Part 18 (2/2)
Pain rotated inside his forehead.
”You all right, Richie?”
”Sorry, yeah.” Richard rubbed his forehead. ”No problem.”
”OK, good. See, that control web is the kind of thing NAers don't get. Actually, just the fastenings on your clothes need a technical civilisation, stuff dug out of the ground with machinery, trucks for transport, factories, and shops, right? They don't get how complicated it all is.”
Richard looked around the workshop, remembering the redwood-panelled rooms at home, clean and elegant but never welcoming, not comfortable like here.
”You're not rich, though. You, Opal, Jayce, and all the”
”Him.”Brian's expression closed down. ”You want to stay with us, you do not nick from your friends.”
”I wouldn'tOh. Is that what Jayce did?””Uh-huh. Now, you know the first rule of hacking, right?”
”Er...”
”You start with a cup of coffee, refill every twenty minutes, repeat until task finished. I'll put the kettle on while you crank up the display. Give us a shout if nothing's in English.”
Richard popped the service interface onto the wallscreen the text was Korean but he found a ReadMe and babelled the contents. By the time Brian put coffee down beside him, he was already deep in the code, sketching diagrams in the side panes as Mr Stanier had taught at school. When he surfaced back into day-to-day reality, his coffee was cold. He sipped from it anyway.
Mr Keele periodically said that optimum cognition requires frequent breaks, so Richard flipped open another pane to browse the news. Unable to help himself, he murmured a query into a bead microphone, and watched as the results blossomed inside the new pane, with FRIENDLY ENEMIES? as the headline, a picture of Father and someone else someone familiar dressed in tuxedos, and the caption: Philip Broomhall Philip Broomhall greets Zebediah Tyndall at City dinner. greets Zebediah Tyndall at City dinner.
He thumbed on the audio...
”Despite the hard-fought takeover battle between Tyndall Industries and BroomCon regarding Hixon Media, the corporate rivals appeared to put aside their differences before the Industries and BroomCon regarding Hixon Media, the corporate rivals appeared to put aside their differences before the Lady Mayor of London. However, appearances can be deceptive, since both men” Lady Mayor of London. However, appearances can be deceptive, since both men”
...then silenced it.
Hands shaking, he made the pane disappear, then continued to stare at the screen where it had been. After some time, his attention drifted as if on gentle currents into the coding panes, and then he was back at work, forgetting everything, at home with himself once more.
[ THIRTEEN ].
Josh walked along the Embankment south of the river, watching the solar barges drift past. There was no reason to be in this part of London particularly there were other places that Richard Broomhall could be but this was central, with hostels and more: an entire ecology of homelessness, a bleak, pervasive undersea of living that was easy to fall into and hard to escape. Every few minutes, he checked his phone display. At 10:01am, finally, output appeared: Entry OK. Entry OK. Thirty seconds later, an appended message brightened: Thirty seconds later, an appended message brightened: 1st gen 1st gen replication successful, 53 processes sp.a.w.ned. replication successful, 53 processes sp.a.w.ned.
Although Petra had slipped the querybot inside the net's defences, she did not know how subtle and pervasive it could be, and he had not told her. Most of his sp.a.w.ned code would suicide quietly in a kind of controlled apoptosis, deliberate suicide just like human cells, for the sake of the body's health. The risk of being traced back to Petra was low. He would have liked more detailed progress reports from the burrowing code, but more traffic meant greater likelihood of monitors noticing and His phone buzzed, and for a moment was too blurred to make out. They've found me. They've found me. But he blinked and refocused, to identify the caller as Kath Gleason, from Sophie's school. But he blinked and refocused, to identify the caller as Kath Gleason, from Sophie's school.
”h.e.l.lo, Josh.”
”Miss Gleason.”
”Kath, please. I just thought I should check in with you.”
”There's no news.”
”I didn't think there was.” In the phone image, she shook her head. ”Your, er, Mrs c.u.mberland came in to see Eileen. Asked for Sophie to be taken off the school roll.”
Eileen was the headmistress.
”The school roll...?”
”Mrs c.u.mberland said that regardless of the outcome, Sophie would never return.”
Josh rubbed his face. There's only one outcome. There's only one outcome.
”I'm sure Maria's right.”
”Probably. It's just We asked about you, for confirmation, and she said you're out of the picture.”
”Out of the picture.”
”That's what she said.”
He looked up at the rotating wind-turbines, the long row stretching past the Houses of Parliament, and said again, without knowing why: ”I'm sure she's right.”
”Oh, then... Are you in Swindon at the moment?”
”Nowhere near.”
”I just wondered if you were going to be around.”
Josh stared at her in the phone.
Christ, she's. .h.i.tting on me.
Sometimes a woman was interested and he didn't get it in fact, he still didn't believe that Petra could fancy him but this was blatant. With Sophie worse than comatose persistent vegetative state meant there was nothing left to awaken and Maria filled with confusion, hating him... How did that equate with him being available?
”The Brezhinskis aren't doing too well,” Kath went on. ”The father's still bottling things up inside, the mother's still drinking, and Marek... We'd like to see him back in school.”
”It sounds as if the family needs help. Would the school pay for counselling?”
”I... don't know.”
”There's someone who could help, so long as she does get paid. I can put her in touch with the family directly. You can vouch for her, if Mr Brezhinski asks you.”
”Vouch for whom, exactly?”
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