Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

She was jacked in deep, probing the labyrinth, guiding her APOSTLE with a mouse. Her concentration was complete. She was totally in tune with the system. It was a complete communion.

It was like praying.

"Good," said Father O'Shaughnessy. "Very good."

She refused to be distracted by the compliment, and stayed away from a file that felt wrong. Father O'Shaughnessy tapped her shoulder approvingly. She came across a cadre of lightly guarded PAGAN programs, defused the booby traps, and interfaced with them. It was a matter of dexterity. The APOSTLE latched onto each of the PAGANs in succession, scrambling their directives. It left CONVERTS in its wake.

She was nearly through the test. No faults.

With a flourish, she pulled herself out of the interface.

…and the screen filled with garbage. She had activated a deepsea tripwire, and her stats were printing out. Crudely computer-animated hellfire flickered on the screen. Father O'Shaughnessy looked at the paper, and tore it off.

"Humility, my child, humility. It is a lesson we must all learn."

Returning to her place, Chantal heard one of the other students tittering.

"The Sin of Pride is greivous," Father O'Shaughnessy told the class, "it can bring you low…"

Chantal's face burned, and she bowed her head. Her wimple covered her neck, but she wished she had an oldstyle habit to draw down over her head.

"…but there are worse sins. Those who hide their lights behind a bushel, for instance, Brother Leon, or those whose industry does not match their ambitions, Sister Sarah."

He held up the print-out.

"Let us examine Sister Chantal's progress in detail, shall we? I hope your colleague may be able to teach you something where my poor efforts might have failed. Let us return to our APOSTLE. As you know, an APOSTLE is an independent program which, when fed into any given system can spread the Word of the Lord and convert selected PAGAN programs. Sister Chantal's progress shows the hazards and dangers any given APOSTLE will face in the cybernet, not unlike the hazards and dangers faced by the original apostles when they first spread the news…"

MILAN, ITALY. 1992.

"Chantal…come back?"

"No, Marcello."

It was late afternoon. Mlle Fournier was out with Isabella, shopping. Chantal sat at her dressing table, looking at the room behind her in the mirror. Since she had taken down all the posters she had had up as a kid, the place looked empty, untenanted, like the bare cubicles she had lived in for three years at St Patrick's. None of them had felt like home, and now home didn't either. She combed her hair. When she was younger, she could spend hours at the mirror, dreaming, passing the comb through her long, long hair. Now, a few strokes of the brush would do. She had turned her back on a lot of things.

"Don't you like me any more?" said Marcello from the bed, his head shadowed by the hanging curtains.

"It's not that."

She examined her face and neck minutely. Her skin was unmarked. Three weeks ago, in Dublin, she had fought for the school and been roundly beaten by a novice from St Brendan's. Her face had been a mass of bruises. Now, there was nothng. Her mother, on an increasingly frequent basis, had Dr Zarathustra's little operations, but all Chantal had was prayer, meditation and exercise. It was working well so far.

"Is it because of your vows?"

"You know it's not that."

Marcello sat up. He looked bitter. "No, of course. Your friend Papa Georgi says you can get laid as often as you want, just so long as you don't marry anyone but Christ! Hell, Chantal, what kind of life is that!"

She promised herself that she wouldn't get angry with Marcello and sorted through the jewellery she would never wear again. Isabella's admirers always used to give her jewellery. She would give the more valuable pieces to the fund for Mother Theresa. The rest could go to her old friends.

"Do you want this ring?" she asked Marcello. "It's fire opal. From Australia. Prince Bonfigliori gave it to me. See how it catches the light."

Marcello stood over her. He wore only his jeans. His skinny torso shone. "What are you talking about, Chantal?" he said, anger in his eyes, "what the freak are you talking about? What's happening here? I feel like a complete…like a complete dweeb."

"Nothing is happening here, Marcello. Nothing has ever happened here."

"Last summer, and the summer before that, something happened all right, something pretty damn…"

"Marcello, you used to call me 'the scarecrow with no tits.'"

"That was a long time ago."

"Not so long."

Marcello stalked back to the shadows. He was shivering. He might be crying. Italian men were so emotional. By contrast, she supposed, she was so…so what? Swiss? She locked her jewel box and stood up.

This evening she wanted to use the house's terminal. She could interface with Father O'Shaughnessy through a safe link in Singapore if she got the satellite window right. And she had been developing some of their theoretical work on Limited Artificial Intelligences. He had promised to name her as co-author on his next paper, and she was keen to put in the background research to earn the credit.

"Marcello, would you go downstairs and make us some tea. I want to get changed now."

He laughed nastily. "Changed? Chantal, you don't need to get changed. You're a completely different person. Since your father died…"

She slapped him. "Tea, Marcello. Ice, lemon, please."

He bunched his fist, but thought better of it. Even as children, he had been the loser.

"Ciao, Chantal," he said, taking his shirt and sandals from the floor. "Ciao forever."

"Goodbye," she said, in as many languages as she knew how, continuing long after her bedroom door had closed and she knew Marcello had left the house.

It was as near to tears as she had been since the day they buried her father.

She was at her terminal in good time, snaking her way through subsidiary corporation accounts, matching the cyberlabyrinth codeword for block. When she got through to Singapore, Father O'Shaughnessy was waiting for her.

SAN FRANCISCO, USA. 1993

"Chantal…"

She hadn't been so tense since she had taken her final vows. She tried to find her centre. Her muscles remained tight.

"Chantal…?"

Mother Kazuko Hara bowed.

"Mother…" Chantal bowed, and backed away.

The first blow came high, striking her thigh.

The Japanese woman, a foot shorter than Chantal, kicked again, catching her waist this time. Chantal took Mother Kazuko's ankle, and pushed back, hoping to unbalance her, but she twisted and was out of her grasp.

"Good," Mother Kazuko said, striking with the flat of her hand at Chantal's forehead.

Chantal ducked under the blow, and lashed out with her fingertips, pushing into Mother Kazuko's ribs above the heart.

"Very good," the Mother said.

The fought on, matching each other skill for skill, switching fighting styles at whim. The two nuns went through Karate, Fisticuffs, Baritsu, Savate, all the major sub-groups of Wushu—The Five Animal Styles of the Shaolin Temple, Choy Li-Fut, Drunken Style, Eagle Claw, Hsing-I, Hung Gar, Mad Monkey Kungfu, Phoenix Eye, Praying Mantis (an especial favourite), Shuai Chiao, Tan Tui, White Crane, Wing Chun— Jeet Kune-Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist), Hapkido, Graeco-Roman Wrestling, Kickboxing, Aikido, Amis, Jujitsu, Ninjutsu, Streetfighting, Arm-Wrestling and Tae Kwon Do.

Chantal knew that if her opponent—whom the students called Mother Gadzooks O'Hara—didn't pull her punches, she would have been dead within ten seconds of Mother Kazuko's fust bow.

Her weak spots were beginning to ache. It wasn't necessary to win this bout—no one had bested Mother Kazuko since the St Matilda's Dojo was opened—but Chantal had to keep in the fight for a full quarter of an hour.