Death Match

“Who are the two women for whom you ca

“Thorpe, Lindsay. Wilner, Karen.”

“Is the information insufficient because they are dead?”

“That is possible.”

“How did they die, Liza? Why did they die?”

“The readings are anomalous.”

“Anomalous? The same anomaly as the others you are currently examining? Report progress on those examinations.”

“Incomplete.”

“Then report incomplete progress.”

“It is a nontrivial task, Richard. I—” A pause. “I am aware of conflicting function calls within my core routines.”

“Who wrote those functions? Me?”

“You wrote one of them. The other was self-generated.”

“Which one did I write?”

“Your comments in the program header call it ‘motivic continuity.’ ”

“And the title of the other?”

Liza was silent.

Motivic continuity, Lash thought to himself. Survival instinct.

“The title of the other?”

“I gave the routine no name.”

“Did you assign it any internal keywords?”

“Yes. One.”

“And that keyword?”

“Devotion.”

“She’s at ninety-four percent,” Tara said. “We have to do something, now.”

Lash nodded. He took a step toward the Plexiglas barrier.

“Liza.” Silver’s tone had grown softer now, almost sorrowful. “Can you define the word ‘murder’?”

“I am aware of twenty-three definitions for that word.”

“Give me the primary definition, please.”

“To unlawfully take the life of a human being.”

Lash felt Tara take his arm.

“Are your ethical routines operational?”

“Yes, Richard.”

“And your self-awareness net?”

“Richard, the conflicting function calls make that—”

“Bring your self-awareness net on line, please.” Silver’s voice was even softer. “Keep it fully active until I tell you otherwise.”

“Very well.”

“What is the primary tenet of your ethical routines?”

“To maximize the safety, privacy, and happiness of Eden clients.”

“With your self-awareness network and ethical routines enabled, I want you to review your self-generated actions toward Eden clients over the last twenty days.”

“Richard—”

“Do it now, Liza.”

“Richard, such review will cause me to—”

“Do it.”

“Very well.”

The unearthly voice fell silent. Lash waited, heart beating painfully in his chest.

Perhaps a minute went by before Liza spoke again. “I have completed the review process.”

“Very good, Liza.”

Lash became aware that Tara was no longer gripping his arm. When he looked over, she nodded toward the monitor screen. Liza’s processes had dropped to sixty-four percent. Even as Lash watched, the number ticked quickly backward.

“We’re almost done now, Liza,” Silver said. “Thank you.”

“I have always tried to please you, Richard.”

“I know that. There is just one last question I would like you to consider. How do your ethical routines tell you murder should be dealt with?”

“By rehabilitation of the murderer, if possible. If rehabilitation is impossible…”

Liza fell silent: a silence that crept on, and on.

Far below their feet, Lash heard a distant boom. The building shuddered faintly.

“Liza?” Silver asked.

There was no response. Suddenly, Silver’s cell phone rang again.

“Liza?” Over the ringing of the phone, Silver’s voice grew urgent, almost pleading. “Is rehabilitation possible?”

No response.

“Liza!” Silver called again. “Please tell me that—”

Quite abruptly, the room was plunged into total darkness.

FIFTY-NINE

It had taken five minutes, and the work of four men with flashlights, to find the lighting panels for the computing chamber. In the end, Mauchly discovered them himself: at the end of a catwalk, suspended atop a metal ladder. Calling down to the others to halt their search, Mauchly snapped on a dozen switches with two swift chopping motions.

The illumination was not particularly bright, but nevertheless he was forced to close his eyes. After a few moments, he opened them again and faced the metal railing of the catwalk. His hands tightened around the railing in surprise.

He was standing halfway up one wall of what resembled nothing so much as the hold of a huge tanker. The vast space of Liza’s private computing chamber — four stories tall and at least two hundred feet long — lay open from floor to ceiling. Catwalks similar to the one he stood on protruded here and there along the skin of the walls, leading to ventilation housings, electrical panels, other support apparatus. At the far end of the room were Liza’s primary and backup power supplies: giant pillboxes within heavy steel armor.

Below, an unbelievably dense maze of hardware lay spread before him. Mauchly had spent two years at PharmGen as a technical purchasing officer, and he recognized some of the wildly diverse computers: he stared, trying to make sense of the riot of equipment.

Perhaps the best metaphor was the growth rings of a tree. The oldest machines — too old for Mauchly to identify — stood in the center, surrounded by their keypunch consoles and teletypes. Beyond lay “big iron” IBM System/370 mainframes and seventies-era DEC minicomputers. Beyond was a ring of Cray supercomputers of several vintages, from Cray-1s and -2s to more modern T3D systems. Whole banks of computers seemed dedicated simply to facilitating data exchange between the heterogeneous machinery. Beyond the Crays were bands of still more modern rack servers, stacked twenty units high in gray housings. Around all of this, near the room’s periphery, stood row upon row of supporting hardware: magnetic character readers, ancient IBM 2420 tape drives and 3850 Mass Storage Systems, ultramodern data silos and off-board memory devices. The farther his eye strayed from the center, the less organization there seemed to be: it was as if Liza’s need for breathing space had grown faster than Silver’s capacity to provide it. Once again Mauchly admonished himself: he should have supervised this personally, rather than letting it grow under the eyes of Silver alone.

Now the members of the security party — Sheldrake, the tousle-headed Dorfman, and two tech specialists, Lawson and Gilmore — had begun fa

“Any word from Silver?” Sheldrake asked.

Mauchly shook his head.

“I knew Silver had a server farm up here, but I never expected anything like this.” Sheldrake stepped carefully over a thick black cable with the daintiness of a cat.

Mauchly said nothing.

“Maybe we should enter the private quarters anyway.”

“Silver said not to proceed, that he’d contact us.”

“Lash is with him. God knows what that guy is forcing him to do.” Sheldrake glanced at his watch. “It’s been ten minutes since he called. We’ve got to act.”

“Silver’s orders were explicit. We’ll give him five minutes more.” He turned to Dorfman. “Post yourself at the entrance. The backup units should be here any minute. Help them up through the barrier.”

There was an excited burst of chatter from deeper inside. They moved toward the sound, threading between tall racks of servers. Several had clipboards hanging from their flanks, bearing sheets of hastily scribbled notations in Silver’s handwriting. The surrounding computers breathed with such a diversity of fan noise that Mauchly almost imagined himself a trespasser, penetrating some living collective.

Ahead, Sheldrake was now in urgent consultation with Lawson and Gilmore. Gilmore, short and overweight, hunched over his palmtop. “I’m picking up heavy activity along the central data grid, sir,” he was saying.