Death Match

Mauchly nodded again, more slowly. “Very well. But let’s not take any chances.” He turned, spoke to someone standing behind Lash. “You and your men accompany Dr. Alicto to Medical. Once there, I want Lash confined to a gurney with leather restraints.”

“Understood,” came a familiar-sounding voice.

Mauchly turned back to Alicto. “How long until he’s ready?”

“Sixty minutes. Ninety, to be safe.”

“Proceed.” Mauchly stood up, looked at Lash cooly. “I’ll see you again shortly, Dr. Lash. Meanwhile, you leave me the unenviable task of breaking all this to Richard Silver.”

He held Lash’s gaze for a moment. Then he turned on his heel and left the conference room by a rear door.

A heavy hand fell on Lash’s shoulder. “Come with us,” said the familiar voice.

As the hand raised him from the seat and swivelled him around, Lash looked into the green eyes of Sheldrake, the security honcho. Sheldrake stepped to one side, motioning Lash forward. As he walked, Lash registered half a dozen security guards falling into position behind him.

The door in front of him opened. As in a dark dream, Lash stepped into the hallway, a guard at each elbow. They guided him down one corridor, then another, on their way to Medical.

Ahead, where two hallways intersected, Lash saw a small knot of people. A technician was approaching them from the intersection, wheeling some piece of equipment on a metal cart.

Lash’s sense of unreality grew stronger. As they approached the intersection, one of the security officers took his elbow. “Make a left up ahead, and stop at the elevator bank,” he murmured. “Don’t be difficult if you know what’s good for you.” The technician with the cart was almost upon them, and the guards guided Lash to one side so the man could pass.

At that moment, Lash felt a strange thing happen. Time seemed to slow. The steps of the surrounding guards decelerated until each footfall became distinct. He could hear his heart beating monotonously, like a drum.

He turned suddenly, tugging free of the guard’s hand. Behind he could see the other four guards, Sheldrake and Dr. Alicto bringing up the rear. Sheldrake’s eyes met his and something unspoken passed between them. Lash saw Sheldrake’s mouth begin to open and his arm rise, but everything was moving so slowly there was still plenty of time. Taking the cart from the technician, Lash flung it at the guards behind him. He felt the two at his sides trying to restrain him: he stomped the instep of the first and sent a knee into the groin of the other.

His limbs seemed to move under some foreign control, as if a puppeteer was guiding him. The cart had upended, entangling the rear guards; Lash grabbed the technician and shoved him into the advancing Sheldrake. The two fell backward in a tangle. And then Lash turned back toward the intersection and began to run. And as he did so — as he reached the crossing, glanced in both directions, chose a corridor, broke through the small knot of workers and dashed away — it seemed time once again began to speed up, faster and faster, until his thoughts, his breathing, and the churning of his legs became a blur of sound and color.

FORTY-FOUR

Lash turned a corner, dashed headlong down a new corridor, turned again. Then he stopped and pressed himself against the wall, looking around wildly. There was nobody in sight. In the distance he could hear raised voices, ru

But it made no difference. It was only a matter of time until they ran him down and resumed the interrogation, with handcuffs and restraints and meds this time.

He struggled against overwhelming disbelief. How had this happened, and happened so quickly? Had he really risen from bed that morning a free man, only now to be hunted as a psychotic murderer? It seemed impossible that anybody, especially a man like Mauchly, could believe it. Yet it was all too clear that he, and everybody else, did believe. And Lash could imagine what the proof was. Mauchly had recited the list of phony but no doubt all too credible evidence: telephone bills, psychological evaluations, even a criminal record. How was it possible to fight someone with the almost infinite resources of Eden at their fingertips?

Somebody appeared in the hallway before him — a technician, dressed in a white lab coat — and Lash trotted past her, head down, without nodding. Another intersection, another quick turn. The hall was narrower here, the doorways farther apart.

Had it really begun as far back as those missing newspapers, the E-ZPass and ATM snafus, the tampering with his mail? Was it possible it had begun so early?

Yes. And then the credit card refusals, the problem with his mortgage payments. It had all been part of a campaign of increasing pressure. Pressure brought to bear because he was getting too close.

And now — now that he knew all — steps would be taken to make sure he would never be heard. He’d be locked away, and his cries would mingle with those of every other inmate protesting his i

He stopped suddenly. Was he becoming paranoid in his extremity, or was it possible even the parole of Edmund Wyre was part of this elaborate attempt to silence him? And was it also possible the mistake that put his own rejected avatar in the Tank, that seemed to promise such a bright future, had simply been a method to keep closer tabs on…

He willed his feet forward once again. But as he did, Mauchly’s words echoed: Steps have been taken to place Diana Mirren out of harm’s way. You won’t be hearing from her again.

There had to be somebody he could talk to, somebody who’d believe. But who inside the fortress of Eden knew anything about him, much less why he was really here? It had been a carefully guarded secret from the begi

He could, in fact, think of only one desperate chance.

But how? He was lost in an endless maze of corridors. Everything was monitored. His hand fell to the identity bracelet circling his wrist. A dozen sca

His eye fell on a door marked WEB FARM 15. He reached for the handle, found it locked. With a low curse, he moved his bracelet toward the identity sca

Then he paused. Stepping back quickly, he trotted down the hall, positioning his bracelet below the sca

The room was dim. As he’d hoped, it was deserted. Twin banks of metal shelving rose from floor to ceiling, jammed with rack-mounted blade servers: a tiny fraction of the massive digital horsepower that made Eden possible. He walked between the shelves to the back of the room, sca

He knelt before it. The plate was perhaps four feet high by three feet wide. For a minute, he feared it might be locked, or guarded by an identity sca

Beyond, he could make out a cylindrical tube of smooth metal. The sides and ceiling were covered in a dense flow of cabling: fiber-optic, CAT-6, half a dozen other types Lash did not recognize. A cold cathode line ran along the ceiling, emitting faint blue illumination. Farther down the accessway, Lash could see the tube dividing, first once, then again, like the tributaries of a great river.