Alan Foster - Cyber Way

They might never know exactly what it was, he thought nervously, unless it went off.

What if Gaggii banged on it hard enough, or shook it violently enough, or in some other way upset its hoihol He almost preferred to think of giant snakes wriggling their loathsome way out of attenuated starships. Were those sinuous shapes simple embellishments which had been added down through the centuries by imaginative hatathlis? Or did they somehow really relate to the sandpainting’s greater purpose?

Snakes. What else was unto a serpent?

If the web was equipped with a warning, how would they recognize it if they did encounter it? They might have missed it several times already. “This is what we have left behind and this is what it does—but don’t do it or it will remove your face.”

If Gaggii was similarly concerned, he’d chosen not to say so to his visitors. That was another reason why they had to catch him before he could proceed with whatever it was he had planned: no fool is so dangerous as a fearless one.

What bothered Moody more than anything else, he decided suddenly, was not whether the visitors had left the web behind on purpose or out of forgetfulness, but that they might have done so indifferently, not caring one way or the other how it might impact on a miserable bunch of primitive bipeds. The one thing Moody hated more than anything else was to be ignored.

“It is funny to think of it now,” Ooljee murmured as the skycutter bounced through an airstream, “but the chants and sandpaintings described to us as children were always designed to deal with powers beyond human control. I never thought that one day I might have to consider that proposition literally.

“We must not just think of this web as dangerous. The hatathlis like to say that what can harm a man can also cure him. Bad things can be controlled and put to good use, just as the good can be turned to evil.”

“The precision of it appeals to me,” said Grayhills. “The idea of using specific sandpaintings and repeated chanting to achieve a desired result. But I still don’t see how chanting and touching the image allows one to access the web.”

Moody was the first one out when the skycutter touched down. A small multiwheeled vehicle started toward them from the edge of the landing pad.

Ooljee was right behind him. “Consider this,” he said to Grayhills. “A number of studies make the claim that sandpainting images are really interpsychic symbols. Some academics think that the reason sandpaintings allowed the old hatathlis to cure diseases was because they literally created a pattern in the patient’s psyche—whatever that means.”

Moody didn’t try to understand what it meant, now that they were out of the skycutter and back on solid ground. He did find it interesting, though not surprising, that the entrance to the accelerator facility faced the east.

Not only did the chief of campus security operations doubt anyone could break into the installation, he wondered why anyone would want to.

“Even if they could sneak inside,” he explained as he parked outside the three-story structure, “they could not do anything. You do not operate a particle accelerator by pushing an ‘On’ button. It takes the skills of a number of highly trained technicians just to set up an experiment, much less run one.”

“We’re not arguing with you.” Grayhills exited the little electric bus. “We just want you to understand that we’re dealing with someone who is responsible for a number of unexplainable incidents, and we don’t want him doing unexplainable things to your accelerator. ”

That got his attention. “The only other Moebial toroid accelerator in the country is at North Carolina,” he announced importantly. “We don’t want anybody monkeying with ours any more than you do. And you claim that your suspect is not a mental case.”

“Not insofar as we have been able to determine.” Ooljee flanked the security chief as they walked toward the entrance. “He may not be able to make use of your facilities here, but we want to make sure he doesn’t do any damage, either.”

“Don’t worry. There aren’t many entrances, our alarm system is as up to date as the accelerator itself, I’ve put extra people on because of your warning, and most of the really sensitive machinery is located below ground level anyway. Every access point not personally supervised by one of my people is scanned by closed-circuit vid.” He smiled confidently.

“Every once in a while we have to deal with students who think slipping inside and draping toilet paper or something over the equipment is outrageously funny. They always get caught, and we have some clever students at this outpost. Our security approaches military specifications. I think that if your Mr. Gaggii comes anywhere near our installation, not only will we be able to detect his presence, we will be able to catch and hold him for you.”

Moody wished he could be as confident as the security chief. But then, he reminded himself, the man had not seen what Yistin Gaggii could do with the alien web.

The above-ground portion of the facility housed administrative offices, labs, supply rooms, and monitoring equipment. The inwardly sloping spraystone walls were painted brownish-pink to blend in with the surrounding terrain, while the windows were copper-tinted glass. As they’d been told, there were few entrances.

Moody was gratified to observe that the one they used was covered by both monitoring vids and live security personnel. Everything was calm and normal, as they’d requested. Obvious precautions like partial evacuation of the campus, for example, might frighten off their man.

Administrators, graduate students, and techies were coming and going, actively discussing subjects incomprehensible to the detective. Navaho, Hopi, Apache, Hualapai, Havasupai; Anglo and Asian; Hispanic and Black, none of them aware of the existence of the alien web all around them, through which they passed as smoothly as sharks through saltwater.

Once the right people had time to study it properly, he mused, the existence of the web might explain a lot of things. Ghosts and poltergeists, all sorts of supernatural phenomena might be related to accidental or partial accessing of the webwork.

The ghosts in the machine. He tried to remember where he’d encountered the phrase. What might they not find when they went fishing in those warm alien depths?

As Gaggii was doing, he reminded himself. What was their murderer after? What did he hope to find there? He’d told them he had something specific in mind, but had neglected to fill in the blank. Did he want to shake hands with a ghost? Or was he after a discovery that would make him rich?

Any of those ends could be gained by working out in the open, without the need for secrecy and murder.

He knows more than he told us, Moody decided. Twenty years of police mollywork insisted on it. We should have pressed him on his goals when we had him, should have demanded to know what he was after. More than just knowledge, surely. Knowledge is an abstraction, and people no longer kill for abstractions. Only nations do that.

His partner’s tales of Holy People and gods kept creeping into his thoughts. Could Gaggii be doing the bidding of something inside the web?

Abruptly aware that he was letting his imagination run riot, he forced himself to admire the spacious lobby, with its impressively realistic artificial rain forest and soapstone sculptures of relevant fauna. He was quite content to let his partner do the talking to the cluster of security people and NDPS uniforms who were waiting to greet them. The latter would patrol a designated perimeter, while the locals would see to the security of the facility itself.