Death Match

Silver folded the tape and stuffed it in his pocket. “I’ll give you the opcodes. You enter them.”

Tara raised her hands again to the control surface.

“Press the LDA button to load the first memory location into the register.”

Tara complied. Lash saw a tiny light illuminate beneath her finger.

“Now move to that panel of nine toggle switches. Enter ‘001111000.’ That’s 120 in decimal, the first available memory location.”

Tara ran her finger down the row of toggle buttons.

“Now press the execute button.”

A small light glowed green on the panel. “Done,” she replied.

“Now press the ADD button.”

“Done.”

“On the toggle switches, enter ‘100000000.’

“Wait. That ‘one’ at the begi

“The parity bit, remember? It has to stay set.”

“Okay.” Tara ran her hands over the buttons again. “Done.”

“Press the execute button to ‘AND’ the zeros to memory location 120.”

Another press of a button; another confirmation.

“Now press the STM button to store the new value in memory.”

Tara pressed a button at the end of the row. Nodded.

“Now press INC to increment the memory pointer.”

“Done.”

“That’s it. You’re ready for the next set. You’re going to have to press those four buttons — LDA, ADD, STM, and INC — in order, executing the sequence each time, over and over until you reach the end of memory.”

“How many memory locations in all?”

“One thousand.”

Tara’s face fell. “Jesus. We’ll never have time to erase them all.”

There was a terrible pause.

“Oh. Sorry.” It was Silver speaking again. “I meant, one thousand in octal.” The smile that followed was even more ghostly than before.

“Base eight,” Tara muttered. “What’s that in base ten?”

“Five hundred twelve.”

“Better. But it’s still a hell of a lot of button-pressing.”

“Then I suggest you get started,” Mauchly said.

They worked as a team — Dorfman keeping track of the iterations, Tara punching in the opcodes, Silver checking her entries. Gilmore, the security tech, was dispatched to the exit hatchway, instructed to alert them if he observed any stand-down from Condition Gamma. Lawson was ordered to keep a clear avenue of escape between them and the interstructural hatch — just in case they succeeded.

They closed ranks around the little computer as the heat and smoke pressed in ever more fiercely. The air thickened, until Lash could barely see the figures around him. His eyes were streaming freely, and his throat was so parched by the acrid smoke that swallowing became all but impossible. Once or twice, Sheldrake disappeared in the direction of the backup generator and its lethal payload; each time he returned, his expression was grimmer.

At last, Tara stepped away from the control surface, flexing and unflexing her fingers.

Dorfman nodded. “Check. That’s five hundred and twelve.”

Lash waited, heart hammering in his chest, for something to happen.

Nothing.

He felt his skin scorching in the heat. He closed his eyes; felt the earth begin to tilt dangerously; opened them quickly again.

Sheldrake picked up his radio. “Gilmore!”

There was a crackle of static. “Yes, sir!”

“Anything happening?”

“No sir. Status quo here.”

Sheldrake slowly lowered the radio. Nobody spoke, or even dared look at one another.

Then the radio chirped back into life. “Mr. Sheldrake!”

Sheldrake instantly raised it. “What is it?”

“The security doors — they’re opening!”

And now Lash could feel a faint vibration beneath his feet: nearly lost amid the death throes of the machinery, but discernible nevertheless.

“Power?” Sheldrake almost yelled into the radio. “Is there power down there?”

“No, sir, I don’t see anything yet — just the lights of the city, shining through the baffle. Jesus, they look good—”

“Hold your position. We’re on our way.” He turned toward the group. “Standing down from Condition Gamma. Looks like we did it.”

“Tara did it,” Mauchly said.

Tara leaned wearily against the panel.

“Come on,” Mauchly said. “No time to lose.”

He began leading the way out through the heavy palls of smoke. Lash took Tara gently by the arm and fell into step behind Sheldrake. Glancing back, he was surprised to see Silver was not following. Instead, the man was threading his paper tape back into the teletype.

“Dr. Silver!” he shouted. “Richard! Come on!”

“In a minute.” The teletype came to life, and the paper tape began threading through the reader.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tara cried. “We have to get out!”

“I’m buying us some time. Don’t know how long your scheme’s going to work — Liza’s bound to notice an irregularity soon. So I’m restoring the original programming to cover our tracks.”

“You’re wasting time — come on!”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

“Let’s go.” And as Lash ducked between viscous curtains of black, he caught one more glimpse of Silver: bending intently over the teletype, guiding the tape back through the reader.

The walk was a nightmare of fire and smoke. What on their way in had been a digital city in overdrive was now a silicon inferno. Cascades of sparks spat, tongues of flame arced overhead; steel behemoths tore themselves apart as their internals expired in jets of burning machine oil. The shriek of failing metal, the bolts exploding under enormous heat, turned the huge chamber into a war zone. The pall grew even thicker as they moved outward through the rings of support equipment. Once, Lash and Tara grew disoriented and strayed from the group, only to be tracked down by Lawson. Later, when Tara became separated in a particularly fiery passage, Lash somehow managed to find her after a frantic ninety-second search.

They stumbled on. A dark mist gathered before Lash’s eyes: a mist that had nothing to do with the smoke.

Then — just as he felt he would succumb to the heat and fumes — he found himself in a small, cramped passage with the others. A metal ladder was anchored to a hatch in the floor. Sheldrake was already descending, flashlight in hand, shouting out to an invisible Gilmore below. Mauchly helped Tara onto the ladder next, then Dorfman — who carried another light — and then Lash.

“Watch your step,” Mauchly said, guiding Lash’s hand onto the railing. “And move quickly.”

Lash began descending the ladder as quickly as he could. He climbed through a vertical steel cylinder — the structural undercarriage of the penthouse — and emerged into a strange, twilight world. Despite everything, he paused for a moment. He’d heard mention of the “baffle,” the open area between the i

“Dr. Lash,” came Mauchly’s voice. “Keep moving, please.”

Just as Mauchly spoke, Lash made out the thick plates of steel that lay, accordion fashion, against the transverse walls of the baffle. They gleamed cruelly in the reflected light, like monstrous jaws. The security plates, he thought as he resumed his descent.

A minute later he was standing on the access pad atop the i

And then he remembered: they were still short one person.

He turned to Mauchly, just now stepping off the ladder. “Where’s Silver?” he asked.

Mauchly raised his cell phone, dialed. “Dr. Silver? Where are you?”

“I’m almost there,” came the voice. Behind it, Lash could hear a terrible fugue of destruction: explosions, collapses, the groan of failing steel. And there was another noise, mechanical and regular, scarcely discernible: the sound of the tape reader, still chattering grimly on…