Allen Steele - Jericho Iteration

“And we’re both screwed,” I shot back, “unless you’ve got some scheme for getting us out of this jam. Okay? So stop blaming me for your troubles.”

Morgan didn’t respond. He turned back around and began climbing the stairs again. I could now see a dim light from somewhere above us, but it was difficult to gauge how far up the tower we were. The pipe thrummed in the darkness, its cold metal shaft slippery with condensation.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a few minutes, not breaking stride this time. “I’m not blaming you for anything. Beryl knew the risks when she decided to seek out a reporter. She was gambling and she lost the bet, but it probably would have happened even if she hadn’t run into you.”

He let out his breath. “But she’s dead,” he went on, “and there’s nothing we can do about it except resort to a backup plan.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see. C’mon …”

The light above us was much larger and sharper by now; it took the form of an open horizontal hatch in the floor. Morgan climbed the final few steps and disappeared through the doorway; I followed him, pulling myself upward by the guardrail until I found myself in the tower’s observation deck.

The cupola was circular, its walls and floor built of old brick mortared into place before my grandfather’s time. Although fluorescent fixtures were suspended from the low ceiling, they were switched off; dim light came from a couple of battery-powered camp lanterns hung from ancient oak rafters. Three sleeping bags were laid out on one side of the room next to a propane hiker’s stove and a sack of canned food; a few newspapers and the last issue of the Big Muddy Inquirer rested next to an untidy stack of computer printouts and a couple of rolls of toilet paper.

It looked like nothing less than the inside of a kid’s treehouse during a weekend campout; all that was missing was a sign reading “Sekret Hedquarters-No Girls Aloud.” Unfortunately, the only girl who had been let up here was gone now …

No treehouse ever had a view like this. Through the twelve square, recessed windows that ringed the room’s circular walls could be seen the entire cityscape of St. Louis, from the weblike streetlights of the western suburbs, to the long dark patch of Forest Park in the center of the northern plain, to the lighted skyscrapers of the downtown area, with the Gateway Arch rising in the distance as a giant silver staple against the eastern horizon. Even if the camper lamps had been switched off, the observation deck would have been bright with the city’s nocturnal shine.

Yet there were other lights inside the observation deck as well. Two portable computers arranged next to each other on the floor beneath the eastern windows emitted a frail blue glow that silhouetted a figure seated before them.

The man turned around to look at us as we entered the cupola, then he grunted as he pushed himself off the floor and walked into the lamplight.

“Mr. Rosen-” he began.

“Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.”

The man whom I had first seen a couple of days earlier at the reception didn’t seem to be insulted. “My friends usually call me Dick,” Richard Payson-Smith said sotto voce as he proffered his hand. “I trust you’ve met my loyal assistant Igor.”

“We’ve talked.” I reached out and grasped his hand. Oxford accent and all, Richard Payson-Smith wasn’t quite what I had expected. I had anticipated meeting a priggish, humorless academician, the stereotypical British scientist. Payson-Smith, firm of handshake and gawky of build, resembled a weird cross between King Charles and Doctor Who.

“Sorry to have put you out so much,” he went on, releasing my hand and stepping back a little, “but it’s important that you see what’s going on right now.”

“And that is …?”

He idly scratched at his bearded chin as he turned toward the two computers on the floor. “Well,” he said in a thoughtful drawl, staring at their screens, “if we can get our friend Ruby to cooperate, we’re trying to plumb the eidetic memory of the world’s first fully functional artificial life-form, ruin my former employer, bring down a powerful conspiracy within the United States government, and save our arses.”

“That’s all?”

“Hmm. Yes, quite.”

Morgan and I chuckled as Dick shrugged beneath his dirty fisherman’s sweater and glanced back at me. “Not necessarily in that order, of course,” he added, “but who’s counting? Want some coffee?”

“Thanks, but I brought my own.” I pulled the still-unopened can of beer Chevy Dick had given me out of my jacket pocket. Morgan watched with frank envy as I popped the top and took a swig.

“Suit yourself.” Payson-Smith walked across the room, knelt beside the propane stove, and picked up an aluminum pot from the grill. “I’ll settle for this bitter swill … as if I haven’t had enough already.”

I watched as Tiptree’s former chief cyberneticist poured overheated coffee into two paper cups. Dr. Frankenstein or not, the man looked skinny and vulnerable in the dim lamplight. He was clearly uncomfortable, locked away in a cold, dark castle that vaguely resembled the Bloody Tower. “So,” I said after a moment, “what’s with the setup here?”

“Hmm? The computers?”

“Uh-huh.” I walked over to the two laptops on the floor. The one on the left was a new Apple, the other an old, heavy-duty Compaq; they were hardwired together through their serial ports. An external hard drive and a small HP Deskjet printer were tucked between them. “I take it you’re interfaced with Ruby.”

“We are.” Payson-Smith stood up, handed one coffee to Morgan, then walked over to join me. “We’re linked with Ruby Fulcrum through cellular modem … and, by the way, we’ve got them running off the tower’s electrical current, in case you’re wondering … and we’ve been running two programs since we moved in here.”

He lowered himself to the floor in front of the two laptops; I squatted on my haunches next to him. “This one,” he said, pointing to the Apple on the left, “is running a search-and-retrieve program through all the government databases it can access … ERA, other federal and state agencies, municipal government files, subcontractors to Tiptree, whatever it’s been able to burrow into.”

I looked closer; page after page of computer files flashed rapidly across the screen, pausing only long enough for a black cursor to skim through the lines. Every so often, the cursor would pause and enclose a particular word or phrase within a blue box before moving on again. “We’re using a hypertext feature,” Richard went on. “Ruby has been taught to look for certain key words and names. When she finds occurrences of these words or names, she copies the file containing them in a subdirectory elsewhere in her network and adds a coded prefix next to it. Later on, Jeff and I sort through those documents and find the ones pertinent to our interests.”

“Which are …?”

Richard took another sip from his coffee and scowled. “Damned stuff tastes like ink,” he muttered and put the cup aside before looking at me again. “We’re collecting evidence of the conspiracy, including tracking down as many participants as we can find. When we’ve compiled enough documentation, we’ll edit the whole thing and have Ruby e-mail it to as many news agencies and public interest groups as we can.”

“Such as newspapers, TV networks?”

He nodded quickly. “All that, yes. We’re also sending copies to the ACLU, Public Citizen, the Rainbow Coalition, the three major political parties, various other nongovernment watchdog organizations, and so forth.”

“And the Big Muddy, I hope.”