Part 18 (1/2)

Anthony nthony, his temper up, emerged from the lift and aimed a Asavage kick at the doors as they snapped hungrily closed, just missing him. 'Hah, better luck next time!'

He headed towards the Vice Chancellor's office. The trouble was that all these corridors looked the same. All Sixties-style breezeblocks, which the architect obviously a.s.sumed gave the university a historic traditional feel. ' Very Very Malcolm Bradbury, Very Sanderson, Malcolm Bradbury, Very Sanderson, ' he complained on frequent occasions, but no one under twenty-five got the reference. ' he complained on frequent occasions, but no one under twenty-five got the reference.

A couple of Chillys, plugged into their walkmans, approached. 'Hi kids,' he sneered. 'Been in any good deprograms lately?'

They ignored him, drifting past like zombies.

'Want any autographs?' he called after them. 'If you can read, that is,' he muttered. He had deserted his post, leaving a syntho-pop medley playing on the grams. It was pumping out into the corridors all over the campus. Yet the Chillys weren't even listening to it. Their headphones played a simplified version of the beat. He had tried it, but it literally gave him a bad head after only a few seconds.

He already hated the place. The students didn't behave like students. No illegal parties. No oversleeping, not even oversleeping in each other's rooms. No jailbait available. They were seriously dead, these Chillys. So chilled out that their minds and other faculties were frozen solid. Stepford Students.

I'll just die if I don't get that degree. I'll just die if I don't get that degree. that degree. Students should be radical and dishevelled and late for lectures he had been. Gigs for students should be like playing to a load of Krypto-Metal fans. Students should be radical and dishevelled and late for lectures he had been. Gigs for students should be like playing to a load of Krypto-Metal fans.

He reached the entrance to a computer room and stopped to listen to the deep growling hum that came from inside. It sounded like the chanting of Tibetan monks.

He scooped up a mangled piece of paper from the floor and smoothed it out. It was covered in codes and numbers with a line drawing of a pyramid. It was the note Danny had shown him in the canteen.

Anthony had been sitting at a table, bemoaning the lack of a Union bar on the campus, when Danny had come up and spoken to him. The kid was unlike any other Chilly he had come across. He displayed emotion. In fact, he was very upset, even disturbed, but Anthony was glad to talk to anybody else, however deranged. The only other people he spoke to were the right-wing fascists and loonies who called on the daily chat show lines.

Compared with them, Danny seemed completely rational.

Danny was convinced that something was going on at New World University. It was all too easy. Everyone was too taken in. Danny wanted to know how the computer that seemed to control everything really worked. He had elaborate plans to hack his way into the secure areas of the mainframe and find out what was behind it.

Anthony wasn't even sure he wanted to know. He just wanted to work out his short-term contract and go back to being unemployable. Even so, he liked the kid. There was no one else in the place to like. 'Let me know what you dig up,'

he said to Danny, 'and we'll see what we can get out of it.'

The kid obviously thought this would make the Big Time, and he sidled off looking happier. Anthony had thought that this might have been his good deed for the decade.

Here and now, looking at the crumpled paper, he wasn't so sure. He rubbed his fingers. There were strands of something resembling cobweb on them. He ducked back as the door opened and Christopher, resplendent in another new pullover, emerged.

'Something you want, Anthony?' he oozed.

Anthony rose to the challenge. 'A producer with a sense of humour?' He shrugged. 'I want a word with the High Priestess.'

Christopher closed the door behind him. 'The Vice Chancellor's busy.' He started steering Anthony back along the corridor, but the DJ pulled free.

'h.e.l.lo, first-time caller to Christopher Rice. Your jazzy-bright DJ has a problem.'

'You had a salary rise within a month of starting.'

Anthony was not deterred. 'I was top of my year at drama college, right?'

Christopher nodded. 'Nineteen seventy-two.'

'Listen up, buster. The conviction I give your propagandist c.r.a.p should win me a BAFTA. Instead, I get chucked out of my office so you can move in more b.l.o.o.d.y computer hardware.'

'It's part of the transmitter automation programme.'

'Then get the transmitter to read the scripts. There's no real people left in this G.o.dd.a.m.ned place. Just hundreds of empty offices, full of computers and squatting Chillys!'

Christopher locked eyes with him and smiled. 'I'll tell Miss Waterfield.'

They had reached a stairwell. Anthony glared for a moment before he started down. At the first landing, he stopped. Out of reach. 'Tell her I want action now. Not when orders arrive from our Glorious Sponsor, wherever he hangs out.'

Having delivered himself of his tirade, he set off back to his gla.s.s dungeon. If they didn't react he would do a DLT live on air and see how they liked that. He still had Danny's crumpled note in his fist. He rubbed at his fingers where they were irritating.

13.

Shapes rush of stale air and the approaching roar of another Aengine.

The presence inhabiting Travers pushes his shape into the low angle between the wall and the floor. A niche for itself, confined to the extent of the body's substance, anch.o.r.ed by gravity to the Earth.

The sound of bodies moving. A threnody of a thousand footsteps clattering, dispersing, echoing away.

The thing in the blind old man's body listens to their shapes. Light and heavy shapes, clumsy, old and young shapes.

A human voice shouts, 'Mind the doors.'

A shrill alarm of bleeps. A slide. A thud. The engine's roar fading into the distance and a rush of air pressing against Travers's surface skin.

Footsteps approach and pause. A c.h.i.n.k of metal pieces on the ground in front of it. The footsteps move on again.

The presence feels itself in every region of Travers's body, held in the stasis it has imposed. It knows every ancient blood cell moving sluggishly in every ancient vein. Every hair and follicle, every nerve-ending. Its own pounding thought-beat overwhelming the dull double thud of Travers's heart. It can make him jerk with spasms as it flexes inside his body. But laughter, cruel and mocking, is exhausting. And it is still so weak. A scooped-out pulp without its own sh.e.l.l.

It has no shape. That was lost long ago. Does it recall what it was once? Was it huge with ma.s.sive claws to crush and maim? A bloated spider-mind filling every cavernous gap with billowing web? Was it a mountain? A bank of mountains looming and rumbling like clouds in another sky or on another continuum? A comet scattering thoughts when it surges through the junctions and circuits of the New World computer?

It is there now, resting while it projects out of that body into Travers's body, where it has had a hold for years.

In truth, it cannot remember what it once was. That was so far off, in another dimension, another form of now.

It struggles to hold its thoughts together. A ma.s.s of thoughts is all it is. But such substantial thoughts. More than just an idea. A ma.s.s of thoughts with one single thought. The Doctor reversed the energy flow. Reversed everything. The power that enabled it, It It, the Great Great Intelligence, now binds it. Intelligence, now binds it.

Now it it is the p.a.w.n. It is blinded. It cannot escape. is the p.a.w.n. It is blinded. It cannot escape.

It is still weak, but it has a new web now: a web of wires and fibres where it has soothed and healed its wounded mind.

The new web reaches and connects with other webs. The Intelligence has spread slowly, bridging interfaces, breaching firewalls, hiding in other commands and texts. The new web already circuits the Earth. All systems are converting to one command system. Search and retrieve that focus that binds it.

That Locus must be recovered and destroyed!

And that is not enough. The rigid web binds it too. It must have solid form and substance. Not to exist solely as blind impulses of data. But does it have the strength?