Death Match

Liza remained silent.

Slowly, external sound and sensation went away. Lash kept his thoughts focused on the beach, on the creamy sound of the surf.

Feel your head relax. Feel it roll gently to one side. Now feel the muscles of your neck relax. Feel your chest grow less tight, your breathing come easier.

“Christopher.” It was the disembodied voice of Liza.

“Yes.” Feel your arms relax, first the right, then the left. Let them go limp.

“Please repeat your last statement.”

Feel your legs relax, first the right, then the left. “Has Richard Silver used this interface to access records relating to me?”

“Yes, Christopher.”

“Were those records external or internal?”

No response.

Take a slow, deep breath. “Were the records Richard accessed within your dataspace, or were they outside Eden Incorporated?”

“Both.”

Focus on the beach. “Did Richard Silver modify or change these records in any way?”

There was no reply.

“Liza, did Richard Silver modify any of—”

“No.”

No? Was Liza telling him Silver had not modified his records, after all? Or was she refusing to answer? But that was…

Abruptly, his hard-won concentration crumpled. Lash took a deep breath, glanced beyond the Plexiglas partition. Silver had taken several steps back now, and was standing beside Tara. They were looking at him, worried expressions on their faces.

“Christopher,” Silver was saying. “Please step out for a minute. I need to speak with you.”

There was no further response from Liza. There was a new look in Silver’s eyes: a haunted look.

Silver reached into his pocket, pulled out a cell phone, dialed a number. “Edwin?” he said. “Edwin, it’s Richard.” Then he held the cell phone away from his ear so both Tara and Lash could hear the response.

“Yes, Dr. Silver,” came Mauchly’s ti

“Where are you currently?”

“We’ve just penetrated the interstructural barrier.”

“Hold your position. Don’t proceed any farther until you get instructions from me.”

“Could you repeat that, Dr. Silver?”

“I said, hold your position. Do not attempt to enter the penthouse.” This time, Silver kept the phone to his ear. “Everything’s fine. Yes, Edwin, just fine. I’ll get back to you soon.”

But Silver did not look fine as he replaced the phone in his pocket. “Christopher. It’s vital that we talk, and talk now.”

Lash hesitated just one more moment. Then he swung his legs off the chair, plucked the leads from his forehead, and exited the chamber.

FIFTY-FIVE

Mauchly looked down at his cell phone a moment, as if doubting it was working properly. Then he returned it to his lips. “Could you repeat that, Dr. Silver?”

“I said, hold your position. Do not attempt to enter the penthouse.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes, Edwin, just fine. I’ll get back to you soon.” And with a chirrup, the phone went silent.

Mauchly gave it another long stare.

Even through the distortion, there’d been no doubt the voice was Silver’s. There was an unusual undercurrent to it Mauchly did not recall hearing before, and he wondered if Lash was threatening him, if he was being held hostage in his own penthouse. Yet the voice hadn’t sounded frightened. If Mauchly detected anything, he detected great weariness.

“That was Silver?” Sheldrake shouted from below.

“Yes.”

“And his orders?”

“Not to enter the penthouse. Hold our position.”

“You kidding?”

“No.”

There was a brief silence. “Well, if we’re to hold our position, could we hold it somewhere more comfortable? I’m feeling like a circus gymnast here.”

Mauchly glanced down. It seemed a reasonable request.

For the last fifteen minutes, they had been waiting at the top of a long metal ladder that climbed the inside wall of Eden’s i

Perhaps Stapleton could have made a quicker job of it. Had she wanted to…

But Mauchly would not allow himself to ponder the problem of Tara Stapleton any further. Instead, he made a mental note to reevaluate penthouse security at the earliest possible opportunity.

Clearly, he’d allowed Silver’s passion for privacy to be carried beyond reasonable extremes. The last fifteen minutes had been proof of that. It was an indulgence, a dangerous indulgence. The battering ram had failed — as expected — but high-tech methods had also proven alarmingly slow. What if Silver should fall suddenly ill and be unable to help himself? If the elevator were to malfunction, precious minutes would be lost reaching him. Silver was simply too valuable an asset of the company to be put at risk, and Mauchly himself would tell him so. Silver was a reasonable man; he would understand.

Now, Mauchly looked up the ladder. It disappeared into a hatch in the roof of the i

“Proceed,” Mauchly called up.

Dorfman raised a hand to one ear.

“Proceed! Wait just inside for us.”

Dorfman nodded, then turned to grasp the narrow ladder with both hands. Another moment and he had climbed out of sight, disappearing into the blackness of the penthouse.

Mauchly glanced down at Sheldrake, motioned for him and his men to follow. It had been a hard-fought battle, gaining access to the penthouse: if they were going to wait, they might as well wait inside.

He began climbing the rest of the way up the ladder. Four steps took him to the porthole in the tower’s roof; another four steps brought him up into the baffle. He had never been in this space before, and despite himself he stopped to look around.

Mauchly was not a particularly imaginative man, but — as he slowly swivelled through an axis of one hundred and eighty degrees — he found he had to fight back vertigo. A dark metal landscape — the roof of the i

And there was something else: something more unsettling. Set into the walls of the long axis, midway between the two structures, were the telescoping sections of the huge security plates. Mauchly could make out three indentations in their steel flanks: two fitted to the data trunks, the other to the private elevator. The plates were fully retracted now, but if an emergency was ever declared they would slide forward and lock together, sealing the penthouse from the tower below. From his vantage point, the massive hydraulic pistons that powered the plates looked like the springs of a colossal mouse trap.