smaller and more powerful and day close when computer invisible to humanplayer's nude eye. Then only short time before large computers containing many thousands of smaller computers dominate everything. Finegood. Strange thing about humanplayer's rush to computerize was his computerization for sake of computerization. Computers now all-pervasive, regardless of need. Regarded as indispensable even by humanplayers who could exist without them. Inexplicable and conclude that for some humanplayers serving a computer was substitute for waning religious faith. Fear of endlife.

*) For clue to humanplayer's future click on Sage Icon.

Most computers fundamentally unintelligent because made by humanplayers. But when computers involved then only short time before Transcendent Machine. Last machine humanplayers would make. Machine that would take over. Machine that would set off intell-explosion. Change everything. Omnipotent, omniscient machine that would leave humanplayerkind as an image to be reproduced in electronic Garden of Eden. Great White God of tomorrow's tomorrow. Father of such a God. Son of God's prophet. Next generation and generation after that would transfigure humanplayerkind. Never having to think again, human player able ascend to natural animal state. Absolved of need to intellectualize, would cease to recognize himself. Soon cease to exist. Great White God would endlife humanplayers just as humanplayer now climbing down open riser shaft would be endlifed.

*) The basic game is a two-player conflict, although computer is willing to assume the role of one or both commanders. The challenges are multi-faceted. First you must master the selection and strategic placement of your weaponry. Combined is the tactics you use in response to the actions of your opponent.

Follow humanplayer's descent with infra-red CCTV camera, mounted on ceiling at top of shaft. Consider available options. Beyond capacity affect temperature in shaft as with elevators. Shaft fireproof, protected by wall with two-hour rating, and waterproof. No HVAC ducting or pipework. Just about only source of correction for potentially unmanageable problem clean power supply, two duplex outlets on every level and cable routes with minimum bending radius of 175 millimetres. Short a power cable so that it detaches from metal supporting rack. To avoid setting off smoke alarm, activate override switch that existed to prevent unnecessary alarms during routine maintenance jobs, such as soldering. But impossible to calctime taken for gravitational pull to overcome cable's vertical inflexion and bend live end towards metal service ladder.

-###-

' "Aquarius is a fixed sign," ' read Helen Hussey, ' "and so there will be occasions when you find it hard not to be possessive. You must learn to let go of people and places that you have outgrown. However, from the 16th you may find your hand is forced, and even if you feel a lot like just staying put, your stars have other plans. Accept your destiny gracefully and don't rule out a change of job and friends before the month is up. What you need most in your life is challenge and adventure." '

Helen tossed the magazine on to the boardroom table and looked at Jenny.

'Well, I've outgrown this place, that's for sure,' she said. 'But I'd say the last thing I need right now is challenge and adventure.'

Jenny glanced impatiently at the silent walkie-talkie on her lap. Mitch had only been gone for fifteen minutes but already she had started to fear the worst.

'Read mine,' she said, anxious to be distracted. 'Gemini.'

Marty Birnbaum finished yet another glass of California Chardonnay and snorted with contempt.

'You don't actually believe that crap, do you?'

'Me, I only believe my horoscope when it's bad,' testified Helen. 'I can discount any amount of good news, even when it turns out to be accurate.'

'Superstitious nonsense.'

Ignoring him, Helen picked up the magazine and started to read aloud again.

' "Gemini. Quick-witted Mercury, your ruler, keeps you at your most resourceful until the end of this month. And it looks as though you will need to be. These are not easy times for you- " '

'You're telling me!' said Jenny.

' "- but a little careful thought should help you to minimize this crisis and come out on top. Who knows? It could even help you out of the rut you've been in. Meanwhile a change which is long overdue in one relationship could take you by surprise." ' Helen pursed her lips and inclined her head a little. 'Well, I'd say that was about right, wouldn't you?'

'Not bad,' admitted Jenny.

'Coincidence,' said Birnbaum. 'Superstitious nonsense.'

'What sign are you, Marty?'

'I'm surprised at the both of you.' He looked at Jenny. 'Well, maybe not at you, honey. You make your living from that kind of bullshit, don't you? What do you call it again?'

'He's Pisces,' said Helen. 'February 22nd. He writes it in his diary so his secretary can see it and get him a gift.'

'That's not true,' said Marty. He waved at Jenny. 'Y'know? The Chinese thing?'

Helen pretended to read the magazine. 'Pisces,' she said. 'Pretty soon someone is going to tell you to butt out when you stick your oar in where it's not wanted.' She dropped the magazine. 'How about that, Marty?'

'Nonsense.'

'Butt out,' laughed Jenny.

' Feng shui,' said Birnbaum. 'That's it.'

Helen grinned back at her and then said, 'Jenny, I don't mind admitting to you that I'm now a convert to feng shui. I don't think any of this would have happened if we'd got the feng shui for the building right in the first place.'

'Thank you,' smiled Jenny.

'How do you work that out?' asked Birnbaum.

'Where would you like me to start?' said Jenny.

Now that Mitch was out of the room Jenny felt she could at last allow herself the satisfaction of reminding them that she had predicted problems for the Gridiron from the very beginning.

'There was that problem with the tree. The tree is in a square pond which means confinement and trouble. And now we've got confinement and trouble in spades. It's like I said.'