Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

That seemed like a long time ago. He remembered Leona walking around the car. Ken Kling—the poor obnoxious dead bastard—had called her "cowgirl" and asked her to get him somethng, a co-cola. She had hoped to have some of Slim's B-B-Q.

"Gas. Slim was filling the gastank."

"Hmmn," Chantal was pensive. "No. It couldn't be in the gas. Wrong medium. Was there any other kind of contact?"

"Just the usual systems check. Slim was on the yaks' payroll. His place was well set-up. We always had him look at the cruiser's whole works."

Chantal snapped her fingers. "That would be the point of possession, then."

"Possession?"

Chantal was bent down by the crushed front of the cruiser now, tapping at the spike linking it to the altar.

"Yes, possessed. Your car was under the influence of a demon."

This was crazy.

"Like, Linda Blair or something?"

"Something like. A demon is a lot of things. You might like to think of it as a computer program that infects a given system and changes its function."

"Like a virus, or a sleeper?"

"Yes, very good. Exactly like a virus. An engineered virus, of course. This was a deliberate act of aggression. Not a chance mutation."

Stack was having difficulty keeping up. Chantal had raised the hood, and was poking around near the engine.

"Ingenious adaption. It leeched surplus metals from the body of the cruiser and melted them down to form the channeling spike. It must be a fast-breeder. It'll be replicating like a plague out there."

Stack's head hurt. It usually did when he had to do any serious thinking. "Let me get this straight? There was something in the works at Slim's?"

"Undoubtedly."

"That makes sense. He said his hardware had gone crazy. And this…demon…downloaded into the cruiser, and made it run amok."

Chantal raised a finger like a teacher correcting a point. "Not amok. It was very purposeful. It came straight here, to this church, and insinuated itself into the altar system. It did exactly what it was invoked to do. It's deep in the datanet now, and it has to be stopped."

"This demon? It's just a computer virus, right? No spook stuff?"

Chantal looked at him. Her expression was serious.

"There is spook stuff."

She nodded. "I'm afraid so. You're not going to find any of this easy to cope with. Do you have any religious faith?"

"Daddy was a Baptist. I guess I'm not anything."

"Well, in that case, a demon is a computer virus."

"Come on, Chantal."

Patiently, she sat on the ruined hood of the cruiser and explained it to him. "And it's also a supernatural entity, an immortal creature, a servant of the Devil. It was summoned from Hell by a powerful diabolist, and it has been deployed in a deliberate attack on the Catholic Church and upon the information exchanges of the United States of America. It will remain in the channels until it has been exorcised."

"Sister, who the freak are you?"

Chantal looked at him as his question echoed. Somewhere, water was gushing. Holy water, he remembered. Chantal sighed, and shook her head. She was having trouble putting the words together.

"Nathan," she said, "I'm a nun."

LUCERNE, SWITZERLAND. 1982.

"Chantal," snapped Mlle Fournier, her nanny, "Papa is busy. You mustn't bother him."

"No, no, that's all right," said her father. "Papa should never be too busy for his bon-bon. How are your classes, darling? How's the ballet coming?"

Chantal sucked her lips in, and wondered whether she should ask her questions. She was nearly eight. She shouldn't need to keep asking grown-ups things. She could read. She could use the villa's terminal and tap into the infonet. Her tutors said she was supposed to have an IQ in the upper 170s.

"Come here," said Thomas Juillerat, turning away from his paper-strewn desk and beckoning. She ran to his arms. "Do you want a consultation?"

Chantal nodded, trying not to cringe as papa ran his stubby fingers through her long, dark hair. He wasn't used to children, and he hurt her sometimes without meaning to.

"Do you know how much your Papa usually charges for a consultation?" asked Mlle Fournier, sternly, "fifty thousand Swiss francs. More in European Currency Units."

Papa was embarassed. He settled Chantal more comfortably in his lap.

"Mlle Fournier, could you get me some coffee, and lemonade for the little madame?"

Mlle Fournier's eyes narrowed in that way only Chantal seemed to notice, nodded, and left the room. It was late, nearly her bed-time, but Papa didn't know when she was supposed to go to bed. In the autumn, when she went back to Milan, Mama would be annoyed to find out how often she had been allowed to stay up late over the summer. When she was annoyed, Mama went into a huddle with Father Daguerre, her confessor, and sorted it out.

"Now, what is it you want to know, mon petit choux? Will I need my law books?"

Chantal wasn't sure. This might not be a good idea. She remembered how Father Daguerre had reacted when she asked him why Marcello, the boy next door, kept putting his hand in his shorts and moving his penis around. But she had gone too far to back down. She took a deep breath.

"Papa, what is it you do?"

Papa seemed bemused by the question. Like most grownups, he wasn't entirely comfortable around Chantal. The difference was that he was sorry for his feelings, and tried not to let them show.

"You know that, Chantal. I'm a lawyer. I work mainly for the Swiss Business Commission."

"Yes, yes, yes. But what do you do ?”

Papa shifted Chantal off his lap and sat her on the desk. Papers scrunched under her bottom. He took off his thick glasses.

"I mainly investigate corporations who want to invest in Swiss-based industries."

"Invest? That means money?"

Papa smiled. "Yes, usually quite a lot of money. Sometimes, people with quite a lot of money have obtained it…unethically. You know what that means?"

"Yes, against the laws."

"Well, I'm afraid it often doesn't. Not every country has entirely just laws. Some things that are legal in, for example, Poland, wouldn't be allowed here. And some things, I'm sorry to say, that are allowed in Switzerland shouldn't be allowed anywhere in the world."

Chantal hit her Papa lightly, as she always did when he missed the point. "Silly, I didn't mean man's laws. I was talking about God's Laws."

Papa had that look again. The look that came when he was proud of Chantal and annoyed with her at the same time.

"Yes, God's laws. That's very well put, Chantal. Well, I try to stop people who've broken God's laws from using their money in this country."

"And is that why we have those telephone calls?"

"Who's been telling you about telephone calls?"

"Rudi and Inge were talking in the kitchen when I was helping Mlle Fournier make biscuits. They said people were calling up and not saying their names and saying bad things. And that they were coming in through your terminal too."

Papa's forehead went crinkly. "That's true. They're bad people."

"The other day when you were out at that meeting and Mlle Fournier was having her nap, I answered a telephone call from a bad person."

Papa was shocked by that. "What did he say?"

"That you were to stop doing something about something called the BioDiv something. He had a funny voice, like some of those government people you talk to on the phone."

"A scrambler. They'd have used a scrambler."

"That's right, so I'd never be able to recognize him even if he came up and tried to make friends with me on the playground at school."

Papa held her shoulders. "Did he say they'd do that? Come up to you on the playground?"