COUNT ZERO

“No,” Marly said, looking down at the helmet she grasped in the suit’s red gauntlets. at her pale reflection in the mirrored faceplate Rez made a little clicking sound with her tongue. “Your life. If you want to get back, have them put a message through JAL Term for the Sweet Jane.”

Marly kicked off clumsily and spun forward into the lock, no larger than an upright coffin. The red suit’s breastplate clicked hard against the outer hatch, and she heard the i

Nothing happened. She was alone with the beating of her heart.

Then the Sweet Jane’s outer hatch slid open. A slight pressure differential was enough to tumble her out into a darkness that smelled old and sadly human, a smell like a long-abandoned locker room. There was a thickness, an un-clean dampness to the air, and, still tumbling, she saw Sweet Jane’s hatch slide shut behind her. A beam of light stabbed past her, wavered, swung, and found her spi

“Lights,” someone bawled hoarsely. “Lights for our guest! Jones!” It was the voice she’d heard through the ear-bead. It rang strangely, in the iron vastness of this place, this hollow she fell through, and then there was a grating sound and a distant ring of harsh blue flared up, showing her the far curve of a wall or hull of steel and welded lunar rock. The surface was lined and pitted with precisely carved cha

Something struck the shoulder of her suit with a damp smack, and she turned her head to see a pink gob of bright plastic trailing a fine pink line, which jerked taut as she watched, flipping her around. The derelict cathedral space filled with the laboring whine of an engine, and, quite slowly, they reeled her in.

“It took you long enough,” the voice said. “I wondered who would be first, and now it’s Virek... Mammon... And then they had her, spi

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Ludgate!” the old man roared. “Wigan Ludgate, as you well know. Who else did he send you to deceive?” His seamed, blotched face was clean shaven, but his gray, un-trimmed hair floated free, seaweed on a tide of stale air.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not here to deceive you. I no longer work for Virek... I came here because... I mean, I’m not at all sure why I came here, to begin with, but on my way I learned that the artist who makes the boxes is in danger. Because there’s something else, something Virek thinks he has, something Virek thinks will free him from his cancers... Her words ran down to silence, in the face of the almost palpable craziness that radiated from Wigan Ludgate, and she saw that he wore the cracked plastic carapace of an old work suit, with cheap metal crucifixes epoxied like a necklace around the tarnished steel helmet ring. His face was very close. She could smell his decaying teeth.

“The boxes!” Little balls of spittle curled off his lips, obeying the elegant laws of Newtonian physics. “You whore! They’re of the hand of God!”

“Easy there, Lud,” said a second voice, “you’re scarin’ the lady. Easy, lady, ‘cause old Lud, he hasn’t got too many visitors. Gets him quite worked up, y’see, but he’s basically a harmless old bugger... She turned her head and met the relaxed gaze of a pair of wide blue eyes in a very young face. “I’m Jones,” he said, “I live here, too...

Wigan Ludgate threw back his head and howled, and the sound rang wild against the walls of steel and stone.

“Mostly, y’see,” Jones was saying as Marly pulled her way behind him along a knotted line stretched taut down a corridor that seemed to have no end, “he’s pretty quiet.

Listens to his voices, y’know. Talks to himself, or maybe to the voices, I du

“Are you Australian?” she asked.

“New Melbourne,” he said. “Or was, before I got up the well.”

“Do you mind my asking why you’re here? I mean, here in this, this... What is it?”

The boy laughed. “Mostly, I call it the Place. Lud, he calls it a lot of things, but mostly the Kingdom. Figures he’s found God, he does. Suppose he has, if you want to look at it that way. Near as I make it, he was some kind of console crook before he got up the well. Don’t know how he came to be here, exactly, other than that it suits the poor bastard. Me, I came here ru

“Can you take me to the artist? Is he here? It’s extremely urgent.”

“I’ll take you, no fear. But this place, it was never really built for people, not to get around in, I mean, so it’s a bit of a journey... It isn’t likely to be going anywhere, though. Can’t guarantee it’ll make a box for you. Do you really work for Virek? Fabulous rich old shit on the telly? Kraut, isn’t he?”

“I did,” she said, “for a number of days. As for nationality, I would guess Herr Virek is the sole citizen of a nation consisting of Herr Virek...”

“See what you mean,” Jones said, cheerily. “It’s all the same, with these rich old fucks, I suppose, though it’s more fun than watching a bloody zaibatsu... You won’t see a zaibatsu come to a messy end, will you? Take old Ashpool – countryman of mine, he was – who built all this; they say his own daughter slit his throat, and now she’s bad as old Lud, holed up in the family castle somewhere. The Place being a former part of all that, y’see.”

“Rez... I mean, my pilot, said something like that. And a friend of mine, in Paris, mentioned the Tessier-Ashpools recently... The clan is in eclipse?”

“Eclipse? Lord! Down the bloody tube’s more like it. Think about it: We’re crawlin’, you an’ me, through what used to be their corporate data cores. Some contractor in Pakistan bought the thing; hull’s fine, and there’s a fair bit of gold in the circuitry, but not as cheap to recover as some might like... It’ s been hangin’ up here ever since, with only old Lud to keep it company, and it him. Till I come along, that is. Guess one day the crews’ll come up from Pakistan and get cuttin’... Fu

“But you think they are still operative?”

“Lord, yes. About the way Lud is, if you call that operative. What do you think your boxmaker is?”

“What do you know about Maas Biolabs?”

“Moss what?”

“Maas. They make biochips...”

“Oh. Them. Well, that’s all I do know about ‘em...”

“Ludgate speaks of them?”

“He might. Can’t say as I listen all that close. Lud, he does speak a fair bit...”