Tracks

Mike Gordon graduated in Physics from the University of
Cambridge, then worked in electronics and computing and
gained a Master's degree at London University. He was
subsequently appointed Lecturer in Computing at Charing
Cross Medical School, where he became involved in the
development of clinical information systems. He later co-
founded a pioneering software company which supplies
advanced systems to premier medical centres around the
world. Tracks is his first novel.

Mike Gordon

Tracks

www.fractalfiction.com

© Mike Gordon 2008

Mike Gordon has asserted his right to be identified as the

author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988

All characters, organizations and events described in this

book are fictitious, except for those clearly in the public

domain. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is

purely coincidental.

Published by Fractal Fiction

Studio 239

30 Red Lion Street

Richmond upon Thames

Surrey TW9 1RB

www.fractalfiction.com

An imprint of Popham Gardens Publishing.

Book Design: David Gordon

Photography:

London: Scott Walker Boston: Eric H Weigle

Printed in the UK by Lightning Source UK Ltd

Milton Keynes

~ Acknowledgements

I specially want to thank the following people, who read

early drafts and provided invaluable comments and
encouragement:

Jane Angel, Dr Rachel Arthur, Dr David Cohen, Nancy
Godwin, Paul Harding, Jackie Collis Harvey, Dawn
Hollingsworth, Carol MacPhail, Minnie McBride, Camilla
Reeve, Professor Mike Riley, Nicki Robson, Dr Christina
Rogers, Philip Ruttley and Professor Hugh de Wardener

Also Peter Stephen-Ward for consultancy on book
production, and Conrad Venn for photographic consultancy.

And most of all, Erica, Deborah, Daniel, Jonathan, and
especially David Gordon, for their forbearance and support.

" . . . we could look around the brain for this information

and read out something that from the outside there's no way
you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch
around, looking for writing on a wall." Professor John-Dylan
Haynes, the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and
Brain Sciences.

- The brain scan that can read people's intentions. Call for

ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation.
Ian Sample, science correspondent. The Guardian, Friday
February 9, 2007.

(© Guardian News and Media Ltd 2007)

1

1~ Sheepdog

`Is this Mr Brandt? Mr Bernard Brandt?'
`Yes.' Fumbling for the bedside lamp, clutching the

cellphone to his ear. `Who is this?'

Somewhere far off, a wailing siren was transiting

downtown Boston. Overhead, a jet rumbled towards Logan,
its arc across the black summer sky visible through the part-
open drapes of his small apartment.

`This is Lee-Ann. From Global HealthCare?' The voice

was female, warm, a little throaty.

He peered at his watch. `It's three a.m., Lee-Ann.'
`Mr Brandt,' the voice intoned. `We're sorry to disturb you,

but you must go immediately to your nearest Emergency
Room.'

`No, it's a mistake. I need some sleep, is all.'
The voice took on an edge. `Mr Brandt, please get ready to

leave. You're going to have a heart attack in just seventeen
minutes from now.'

`It's a false alarm. I'll come in later, in the morning, if I

must.'

`Mr Brandt,' Lee-Ann said, `if you don't come in now, I'm

afraid you won't be here in the morning. Unfortunately, it will
be a rather bad heart attack. Without intervention, your
chance of survival is less than five percent. So please, Mr
Brandt, pack a bag with any essentials, including any current
medications, and be ready. Your transport will arrive in four
minutes. Be sure to bring your Wellness Management card.
We don't want you to have any delays checking in.'

2

`I don't know where it is.'
`Then bring any current credit card.'
In the distance there was a fluttering, like the wings of an

enormous moth. A chill ran through Brandt, and his heart
began to beat uncomfortably fast. `For Christ's sake,' he said,
`what do you care if I come in now or later?'

Lee-Ann sighed. `Mr Brandt, as an employee of Global

HealthCare, you agreed to participate in trials . . . ' He didn't
catch the rest, because the moth-wings had become so loud.
Were they really the sound of a helicopter in the plaza
outside, or some clamour inside his head?

A sharp pain in his left arm distracted him, and he felt

dizzy. He heard a key turn in his front door, and muffled
footsteps in the hall. Two men in green fatigues came into the
room. One carried a small oxygen cylinder. Each had a bright
red logo on his jacket, with the words:

Sheepdog Unit 9

The men from Global strapped him to a couch in the

helicopter, inserted a drip into his arm, fitted an oxygen mask
over his face and placed a headset over his ears. The little
aircraft rocked as its rotors came up to speed. Then it lifted,
and there outside its porthole window was his apartment
block at a crazy angle, and beyond that an ocean of light that
was the city.

As they made a tight, climbing turn to the west, he

thought about Lee-Ann's seductive voice. Was she real? The
technicians at Global could have synthesized a virtual person,
someone who was only a program running in a computer . . .
the pain in his arm suddenly increased, radiating into his

3

middle finger. Then it spread into his chest, becoming
unbearable.

One of the men in green was saying something, his voice

blurred over the intercom: `Emergency won't like this. Two
false positives last week, now a late alert. I don't know if this
one's going to make it.'

`Forget Emergency,' the pilot said. `Ben Hudson was onto

Control.'

`Hudson? The Global VP?'
`Man, he was incandescent. Said he was calling his

technical support people, get them on the case there and
then.'

`At three a.m.?' His partner looked down at the glittering

city sliding below. `Well, have fun, guys. So much for new
technology.'

Ben Hudson, Vice President of Operations at Global

HealthCare Inc, called a computer programmer named Peter
Miller, at his apartment a few miles west of Brandt's place.
When his bedroom phone started to ring, Miller almost
missed it. His hearing was muffled by the clinging embrace of
the girl he'd met just a few hours earlier at a friend's party.
He'd run into her as he'd been about to leave, bored by
alcoholic chit-chat and jokes he didn't find funny. Cheerfully
uninhibited, she'd dispelled his wariness of close encounters
and the unease that they induced. But now the sound of the
phone brought him up from the warm cushions of flesh,
reluctant to surrender their luxury, yet welcoming what he
knew the call would bring. He reached for the phone, but the
girl caught his arm.

`Who calls at this hour?' she demanded breathlessly.
Miller grinned. `My boss.'

4

`In the middle of the night?'
`Whenever their system has a problem.'
`He expects you to take calls at three in the morning?' the

girl said. `That's ridiculous. Come back to bed.'

`I'm the only one who can fix it. The system's a disaster.'
`So don't answer.'
The phone stopped ringing.
`Back to work, then,' the girl said, arranging herself

invitingly against the pillows.

`Good thinking.' But Miller hesitated, his eyes on the

phone where it lay on the floor. Almost at once, the ringing
started again.

`I guess you'd better take it,' the girl said reluctantly. `Just

get rid of him.'

Miller hooked his wire-rim glasses onto his nose, and lifted

the handset. `What is it now, Ben?'

He held the phone away from his ear as a thin litany of

complaint etched its way into the quiet of the room.

`That's too bad,' he said when the flow abated. `I'm sure

our CEO will go ballistic, and I really hope the guy doesn't
die. But Ben, you short-cut development.'

The complaints became louder.
`Support should handle this,' Miller said at last, `but alright

I'll see if there's a short-term fix. Just don't expect me to
rewrite the software. His name's B-R-A-N-D-T? OK, I'll call
you back.' He put the phone down.

`Are you done?' the girl asked. `Time's wasting.'
Miller got out of bed, leaned across and tucked the duvet

around her shoulders. `A few minutes, OK?' Hopping on one
foot, he pulled on his boxer shorts, picked up a laptop from
the floor, sat down cross-legged, with his back propped
against the bed, and began to type.

The girl sat up. `What are you doing?'

5

On the laptop screen the figure of a woman in a tailored

business suit materialized at the centre of an arc of shining
letters which spelled out the words: "Global HealthCare".
The figure turned towards Miller and smiled. `Hi Peter,' it
said softly. `I'm Lee-Ann, your Sheepdog avatar. How are you
today?'

The girl moved across to look over his shoulder. `Who is

that?' she asked. `Some celeb?'

`No. She's not real. Not exactly.' He smiled. `Did you know

"avatar" is the Sanskrit word for an ideal being?'

`What is it with you?' the girl demanded. `First you come

on like a demon, then next thing you're dewy-eyed about a
computer. Come back to bed. I have to leave soon.'

`It won't take long.'
She stared at him. At the party he'd seemed normal

enough, attractive too. Perhaps in his early thirties, with alert
eyes behind trendy glasses, a crazy London accent, and a
sureness about him that was appealing but also an
underlying complexity, which intrigued her. There was
something of the musician about him, she'd thought, and he
was certainly good in the sack. But now it was clear he had
priorities he considered more important. She didn't care to be
treated like a second-class citizen.

`Maybe you should drive me home,' she said.
`Really?' He wasn't listening, she could tell.
`Forget it.' The girl slid out of bed and started pulling on

her clothes.

He didn't notice. He was smiling at the woman on the

screen as if she were an old friend.

Oblivious to the girl's angry glare, Miller carried the laptop

into the adjoining room and set it on the dining table,

6

pushing aside a litter of tools and electronics to make space.
He said: `Go to recall mode, Lee-Ann. Replay Brandt.'

On-screen, Lee-Ann seemed to freeze, lifeless for a

moment. Then, as if awoken by a sudden rush of memory, she
asked: `Is this Mr Brandt? Mr Bernard Brandt?'

`Yes.' Brandt's voice echoed from somewhere in the

shadows of the room. `Who is this?'

There was a bang as the front door of the apartment

slammed. Startled, Miller crossed to the window. In the street
below, the girl's foreshortened figure was hurrying to the
corner. She flagged a passing cab, and looked back towards
him once before she got in. Then the cab pulled away, its
motion at this distance soundless.

Miller sighed. There was a pattern, but the pattern made

no sense. One-night stands were supposed to make you feel
good, having a great time. And for a few hours they did, it
was true. The release the girl had provided was still vibrating
through him. But a while later you found yourself feeling
more isolated than when you began, empty, even tainted. Yet
somehow, more permanent arrangements never held together,
not for him, anyway.

He sat down in front of the laptop, and pressed his fingers

to his eyes. When he opened them, he began to type, and
almost at once his feeling of desolation dissolved into
fascination and certainty. Windows opened on the screen,
filled with code, maps and graphs. He studied them carefully.
`Interesting,' he said aloud. Programs that didn't work
properly often were interesting, even those that had been
written by air-heads. He reached for the coffee pot that stood
on the table.

7

The Emergency Room consultant, Dr Coney, was waiting

irritably for his patient. Bathed in the pale glare of the
operating lights, the hiss of filtered air and the flat, faint
chemical smell of antisepsis, he readied the resuscitation
trolley and the cardiac instrumentation, with movements that
were short and ill-tempered. Usually he didn't object to being
called in at night: at this stage of his career it happened
infrequently and meant an interesting case. But this was
different: he was there only because Global HealthCare had
insisted he attend in person.

'What kind of a monitoring service is this?' he demanded

of his charge nurse. `Seventeen minutes' warning for a major
infarct? What kind of contract do we have with these Global
people? A minimum of three hours, I signed up for. Didn't I?'

`Yessir,' the nurse said, busy sorting instruments on a tray,

making small metallic sounds. He shot a hesitant glance at the
doctor. `The chopper team told me Global's monitoring
centre was down nearly three hours. I guess it's lucky it came
up in time to detect the infarct.'

`This kind of patient, they shouldn't expect to live.' Dr

Coney yanked hard on the line of a saline drip as he moved it
to a better position. `Risking their lives with an outfit like
that.'

Both men looked up as Brandt arrived on a cart, ferried

through the swing doors by an orderly. He was blue and very
still, with a mist of perspiration across his face.

'What did I say?' Dr Coney muttered. 'Does it look good?

It doesn't look good.'

'Nosir,' the nurse agreed.
The doctor applied a stethoscope briefly to Brandt's chest.

He picked up a hypodermic and injected its contents into a
vein in his arm. Then he reached for the paddles of the
defibrillator.

8

Brandt saw something marvellous, a woman more female

and more enticing than anyone he'd ever had the luck to meet.
She shimmered towards him, extending an elegant,
peremptory hand, beckoning him. It was Lee-Ann, he
thought, she was real after all, and she was impossibly
beautiful.

Somewhere far off an angry voice called out `Clear!' Brandt

stretched out his arms and enclosed Lee-Ann in his embrace,
in his delirium. For a moment she seemed to melt into him.
And then she struck him! She hit him so hard in the chest
that he could not draw breath.

`Again,' the voice said. Brandt tried so desperately to suck

life from the resistant air that he could hear his lungs squeal
with the effort. And all the bitch did was to hit him again, an
awful blow he knew must be life-threatening, it hurt so much.

Then he realized she was angry because he hadn't accepted

her invitation. He reached out and took her hand. It was
colder than ice.

`Those schmucks at Global should throw their technology

in the Charles River,' Dr Coney said, readying the paddles
again. `From this, lives will be saved. Any more of these
screw-ups and you know who's screwed?'

`Nosir,' the nurse said.
`I am. Worse still, if that's possible, the hospital is. Even

you could find yourself in that indelicate situation. The
patients' lawyers will eat us for hors d'oeuvres and spit out the
pits. The insurers won't want to know. And the Medical
Defence League? The Medical Defence League most
probably will laugh. Ha ha. For this I trained fifteen years?'

9

`Nosir,' the nurse said.
`Damn right nosir,' Dr Coney said. `This stuff has no

future.'

Almost three hours after Hudson's call, as the first light of

the new day fingered its way past his curtains, Miller reached
for the phone. He'd been right, the problem was an
interesting one. It had drawn him into a comfortable
absorption, the girl forgotten entirely, the world filled with
symbols, lines of code, the syncopated movement of logic.

The phone rang for some time before Hudson's graveled

voice answered.

`I found it,' Miller told him. `It was in that kludge

Applications Group coded in the prediction routines. I've
rewritten it. Next time it'll work.'

`I thought you were refusing to rewrite it.'
`I decided I'd rather not get calls in the middle of the

night.' Miller worked the keyboard, watching code roll over
the screen. `If you'd used what I developed, we'd all be getting
a night's sleep.'

`Yeah, well there's things we need to discuss. Clarissa just

decided she wants to use some of Brandt's data for the demo
today.'

`You woke up Clarissa?'
`I had to. She needs to know. Anything leaks out about

Brandt, it could wreck the prospects for the dem. But she
figures this way we'll turn it into an advantage. A real case.'

`Except the guy probably died. There's no new data coming

in for him.'

`Never mind, let Clarissa handle that. She's been speaking

with the hospital. Just make sure the data we have is available.
And I need to meet with you, afterwards.'

10

Miller groaned. `When?'
`Tomorrow evening. My office, after the demo and don't

be late for that, and you just take care of the replay. You don't
get involved with the outcome.'

`Like I could care.' Miller put the phone down. `Lee-Ann?'

On-screen, the avatar turned her head towards him. `Hi Peter.
How can I help?'

`You could free me from air-heads, Lee-Ann. Guys who

are 404.'

`Can I help you search for the website you require?'
He frowned. `Remind me to update your jargon database.'
`Of course.' Lee-Ann seemed to be pondering something.

Finally she asked: `Want some music?'

Miller thought about it. `Miles.'
He stretched out on the bed. For a long time he lay with

his eyes open, listening to the deliquescent horn line,
watching the room absorb the increasing brightness of the
new day.

11

2~ Martha

Nightfall in London had come five hours before the dark

enveloped Boston. The girl called Emma, walking with her
friend to a Tube station, had been a little uneasy at the
prospect of the Underground so late at night. She didn't
usually travel at this hour, but they'd stayed up watching a
movie on TV, and she hadn't felt she could impose on her
friend to drive her home.

`It's fine,' she said. `I could do this journey with my eyes

shut.' It was true she had made the trip often enough to know
every turn of the stairs down to the southbound platform. She
even knew where the train's doors would be when it came to a
halt.

She kissed her friend, and turned into the lighted entrance.

The air was chilly, and she shivered, pulling her summer coat
around her as she took the stairs down, not wanting to find
herself trapped in the lift if it should fail while the station was
deserted. Her footsteps clacked back at her from the tiled
walls.

It was good to get down to the platform, where it was

warm, and she could sit on a bench till the train arrived.
There was no-one down here. The cold fluorescent lights
reflected from the shiny surfaces of adverts, whose
photographic models stared at her. She wasn't the nervous
type, yet she felt comforted to see a surveillance camera high
on the wall turn in her direction as she settled down to wait
for the reassuring rumble of the train, coming to take her

12

home. There were faint noises in the far reaches of the
tunnels, trains moving somewhere in the distance, then fading
away, leaving just the rushing sounds of ventilation, delivering
stale-smelling air.

Then she heard something else: a subdued clang, followed

by a humming noise. Someone was using the lift. Now she
could hear its automaton voice announcing that its doors were
opening. There were footsteps, and a woman appeared at the
end of the platform, a few dozen metres away. She wore a
brown raincoat, with the collar pulled up round her neck. She
was tall, and her black hair looked unkempt. She glanced in
Emma's direction and began to walk slowly towards her.
Without reason, Emma shivered again; but at least here was
company.

Now the woman was quite close. She wore heavy, garish

make-up. She produced a cigarette from her handbag. `I need
a light,' she said. Her voice was coarse, low-pitched. Emma
wondered if this was someone on the game, making her way
home on the last train. The Tube had its share of predators.

`I'm really sorry. I don't smoke. Anyway, they don't allow it

down here, do they?' The moment Emma said this, she knew
it was a mistake. The woman's eyes hardened. `Who cares
about them?' she said angrily.

`I suppose you're right,' Emma said. What had she got into

here? She made a shot at a smile. `Life's so full of rules and
regulations,' she said, managing to keep her voice steady.

`Oh, they want to rule,' the woman said. `Look what they

did to me.' She pulled back the collar of her raincoat, baring
her shoulder. A twisted pink scar about three centimetres long
ran from her collarbone towards her neck.

`How did you get that?' Emma asked, unable now to keep

the tremble out of her voice.

13

`They did it,' the woman said. `This is the only place I can

get away from them. They don't like that.'

`They? Who do you mean?' Emma asked, her mouth dry.
The woman didn't answer. Instead, she reached out and

grabbed Emma's wrist. Her hand was rough, with a rime of
dirt under the nails. Her grip was brutal, so harsh that Emma
cried out. She realized now that she had to placate a
madwoman. Trying to force herself to think despite the
painful grasp, she heard a distant rumbling. The train was
coming at last. She need only buy a minute or so to gain the
bright security of the carriage, where - surely - there would be
other passengers, and safety.

Now she could see the lights of the train in the darkness of

the tunnel. `Come on,' she pleaded, `the train's here.'

`You're one of them, aren't you?' the woman hissed. `That's

why you're here, isn't it?' Her eyes suddenly narrowed. `Ohh! I
know who you are. Did you think I wouldn't recognize you?'

`I don't know what you're talking about,' Emma said. `I've

never seen you before.'

`I told them I'd find you,' the woman shouted. `Well,

Martha keeps her promises.' She turned her wrist viciously,
and Emma screamed. `Let me go!'

But the woman wouldn't let go. She was dragging her

towards the edge of the platform and the approaching train.
Emma felt herself falling, turning, her arms flailing, reaching
hopelessly for some purchase to escape the impossible violence
of the mass hurtling towards her. But she could not get away.

Nor could she have heard the eldritch song, almost lost in

the screech of the train's brakes, which floated from the
staircase that led to a deeper section of the Underground:

`Goodbye whore. You're no more. Martha, Martha, settled

the score. Martha, Martha. She's the law.'

14

3~ Global

Later that morning, as he headed his Toyota compact on a

back road south out of Boston, Peter Miller thought about
Hudson's call. No question, the VP and most of the others at
Global were 404: the internet code for "File Not Found".
Meaning, nothing there. Empty suits, whose only interest in
software was to make money from it, when actually it was the
most difficult art, satisfying and beautiful, like chess or music.
Or like women - except that he was at ease around software.
Remembering the girl from last night made him
uncomfortable. Making sense of other people was a tough
proposition. What kind of programs operated in their heads?

He floored the gas pedal, hurled the car through a series of

bends, and didn't back off till he reached a freeway. A few
miles further on, the roadside hoardings, retail outlets and
fast-food drive-ins gave way to residential developments and
woodland, and he took the slip road to a business park. It led
through landscaped gardens to a high fence of ornamental
steel mesh with a capital "G" woven into its strands, where he
halted and stared into the lens of an iris scanner. A heavy gate
swung open, and he drove into the parking lot of Global's
Data Center. The place where Bernard Brandt's heart attack
had been detected.

A black limo was drawn up at a distance from the usual

collection of more modest cars. Its dark-suited driver was
standing by his open door, his fingers pressed to an ear-piece.
Miller grimaced. The CEO's important visitor had already

15

arrived, and he'd ignored Hudson's injunction to arrive
punctually, was no earlier than his usual arrival time only
grudgingly tolerated by management. But he didn't walk any
faster up the path to the Center.

In the two decades since 9/11, corporate America had

moved to ever-higher levels of security, and the Center was a
beautiful example of fortress chic, a long low cuboid of black
armored glass with no obvious door. At one end where the
roof-line was raised, the faint outlines of satellite dishes stared
at the sky through translucent cladding. As Miller
approached, his reflection distorting in the dark glass, he
could sense the covert gaze of cameras and movement
detectors. A password let him through a concealed side
entrance; an elevator took him down to where the action was.

He didn't mind the absence of daylight. Something in him

welcomed the enclosed, softly lit ambience of this
subterranean facility. He strolled through the computer suite,
past sleek cabinets, multi-coloured cable harnesses and racks
of communications gear with indicator lights pulsing like tiny
knowing eyes. The sight still gave him a buzz. Here, a blur of
data was being fed at unimaginable speed into billions of
microcircuits, which extracted its meaning, and meshed it
with the cyber-world. All of it controlled by programs of
subtle instructions software.

At the far wall, he opened a glass door into a cavernous

room, perhaps sixty feet square. A cluster of grey consoles like
those of an air traffic centre, their screens glowing with data,
were picked out from the gloom by amber ceiling lights. The
air, at a comfortable, controlled temperature, smelled of new
carpet and a trace of warm shellac varnish: the scent of
electronics at work.

A half-dozen men and women in shirt-sleeved uniforms

sat watching the screens. Miller eased into the room and

16

perched on the edge of the nearest console, looking down at
the blonde hair of the real Lee-Ann.

Whatever the barrier was that got between him and other

people, it fell away in face of Lee-Ann's easy acceptance of
him: he didn't feel threatened by the pull of emotional gravity,
or the exposure of his inner self. It was the reason, he
supposed, that he'd taken her as the model for the avatar.

She glanced up at him. `Hey sweetie! Where were you?

You know I can't live without you. Especially with a demo to
run for Clarissa.' Her voice was as come-on as her computer
incarnation, but the real Lee-Ann was maybe twenty years
older, a rangy mid-Westerner, lean-faced, with long, scarlet-
tipped fingers which moved constantly over a keypad as she
was talking. On the screen before her, rows of data and rolling
traces of heart-beats, respiration and biochemistry came and
went, superimposed on a succession of street maps.

Then, suddenly, the picture broke up and became a

flickering cross-hatch of bright lines.

`See?' Lee-Ann said. `That's the second time the fucking

system's crashed this morning.'

Miller reached to type on the keyboard, and studied the

string of numbers that appeared. It was a problem he'd
identified before, but needless to say, Support hadn't fixed it.
He typed some more, and the picture reasserted itself. He
shrugged. `Let's hope it holds. You heard about this guy
Brandt?'

`I sure did. Ben called me just before 3 a.m. Said I had to

call Mr Brandt personally, get his ass to Emergency pronto.
Said he didn't trust the avatar to contact him.'

Miller grimaced. `He was right. Did Brandt survive?'
`Last I saw on-screen, he was hanging in. But the hospital

made us turn off the monitoring, didn't want any ambulance-

17

chasing lawyers finding the data. So I don't know if he's still
with us.'

`Clarissa's taking an interest in him. Wants to use his data

for the demo. I've patched it in.'

`You're not serious!'
Lee-Ann broke off as a steel door at the far end of the

room hissed open, and a woman and a man came in. They
moved along the row of consoles, looking around, halting to
inspect the screens and to speak with the operators, the
woman pointing to the information on display.

`Talk of the devil,' Lee-Ann said.
Miller glanced up. `Who's the guy?'
Lee-Ann shook her yellow mane. `Management didn't say.

The grapevine says he's a wheel, a money man Clarissa wants
on the board. Apparently he eats, breathes and shits dollars,
chases tail, but stays out of the limelight, and visits clinics in
Switzerland for those kind of injections. Hoping for a late
check-out, I guess.' She started to hoot with laughter, then
glanced at the visitors and smothered it with a cough. She
looked up at Miller. `Am I ever glad you're here. You really
have to straighten this mess out.'

`I can't,' Miller said. `I don't believe anyone can.'
Lee-Ann leaned her head against his arm. `Don't say that,

hon. I need my job.'

He grinned. `For you I'll take care of it. For today, anyway.'

He slid down from Lee-Ann's console and moved to another
that stood in the shadows near the wall, from where he could
observe the visitors unseen, as they approached.

Clarissa Bergson, Global's CEO, had run the corporation

since the death of her husband, its founder, seven years
before. Her appearance in person today confirmed that her
guest was something special. ` . . . an overview of our nerve

18

centre,' Miller heard her say with precise diction, the pure,
near-Germanic vowels of educated New York.

The visitor had close-trimmed silver hair and a perfectly

cut light grey suit. At a guess he was in his early sixties. He
moved with a brisk energy, but there was a wariness about
him too. He was looking at Lee-Ann's console as if
calculations were going on behind his eyes.

`Let me introduce an important member of our staff,' Mrs

Bergson said. She paused for a moment, and peered at Lee-
Ann's name badge. `Lee-Ann, meet Mr Theodore Lamb.'
They shook hands.

Lamb continued to stare at the console. `This screen. What

does it show?'

`It depends on what contract the client chooses. Our

microlab implants are so very tiny,' - Mrs Bergson delineated
the smallest of gaps between her immaculately manicured
finger and thumb `they sit right against the blood-stream
and monitor vital signs, heart rate, blood pressure and the
rest, to spot trouble that a regular health check never sees - till
it's too late.' She shook her head, looking a little sad. `They
can recognize chemical imbalances, and the presence of
malignant cells too, so the patient can have low-dose
chemotherapy if necessary, to fix the problem right away. If
the implant finds something wrong, it transmits the results
back through the wireless networks, and we see it on screen
here. Our computers assess the urgency, and predict how it
will develop. Then our Sheepdog transport teams can bring
the client safely to a care centre, long before any crisis can
occur.'

`What about viruses?' Lamb asked.
`Our computers are protected . . . '
`No, I mean microbes, the kind that cause human illness.

Can it detect those?'

19

`We have a staged marketing strategy,' Mrs Bergson said.

`Infectious diseases will feature in the next version of the
product. Now - perhaps you could demonstrate, Lee-Ann.'

`Run demo,' Lee-Ann said firmly to the console. In the

shadows, Miller craned forward to hear, and as he typed on
his keyboard, a satellite view of the city appeared on Lee-
Ann's screen. It zoomed in closer, to show a collection of tiny
red matchstick men patrolling the streets. She moved a
hairline cross to one of them, and again Miller typed. Now a
heart-beat appeared, along with traces annotated: BP, pO2,
pCO2 . . . Lee-Ann touched a key, he typed, the heart-beat
became increasingly erratic, and some of the traces headed
into free fall. The colour of the matchstick image changed to
an intense orange and it began to blink rapidly. A buzzer
began a throaty, urgent call.

Miller was enjoying this game. It required a cool head and

relaxed coordination. It gave him the same kind of pleasure
he'd felt as a kid, when he'd taught himself to juggle -
intercepting things that were fast moving, at the exact
moment.

`An actual case,' Mrs Bergson was saying. `We replayed it

quicker than real-time of course. In real life we had several
hours' warning.'

At that moment, the display on Lee-Ann's screen began to

break up. Miller typed urgently, and the picture stabilized and
became bright again. He looked up to see that Lamb was
watching him. The small man had a sharp, inquisitive stare.
He showed no embarrassment that his gaze had been
intercepted.

Lamb nodded towards him. `Who is that?'
Mrs Bergson peered into the shadows: `Oh - let me

introduce one of our most talented software experts. Peter!'

20

Reluctantly, Miller came into the light and with a curt nod

shook hands. Mrs Bergson said: `Peter Miller's designed
avatars for us. He's even developed one that looks like Lee-
Ann. The whole system is a very advanced design, isn't that
right, Peter?'

The temptation to speak the truth was overwhelming. But

then Miller glanced at Lee-Ann, who closed one eye in a huge
wink, and he almost laughed. `Yes,' he said. `It's a fantastic
opportunity - for a corporation that has vision.'

Mrs Bergson checked her watch. `Theodore, I hate to drag

you away, but we're due at lunch.' She glanced again at Lee-
Ann's identity badge. `Thank you so much, Lee-Ann. And
thank you, Peter.'

As the metal door sighed shut behind them, Lee-Ann

swore loudly and hit the console desk with her fist. Her screen
had become a colourful, random chaos. Miller turned to look
at the pathological display and grinned. `I nearly lost it while
they were here,' he said.

Lee-Ann leaned her head against his arm again. `Thank

Christ you're here, Peter,' she said. `No-one else can keep this
fucking kludge running.'

As an elevator carried them upwards, Theodore Lamb

studied Clarissa Bergson in its vanity mirror. It was
fascinating, he thought, how she encapsulated the word
"elegance". She wore her couture clothes the way other people
breathed. You couldn't guess her age, save that she wasn't
young, but time hadn't impeached her patrician good looks:
the large grey eyes, high cheekbones, poise that never had to
be learned. A diva. He knew he'd enjoy working with her. But
he had to be careful.

21

Because of course she wanted his money. Despite carefully

maintained appearances of success, Global was in deep
financial trouble. Its CEO wasn't going to spell out any
negatives unless she had to, and would undoubtedly conceal
those that she could. Proponents of novel computer systems
invariably promised wonders, but what was really inside the
box of tricks? Even for experts it was hard to tell. Therefore
one had to be careful. It was as well she didn't know just how
much he wanted to believe that she was telling the truth.

She smiled at him.
He stared back. `So you're saying Sheepdog's up and

running?'

`Yes. We're testing it on volunteers, members of our staff.

Everything's on track.'

`And you've proof that it works?'
She made a moué. `Absolutely. As I said, what we just

showed you was a real case. Just last night the system saved
the life of a clerk from our accounts department, quite a
young man actually. Sheepdog predicted his cardiac problem,
and the team got him to Emergency in good time.'

`My people say the technology needs more work.'.
`There's always more to do,' Clarissa Bergson said. `But it's

only a matter of a few more weeks before we're ready for the
launch. The pieces are together.'

Lunch was served in an area reserved for VIPs, a

mezzanine floor which looked down onto the satellite dishes
through a glass curtain wall. The table was laid with white
napery and cutlery of simple contemporary design. A waitress
came forward, smiling and discreet. Lamb moved his chair
further from the void beyond the wall, and nodded when she
offered to pour wine. `The Californian white.'

22

He pulled a slim silver case from his pocket, checked the

rows of multi-coloured bio-supplements it contained, and
washed down four tablets with a glass of water. He read the
hand-written lunch menu carefully, keyed a selection of items
into a calculator in the lid of the case, consulted the read-out
and made his choice. Finally he took a sip of wine.

Clarissa Bergson watched him with mild amusement.

`With a Sheepdog implant to look after your health, you
wouldn't have to be so careful. Or take so many pills.'

He tilted his glass towards her. `This is excellent.'
`From a friend's vineyard.'
`Friends are what matter.' He took another cautious sip.

`How can you be confident of completing development on
time, with the subcontractors so far away?'

Carrying out due diligence, his people had expressed

concern. Computer links and teleconferencing couldn't crack
problems as readily as the impromptu chat in the corridor, the
sketch on an envelope, the informal design meeting convened
at short notice. With deadlines so tight, there was greater
scope for error and delay, his people said. But then, they were
paid to be cautious.

Mrs Bergson turned her head towards the satellite dishes

that beseeched the sky like giant begging bowls. `The group in
India is first rate. So are our own technical people.'

`Indian software developers are certainly cheap.' He studied

her face. `Tell me, what was the name of the man whose life
was saved the case you demonstrated?'

She looked back at him, her gaze direct. `Bernard Brandt.'

No hesitation, not the slightest sign of doubt. He wanted to
think it was proof. Nevertheless, he'd check out that story.

Lamb frowned. `And that young man Miller? What was

he doing there?'

23

Now she did hesitate, but only for a moment. `Today's his

turn as duty programmer. We always have a software engineer
there, just in case there should be any problem. We're
cautious people.'

That was reasonable. Perhaps. `When is the product

launch?'

`In a little under eight weeks.'
Outside the dark glass shell that surrounded the huge

dishes the sun had faded. A bank of clouds was forming into a
thunderhead. Lamb folded his napkin and set it neatly on the
table. `Tell me - to help the person who is in danger, who
might . . . who is sick, your team must know where to find
him.'

`Of course. You have to get there right away. We exploit

the global positioning system.'

`So you know where every client is at every moment.'
Mrs Bergson smiled. `In principle. But the implant

transmits data only when the client authorizes it, or when it
recognizes a medical emergency. Then it alerts us and gives
the position, but we don't keep long-term records of location.
In any case, position tracking's hardly new. Even your
cellphone knows where you are.'

`I don't carry a cellphone,' Lamb said. `Can outsiders read

Sheepdog data?'

`No. Even the FBI can't get to it without special approval

from a judge, and I can assure you our legal department is
formidable in guarding our clients' interests. And the data's
deeply encoded. No-one who isn't authorized can read it.'

He thought for a while. `And FDA approval's through?'
`Expected any day. The Food and Drugs Administration is

a friend of the healthcare industry. Our lobbyists have done a
fine job.'

24

Lamb mused. `Well, you have quite a proposition.' He

poured more wine, tilting his glass to the light. `No question,
these implants from Xiu Corporation are ground-breaking
technology.'

With the potential, he thought, for Xiu to open up a new

market, and Global to have exclusive rights in North America
and get way ahead of its competition. It had the infrastructure
doctors, hospitals and treatment centers to deliver the
service. The insurance companies would get early warning of
claims, have reduced liabilities and smoother cash flow.
They'd pay handsomely for the privilege. Global would get a
new revenue stream, and a new image to lift its stock price.
With the corporation out of trouble, he could bring in further
capital on favourable terms if it were needed. Everyone
would win. Not least, Theodore Lamb, who would be
investing in every one of the parties.

She was smiling at him. `We're ahead of the game.'
He turned the glass in his fingers. `Providing the

technology does what you say.' He set the glass on the table,
and looked at her thoughtfully. `About Sheepdog detecting
viruses.'

`We're already working on some simpler ones. They're

quite important, you know. Some are suspected causes of
cancer. Once it can recognize those, we'll add more.'

`When?'
`After we've rolled out capability for the high profile

illnesses, heart attacks, stroke, cancer. Then we'll move on to
infectious diseases.'

He breathed out a long sigh. `You must push ahead with

that work. More and more of those threats are turning up,
and they're predicted to increase. Now - if we are able to agree
a contract, you'll provide me with an implant?'

`Of course. As soon as quality control's fully complete.'

25

He lifted his glass. `Here's to health.'
She raised hers in return. `Yours and Global's.'

After the demonstration, Peter Miller made his way to a

cramped office behind the monitoring suite. It was used by
the duty programmers, technicians consigned by rota to
oversee the operation of the Sheepdog system. He sat down at
a workstation, entered his password and began calling up code
on the screen. The problem he'd solved for Ben Hudson the
previous night had sparked ideas for the project he was
nurturing, the brain-child which obsessed him. For its benefit
he wanted to review the inner structures of Sheepdog. In
minutes he was swallowed up in a world of symbols: programs
which defined the rules by which a blind machine processed a
flood of data, indifferent to whether it was the responses of a
dying man, or the recovery of a child brought back from the
edge. Miller did not care either, was concerned only with the
virtual cogs and levers of an information engine. Absorbed in
complexity, he lost all awareness of his surroundings. When
the phone shrilled, he jumped.

He picked up the handset. `Peter Miller.'
An authoritative voice answered. `Peter, this is Dr Taylor.

Gresham Taylor, from St Evelyn's Hospital. We met last
year, at your interview in London.'

Miller blinked. Then he remembered: the job application

he'd made before deciding to join Global HealthCare, the
interview held at a smart hotel in town to facilitate applicants'
travel, though the position was with a psychiatric hospital in
South London. It had been tempting, but in the end he'd
decided to take up Global's offer. The work there was better
funded, and the corporation more progressive. Or so he'd
thought.

26

`Yes, I remember,' he said, though his gaze remained fixed

on the workstation screen.

`We thought you'd like to know we're readvertising the

post at St Evelyn's, at a considerably higher salary. We need
skills like yours urgently. We wondered if you'd like to
reapply.'

Absorbed in the screen, Miller said: `I don't think so.

There's work here I want to get done.'

`Of course, I understand.' The voice sounded disappointed.

`You know, we're a small team, quite informal and friendly.
You'd be liaising with the clinical staff and some pretty
nurses.' Taylor laughed, then his tone became more serious.
`No need to be involved with the patients, if you don't want
to.'

`It wouldn't bother me.' Miller was typing again, calling up

blocks of code. `But I'm not looking to change jobs.'

`Perhaps I could send you the job description anyway,'

Taylor said. `If you should reconsider, please give me a call.'

`Fine,' Miller said. He wasn't listening any more. What

was on screen was particularly intriguing.

27

4~ Motel

Ten days earlier, in Texas, fifteen hundred miles south-

west of Global's Data Center, the salesman who'd stayed
overnight in a cheap motel had gingerly pulled back the
grubby drapes, blinking at the morning sunlight. His car,
parked in the lot outside the window, showed no obvious
damage. That was a relief: on the long haul through the New
Mexico desert the windscreen washers had run dry, and at
dusk, reduced vision had caused him to run off the road. But
after all, the scraping noise must have been only brushwood
catching the underside.

He rubbed his eyes, still sore from the glare. It had been an

unusually long tour, and he was tired, with four hundred miles
still to go, but at least the sale he'd made at Los Alamos
would bring him a sizeable commission. He'd been nervous
about visiting there, had heard rumours about what went on
in the new lab complex, but OK, the government had to be
prepared for terrorist attacks on the farming industry as much
as the rest of the infrastructure, and if it wanted agrochemicals
for its experiments, his job was to sell product, not worry how
it was used.

He limped to the bathroom to take a leak, his legs still

aching from the awkward driving position. The bean-counters
who specified the fleet should try it for themselves - then,
shit, we'd all be driving Cadi's. He chuckled hoarsely as he lit
the first one of the day. You weren't supposed to smoke any
place public these days, not even hotel rooms, but there was

28

no other way he could get started. Well, it wasn't that long to
retirement, then he'd buy himself a piece of land, maybe up in
Oregon. He'd sit on the porch, sink some cool ones, watch
the sun go down, and smoke himself to death if he felt like it.
The buzz felt as good as ever, but his lungs hurt when he
drew down the smoke, and then a painful spasm of coughing
hit him.

The bathroom was the standard down-market package,

white porcelain, white shower curtain, off-white towels. The
mirror had a crack across one corner. Maintenance was an
expensive game these days. He peered at his reflection. Jesus,
he looked rough. He suddenly realized just how sore his eyes
felt. The dust must really have got to him on that last stretch.

He pulled down his lower lid. The eye was red,

frighteningly red. He rubbed at it tentatively, and drew his
finger away with a muttered curse. A bead of blood crawled
over his finger-tip and dripped onto the tiled floor.

The hell with this. He found the "Do Not Disturb" placard

and hung it outside the door. Then he lay down on the bed
and reached for the phone, to call in sick.

The motel lay at the end of a lane surrounded by pine

woods. It was run-down, but it provided a haven where the
salesman had stayed many times. The owners raised no fuss
about check-out times or service for the rooms, and when as
sometimes happened he wanted to sleep late, alone or with
company, he was left in peace.

So for the whole of the first day that he was ill, a Friday,

he was undisturbed, and since the staff didn't come in at the
weekend, it wasn't till the following Monday afternoon that
the cleaner knocked tentatively at his door and let herself in.
She was a lean, middle-aged black woman, with a calm

29

temperament. She sniffed: a thin, unpleasant odour hung in
the air. They really should keep to a proper cleaning schedule,
she thought. Then she saw that the salesman was snoozing in
bed.

She put out a hand and gently nudged his pyjama sleeve.

For a moment she thought she was hallucinating. Through
the thin cloth, she'd felt his flesh slide away from the bone, as
if she'd prodded a rotting fish. Then his head flopped round,
and his eyes looked straight at her. They were dark red,
almost black. Blood clots coated his puffy grey cheeks; and
now she saw that rusty brown stains had soiled the sheets. A
nauseating smell rose up to fill her nose and throat.

She managed not to cry out, backed away and propped

herself against the wall till her dizziness passed and she could
be sure she wasn't going to throw up. She stumbled out, sat
down and took great breaths of pine-scented air to wash away
the stench.

The owners of the motel were an elderly couple, Joel and

Bethany Garmin. It was Bethany who came across her, on the
steps of the motel cabin, making small, meaningless sounds.

`What is it, Agnes?' Bethany asked. `You look like you've

seen a ghost.'

Agnes pointed dumbly to the door of the cabin, but when

Bethany made to approach it, Agnes grabbed the hem of her
skirt. Bethany pulled free and went in.

Her scream sent crows scattering into the afternoon sky,

and brought Joel hurrying from the office across the yard, as
she stumbled down the steps, still shrieking. At first he could
get no sense from either woman. But finally Bethany sobbed:
`Call 911! He's dead!'

Joel went back to the office, and thought about it. 911

would bring the police and an ambulance. Hospital services
cost money and their finance departments were ruthless. It

30

was possible the bills might be levied on himself and Bethany,
as owners of the motel. It was best to be cautious. Instead of
911 he called the retired family physician, Dr Evesham, a
friend of his late father. Dr Evesham would know the ropes,
and if finally a bill could not be avoided, at least he would
allow Joel time to pay.

The doctor arrived at the motel within the hour. He

parked his elderly coupé, levered himself out of the driver's
seat, and carrying his leather bag stumped across the yard to
the office. It took him a while to calm Bethany and Agnes
enough to get their stories. Then he went into the salesman's
room. Minutes later he came out, holding a handkerchief to
his nose.

`What is it?' Bethany asked tremulously. `Some kind of

plague? Like the Lord visited on the Egyptians?'

`Truth is, Beth,' the doctor said, `I don't know what it is.

I'll have to report it. These days the Federal authorities
demand it.' He rummaged through documents in his bag, and
brought out a crumpled sheet of paper, which he held towards
the light in order to read it.

Bethany peered over his shoulder. An imprint in blue

letters stood above bold headings:

CDC
Syndromic Surveillance Infrastructure
Diseases Associated With Critical Bioterrorism Agents.
24/7 Phone Triage Protocol.

`Terrorism?' Bethany said. She bit her lower lip. `He was a

terrorist agent?'

31

`Not that kind of agent, Beth,' Dr Evesham said. `"Agents"

are what the Centers for Disease Control call bugs. Viruses
and suchlike. Likely this problem's nothing to do with
terrorism, but the fact is, I've never seen anything like it.' He
looked around the tired little office. `Where's your phone?'

Within two hours of the doctor's call, a cordon was thrown

around the motel. Unmarked cars and vans were drawn up in
a circle, like covered wagons defending against a Red Indian
onslaught. But these wagons pointed inwards, confronting an
invader no-one could see. Men in yellow plastic suits, with
bubble helmets and breathing packs, brought out a stretcher
from the salesman's room, on which he lay sealed in a
translucent wrapper that covered him from head to foot.
Through the smeary window of his room, Bethany could
make out the movements of other suited men inside, who
brandished bright lights, long-handled spray guns and
canisters of chemicals.

In his plastic caul, the salesman was spirited away in a

white van which sped off in convoy with two of the
anonymous cars. The drivers did not turn on any sirens or
flashing lights.

Two of the space-suited men went up to the office to speak

to Joel and Bethany.

It was Bethany who most strongly resisted quarantine. She

was terrified by the strangers dressed like aliens, whose voices
came through loudspeakers in their yellow suits. She didn't
understand what they told her about the provisions of the
Third Patriot Act; she simply didn't want to be removed to a
military hospital up-state. She refused to leave the house

32

where she and Joel had lived for thirty years. Her shrill
complaints filled her shabby living room.

But Joel understood the reality. Through the window he

could see a State trooper, talking to two men in business suits,
one bulky and thickset, the other slight. All three were
keeping their distance from the motel, but Joel was certain
what their presence meant. Whoever these people were, they
hadn't come here to leave empty-handed.

He shrugged. `We have to call a lawyer.'
Of course they could call, the aliens agreed but first the

hospital doctors must examine them, to make sure they had
not caught anything nasty from the unfortunate salesman.

`Come on, Bethany,' Joel said, and wrapped his arm

around her thin shoulders. `They're going to take care of us.'

`You were always a fool, Joel Garmin,' she told him. `We

won't be coming back. Who'll run the motel?'

`Shush now. They'll find someone.'
Still Bethany resisted. Only when she learned that Dr

Evesham had agreed to be quarantined did she give in, and go
with the yellow-suited men in an unmarked ambulance.

Agnes, the cleaner, went too. By now, some of her natural

calm had returned.

33

5~ Lamb

After his meeting with Clarissa Bergson, Theodore Lamb

took the Amtrak Express from Boston South to Penn
Central. He'd sent his minder on ahead by road, to meet him
in Manhattan.

Seated comfortably in First Class, he checked his dietary

calculator, ordered a coffee and a sandwich from the car
attendant, swallowed four pills, and settled down to scan the
Wall Street Journal. To travel alone in this way, a ride of more
than three hours, was a deliberate risk, but refreshing. He
enjoyed the frisson of being among ordinary people. Glancing
around, he could see no sign that anyone had recognised him:
he was safely anonymous. Of course he worried about the
incidence of microbes in the air of the rail car, but it was
reassuring that soon he'd have the protection of the ultimate
talisman - a Sheepdog implant.

In a while, bored by the Journal's uninspired articles, he

began to doze. Half-memories crept in like scenes from an
erratic movie: sleet that hurt his face, torches shining through
fog, the swaying of a boat, distant shots. Being slapped
repeatedly when he wanted to sleep for ever.

He forced himself awake to avoid the frightening dream-

fragments. They afflicted him from time to time, and he knew
they had to reflect a childhood reality too far back to
remember. He knew that parents like his, escaping from
Budapest and the approaching Soviet army, had often
drugged their children to keep them quiet. Some were over-

34

dosed, and afterwards had to be kept awake forcibly. To this
day he could not stand the smell of damp straw. Perhaps that
was where they'd hidden him.

The train was speeding now through the battered

woodlands of Massachusetts, which gradually gave way to
downscale commuter homes, and then the first tenements and
office blocks rolling by, the foothills of Manhattan. Finally,
high concrete walls and the grimy backsides of tower blocks
slid past, and the train sighed to a stop at Penn Central.

Outside the precinct the waiting limo purred towards him.

In fifteen minutes, he was at the door of the clinic on Park

Avenue South. Dr Chen greeted him with her invariable
courtesy, padding in her white tracksuit and slippers across
the deep carpet of the consulting room, bidding him visit the
changing room to put on a blue kimono "sterile-clean for
your protection", its label said then stand on a weighing
machine, and finally sink down into the examination couch.
He did so, clutching the notes he'd brought with him,
inhaling the slight, soothing odour of incense that filled the
room.

She sat on a stool opposite, straight-backed, her laptop on

her knees, in front of a mathematically spaced array of dwarf
bamboos. A repetitive sequence of temple bells sounded in the
background. `And so. You are well?'

It was always a difficult question. Lamb delved for an exact

answer. `I'm a little concerned still about the pains . . .'

`So. First we will go through the checklist, then we will

take the measurements, and then the therapy. Your happiness
coefficient?'

Lamb checked the piece of paper. `Improved. Some days it

was almost 20 percent.'

35

Dr Chen's fingers moved gracefully over the keys. `You

attended the gym?'

`I'm afraid just once since I saw you. My work . . . '
`Hmm. You've gained weight.'
`Only a pound.'
`Even so. The wrinkles?'
`Do you know,' Lamb said, `I really believe some of them

have vanished.'

`You see? The supplements! Now, frequency of urination.'
`Down to twice a night.'
`Ahh, excellent. And the sexual function. Especially

duration of penile erection.' Dr Chen smiled at him politely,
her stencilled eyebrows raised.

Happily, Lamb thought to himself, that had ceased to be a

problem since Julia had appeared on the scene.

At the end of the check-list, she said: `Now the pains.

Have they increased?'

He checked the notes. `The Level 3's seem to have

stopped. Except for one occurrence when I was at the gym.
But the lesser ones happen two or three times a week.'

She sat perfectly still, saying nothing.
He waited. At last she said: `You followed the protocol?

The correct times for all the supplements? Especially the
HGF and the IGF-1?'

`Of course.' Lamb felt anxiety beginning to creep through

him.

`Hmm.' Again Dr Chen fell silent. The silence went on. It

had to be bad news.

`The human body . . . ' she began at last.
`Yes?'
`. . . to correct the operation of the complex machine . . . '

36

`Yes?'
`It's not instantaneous. Rebalancing the delicate chemistry

takes time. The full benefits will come soon.'

`But if the pains are a sign of heart problems . . . '
`You had a full set of tests only a month ago, treadmill,

EKG, imaging, ultrasound, everything. There's nothing to be
concerned about. But just to be sure, we'll make more tests.
Meanwhile, you should continue with the autogenic exercises.'

`Sometimes conventional tests miss important signs.'
`Come, let's go through to the therapy suite.'

Afterwards, with his minder Fusillo at the wheel, the limo

took Lamb north to an office upstate, an undistinguished
concrete building fronted by a grey mock-marble fountain,
devoid of water. He had long ago given up big-name
accountancy firms in favour of a smaller organisation with
highly specialized skills. On the fifth floor a group of men in
suits sitting round a boardroom table looked up expectantly as
he pushed open the panelled door.

The meeting ran on till evening; by the time the limo

began the return journey to Manhattan, the light was fading.
Settled in the cushioned rear seat, Theodore Lamb reflected
on the outcome. He'd accepted that the dollar value of his
American and European equity portfolios, together with his
Federal bond holdings, high-tech stocks, Canadian bonds,
New York and California property portfolios, the Croatian
island, the houses in New York, London and Florence, oh,
and The Dolphin, his yacht lying off the Florida Keys, plus
sundries the total of these assets fell short of a 10-figure
number. Irritatingly, he was not quite a billionaire, but to have

37

faked it would have been as unsatisfying as cheating at golf or
bridge, if on a vaster scale. At least he still had a target to aim
for, and in any case the total was only a means to keep track.
The sharpest pleasure lay in beating rapacious opponents,
bringing off deals that proved you had the nous to do it, but
what really mattered was a civilized lifestyle, underpinned
with a warm feeling of safety. An antidote to dread.

The accountancy partners had pressed him about Global.

In principle his investment might succeed, they warned, but
their research indicated an unacceptable level of risk. The
corporation had been down-rated by the major investment
bureaux, and worse still, inside information suggested that the
Sheepdog technology might not be sound. Global, after all,
was a medical services company rather than a high-tech
developer, and might have bitten off something it didn't know
how to chew. Meanwhile Big Pharma - the giant
pharmaceutical corporations - were beginning to promote
rival technologies: medicines tailored to the individual,
genetic vaccines custom-designed by computer and
synthesized by automated laboratories - these looked like the
way of the future. So Theodore Lamb would do well not to
risk heavy losses, and incidentally, the Schadenfreude of other
big-time investors who envied his track record. In short
keep away from Global!

It was concerning, but sharp as his advisors were, at heart

they were small people, he thought. His instinct was telling
him that Global could deliver the biggest financial killing of
his life. Technology let you press a button while you were
walking down the street and talk to someone on the other side
of the world, brought information instantly to your desk that
otherwise would take years to find, and had even unpicked the
way life itself was transmitted through a strange, coiled
molecule which carried the code for the individual's very

38

existence. If it could do all that, why couldn't it spot incipient
disease and stamp it out? The product would sell like crazy.
The deal with Global was going to cost him plenty, but he
didn't want anyone else buying in.

He hadn't wasted time explaining to the advisors the still

deeper possibilities, which he hardly admitted even to himself.

That turned his thoughts to Julia, his P.A., and he felt

better immediately. He'd met her by complete chance, in a
rainstorm, as she fought for a cab outside a department store,
and he'd been struck by her looks dark eyes, silky black hair
wet through and clinging to high cheekbones. She hadn't
taken much persuasion to accept a ride home in the waiting
limo. Later she'd told him about Global HealthCare and
Sheepdog: she'd been working for a PR company which
Global had engaged to prepare advance publicity. The
potential both of Julia and of the technology came home to
him like a lightning strike. She had proved a superb
investment, and now he was increasingly sure that Sheepdog
would be even more rewarding. Julia was already checking out
Clarissa Bergson's story about Bernard Brandt.

39

6~ Hudson

After the demonstration, when Mrs Bergson and her guest

were long gone, Peter Miller drove from Global's Data Center
into the city, to an underground parking lot beneath a
tapering green glass skyscraper. He took an elevator up to the
corporation's headquarters, where he found Ben Hudson in
his office on the thirty-eighth. Seated behind his generous
desk, the VP of Operations had swivelled his chair to watch
the view outside his panoramic window: the sun dying in dark
cloud, the diamond scatter of the city's lights beginning to
take over.

As Miller came in, Hudson turned to face him. He was

holding a tumbler of Scotch which he freshened from an open
bottle on the desk, and without asking he poured a measure
for his visitor. Although his dark blue suit was well cut and his
tie discreet, he had the battered face of a prize-fighter. Miller
had often wondered how Hudson had achieved his senior
position in the corporation. He took the drink and sat down
opposite the VP.

Hudson looked him over. `You get some sleep, finally?'
`Enough.' Miller was watching the last meniscus of light

fading on the horizon. `Did Mr Brandt survive?'

Hudson reached out to switch on a desk-lamp. A stray

gleam echoed from Miller's glasses. `I'm waiting to hear. Not
that it matters much: he was sick beforehand. Human
Resources did a good job researching the staff's medical
records. No point running trials on healthy people.'

40

`Judging by your phone call, I thought he was a big

problem.'

Hudson laughed, a hollow sound in the half-dark. `Dead or

alive, Mr Brandt isn't trouble. It's the system that's the
problem.'

Miller turned his head to look at him. `I warned you

months ago what would happen.'

`Yeah, well, we're not here to talk history.' Hudson leaned

back in his chair. `The Medyx exhibition is in eight weeks.
The launch invites are out, and the PR people are warming up
the media. We need the bugs out of Sheepdog.'

`Fine. You tell me how,' Miller said mildly. `It's your

system.'

Hudson stared at him. `You've some balls, I give you that.

You designed the fucking system and now you tell us to find
out what's wrong with it?'

`You hired me to build a pilot system. I did. Then I

designed a full version, with all the flexibility you could ever
want - in this game, you can't know what's round the next
corner. It would have been beautiful. But no, next thing, you
hire a programming team on the cheap, then find you've
brought in guys who can't cut it. So Clarissa decides to
outsource development to a software house in L.A., and when
that doesn't work, she hands it over to the programming shop
in India. Saved a fortune, right? Except now you've got
yourselves a quick and dirty solution full of bugs, and no way
to fix it.'

Hudson swallowed whisky. `You were wasting time on

features the market doesn't want. Flexibility no-one's asking
for, and artificial people, avatars, for Christ's sake! Who needs
a classy dame on-screen pushing up his pulse rate, when he's
having a heart attack? Then we discover your timescale's three
times the original estimate, when we need to beat the

41

competition to it. Of course Clarissa was pissed. What do you
expect?'

`I expected you to use my design,' Miller said calmly.

`Instead I'm sidelined to work on a future prototype. Except
what I actually do is chase after the mess the Indian guys have
made. Not that I can blame them, since you're on their backs
non-stop, and you change the requirements every other day.'

`Cut the crap. We have to fix Sheepdog, and we need your

help full-time. We're moving you to the QA team. You'll
report to the team leader.'

Miller stared at him. `You said I could finish the new

prototype. You can't go back on that.'

`You start tomorrow.'
`No way.'
Miller got up and crossed to the window. Sometimes,

working all night on the pilot system, he'd come up to the
lobby on this floor, to take a break and watch the night scene.
How many hours had he spent on the software? Thousands,
probably, and he'd produced something truly elegant, that
he'd continued to develop in every spare moment. He'd only
agreed to help with the mess that Sheepdog had become so
that he could further his creation, which he'd named
TRACKS - a nice acronym for Tracking, Recall And Clinical
Knowledge System - and see it brought into use. It was an
engineering poem, and now they intended to part him from it.

He stared into the darkness. Across the black water of the

bay a jet floated down to the island airport, like a huge firefly.
He turned towards Hudson. `I quit.'

The VP set his glass down. `Hey, hey, let's not over-react.

You hold stock options, right? They're going to be worth big
money. OK, India's finding the going a little tough, but you
can help with that. We can negotiate you a hefty pay rise.'

`I don't care about the options. Or the pay rise. Or India.'

42

`This stuff we're developing can end disease. Children get

cancer, you know. People die young when they don't need to.
We can keep this whole fucking nation healthy.'

Being 404 didn't preclude Hudson from being a

manipulative bastard, Miller thought. That explained his rise
to the higher echelons of the corporation. He didn't care
about the health of children any more than he cared about the
quality of software. What he cared about was something else.
`You mean keep Global's stock price healthy. Keep Clarissa's
bank accounts and your retirement plan healthy.'

`Justifiable rewards.'
`You said you wanted quality. That's what I do. But not

here, not any more.'

Hudson stared at him. `Where would you go?'
For the first time Miller swallowed some Scotch. `I had a

job offer in the UK. They called me again. It's advanced
development - using implants from Xiu Corporation, too.'

`It can't be that great if you turned them down the first

time, can it? What do they do?'

`Psychiatric medicine. At a hospital in London.'
Hudson laughed out loud. `Aren't there enough crazies for

you in this town?'

Miller hesitated, inexplicably feeling exposed and suddenly

vulnerable. `I'll have a free hand to design the software.'

`Yeah?' Hudson looked at him. `There's a saying the

Chinese have.'

`Oh really. What's that?'
`Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.'
`I'll take my chances. Better that than be treated like dirt.'

Miller stood up.

`I guess that does it.' Hudson held out an open palm. `Give

me your ID card. In the morning you can collect your
personal belongings. Security will see you off the premises.'

43

He took the card. `And don't think about using anything
you've developed here. We'll sue your ass off.'

`You needn't worry,' Miller said. `This screwed-up system

is all yours.'

Hudson shook his head, took another pull of Scotch, and

as Miller headed for the door, turned his chair to face the
window.

`Ah, shit!' he muttered under his breath.
Hearing this, Miller would have smiled, if he hadn't felt

dangerously close to tears.

Miller took the elevator down, but only as far as the 36th.

Using the duplicate ID card he'd programmed in some idle
moments, he let himself into the development suite. It was
empty. Unlike him, most programmers at Global didn't work
late, they preferred to get away to their outside lives at the end
of the day. The intruder alarm was active, but it was simple to
disable it from the keypad on the wall before it could sound:
he'd long ago figured out the algorithm which set a new code
each day. Locks and alarms were a pleasing logical challenge
to be cracked, the same way software problems were there to
be solved.

He went to his cube space, and took out three silver

memory cards from the desk drawer. There was no way he'd
leave Tracks behind. He spent a few minutes making changes
to the master copy that would remain on the workstation. If
Hudson, or anyone else from Global should ever look for it,
they'd find it, but it would be useless to them. It wouldn't
even run. He pocketed the cards that held his good copies,
reset the alarms, and took the elevator down to the parking
lot.

44

Back at his apartment, he inserted one of the cards into his

laptop. Lee-Ann appeared and gave her usual friendly
greeting.

`Go to Tracks mode, please Lee-Ann,' he told her.
As she faded into transparency, the screen filled with the

blue and red clouds of a supernova. A whirl of letters spun
into the stretched-out word "T R A C K S" and Lee-Ann
reappeared, now wearing a silver suit as she stepped from the
centre of the exploding star. She turned her blonde head
towards him enquiringly. `Hi Peter. I'm Lee-Ann, your
Tracks avatar. How are you today?' Her voice had changed,
had become a little deeper and huskier than before.

`Better for having a serious system running. Get ready,

Lee-Ann. We're going where they'll appreciate us.'

He'd call Gresham Taylor first thing in the morning. And

he'd send the real Lee-Ann an email once he arrived in
London, he thought. He didn't want her persuading him to
reconsider. He was out of there.

45

7~ Palisades

That same evening, with the last of the light rapidly

fading, the limo bringing Lamb home from his accountants'
office cruised Palisades Parkway, a black ghost slipping back
to Manhattan through sighing woodlands, the headlights
picking out gusts of leaves that scuttered across the black-top.
He reached forward and turned on the heating, and as he did
so, the thin beep of the car's phone sounded. Lamb nodded to
Fusillo behind his glass partition, and took the call. It was
Julia.

`Any news? Anything from Global's people?' Lamb pressed

the phone to his ear as the car rumbled over a rough surface. `I
see. Then in the morning we call their attorneys and tell them
they've till noon on Friday to respond. Alright, good. Did you
contact the hospital about Brandt?'

He screwed up his face in concentration as they hit another

noisy patch of road. `So the consultant was unavailable, but
you spoke with the hospital's Clinical Director. And?' He
listened. `Global had Brandt admitted to Emergency, in time
to save him! Excellent!' He sat back in his seat, with a sigh of
satisfaction. `Anything else?'

Abruptly he sat up straight. `Is that so? In Texas! Have the

other media picked it up? Alright, have him email the report
to us. Yes, tonight. I'll be there in about 30 minutes.'

Now he knew for sure that he was on what the Americans

called "a roll". Julia was his primary interface to the media,
and to his contacts in major cities. She rarely missed a story

46

that mattered, and she'd not only verified Clarissa's claim that
Sheepdog worked, she'd also picked up a new glint of gold. A
local paper had reported a suspected virus outbreak in Texas.
A fatal outbreak. And therefore a new marketing lead for
Sheepdog's capability. Lamb could not repress a shiver that
was part excitement, part fear. A virus an organism on the
boundary between living and dead, too small to see except
under the most powerful microscopes, internally programmed
to be a lethal mechanism.

He pressed the intercom button. `Find a news stand. Try

the gas station a mile ahead.'

It was on the center strip that divided the road, a lonely

automated outpost, standing out from the dark under bleak
fluorescent lights. The limo cut across the highway and
lumbered to a halt at the pumps. After a few seconds, Fusillo
cracked the door and got out warily. He made his way to the
news dispensers outside the empty sales booth.

The minder returned with an armful of papers. As the limo

eased back onto the parkway, Lamb began to leaf through
them under the mood lights, reading carefully, a muscle in his
cheek pulsing. He could find no mention of any virus
outbreak in Texas.

Soon they were in sight of the Hudson River to their left,

running like dark quicksilver towards the George Washington
Bridge.

`The penthouse,' Lamb said into the intercom. There was a

grunt from the speaker, and a minute later the limo swung its
mass forcefully to the left, slowed for the tollgates, then
drummed its way through the steel dinosaur bones of the
bridge and headed for Midtown. As it tilted down into the
underground lot below the penthouse, anticipation began to
course through him. Sixty storeys above, Julia was waiting,
perhaps in the blue robe that she liked to wear after she'd

47

showered, freshly scented with the oils she used, her hair
loose, her nails painted, gleaming in the subdued lighting.

An hour later, he lay curled against her. He smiled. `I

sometimes wonder why I ever let business take me away from
you . . . '

`With you, business isn't what you do, it's what you are.'

Julia slid out of the sheets, dug her plum-tipped toes into the
white wool of the carpet, and meandered over to stare through
the window. Far below, yellow cabs and limos were weaving
through a swelling river of traffic; the Empire State and the
Chrysler Building pinnacles of light in the velvet evening.

`It's gorgeous,' she whispered.
He looked up. `Better than that miserable apartment you

were living in.'

For a moment, she looked a little sad. `Yes, it's better.'
Lamb came up behind her and put his arms round her. `I'm

getting old.' He nuzzled her hair. `You'll stay with me.'

It was somewhere between a plea and a command. She

twisted to face him. `Of course you're not old.'

He sighed, gazing past her at the beaded lights of the city.

`I wish,' he said.

Later still, in their emperor-size bed, Lamb stared into the

darkness, hearing Julia's steady breathing, conscious of her
body warmth. He switched on a lamp to read again the email
from Texas which she'd printed out for him, and which he'd
placed beside the bed.

He turned towards her. `Are you asleep?'
`Not quite,' she said drowsily.
`I think you should fly down to Texas.'

48

Julia moved away from him. `There are always scare

stories.'

`This one's different,' Lamb said. `I can feel it.'
She muttered something.
`What?'
`I said you're obsessed.'
Lamb laughed. `How much do you suppose people would

pay to avoid being cut down by an epidemic?'

`Forget it,' Julia said. `I hate Texas.'
`Only because it reminds you of that con-artist you were

hooked up with.'

`I'm not going.' Julia rolled onto her side and in moments

seemed to be fast asleep.

`We'll see,' Lamb said gently.

49

8~ Water-cooler

The following morning, Hudson got to the office early.

He'd hardly slept, had replayed Miller's departure in his
mind's eye till dawn. Clarissa could fool herself all she wanted
about miracles to come from the Indian software house, but
he, Ben Hudson, understood the true situation. Good
programmers were decisive by nature and stubborn as mules.
That was how they coped with software, bending code to
their indomitable wills, no matter how contorted its logic. He
should have stayed off the Scotch, kept his head clear,
promised anything that would have kept Miller on board to
ensure Sheepdog could be demonstrated and sales closed,
while the shop in India straightened up a version fit for
delivery. Now there would be no way to get him back.

Global was about to push a product that wouldn't cut it,

would likely bring lawsuits down on its head. It wouldn't take
much to send the corporation over the edge, taking with it the
nest-egg he'd been patiently waiting for, putting up with all
the crap that Global threw at its people. His share options
would bite the dust, and like as not his pension rights. Outfits
like Global had a habit of dipping into that pot when things
got bad.

He'd thrashed around, sleepless, trying to figure the angles.

Clarissa was as stubborn as Miller. To her, the programmer
was merely a no-goodnik, a non-team-player. She'd never
authorize the kind of astronomical pay-rise that might just
possibly get him back, and at the end she would blame Ben

50

Hudson, VP of Operations. He should never have let Miller
go. What to do?

He caught up with Lee-Ann by the water-cooler. `Got a

minute?' He led her by the arm to the elevator and up to his
office.

`What's the problem?' she demanded, looking him in the

eye.

He scrutinized her, considering. He didn't like the broad,

didn't care for the mid-western twang of her speech, nor for
her language, which if anything was more foul than his own -
he liked his women ladylike. But right now he needed her
help.

`How's the job going?' he asked.
She eyed him carefully. `About the same as yesterday. And

the day before. Why?'

`You're a friend of Peter Miller, right?'
`I wouldn't say a friend. He's a good kid, is all.'
`Come on. He based the avatar on you. I've seen the way

he looks at you - he wastes hours shooting the shit with you.'

`I'm way past those games.' Lee-Ann said, absently patting

her blonde hair. `I guess he likes me though, and he sure is
valuable around this place. Without him . . . '

`Yeah,' Hudson said. `Well, that's what I want to talk

about. He's quit.'

`Holy fucking shit!'
Hudson winced. `Can we keep this business-like?'
`Well, excuse my reaction,' Lee-Ann said. `Didn't you tell

us all that our bright new future was guaranteed by our
amazing new product? You know, the one that doesn't work
unless Peter Miller's around?'

51

`It won't take long to fix the problems. The shop in India's

on the ball.'

`Like, how long?'
`Let me worry about that,' Hudson said. `OK, we'll need

extra support while India's bringing the product through. So
OK, I have to agree Miller's the best support we have for this
transitional phase.'

`Had.'
`What?'
`Did have. You just told me he quit.'
`Right. Question is, do you want to keep your job?'
Lee-Ann looked at him steadfastly. `You know goddamn

well I do.'

`Then we need Miller back on the case.'
`Are you kidding? You know what he's like. If he doesn't

want to do something, go whistle, he won't do it.'

`In that case Global's going to take a beating,' Hudson

said. `There'll be job cuts, I shit you not. And guess who's
right up front of the line.'

`He hates your guts. Hates Clarissa's worse.'
`Your call,' Hudson said. `Feel free to check out the

situations vacant ads.'

`There's high unemployment right now.'
`Exactly. Meanwhile, you're fronting the demos at the

Medyx product launch. That had better go well, otherwise
we'll know you didn't deliver as a team member. I imagine
you'll find it easier to cope if Miller's around to help.'

Lee-Ann glared at him. Finally she said: `Where's he

going?'

`To London, apparently. To work at some hospital for

psychos.'

`How do I find him?'
`Go figure,' Hudson said.

52

9~ Brandt

After 48 hours in intensive care Bernard Brandt had been

moved to his own hospital room, where he was well looked
after by the nurses and physicians. But when Dr Coney came
to visit and tried to start a conversation about Global, Brandt
became taciturn and changed the subject. There was no-one
he dared talk to about the way Sheepdog had failed him. That
would breach his contract with the corporation, which bound
him to silence. Global was still paying his salary and his
medical insurance, and was known to be merciless when its
interests were threatened.

Intermittently, he tried to make small-talk with the nurses,

but mostly he watched television, tried to read, and suffered in
silence. What haunted him was Lee-Ann's beauty if that
was her name - the woman he'd seen when he'd been brought
into hospital. She was what life should have offered, he
realized. And he'd so nearly joined her when she'd held out
her hand!

He tried to tell one of the nurses about her, but she merely

patted his hand and said he should get some rest. People see
all sorts of things when they're very sick, she told him, in a
coolly professional tone.

His hospital room was well equipped. Executive

accommodation, another nurse explained, a benefit of his
contract with Global. There was even a PC provided. One
day he switched it on, only to discover that exciting movies
and porn sites were blocked, no doubt because of his heart

53

condition. But perhaps, he thought, there were other people
out there who had met Lee-Ann. He began to search websites
for near-death experiences. After a while he came across
someone who would listen patiently to his concerns.

Whatever might be shared with Pastor Nyquist was in

complete confidence, Brandt was sure, because the tiny
symbol for a padlock appeared on the screen whenever he
exchanged messages with the Pastor's church. Amazingly
enough, it emerged that the Pastor was specially interested in
the problems that implants could bring, and was delighted to
hear about them.

Meanwhile in upstate Texas, in the military hospital where

Joel Garmin and his wife had been taken, Joel found himself
confined to a room in an isolation unit, without a phone, and
with no way to speak to Bethany. At regular intervals nurses
came to bring meals and tend to him. They wore white plastic
space suits, more cumbersome than the yellow suits the
strangers had worn at the motel: these ones trailed air-hoses.
The nurses said comforting things about his release, maybe in
a few weeks' time, but they never specified a date. At first Joel
was angry, and later lapsed into pleading. He asked constantly
for Bethany, but received only vague replies. Finally he
became resigned, as if he knew time had run out.

A while later, his eyes became sore and increasingly red.

54

10~ St Evelyn's

Within a week of his confrontation with Ben Hudson,

Peter Miller was sitting, drinking coffee, in the kitchen of a
comfortable flat in London, found for him by his new
employer. He was jet-lagged, but nevertheless thinking
pleasurably about the Tracks software, which he'd taken from
Global. He could visualize its code, even his hand-written
amendments, as clearly as if it were superimposed on the
white kitchen wall. There was bound to be scope for its
complex, satisfying levels at St Evelyn's Hospital. The idea of
monitoring disturbed minds - exploring human programs -
caused him a curious thrill.

He ate breakfast gazing out over a familiar, half-forgotten

ambience, a muted, tree-lined street of tall Victorian houses,
slate roofs and ivy-colonized walls. He'd grown up in South-
east London, not far from St Evelyn's. The real Lee-Ann had
once claimed that such "synchronicity" meant there was a
deep connectedness in the universe, and doubtless his father,
the lay preacher, would have seen God's hand in the
coincidence. They were both wrong, of course. It was only a
throw of the dice.

He pulled out a padded envelope from his flight bag,

checked its contents, and went out into a bright, early autumn
morning. In ten minutes he was walking uphill along a narrow
street, towards St Evelyn's. Unthinkingly he stepped around a
tangled shadow cast by a tree, and as he did so a memory
surfaced, his grandfather glancing at the hospital's brooding

55

buildings, saying with a wry shrug that it was a bad place:
those who entered as patients didn't return.

Today its wrought-iron gates and lawns looked unchanged.

Some of the old buildings were still standing, butted against
newer low-rise blocks and a tower. They had the same grey
brick and filmed-over windows he remembered from all that
time ago.

In the gate house a uniformed security guard sat in front of

flickering video monitors. Miller said: `Dr Gresham Taylor?'

The man produced a visitors' book to sign, issued him with

a name badge, came outside and pointed to one of the old
buildings. `On the first floor. Ask reception to take you up.
They don't like surprises over there.'

Miller followed a gravelled path past rose beds. On the far

side of the lawns a few spare figures walked slowly, heads cast
down, patients, he supposed. Two nurses in white suits
hurried into the tower block.

The wooden door of the old building opened easily to let

him into a carpeted reception area. The cream walls looked
recently painted, but there was a faint, musty background
odour, as if the air itself had grown old. To either side, glass-
panelled doors fronted corridors that led into the depths of
the place. A row of three chairs were set against a wall. He sat
down on one of them. There was no-one in sight.

After what seemed like many minutes, there were footsteps

in one of the corridors, and a woman appeared. She was
perhaps in her late twenties, lean, with dark hair cut in a bob
that framed her oval face. She looked at him warily. `Can I
help you?'

`I'm looking for Dr Gresham Taylor.'

56

`Oh, you must be Peter Miller. I heard you were arriving

today.' The smile she gave him was slight, though her mouth
had a generous curve. She held out her hand. `I'm Sarah Ross,
Dr Taylor's research assistant. I'll take you up to his office.'

She led him at a brisk pace up a staircase to the next level.

Miller followed, noting absently that her calves were nicely
shaped. Her hips moved in a distinctly pleasing way too. He
might program that motion into the next version of virtual
Lee-Ann. Perhaps start with a sine wave, mix in a small
percentage of an exponential function, and then add in a little
randomness, to avoid too mechanistic an appearance. That
should do it.

Along a narrow corridor she knocked at a polished door,

and cautiously pushed it open. `He was in reception, looking
lost.'

The occupant of the room was silhouetted against a

window, behind a desk piled with journals, folders and
printout. He came forward to shake hands, peering at Miller
over half-moon glasses. His dark hair, greying a little, was
brushed back from his narrow forehead. He was easily six feet
tall, and broad-shouldered.

`Well, Peter Miller! You found us! Come and sit down.

You're just in time for coffee.'

`Sounds good,' Miller said.
Taylor looked questioningly at Sarah. Her mouth

tightened a fraction, but she nodded and went out. The
psychiatrist's eyes lingered on her as she left. He motioned
Miller to a settee, and settled in an armchair opposite. `When
did you get in?'

`Yesterday morning.'
`You poor chap, you must still be jet-lagged. Those night

flights are devastating.'

57

`I'm fine.' Miller looked around, a momentary depression

catching at him. The comfortably worn settee he perched on
and the matching armchair were set in front of an ornamental
iron fireplace. Bookshelves lined two walls. An alabaster bust
stared from one of the shelves. Outside the dusty window
distant terra-cotta chimneys stood above slate roofs. It didn't
feel like a place where exciting software could be developed.
Perhaps Tracks wouldn't take root here after all.

Taylor was watching him. `You must be thinking that

things here are very different from the States. Unfortunately
we're waiting for the powers that be to get on with the
wretched rebuilding. Still, I comfort myself with the thought
that my office has character.'

Miller laughed, feeling a little better. `It doesn't bother me.

Though I remember when I lived around here as a kid, people
were scared of this hospital.'

`Folk memories,' Taylor said cheerfully. `The collective

unconscious, if you favour that school. It's quite a history, it
must be said.'

There was a tap at the door, and Sarah came in with a tray

of coffee. `Wonderful,' Taylor said. `If you'd just leave it on
the table? Peter and I are going to chat.'

He waited till the door closed behind her, then poured the

coffee. `St Evelyn's was originally one of the old Victorian
fever hospitals, with wards set in gardens, so the wind could
blow away the "miasma" they believed caused disease. Our
archivist discovered it's actually on the site of a mediaeval
sickhouse, where plague victims were confined.'

Taylor reached for a silver paper knife that lay on his desk,

and turned it in his fingers. `Later, when it became a general
hospital, there was an enthusiastic surgeon here who
performed drastic operations, unfortunately on hopeless cases.
All that probably accounts for the echoes you picked up as a

58

child. Bad vibes, I expect you'd say.' He smiled. `Well, finally
it's a psychiatric unit, and despite the fact that insanity was
once believed to be possession by evil spirits, I can assure you
there's nothing to be afraid of.'

Miller looked at him thoughtfully. `Tell me about the

software.' Which is to say, where to begin finding a place for
Tracks? - except he didn't say it.

Taylor smiled. `You're an eager beaver. Good!' He put the

knife down gently on the table. `You've heard of Care in the
Community. In the late twentieth century, the old asylums
were closed and their long-stay patients were released, mostly
to become out-patients looked after by psychiatrists and social
workers. The Government's aim was better treatment - and to
save millions. Unfortunately, there were . . . incidents. The
media seized on a notorious case of a man stabbed by a
complete stranger a schizophrenic patient.' He shrugged.
`That started a current of fear among the public, and doctors
began to use more and more medications to control patients.
The problem is, the patients can't be relied on to take the
medicines. On average, recently, there's been one innocent
person killed by a psychologically disturbed attacker each
week.'

`About the software . . . '
`So we need to know who's compliant - who's taking the

prescribed dose and who isn't. Our SEMPER project will
track the patients, monitor the level of medication in their
blood, and look for signs of arousal. Then we'll know when
they're presenting a risk.'

Miller frowned. `That can't be difficult. You said you were

developing advanced techniques.'

`Monitoring medications is our official remit from the

Department of Health. But you're right, I'm after something
more.'

59

`Like what?'
`This is confidential . . . ' There was a tentative knock at

the door, and Taylor broke off. A secretary looked in
cautiously.

`What is it? I'm busy.'
`Mr Hart's here.'
`Ahhh, these bureaucrats! Always early, except when it

comes to coughing up money. Where is he?'

`In reception. In the tower block. Shall I bring him up?'
`No, I'll get him myself.' He smiled at Miller. `Why don't

we have Sarah give you a tour, and afterwards we'll talk more.
Shall we say back here, after lunch?'

He picked up the phone. After a short conversation, he

said: `She's on her way.'

As his office door closed behind Miller and Sarah, Taylor

crossed to a corner where between two bookcases there was
another, inconspicuous door, its flush surface painted off-
white to match the wall. He turned a concealed latch, pulled
the door open, and took a staircase down to a narrow corridor
lit only by bare bulbs which threaded light into the distance.
Pipes swathed in lagging ran overhead; disused equipment
and racks loaded with journals and bundles of medical notes
were parked against the grimy walls. He kept his distance
from a rusting dialysis machine, circumvented a puddle where
drips fell from a pipe, and swerved away from a yellow plastic
box lying by the wall which carried a death's head symbol
above the word `SHARPS'.

The corridor, left undisturbed when the new tower was

built abutting the old building, was a useful short cut when he
was in a hurry. Freud would have delighted in it, he thought,

60

a hidden place filled with buried accounts of distressing
histories.

He paused at the junction with a second, narrower tunnel

on his left. Even now it was tempting. When the pressure
became too great, he liked to go down there, to explore what
had been left behind when certain departments of St Evelyn's
had been transferred to one of the London teaching hospitals.
It amused him that some people would recoil from what was
there; he found the experience soothing, an escape from day-
to-day problems. One needed an outlet over and above one's
professional occupation. Though of course, one had to be a
little wary. Not everyone would understand.

It was a shame that he'd never found the opportunity to

take Sarah along. She'd been upset recently, and he'd had to
agree to her taking time away from the unit. But she'd come
back. She was intelligent, not one to be afraid. Getting her to
show the new programmer around was a good move, would
remind her how important the project was. When she
returned to work, he'd suggest a visit. She'd be intrigued, it
would be a chance for them to find a mutual interest. Then
perhaps . . . well, it wasn't unusual these days . . . an older
man and a younger woman . . .

No time for a visit now, anyway. He had to deal with the

wretch from the Department of Health, who undoubtedly was
here to cause trouble - as usual. Bureaucrats valued medical
research primarily as a means to increase the volume of
paperwork. Real progress, especially when pursued by men of
vision, was a threat to the flow of paper, to be avoided. Delays
in a project due to its technical difficulty offered a perfect
excuse to obstruct it further.

Reluctantly he moved on, his shadow overtaking him at

each pool of light from an overhead bulb. At the end of the
corridor he tugged open a heavy door, and emerged into a

61

broad corridor. His footsteps clicked over smooth stone as he
walked through an arch into the tower block.

A few yards ahead, a tall figure was standing by a pillar,

silently watching him. The man moved tentatively across
Taylor's path, as if to raise a question.

`What are you doing here, Martin?' Taylor demanded.
At that moment a male nurse came hurrying up, out of

breath. Taylor glared at him. `Get him back to the ward
immediately. He's Code 5.' He motioned the patient aside,
and walked on.

The man retreated to the wall. As the nurse took his arm,

he continued to watch Taylor, then curiously eyed the
doorway where he'd emerged.

62

11~ Taylor

Taylor's visitor was waiting in reception in the new tower

block, his fingers drumming on the briefcase he held on his
lap. A slight man, who wore a neat suit and dark tie, he had a
quiff of sandy hair that fell over his forehead, and pale brown
eyes that shifted frequently over his surroundings as if he were
suspicious of their significance. Now his eyes focused on
Taylor as the psychiatrist approached.

`Jeremy!' Taylor shook hands. `So sorry to keep you

waiting, I was with a patient. One can't hurry them they
need time.'

Jeremy Hart blinked. `Clinical priorities.' He smiled thinly.

`Exigencies of service. Entirely understandable.'

Taylor piloted him out from the tower and across the

gardens. `We weren't expecting you before the next project
meeting.'

`It was thought an informal session would be helpful.'
In his office, Taylor settled his visitor in the armchair.

`Coffee?'

`Thank you, no. I've come up from a planning meeting in

the West Country. Had breakfast on the train.'

Taylor seated himself opposite, on the worn settee where

Miller had sat earlier. `You chaps still travel first-class, I trust?'
he said, straight-faced.

Hart glanced out of the window. `Standing orders.

Department feels travel should be working time, not
interrupted by hoi polloi. So no choice, I'm afraid. Not that

63

you've done badly. What did we spend on your new buildings?
Ninety million?'

`That was twelve years ago.'
Hart sighed. `Always this wretched business of priorities.

We're under constant pressure to justify. Perhaps I will have
that coffee.' He tripped the locks on the briefcase, making
sharp clicks, and pulled out a clutch of buff folders.

Taylor reached for the phone and ordered. `Well now, to

what do we owe your visit, Jeremy?' No need to ask, really. It
was going to be the routine complaint.

Hart blinked at the wall, then at the folders. `Unfortunately

to put matters bluntly - concern at lack of progress.
Secretary of State is having doubts whether we can announce
success as we hoped.'

`But you've seen our recent excellent progress reports, and

we've another year to complete the work.'

Hart shook his head. `Regrettably, Gresham, events change

priorities. We're going to need your final report well before
the election. You've four months at most, and we need you to
deliver additional benefits.'

`What?' The psychiatrist stared at him. `What are you

talking about?'

Hart handed him one of the folders. Taylor picked up his

half-moon glasses, took his time checking that the lenses were
clean, then propped them on his nose, and scanned the
folder's contents. `Jeremy, this is absurd. You want to shorten
the agreed deadlines, yet you impose this huge change in
requirements.'

`Not huge. Merely additional disorders to be monitored.'
`We agreed to focus on the major psychoses first. Now you

want to add the severe personality disorders, at the last
moment. Why?'

64

`The revised guidelines come from the National Institute

for Health and Clinical Excellence. This project has to
address a broader range of threats.'

`This is a research project, for God's sake,' Taylor said. `If

we try to take on every diagnostic category from the start,
we'll fall flat on our faces. We're on target, we've a new
programmer from the US helping finalize the technology
right now. He's extremely bright.'

`He'll need to be. Some of us have put our names to this

project.'

The secretary brought in coffee and Taylor poured. The

cup and saucer rattled slightly as he handed them to his
visitor. `Jeremy, I fail to understand. What's brought this on?'

`Among other matters, the recent ghastly business in the

Tube.'

The psychiatrist paused, cup in hand. `What about it?'
Hart sipped his coffee, watching Taylor over the rim of his

cup. `The media are ramping up the incident into a national
issue. They play on the resemblance to previous cases. Their
hype - to use that unfortunate term speculates that the
murderer had a psychiatric disorder, perhaps was already a
patient.'

`Perhaps she was.'
`It seems very possible. In which case, when she's caught,

her diagnosis will come out. It would be politically
embarrassing if Semper proved to be useless against that
particular disorder.'

`I can't agree. The public aren't stupid. They'll understand

Semper's potential.'

`Public opinion is seldom predictable. And there's a still

more unsettling possibility.'

`What?'

65

Hart's gaze flitted around the room again. `The Tube

station's near this hospital.'

`The line passes several psychiatric units.'
`I'm aware it has a history of assaults. I believe the police

contact nearby hospitals when there's an incident.'

`Quite so. I had a call from them the other day.'
`And?'
`Of course, I had to tell them, it's not completely

impossible it could have been one of our outpatients. Even
though we're a small unit, we have several hundred under our
care, and more we've lost to follow-up. The policies you
people impose force us to discharge patients sooner than we'd
wish. But I've no reason to believe it was one of ours.'

Hart shot him a sideways glance. `Nevertheless, the

murderer could have been one of the patients on the trial.'

`Your imagination's running wild,' Taylor said. `It's true the

monitoring hasn't always run 24/7 as you well know, it's still
experimental - but nothing in the data it's produced suggests
that any patient might have been homicidal. And at this stage
of the project, I frequently see the trial subjects in person. I'd
have spotted the change in mood.' He set his glasses down
gently on the table. `Why are you so concerned? Surely, this
unfortunate business just strengthens the case for our project,
doesn't it?'

`Not if the murderer was in the trial.' Hart suddenly made

perfectly steady eye contact.

`But there'd be no need to announce the fact, would there?'

Taylor drank from his cup, looking at Hart evenly. `An
unfortunate glitch during the development phase, not
important in the wider scheme of things hardly worth
reporting '

`I'm relieved that we're singing from the same hymn sheet.

To invest in an advanced system like this, and have it fail and

66

cause such a high-profile incident . . . were a failure like that
to become public, I can assure you that Secretary of State and
the Department would distance themselves from the project
immediately.'

`You're worrying about nothing,' Taylor said. `Now, since

you're here, about funding for the Institute.'

Hart's eyes jumped across the framed certificates of

qualification on the walls. `Your proposed Institute of e-
Psychiatry would absorb a great deal of tax-payers' money.
Secretary of State needs a new business case before he can
consider such expenditure - including satisfactory results
from your present project.'

Taylor put his cup down with a clatter. `You've had the

business case, and God knows how many revisions.' He
reached out, and picked up the silver paper knife from his
desk.

Hart's gaze was steady again. `I'm afraid we can't go further

until we can announce that the first stage is successful. As it is
the media are making hay with the Home Office's problems
in tagging sex offenders.'

Taylor exhaled, a long breath. `Jeremy, we both know that

psychiatric disorders are only going to increase. We humans
are a phenomenally clever species, but not clever enough to
cope with our emotions, or the complex society we've built.
As you once said, the Semper project is a useful first step, a
warm blanket provided by a benign government, so voters can
sleep soundly at night. But we'll never solve the problem until
we have a more subtle understanding of the mind, know more
deeply how it interprets the world and responds to stress.
That's what my Institute will achieve once you allow me to
get on with it.'

67

`I dare say. But we don't want the media playing up issues

of public safety and civil liberties before the benefits are
proven.' Hart began packing the files away in his briefcase.

Taylor tossed the paper knife onto the desk. `You know, it

won't surprise me to see the Americans get there first. They
may be barbarians, but at least they have vision.'

`Nevertheless we need definitive evidence. When can we

expect the next project report?'

`I hope in about six weeks.'
`Four would be better.'
`We'll do our best,' Taylor said, thin-lipped. He stood up.

`Now you'll have to excuse me. I've patients to attend to. My
secretary can order you a taxi to the station.'

Hart closed the locks of his briefcase. `Well, good to see

you again. I'm glad we could clear up that matter of the
assault.'

`You're concerning yourself needlessly, Jeremy. You'd

better hurry if you want to catch your train.'

Just along from Taylor's office there was a consulting

room, a shabby room painted in cream emulsion. One wall
carried a white china sink with long-handled surgical taps;
another a clock. A workstation was bolted to a wooden table
which stood on the grey vinyl floor. There were three chairs at
the table, and in one of them, Taylor's patient sat waiting, a
small, thin agitated man in a dark suit. His hands rested on
the table. When he stood up as Taylor came in, damp
shadows remained where his palms had been.

Taylor sat down opposite and entered a password into the

workstation `Well now, Henry,' he said in a firm voice.
`How've you been? Have you been keeping up the
medication?'

68

The man nodded anxiously. `Yes, doctor, I have.'
`And?'
Henry looked at him beseechingly, but said nothing.
Taylor leaned forward a little and looked directly into the

man's eyes. `Are you still hearing your voices?'

Henry's eyes slewed sideways, avoiding Taylor's gaze. `Not

really.'

`Not really. What does that mean, Henry?' Taylor ran his

eye over the data on the screen. `The computer seems to think
you haven't been taking the medicine. What have you got to
say about that?'

`I meant to.'
Taylor leaned back and locked his hands behind his head.

`You meant to. Then you are hearing the voices.'

Henry said nothing. He shut his eyes. His hands began to

tremble, and he steadied himself by grasping the table.

`Listen to me,' Taylor said. He looked carefully at the

screen again. `Last time we had this discussion, we talked
about whether you could visit your children. Do you
remember that?'

Henry remained silent.
`Well, do you or don't you?' Taylor's voice was suddenly

loud. `You understand English, don't you?'

Henry nodded soundlessly, his eyes tightly closed, like a

blind man.

Taylor's voice became quieter again. `And I said maybe one

day we might arrange permission. If you do as you're told.
Yes?'

Henry nodded. `Yes,' he said in a near-whisper.
`Then take the medicine!' Taylor shouted. He banged his

closed fist on the table, and walked over to the sink. `You
people. You've no idea how much effort goes into taking care
of you. All you do is whine and go on doing what you want.'

69

He splashed his face with cold water, dabbed it with a paper
towel and returned to study the workstation. On the screen, a
curved graph was rising slowly. Something like a small smile
lifted the corners of Taylor's mouth. He typed some keys.

Then he shut down the workstation, and pressed a bell-

push. To Henry, he said, `I've given you a further prescription.
Collect it at pharmacy, and this time, make sure you take the
medicine. I have to go.'

`But about my children, doctor. You said . . . '
A secretary came in. Taylor glanced at her. `Give him

another appointment in a couple of months. And make sure
he doesn't hang around here.' He strode out of the door.

The secretary shook her head. `Come on, Henry dear,' she

said. `Let's sort out a date for you. Don't worry - we'll soon
get you better.'

70

12~ The Lodge

Sarah brought Peter Miller to a cramped office which was

squeezed next to a storage room, on the fifth floor of the
tower block. It was furnished with a basic desk, chair, filing
cabinet, workstation and printer. A narrow window looked
down onto a concreted service area which held garbage bins.

Sarah stepped aside to let him past, then stood in the

doorway watching him. `Home from home,' she said. `I hope
you like it.'

`It's fine.' Miller took out from his jacket the padded

envelope containing the memory cards he'd brought from
Global. He locked the envelope carefully in the filing cabinet,
added the key to his key-ring, sat down and tried the
keyboard. He studied the screen, and sighed. `Where's the
computer room?'

`Up on the twelfth. You'll have to ask Dr Taylor if you

want to go there. I'm to show you the wards and introduce
you to Simeon.'

`Who's he?'
`He tracks the patients. When the system works, that is.'
`The system has problems?' Miller brightened. Problems

meant that improved software could be promoted. Tracks
software.

`You'll have to ask Dr Taylor. Come on, I'll take you to

The Lodge.'

71

Sarah led him at her brisk pace to one of the new low-rise

buildings. `The really disturbed ones come here first,' she told
him.

The yellow brickwork was precise, the mortar between its

courses artfully recessed. Miller traced his finger admiringly
along the neatly bevelled edges of the small plate-glass
window in the door. `Money from a charity,' Sarah said
briefly. She pressed a button set in the wall below a lens. In a
few seconds a tiny red light gleamed, the lock clicked, and
they went in.

The door slammed behind them. Now they were trapped

in a corridor like an air-lock, closed at the far end by a further
door with a reinforced window. As they approached it, a tall
West Indian in a white nurse's uniform came out.

`Freddy,' Sarah said. `Meet our new computer guru, Peter

Miller.'

`Pleased to meet you,' the nurse said. `Visiting the

clientele?'

Sarah smiled tightly. `Passing by. We'll just look through

the window. Is Mr Baines there?'

`It's OK. They took him to radiology for a scan.'
`Are we going in?' Miller asked.
`You're sure he's not there?'
`You needn't fear,' Freddy said. `He'll be gone some while.'
`For a moment then.'

Freddy took out a plastic card and let them into an area

about a dozen metres square, set out with a few tables and
chairs, like a minimal café. To either side, closed doors carried
signs to male and female dormitories.

A nursing office enclosed by armoured glass panes

extended from one wall like a large conservatory. Three
white-suited nurses sat behind the glass, typing at

72

workstations while glancing out watchfully at the few shabby
men and women who sat around listlessly at the tables. Two
of the women were engaged in a desultory game of cards. In a
corner, a thin man stared at the visitors, motionless.

A patient in pyjamas sat at one of the tables, pondering a

chess board. He was moving pieces back and forth repeatedly,
as if seeking some ideal configuration. Gradually his
movements became increasingly agitated and then frantic.
Suddenly he hurled the board against the wall so the pieces
scattered wildly, stood up and grasped his chair, lifting it
above his head as if to throw it. A nurse came quickly from
the glass office and spoke to him in a soothing way. Slowly he
lowered the chair. A second nurse emerged, waved Miller and
Sarah towards the door and let them out, as a uniformed
security man came into the ward.

`Jesus,' Miller said as they headed across the gardens. `Are

they all like that?'

`Wait till you see the really bad ones,' Sarah said. `He's

new, he'll probably be OK. Once the medication builds up,
most of them settle down and they go to the open wards. If
he's lucky he might even get some psychotherapy.'

`Who's Mr Baines?'
`I don't want to talk about him.'
There was a silence. Then Miller said: `The system keeps

tabs on the patients, right?'

`Supposedly.'
He halted. `Wait a minute. Let's sit down.'
She shook her head. `Simeon's expecting us.' But she

settled next to him on a wooden bench at the side of the lawn.

`Why "supposedly"? Doesn't it show their medication

levels?'

`It's supposed to do more than that. According to Dr

Taylor, that is. The fact is though, it's a disaster.'

73

`How? I'm here to improve the system. If it's

malfunctioning, I need to know how.'

Sarah hesitated. `I really don't want to talk about it.' He

saw that her eyes were hazel, the pupils wide despite the
bright day. She stood up. `Come on, you have to meet
Simeon.'

Apparently she was scared to tell him, Miller thought.

Well, he knew how to be patient. He'd find another
opportunity to talk with her and discover what this was all
about.

He smiled at her. `Alright, where to?'
`Over there. The old building.'
Inside, they took a spiral stairwell downwards. At the

bottom, the door to a room lit by an overhead skylight hung
half-open.

Sarah laughed nervously. `There's some history for you.'
He looked into the small round room. Its walls were

shrouded in thick grey padding, ripped here and there so the
stuffing hung out. In places it was marked with dark brown
streaks. The air was unpleasantly musty.

`Jesus,' he said. `Do they still use this kind of thing?'
`Oh, the modern ones are much more trendy,' Sarah said.

`They have bright pink padding. Mostly though, medication's
more effective - and not so labour-intensive. Come on, this
way.' She kept close as she led him along the stone-floored
corridor.

The walls of the basement work-place they entered were

painted in grubby cream emulsion. Windows of opaque glass
protected by metal bars let in pale daylight, supplemented by
overhead electric lights. A row of new workstations stood on a
steel table.

74

Simeon, a small, neat, rounded man with a fringe of silver

hair, looked up from an open book as they came in.

`Sarah!' he cried. `Good to see you. And who is this?'
Miller was eyeing the book curiously.
`Peter Miller's going to help develop the system,' Sarah

said. She checked her watch. `Simeon, I'm really sorry, but
Gresham made me promise to finish some reports. Do you
mind if I leave Peter to talk with you?' She gave Miller a
slight smile. `I'll meet you at the canteen? In about half an
hour?'

Simeon smiled too. `Be sure to look in before you go.' As

the door closed behind Sarah, he said: `We're going to miss
her. It's a real shame she's leaving.'

`When?'
`Today's her last day.'
`She didn't tell me,' Miller said. So he had only a few more

hours to discover what Sarah was hiding. `Why is she leaving?'

`Working here isn't for everyone,' Simeon said. `You can

start imagining things. Sarah needs to get back to the real
world.'

Miller glanced at the workstations. Their screens showed

rows of numbers that changed sluggishly every few seconds.
`She said the system has problems.'

`Well . . . it does follow medication levels most of the

time,' Simeon said, `and it also gives us an idea of the patient's
emotional state. That's Dr Taylor's special interest. But
sometimes, just when you most need to track the patient, it
loses information completely.'

`Exactly what does it monitor?'
Simeon pointed. `These figures are the medication levels in

the blood. This other group of numbers relate to the primitive
part of the brain, the limbic system, that deals with feelings,
aggression, and memory. Some people call it the "lizard brain"

75

- though I don't think Dr Taylor would hold with that
description.'

`So you know when the guy's getting up-tight?'
`Exactly. And this trace is testosterone. So we can tell if the

subject is ...'

`Horny.'
`Well . . . having possibly inappropriate thoughts. If the

system sees dangerous changes, we know we have a problem.
That's the theory, at least.'

Miller became thoughtful. `How does it alert you?'
`One of us carries a bleep that it triggers, automatically.

We have a rota. If necessary we go and find the patient.'

`With GPS?'
`Yes. Or the local tracking system if they're in the hospital.

Map,' Simeon said loudly to the workstation, and looked on,
pleased, as a street map asserted itself next to the other data.
Small red dots patrolled it.

`Which one is Mr Baines?' Miller asked.
Simeon looked up, startled. `You know about him?'
`Sarah mentioned him. Is his data on the system?'
Simeon typed a command, and a new row of numbers

appeared next to one of the dots. Beside it was a fuzzy,
thumbnail picture of a craggy, unshaven face, the eyes
distracted and suspicious.

Miller peered at the picture. `Sarah's scared of him. Is he

one of her imaginary problems?'

`Well, he's real, not imaginary. But the system doesn't

think he's a problem.'

`So why is she so concerned?'
Simeon looked uncomfortable. `You really should speak to

Dr Taylor about that. Sarah's a good person, is all I can say.'

`And Mr Baines?'

76

`He's a human being, so he's deserving of care, like all of

us. In his case, that's best left to a specialist like Dr Taylor.'

Miller examined the display again.
`A neat enough format. Who designed it?'
`A young chap who was here before my time, called David

Lloyd, a nice fellow, everyone says, but like Sarah, a bit too
sensitive. Now we have a freelance consultant, Don Cooke,
and his partner Rafe Lamarr, holding the fort.'

Miller sighed. `Where do I find them?'
`Dr Taylor's secretary might know. Don tends to be

elusive, like all you computer people.' Simeon smiled. `Why is
that?'

The programmer didn't answer. He was again staring at

the book lying on the table, which Simeon had been reading.
`That's a Concordance.'

`You surprise me,' Simeon said. `Yes, I was making some

notes. I used to be in a Brotherhood . . . till I saw the light.
It's still an interest of mine.'

`My father was a lay preacher,' Miller said briefly. He

turned to the workstations.

`You're religious?'
`I'm a card-carrying atheist.'
`Oh. Still, it's interesting to meet someone with that

background.'

`I'd better find Sarah.'
`As you please. And by the way . . . '
`Yes?' Miller said, half-way out of the door.
`If you ever feel like discussing theology, please don't

hesitate come and find me.'

`Sure,' Miller said, and was gone.
Undoubtedly a highly intelligent young man, Simeon

thought, if rather short on human communication. From the
way Sarah had stood close to Peter and smiled at him, she

77

obviously liked him. But as to his claim to be an atheist,
Simeon didn't buy that for even one second. There were those
who can't help but believe, and if one god fails, they find
another. One made from silicon, if need be.

The canteen was on the second floor of one of the modern

blocks. A long, low room with windows made secure by slim
metal bars, it was suffused by a metallic smell of hot food.
Sarah and Miller carried their chipped plastic trays to a table
by the window.

She nodded at his meal. `Healthy choice.'
He ignored this.
Picking at her salad, she watched him covertly as he

consumed a burger with fries. He was obviously bright, and
some people would consider him good-looking: firm mouth,
clear eyes behind fashionable glasses. She thought she
detected a flicker of something more interesting, too some
insecurity? - that she couldn't pin down. Perhaps under his
rather arrogant surface he was actually a lost soul. But then
again, she'd felt him staring unashamedly at her legs when she
took him up to Gresham's office; and even worse, she got the
clear feeling that he preferred computers to people. Right now
he seemed preoccupied, like someone studying an intriguing
book. Only there was no book there. They ate in silence.

Then he seemed to return from wherever he'd been. `I hear

you're leaving.'

`Tomorrow. I can't wait to get out of here.'
He smiled at that. `I know the feeling.'
`Really?' Sarah said. Perhaps he was human after all, or

more human than she'd thought. Part-human anyway. But
now he was going to ask her about the system, and she
couldn't face it. `I saw you looking at Simeon's book,' she said.

78

Miller looked up. `It was a Concordance. A kind of biblical

dictionary.'

`Oh, you're a church-goer?'
`Religions are interesting.'
`Are you a believer?'
`I said religions. Plural. People are irrational. They believe

what obviously isn't true. And they try to force other people to
believe it.'

`You might ask Gresham Taylor about that.'
`He seems rational enough to me.' Miller speared the last

of the fries.

Sarah looked at her watch, and pushed the remains of her

salad aside. `Oh God,' she said. `Sorry, I mean oh gods. I have
to go to a case conference.'

`Wait,' he said. `I have to know about the system. Please.'
For some reason, her intuition was saying she could trust

him. `Look, I could meet you after work.'

`When does this guy Cooke show up?'
`Usually in the evening.'
`What time?'
`He works late. Sometimes all night, I think.'
That seemed to please him. `So he'll be here tonight?'
`Probably. Anyway, he doesn't get here till after seven, I get

off around five thirty. We could go to the Falcon. It's a nice
pub, not too noisy. Say a quarter to six? In reception.'

`What's wrong with meeting here?'
`No,' Sarah said. `I don't want to stay here after hours. And

don't tell Gresham Taylor. Alright?'

`Alright,' Miller said.

79

13~ Julia

In the early afternoon, the Learjet carrying Julia slipped

out of high cloud above Texas and touched down at a small
airfield outside Austin, where it taxied towards a waiting limo.
The captain came from the flight deck to salute her. She was
sitting very upright in the cabin. He smiled, and at the door of
the plane, politely offered his hand to steady her onto the
steps down. She pushed past, ignoring him, and made her
own way to the car, the sudden sun a blast of heat on her
back. Cutting the driver dead, she got into the back seat and
slammed the door. The icy cool of the interior was welcome.

There were times when Theo was too much, she thought.

She'd learned to put up with his certainty that he was always
right, and it was true that their "arrangement", as he liked to
call it, had paid off handsomely, and rescued her from a
situation that was to say the least, difficult - his unkind
remark about her Texan con-man had been all too accurate.
But she sometimes wondered if the rescue had been worth the
price. Like now. What had got into him? He had more
money than he could ever possibly use, every conceivable
luxury, and herself - among others, she suspected - to warm
his bed. So why screw around with high-risk nonsense, like
Global, and this present wild-goose chase?

Or rather, wild-virus chase. He'd insisted that she track

down the paper which had printed the story, even though it
had immediately retracted, stating that the incident was after
all just a case of food-poisoning - and that she also locate the

80

reporter whose name had been on the by-line. Why couldn't
he have sent someone else on this so-called fact-finding trip?
For him to have confidence in her abilities was one thing, but
what did she know about microbes, or for that matter, small-
town newspapers? She was going to have to improvise.

The limo rolled steadily along a freeway, in light traffic.

Blue-cast pasture receded into the distance on either side.
Julia frowned as they passed a large shed, its wall carrying the
words "Guns and Ammo" in letters three feet high. Behind a
wooden rail fence, a string of thoroughbred horses cantered in
a field.

After some miles the limo turned into a rest area. The

place was almost empty, just a few vehicles standing in the
open expanse, one with a trailer home hitched to its tow-bar,
kids running around while their father fussed with the engine
under the open hood. A battered red sedan with its windows
wound down was parked in the shade of a live oak. The limo
pulled up close by it and halted, with its motor idling. A
young man got out and walked awkwardly towards them.

Julia opened her window and smiled at him. `You're Tom

Elders?' He smiled back, rather nervously, and held out his
hand.

`Get in,' she said.
Elders settled himself in the limo's roomy back seat, and

turned towards her, blinking. She raised the window, shutting
out the heat, and nodded to the driver. `Take a walk, please.'

`I'll leave it idling. You'll want the aircon.'
`No,' Julia said. `Switch it off. Take the key with you.' She

didn't want Elders pulling any stunts, driving off in the car,
with herself in it.

81

The driver looked at her strangely, but he shut off the

motor, got out and ambled over to a bench under a distant
tree, where he settled in the shade.

Julia smiled at Elders again. `It's good of you to meet with

me.'

`I don't know why you'd want to meet. I already told you

what I know,' Elders said. `Though now I see you in person, I
must say it's no hardship.'

`Well, thank you.' Julia drew out an envelope from her

purse and placed it on her lap.

Elder's eyes flickered towards it. `My fee?'
`Yes. When I get the rest of the information.'
`I told you what I know. The editor found out I was

wrong. It was a mistake.'

`Why did you think there was a bug a virus? Where did it

show up?'

`I said, I got the story second hand. Somewhere north of

here, they reckoned.'

`Who reckoned?'
`This guy I talked to in a bar. He didn't say exactly where.'
`What's his name?'
`I don't know.' He pursed his lips firmly.
It didn't add up. The paper paid him for stories. Even a

hick reporter wouldn't give up on a lead like that. Julia sighed
inwardly, reluctantly deciding that a change of tactics was
needed. You could always rely on the juvenile inside every
male. She leaned a little closer to Elders, and demurely
crossed one knee over the other, the hem of her skirt riding up
a little in the process. She ran her fingers over the envelope.
`There has to be more.'

`No,' Elders said. `That's it.'
Julia sat there, saying nothing, her fingers on the envelope.

Without the aircon, the temperature was starting to climb.

82

She tapped the envelope on her knee, thoughtfully. Elders
stared at it. A bead of sweat crawled down his forehead.

Absently, Julia fingered the top button of her silk shirt. `I

really need to know.'

When he still said nothing, she opened the clasp of her

purse and put the envelope back inside. She looked at Elders
enquiringly. `Well,' she said at last. `I guess I'll be leaving.'

The bead of sweat dripped onto Elder's tee-shirt, making a

dark stain. A second one got ready to follow it. `We agreed
my fee,' he said.

`We agreed you'd supply all the information you have.'

Julia clicked the purse firmly shut.

`Damn you,' Elders said. `I'm not supposed to say.'
She knew it. Julia suppressed her elation. `Why not? Who

said so?'

`Two guys. From some Federal Agency with Homeland

Security. They spelled it out. If I say anything, they'll take me
in.'

And for sure they'd had a talk with the editor of the paper

too.

`Look,' Julia said, `I'm here to find out about this thing. I'm

going to find out, one way or another, if I have to ask
everyone in this county. There'll be other people who aren't
scared, and who'll tell me. There's no way your agent friends
will find out who spilled the beans. So it might as well be you
then you walk free with the money. And since we're on the
subject, how about we double the fee?' She opened the clasp
of the purse.

Elders looked at her, weighing it up. At last he said: `Five-

fold.' His voice had a tremor.

`I'd have to go back to my boss for that. He'd never agree.'

Julia took out the envelope, and waited. `I think I could get
away with three times though.'

83

He thought it over, looking around the parking lot warily.

`Well alright. I guess you made your point. It was at the old
motel, out on Pinewood Road, a guy staying there. A real
mess, it seems. Bled to death.'

`Did anyone else get sick? Your story said an outbreak.'
`They took away the cleaner, and the couple who own the

motel. And their doctor.'

`Who did?'
`I really don't know. Soldiers were there, I think.'
`Where did they take them?'
`I swear I don't know.'
She watched his face carefully. It was true, she thought.

`Alright.' She brought out a wad of notes from the purse,
counted off a thick sheaf, and held on to it. `Why did your
paper retract the story?'

`I saw the two guys in Lennie's office. The agents.'
`He's the editor?'
`Yes. Mr Rayner.'
`Do you know how to contact them? The agents?'
He turned his head away. She opened the envelope and

stuffed the notes back inside again, with as much rustling of
paper as she could contrive.

He spoke so low she could hardly hear him. `One of them

was called duCassis, I think.'

`How would I find him?'
`He left a phone number with Lennie's secretary.'
She handed him the envelope, automatically making a

mental note to adjust the cash book back in the office. Theo
always found out if there were discrepancies. God alone knew
how he kept up with such trivia.

Elders was staring at her.
`I was wondering . . . ' he began.
She raised an eyebrow.

84

`While you're here - maybe you'd care to have dinner with

me. There's a nice place a few miles out of town.'

`Yes, that would be nice,' Julia said, `but it wouldn't be a

good idea for you to be seen with me, would it? Some other
time, when this has all blown over.'

He shrugged. `I guess.'
`I haven't seen you,' she told him. `I don't even know who

you are.'

He nodded wordlessly, stumbled out of the car, and ran

across to his red sedan.

Suddenly aware of the heated air, Julia waved the driver

over. `Pinewood Road,' she told him as he started the motor.

Theo's instinct had proved right, damn him, just as he'd

claimed. Something significant was going on. He'd insisted
that she shouldn't go near the outbreak if she found it - just
get the background, he'd said - and she was still mad at him
for sending her on this trip, but now she was determined to
bring back the goods. Apart from anything else, one of the
things that had attracted her to Theo was his generosity -
especially towards those who delivered. And she had to admit
that curiosity had taken hold of her. She wanted to know
what this was all about.

It took a while to find the motel. The sign at the start of

the overgrown lane was almost obscured by the low branches
of trees. The limo cruised warily until the driver suddenly
braked: the way ahead was blocked by a steel gate in a wire
fence, sealed with a heavy padlock. A cursory notice attached
to the fence explained that the motel was no longer in
business. Julia got out and squinted through the strands. An
inner barrier of razor wire had been erected around the
property.

85

She became suddenly aware of birdsong, and a flutter of

wings in the trees. She peered through the fence again and
saw something move further along the lane, a gleam of sun on
metal. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the greenery.

Julia looked down and saw on the ground a blue surgical

glove. She reached towards it, then stopped with her hand an
inch from the plastic fingers, remembering Theo's warning.
She went back to the car. `Head into town,' she told the
driver.

86

14~ SEMPER

After his lunch with Sarah, Miller went back to Taylor's

office. The door was shut. He knocked and when there was
no answer tried the handle. It was locked. After a few
minutes, when there was still no sign of the psychiatrist, he
stooped and carefully inspected the Yale lock. He was idly
trying out combinations of numbers on the keypad above it
when he heard someone coming.

Taylor appeared at the end of the corridor, carrying a batch

of folders under his arm, looking preoccupied. `Sorry I'm late,'
he said curtly. He entered a code, turned a key in the Yale,
and shouldered the door open. `I'll just drop these off, and
we'll go up to the lab.'

As they walked to the tower block, Taylor said: `How was

your tour?'

`Sarah took me to one of the wards. I talked with her and

Simeon.' Miller shot a careful glance at the psychiatrist. `They
said the system sometimes loses track of patients.'

`That's one reason why you're here,' Taylor said sharply.

`What else did they say?'

Miller paused, remembering Sarah's insistence that he

shouldn't mention their forthcoming meeting. `That I should
talk to you about the problems.'

`Good. That way we'll avoid confusion.' Taylor increased

his stride as they approached the tower block.

87

At the end of a blind corridor on the seventh floor, Taylor

unlocked a door marked: `SEMPER PROCEDURES.'

`Latin for "always"?' Miller asked.
`Yes, Simeon suggested it - meaning, always with the

patient, keeping him well,' the psychiatrist said. `It's also an
acronym for St Evelyn's Monitoring system for Psychiatric
Evaluation and Recall.' He groped for a wall switch, and
fluorescent lighting flickered into life. The narrow room was
furnished along three walls with teak work-benches and,
above them, cupboards with glass sliding doors. Stainless steel
kidney dishes covered with blue cloths were laid out next to
glass Petri dishes on white plastic mats, alongside scalpels,
fine tweezers, hypodermic syringes and needles in plastic
packs. A row of microscopes stood at attention. A sharp,
clean, chemical smell hung in the cool air.

Taylor sat down and switched on a microscope. A circle of

intense light fell on its stage. He racked the focus wheel, and
beckoned Miller to look through the eyepiece. In the bright,
even field of magnified vision lay an object like a pearl-grey
seed cut in two along its length. Its body was filled with a
patterned array of microcircuits, a maze of paths and
junctions.

Miller grunted. `One of Xiu Corporation's implants?'
`Their latest,' Taylor said, sounding more cheerful. `Those

Far Eastern companies are phenomenally innovative. Do you
know, the first time I ever heard of implantable micro-chips
they were being used to label logs cut from forests in Canada.
A few years later they were being planted under the skins of
domestic cats and dogs to provide electronic identity tags, and
soon after that, supermarkets were sticking them to cans of
beans so the stock could be tracked. Meanwhile, medical lab

88

technology was getting smaller and smaller, until early this
century Imperial College in London used micro-chips
experimentally to monitor blood glucose in diabetic patients.
Now here we are at the logical next step permanent human
implants.'

`It's neat,' Miller said, squinting through the eyepiece.

`Neater than we had at Global. But then Global always buys
cheap.'

`Xiu have miniaturized the technology beyond belief.

Look.' Taylor switched on a video camera attached to the
microscope. A monitor screen above the bench flared, then
settled to an image of the field of view. With his fingers he
rolled a small sphere that sat in a holder on the bench, and
on-screen, cross-hairs obediently traversed the implant's
anatomy.

`Here's the micro-lab,' the psychiatrist said, sounding

positively happy now. He rolled the track-ball. `That's the
pattern recognition module, and here's the tracking and
communications subsystem, power generation and the sensors
for blood pressure, temperature and the other vital signs.
Beautiful, isn't it?'

`It's a full function lab?'
`Oh yes.' Taylor turned to smile at him. For a moment

Miller could almost have sworn his eyes glowed. `Very much
full function. With bio-detectors for important physiological
molecules. Xiu genetically engineers them from viral
structures.'

Miller thought for some moments. `And the implant sits in

the patient's brain, right?'

Taylor looked shocked. `Good God, no. Positioning it

would be high-risk even for the best surgeons. You couldn't
justify it, especially given the number of patients we want to

89

follow. No, we typically implant in the shoulder. That's
harmless and effective.'

`Then what do you monitor? '
`Something that's been overlooked,' Taylor said. `The

working of our minds emerges from complexity, though so far
no-one knows how. The brain has around a hundred billion
nerve cells neurons - which have about a hundred trillion
cross-connections.'

`Big numbers,' Miller said. He settled on a lab stool,

studying the video image.

`Too big to understand what the whole structure's doing.

But we know that specialized areas deal with emotion and
cognition the hippocampus, amygdala, temporal lobes, and
so on.'

`The lizard brain,' Miller said, remembering Simeon's

explanation.

`Let's avoid tabloid-speak,' Taylor said, frowning. `Now,

you can visualize brain activity with imaging techniques. But
we can't have our patients wearing scanners on their heads all
the time. Of course, eventually those will be miniaturized and
when that happens . . . but not yet. This isn't a science fiction
story.'

`Then what's the answer?' Miller was using the track-ball

to move the cross-hairs around the image of the seed.

`The neurons communicate by exchanging chemical

messenger substances - neurotransmitters.' He glanced at
Miller. `These days we know almost a hundred different
kinds. Their balance changes with depression, aggression,
different kinds of arousal, and delusions. That's what
medications do control that chemical balance in our
patients' brains, so they become less disturbed.'

`Fascinating,' Miller said, still absorbed in the screen.

90

Taylor gave him a sideways look, but went on: `Outside the

brain the neurotransmitters are neutralized, but they leave
chemical traces in the blood-stream and the tissues. The
micro-lab in the implant is so sensitive it can pick those up.
So by sampling the fluid in shoulder muscle, we can work out
how the pattern of neurotransmitters is changing. Add in
basic data like heart rate and blood pressure, and we begin to
get a picture of the patient's mental state.'

`Sounds an awfully big jump,' Miller said, `deciding how

someone might behave from even a hundred chemical
concentrations, when the machine itself the brain is so
complicated.' More complicated than any computer program,
he was realising. No wonder people were hard to understand.

`Let me give you an analogy.' Taylor said. `A facial

expression is vastly simpler than the brain. Yet it can tell you
how someone's likely to act. For instance, if they're so angry
that they might hit you.'

Miller thought about it. `A face is still a huge amount of

information. A high-quality photo takes up a lot of memory
on a PC.'

`That's what you'd think.' A triumphant note had come

into Taylor's voice. `But now think about cartoons or
children's drawings. Even email smileys. They don't have
anything like that amount of detail. An upturned mouth tells
us happy. Downturned says sad. A few simple lines are
enough to convey emotions. That's what I'm after. The
patient's neurochemical face. The hidden face, defined by
hard numbers. We call our technique inferential chemistry,
because we'll infer that face from the neurochemistry.'

`Where do I come into all this?' Miller spun the trackball.

On screen the cross-hairs executed a series of perfect circles.
`It sounds as if you've got it worked out.'

91

`Look, this is confidential, alright?' Taylor said, his tone

serious now. `First of all, we've sometimes lost track of
patients. Don Cooke hopes he may have found the reason,
but he's also having trouble extending the programs with
further neurotransmitters - the neuro-face isn't complete yet.
If we can overcome those problems we'll be world leaders in
this field.'

Now his voice deepened, became angry. `Except the

wretched Department of Health want something else that's
new - a whole slew of pointless extra variables and
medications added into the system in no time flat. They're
putting us under enormous pressure, and Don's finding he
can't cope. The idiots could even close us down if we don't
deliver. We could lose everything.' He looked at Miller.
`What are you grinning about?'

`I can help you.'
`I'm glad to hear it. That's why I hired you.'
`I know a software package that will solve the problem.'
The psychiatrist frowned. `We have to use what we've

already developed. It's been a huge amount of work, and the
Department of Health paid for it. We can't change horses.'

`You can link the package to what you already have. It's

very adaptable. That way you can have the extra variables you
want. That's all it would be, an add-on.' It wouldn't be
anything of the kind of course, Miller thought, but he had to
find a toe-hold so Tracks could begin to take over.

Taylor grimaced. `I've heard this kind of thing before. You

software types promise wonders, then you take forever. And
what about my research archive - animal results, early trials,
patients who transferred elsewhere, and other important
material? I need to keep taking data from the clinical system.'

`No problem,' Miller said. `That would all still work. You

won't see any difference.'

92

Taylor looked at him suspiciously. `What does it cost?'
`Actually, nothing. I wrote the package.'
`Frankly, it sounds most unlikely.' Taylor got up from his

chair and switched off the microscope. `Still, if you want, you
can discuss it with Don Cooke. Can you be around tonight?'

`My time of day,' Miller said.
`It's extraordinary - all you computer people are nocturnal.

Someone should study your metabolism it would make a
good research project. I'll pick you up this evening and we'll
go together to meet Don and Rafe. About nine?'

`Fine.' Miller stood up. `Tell me something. You infer the

patient's psychological state from the dynamic mix of
variables.'

`So you were listening.'
`Of course,' Miller gave him an amused look. `I can see

how you'd do that. But you still won't know what someone's
actually thinking, will you?'

Taylor became silent. He gave Miller a look so intense the

programmer felt it had run him through. Taylor's pupils
contracted, and for a moment he raised his hands to shroud
his face. Then he dropped them and smiled.

`Not yet. Now I must get back to my office.'

93

15~ The Courier

`Dear God,' Julia muttered to herself. Arnette Creek was

even worse than she'd feared. It had all the marks of a trail
town, its buildings apparently dropped into place as it had
grown randomly, some even now resembling converted stables
or grain stores. She could imagine a Model-T Ford coming
round the corner at any moment, piloted by a hick wearing
dungarees and a broken straw hat.

The limo came to a smooth stop outside a two-storey

stucco office with the words "Arnette Creek Courier" painted
across its store-front window. The window hadn't been
cleaned in a considerable time. Julia shuddered slightly. The
urge to be back in Manhattan was becoming very strong.
Through the smeary glass she could see a middle-aged woman
sifting through a batch of documents: invoices maybe, or
perhaps press-clippings.

As Julia reached for the limo's door handle, a grey-haired

man came out from the office and crossed the street in front
of her. Julia breathed a prayer of thanks that her research had
been thorough, had even located photos of some of the people
she'd intended to meet on this trip. This was Rayner, the
editor. He had a determined expression: wary blue eyes and a
rat-trap mouth. Unlike Elders, he was no push-over, Julia
could see that, he was the sort that would keep a gimcrack
local paper afloat against all odds. She would get nothing
from him that he didn't want to reveal, and given the degree
of fright Elders had shown about the visit from the Federal

94

Agency, interviewing this character would be a major
challenge. In fact, a waste of time. She watched him get into a
4X4 and accelerate away.

`Pull across the street,' she told the limo driver.
From her cellphone she called Theo's office and got

through to one of the managers there, a woman she knew to
be reliable and level-headed.

`Listen, Paula, I want you to call Lennie Rayner. He's the

editor of the Arnette Creek Courier. Tell him we're putting
together a consortium of small papers that have real potential.
We've heard his paper's outstanding, would he be interested.
Ask about financials, circulation, whatever you like, but keep
him talking.' She gave the woman Rayner's cellphone number,
which she'd managed to extract from his office before she left
New York.

She waited, giving it a couple of minutes, checking the

second hand on her thin platinum watch, one of Theo's nicer
presents. Then she called the Courier's landline. Through the
store-front she could see the woman reach to answer the
phone on her desk. Her voice was down-homey.

`Hi,' Julia said. `This is Julia Leigh, from Lamb

Enterprise. I'm trying to reach Mr Rayner.'

`I'm so sorry,' the woman said. `He's not here right now.

Can I have him call you?'

`I've some important material with me for our meeting

with Mr duCassis,' Julia said, `but I'm delayed. It's a very tight
schedule.'

`He didn't mention a meeting,' the woman said, surprised.

`He always lets me know his appointments.'

`It's a highly confidential matter. I expect that's why.'
`Well, let me see if I can raise him on his cellphone. Please

hold.'

95

Julia held her breath. In a few seconds the woman came

back. `He's already on a call. Let me have him call you when
he's done.'

`Oh, this is awful,' Julia said. `My boss is going to be

furious if I screw up on this meeting. I wouldn't be surprised
if he fires me. I know it's important to Mr Rayner too. Maybe
I could reach Mr duCassis. Do you happen to have his
number there? I stupidly didn't bring it with me.'

`Just a minute,' the woman said. There was a moment's

pause. Then she read out a number with a Washington DC
area code.

Julia copied it into her notebook, and read it back to be

sure. She smiled. `Thank you sooo much.' Theo was going to
be pleased. Happily, there was no need to stay longer. `The
airport,' she told the driver.

96

16~ Sarah

Gresham Taylor had given Sarah a large batch of paper-

work to complete. It was dusk by the time she had dealt with
it, and she left her office with a sense of relief, to walk
through the gardens, savouring the warm evening air, glad to
be finished and outside at last.

She didn't notice the sounds at first. They were masked by

her own footsteps on the crisp gravel. But then she heard the
dragging feet behind her on the gravel path, and she looked
over her shoulder. A tall figure was following a few yards
behind her.

She knew instantly she was in trouble. She was looking at

the patient, Martin Baines, who had secured limited freedom
to move beyond the closed wards, thanks to the improved
insight he'd been considered to show at his reviews though
she had found that surprising and by volunteering for Dr
Taylor's experimental trials. Martin Baines, whose medication
had been recently reduced, and who now was trailing after her
in stolen women's clothes, smiling his strange smile, one hand
raised as if in a greeting, the other behind his back, as if
concealing something.

She didn't hesitate. In one of the old buildings, close by,

there was an office used by the nurse administrators. They
sometimes worked late. She pushed open the heavy sheet of
flexible plastic which had been fitted to form an outer door,
and ran into the long corridor. It was deserted. The only
sounds were those of her running feet, and somewhere the

97

faint whine of a distant floor-polishing machine. The corridor
was dim, lit only by a few shaded bulbs and the last glint of
evening light through its high windows. She ran as hard as
she could towards the stairwell, and heard the bang of the
plastic door as Baines came through it. Now she could hear
his footsteps inside the building.

Scrambling desperately, shoes skidding on the stone steps,

she gained the first floor, and raced for the office, then
realized with despair that there was no light under its closed
door: the staff had already left. Obeying blind instinct, she
turned into the dark entrance of a smaller stairway on her left.
A moment later she heard Baines's heavy steps, and as he
paused, his rasping breath. She knew he was standing there,
looking for her. She tiptoed higher up the little stairway,
holding her breath, trying not to make any sound.

The stairs led to a landing. Ahead of her were swing doors

with glass portholes. She'd come to one of the old operating
theatres, a survivor from the building's past, used now only for
storage. Ever so gently, a millimetre at a time, she eased the
doors open, and worked her way into the gloomy interior.
She'd been here once before, and the place had given her the
creeps, because of its macabre echoes of suffering. Now it was
her only hope - if she could find somewhere to hide.

On one side of the big oblong room there were a few

hospital beds, their iron frames silhouetted against the
windows. The abandoned bedclothes formed bulky shapes as
if the beds still had occupants.

On the opposite wall there stood a row of big linen presses,

their wooden doors barely ajar. Without conscious thought,
Sarah ran to the biggest press, squeezed inside, and found
herself in a web of musty sheets and discarded pillows. She
got a finger hold on the door, and pulled. It wouldn't quite
close.

98

Now she could hear noisy breathing: Baines was in the

room. He stumbled past her hiding place. Through the crack
of the door she glimpsed something metal that glinted softly
in his hand. His footsteps receded, and an exit door at the far
end of the ward scraped as it was pulled open. He was going
away! But then the steps turned back, becoming louder, and
she heard the door of the furthest linen cupboard being
opened.

There was a muttering as he opened the next cupboard: the

word "Lilith". Oh God! She tried to picture how many presses
remained. Two? Three at the most. Please let it be quick, not
like one of the really bad ones she'd heard about in the ward
meetings. Now the door right next to her was being pulled
open, and there was a brief pause before it was banged shut.
She shrank back, trying to bury herself in the dingy contents
of the press.

Then Baines began to talk to himself in another voice, as if

he were two different people, in the room together. She
couldn't make out the words, which were muffled by the dusty
linen around her. Unbearably, the crack of light in front of her
began to widen, and the door that shielded her began to swing
outwards. And now it was letting in a darkness that was
falling over her vision. Her last thought was that after all it
was true: St Evelyn's was an asylum.

99

17~ Church 666

A fortnight after leaving hospital, Bernard Brandt flew

down to Gainesville, Florida, to meet Pastor Nyquist, the
internet preacher who had supported him through his
recovery. He was feeling a new optimism. The plane touched
down in bright sunlight.

He collected a rental car, a white Ford compact, headed it

for I75 southbound, tuned in one of a dozen Country and
Western stations, and cruised alongside 4X4's towing boats,
sedans packed with vacationing families and the occasional
fast-lane hot-shot in a Porsche. The car's GPS took him on
back roads past small farms, crop fields with wire fences,
scattered houses. After some 20 miles, he skidded to a halt,
and turned into a gate under a sign:

SALVATION GARDEN
PRIVATE PROPERTY

In the secluded parking lot, a sheet of paper nailed to a tree

fluttered, its freshly inked message bold in green marker pen:

BE RAPTURE READY!!!
END TIMES ARE NEAR!!!

He followed a path to a collection of ramshackle, single-

storey, small-windowed wooden shacks supported on concrete
blocks. A young woman in dungarees emerged from the door

100

of the nearest hut and stood looking down at him. She was
barefoot.

`Can I help you?' she asked.
`I'm here to see Pastor Nyquist. He invited me.'
She continued to eye him. `What's your name?'
`Bernard Brandt.'
`Please wait.' She disappeared into the hut.

She returned in minutes, smiling. `The pastor will greet

you now. Please remove your shoes.'

Brandt clambered up the steps, and parked his shoes by the

door. Belying its shabby exterior, the hut was air-conditioned
and filled with computer equipment: servers, communications
hubs, workstations and laptops set on purpose-built tables. A
few barefoot youngsters with serious expressions were
pondering screens, occasionally murmuring to each other.

Nyquist stood by one of the tables, scrutinizing a

workstation. He was bearded, sixty-plus, barrel-chested, bare
feet firmly planted on the board floor, jeans and linen jacket
well-worn but very clean, a shock of grey hair framing a stern
face. His glittering blue eyes were even more vivid than they'd
seemed on the screen of Brandt's PC.

`Bernard, welcome.' The preacher turned the brilliant gaze

full on his guest and extended a large hand. `You look well.'

`Thanks to your help.'
`God's message is powerful medicine.' Nyquist smiled.

`Let's go where we can talk.'

He led Brandt to an adjoining room, waved him to a low

couch, and sank into a chair. `Praise the Lord, you're back to
health.'

`I have to be careful. Take some exercise, keep my weight

down, stay off alcohol completely - unfortunately. But yes,

101

I'm in good shape. It's an honor to meet you. There's so much
I want to ask you.'

`I'll give what guidance I can. What concerns you?'
`What can be done about Global HealthCare. And about

Lee-Ann. You remember, the vision I had.'

Nyquist reached for a green marker pen and a sheet of

paper that lay on a table, and began to doodle, a dark formless
shape, then a sun surrounded by flames. `You're not back at
work yet?'

`Right now I'm still on Global's payroll. But I don't intend

to go back there.'

`You still have the implant in place?'
`The contract I signed says I have to keep it in place.

They're talking about reactivating it. They say it will work
properly now. I don't believe them, but I'm legally bound.'

`It must be removed. It's essential you have it removed.'
`You think so? Why?'
`You bear the Mark.' A long sigh escaped Nyquist. `One of

the clearest signs.'

`The mark?'
`The Mark of the Beast. The number 666.' Nyquist turned

his glittering stare on Brandt. `I want to know everything
about Global HealthCare. To begin with, what are its aims?'

Brandt looked at him, puzzled. `How do you mean?'
`I mean its real aims.'
`Well, of course, it wants to maximize profit. But it lies

about its products. Sheepdog does more harm than good.
Look at what happened to me. What did you mean about that
number?'

`Revelation 14:9 and 16:2 - the Mark of the Beast will

identify those who worship the Beast. The unbelievers.'
Nyquist stood up to pace the small room. `The Rapture Index
is at an all-time high. The forces of evil are gathering.'

102

`I don't know about that,' Brandt said. He was beginning

to feel uneasy. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to rush into
joining Pastor Nyquist's church as he'd been contemplating.
He decided to change the subject.

`About Global. I read that your church has influential

members. People in government.'

Nyquist got up slowly, and went to stare through the

window as if looking for a sign, stroking his beard with his
thick fingers. Brandt could see the faint reflection of his face
in the glass. `How many people does Global intend to
implant?'

`As many as possible of course. They'll start with wealthy

people who can afford it, executives in the financial sector,
entrepreneurs, and so on. But eventually, all levels of society.'

Nyquist pressed his hands to his face. Brandt could see

they were trembling. `Revelation 13:16 to 18. And he causeth
all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bound, to
receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.'

`Well, it's actually in their shoulders . . . '
Nyquist frowned, becoming lost in thought. `In the past

many of us believed that barcodes contained the Mark. But
that was a matter of labeling products. Global labels people.
Almost certainly we're seeing the work of the AntiChrist.'

`I'm not sure even Mrs Bergson qualifies as that,' Brandt

said. `But look, what I wanted to ask you . . . I mean, Global's
given me a terrible time. There were so many false alarms I
ignored the real warning, and that was too late. I nearly died.
Now Global wants to implant more people and put them at
risk. It deserves its come-uppance. I've read that you have all
these influential contacts . . . '

`You're correct that we speak with believers in high places.

Even in the White House there are some who understand the

103

Truth. God has planted the seeds of our Church there, and
they listen to us.'

`Then you could ask them to force Global to stop

marketing the technology. Couldn't you?'

`Why would I do that?' Nyquist turned his massive head

slowly towards Brandt so the gleaming eyes fell on him. `If
you prevent the Mark from being available to everyone, you
block God's purpose.'

`You'd accept an implant yourself?'
`Of course not.' Nyquist smiled. `Those who truly believe

must not accept the Mark. When the Rapture begins the
virtuous ones will be lifted up and held safe, before the
Tribulations begin. Those who have the Mark will suffer
torments. There is still a little time. You must have your
implant removed and join us here. We can bring you to God.'

`I don't know,' Brandt said hesitantly. `That all seems very

confusing. I'm not sure if I'm ready to become a believer. Now
I think about it, I suppose it's possible Global might go out of
business anyway. If that happens, it won't be producing the
implants any more.'

`Global will survive. It will have God's help to ensure His

purpose,' Nyquist said. `And the help of those who believe,
too.' He got to his feet. `We must stop. I've a sermon to
prepare.'

`But I wanted to ask you,' Brandt said. `About Lee-Ann

the woman I saw when I nearly died. She was . . . so beautiful.
Who is she? What does it mean?'

`People see all kinds of things when they're ill,' Nyquist

said. `You mustn't confuse delirium with true revelation.'

Opening the door for Brandt to leave, he added: `I'll pray

for you.'

104

On the plane back to Boston, Brandt began to feel

extremely depressed.

`Can I get you something to drink?' the stewardess asked.
`A double Scotch,' he said. `No, make that two.'

105

18~ The Falcon

Peter Miller almost didn't keep the appointment he'd

made with Sarah Ross. His meeting with Gresham Taylor
had told him exactly how he could introduce Tracks as a
replacement for the ailing Semper system, and the
psychiatrist's obvious anxiety was going to make it easy. So
why bother with Sarah's story? But he'd promised to meet her,
she'd clearly had a bad time, and you never knew what
information might prove useful. Besides, it troubled him,
obscurely, that she seemed to blame her problems on
technology. He wanted to show her that view was misguided.

He waited for her in the reception area of the old building

where they'd first met, and was disappointed when she didn't
show by six. She didn't seem the type to be late: at lunch she'd
been anxious enough to get to the ward meeting on time.
She'd stood him up. He turned to leave.

And then she arrived, apologetic and a little out of breath.
They walked out together through the iron gates and down

the hill, where the evening light was beginning to cast long
shadows. In a side street they came to a pleasantly shabby pub.
Its battered wooden sign carried the title "The Falcon" under
a faded picture of a bird of prey.

`The hospital pub,' Sarah said. `You can trust the medical

profession to find a good watering hole.' She led him into the
dim saloon and pointed to a table at the back. `Over there.'

The place radiated an agreeable, lived-in feeling: grubby

patterned carpets, tables surfaced with dark, scratched varnish,

106

a pervasive warm smell of beer. It had a past, Miller thought
approvingly. The last bar he'd visited in the United States had
been a log cabin, complete with peeling bark, formed entirely
from moulded plastic.

`What do you want to drink?' he asked.
`Tia Maria and Coke.'
`Really?'
`I'll get them.'
`No, that's OK.'
He brought it from the bar, with a small beer for himself.

Sarah had moved her chair out of the light, and was looking
warily around the scattered clientele

He watched, intrigued, as she drank. `Do you always drink

that?'

`Mostly.' She pushed her glass towards him. `Try some.'
Cautiously, he did. `Not bad,' he said. It wasn't bad, it was

dire.

`I thought you might like it. So, what were you doing in

the States?'

`I went there to do a Master's at M.I.T.'
`Oh. What subject?'
Miller was feeling that he liked sitting here. The buzz of

chatter was soothing, the aroma of food and alcohol relaxing.
Maybe he'd stay for another drink before he left. It wouldn't
affect his work. He'd known programmers who wrote superb
code when they could barely stand upright.

`Avatars,' he answered, and waited for the inevitable

questions.

`Sanskrit for "ideal beings".' She slewed her eyes onto him.

`Don't look so surprised. I had to take an IT module for my
degree.' She paused. `I must say it was extremely tedious.'

107

He grinned. `You should try systems programming. The

real thing. With enough processing power you can make a
computer do absolutely anything you want.'

`Give me a lever long enough and I'll move the earth.'
`What?'
`Archimedes. A typical unassuming technologist. Male, of

course.' Sarah smiled too. Her mouth really was a pleasing
shape, Miller realized. Even though she was pale, and he saw
now that there were dark shadows under her eyes, actually she
was very good-looking. For some reason, her presence made
him feel extremely comfortable.

`What did you do afterwards?' she was asking.
`I worked for a big medical company in Boston.'
`You left that for St Evelyn's?'
She was surveying the room again. The bar was filling up,

and a few off-duty nurses had gathered in a corner, chattering
and sharing jokes. A tall man in a shabby raincoat came in.
One of the nurses glanced at him, and immediately looked
away. Sarah dropped her gaze, and moved a fraction closer to
Peter Miller. `One of the patients,' she said, so quietly he
could hardly hear her.

`You could use another drink,' he said. `Then you'll tell me

about the system?'

She sighed. `Yes, alright.'
He got the drinks.

`I had a decent Eng Lit degree,' Sarah began. `A nice way

to pass three years at Uni, but after that I wanted a decent job,
and there weren't any. So I temped, and did a part-time MSc
in Psychology. My younger brother Luke was diagnosed with
autism and I thought maybe there would be answers. He's
such a nice little boy has his own way of looking at the

108

world, but if you know him . . . ' She smiled. `Well, there
weren't answers. But then I saw this ad in New Scientist.'

Helping disadvantaged people, was how Gresham Taylor

had pitched it at her interview. She joined a week later.

She'd been nervous of course, coming into such a strange

environment, but her duties as a research assistant involved
only limited contact with the patients, and Simeon, Freddy
and the other nurses were reassuring, though they had no
illusions.

`They people,' Freddy said simply. `Have to treat them that

way.'

`Of course, one does have to be careful,' Simeon added. `It

can be hard to understand them. They can be . . . difficult.'

`Not so difficult if you understand yourself,' Freddy said.
Sarah's concerns faded under the fascination of the early

experiments. She watched the implant signals from a severely
deluded patient, displayed on a workstation screen twenty
metres from where he sat behind one-way glass. When certain
questions were asked of him, the signals flared into angry
spikes someone else's rage recorded and coolly analysed, she
thought, like flames on the surface of the sun, photographed
through the safety of dark glass. She was convinced that
Gresham Taylor was right, the work would lead to a new way
to care for damaged souls. And if some of those souls were
monsters, the technology would also safeguard their potential
victims.

But then she discovered that Simeon's remark had been an

understatement. The clinical meetings revealed bizarre
reaches of human nature: at one she heard a psychopath
confess how, working late at his office, he'd been irritated by a
colleague's stupid joke. On a desk he'd spotted a copy-spike . .
.

109

He'd long since been removed to a more secure institution,

but she still felt a shiver when she remembered how ordinary
he'd looked, how calmly he'd spoken. Perhaps that was what
first triggered the change in her perception.

Little by little, as she learned more about Gresham

Taylor's strange flock, she became uneasy. It was true the
wards were as bright and cheerful as any place could be where
wire-reinforced windows would open only a few inches, and
where there was a careful absence of sharp objects, but still the
way some of the patients stared made her uncomfortable. Not
specially at her, but into space, as if preoccupied with inner
dialogues which she felt instinctively she would rather not
know. Instead of "The Unit", she began to think of St
Evelyn's as "The Asylum".

Sometimes she wondered about Gresham Taylor, too. Was

that distinguished surface all it had first seemed?

Even so, the fascination of the project held her there, and

anyway, she wasn't one to walk away from a commitment. She
would have coped, had it not been for the patient called
Martin Baines.

`It was almost a month ago,' she told Peter Miller, as they

sat in the Falcon pub. `I was working late, and when I left to
go home, he came after me.' Sarah reached for her drink, but
her hands were shaking too much. This computer geek was
making her re-tell the whole terrifying incident. Why had she
agreed to talk to him? But she bit her lip, and haltingly, she
revisited her ordeal.

`Since then I get flashbacks and I can't sleep,' she ended,

avoiding Miller's gaze. `Gresham wants me to stay. He says

110

I'm over-reacting. He's prescribed tranquillizers, I've even
seen a therapist, but I can't stay here. Baines is after me.'

`You in particular?'
`You can believe this or not, but he identifies me with

Lilith. You won't have heard of her . . . '

`The Lilith who was Adam's first wife, before Eve?'
`Yes. How . . . '
`Bible study is one disadvantage of having a lay preacher for

a father,' Miller said. `Didn't she refuse to lie beneath Adam,
saying they were made from the same dust - so they were
equal? The first feminist.'

`I'm glad you think it's funny,' Sarah said. `Can you believe

there are whole websites devoted to her? People who believe
she's the daughter of a wind-demon, who became a demoness
herself, and lives in the world beyond mirrors.' She shuddered.

Miller looked up, suddenly remembering what Taylor had

told him about the layout of the old hospital, designed so the
wind could flow around its buildings. But he said nothing.

`Freddy says deep down Baines wants to punish all women,

because he thinks they're whores, or faithless, or some such
nonsense,' Sarah said. `He wants to make an example of me,
though God knows what I've done to deserve it. And do you
know what's the most bizarre thing of all? He has a
compulsion to dress up as a woman himself. How screwed up
can you get? He doesn't know who he is. If you ask me, he
should have been shut away in a secure hospital from the start.
But somehow he slipped through the net.'

`You don't look much like a demoness.'
Sarah sighed. `I see compliments are your strong suit.' She

drained her glass and held it out. `Can I have another drink?'

111

Miller brought her drink and a beer for himself, and sat

not touching it, thinking there were things in Sarah's story
that didn't add up.

`So it was Gresham who rescued you?' he asked.
`Yes. I think now I heard his voice before I passed out. He

tracked Baines down and got him back to the ward.
Apparently.'

`Then why do you think the system was a failure?' he

asked. `Gresham saved you, didn't he?'

Sarah started on her drink. `He showed me Baines's data.

According to the system his medication was at the right level,
and he was completely calm. There was no sign that he was
aroused, so the system didn't issue any warning. If that's not a
failure, I don't know what is.'

`Then how did Gresham know to turn up just at that

moment?'

Sarah hesitated. `It seems Baines didn't show up for the

evening medication round. Gresham used Semper to find out
where he was, and came to fetch him.'

`Why didn't he send a nurse?'
`They'd just got a portable tracker unit working. I suppose

he wanted to play with his new toy.'

`Then it was pure coincidence that he found you?'
`That's what he says, and do you know what really pisses

me off? He's convinced Baines didn't intend any harm. He
says his treatment was proving successful and the data from
the system confirms that. They didn't find any weapon, and I
shouldn't go around telling people that Baines was going to
attack me. But he was. I know he was.' She drew a deep
breath. `So if Gresham thinks I'm going to stay here, he can
go to hell.'

Of course Gresham Taylor would deny there'd been any

problem, Miller thought, whether there'd been one or not.

112

Like the people at Global, he wouldn't want bad news leaking
out, wouldn't want any suggestion bandied around that the
system might not work properly. The ones in power were all
the same.

Yet it would be an unlikely computer error that would

show all of Baines's data as perfectly normal if it was actually
abnormal. Perhaps Sarah really had overreacted - after all,
she'd just admitted that the Unit had got to her, made her
jumpy. Certain incidents in his own childhood had educated
him in the effects of fear, and he could imagine how she'd felt
though he wouldn't have been so illogical as to hide in a
cupboard where there was no escape.

`Maybe Baines really didn't mean to harm you,' he said.
She looked at him narrowly. `Did you hear about that poor

girl who was murdered in the Tube?'

`No. I only just got here.'
`It was just a week after Baines went for me. She was

waiting for her train, and this woman came and pushed her
under it. A security camera saw it happen.'

`A woman? Jesus! Did they catch her?'
`No.' Sarah shivered. `You talk about coincidences. Well,

that day Martin Baines was out on day release. Like I told
you, he likes to dress up as a woman. So it was him, wasn't it?'

`If it was, they've got him. The system will show where he

was.'

Sarah looked at him in mock amazement. `You'd have a

future in stand-up. Needless to say, Semper went haywire that
morning. It didn't record anything. Nothing about where
Baines was, or where any of them were, or what state they
were in. Pathetic!'

No need to flame me, Miller thought, I'm only trying to

help. `What does Gresham say?'

113

`That he doubts it was Baines, in any case it's in the hands

of the police, and we should leave it to them. It seems Baines
went to his mother's house, they had a row, and he went for a
walk. He doesn't remember where, only that he wandered
around for a long time. Gresham says chances are he had
nothing to do with the murder, and there are plenty of
dangerous people on the streets, including violent women.
We mustn't jump to conclusions, he says, and I'm imagining
things again, because I thought I'd been attacked myself. Mild
post-traumatic stress disorder, he calls it. Which is complete
nonsense!'

`Why don't you go to the police and tell them what you

think?'

`Because . . . because I don't want to get involved.'
Because a few times Gresham had been over-familiar.

Creepily over-familiar, with what seemed to be attempts at
innuendo. Because something told her that Gresham made up
stories about people, and he would make up lies about her
leading Baines on. And perhaps because of a tiny grain of
uncertainty in her own mind that maybe the Semper system
actually did know better than she did. But she wasn't going to
admit it. `I just don't want Gresham knowing I pointed the
finger at Baines. I don't want Baines knowing it either.'

Perhaps that was as well, Miller thought. Maybe Sarah was

onto something, in which case she should certainly stay out of
Baines's way. And there was another respect in which he
could go along with Taylor's ideas. If Sarah raised a fuss now,
it could derail his plans to introduce Tracks. Let the police
sort it out. Taylor would undoubtedly keep the system out of
the picture, and by the time there was any outcome, Tracks
would have transformed it, so it worked perfectly.

114

`Once I get Semper running properly, they'll know where

Baines is all the time, and everything about him, for sure. He
won't be any danger.'

`You really are a comedian.'
He looked at her over his glass. If she wasn't quite as good-

looking as virtual Lee-Ann, the ideal person he'd so carefully
created, nor her clothes as elegant, still in the glow from the
lighted bar her dark hair had a lustre that made him think it
would feel and smell as good as it looked.

Maybe she was interested, that was why she'd suggested

meeting here. He felt warmth flaring, and simultaneously a
background swell of unease at the prospect of entanglement.
Then he remembered that she wouldn't be around after today.

`Are you doing anything now?' he asked her.
She looked at him quizzically. `Why, what did you have in

mind?'

`We could get together, listen to some jazz.'
`Where?'
`I know there are some good places in town. I guess it's

late, though. There's decent hi-fi at my flat.'

`I don't think so. Anyway I thought you had to work.'
`Only to take a first look at the system, to start to fix it.'
She laughed. `After all this time and effort, Semper can't

even tell us where one patient was, when we most need to
know. You won't fix it. No-one can.'

`I'm going to shut Mr Baines in a box he can't break out of.

You'll be safe.'

Sarah shook her head. `Sorry, I've heard it all before.'
`But not from me.' Miller stood up. `Well, I have to get

back. I'm meeting your man Taylor.'

`Listen, you won't repeat what I said? You promised.'
`You needn't worry.'

115

Outside, it was dusk. In the high street, traffic was

dawdling its way home. Though the air was still warm, Sarah
shivered.

`Can I walk you home?' he asked.
`No. There's my bus.'
`Tell me something. How would I get to meet this

character Baines?'

`Don't. Stay away.'
`I need to find out whether there's a problem with his

implant.'

`Baines is bad news.'
`So you said, but how can I meet him?'
Sarah gave a small shrug. `If you really must, speak to

Freddy, the nurse. He can sneak you in there, and he knows
how to handle him. It's some West Indian thing he's got. Just
don't say I didn't warn you.'

`I won't. Well, good luck. See you around some time.'
He watched her hurry across the street to the stop. The bus

moved away down the hill.

He began to walk home, feeling melancholy, humming

one of Miles's riffs under his breath. Sarah was good-looking
and bright. He'd felt sorry for her, and he'd been strangely at
ease around her, despite her jibes. But somehow the old
inevitable pattern had recurred.

Still, he'd probably avoided another disastrous encounter.

Back at the flat the phone's message light was pulsing. He

frowned as he played the voicemail, guessing what it was
about to say, and not wanting anything more to do with
Global. But nevertheless he called her back straight away. He
suddenly wanted a friend. Someone to talk to.

116

`Lee-Ann?'
`Hi Peter. How are you doing?'
`Good, thanks.'
`Really?' She sounded disappointed. `Well, I just thought it

would be nice to hear your voice.'

`Me too. How are things over there?'
`We miss you. When are you coming back?'
`I'm not.'
Lee-Ann sighed. `I didn't really think so. Sure wish you

were, though.'

`What's the problem?'
`I have to give another demo. This time a zillion people are

coming to see it.'

`At Medyx?'
`Right. What the hell am I going to do? Ben Hudson's

giving me a hard time, and if I told you what's going on with
my divorce . . . Sweetie, I need my salary. They're looking to
cut costs. If this demo screws up, they'll fire me. Ben said so.'

`That bastard.' Miller exhaled. `Alright, I'll help you nail

him.'

`I knew I could rely on you. Then you'll come back? Till

I'm off the hook, at least?'

`I didn't say that. Are the demo sessions at particular

times?'

`Yes. Do you want me to email them?'
`The West Coast is eight hours behind us, and I work late

at night. So I'll have peace and quiet here.'

`You're a doll. I'll make it up to you.'
`Email the specifications for the dem,' Miller said. `Then

we'll talk some more.'

117

19~ duCassis

Arriving back at the Manhattan penthouse after her

expedition to Arnette Creek, Julia found Theodore Lamb
absorbed in analysts' reports on corporations he was
considering as investments. The surround-sound system was
playing Brahms, music she'd come to like as part of an
agreeably furnished life.

He looked up as she came in. `How was the Lone Star

State?'

`Not worth even one star.' Julia sank gratefully into the

embrace of the soft white leather settee, plumping up the
cushions under her head. `Still, I found you some
information.'

Lamb looked up sharply. `What was it?'
Julia yawned. `Get me a drink first.'
`Ach, you like to torment me. The usual?'
`Yes.' Julia waved a hand in the direction of the bar.
He came back in a minute and handed her a daiquiri, the

glass lightly frosted. `Did I get it right this time?'

Julia took a tentative sip. `You're definitely improving.'
`Well then, if I have my brownie points, what did you find

out?'

Julia mused. `Something strange is going on. Actually,

something quite scary.' Between sips, feeling the delectable
drink relax her, she told him about Elders and about the man
said to have died and the others supposedly spirited away by
soldiers; about the motel walled off with razor wire and the

118

locked steel gate, with someone or something moving in the
yard. And about the phone number, embroidering it just
slightly, so he wouldn't be annoyed that she hadn't actually
spoken with the editor. `He wouldn't tell me anything at all,'
she concluded.

Lamb looked at her quizzically. `He must be unusually

resistant to feminine charms.'

Julia smiled. `Some men are, believe it or not. Not

everyone's weak-willed.'

He laughed. `They don't know what they're missing.

What's the number?'

She told him.
`You didn't call it?'
`You told me to be careful. So I was careful.'
`Quite right. But we'll call it now.' He lowered the sound

of the music, then picked up a phone. `Let's see what Mr
duCassis has to say.' He pressed the hands-free button and
dialled.

The ringing tone. Then a mechanical voice: `Please enter

your access code.'

Lamb looked enquiringly at Julia. She shook her head

helplessly.

The voice repeated its demand.
`Ach! Goddamned automation.' Lamb put the phone

down. `Now what?'

`You tell me,' Julia said. She sipped the daiquiri. `This is a

wild goose chase.'

`It was worth a try.' Lamb sat back in the settee. `So now

we have to find another way.'

`Drop it. What do you care?'
The phone rang. Lamb reached out and picked it up.
`Mr Lamb?' the caller said. `This is Mr duCassis. You

called.'

119

Lamb laughed. `You surprise me, Mr duCassis. Obviously

you're a man of influence. My number is withheld.'

`It's a matter of having the right connections,' duCassis

said laconically. `How did you find me? Like yourself, I don't
advertise my number.'

`Through a contact,' Lamb said. He smiled at Julia. `Well,

I called because I wanted to tell you about an excellent
corporation called Global HealthCare. I think the technology
it offers will interest you.'

`Oh? What makes you think so?'
`Put it down to my instinct,' Lamb said. `It rarely fails me.'
`I'm listening,' duCassis said.

120

20~ Miller goes to work

On the evening of Miller's arrival in London, at a little

before 9pm, Taylor backed his black Audi coupé out from the
drive of his detached Victorian house, past the rhododendrons
and the creeper that trailed from the boundary wall. He waved
to the figure of a woman in a shawl who passed across the
part-open curtain of an upstairs window. Then he engaged
drive, headed south, and soon crossed the black, swirling river.
The weather had turned cold, with a slight drizzle. The
headlights shone on wet, empty streets, fragmenting
momentary reflections from shop windows.

As he pulled up at Miller's flat, a light on the upper floor

went out. Seconds later, the front door banged, and Miller got
into the car. Taylor waited for him to settle himself, then
accelerated smoothly away, the wipers hissing droplets from
the screen.

`This wretched English weather,' the psychiatrist said. `You

can't rely on anything in this country.'

Miller shrugged. `It doesn't bother me.'
For a minute or two they drove in silence. Then Taylor

glanced at the programmer. `About that software package you
mentioned.'

`Tracks?'
`If that's what it's called.'
`It's a construction kit,' Miller said. `A bit like intelligent

Lego. It helps you build what you want, it remembers what
you've built, and when you need to change the design, it helps

121

you alter it. Like I said, you can bolt it on to what you already
have.'

`You really think it can speed up development?'
`Enormously.'
`Perhaps I was a little hasty earlier. I want you to explain it

to Don Cooke. I'd like to know what he thinks.'

In the darkened cabin of the car, Miller smiled.

At the hospital, Taylor pulled into a corner of the staff car

park. As they got out of the car, the dull slam of its doors
echoed from some unseen wall. The tower block was a dark
hulk, barely visible against the faint sodium cast of the sky,
with only a few dim lights showing at shaded windows. At an
unobtrusive, lower-ground entrance in a corner of the
building, Taylor swiped a card and the door swung
soundlessly inwards. Beyond it, empty lobbies and staircases
stretched away, lit only by an occasional green exit sign.

`Energy conservation,' Taylor muttered, groping for a

switch. `Our dedicated administrators.' A single line of lights
flickered, then held steady. In the lobby he pressed a call
button. They entered the lift, which climbed silently to the
twelfth floor.

At the end of a narrow corridor, there was a crack of light.

Taylor pushed his way into a small room where there was
bright fluorescent lighting, and the soft rushing of air-
conditioning. The humidified air was cool and soft; indicator
lights blinked in a chaotic rhythm on a rack of computer
equipment. A small window of dark glass in the wall looked
into some further space beyond the room.

A young man in jeans and a denim shirt hunched on a

swivel chair, at a teak bench covered with a jumble of circuit
diagrams, computer printout, and grey electronic boxes. He

122

was staring at a workstation screen, which displayed a
complex maze of pathways, and what looked like caverns.

A second, older man, in shirt and tie, his jacket hung on

the back of his chair, was watching data cascading across a
second screen. As Taylor and Miller came in, he pressed a key
on a cellphone, and the unmistakable signature of a heartbeat
began to crawl across the screen. Glowing numbers scrolled
below it.

`Don,' Taylor said. `This is Peter Miller.'
The older man got up to shake hands. `Good to meet you.'
`And this is Rafe Lamarr,' Taylor said. The younger man

nodded amiably, and killed the display he was watching, so
that the maze faded away. He didn't get up.

`We're about to run a test,' Cooke said. `It'd be a useful

introduction for Peter.'

Miller had moved to the bench and was studying one of

the sheets of printout. `How much software documentation is
there?' he asked.

Cooke grinned. `Some.' From a file cabinet he pulled out a

thick folder and laid it on the bench. Miller opened it and
began to read, becoming immediately absorbed.

`Are you starting the test now?' Taylor asked Cooke.
`In about a half-hour.'
The psychiatrist stood up. `Then I'll be in my office. Call

me when you're ready.' He smiled at them as he went out.
`Have fun.'

As the door closed, Miller shut the folder, and turned to

Lamarr. `I saw you playing HyperZorg,' he said. `It's a terrific
game. What version do you have?'

Lamarr grinned. `Vee-nine.'
`What level were you on?'
`Seven. I got in through the quantum teleportation

chamber.'

123

`You're still in the primary time-shift zone?'
`That's exactly my problem,' Lamarr said. `How do I get

out of it?'

`There's no direct way. You have to find a personal teleport

controller that someone's left behind.'

`Aaah!' Lamarr said. `Welcome aboard.'
`Wait till you try the four-dimensional game,' Miller said.

He turned back to Cooke's folder. `So tell me about the
system.'

An hour later, all three of them were absorbed in the

computer-game maze on the screen, high on success in
finding their way through a complex of virtual buildings on a
distant planet. As Taylor came in, Cooke and Lamarr moved
away from the workstation, but Miller kept playing. The
psychiatrist waited. In a minute or two Miller straightened up,
ended the game, and moved across to sit on a lab stool.

Taylor forced a smile. `I see you're making good use of

time.'

`We've been through the Semper architecture,' Miller said.

`We were just waiting for you to get back.'

Taylor looked at Cooke. `What's the test you're running?'
`Basically to see if we've made the tracking more reliable.'
Miller looked up. `What's the data source?'
Cooke grinned and rubbed his shoulder. `I am the data

source.' He pointed to the screen where the heart waveform
was still rolling.

`You've an implant?'
`Oh sure,' Taylor broke in. `Several of us volunteered. I had

the first implant myself. That way we get subjective accounts
to compare with the neurological and physiological data. We

124

don't leave them in for long, of course. Not in volunteers,
anyway.'

`OK Rafe,' Cooke said. `Is the signal locked in?'
Lamarr brought up a dancing wave-like line on the

workstation.

Miller bent to study it. `That doesn't look like full sync.'
`It's the best the system will do,' Lamarr said.
Miller spoke commands to the workstation. The trace

broke up, then reformed in a jittery unstable pattern.

`Told you,' Lamarr said.
`Wait. I want to try something.' Miller spoke again to the

workstation. Segments of code blurred past, halted as he
inspected them, then blurred again. He hit a key, and the
trace suddenly steadied and sharpened.

`Shit,' Lamarr said.
`Thought so,' Miller said happily. `I fixed a similar problem

in Boston.'

Lamarr touched a key, and a crowd of additional traces

unfurled on the screen. `The signal's really locked in.' He
glanced at Cooke. `We read you, Don,' he said. `The real you.'
He laughed. `By this time I'd recognize you in a crowd.'

`I'm glad,' Cooke said. `How am I?'
`Looking good. It's time to go walkabouts.'
`Let's hope the damn thing stays in lock,' Cooke said. He

moved to the door. It closed softly behind him.

It was the fifth such foray within days, and Don Cooke

had not enjoyed a single one of them. If he hadn't committed
to finish the job, he'd have quit before now. Truth was he
hated this place at night. The corridor he was in spooked him
- the shadowy silence, the deserted stairwells, and something
he couldn't quite shake off, a feeling that something was

125

hovering nearby. As he waited in the dark lobby for the soft
swish of the lift cage, he had a moment's panic, expecting
some theatre of alarm to be revealed when the doors opened.
But of course there was nothing waiting there. He got in and
pressed the button for the ground floor.

In the room on the twelfth, Miller watched the multi-

coloured traces feeling their way across the screen: they were
speeding up, becoming jumpy and erratic. He raised an
eyebrow. `Interesting.'

Lamarr looked at the display. `It's for real. Don's a wimp,'

he told Miller. `This place freaks him at night.'

Taylor came over, intrigued. `You didn't tell me Don's

phobic.'

`He finally admitted it to me,' Lamarr said, `But you can

tell anyway. Just look at his pulse rate!'

Taylor's eyes gleamed. `Can we check out his adrenaline as

well?'

`Yes, but we'll have to drop one of the vital signs. Oxygen

saturation?'

`No,' Miller said. `Leave them in. You can put up extra

traces.'

Lamarr shook his head. `These chips only have 16

channels.'

`That's what Xiu Corporation tell you, but if you know

how, you can switch on extra ones. Watch.' This time Miller
typed his commands on the keyboard. Another trace faded in,
coasting across the green data field, and curving sharply
upwards.

Lamarr laughed delightedly. `Brilliant! Look, Don's

thinking nightmares. Forces of darkness, man!'

126

This Miller character, wherever Gresham had found him,

was something else, Lamarr thought. He knew what he was
doing, no doubt of it. For that matter, the whole scene was
wild. Here goes Don, strolling around London in the small
hours, and here am I in this crummy room in this tower,
halfway to God, and I'm seeing his heartbeat, blood pressure
and breathing, his biochemistry, and his neurotransmitters, all
laid out moment by moment in front of me. He's
promenading, and it's like I'm riding around with him,
knowing exactly where he is and watching everything that
ticks inside him. Magic! If the bureaucrats don't buy into this
stuff, they're crazy.

Taylor was transfixed. `So he is phobic,' he said again, half

to himself.

Miller was grinning from ear to ear. `It's tracking like a

charm.'

But then, without warning, the display contracted, the

traces became small and distorted, and moments afterwards,
the picture blanked out.

`Ah shit, it crashed again,' Lamarr said. `Visitor effect!'
Miller pursed his lips. `I'm not a visitor,' he said. `I'm here

to stay.'

An hour later Taylor came back from his office for the

second time to find Miller and Cooke huddled at the bench.
Sheets of printout lay on the table in front of them, covered
with hand-sketched diagrams, neat boxes connected with
arrows and lines, annotated with the hieroglyphics of
computer code. The sense of mysteries shared, the exchange
of professional intelligence and priestly consultation, was thick
in the air.

127

`I'm leaving. Can I drop anyone off?' Taylor asked.
Cooke checked his watch. `My car's here, but I'll come

down with you. Early start tomorrow.'

`Me too,' Lamarr said. `Peter?'
`I'm fine, thanks,' Miller said, without looking up. `I'll be

here for a while.' He was immersed in a folder of
documentation, checking it against code on the screen.

`You can get back OK?' Taylor asked him.
`No problem. There's a lot to check out.'
`Tell me about it,' Cooke said.
`Give me a little time,' Miller said, `and I will.'

Riding the lift to the lower ground floor, Taylor said: `You

saw my email about the new requirements? DoH are on my
back. Did Peter tell you about his idea of incorporating a new
software package?'

`Yes, but we don't have time,' Lamarr said. `We have to

patch up what we've got.'

Taylor glanced at him in the tinted vanity mirror, then at

Cooke. `Don?'

`I don't know,' Cooke said hesitantly. `Normally, I'd say it's

too risky to start adding anything new. But there's something
about this guy . . . you saw what he did tonight. I have to say,
after talking to him, he's right about one thing . . . '

`What?'
`Patching up what we have is a big job. Sooner or later, it

would have to be reworked completely. Your last guy, Lloyd,
left us quite a tangle.'

`Are you saying the system might never be reliable?'
Cooke shrugged. `We came in after the event. We've had

to pick up the pieces.'

128

`Do you really think Peter could improve things fast

enough?'

`It's a gamble. Let's see what he comes up with in the next

few days. If it looks good, we might want to roll the dice with
him.'

The lift arrived at the ground floor. The three of them

headed for the car park.

129

21~ Quarantine

After the motel in Texas was sealed off, the two men in

business suits who had first arrived with the state trooper
came back, the one who was overweight walking with a
rolling gait, the smaller one, of slight build, moving with easy
precision. They produced ID badges, and looked into a
biometric scanner held by the armed guard who waited
behind the gate.

The soldier snapped a salute. `Agent duCassis!'
`Thank you.' The smaller man smiled pleasantly as he

reclaimed his badge.

`Agent Feldman!'
The fat man pocketed his badge, saying nothing.
The soldier unlocked the gate and walked with them to the

motel. `Do you want to go in?'

duCassis looked questioningly at Feldman, who shook his

head. `No, that's fine,' duCassis said.

The soldier saluted again. `I'll be at the gate.'
The doors and windows of the motel's guest rooms were

sealed with orange tape which carried a repetitive symbol of
black intersecting circles above the word BIOHAZARD.
DuCassis checked the seal on a room nearby. Satisfied it
hadn't been tampered with, he looked through a dusty
window at the empty interior.

`Where was the index case?' Feldman's voice was a

surprisingly clear tenor for such a large man.

`Room 11.'

130

`It's clean?'
`For sure. The Army Research guys nuked the whole site.

Nothing got out of here.'

`Contacts?'
`We think none. It looks like the index the sales guy

didn't hit the infectious phase till he got here. All the time he
was travelling, the bug was incubating, lying low in his
bloodstream.'

`His family? They have to be looking for him.'
`He's divorced. No children, and the ex-wife doesn't want

anything to do with him.'

`What about his employers?'
`Taken care of. They understand he's gone AWOL and if

they raise any questions they lose the Los Alamos deal, and
never see another government contract.'

`Any materials get out? Laundry? Garbage bags?'
`No. It was the weekend. There'll be no survivors to tell

tales, either. Infection's confirmed in all four of them. They're
finished.'

`No way you'd expect them to survive,' Feldman said. He

nudged at a stone with his shoe. `How the hell did Los
Alamos let a weapon like this get out, for Christ's sake? They
hadn't even developed a vaccine.'

`Who knows?' duCassis shrugged. `Their story not that

they're giving much away is they were working on counter-
measures to the threat of a blackmail virus. You know, the
enemy infects our forces, lets them see what the bug does,
tells them they only get the cure if they surrender. Naturally,
Los Alamos wanted suitable weapons in hand to work on.'

`Meaning, our military wanted them stockpiled, ready for

battle-field use,' Feldman said.

`You bet. Anyway, the lab developed this one, inserted new

genes into Ebola, changed its transmission pattern, who

131

knows what the hell they do up there. Seems they got it
mostly done, then it escaped before they had the cure. Maybe
it was faulty ultra-filtration for the exhaust air from the labs,
maybe someone just got plain careless. Even Defence
Department scientists have bad days.'

`And our agency gets to clean up the mess,' Feldman

grunted. `Fuck them. What's our cover story?'

`Same story we gave the paper in Arnette Creek. Food

poisoning. It goes nicely with a dump like this. They could all
have eaten from the same kitchen.'

They pondered this. Then duCassis said: `Ever hear of an

outfit called Global HealthCare?'

`Based in Boston?'
`Yes.'
`I seem to recall a heads-up from Forester's group in DC.

Pushing some medical technology from Global, I think.'

`Forester? The born-again guy who holds lunch-time

prayer meetings?'

`So I hear.' Feldman grinned. `Why?'
`One of Global's people called me direct. Claims they're

developing technology that tracks viruses.'

`Why's he talking virus?'
`Might have gotten wind of the problem. It's OK. There's

nothing left to find, no-one to trace, all clean and tidy. The
guy from Global won't talk, and the media are zipped up
tight.'

`How'd he find you?'
`We don't know yet. Probably some jerk in Arnette leaked

a contact number,' duCassis said laconically.

`I don't like it,' Feldman said, a coldness entering his clear

tenor voice. `Someone knows more than they should. We
should check this out. Find out what technology they're
pushing and why.'

132

`I already talked with Infectious Disease Institute. Word is,

Global doesn't actually have virus tracking yet, only the
potential for it. Right now its marketing team are interested
in coronaries, strokes, the big C, that kind of stuff.'

`The USAMRIID people have their heads up their own

ass-holes,' Feldman said. `It wouldn't be the first time they
overlooked a strategic technology. You know, if we ever
deploy this weapon, we'll sure want to know where the air-
currents are spreading it.'

duCassis yawned. `Well, OK. I'll find out what's with

Global, talk more with my contact. There's a product launch
coming up apparently, maybe we should visit. Meanwhile let's
be sure this outbreak's completely under wraps before we start
any hares running.'

Feldman turned on his heel, staring at the deserted motel.

`Jesus,' he said. `That was one hell of a close call. The index
case could have spread it all over New Mexico.'

`Not just New Mexico. Every airline flight would have

been carrying it out of there.'

`One hell of a lucky break.'
`Everyone deserves one sometime.'

133

22~ Baines

Peter Miller found it difficult to persuade Freddy to let

him meet Martin Baines. It would be unethical, the West
Indian nurse told him, it would prejudice the patient's well-
being, and it would contravene Health and Safety regulations.
Dr Taylor would fire both him and Miller, the nurses would
go on strike, patients would die, escape and harm the public.
Only when Miller explained that interrogating Baines was
essential to keeping Sarah safe, did the nurse back down from
his refusal to let him anywhere near the patient.

At around 10 o'clock at night, Freddy unlocked the door at

the end of the vestibule like an air-lock, which led to the
closed ward, and beckoned Miller to follow. They moved
quietly into an open-plan dormitory, where a dozen patients
were sleeping. There were rasping sounds of snoring, and
someone turned restlessly, muttering in his sleep as they
passed by. A nurse sat at a table, reading by the dim light of a
desk lamp. He looked up and nodded as Freddy raised his
hand in salute. Freddy worked a keypad at another door. The
lock clicked. He swung the door inwards, turned and raised a
finger cautiously to his lips. Miller tilted the portable scanner
he held in one hand, checking the read-out.

A night-light glowed in the ceiling, sufficient for them to

see that there was a bed by the wall, with a locker and wash-
basin next to it. They made out Baines' shape, hunched under
the blankets; he had burrowed his head under the pillow.

134

Freddy looked at Miller and raised his eyebrows in an

unspoken query. Miller nodded, and Freddy lifted the pillow,
and shone a pen-torch onto Baines' closed lids. One large eye
opened in the beam, peering at them, and sleepily, Baines
lifted his head to face them.

`Martin!' Freddy said in a loud whisper.
`Freddy?' Baines muttered. `That you? What you want?'
`Wake up. This gentleman need to talk to you.'
`Did you bring the dress?'
`Not now, OK?' Freddy said. `We talk about that later.

Right now this here is Peter Miller. He need to talk to you.'

Baines yawned. `Don't want to talk. I'm tired.'
Miller was watching Baines with fascination, while

glancing frequently at the scanner.

`That's just that old medication they give you,' Freddy said

to Baines. `You ain't so tired.'

Baines turned his head into the pillow. `I'm going to sleep

now Freddy, OK?'

`No you ain't.' Freddy spoke close to Baines's ear. `Too

much sleep no good for you.'

Baines' voice became blurred. `Goo'night Freddy.'
Freddy reached over and shook him hard. `Come on,' he

hissed. `A man like you need to be up and about. Come on
now.'

On the screen of the scanner, graphs began to curve

upwards. Miller watched them avidly.

Freddy shook Baines one more time. Abruptly the big man

sat up, his eyes glaring. `Leave me alone,' he muttered. `I'm
warning you. Leave Martin alone.'

Freddy laughed. `What will happen? You'll bring Lilith

here?'

135

`Stop that,' Baines said. `I don't want to hear about her.

She's gone away. She used to work for the Taylor doctor. But
Martha drove her away.'

`I don't think you telling me truth, Martin. I think she here

with you somewhere.'

Baines pressed his hands to his ears. `Stop that. You'll

upset Martha. It's not good to upset Martha.'

`You lying, Martin,' Freddy said, his voice a jeering sing-

song.

Miller bent to look at the scanner in wonder. `Beautiful,' he

murmured to Freddy. Human programs were running, right
before his eyes.

Baines threw off the blankets. He got out of the bed and

stood up. `I told you. Martha's here, and she's very angry.
Martin can't save you now.' He stretched out his hands in
supplication, reaching for Freddy's throat. On the scanner, the
traces curved upwards, yearning for their target.

Freddy backed away. `OK now, Martin. You don't want to

be thinking those things. Remember who I am?' There was
something new in his voice, some odd music that Miller could
not pin down. `I'm going to bring you the dress. Remember
me now?' On the screen the traces steadied, than began to
subside.

Baines sat down abruptly on the bed. `When?' he asked

plaintively.

`Soon as the shop have it. They going to call me.'
`Alright.' Baines pulled the covers over himself and turned

on his side, like a monstrous child settling in a nursery.

`You sleep well now,' Freddy said. `We have to go.' He

motioned Miller to move to the door.

Outside, he wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his

jacket. `Don't ask me to do that again,' he said. `Sarah she a
beautiful person, but not even for her, we don't want to play

136

those games with Mr Baines. Not even when he on
medication.'

Miller grinned. `No need to do it again. The implant works

beautifully. The problems are in the rest of the system.' On
the screen of the scanner, the traces had settled into a placid
river of quiet data.

`Now you seen him, you understand why Sarah was scared

of him.'

`Did you know she believed he murdered the girl in the

Tube station?'

`Likely he did.'
`You believe that?'
`Except not him exactly.'
`What does that mean?'
`You could say, one of him,' Freddy said. `You saw, Mr

Baines, he isn't just one person. That why you have to be very
careful around him.'

`Have you told the police?'
`They going to find out anyway, and I hear Mr Baines soon

gonna be moved where he can't do no harm. As for me, my
motto's simple: step away from trouble. Take my advice, from
now on, you do the same.'

Walking home Miller remembered the frightened look in

Sarah's eyes. Now he understood one of the programs that
surely ran in her head. How it felt to be scared of Martin
Baines.

137

23~ A Meeting at Global

Ben Hudson had suffered another night so sleepless that

his wife had banished him to their spare room, where he'd
continued to lie awake, tormented. The reason: Theodore
Lamb had finally signed his deal with Global, and rescued the
corporation but with a contract which imposed drastic
penalties if the product wasn't satisfactory and delivered on
time.

As VP of Operations, Hudson had over-all responsibility

for software development, at least according to the corporate
organization chart. Lamb's money would keep Global afloat
for a time, but it wouldn't solve the problems with Sheepdog.
When disaster came, as it was going to, Hudson would not
only lose his nest-egg, he'd be squarely in the firing line, a
target for an enraged Lamb, and a scapegoat for Clarissa. And
now Lamb had announced his intention to attend this
morning's board meeting, at which progress would be
reviewed.

Hudson had been delighted when he'd been offered the

VP's post, with all its personal benefits. Although his
background was in business economics, he'd seen the job as a
straightforward management exercise, since he'd have
computer experts reporting to him who would handle the
nitty-gritty. In reality, however, he'd discovered that
managing software developers was a nightmare. The good
ones could be fantastically productive, but more often than
not they were mavericks - Peter Miller being a prime example.

138

What they did was obscure, and dependent on a level of detail
that no amount of documentation could control. They could
run rings around their managers if they felt like it, and they
knew it.

That was what had led Global to hand over development

to the Indian company, in the expectation that a different
culture would bring more orderly progress. But as the disaster
with Bernard Brandt had shown, the problems weren't over.

Clarissa Bergson and Global's principal attorney, Leon

Ratzinowitz, between them had muzzled Dr Coney and the
hospital that employed him. They'd promised large discounts
on goods and services from Global: treatments at specialized
clinics, supplies of consumables, and Sheepdog itself to be
provided free for a year once it was finally viable. A threat had
been subtly insinuated also, that the hospital would be
dragged into court, and suffer damage to its reputation, if
word leaked out about the technology's malfunction. The
hospital had agreed to keep quiet.

But now Hudson had to face Lamb in person, and defend

a situation that sooner or later would surely trigger the
investor's penalty clauses.

He arrived at Clarissa Bergson's office on the 39th floor

barely on time, passed through the outer area where her PA
sat at a work-station, and pushed open the door to the inner
room.

The whole far wall of the office was a panoramic window

which commanded a view clear across to the horse-shoe curve
of the bay. On this bright morning the water was dotted with
the white moving triangles of sailboats. The room was
pervaded with a rich scent of hot coffee. Two large jugs of it
were set out on a side table together with the bagels and

139

Danish traditional at these morning meetings. Hudson
murmured greetings, filled a cup, helped himself to an apple
Danish, and joined the other members of the team at the oval
conference table.

At its head, Clarissa seemed engrossed in studying the

paintings on her wall, pieces from her private collection.
Hudson knew she billed the corporation for the loan of the
pictures that was only natural - and he had to admit they
added class to the operation, though he didn't really care for
the works of the Cubists. Study them too long, and you
started to see people in very weird ways.

At the far end of the table, Theodore Lamb was studying

the paintings too, his head turned away from the precipitous
space outside the window. The tips of the first two fingers of
his right hand were pressed to the inside of his left wrist. As
Hudson came in, Lamb looked up, and his sharp eyes fixed on
him, unwavering and skeptical.

Benny Solnik, Chief Finance Officer, was staring gloomily

at a spread-sheet. Hudson didn't think he'd ever seen this
plump clone of an undertaker smile. Did Solnik keep
stationery with black borders on his shelves? Of course, no
circumstance could make a bean-counter happy. If profits
increased moderately, they'd be deemed inadequate to support
the stock price; if they soared, doom would equally be
predicted, since the corporation obviously wouldn't cope with
the rate of growth. The recent losses had likely rendered
Solnik delirious, in sado-masochistic heaven.

Jan Tofler, VP of Marketing, looked keenly alert, his eyes

watchful, observing the others. A file of advertising copy and
sales figures lay on the table in front of him. Beside him, Dr
Henry Richardson, the Medical Director, maintained the
grave silence of a senior physician attending a seriously ill
patient. He was not in the direct line of the CEO's fire,

140

Hudson knew. A medical man could hardly be expected to
remedy the pathologies of information technology, but
Hudson could well understand Richardson's tendency to keep
schtum. With Clarissa Bergson, one could never be sure.

And on her right hand there sat the lawyer Leon

Ratzinowitz, chewing on a cheese bagel as he scanned a batch
of documents. The man ate voraciously, but never put on
weight, as if his supply of testosterone and adrenaline burned
unlimited calories.

This tiny group of six people controlled what was in effect

a titanic corner shop. Through the leveraged take-over of
treatment centers and hospitals, they had tapped into the vast
torrent of money which fuelled the American health care
system, and for a time Global had made spectacular profits.
That was, until Clarissa had insisted on acquiring a West
Coast hospital chain which had proved a horrific liability, and
now threatened to send the corporation's stock price into free
fall.

Clarissa shifted her gaze from a Leger portrait on the wall

to Tofler. `Jan? The sales pipeline?'

The marketing man's eyes studied her, then switched to

the folder in front of him. `Letters of intent from Mass
General, Brigham and Women's, the HMOs in Ohio, and
the Santa Barbara clinics. The Mayo just asked for a full
presentation. All of them opinion leaders, and all of them
wanting evaluation trials of Sheepdog. This keeps up, we'll go
gangbusters when we launch at Medyx.'

Or go bust, Hudson thought, feeling his stomach tighten.

He glanced at Solnik. The man's expression had become even
more despairing.

`Excellent!' Lamb said: `And we have a further most

promising opportunity. One that I personally found.'

141

`I heard about that,' Solnik said. `My understanding is it

would need additional development. Tracking viruses, I mean.
If it brings us government contracts sometime in the future,
that's probably good news - if we can avoid the Feds screwing
us over. But right now there's no time to build in new
features. We launch in seven weeks.'

Lamb frowned, and turned his sharp gaze on the

accountant. `I was assured the Sheepdog system is extremely
versatile. Easily modified, I was told.'

Now everyone turned to stare at Hudson. He said. `We

can't run before we can walk. The Bangalore shop's still
sorting out teething troubles.'

`Teething troubles?' Lamb demanded.
`Nothing that won't be fixed before the launch,' Clarissa

said quickly.

`I want to hear from the developers. Let's call them. Now.'
Clarissa frowned. `They won't be there, Theo. They're

nine-and-a half hours ahead of us.'

Solnik looked up. `Since last month they're working night

shifts . . . ' He fell silent as Mrs Bergson turned a furious stare
on him.

`Call them,' Lamb said.
`Theo, it's unnecessary. There's nothing major.'
`You'd like my support to continue?'
Clarissa became pale - with fury not fright, Hudson knew.

But she gestured to him. `Call Iyla. Set up the video link.'

A display panel on the wall flared into life and the image of

a sleek Indian woman appeared who sat regarding them
calmly. Hudson saw that Clarissa was carefully studying the
woman's outfit, a rust-coloured silk tunic, its vee neck richly

142

embroidered with ruby beads. Competition in the elegance
stakes.

The woman pressed her palms together. `Namaste! How

can I help?' Her cultured English accent was only slightly
inflected.

`Iyla,' Clarissa said. `This is Theodore Lamb. He's joining

our board. He's anxious to hear from you that development's
going well.'

Iyla considered. `In the circumstances, yes, we're making

good progress. Of course, the deadlines are very tight . . . '

`But you're on target,' Clarissa said, an edge in her voice.
`Our contract commits us to best endeavours.'
`Indeed, it does. How long to completion?' Lamb asked.
`Mm - it's difficult to be precise,' Iyla said. `We're still in

the testing phase.'

Lamb stared at her image on the screen. `That's not what

you told my people!'

`I told them that the situation was fluid,' Iyla said. `And as

so often happens when there are late changes to a software
design, we are removing many bugs.'

Clarissa broke in. `But the product's demonstrable. Any

software product has bugs, isn't that right Iyla?'

Iyla looked at her carefully. `Every software product evolves

as the developers work on it.'

`Hmm. To add a facility, to detect a particular virus how

difficult would that be?' Lamb asked.

Iyla looked grave. `I would not recommend that you ask for

such a feature in the first version. There is a saying - it's
essential to walk before one tries to run.'

A woman he could fall in love with, Hudson thought.
`. . . once the product is ready for release we can consider

additions,' she was saying.

`And you'll be able to do that quickly?'

143

`Forgive me, Mr Lamb. Writing software isn't like laying

bricks. Of course, if the original design is really clean and
designed to accept change . . . ' She paused. `It's perhaps
unfortunate that Peter Miller has left the project . . . but still,
with software there is always a way.'

And always a cost and a timescale, Hudson thought. Some

ways being longer and more expensive than others. Some
being impossibly long and ruinously costly, so that it was
necessary to start a whole new journey.

The room fell silent. Lamb seemed to be pondering what

he'd heard.

Finally Clarissa said: `Well, thank you, Iyla. We mustn't

keep you any longer.'

Iyla again pressed her palms together, as if in prayer. The

screen went blank.

Lamb was staring at Clarissa suspiciously. `Peter Miller,' he

said. `I remember him. The young man I met at the
demonstration. Why is he so important?'

`He's not. Iyla happened to take a liking to him.'
`Why did he leave?'
Clarissa looked pointedly at Hudson. `He wasn't a team

player,' he said at last.

`He controlled the demonstration I came to,' Lamb said.

`When that blonde woman pretended she was in charge.'

`Theo, you've misunderstood,' Clarissa said.
`I saw him. As we were leaving, the woman what does

she call herself, Lee-Ann, or some such - she was falling over
herself to thank him.'

`Miller was unmanageable,' Clarissa said. `He wouldn't

complete the work he was assigned, and I might add, he was
insolent.'

144

`I see. Lese-majesty.' Lamb smiled thinly. `In my

experience, that's often a mark of ability. My instinct says it
would be better to have him back in the fold. We should call
him.'

`That would be a complete waste of our time.'
`Hardly what Iyla just told us. I want to hear what Mr

Miller has to say. Now.'

Clarissa shrugged, her gaze icy. `Ben, call and see if he's

available.'

Hudson got up. `I'll go find the number, see if I can locate

him.' He needed time out.

`He has to understand, money's no problem,' Lamb said as

Hudson headed for the door.

The meeting had moved on to other topics by the time he

came back. A room-full of eyes followed him to his chair.

`Did you locate Miller?'
Hudson looked at Clarissa steadily. `Yeah, I called him.'
`And?'
`He's not interested.'
`You see?' Clarissa said triumphantly.
`Perhaps, but what exactly did he say?' Lamb asked.
`That's the gist of it,' Hudson said.
`Ben, do you want to keep your job?' Mrs Bergson said.

`Let's get this done with. What words did he use?'

`You really don't want to know.'
`Yes I do.'
Hudson fished in his pocket. He pulled out a little silver

dictating machine, put it on the table and pressed the play
button. His own voice came from the machine, thin and
attenuated by the miniature speaker. `Peter, the board is keen
to have you back to help progress our system. Clarissa regrets

145

any misunderstanding. She really needs your help. Money
won't be any problem. Whatever it takes.'

Miller's voice came from the machine, reedy, a little faint

over the transatlantic line, but clear enough and quite calm.
`Tell the witch to shove her broomstick . . . '

Hudson had pressed the stop button. He looked dead-pan

at Clarissa Bergson.

Her face was flat white, her eyes narrowed. She turned

towards Lamb. `You see? We don't need his kind here. Iyla
and her team work perfectly with our other engineers.'

`I must agree, he's hardly cooperative.' Hudson couldn't be

sure, but he thought a grin was threatening to appear on
Lamb's face. The investor turned towards Clarissa. `You're
really confident that the launch will go well? We'll have a
deliverable product that we can extend for new applications?'

Nothing fazed this guy, Hudson was realizing, with relief.

It meant that after all, he wasn't going to be crucified, because
Lamb was hell bent on seeing his new opportunity realized.
Someone really ought to tell him what he was getting into,
but he could afford the risk of failure, whereas Ben Hudson,
whose retirement package depended on Sheepdog, could not.
And perhaps there was even a chance that the Indian shop
would deliver.

`Absolutely,' Clarissa said.
Now an exhilaration seemed to seize Lamb. `Very well.

Necessity brings results. Remember Wolfe at Quebec? He
faced the most extreme odds imaginable, and he triumphed.
We go full steam ahead with the product launch.'

`Bravo!' Clarissa said.
A feeling of deep unease came over Hudson. This wasn't

the steam age. Moreover, as he recalled, while Wolfe had
triumphed at Quebec he'd died in the process.

146

Lamb had become thoughtful again. `All the same we

should keep contact with Mr Miller. My instinct says we
might need him.'

It was a sentiment Hudson endorsed.

147

24~ Miller's Progress

At St Evelyn's, Peter Miller now began an intensive cycle

of working late. At whatever hour Gresham Taylor looked
into the computer lab, anxious to hear about progress,
invariably the programmer was there. Almost always he was
still there when Cooke and Lamarr went home to their
families in the early hours. Long after the lights in the
corridor went off, a glow continued to burn under the
computer room door. Except for an occasional prowling
security man, no-one saw him leave. He'd become a nocturnal
creature, living the Tracks system. He appeared to have no
other life.

One morning around six a.m., a cleaner ran screaming

from the computer lab, shouting to the first nurse she saw that
she had found a dead body. But when the nurse pushed open
the door, she found only Miller peacefully asleep on the floor,
across two chair cushions borrowed from a nearby office. The
nurse gently shook him awake. Sounding embarrassed, he
explained that due to tiredness, he must have miscalculated
when he'd programmed the workstation to wake him with
some music.

In the small hours, when he was alone, Miller would set up

the music. Miles, Monk and Billie Holiday kept him

148

company. With the computer room door firmly closed, he
could turn up the sound. No-one could get at him, he was
alone with the code and the music, his mind free to spiral
around pure logic, floating harmonies and free melodic lines.
At those times anything seemed possible; he was as happy as
he knew how to be.

Something was bugging him, though. The new system

would work beautifully, he could feel its sure vibes even now.
But Sarah wouldn't know about it. He often thought about
her, sitting with him in the pub drinking her ridiculous
cocktail, when she'd poked fun at his remark his true
statement that computers could achieve anything. By the
end of their talk he'd really wanted to get together with her.
She was intelligent and attractive - and she'd as good as told
him he was incompetent. A comedian. The insult had grown
in his mind. He seethed when he thought about it.

To cap it all, she'd vanished, leaving him no chance to

prove her wrong. He'd asked Simeon, Freddy, and Taylor's
secretary where she could be contacted, but they had only her
previous phone number and address. She'd set up a PO box
number for her correspondence, and her email had been
discontinued Twice he went to the flat where she'd been
living and rang the bell, but no-one answered.

Apart from Taylor, Cooke and Lamarr, with whom he had

technical discussions, there was no-one around that he wanted
to spend time with. A few of the female nurses had tried to
start conversations at mealtimes in the canteen. There had
been one close call, but he didn't want to get into that again.
What did they want, anyway? To prove they could win over
someone who could find little to say to them? It would turn

149

out the same old way, and the emotional repercussions would
reverberate in the workplace, and disrupt his work.

And besides . . . Sarah might come back.
With Tracks almost ready to replace Semper he had the

means to protect her. He wanted to tell her that. Then she
would know he was for real.

At St Evelyn's there was no thirty-eighth floor with a view

across the bay at night. When he needed a break from the
twists and turns of computer logic, and when even the music
didn't settle his mind, Miller would break off to play a few
rounds of HyperZorg. If that failed, he would spend time
treating virtual Lee-Ann to some new features. He'd already
added the pleasing movement to her hips that he'd noticed
when he followed Sarah up to Taylor's office. It had made
Lee-Ann even more lifelike. He'd fitted her out with a new
evening gown that would go with a classic blues track which
he'd downloaded. He'd used the mouse to paint the dress onto
her, the colour sliding easily over her, the virtual fabric taking
on texture and moulding closely to her shape. The new dress
simply merged into the old one, replacing it so that it ceased
to exist.

At times he felt that he was channelling inspiration from

virtual Lee-Ann as if she were some kind of muse. He'd
improved her face, just a little, lifted the cheekbones slightly,
given a softer, more generous curve to her mouth, and created
a new hairstyle. She looked fabulous. Only when he'd finished
the changes did it dawn on him who she was beginning to
look like.

150

Once or twice a week, thinner and unshaven now, he met

Taylor in his office or in the computer room, and provided a
terse summary of progress. Sometimes he offered a
demonstration, showing how the system was improving, how
data appeared on screen. He would call Don Cooke's mobile
phone, and ask him to activate his implant. The workstation
would show Cooke's whereabouts, and data would scroll onto
the screen as the implant relayed information about the
workings of his body and his mind.

In recent meetings, additional items had begun to show up

on screen. Some carried the extra information required by the
Department of Health, which had so perturbed Taylor when
his visitor delivered that demand. The psychiatrist stared
enthralled at the new information. `How did you do it so
quickly?' he asked Miller.

`The software package I told you about - plus some

changes to the implant's firmware.'

`Superb! I'll let Jeremy Hart know what progress we've

made.'

Something else was beginning to appear too: new kinds of

graphics, rounded figures, with coloured segments which
shifted shape as Taylor watched.

`What are those?' Taylor asked.
Miller smiled. `I'll tell you soon.'
Meanwhile, he still had the real Lee-Ann's problems to

take care of.

151

25~ Mojave

Theodore Lamb was familiar with the energy of American

commercial life, but even so, he was surprised by what he saw
as he stood alone in the warm Californian dusk, on a small
white bridge outside Ultimate Studios. The bridge, sculpted
in the Palladian style from reinforced concrete, spanned one
end of an artificial lake. Below it, illuminated by floodlights,
an enormous, bright green lily-leaf floated on azure water, and
on the leaf a pianist in a white tailcoat sat playing a concert-
size white grand piano. Moths and fire-flies danced in the
blue-white light as if to his renderings of Broadway standards.
It was the end of the first day of the Medyx conference and
exhibition.

The organizers had chosen the Studios as a venue which

would appeal to clinicians from all over the world, somewhere
that American medical science could tout its wares to full
effect. Lamb had come here for the launch of the Sheepdog
marketing offensive. The previous afternoon, in the vast,
vaulted exhibition hall, he'd watched workmen unroll swathes
of rich carpet onto exhibitor areas, erect temples to commerce,
carved from polystyrene, and connect power, lighting and
computing services to bring the exhibits to life.

As could be expected, the pharmaceutical industry was

making a show of strength. Among other spectacular exhibits,
one booth featured a replica of a chemical production line,
which occupied more than fifty linear feet of floor space. It
didn't look out of place in a hall of such great size.

152

In the early evening he'd attended the opening ceremony.

Learned conferences like Medyx traditionally opened with an
entertainment representing the host nation's cultural
achievements. Here, after the chairman's welcome, a group of
rappers had leaped onto stage and performed songs and
dances of unmistakable lewdness. Next came an invited
address, given by a distinguished physician from Germany.
Looking somewhat taken aback by the act he had to follow
was he inwardly trying to translate "motherfucker" into
German, Lamb wondered - the speaker gave a critical review
of computerized decision-making in medicine, extolling its
potential for better, smarter, cheaper healthcare.

Today Lamb had made several leisurely circuits of the

exhibition hall. Attractive, energetic salespeople uttered
blandishments as he passed their carpeted territories. The
imitation chemical works was working now, lit up with
moving video images projected from within the translucent
vats and pipes to illustrate the fizzing molecular reactions a
real production unit would contain.

Global's exhibit was built round a hi-tech doctor's office,

staffed by pretty models posing as secretaries. On its walls
videos of Sheepdog at work were projected, looping endlessly.
Inside, the horse-faced woman Lee-Ann, whom he'd met at
the Sheepdog center, was giving periodic demonstrations and
answering questions. She was certainly popular: a crowd of
sober-looking medical men clustered round to hear her spiel.
From time to time, she would dispatch some of them to a
hovering salesman. Now she was talking earnestly with two
doctors in business suits, a jowled heavyweight and one who
was smaller and quick in movement. They seemed deeply
interested in what she had to say, were still there when Lamb
passed by for the second time.

153

Each time he returned to Global's booth there was a larger

crowd, till visitors were beginning to spill out into the
gangways. On his last visit, he caught up with Tofler, the VP
of marketing. His normally pale complexion was flushed.
`Leads pouring in!' he said, on recognising Lamb. `Fantastic
product!'

`I told you Wolfe's approach at Quebec was the right one,'

Lamb said.

Tofler grinned. `So was yours. Gangbusters!'
Lamb walked on, exhilarated. Clarissa had delivered on her

promise and Global's marketing onslaught was a success.
Sheepdog had run smoothly throughout, its technical
problems clearly had been sorted out, and the product could
soon be extended as he'd insisted. It was going to happen. His
finest-ever investment was going to pay off. Nothing could
stop it.

From his computer room in London, Peter Miller

continued to steer Lee-Ann's Sheepdog demonstration, as he
had done weeks before when Mrs Bergson and her visitors
came to Global's Data Center - only this time he was hooked
into Lee-Ann's workstation more than 5,000 miles away, via a
fast data link. On his screen he could see what she typed, hear
her voice in his earpiece. He controlled what appeared on-
screen at the exhibition, and steered round any dangerous
moves that might have thrown Sheepdog into chaos. The
distance that separated him from Lee-Ann made little
difference. They'd rehearsed what she would demonstrate,
and what tactics she'd employ with any awkward customer
who threatened a deviation from plan. The fractional delays in
satellite transmission, inevitable due to the distance -
information hurled into space and deftly caught by the

154

electronics at its destination - were too small to impede his
juggling act, or to destroy the illusion that she was in the
driving seat.

The last demonstration would be at 4.30, West Coast

time, and the exhibition closed 30 minutes later. That meant
that by 1 a.m. London time, he could get down to the night's
serious work: further improving the design of Tracks.

Clarissa had arrived at Medyx after lunch, on a state visit

to meet with major sales prospects. Lamb spotted her heading
for the hospitality suite with the two doctors the fat one and
the thin one - who'd spent so much time at Global's booth.
She'd greeted him rather coolly, he thought, and afterwards
she retired to her hotel suite early, claiming exhaustion. It
crossed his mind that she might be avoiding him. Was she
concealing something? But perhaps she was genuinely tired.
In any event, she'd arranged to travel back with him in the
morning, and when she'd said goodnight, she seemed cheerful
enough, no doubt due to the success of the launch. She just
wasn't very forthcoming.

Lamb stood on the bridge for a while, listening to the lily-

pianist, then strolled over to one of the many alfresco bars.
The air was filled with the scent of jasmine. Perched on a
chrome barstool, he ordered a glass of champagne and looked
around the scene appreciatively. It was remarkable how dusk
made women more alluring; he wished Julia were with him.
Under a roof decorated with coloured lights, members of the
medical profession were propping up the bar, earnestly
discussing what they'd seen at the exhibition, some laughing
at probably off-colour medical jokes. They lived, he reflected,

155

by saving patients from Nature's recycling scheme. In the
process they enriched themselves as well as the giant
pharmaceutical companies, the hospitals and the insurers, and
of course, Global HealthCare at least, that would be the
case from now on. It was the way of the world. The trick was
to benefit from it, and he was about to pull off the trick.

The Learjet lifted from LAX at about eleven o'clock the

following morning. Los Angeles spread out endlessly in all
directions below them as they climbed, wall-to-wall city. As
always, Lamb was tense during take-off, expecting the
disastrous sound or abrupt lurch that would mean fate had
finally caught up with him. But an hour later, they were
gliding in slow motion above the whorls and contortions of
the great Colorado basin. Up here, God only knew how high
- the Lear had a flight ceiling above 50,000 feet his anxiety
had given way to an appreciation of the tormented landscape
unrolling beneath them. He pulled a map from the rack, and
read place names randomly: Mojave, Magdalena, Escalante.
Found-poetry up here to match the abstract design below.
Perhaps he'd buy a gold mine down there, one with unworked
seams, abandoned when the Gold Rush left behind ghost
towns, its spoor of greed.

A while later, as the plane cleared the edge of the Rockies,

it headed into a different air mass and an updraft bumped it
violently. Lamb shifted nervously in his cushioned seat, and
looked across at Clarissa. She was continuing to read the New
Yorker with studied calm.

He reigned in his anxiety. `The launch was a great success.'
`Yes, we've some excellent sales leads.'
She was looking rather smug, Lamb thought, and she still

wasn't saying much. Could she actually be hiding something?

156

`I was wrong to doubt your developers in India.'
She looked up. `It's a little late in the day for apologies.'

She smiled, and went back to her reading.

So that was why she was being distant.
`It was important to be certain.' Lamb spread his hands.

`Forgive me, but I had to be sure our bets were correctly
placed.'

`I trust now you're convinced?'
`Yes. In fact . . . '
Just then, some shift in the structure of the sky took the air

away from under the plane, and for what felt like an eternity,
Lamb lost contact with his seat, could not feel the floor, nor
the seatbelt that was supposed to restrain him. Almost passing
out, grabbing for the seat arms, he stared through the window
in terror, expecting to see the ground rushing up to hit them.
Below there was a horrifying black object, with tentacles like
an octopus, which reached out for him as they fell. An
immense microbe! Then the plane righted itself, the free fall
was over, and everything was smooth again. His head cleared,
and he realized the monster was only one of the desert
formations, a black, strangely distorted spiral. But his heart
was pounding violently and his chest pains were back. He
timed his racing pulse with his Rolex. He'd been overdoing it,
he realized, he needed a rest. Needed it badly.

Even Clarissa was looking perturbed. A lock of her hair

had fallen loose, and she was gripping the arms of her seat.
The door of the flight deck opened, the captain was coming
towards them to apologize, looking concerned.

Lamb said to Clarissa: `I want my implant in place as soon

as we get back.'

157

26~ A Nocturnal Demonstration

A month into his nocturnal regime, Miller invited

Gresham Taylor to a demonstration. The psychiatrist arrived
at nine at night, to find Miller in the computer room along
with Cooke and Lamarr. The workstations were glowing with
data. Taylor settled expectantly on a lab stool while Miller sat
before a screen and made adjustments. At last he said:
`Alright, Don, we're ready.'

Cooke got up from his chair and moved towards the door,

and Miller hit a key. A supernova burst onto the screen and
coalesced to form the image of a blonde woman in a tailored
two-piece suit who faced them.

`Hello, I'm Lee-Ann,' she said, in a cut-glass English

accent. `How is everyone today?'

Taylor looked bemused. `That's not one of our patients.

Who is she?'

`The system avatar,' Miller said, busy adjusting settings.
Taylor looked at him silently. But before he could speak,

Miller brought something else onto the screen alongside the
map. It was one of the curious multi-coloured shapes that
Taylor had asked about previously. Like an amoeba, its
pseudopods formed and distorted, as if exploring the confines
of the workstation.

`What is that?' Taylor asked.
`Like it?' Miller said. `You should. It's your technique.

Inferential chemistry - the hidden face. It's a polar diagram, a
picture of arousal, and it's continuously updated. Its shape

158

shows which emotions are present, and at what level. The
colours and brightness of the individual segments show the
types of arousal and the intensity. The quantitative
measurements are here, below the figure.'

Taylor was transfixed. `What types of arousal?' His eyes

gleamed greedily.

`The red shows aggression the larger and brighter that

area is, the more violent the patient's feeling. Sexual arousal is
purple. We can configure most emotions that you can define.
Delusional patterns too, if you can characterize them.'

For the first time in his life, Miller saw someone actually

rub his hands together with glee. `Superb,' Taylor said. `Quite
superb.' He stooped to inspect the display. `This blue area?'

Miller smiled. `It measures the neurotransmitters that go

with fear. I call the shape a phoboid, after the Greek god of
fear.' He looked across at Cooke. `Ready, Don?'

`I guess so,' Cooke said. The door closed slowly behind

him. The three men huddled round the screen to watch a
matchstick-man marker that was Don Cooke as it made its
way through a skeletal outline of the tower block and its
corridors, towards the lift.

A minute or so later, Don Cooke left the lift car twelve

floors below and walked across the dark lobby. He turned to
his right, through swing doors marked `Staff Only' and went
through a service entrance which led onto the gardens, and
then through a gate onto a back street.

As he cleared a corner, a blustering wind caught at his

clothes, and a squall of raindrops blew in his face. Flinching,
he pulled his jacket collar up around his neck. Then he
stopped. On a bench, on the other side of the street, what
might have been a large bundle of rags stirred in the wind.
Then whoever or whatever had been lying there sat up slowly

159

and turned to look in his direction. Cooke walked away
quickly in the opposite direction.

On the screen, the amoeba shifted, threw out a new

tentacle, and began to change to a shade of blue.

`He hasn't got any braver,' Lamarr said.
Taylor looked ready to shed tears of happiness. `We need

to discuss Mr Baines,' he said.

160

27~ Ralph

Agent Feldman's lucky break did not last. Some six weeks

after the salesman's death, the virus surfaced several miles
from the motel in a nearby hamlet, where it struck Linda, the
sister of Agnes, the cleaner who'd found the salesman's body.
Linda had been helping out at the motel for a few hours each
week, and had encountered the salesman briefly as he was
arriving and she was leaving to go home. In the confusion that
followed his death, she had been forgotten; or perhaps Agnes
had wanted to keep her younger sister out of the hands of the
authorities, and so had not mentioned her.

The local paper carried a brief paragraph about a case of

severe food-poisoning, but no-one who saw Linda go into a
bloody melt-down believed that story for a moment. By the
time the disease tightened its grip, beginning with Linda's
next-door neighbours, no-one at all believed it, especially as
by then, the soldiers had arrived.

The military surrounded the virus-infected hamlet with

armoured vehicles. They drove through the streets in Super-
Humvees, their loudspeakers shouting an echoing message.
No-one must leave: everyone must report to the town hall.

Ralph, the grandson of Dr Evesham, the physician who

had reported the first case, was only nine, but he didn't buy
what was going on. He was angry that his grandfather had
been removed to hospital from the motel when he showed no

161

signs of illness so Ralph's grandmother claimed - and he was
determined not to be taken away himself. With two school-
friends, Tommy and Wort, he formed a plan. The three of
them filled back-packs with cookies and sodas and slid out
from their houses.

They knew something the soldiers didn't that on the

north side of the town there was a tunnel under the road, put
there to allow free passage for wildlife. It led into a corn-field
which would provide excellent cover. They had made dens
there in the past.

Ralph led them, bent double and moving silently, through

the tunnel. They cleared its oval exit, and at once they were
into the tall corn, hidden in its shadows, lost in green and
gold secrecy. They advanced stealthily. Ralph's plan was to
head west across the field, and on to the next town, six miles
away. From there they would hitch a ride to his aunt's house
upstate.

There was a soldier posted on the road by the field, but he

didn't spot them. A gentle breeze made any disturbance they
caused indistinguishable from the natural stirring of the corn.
They would have made it, but for the vagrant.

Ralph almost tripped over him, where he lay asleep in a

hollow, a near-empty bottle of rye on the ground beside him.
As Ralph's foot touched his leg, the man suddenly stirred. He
opened his eyes, bloodshot in an unshaven face, and grabbed
Ralph's ankle. Ralph stumbled, lost balance, and fell across
the tramp's ragged frame. To his horror, the man's scrawny
hand fastened round his neck, pulling him down. Panic-
stricken, Ralph shouted `Whoooo!!', wrenched himself free
from the man's grasp and jumped up.

The soldier turned, fired his gun in the air, and shouted

`Stop!'

162

They knew better than to run. They stood still and waited,

while the soldier used his radio. In a little while, the men in
the yellow space-suits marched them to the town hall where
their blood would be taken for testing.

The tramp had crawled away into the corn, unseen. Later

he would make it to a highway where he would hitch a ride
with a passing truck-driver.

duCassis and Feldman shared a windowless office on the

fifth floor of a nondescript block in Washington DC. An arc
of data screens curved around the walls, showing incoming
news feeds, emails, status reports and video replays, in
staccato patterns. But the agents' attentions were focused on
the printout that lay on the table in front of them. Feldman's
bulk nudged the smaller man's slight frame as he stood next to
duCassis's chair.

`They're positive about the contact?' he asked.
`Not certain, but it's a probable. A come-to-Jesus talk to

the staff at Bell Helicopter, highlight the strength of the
economy, value of global trade and the rest of it.' duCassis
shook his head grimly. `Why the hell couldn't he stay in DC,
use a video link?'

`The President likes to get out,' Feldman said gloomily.

`Take the air, smell the roses. Was it a big motorcade?'

`No, the Service figured it was a low-risk visit. He was in

Cadillac One, they flew it down there as usual. Just a half-
dozen motor-cycle leads up front, three police cars including
the bomb sweep unit, and then the secure package following
five vans including the SWAT team - with the President in
Cadillac One at the centre. Plus the trailing ambulance of
course, the Press Corps and media vans, a couple more State
police cruisers, and four more bikes.'

163

`At least it was minimal. So it was just the one guy?'
`Yep. One of the police drivers, they use locals, they know

the roads. He lives in the hamlet, went up to Amarillo for
briefing two days before Wildfire showed itself.'

`Christ.' Feldman crashed his fist on the table. `After all we

did to contain the bug. After all that. Now we have the worst-
case risk scenario, right in our faces. This bug gets out, this
whole country's on fire, and it could start with the President
himself. Have we heard from the people at the Centers for
Disease Control yet?'

`They've had our evaluation. They'll be back to us within

an hour to confirm. Then we can make our move.'

In her office at Global's headquarters, Clarissa Bergson

was pensively reviewing the results from Medyx: a wealth of
sales leads, more than enough to restore the corporation's
fortunes providing that the technology came through. The
uncomfortable feeling was growing on her that Hudson was
right about the problems, even though he was wrong about
that insolent loose cannon, Miller. There were rumours that
he'd somehow helped out with Medyx, but she wouldn't have
the trouble-maker back. So, how to buy enough time for the
product to be completed and tested? If she lost the sales
opportunities, Global would face disaster, be at the mercy of
Theodore Lamb and the savage penalty clauses in his
contract, which she'd reluctantly had to accept because no-
one other than Lamb was prepared to put up the amount of
money that Global needed. She'd sometimes wondered what
had made him do it.

She'd wanted to keep to herself the visit by the two Federal

agents to Medyx, had steered them away from Lamb, feeling
intuitively that their interest in viruses would somehow lead to

164

his having a still stronger hold over Global. It was bad enough
that he was demanding an implant before development could
be completed. But it was becoming clear that no matter what
happened, she must keep Lamb on board, keep him
convinced that his future gains would far outweigh any short-
term difficulties.

Just then, her PA poked her head round the door.
Clarissa looked up. `What is it?'
`There's a Mr duCassis on the line. He wants to speak with

you personally. He says he met you at Medyx. He says it's
extremely urgent.'

165

28~ Sarah's Escape

From St Evelyn's in South-east London, Sarah had

returned to her parent's comfortable home in Surrey. It was
wonderful to be there, free from the craziness of the asylum.
The house occupied a generous plot on the border of a small
town, close to open country. The fresh air and greenery were
relaxing, and in the daytime she lounged around the house,
reading, listening to music and thinking about possibilities for
her new life. She called old school-friends, picking up threads,
catching up over coffee, and in the evenings, when he was
back from his special school, spent time with her younger
brother Luke. She found it easier to talk with him than in the
past: his mild autism seemed less of a problem. She was
amused to find that something about his odd-ball, obsessive
interests reminded her of Peter Miller.

If Luke started out to build a house from Lego, a skill he'd

acquired at the school, he was always determined to complete
it to perfection, as he saw it. No matter how complicated the
structure became, he wouldn't give up on the ideal picture he
presumably held in his head. The designs were often wild,
with turrets at strange angles, and walkways that stretched out
over space, hanging perilously from walls that looked too
slender to support them. Sometimes there were collapses,
which had to be repaired. She suspected him of causing some
of these disasters deliberately, in order to have the pleasure of
rebuilding. Attempts to make him stop when it was time for
dinner resulted in tantrums and tears.

166

Maybe, she thought, the crazy castles were the soul-food

he really needed. Perhaps, deep-down, Miller's mind worked
on similar lines. Was he kept whole and stable by the quest
for a perfect system, did he enjoy endless improvements so
much that he'd seek out problems that didn't matter, for the
satisfaction of fixing them?

She thought of Miller quite often. With hindsight, he'd

been rather good-looking and his clothes had at least a degree
of style. He'd seemed arrogant, but perhaps he was covering
up for some insecurity and in truth, all he'd done was claim
to offer her protection. After her talk with him in the pub, her
fear of Baines had actually receded. She hadn't believed a
word he'd said, yet his promises must have lodged in some
deep niche of her mind. That night, at her flat, she'd slept
comforted and unafraid, and the following day the flashbacks
and panics had stayed away.

She could even forgive him for eyeing her legs on the stairs

to Gresham's office. After all, she wasn't bad-looking herself,
had found boy-friends in the past without having to try. In
fact, one of the few downsides of being at home was that all
the men she used to know seemed to have moved away.
Despite having her family around her, she sometimes felt
lonely. Maybe in time she'd move back to London. But for
now, she was calm and ready to forget the whole awful
business of St Evelyn's. It was history.

Then, a few weeks after she'd settled in, after a day spent

walking in the countryside, she came suddenly awake in the
middle of the night, afraid to breathe. Something had woken
her: a sound? Someone moving? Baines here in the room?

She forced herself to reach out a stealthy hand, took a

breath, and switched on the bedside lamp. Of course, she'd

167

imagined it. There was no sign of an intruder. But perhaps
the sound had come from outside? She switched the light off
again, slid out of bed, and moved cautiously to the window.

Patches of moonlight haunted the lawn. Across the far end

of the garden there was a line of shrubbery and behind it a
fence which separated the garden from woodland. The shrubs
seemed to be moving, shifting in the eerie luminance as if
something had stirred them. Yet the branches of nearby trees
were hanging stationary in windless air. Had someone come
through the shrubbery to approach the house? Someone who
had gone back into hiding in the woods? Or who had already
reached the house, and now stood where she could not see
him. She knew who it would be.

She went back to bed, and pulled the duvet close around

her. She'd thought she'd escaped Martin Baines. Now she
knew it wasn't possible. He was never going to go away.

She didn't sleep again before daybreak. When she got up

she phoned Peter Miller.

Miller was in his lab, taking a break, playing a round of

HyperZorg. Reluctantly, he paused the game and picked up
the phone.

`Peter?'
The voice was subdued, but he knew at once who it was.
`Hi! How are you? I thought about you.'
`So so.' She sounded odd.
`What's the matter?'
`I was wondering . . . how you'd got on. With your project.'
A quiet thrill ran through him. `It's looking good. Great, in

fact.'

`Do you think . . . is it going to work? I mean, with

Baines.'

168

`Baines will be in virtual handcuffs for the rest of his days.'
`How do I know that's true?' Now there was no mistaking

the tremor in her voice.

`I'll prove it. What's your phone number?'
He wrote it down, recalled virtual Lee-Ann, and told her

to store the number in his contacts database. For a moment,
he could have sworn she looked at him askance; but he must
have imagined it.

That night, he experienced a dream that had visited him

every few years since his teens. He was living in a house which
had many wings, and storage barns set in rambling gardens
which were segmented by fences and paths. He knew the
place well, yet he couldn't recall its exact layout, nor who lived
there with him. The house was so large he'd forgotten some
of its rooms, and would suddenly remember their existence
when he was sitting reading in its library.

This time, in the dream, he came to a fence at the end of

the garden through a secret pathway from a busy shopping
street. He could see the house beyond an area of tangled grass
and overgrown flower beds. A woman with dark hair was
walking across the distant lawn. No matter how he tried, he
couldn't see her face, but he knew he wanted very much to
meet her. When she reached the house she climbed the steps
up to a veranda, walked along it, and disappeared inside. The
house contained something important but he couldn't
remember what.

Perhaps the dream meant nothing, was merely the random

firing of neurons. In the past, its curious half-logic had
disturbed him and he'd tried unsuccessfully to decode it. This
time, however, it left him strangely comforted.

169

29~ Dolphin

Riding at anchor off the Florida Keys, Theodore Lamb's

motor yacht Dolphin rolled lazily in the swell of a
shimmering ocean. Above its communications antennae, its
pennant fluttered in a warm salt breeze.

Lamb lolled in the skipper's chair, wearing a yachting cap

pulled down over his eyes. He had no idea how to handle this
powerful 160-foot vessel for that he depended on the crew
and on Fusillo - but sitting high up on the master deck gave
him the pleasing illusion that he controlled a marine empire.
Below, on the fore-deck, Julia in her swimsuit sprawled lazily
on a sun-bed. In only two days she'd acquired a gorgeous
silken tan. Undoubtedly she must have Latin blood, Lamb
thought. He personally couldn't tolerate even moderate sun,
and despite Julia's blandishments he'd kept out of the
carcinogenic rays. He glanced at his watch. At sundown he
could share space with her.

It had been an excellent idea to come here and relax, after

the launch at Medyx and his hallucination as the plane fell,
the giant bug waiting to consume him. He'd been working too
hard, worrying too much about Sheepdog's potential. It was
irritating that Clarissa had put off his implant yet again,
claiming that more refinement and testing was essential, but
he'd decided to be patient. It would come through soon
enough.

In the distance, a white gash appeared in the ocean, the

wake of a boat coming their way. Lamb picked up his

170

binoculars, and saw that Fusillo was returning from his
errand. In minutes the launch came alongside, and the minder
hauled his sweating bulk up to the wheel-house and held out
the morning papers.

All the news Lamb could want was available from the

yacht's satellite link, but he loved the ritual of reading the
papers at his leisure. Pulling his skipper's cap lower, he settled
back with the New York Times.

Checking the Science and Technology section for

investment ideas, his eye fell on an article headed "Where
Medicine Might Lead - Global HealthCare's New
Technology". This was good news. The PR people had done
their job. Sheepdog had pole position. Then he saw the
strapline. `No hiding place for disease or people?'

He read on. A brief account of Sheepdog technology was

followed by an assessment of its potential in an era when
medications and therapies would soon be custom-designed by
computers. Genetic vaccines tailored to the individual would
prevent disease and prolong healthy life, and would be cheap,
safe and long-lasting, the article declared. Electronic implants
like Sheepdog were fallible, prone to generate false positives,
while missing the real ones.

Then a darker tone emerged. A professor of politics

described the history of intelligence gathering in the US, from
the State Department's illegal interception of telegrams after
World War I to the current vast network of surveillance, like
the Echelon project, said to be intercepting 3 billion
communications every day. An implant might even include a
secret microphone to eavesdrop on the client. Sheepdog used
GPS to follow the individual everywhere. In future it could
identify his DNA.

It was what his accountants had warned about. Lamb knew

he was looking at the opening shot of a marketing battle. Big

171

Pharma, the heavy-weight pharmaceutical industry, was
plugging future product, playing the civil liberties card, and
trying to bury Sheepdog under a high-class smear campaign.
It didn't surprise him. If Global succeeded in subduing
disease, the ocean of drugs sold to the American public would
shrink. Enormous vested interests would resist that. In one
way, the article was good news: by attacking Sheepdog, the
competition had confirmed its potential.

He tore out the article, crumpled it into a ball, and hurled

it over the rail. The wind caught it and swept it away, till it
landed in the ocean and was taken by the current. But even
when it became a distant white dot, it refused to sink.

He looked down at the paper. And there, on the page

beneath the one he'd torn out, was what he'd been sure would
sooner or later show up in the broadsheets:

A Deadly Virus In Texas?

An outbreak of an unidentified virus in a small town in

Texas. A few details, a suggestion of menace, the authorities
not saying what the bug was. Most of the copy was old hat,
the background to avian flu and the rest. Nevertheless, here
was proof that his intuition had been right, as it always was.
Certainty flooded through him. Big Pharma could do its
damnedest. Sheepdog was about to find a major new market.
Nothing could stop it.

On the foredeck Julia settled back on the sun-bed. Seeing

him standing at the rail, she waved to him cheerfully. He
almost ran down the steps to her, clutching the newspaper.
He leaned down to show it to her, close now to her sun-
brown skin. As she read the piece, he kissed her shoulder.
Delectably warm, it smelled of expensive tanning lotion.

`I thought you were taking time out,' she said.

172

`I must speak with Clarissa.' Lamb grabbed the paper and

headed towards the stairs.

`On a perfect day like this,' Julia sighed to herself. She

adjusted her shades, turned her face gratefully towards the
bright light, and closed her eyes.

In the wheelhouse, Lamb called Clarissa's direct line.

`Have you seen the piece in the New York Times?'

`Yes, I've seen it.' Unbelievably, there was a trace of almost

girlish excitement in Clarissa's voice. `We have to meet. I'm
going on a sales trip and you must come along.'

173

30~ True Madness

At mid-morning on the day after his successful

demonstration of the phoboid software, Peter Miller came to
Gresham Taylor's office. The lights were on, the day outside
darkening with the threat of rain. A lamp cast a glow over the
alabaster bust on the bookshelf.

`Sit down, sit down,' Taylor said affably, waving him

towards the settee. `Well, tremendous progress.'

`I'm glad you think so.' Miller settled himself in a

comfortable sprawl. `This is about Mr Baines?'

`Yes. He's being transferred elsewhere in a couple of days'

time.'

`Oh?' So Freddy had been right.
`He's going to a secure hospital.' Taylor rummaged in a

desk drawer and brought out a diary. `It's a precaution.'

`Sarah would have been relieved to hear that. She thought

Baines attacked her.'

`Nonsense.' Taylor shut the drawer firmly. `Sarah was a

very sweet girl, but she had an overactive imagination. Baines
followed her, he didn't attack her: the system clearly showed
that he wasn't aroused. We can all misinterpret reality, and
I'm sorry to say, at times Sarah was paranoid.'

`Maybe. If you say so.'
`Now, before Mr Baines goes, I want to carry out an

experiment. You said the system could pick up delusional
ideas.'

174

`If you can tell me what pattern of neurotransmitters to

look for, I'm sure it could.'

`With Mr Baines's help, that's exactly what I'd like to test.'
`Why him?'
`He's a singularly interesting case,' Taylor said.

`Extraordinary in fact. The simplest way to describe him is
that he has more than one personality, contained within an
over-arching delusional system. It's a fascinating psychic
structure.'

Freddy had said as much, Miller remembered, when they'd

visited Baines at night, on the ward. After that experience, he
didn't relish a further encounter. `Shouldn't we try a simpler
case first?' he said.

`Let me be the judge of that,' Taylor said sharply. `You

look after the software. Leave the clinical issues to me.'

`But if he's on medication he doesn't have delusions, does

he?'

Taylor smiled. `Precisely. They're under control. What I

want to see is what happens when we take the medication
away. I want to give him an antagonist substance that will
cancel the anti-psychotic drugs.'

Miller stared at him. `Mind if I ask you something?'
`By all means.'
`At Global, that would have been considered unethical. It

would have needed clearance from the ethics committee.
Maybe even from the State authorities.'

Outside the sky was clouding over heavily; a few drops of

rain ran spidery trails across the glass. `I don't think we need
bother the ethics committee,' Taylor said. `They approved the
original trials. It could take them weeks to review another
proposal. By then, Baines will be long gone.'

Miller shrugged. `Use another patient.'

175

`No,' Taylor said. `We already know a great deal about Mr

Baines. If we stay with him, we can learn much more, in
depth. He's the right choice.'

And perhaps, Miller suddenly realized, the means to

provide exactly the proof Sarah had asked for. He looked at
Taylor thoughtfully. `Alright. When do you want to do the
experiment?'

`Tonight.' Taylor leafed through the diary. `Don and Rafe

aren't here. Is that a problem?'

`No. Maybe we should have Freddy there, though. I'll ask

him if you want.'

`You obviously understand more than I thought,' Taylor

said. `Here.' He handed Miller a file. `That's the specification.'
He shut the diary. `Seven o'clock. We don't want Mr Baines
to miss his bedtime.'

The request for Freddy's help met another flat refusal.

Only after Miller repeatedly explained that he had promised
Sarah to keep her safe, and that this further experiment was
vital to that promise, did the nurse finally relent. He would
give an hour, no more, and only because it was in Sarah's
interest.

Miller went back to his lab. He had a few hours' work

ahead, to make Tracks ready.

At seven, Freddy brought Baines to the minor procedures

area next to the computer lab, where Miller and Taylor were
waiting. He had persuaded Baines into a wheel-chair, which
he swivelled through the narrow door, halting it next to a
heavy steel chair with arms fitted with straps, which stood in
the centre of the room and was bolted to the floor. Baines, in

176

grey flannel trousers and a grubby open-necked white shirt,
got up obediently enough at Freddy's command, and folded
himself into the chair.

On a metal table next to the chair, three stainless steel

kidney dishes, each containing a translucent plastic syringe,
were laid out alongside needles in sealed packets, plastic vials
of straw-coloured liquids, gauze, and surgical tape. A pedestal
lamp, its bowl lined with mirror panels, and a video camera on
a tripod, stood pointed at Baines. At one end of the table
there was a workstation. Taylor pressed a switch on the lamp,
and bright light fell on Baines.

The psychiatrist pulled up a lab stool and sat down beside

him. He said: `Hello Martin, old chap, how are you feeling?'

Baines cocked his large head to one side, and looked at

him incuriously. `Alright, doctor.'

`Now, Martin,' Taylor said. `We just want to check that

you're in good shape. We're going to give you a bit of a
booster shot, to make sure your medicine's working properly.
OK?'

Baines turned his head away. `I don't like injections.'
`You'll hardly feel a thing, I promise. I'll be very gentle. Just

slip your jacket off, old chap. That's the way. Now roll up
your sleeve, please.'

`I hate those needles.'
`I tell you what. Just let me put this strap round your arm,

so you won't move it accidentally. That way I can't possibly
hurt you. In fact we'll do the other arm as well, so you'll be
really still.' He looked at Miller. `Is the video running?'

Miller touched a switch on the camera, and nodded.
Baines sat impassive while Taylor tightened the straps

round his wrists, and pulled a tourniquet tight round his
upper arm. Freddy stood watching. Miller sensed that his

177

usual laid-back poise had been replaced by an uneasy
expectancy.

Taylor pulled on surgical gloves, and swabbed Baines's

forearm with alcohol. With a smooth, easy motion he pushed
a needle sheathed in plastic into a swollen vein. The big man
made a small sound, a whimper, then was silent. Taylor
withdrew the needle, leaving a cannula, a thin plastic tube,
embedded in the vein. It terminated in a connector, which he
taped to the skin of Baines's arm. He filled the syringes in
turn from separate vials and expelled surplus air from them,
not stopping to show the vials to Freddy. He connected the
first syringe, drew a curl of blood up into the saline solution it
contained, and slowly pressed its plunger to flush through the
cannula. He detached the syringe, replaced it with the second
one and delivered the contents into the vein. Then he looked
up and nodded.

Miller walked through the door into the computer lab and

murmured commands to a workstation. An image of Baines
appeared in the centre of the screen. One of the amoeba-like
polar diagrams, a phoboid, floated into view and positioned
itself next to the picture.

At first, Baines seemed indifferent. He continued to look

around the room, with little apparent interest, now and again
glancing at Taylor and Freddy as if they were acquaintances
he barely knew.

`How are you, Martin?' Taylor asked him.
`Alright, thank you,' the big man said. His voice was

distant, as if he were detached from the scene.

Taylor looked at his watch. `Stay here,' he said to Freddy.

He went into the computer lab.

178

On the screen the amoeba-like phoboid was restlessly

changing shape and colour.

`You've recorded the base-line?' Taylor asked Miller.
`Of course.'
`What was it?'
`No sign of delusional activity,' Miller said. `Something's

happening now, though. The medication level's down almost
to zero. And look.'

The amoeba had grown large and heavy as if pregnant.

Small pseudopods began to proliferate around its edge; one of
them grew and took on a threatening orange tinge, like the
glow of a forest fire at night.

`A delusional sub-system,' Miller said happily. `I'll patch it

through to the screen next door.' He looked up, intrigued.
`What does Baines say about it?'

But Taylor had already returned to the other room.

Baines seemed interested in his surroundings now, more

alert, and a little more wary.

`How you like that new medicine?' Freddy asked.
Baines smiled. `It feels good,' he said. `That's good stuff the

doc gave me. He should have let me have that earlier.'

`Why's that?' Freddy asked, as Taylor came back to join

them.

`You can see better,' Baines said.
`What can you see, Martin?' Taylor asked him. He was

watching Baines intently.

`The light, of course,' Baines sighed.
`The light?'
`The light, the light . . . he who knows the light of God

shall stand in His presence and be blessed. But he who knows

179

not the Lord, he shall lie with the whores of Babylon, and
with the evil-doers of Gomorrah, and shall reap the
whirlwind.' Baines tilted up his face to the surgical lamp that
shone on him like a sun. In its radiance, his worn, lined face
took on a certain craggy dignity, as if an inner power had been
released, and had transformed it.

`And who are the evil-doers, Martin?'
`Aaaaah.' A long sigh escaped Baines. `By their deeds shall

ye know them. By their deeds, and the deeds of their
offspring, the bastard offspring of Babylon. And by their love
for the filthiest whore of all of them. L . . i . . l . . i . . th.' The
name tore itself from his mouth. `I see her. I see her now.'
Frantically, he tried to free his hands from the straps, pushing
his feet so hard against the floor that the steel chair trembled.
The back of one hand compressed against the strap until a
great flap of skin tore loose, and Baines wrenched the hand
free. He stood up, tethered now only by his other wrist, his
eyes glaring. With a flailing arm he sent the workstation
crashing to the floor, and grabbed for Taylor's throat with
clawed fingers. As the psychiatrist jumped back, Baines
emitted a long, animal howl, and turned to undo the buckle of
the remaining strap.

Taylor snatched up the third syringe. `Hold him!' he

shouted to Freddy. The West Indian hurled himself at Baines,
pushed him down in the chair and began to repeat an
incantation. Feverishly, Taylor fought to attach the syringe,
managed to connect it, and emptied its contents into Baines's
vein.

In the computer room, the amoeba had become a fireball,

raging across the screen, its pseudopods burning and
threatening to merge into one another. Then in a while, it

180

began to subside, and to shrink into a pale placid globe, which
held steady as if radiating calm.

`Come on, Martin.' Taylor said. Baines was slumped

sideways, lolling in the chair like an enormous doll. Taylor
nodded to Freddy, and together they heaved his passive bulk
into the wheelchair. `You'll get him back to the Lodge?'
Taylor asked.

Freddy shot him a look of pure dislike, but he nodded and

took hold of the handles of the chair.

`He won't remember a thing.' Taylor said.
Miller had come from the computer room to watch. From

the expression on Taylor's face, he thought, it wouldn't have
been surprising if the psychiatrist had lit up and asked him
how it had been for him.

181

31~ Wildfire

Hudson wasn't happy about going on Clarissa's sales trip,

along with Global's Medical Director, Henry Richardson.
Sales weren't his scene: they required one to sound dynamic
and positive when asserting half-truths or worse. He was even
less pleased at having to sign the set of Federal Secrecy
Provisions which Ratzinowitz presented to him with a
knowing smile. It made Hudson antsy to put himself in the
hands of the Feds: you never knew how it might some day
rebound on you. But Clarissa was hell-bent on bringing
through this sales opportunity, whatever it was. All he could
get out of her was that a Federal agency was interested in the
Sheepdog technology, and they would learn more on their
journey. A contact, a Mr duCassis, had arranged a whistle-
stop tour for them.

They were collected from Global's HQ by a taciturn

middle-aged woman who drove an unmarked Ford sedan with
precision, slicing efficiently through the traffic, though never
exceeding the speed limits. She had insisted on taking charge
of their cellphones, to ensure they were switched off. She
would volunteer only that she was taking them to hangar
Sierra Delta Three.

It was at a small airstrip fifty miles south of the city, a

cavernous, echoing space, smelling of oil and tyre rubber.
They parked inside it, and their driver led them to a small jet
which stood waiting. Once on board, she buckled herself into
a seat behind the flight deck, and again lapsed into silence.

182

The little military jet taxied out to the runway, accelerated,

and hurled itself into the air like a fast-pitched ball. It climbed
out over the sea, and turned south west, pulling altitude
rapidly. To watchers on the ground it was soon a toy, then a
dot in the clear morning sky, and then it had vanished.

Hudson was exhilarated. In his Air Force days he'd ridden

shotgun in F15s. but since then, it had all been airline travel,
often in coach, for Global was mean-spirited. He stared
through the window at the coastline, perhaps a hundred miles
away. `Damn if you can't see the curve of the earth,' he
muttered to himself.

Clarissa permitted herself a small smile before returning to

her copy of the New Yorker.

In less than three hours, they touched down at another

isolated airfield outside Dallas. Evidently the Feds had a
collection of such out-of-the way places for their own use,
Hudson thought. There was only one other aircraft in sight, a
silver Learjet standing by itself on the rectangular apron by a
rusting hangar: Lamb had flown up from the Keys.

`Over there,' the driver said in her low-pitched voice,

pointing to a battered Chevy station wagon beside the hangar.
They clambered in, and with the same exactitude as before
she ferried them along the perimeter road, picked up a
freeway, and delivered them to a military hospital on the
outskirts of the city. Lamb, sitting next to Richardson in the
back seat, was unusually quiet.

A mild-spoken doctor greeted them. `I'm Dr Williams, the

attending physician. Follow me please.' His ID badge read
"Dr Kobayashi", Hudson noticed, which better matched his
oriental features. Security lapse.

183

The doctor conducted them through a labyrinth of

corridors to an isolation unit, where behind a sealed window
of thick glass a man lay in bed, under a green coverlet. He was
surrounded by machinery that breathed for him, and displayed
his vital signs on monitor screens. Hudson could see dark red
tears that had seeped from his eye-sockets. A nurse wearing a
kind of space-suit entered the room, stroked the tears away
with a surgical wipe, administered an injection and renewed a
plastic bag of blood which fed a tube in the patient's arm.

`Will he survive?' Mrs Bergson asked.
`For another day, maybe two, if the exsanguination doesn't

halt,' Dr Williams-Kobayashi said quietly. `It hasn't in any of
the other cases. It's remarkable he's lasted this long.'

Richardson was looking grave. `How many cases so far?'
`This is the twelfth we've treated here,'
`Have you profiled the bug?'
The doctor grimaced. `USAMRIID our Army research

institute thinks it's a modified filovirus. They've code-
named it Wildfire. The incubation time is around six weeks.
Right now they're looking for a suitable antiviral compound.'

`Do they have any candidates?'
`They've something that breaks its metabolic chain, but it's

only effective if you inject in the first 24 hours after infection.'
The doctor sighed. `The problem is, the patient is
asymptomatic throughout most of the incubation period, so
you don't know the bug has gotten to him. Unfortunately, he
becomes infectious two or three days before symptoms appear.
In other words, you can't tell who's caught it, or who they
could have infected, until it's too late.'

`What about a vaccine?' Richardson asked.
The doctor shrugged. `None available, and I don't have to

tell you, vaccines can take months to develop.'

184

`Then the answer is, treat the whole population with the

antiviral, as a prophylactic.'

Dr Williams-Kobayashi shook his head. `No use. It's

metabolized by the liver, and the anti-viral action's destroyed
within a few hours of injection. There's next to no chance it
will still be active in the body when it's needed - and even if
you could give it continuously to enough people, longer-term
it's toxic.'

Richardson looked shocked. `You're saying potentially one

hundred percent mortality - from a highly infectious agent,
which you can't detect in time to stop it spreading. In other
words, a lethal time bomb that you can't defuse.'

Hudson stared into the room where the man was lying.

`Where did this thing come from?'

The doctor looked at them carefully. `It might have

jumped species maybe from animal imports. Or it might
have been deliberate.'

`Meaning terrorism!' Richardson said.
`The USAMRIID guys are trying to decide. Either way,

we have to contain it if we're to avoid a devastating pandemic.
Right now, quarantine's the only hope.' He looked through
the glass at the man in the bed. `Too late for this poor guy,
I'm afraid.'

This was getting worse, Hudson thought. First the Feds

get into the act, now we're dealing with an unstoppable
terrorist virus. But Clarissa seemed remarkably calm.

`Henry, will you arrange to get the full profile of the virus?'

she asked Richardson.

`Of course.'
`Theo, do you have any questions?'
The investor had remained silent so far, and now he didn't

answer. He was looking pale. His eyes wide, he was staring
into the chamber where the patient lay.

185

`Are you alright?' the physician asked. `You're feeling ill?'
Lamb shook his head, and turned to walk out with them.

He didn't speak again till they were once more airborne.

With Lamb's Learjet following, the military jet ferried

them to Andrews Air Base outside DC. Nostalgia washed
over Hudson as they taxied past rows of fighter jets lined up
before huge, arched hangars. Beyond an expanse of blacktop,
he caught sight of something the size and shape of a sleek
blue-and-white whale. They were in the presence of Airforce
One. No doubt it was a coincidence, but it reinforced his
growing certainty that they were caught up in something too
big to be comfortable.

They were collected by the polite young driver of a black

sedan which had opaque windows. He dropped them at a
drab office building off Pennsylvania Avenue, where another
courteous man welcomed them laconically and led them
through a dingy lobby to an elevator. `Floor three,' he said
loudly, and the elevator plunged downwards.

Their guide brought them to a sparsely furnished meeting

room and seated them at a small conference table. As he left,
he said: `Please make yourselves comfortable. Agents Feldman
and duCassis will be here momentarily.'

Clarissa and Lamb exchanged glances. They knew way

more than they were telling him, Hudson thought. `Just what
are we getting into . . . ?' he started to ask, when the two
agents came in.

duCassis was slender, no taller than five-six. He moved

with economy as he sat down and looked expectantly at his
partner.

Feldman, who was shaped like a large pear, wore a summer

sport coat, and breathed with noticeable difficulty. He

186

extended his arm in a straight line to shake hands. `Mrs.
Bergson, good to meet with you again.' His tenor voice cut
through the stuffy air of the little room with authority. `Mr
Lamb, Dr Richardson. And you're Mr Hudson?' Feldman
wedged his bulk into a chair which wobbled perilously, and
wiped his forehead with a very clean white handkerchief.

Hudson stepped up his smile. `VP of Operations at Global.

Good to meet you.'

Agent duCassis smiled. Feldman didn't smile.
Hudson said: `And you're with?' CIA, he thought. Or

maybe NSA, the National Security Agency. The No Such
Agency.

`Let's just say we're a part of Homeland Security.' duCassis

said, `We don't care to be labelled. It wouldn't be in the
interests of the American people, OK?'

No name at all, Hudson thought. How much worse can

this get?

`Now, we're here to discuss Wildfire,' duCassis went on.
`You've seen its effects,' Feldman said.
`Worse than plague,' Richardson said grimly. `Airborne,

robust and virulent.'

`Far worse. The only way to beat this thing is to locate

infections and deliver the antiviral immediately. They
explained that in Dallas?'

Richardson nodded.
Feldman looked at him flinty-eyed. `You signed Federal

Provisions. You understand we're talking national security?
No word of this meeting leaves here - unless you want to
vacation for the longest time at Uncle Sam's expense.'

They murmured agreement.
duCassis said: `Then here's the situation. One of the

drivers in the Presidential motorcade that visited Amarillo
had exposure to the bug. He may have gotten close to the

187

President. We have to protect the Administration from this
outbreak.'

`We have to inoculate everyone who matters,' Feldman

said. `We start with the President and the people closest to
him.'

`Inoculate?' Hudson said, confused. `But the doctor . . . he

said we don't have a vaccine.'

`Sure we do,' Feldman said. `Not a traditional one, is all.

We're going to inoculate with Sheepdog implants. The
product's adaptable for a whole range of medical needs, we
saw that at Medyx, right? And your organisation has the
infrastructure the treatment centers as well as the
Sheepdog technology. You're going to handle first-line
monitoring, deliver rapid-response treatment, and report to
us, hourly if need be, till we're sure this thing's no danger.'

`And we need total quality assurance,' duCassis continued.

`One, the implant mustn't harm the President in any way.
Two, it has to deliver the data without a hitch, one hundred
percent accurate and reliable.'

`You'll be dependent on the telcos,' Hudson said.
`Forget it,' Feldman said. `We have data networks that

don't go wrong.'

For the first time since their visit to the intensive care unit,

Lamb's energy seemed to return. He sat up, a gleam in his
eyes. `How many inoculations, how fast?'

`We're still getting precise numbers,' duCassis told him.

`Executive branch has over three million staff, but that
includes the grunts. Pentagon has around 25,000. All up,
maybe twenty thousand people to process in the first wave, a
quarter million second wave. The President stays home and
out of circulation till we've quenched all risk. We start with
the key individuals in Government twenty thousand in the
first two days, 100,000 by end of the first week. Then the

188

remainder. You've six weeks, maximum, before the bug breaks
out of its cage.'

`Six weeks!' Lamb was leaning forward now, his

concentration intense. `Of course, we can adapt the system for
Wildfire, but we'll have to commit substantial resource, there
will be very substantial costs . . . '

`It's do-able,' duCassis said. `Back in 1976, the Brazilians

inoculated over 3 million people against a meningitis
epidemic, in five days.'

`Yes, but that was presumably a simple jab, with no

technical development needed.' Lamb became thoughtful.
`And what if Wildfire really spreads?'

`I was getting to that,' duCassis said, `We want you ready

with Plan B.'

`And what is that?'
`Implant the entire nation.'
Mrs Bergson sat in luxurious silence. Her skin had taken

on the subtle glow that can follow the act of love. Hudson
knew that financial spreadsheets were unrolling behind her
eyes.

Lamb's eyes were bright. `I imagine a satisfactory deal can

be agreed.'

`That's fine,' Hudson said. He exchanged glances with

Richardson. It would be absolutely fine, he thought - if only
fucking Sheepdog worked.

They talked for another hour before Mrs Bergson said: `If I

can call the office from here? I'll have them prepare a first-
draft contract.'

`Good.' Feldman mopped his forehead. `Now, about QA -

you guys get the first implants. That way we'll know we can
trust the President's life to this technology of yours.'

189

Leaving the office, Hudson got a moment alone with

Lamb.

`I'd like to call you.'
`Clarissa has my number.'
`No, this is kind of personal.'
The investor studied him. `Very well. Here's my card.'
Hudson had just time to pocket it before Clarissa caught

up with them. `We'll see you in Boston in three days' time,'
she told Lamb.

Travelling home on the freeway, piloted by the taciturn

woman driver, Clarissa was high on salvation.

`I knew our problems were short-term,' she said. `It was

obvious.'

Hudson looked at her sceptically. `The problems aren't

over. We still have to make the goddamn technology work.'

`The people in India will do that. Put them on double

overtime. Have them bring in more programmers, never mind
what Iyla says. In fact, bring her team here, all of them, so we
can stand over them and make sure they get it done.'

`Clarissa, you know as well as I do, this isn't like hiring

bricklayers,' Hudson said. `We should bring Peter Miller back.
When he's motivated, his output's phenomenal - and he
knows the product. In this situation he's worth twenty
ordinary programmers.'

`We've been through that,' Clarissa said. `He isn't

motivated, he doesn't believe in the product, and I don't want
to hear his name again.'

As Lamb returned to the Keys, his Learjet lifting into a

high arc over the sea, he was feeling a mixture of elation and

190

profound unease. The scale of the proposed Federal contract
meant that he was looking at the finest investment
opportunity he'd ever engineered. His refusal to take his
accountants' advice to stay away from Global HealthCare had
been the correct move. It proved he still had what it takes,
could pick the outside bet that would pay off superbly.

But he was afraid, too, and this time it wasn't the take-off

that had unsettled him. The sight of the patient dying in the
isolation unit at Dallas had dragged a different image out
from the shadows. He knew now that his flashbacks were real,
that he had witnessed his family's escape from Hungary, had
seen things that his mind had obligingly buried. The child
lying next to him and his parents, as they hid from the
invaders in a barn. The sheen of fever, bloody excrement
staining the straw, the red-brown drops that had splashed
onto his own shirt-sleeve, the rasping breath that became a
rattle. The murmured words from one of the refugees, a
medical student: `Tifusz! Mikroorganizmus okozza.' Typhoid.
The work of a micro-organism.

Now with Sheepdog he was dealing with a microscopic

tyrant even more frightening than the one that had haunted
his unconscious.

191

32~ Dr Oliver

Now that the broadsheets had broken the story, it was

CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a
well-respected arm of the Department of Health and Human
Services, that took the heat. CDC representatives issued news
bulletins and held media conferences. They announced the
existence of the disease, confirmed that it was of unknown
origin, but played down its severity and gave assurances that
the situation was under control. Yes, there had been some
cases of what might prove to be an unusual virus, but they had
been contained, and the outbreak was expected to die out.
The nature of the bug was being determined at CDC's
Atlanta labs. No-one need be concerned. New methods to
deal with any recurrence were already in hand.

On TV, the bulletins were delivered by Dr Dean Oliver, a

young physician who was a movie-star picture of perfect
health. Relaxed and obviously in complete command of his
subject, he had an easy smile and a bedside manner which
would have commanded a fortune in private practice. It was
impossible to watch Dr Oliver on TV and feel that anything
he was involved with could turn out badly: he gave medical
science the aura of an invincible shield. He was also a
specialist in handling awkward questions.

A caller to a TV phone-in, a sharp-voiced woman named

Rachel, asked for more detail. The newspaper and television
reports really said nothing, she complained. Earlier
occurrences of bird-flu, hepatitis C and mad-cow disease had

192

resulted in detailed explanations and analyses, widely featured
in news-print and on air. Were the authorities hiding
something this time?

Dr Oliver deployed his laid-back, beautiful smile. `You

know Rachel,' he said, `we all have worries. This modern
world puts a lot of pressure on us, and sometimes our worries
latch onto to outside things that we get out of proportion. I
understand that, and so I don't want you to take it the wrong
way when I say that you're asking the wrong question. What
you should be asking is: why is this minor bug getting so
much attention? And the answer is - that ever since we set up
the procedures which dealt so successfully with those earlier
problems, why, we take no chances. So maybe we overstep the
mark a little in issuing bulletins to keep the public informed,
even when there's nothing to tell or to lose sleep about.'

The beautiful smile had its effect. `Of course, Dean, I

understand what you're saying,' the woman said. `But then
why . . . '

`I'm so sorry, Rachel,' the show's host said. `we're almost

out of time. We've just time to squeeze in one more caller.
Bobby, in Tucson, are you there?

Off-the-record briefings to the media were a different

matter. Federal spokespersons spelled out that panic must be
avoided at all costs. If it began before the disease was fully
contained and controlled, it could severely damage the
economy. It could be the end of the American Dream - the
very effect terrorists would desire. The spokespersons didn't
state explicitly that the disease was a terrorist attack, nor did
they suggest that it might be difficult to control. But they did
explain the provisions for official censorship. The story must
be carefully managed for public consumption.

193

No doubt as a result, it soon after fell into the background,

and then disappeared.

The time of incubation.

194

33~ Celebration

Twenty-four hours had passed since the experiment on

Baines, and Peter Miller had twice picked up the phone to
call Sarah, then put it down before it could ring. He wanted
to tell her she was safe. Alright, he wanted to see her very
much. And yet his old unease was back. Guilt, and
presentiments of being shut in. For no apparent reason,
memories of the house he'd lived in as a child floated
uninvited into his mind.

Finally he called her.
`There's no way I'm coming back to St Evelyn's,' she told

him.

`If you want proof, you'd best come here.'

He was several minutes late. The Falcon was almost

empty, with just a few regulars stolidly watching a soccer
match on television. The temperature outside had fallen and a
mock coal fire burned in the grate. Sarah was sitting by herself
at a table at the back of the room, wearing her outdoor coat.
She'd refused to meet him in the hospital: this was as near to
it as she was prepared to go.

She looked at her watch as he got to the table. `I'd about

given you up.'

`I was putting this together.' He dropped the folder he was

carrying onto the table. `Let's get a drink.'

195

He went over to the bar, and returned with the bartender

following him, carrying glasses and a bottle of champagne in
an ice-bucket. `I thought we'd celebrate.' He filled the tulip
glasses, pouring the cold liquid so that it reached precisely to
the etched calibration lines.

`Celebrate what?'
`The success of Tracks, my new system.'
`I'm glad you're so confident.' Sarah took a cautious sip

from her glass. She stared at the folder. `Is that the proof?'

`Yes. Rafe even checked that it works properly in the

Tube.' He pulled out a batch of printout and handed it to her.

She leafed through the pages without enthusiasm, then

handed them back. `You know what people say: lies, damn lies
and statistics. Gresham was forever producing statistics.
Anyone can make up this stuff.'

`You hardly read it.'
`You've brought me here for nothing.'
`I have real proof if you want,' he said. `You may not like it,

though.'

`Try me.'
`It's in the computer room. Up on the twelfth.'
`I'm not going near that mad-house.'
`Your choice.' He poured himself some more champagne.
She'd been right the first time about Peter Miller, Sarah

realized. He was only interested in his personal obsessions.
She felt tears threatening. This wasn't fair, it was a classic
double-bind. She could head back to the station, wait around
in the cold for the train, make the tedious trek home, and
from then on live out sleepless nights waiting for Baines to
find her. Or she could go back inside the one place in the
world she never wanted even to see again.

`I'm going home,' she said. But she didn't get up from her

chair. Baines was incurable, that was certain. Was it just

196

possible that Peter Miller had a cure for sleepless nights? She
looked at him angrily. `How long would it take?'

`A half hour. Twenty minutes, maybe.'
`Fifteen minutes,' she said. `No more.'
`Alright.' He refilled their drinks. `After we finish this.'
Soon he poured two final half-measures, still exactly equal.

When they'd emptied the glasses he led her to the door.

She kept pace with him as they as they walked towards St

Evelyn's, turning up the collar of her coat against a cool wind.
As they neared the hospital a black Audi coupé came towards
them, the driver turning his head to stare at them.

`Gresham,' Sarah said.
Miller squinted after the car. `He's going home early.'
She shivered as they passed through the wrought-iron

gates and made their way across the lawns, into the dim foyer
of the tower block, where Miller summoned the lift. As it
climbed, she stood very close to him, not wanting to look into
the mirrors on its wall, not wanting to think about where she
was.

At the lab on the twelfth floor he pulled the door closed

behind them. He turned to the workstation, and keyed in
commands.

The figure of a woman appeared on screen, a blonde in a

silver suit. `Hi Peter,' she said. `What's new?'

For a moment Sarah forgot her fears. `One of your avatars?

She's pretty, I'll say that.'

Peter Miller glanced at the figure, and smiled. `Pause, Lee-

Ann.'

197

`She has a name?' Sarah moved nearer and inspected Lee-

Ann, then gave Miller a sideways look. `Am I imagining it, or
does she look like me?'

`You're imagining it. She's no-one important. Now, let me

show you how Tracks protects people.'

Sarah laughed without humour. `I'm sure it's good at

protecting avatars. Unfortunately I'm flesh and blood.'

`Wait and see,' Miller said. `Go to replay mode, Lee-Ann.'

As the screen cleared, he typed again. Names, numbers, and
the amoeba-like phoboids flickered across the screen. Sarah
stood behind him leaning forward to see better. She was close
enough that he could feel the warmth from her body.

He hit a final key, and suddenly Baines stared out from the

screen, strapped into the chair in the room where Taylor had
performed his experiment. Sarah jumped back as if she'd
received an electric shock.

`Relax,' Miller said. `It's OK.'
The video recording began to unroll. The needle slid into

Baines's arm, the syringe delivered its contents. He continued
to look indifferent, unaffected by the procedure, but within
moments red alert messages flared on screen. The phoboid
appeared, performing its agitated dance. A printer whirred,
and a loud, wailing alarm started up in the confined space of
the little room.

Sarah put her hands over her ears. `Shut it down!'
He muted the sound. `No-one's going to miss that.'
She shook her head stubbornly. `Demonstrations are one

thing. What if there's a real threat?'

`This is real,' Miller said. `Watch.'
As minutes ticked by the red messages on screen became

more frantic, but still Baines showed no interest. Then he
looked up.

`You can see better,' he said.

198

`What can you see, Martin?' Taylor's voice asked.
`The light, of course,' Baines sighed.
`The light?'
`The light, the light . . . He who knows the light of God

shall stand in His presence . . . '

Sarah was trembling violently. `Please turn it off,' she said

in a low voice. `He terrifies me.'

Miller killed the video. `Did you see Tracks picking up the

changes before he showed any outward signs? Gresham gave
him a fast-acting antagonist drug. In real life, we'd get the
warning hours in advance. You can stop looking over your
shoulder. You're safe.'

She searched his face. `He really can't get to me?'
`The tracking has him as tight as handcuffs. I said I'd take

care of you.'

It was alright, after all he hadn't been making it up, she

knew by the way he spoke. Sarah began to cry quietly.

`Come on, let's get out of here,' he said. `Do you want to

go back to the Falcon? We can have another drink'

She shook her head mutely.
`Well, there you are, it's not just for avatars.'
Abruptly she crooked her arm round his neck, and hugged

him.

`Hey!' He pushed her away.
`What's the matter?'
`Nothing,'
`I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . .'
`It's OK.'
He was keeping his distance, acting rather oddly, Sarah

thought, as if he were unsure of himself.

`Come on, let's go,' he said. He typed a command on the

workstation, and the virtual person turned, for a moment

199

remained poised as if on a catwalk, then walked away
elegantly, towards the vanishing point.

Sarah smiled. `Her face might look like mine, but she

hardly moves like me.'

Miller grinned as if she'd reminded him of something.

`Oh, I wouldn't say that. Mind you, a body's a body. They all
have similar dynamics.'

`Well, I suppose if avatars are what you're partial to - I've

heard of kinky relationships, but really . . . ' Sarah began to
laugh.

`That's not what I meant,' he said.
Sarah was feeling something coming unlocked that had

been pent up for a long time during her fearful hiding from
Baines. A huge release of tension was flooding through her.
Maybe Peter Miller was an odd-ball, but he wasn't a fake or a
dubious self-promoter on the make, like Gresham Taylor. He
was for real, and his ability was real, and if he was obsessed,
nevertheless he could work magic. The nightmare was over.

She looked at the avatar, still waiting on-screen, and then

at him. `What does she have on under that gorgeous suit?'

`Nothing. I mean, I don't know.'
`Really?'
`Yes.'
`I don't believe you.' She moved close and kissed him, a

kiss that lasted several long seconds.

`You don't know what you're getting into,' Miller said.
`I don't care.'
He sighed. `Things won't be how you imagine.'
`You don't know what I'm imagining.' Sarah leaned

forward and spoke in his ear.

He looked surprised, then grinned. `Really? That's why Mr

Baines thinks you're a demoness?'

200

At his flat, Miller stood at the window, looking out at the

street below.

Sarah came up behind him. `What does she wear under that

suit?'

He reached up to close the curtains. `I told you, I don't

know.'

`Is it anything like this?'
He turned to face her, and drew a sudden breath. `Are you

sure?'

`Try me.'
Suddenly it was becoming urgent, it wouldn't wait.
She didn't live behind mirrors. She wasn't Lee-Ann, or

some passing encounter that he didn't really want. She was
real, her warmth, the hospitality of her body, she was his.

Afterwards, as she drifted off gratefully into sleep, Sarah

thought that everyone knew that one-night stands were
stupid, meaningless at best, real trouble at worst. Of course
there had been the champagne, rather a lot of it. And she'd
lived so long in terror of Baines . . . and after so long, this had
felt so nice, as if Peter were trying to find out who he was.
Who the two of them were. Perhaps it was more than a one-
night stand . . .

Miller woke late. Light was filtering through the curtains.
Curled next to him, Sarah was breathing quietly. He

pressed his face into her hair. It smelled as good as he'd
imagined, that time in the Falcon.

Half asleep, she moved closer and murmured something he

didn't catch.

201

`What?' He put his ear close to hear what she was saying.
`Reckon I'd qualify as a demoness?'
`In the first league.'
His fingers traced the line of her neck. Just above her

shoulder they found the raised ridge of a scar.

`What's this?'
She yawned, more awake now. `From the trials. We had

temporary implants.'

`Oh yes, I remember, Taylor said that. Which reminds

me.' Miller swung his legs out of bed, picked up the laptop
from the floor, and switched it on.

`Hey,' she said drowsily. `What are you doing?'
`I want to check something.'
`No, come back here.'
He looked at the screen, then back at her lying under the

covers. He ought to be at work now, putting the finishing
touches to Tracks.

He set the laptop down carefully, and went back to bed.

He got to the lab in the early afternoon, sat down at a

workstation, and stretched lazily: `Lee-Ann!'

`Hi, Peter,' Lee-Ann said as she materialized on screen.

`How are you today?'

`Pretty good,' he sighed. `How about some music?'
As the last chorus sounded, the door opened and Simeon

came in. He watched Lee-Ann bow her head gracefully. `A
charming lady.'

`An old friend.'
`What was the tune? I know it from somewhere.'
Miller smiled. `It's called "Till the real thing comes along."'

202

34~ Status

In Boston, Clarissa Bergson sat alone in her office, her eyes

fixed on the screen of the video link. Beyond the panoramic
window it was dark, only the silent trace of an airliner over the
bay breaking the blackness. On-screen, Iyla, elegant in a dark
blue silk tunic, looked back at her enquiringly.

Mrs Bergson drew a breath. `Iyla, I regret the need to call

you at home, but there's a change of plan. We must have
immediate delivery. It's urgent.'

The Indian woman looked apologetic. `Unfortunately

Clarissa, that's impossible. I'm afraid the news isn't good.
We've found a whole collection of new problems. Some
software components will have to be redesigned.'

`Out of the question,' Mrs Bergson said, a hard edge in her

voice now. `You assured me you were on target.'

`Forgive me, Clarissa, I did not say that. I said that we

were exerting best endeavours, according to our contract. We
took over the hasty design that the software house in Los
Angeles threw together, and we're paying the price. More
haste, less speed, it's an old proverb, is it not?'

Mrs Bergson uttered a sigh that was more like a hiss. `You

haven't heard me. Hire twenty of the best programmers if you
need them. Hire a hundred. I don't care what it costs.'

`Clarissa, it takes months to bring a new programmer up to

full speed. To add more hands would actually slow us down.'

Mrs Bergson's nails clicked against the polished wood of

her desk. `If you persist in this, I can assure you by the time

203

our lawyers have finished with you, there'll be nothing left of
you or your company. Now, when can you deliver the
product? It doesn't have to be final, the most basic functions
will do, as long as it has the virus capability we specified.'

`There is never a final product in software,' Iyla said. `It is

always changing, always evolving. But if you're asking me
when we expect to have a viable product to install at beta sites,
then the best I can offer is ten to twelve weeks from now,
possibly longer.'

`No! I want it this month, and you'll deliver it. You'll

provide a twice-daily report till it's done, direct to myself,
copy to Ben Hudson.'

Clarissa's hand trembled as she reached for the remote.

She clicked it and the video link died.

She checked the slender disc of her wrist-watch, picked up

the phone and called Ben Hudson. But the number was
engaged, and she dropped the phone back on its cradle. She'd
get a night's sleep, and perhaps in the morning things would
go better. She'd get together with Hudson and discuss
whether it would really help to bring back the miserable
creature Miller - who for some incomprehensible reason,
everyone seemed to favour - and if so, how they could tempt
him to return. There had to be a way through this wood.

204

35~ News for Taylor

Since the successful experiment on Martin Baines,

Gresham Taylor had been in high spirits. The experiment had
been deeply satisfying, had opened out brilliant possibilities.
What a master stroke to have hired Peter Miller! The
programmer had even incorporated the extra variables that
Jeremy Hart had demanded, in no time at all.

Taylor had submitted a report about the improved system

to the Department of Health. There was nothing now that
Hart and his gang of petty bureaucrats could do to obstruct
Semper. After this success, they would surely fund the
Institute of e-Psychiatry, and with himself as Director, it
would be superb. He'd keep the most profound topics for
himself and Miller . . . and his personal research assistant.
Sarah would return to join the team - she wouldn't be able to
resist the intellectual fascination. They'd form a bond . . . it
would mean working together after hours . . .

Drumming his fingers on his desk, he turned over the next

letter in the stack of incoming mail that his secretary had
prepared for him to read.

Dear Gresham,
Thank you for submitting your latest Progress Report on

the SEMPER project, for review by the Frontier Information
Technology Subcommittee.

Unfortunately, I have to advise you that as part of the

current on-going Departmental re-organisation, the current

205

Subcommittee will cease to exist from the end of this month.
A new Steering Committee is to be formed which will have
overall responsibility for those projects deemed suitable for
`frontier' funding, and it is likely that SEMPER will then fall
under the aegis of one of a number of new subcommittees to
be charged with the formulation of strategy within the context
of National Health Service technological initiatives.

A definitive review of your Report therefore will not be

possible until these revised organisational structures are fully
implemented. You will appreciate that the driving force
behind the reorganisation is the need to contain healthcare
costs while optimising outcomes and cost-effectiveness.
Developmental initiatives which have potential on-going
revenue implications will be subject to comprehensive cost-
benefit review, and in a number of cases, may be scheduled for
termination.

Regrettably, I cannot be sanguine that funding for

SEMPER or for your proposed Institute of e-Psychiatry, will
continue as previously envisaged. This uncertainty is an
inevitable consequence of cost over-runs within the Service as
a whole.

It is my duty to remind you that should SEMPER be

terminated, intellectual property rights will continue to reside
with the Crown, and all copies of software and documentation
should then be returned to this Department.

The Secretary of State has asked me to convey his thanks

for the dedicated work your group has contributed, and his
regret that a more rapid decision is not possible at the present
time. I should like to add my own appreciation of the skill and
enthusiasm you and your co-workers have exhibited, and to
say what a pleasure it has been to work with you.

I very much hope that the opportunity will arise to work

with you again in the future.

206

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy Hart
Assistant Under-Secretary for Health

`I want to speak to Mr Hart.'
`Who's calling, please?'
`This is Dr Gresham Taylor.'
`One moment please.'
Pause.
`Mr Hart is in a meeting. Would you like his voice-mail?'
`No. Tell him it's urgent.'
Pause.
`Mr Hart says he'll try to return your call later.'
`Please tell Mr Hart that if he won't speak to me right

now, I'll be writing to the Public Accounts Committee with a
detailed statement of the money your organisation has thrown
away.'

`One moment please.'
A long pause.
`Jeremy Hart here.'
`This is Gresham Taylor.'
`Good morning, Gresham. You've received my letter?'
`Why do you suppose I'm calling? What are you people

playing at? We've sweated our guts out because of the
promises you made.'

`Gresham, I know this must have come as a shock. We're

all in shock as a result of these organisational changes. In your
case, it's seen as a particular problem that we're so near the
election with nothing to show for the work so far.'

207

`Nothing? What do you mean, nothing? Have you read the

report? The technology's a complete success. It's superb!'

`Conceivably. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the

beholder. But in any case, Gresham, my team no longer has
responsibility for Semper.'

Silence.
`You won't get away with this. Before I've finished, the

Public Accounts Committee will roast you and the Secretary
of State alive.'

`I can't recommend you take that line, Gresham.'
`I don't care what you recommend.'
`Gresham, it would be unwise to raise matters that might

lead to questions concerning certain of your patients.'

`What do you mean?'
`Mr Baines? I think that was the name. He seems to be of

particular interest to the police.'

A longer silence.
`There is a Baines among our patients. But he's not in the

trial. At least, not any longer.'

`That may be. Still, for our part, we would sooner that you

didn't have the inconvenience of an official enquiry into how
his case was managed, and especially why such a dangerous
person was allowed out on day release, when you knew the
monitoring wasn't reliable. But if you insist on forcing the
issue, so be it. It will be yourself who'll be the focus of
attention. I imagine the General Medical Council will be
interested, among others.'

`You'll pay for this. It's dishonest, it's disgraceful. It's

turning down a brilliant development.'

`I'd recommend you think most carefully about possible

consequences, Gresham. I'd advise you to forget about
Semper. Between ourselves, it's finished. Now I really must
get back to my meeting.'

208

`I suppose there's one consolation. If you're shutting down

so many projects, you won't have anything left to do, will you?
With any luck, you'll be out of a job.'

A shocked silence. `Oh goodness no. We have at least a

dozen projects to close down in an orderly manner. That's a
major administrative task. We're recruiting extra staff.'

`Rot in hell,' Taylor shouted, as he banged the phone into

its cradle.

209

36~ Lambada

Lamb was in the shower when the phone on the marble

wall of the bathroom began to ring. Drenched in expensive,
aromatic lather, he shouted for Julia to take the call.

`Alright,' she yelled back. `And hurry up. We should have

left by now.'

It was only as they were leaving the penthouse that she told

him who'd called. `Ben Hudson,' she said, pulling her velvet
wrap around her shoulders, as they stepped into the elevator.

`Why didn't you tell me?'
`In case you've forgotten, we're going out for the evening.'
Lamb frowned. `Did he say what it was about?'
`He said it's to do with the virus application. He asked that

you call and speak to him directly, and not to Clarissa. He
seemed rather anxious about that.'

`I'll call him now.'
`No, you won't. We're going out.'
In the underground parking lot, Fusillo was waiting, the

limo's motor idling sweetly. They sank into the cushioned rear
seat. The limo moved smoothly up the ramp, the security gate
lifted, and they cruised out into the neon Manhattan evening.

Feeling relaxed, Lamb watched the traffic ease by as they

rolled through a neighborhood of select brownstones. There

210

was plenty of reason for celebration, he thought. The
projected revenues from an impeccable trade debtor the
Federal Government were going to propel him into the
ultimate financial club he coveted. Add together the profits to
be expected from his investments in Global, Xiu, and the
insurers, and he'd qualify for membership several times over.
How satisfying that his instinct was still infallible!

Another oppressive weight had lifted from his mind too.

Seeing what the Wildfire virus did to human flesh had
swamped him with horror. He'd immediately made plans to
leave town, to be far out of the way where the bug couldn't get
him, but who could say where the wind might carry it? Well,
those worries were past now. Clarissa had made a fuss, and
tried to delay the procedure, but he'd insisted, and now he had
his own Sheepdog implant, which was being specially
monitored by Global's software people. A second implant was
being prepared for Julia, and the upgrades to provide Wildfire
detection were promised any day now, before the virus could
strike.

He rapped on the glass panel, and retrieved his cellphone

from Fusillo. He entered the implant's activation code into
the phone and selected full GuardDog mode before handing
it back. Now, so long as Fusillo and the phone stayed in
range, he was secure, protected by an electronic warning
system. He felt energy surge through him. He was fit, healthy,
exceedingly wealthy and ready to enjoy life to the hilt. And
the person to help him do so was Julia, that free spirit beside
him, with her sloe eyes and her effortless sense of rhythm.

The key-note of the Tania Club in upper Manhattan was

discretion. The bouncers or door-hosts, as the Tania termed

211

them could spot and repel gossip columnists and hopeful
media stringers at a thousand paces. No inimical observer
would recognize them, as the maître d' seated them in their
usual comfortable alcove. They consulted the menu, and for
once, Lamb did not trouble to use his calculator before
ordering. After a sip or two of their drinks, they stepped onto
the dimly lit dance floor.

A drum began to throb, and soon they were into a salsa

routine. Julia stepped away from Lamb, then turned and
moved back towards him, passing so close he breathed her
perfume. Oh, she certainly could move. He spun round to
face her, looking into the cleft her neckline revealed. Keeping
up with her, following the beat, why he was hardly out of
breath. The gym and Dr Chen's clinic had paid off.

As he pivoted again, ready to wrap an arm around her

waist, he caught sight of Fusillo hopping about at the edge of
the floor. In the dim rose light of the band-stand, the man
was waving the cellphone, making clumsy pointing gestures at
it. What the hell was it this time? Fusillo knew perfectly well
he had to stay out of the way, field any calls, if necessary say
the boss was in conference. Lamb gestured angrily to shoo
him away. But instead Fusillo again stabbed his thick
forefinger at the phone, rolling his eyes and grimacing. A
couple of the musicians were eyeing him curiously. Now the
maître d' had noticed, and was summoning a muscular door
host from the shadows.

`Honey,' Lamb murmured, as Julia circled him, `excuse me

for just one moment?' She shot him an irritated look, but
went on dancing, swaying her way towards the band.

He strode over to the minder. `What are you doing here?'

he hissed.

Fusillo brandished the phone at him. `They say won't wait.

They say life and death.'

212

God damn! It had to be the action against Goldman's. The

idiot lawyers had screwed up again. This time he'd fire them
for sure. He grabbed the phone and walked into the bar.
`Lamb.'

He listened, and turned extremely pale. `I understand,' he

whispered, and handed the phone back to Fusillo. He looked
around the bar, at its amber lighting, its shelves of rare malts
and fine wines, the bartender in his tuxedo. There was a pink
retro chaise longue by the wall. He went to it and lay down.
Through the opaque double glazing of the narrow windows,
outdoing the music from the dance floor, there came the rattle
of helicopter blades cutting the air.

An hour later, Lamb raised his head and blinked groggily

at the white-coated man who sat at the foot of his hospital
bed. `You saved me! I'm so grateful.'

`Hardly a case for gratitude,' Dr Coney said. `There was

nothing wrong with you - apart from total panic, that is.
Tranquilizers fixed that.'

`I had a heart attack. At least I was going to. The

Sheepdog system - the Global people diagnosed it. You saved
my life.'

Dr Coney continued to look at him, saying nothing.
`What's the matter?' Lamb asked. `Am I very sick? Don't

say I'm still in danger.'

`What do you want me to say? Your life wasn't in danger.

You weren't about to have a heart attack. Your heart's as
sound as a carthorse's.'

`Look,' Lamb said. `I understand you're the specialist, you

know what you're doing. But the Global people also know
what they're doing. I know they do. I had my people check
them out. I've invested in them. They must be right.'

213

`You invested?' Dr Coney regarded him stonily. `Well, you

may not be in intensive care, but your finances soon will be.'

`What are you saying?'
`I'm saying the people at Global are high-class thieves.'
`Forget financial intensive care,' Lamb said. `My people

provide for contingencies. But we checked out their
technology. I've seen it working.'

`I'm sorry to have to break this to you,' Dr Coney said. `But

what they told you you saw, what you think you saw, and
what you actually saw, these things are not necessarily the
same things. If you follow me.'

`Sheepdog saved one of Global's employees, a man called

Bernard Brandt.'

Dr Coney sighed. `Ah, Mr Brandt. Poor man, he came in

again just a few days ago, for the second time. He was doing
well, and then for some reason we really don't understand, he
seemed to lose heart - you should excuse the expression. This
time Global gave us even less warning. He passed away
yesterday.' He looked at Lamb with concern. `Are you feeling
OK? You don't look so good.'

`Are you telling me,' Lamb said, `that after all I've done to

make sure I get the benefit of this technology which I need
you're telling me it doesn't work?

`I'd like to tell you I'm not telling you that,' Dr Coney said.

`But sadly, I am.'

Lamb was suddenly assailed by the vision he'd seen as the

plane lost altitude over the desert the thing he dreaded, that
Sheepdog was supposed to defend against. And now his
defence was taken away. He pushed back the covers. `I've
made a dreadful mistake.'

`It happens.'
`Yes,' Lamb said. `It does. But mistakes exist to be

corrected.'

214

There might still be a chance. What was there to lose?

215

37~ A Phone Call from Boston

Back at the penthouse, recovered from his fright and

thinking it through, Theodore Lamb decided that after all, his
instinct had been as accurate as ever. It had told him correctly
that micro-organisms would be the most important market
for Sheepdog. Even his doubts about Clarissa Bergson's
honesty had been right, he just hadn't realized the depths of
the wretched woman's duplicity. He'd recently called Ben
Hudson, and learned what the VP had wanted to tell him
about the state of the product and the importance of Peter
Miller - and sure enough, his unconscious had rung a bell
when he'd first seen the programmer, too.

Only fools failed to arrange a back-up plan, and he was

preparing to go under cover till the dreadful Wildfire plague
burned itself out - if it ever did. But there was still a chance
that Sheepdog could be made effective against the scourge. If
he could pull that off, he would not only keep himself and
Julia safe and incidentally, the nation he would achieve a
great financial triumph. Against all the odds. In face of all the
doubters.

`Find out where Peter Miller is,' he told Julia. `Get his

phone numbers, who he's working for, what they are working
on. There's a woman at Global who probably knows. Her
name's Lee-Ann, I recall.'

It didn't take Julia very long.

216

Miller had been playing HyperZorg, passing the time after

Taylor, in an unusually surly mood, had cancelled a meeting.
Now, bored with the game, he was tuning Tracks for even
better performance. He'd dimmed the lights, and was working
in the glow from a desk lamp, when the phone rang.

`Mr Miller?'
`Yes. Who's this?'
The voice that answered was precise, with a slight

European inflection. `My name is Theodore Lamb. You
might remember me. We met when you helped demonstrate
the Sheepdog system at Global HealthCare.'

With the phone propped against his ear, Miller kept

typing. `I remember you.'

`There's a proposition I'd like to discuss.'
`Oh?'
`You see,' Lamb said, and now an intensity entered his

voice, `I've invested in the Sheepdog system. It appears that I
was misled. The system is defective. It also appears that you
may be able to correct the problems. The system has to be
adapted to a new disease. It's a matter of great urgency.'

`I could have told you Sheepdog's a disaster,' Miller said. `I

nearly said so at the demonstration.'

`Then why didn't you? Apparently you were planning to

leave anyway. What difference would it have made to you?'

`I was working on something much better,' Miller said. `I

thought they'd let me continue. I left because they broke their
word.'

`But you know how to make Sheepdog work properly,

how to add to its functions, isn't that so? How long might
that take? I'll pay handsomely.'

Miller laughed. `If you knew how Sheepdog's constructed

or rather, thrown together you'd realize it can't be fixed.'

217

Lamb's voice became anxious. `Mr Miller, I can assure you

this is the most important question you'll ever be asked.
You're saying there's absolutely no cure for the problems?'

Eyeing the code on the screen, Miller said: `I didn't say

that.'

`Then there is a cure? What is it? This is very, very urgent.'
`I have a software package that would do what you want.'
`How do I know it would work?'
`It's working here. It's operational.'
A softness came into Lamb's voice, a predatory sureness.

`Then it can be available. For enough money, it can be
licensed to a third party.'

`Not to Global HealthCare,' Miller said.
`Any arrangement will be with myself personally,' Lamb

said hastily. `I can make you rich extremely rich. I can make
sure you're recognized. Your software can fulfil one of the
oldest dreams. The world will thank you.'

`For what?'
`For making it possible to live for a very long time. Perhaps

for ever.'

`An interesting idea,' Miller said. `As a matter of fact I

believe computers could achieve that - someday. With enough
computing power you can do absolutely anything you want.
The problem is, I've heard a spiel like that before, from a guy
called Ben Hudson. I know Global's hype when I hear it. So I
appreciate the call, but there's no way I'd get involved.'

`Please listen to me,' Lamb said. `I'm going to tell you the

truth about this situation . . .

Miller didn't hear the rest: he'd cut off the call while Lamb

was still speaking, and at once was lost in studying his
creation.

218

Ten minutes later, Taylor's phone buzzed.
The psychiatrist ignored it. Hunched at his desk, he

continued to stare at a set of notes, sometimes glancing
indifferently at the grey evening which had settled over the
skyline outside. He wasn't reading: the printed words bounced
off obsessions that had been circulating non-stop in his mind
ever since he'd read Hart's letter. Everything was wrecked.
What he'd worked for, schemed for, pulled strings for, was to
be lost at the very moment of success: his Institute, the chance
of fame, Peter Miller who was delivering his dream, Sarah,
who would have finally seen the brilliance of the work and
the deeper, still more satisfying possibilities for what he'd
brought into being. All of it snatched away by grey men who
had no vision. The Semper project was finished, and there
was no way to salvage it.

When his secretary put her head round the door, and

tentatively cleared her throat, he kept his eyes on the page.
`What?'

`There's a call for you from the United States. A Mr

Lamb.'

He glared at her. `I told you I'm busy.'
`I'm sorry, Gresham. He says it's very important.'
`Get his number. I'll call him back.'
`I already asked him, Gresham. He says he must speak

with you.'

`Oh, for God's sake.' Taylor threw the notes down on the

desk. `Alright, put him through.'

`Yes, Gresham.'
A faintly accented voice came on the line. `Dr Taylor?'
`Yes.'
`My name is Theodore Lamb. I work closely with Global

HealthCare in Boston. You may have heard of the
corporation.'

219

`Probably.' Taylor pulled the notes in front of him again,

and began to scan them. Listlessly, he scrawled some jottings
in a margin.

`Global operates more than two hundred hospitals and

eleven hundred specialized medical centres across the United
States,' Lamb said. `Its projected revenues next year will
exceed seven billion dollars.'

Taylor raised his eyes from the folder. `A large amount of

money.'

`Relatively large, yes. Dr Taylor, I believe your organisation

has something in common with Global. I mean Xiu
Corporation of Taiwan?'

`The implant manufacturer?'
`Global has an advanced wellness management project in

the United States, based on Xiu products.'

`A similar line of business to ours, then.'
`Not exactly. It monitors physical health.'
`Merely a difference of perspective,' Taylor said hurriedly.

`One treats the whole man, not the parts.'

`A fascinating concept,' Lamb said. `I'd like to discuss it

further. However, let's stay with the business in hand. I
understand you too have an advanced project. Care for the
community?'

`Care in the Community. The Semper project.'
`It's going well?'
`Superbly.'
`I believe you work with an ex-employee of Global's. Peter

Miller.'

`Oh, you're with that Global. Yes, a remarkable young

man.'

`I'd like to explore possibilities for cooperation.'

220

Outside the window a bird flew past, turned and broke its

flight, wings fluttering, to settle on the sill. Taylor stared at it.
`In psychiatry?'

`In the general potential of your work. Dr Taylor, we're

both men of the world. Can I take it that this conversation is
in complete confidence?'

`I don't see why not.'
`Excellent. Then let me explain. I want to license the

software you've developed.'

`I dare say you do. Do you mind if I ask - who are you,

exactly?'

`Let's say I'm a successful entrepreneur. Mr Miller has met

me. In due course I'll make my credentials available to you. I
can assure you, you won't be disappointed. Meanwhile let's
examine possibilities.'

Taylor breathed a long sigh. He picked up the silver paper

knife and turned it, letting it slide through his fingers
repeatedly, as if he had decided to allow himself an obsessive
tic. `Even if you're genuine, the software isn't in my gift. It's
the intellectual property of our Department of Health.'

`Let's not allow details to get in our way. I believe you're

proposing an Institute to carry on your research?'

Taylor dropped the knife with a clatter. `How did you

know about that?'

`It's my business to be well informed. Let me explain a

little more. I am a trustee of the Lamb Foundation a not-
for-profit charitable organization which administers
substantial funds. Naturally, in law the Foundation and I are
entirely separate entities. Nevertheless, I have influence there.
I can assure you the Foundation would have no problem in
funding your Institute. Providing that in return I have rights
to your software.'

`For what purpose?'

221

`I will own the rights. The world rights. I will sub-license it

to Global HealthCare, who will market it. You will receive a
royalty for every patient who benefits from the software,
payable into any bank account you nominate. There will be a
substantial down payment, more than sufficient to establish
your Institute. Would you like to know the amounts I have in
mind?'

Taylor listened in silence. With the tip of the knife he

traced out numbers with many trailing zeroes.

`Dr Taylor, are you there?'
`Yeeesss. What you haven't told me is how the software

will be used.'

`Does it matter? If it helps, I can tell you that it will be for

the benefit of mankind. More than that, I can't say at present,
it must remain confidential. Now, my offer has another
essential condition. Along with the software I get the
exclusive services of Peter Miller to adapt it for my
requirements.'

Taylor frowned. `That may not be so simple. I can't say if

he'd agree.'

`He won't agree. It's for you to persuade him. I need him

urgently.'

`How urgently?'
`Immediately.'
Taylor became thoughtful. `Perhaps you'd email your offer

in confidence along with your credentials. My secretary will
give you my details. Then Mr Miller and I will have a chat.'

`Don't waste your time offering him money.'
`There are other ways.'
`I'm relieved to hear it. The moment our agreement is firm,

I'll arrange for someone called Ben Hudson to contact you.
He will explain what needs to be done. And please understand
time is of the essence.'

222

`I'm sure we'll speak again very soon.'
Taylor replaced the receiver with a soft click. Who was this

Lamb? A confidence trickster? Someone from a rival
organisation who'd heard about the decision to close down the
Semper project, and wanted to steal the product? Yet
something about Lamb's voice told him he was none of those
things. And in any case, what was there to lose?

When the phone's busy light went out, he called his

secretary.

`Find Peter Miller. I have to see him.'

Lamb's email arrived within the hour. Taylor read its dense

text avidly, then went through it again, word by word. It
contained a password with which he could enter the Lamb
Foundation's website, and also the phone number for a private
bank in Zurich. He called there and had a discussion that
lasted almost fifteen minutes. At the end, he dropped the
phone onto its cradle, lifted the paper knife, and stabbed it
deep into the wood of the desk, so that the blade vibrated for
many seconds.

`I won't have anything to do with Global,' Miller leaned

back in his swivel chair in the computer room. In front of him
phoboids writhed and collided on-screen as if contending for
a chance to be free.

Taylor was visibly agitated. `Why not?'
Miller stared at the display, pensively typing fragments of

code. `Because the corporation is shit.'

Taylor sat down next to him. `Peter - Global and this

fellow Lamb are a way to get what we want. What we've
developed what you've developed - can get us recognized as

223

world class. You'll have the chance to do whatever
development you want. People to do the leg work. Money,
ample money. Providing we get this character Lamb on
board.'

`That's your problem,' Miller said, peering at one of the

creatures, following its motion round the screen.

`Look,' the psychiatrist said, `I hoped I wouldn't have to

tell you this, but the Department of Health are going to close
us down, kill the project. Lamb has all the cash we need to
keep the work going inside my new Institute. It can be a
brilliant operation.'

`Not if Global has anything to do with it.'
Taylor gave him an angry glance. `Just what do you want?'
`I do software. Let me get on with it.'
`No, there's more to it. Have you ever considered why you

won't compromise?'

Miller's fingers kept moving on the keyboard. `What does

it matter? I get results.'

`I think it does matter. You can't tolerate authority. Having

complete control is the only way you feel safe. But this is real
life it's not a case of whether to compromise, it's when to
compromise.'

`Fine. If that gives you a problem, I'm happy to move on.'
`Don't you see, you're like a small boy who shuts himself in

his room to play with his toys, to blank out the fact that his
parents give him a hard time. You need to face reality.'

Miller's fingers stopped moving. He looked up, his eyes

hard. `What do you know about it?' He shut off the display
and stood up.

`Sit down. There's another matter. What about Sarah?'
`What's she to do with it?'
Taylor smiled thinly. `I'm a research psychiatrist. I can

recognize the effects of oxytocin when I see them.'

224

`I don't know what you're talking about.' Miller's voice was

flat. But he sat down again.

`Look it up sometime. The tabloids call it the love

hormone. You and she are . . . attached, aren't you? I saw the
two of you together the other evening. Well, if you want her
to feel safe, you'd better help me keep Semper alive. There's
Martin Baines to deal with.'

Miller shrugged. `He's locked up, isn't he?'
Taylor looked at him narrowly. `It's true he's out of the way

- for the moment. But I have a confession to make. I've rather
played down the threat he represents. The fact is, under some
circumstances he could be very dangerous. You saw for
yourself what crazy ideas live in his mind. Medication helps
him cope with them helps him conceal them too, when he
wants - but it doesn't eliminate them. Unfortunately, Sarah's
at the very centre of his delusions.'

`Where's this going?'
`When he's medicated, and he wants something - his

freedom, for instance Mr Baines can be remarkably
convincing. These days official policy's against long-term
inpatient stays. There'll be pressure to release him into the
community.'

He looked steadily at Miller. `Sarah knows that. Well, she

can run away again, but she'll never be free from the fear that
he's stalking her. She'll live with that fear every day - and
there's a very real chance he might find her. So you see, it's
better that we're able to track where he is and what state he's
in. Then we can control him. That can only happen if this
project goes live. And it will only go live if our friend at
Global buys into our work - which, incidentally would not
only keep Sarah safe and give her peace of mind, but would let
us let you finally turn Semper into a beautiful piece of

225

engineering. Software the whole world would admire. Is that
logical enough for you?'

Miller fell silent. He looked at Taylor without expression,

as if considering a hand at poker.

`After all, you are fond of Sarah, aren't you?' the

psychiatrist said. `Or am I a complete failure as a
diagnostician?'

`I'll do it on two conditions,' Miller said at last.
`Namely?'
`How much income is Lamb offering?'
Taylor hesitated, as if trying to remember. Then he quoted

a large number.

Miller looked at him quizzically. `We split it fity-fifty.'
Taylor's face flushed dark red. `That's absurd. I thought

you weren't interested in money.'

`I'm not. But Global owes me. Take it or leave it.'
The psychiatrist thought about it. At last, he said

reluctantly: `Alright. Providing you deliver fast.' It wasn't
really so bad: after all, he'd divided Lamb's offer by a factor of
five before quoting it.

`Good. Be sure to insist on a hefty down-payment. And

you'll need the services of a lawyer to prepare a contract.'

`What's the other condition?'
Miller told him.

226

38~ Lawyers

Theodore Lamb called an urgent meeting with Global's

executive board, but he didn't attend in person. Instead a slew
of lawyers came to Clarissa Bergson's office to represent him,
three well-groomed young men with dark suits and sharp
eyes. Hudson watched them settle at the oval conference
table, making ready to take notes on their yellow legal pads.
From within the Global cadre, already seated in their
accustomed places, Ratzinowitz directed a gladiatorial glare at
the intruders. At the centre of the table there stood a small
black pyramid made from plastic. Beyond the panoramic
window, cloud was gathering across the bay, beginning to
obscure the morning sunlight.

Ratzinowitz checked his watch. `He's late.'
For the first time that Hudson could recall, Clarissa looked

her years. Her grey eyes were hooded and her skin had a
sallow cast. She leaned her head back against her padded
chair, and closed her eyes.

A chime sounded. Ratzinowitz touched a key and the voice

of Clarissa's PA came from the pyramid. `Mr Lamb's on the
line.'

Clarissa opened her eyes, and Hudson saw that she looked

younger again, like before. Whatever force drove her had been
switched back on. `Put him through,' she said, her voice low
and clear.

Lamb's voice echoed from the black box. `Clarissa?'
`I'm here. With the others.'

227

They all murmured greetings.
`My attorneys are with you?'
`We're here,' one of the lawyers called out.
`Theo, before we begin,' Clarissa said: `On behalf of us all .

. . we're sorry for the inconvenience you suffered. It was a rare
technical problem.'

`Are you?' the pyramid said. `Well, sorry or not, Global

now has a very serious problem, and it's one that's not going
away.'

`Theo.' Clarissa leaned towards the box. `It was a glitch,

that's all. The difficulties were purely temporary.'

`Ach! You knew the technology was defective all along.

You falsified the due diligence information you gave my
people.'

`Absolutely not . . . ' Clarissa began.
`Let me finish. My investment is in the form of convertible

loan stock with a floating charge over Global's assets against
agreed performance targets. Given the defective state of the
Sheepdog technology, it's clear you've no chance of meeting
the targets within the required timescales. Be assured I'm
going to collect - and as a result I will own this miserable
corporation.'

Nodding, the lawyers scribbled.
`However,' Lamb went on, `that consequence of your

attempt to cheat me is the least of your problems, Clarissa.
You also have a contract with the Federal Government which
you could never possibly have fulfilled. The Government
doesn't tolerate commercial fraud. You're going to find
yourself behind bars.'

`Nonsense, Theo,' Clarissa said calmly. `I told you there

were minor problems. That's normal in new software, and we
have it under control. The issues were perhaps more than I

228

realized . . . ' She cut her large grey eyes to Hudson. `In fact,
why didn't you warn me, Ben?'

The lawyers lifted their pens, turned their heads to regard

him with interest.

`Clarissa, you had the weekly development reports,'

Hudson said.

She made a small moué. `Couched in technical jargon,

which concealed the extent of the difficulties. No doubt
deliberately.'

Ratzinowitz fixed Hudson with an assassin's stare.

Richardson was nodding agreement. Solnik kept his head
down, morosely studying the papers in front of him.

Hudson felt himself floundering. `For Christ's sake,

Clarissa, if I told you once, I told you a dozen times. I offered
to send you an executive summary, remember? You said there
was no need . . . '

`I confess the thought of your good looks mouldering in a

Federal prison disturbs me, Clarissa,' Lamb's voice continued.
`But even that isn't the worst fate you face. A different
organisation or rather, organism will almost certainly
destroy you while you're still in prison. Unless, that is, you
cooperate fully with me. Your good fortune is that I'm
offering you a solution.'

`Sabre rattling!' Ratzinowitz leered at the box. `Back off

before you get hurt.'

`I'm not the one who'll be hurt,' the pyramid said, `and this

is no longer a matter of Wolfe at Quebec. The appropriate
metaphor now is the mediaeval times of plague. There were
survivors back then, and I'll survive now.'

The lawyers looked at one another uneasily. What did the

client mean? This was strange language for a commercial
dispute.

229

`I'm prepared to allow you a chance.' Lamb went on. `I own

the rights to software that can meet the Federal Government's
requirements. It can defeat the . . . invader. I'm prepared to
license it to you on terms that will allow you a share of profits.
I'm even prepared to limit my future holding in Global to a
mere ninety percent. You will obtain the software from Peter
Miller, and you will liaise with him for guidance in its use.
You will provide him with information sufficient to prepare
the software for the required purpose. Is that clear?'

`A few minutes, please,' Clarissa said. `We need to confer.'
Ratzinowitz muted the phone and looked pointedly at

Lamb's lawyers. They picked up their notepads and headed
for the anteroom, closing the door behind them.

`Ben,' Clarissa said. `Is there any new update from Iyla?'
`Only that they've found still more problems.'
`You really think Miller could make an impact?'
`Maybe he can, maybe he can't, but he's the best hope.'
Clarissa turned to Ratzinowitz. `What's your view?'
`We could hold Lamb off,' the attorney said. `It would take

forever to get this thing through the courts, but chances are
we'd win.'

`Sure,' Hudson said. `Except in a few weeks from now

we're all dead meat.'

`Perhaps.' Ratzinowitz was looking thoughtful. `But where

did he get this software from? It could be something Miller
took from Global when he left.' He slapped his thigh.
`Goddamn it! I guarantee you, Lamb wants us to pay for
something we already own!'

`Then he's the one who's dead meat.' Mrs Bergson said.

`He's stolen our property.'

Ratzinowitz looked at Hudson. `You can confirm that?'
Hudson looked him back in the eye. `No way,' he said.

That is, no way he was going to see his pension and share

230

options lost to Ratzinowitz's taste for legal warfare, now that
rescue was in sight. `No way Miller got out of here with
anything,' he said. `I checked. Every piece of software he
touched stayed here, under lock and key.'

`Yeah?' Ratzinowitz said, fixing Hudson with a

disbelieving stare. `Well, I guess I can't argue with that right
now. So OK, we let him deliver. Once we have the software,
we compare it with what's on file here. Then we'll know if
we're being ripped off.'

Clarissa's eyes hooded again. She gestured towards the

anteroom. `Tell them to come in.'

With the lawyers back in their seats, she reopened the line

to Lamb.

`Theodore, we reject your accusations absolutely. We have

never concealed any substantive information, and we certainly
have not misled the Federal authorities. However, given the
urgency of the situation, we're prepared to negotiate.' She bit
her lip; her eyes narrowed. `We accept that Miller may be of
temporary use. We're prepared to evaluate his software, with
his input, under the strict control of Ben Hudson. We will
negotiate with you regarding any variation in your holding in
our corporation.'

A grim laugh came from the pyramid. `Then you may yet

survive. Mr Hudson will contact Miller immediately with the
necessary information. Is that clear?'

The group muttered agreement.
`Good. Then you'll hear from me.'
The lawyers completed their notes, gathered up their

yellow pads and their briefcases, and moved in a cohort
towards the door.

`You'll hear from us,' one of them said as they exited.

231

After the meeting, Hudson went down to the development

area on the 36th and got hold of a programmer he knew well.
The guy owed him a favour, from the time Hudson had
caught him and his girlfriend in flagrante on corporate
premises, and had saved him from loss of his bonus and
promotion prospects - if not worse.

Hudson brought him to the cube where Miller used to

work, and got him to fire up the workstation and find the
copies of software that Miller had been working on.

`OK, listen,' he told the programmer. I want these files

written over. Write garbage onto them, as if there'd been a
malfunction. I don't want anyone checking their contents,
comparing them with other stuff.'

The programmer looked blank, but he got on with it

anyway. Then he said: `I can't do this.'

`Why not?'
`Because they already have garbage written all over them.'
It took Hudson a few moments to figure out that Miller

had gotten there first.

Taylor was hovering anxiously in the computer room when

the phone began to ring. Since his run-in with Miller, he'd
visited there constantly, demanding details of any contact
from Lamb or Global. So far there had been none.

Miller checked the caller display and let the phone ring for

a while before he picked it up, watching with amusement
Taylor's evident difficulty in restraining himself from
grabbing it. `Hello, Ben,' he said into the mouthpiece. He
grinned. `I'm good, thanks. I understand you have problems.
Exactly what do you want from me?' He listened, jotting
notes on a pad. `Is Global the end user?'

232

He pressed keys idly, and on-screen, phoboids migrated

across a fractal landscape, dragging star-dust trails after them.
`Really? It's so confidential you can't tell me?' He listened
calmly. `Then can you provide a full spec for the application?'

There was a longer spiel from the phone. When it finished

Miller said: `Modifying Sheepdog is hopeless. You know that.
The best way is to adapt my system here. With luck I can
download what you want in about a week.'

Holding the phone to his ear, he pursed his lips, looked at

Taylor and nodded. `OK, email the spec and I'll start on it,' he
said to Hudson: `By the sound of it, you'll need the newer
implants. Dr Taylor told you the conditions? No? Well, the
software's to be marketed under the name "Tracks". No, not
"Sheepdog". T-R-A-C-K-S, Tracks. And the source code
remains with me. It's my property.' Now he held the phone
away from his ear, grinning. `Well, that's fine. If Clarissa
doesn't want to sign up, that's fine too. And Ben . . . good
luck.'

He put the phone down before Taylor could grab it from

him.

`What the hell do you think you're doing?' Taylor shouted.

`We need them.'

`Be cool. Ben will be back. It doesn't pay to lie down for

Global.'

`Listen,' Taylor said hoarsely. `I originated this work. I

thought of it. I got the development under way and I've just
found the way to keep it going. And now you're wrecking the
deal.'

`Oh ye of little faith.' A grin spread over Miller's face. `Do

you want them to steal the software?'

`What do you mean?'
Miller laughed out loud. `Trust me, I know Global and the

kind of people they work with. If they get their hands on the

233

source code, you're lost. It's the master text for Tracks. Once
they have it they can change the system any way they want,
add features, fix problems, be independent of us. Of me, that
is. They'll probably hire some software house in India.'

`So what? That would mean less work for you, wouldn't it?'
`They'll screw up. And if Lamb refuses to pay what he

promised, what are you going to do? Set the lawyers on him?
That would cost the earth and take for ever. Ask your friends
at the Department of Health to sue? I'm sure they'd be
sympathetic when they hear you've been selling software
they'll claim is theirs, to the Americans. No, the source code
gives us the whip hand, and it stays with me. You needn't
even wait for the lawyers to tie up a contract. I'll limit the
software to a small number of implants to begin with. Global
can try it out, but we don't deliver in full till they pay up. You
have them over a barrel.'

`You mean you have everyone over a barrel.'
`You could look at it that way.'
Taylor stared at him. `My God, you're more manipulative

than I'd have believed possible.'

`Just careful.'
`And what about the Department of Health? You're right,

they'll crucify us both if they find out about this deal.'

Miller considered, drumming his fingers on the table. On

screen a phoboid split into two, four, eight, and then
successive multiples of itself. The pack swam outwards,
probing the boundaries of the screen. `They won't have a clue.
What Global gets won't look anything like the application
developed here. Or developed over there, either.' He smiled.
`It will be all over before it occurs to anyone to check, and if
they do, they won't see anything they'd recognize. And if later
on the Department wants to buy what we develop at your
Institute, so much the better. It'll cost them.'

234

`What makes you so sure Global will agree to your

conditions?'

`Like I said, I've seen Global and its friends do business,'

Miller said. `For this guy Lamb to come onto us onto me
like this, they have to be desperate. Something big is going
on.'

When the phone rang they both turned to look at it. `Ben's

back,' Miller said.

Taylor picked up the phone, but pressed the mute button.

`You'll start on it today?'

`I'll keep my word if you will.' Miller turned away to study

the workstation. Its screen was filled now with the amoebae,
moving hungrily, as if seeking a gap in the defences that
contained them.

Taylor pressed the button again. `Hello,' he said. `Yes, Ben.

Good to hear from you again.'

235

39~ Developments

For the next six days Ben Hudson received repeated calls

from Theodore Lamb, demanding delivery of Peter Miller's
software. Sometimes a woman named Julia called on his
behalf. Hudson found her pushy and uncompromising. One
Clarissa was sufficient, he thought. But he had no choice
except to call Miller in turn, receive a curt response, and
frequently discover that Lamb or Julia had called him directly
anyway.

But at last, on the seventh day, Miller transmitted a

Wildfire-ready version of Tracks to Global, over a secure
internet link. Within hours of that, a freight plane touched
down at Logan, carrying scores of plastic crates. Inside each
crate, carefully packaged, were several hundred small, sealed
containers the first batch of Wildfire-detecting implants
from Xiu Corporation of Taiwan.

These deliverables came to the newly appointed Project

Manager for Tracks, Al Davis, a grizzled fifty-year-old, long
versed in computer projects. Previously a project manager for
Sheepdog, he'd spent the last year with little to do but think
about his approaching retirement, while he waited for a viable
release of the Sheepdog product. Now he became frenetically
busy. His team of engineers had already upgraded the
computers at Global's Data Center to hold more data and
process it faster. Now they installed the new software, set up
satellite tracking to follow the whereabouts of the clients once

236

they were implanted, and made connections to systems in the
outside world.

Davis marvelled at the pull that was going on somewhere.

He'd dealt with IBM for years, and he'd never seen Big Blue
jump around the way it was doing now, making super-
computers available in a secure facility in upstate New York
with high-speed connections to Global's Data Center, to
process data instantaneously. Shit, Davis thought, whatever
deal Global had closed, it carried serious leverage, presumably
because it was with the Feds, as everyone knew - though that
was supposed to be a secret.

An IBM team got ready to test the systems to see if they

could handle the burden of data that would flood in from the
implants. Without real implants in huge numbers of real
people, it was only possible to simulate how the systems
would behave, but at least that allowed a prediction of their
performance.

After working with Davis's people through three days and

nights, the IBM team started up the test programs. Weary but
elated, Davis watched as the image of a matchstick man
appeared on screen. Where his stick arm joined his stick body
a circular blob began to blink. It represented a functioning
implant. Pulsing dotted lines connected it to a box which
simulated a cluster of computers storing the data transmitted
by the implant. Within the box, smaller compartments
indicated its internal components. The whole picture was an
animated model of the Tracks system in operation.

Soon the matchstick man split into two men, each

separately transmitting data. Each twin divided again to make
four data sources, and then, as the process automatically
repeated, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and then more and more,
in an exponential explosion. The matchstick drawings shrank
to dots which fused into a pulsing cloud, and the connecting

237

lines leading to the computers merged into a single throbbing
avenue. Soon the model was representing tens of millions of
implanted subjects, and the number continued to grow every
moment.

Davis held his breath as an orange graph of the system's

response at first stayed flat, then began to climb gently, and
finally curved rapidly upwards to become vertical, showing
that the model system could no longer cope with the torrent
of data coming from the matchstick men the make-believe
implanted clients.

The result wasn't as good as he'd hoped: the IBM people

would have to make further enhancements to the computers,
but it wasn't far off what was required. The target he'd been
given was to track 500 million implants, more than there were
citizens in the United States of America. Privately, Davis
thought that Global's marketing department must have gone
insane, to be specifying such numbers. But it wasn't his place
to say so.

Global's Medical Director, Henry Richardson, flew down

to a lab at Los Alamos, where inside a sealed containment
unit, the new Xiu implant chips were being tested by
USAMRIID technicians wearing space suits. On closed-
circuit TV, under halogen lights, cultures of the Wildfire virus
held in glass vessels glowed with a green fluorescence.
Spectacularly, the Xiu implants immersed in the cultures read
out the fingerprint of Wildfire, displaying it on a screen
alongside the identity of the molecular building blocks that
controlled the silent slither of the virus's metabolism, and its
rate of reproduction.

When Richardson got back to headquarters, an email was

waiting for him. It confirmed that the experiment had been

238

repeated successfully at the Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta. It was evidence that the implants worked reliably and
the data they produced could be trusted. A second email
contained clinical fine detail from the military hospital in
Dallas, where the latest victim of Wildfire had given up his
life in a bloody collapse, closely observed by his Tracks
implant.

It was all pretty satisfying.

At one of the corporation's downtown clinics, the

implantation of Global's human guinea-pigs began. Hudson
led the way. An anaesthetic injected into his shoulder
prepared the path for a larger needle which delivered the
implant, followed by some work with a scalpel. The nurse in
attendance laid a cool hand on his forehead while a pleasant
young doctor carried out the procedure. Both of them wore
hospital greens with the Global logo.

`Didn't hurt too much?' the doctor asked.
`I've had worse,' Hudson said, pulling on his jacket.

Afterwards his shoulder ached, but then various parts of him
often ached these days, and he had his own variety of
anaesthetic.

Tofler did not take it so well. He hated needles. The

marketing man had long felt that he was the one who actually
originated the idea of Sheepdog, but he hadn't expected it to
rebound on his person. Market penetration, yes, personal
penetration, absolutely not. His mind twitched dreadfully at
the presence of the alien intruder in his flesh.

When Richardson's turn came, the Medical Director

observed the procedure with clinical detachment and an eye
for detail. After all, he was responsible for ensuring that

239

inoculation en masse would be carried out to the highest
standards when the time came. Including the inoculation of
the President.

After five more sleepless nights, Davis brought the system

live. Flanked by tired programmers, he sat red-eyed in front of
a bank of screens, and toggled keys and switches until a
collection of moving dots appeared inside a skeletal drawing
of Global's headquarters. Exhausted as he was, he was
enthralled to observe the dot that was Tofler meandering
from his office into the nearby streets, perhaps seeking
inspiration. The thing worked! No-one could hide from it.

Over the next 48 hours he learned that at night, Tofler's

pulse often raced, and his blood pressure rose alarmingly.
Davis assumed this was due to the VP springing new ideas for
cutting-edge commercial opportunities. It seemed Tofler's
brain never switched off.

Hudson too not infrequently left the building, heading for

a nearby bar. His blood chemistry and cardiovascular patterns
weren't bad for his years, but now and again his vital signs
accelerated, so that Tracks came up with minor health
warnings. Eventually, Davis figured out that this happened
when a particularly attractive secretary visited Hudson's office.

Mrs Bergson, who had graciously allowed the other

volunteers to go first, missed her own appointment because of
a migraine, and had to cancel the next one due to a meeting
with a major client. She seemed little concerned, as if she were
sure that her aristocratic bloodstream would keep the
impertinent virus at bay. When she finally received her
implant, her data did not come to Davis. Instead her PA
stood over the printer to receive it. Shortly after, an upgrade

240

received from Miller contrived that the report was transferred
by secure email, direct to her personal inbox.

Soon, Solnik and a few lesser members of staff were added

to the group of guinea-pigs. Under Richardson's guidance,
their data was cross-checked by clerks from the accounts
department against vital signs observed conventionally - `the
doc pressing the flesh', as Hudson called it - and against blood
analyses from a regular lab. More needles were involved.
Tofler's distress was increased by uncomfortable nights
wearing external sensors to record his blood pressure and
EKG.

All of it checked out, and Davis was left with no doubt

that the new system worked beautifully. It did not miss a beat,
not the smallest physiological shift. All the results matched up
nicely, well within experimental error. His conclusions were
confirmed by Peter Miller, who monitored progress across the
internet, and emailed neatly formatted reports daily from
London.

Davis envied Miller. He imagined him sitting in a classy

office looking out at Buckingham Palace. Everyone knew the
British had style, and no-one, not even Miller, left a job
unless it was for a better deal.

Two days later, Davis reported to Hudson that the Tracks

system had passed every test. There had been only one brief
glitch, and that was due to a break in service from the telco
whose network had transmitted data from the guinea-pigs'
implants.

`You're sure about this, Al?' Hudson asked. `The system's

really tight? Because if it isn't, you and I could have a different
kind of health problem.'

`With the Feds, right?' Davis said

241

So much for secrecy, Hudson thought. `I wouldn't know,'

he said, remembering the warning that Feldman had spelled
out in Dallas. `Is the fucking system to spec or not?'

`Every test says it works perfectly,' Davis said, `You want

the results, they're documented on our intranet and on paper,
though God knows why Clarissa wants hard copy. I've had to
requisition a dozen filing cabinets. Want to see?'

`Yeah,' Hudson said. `I'll come see it later.' He did, spent

most of a day on it, and passed on a layman's summary to
Tofler: `Miller knows what he's doing. Tracks runs like
greased weasel-shit.'

Next morning, Hudson, Richardson, Radzinowitz and

Tofler met with Mrs Bergson. She looked a little strained,
Hudson thought. At times, she lightly touched her shoulder
through the fine silk of her blouse.

`Well?' She lasered him with the grey eyes.
`It's good. The Feds can go ahead with innoculation.'
`You're absolutely sure?'
`I just got through twelve filing cabinets full of test reports.'
`Then we go ahead.'
`OK,' Hudson said. `You want me to email duCassis?'
`Yes. Tell him everything checks out, and none of us have

any ill-effects.'

Tofler cleared his throat. `Clarissa? I need this thing out of

my arm. It's getting to me. I haven't had a marketing idea for
three days.'

`Not possible,' Clarissa said. `You're far too valuable for us

to risk your health. Anyway, it'll soon be a legal requirement.'

`But,' Tofler said, `if most people have implants, the bug

won't spread. Surely there should be exemptions for creative
people - sensitive people who are valuable to business?

242

Otherwise the terrorists who released this bug will achieve
their aim. They'll damage the economy for good.'

`We regret,' Clarissa said, `the implant stays in.'
`So I'll tell duCassis he can start implanting the Chosen

Few?' Hudson said.

`Yes,' Clarissa said. `Make sure that all our first-wave

centres have had their batches of implants delivered. Agent
duCassis needs to advise the White House to be ready. We'll
carry out their procedures on-site.'

Next day when Davis picked Tofler's report off the printer

in his office he found something strange: Below the regular
test results was a box containing a new kind of data, which
he'd never seen before.

Psych Status
Bipolar delusional pattern detected:

Severity 2

Neurotransmitter imbalance:

Severity 3

Paranoia

detected:

Severity

3

Consider possible restraint.

Urgency 1

Davis wrinkled his brow. This wasn't in the spec. He had

to contact Hudson. But Hudson's phone didn't answer. Davis
consulted Tracks and discovered his whereabouts.

Hudson was taking a break. The pressure was getting to

him. He walked the few blocks to a nearby bar, and ordered a
Bud. He needed it, and Clarissa wasn't around - he'd never
been quite sure if she knew that he took the occasional
stiffener during the day, and when she was there he preferred
not to push his luck. With pleasant anticipation, he hefted

243

himself onto the bar stool, and reached for the glass. Then a
sudden qualm hit him. Was the goddam implant monitoring
his alcohol level? If so, Clarissa would probably see the results,
complete with date, time and location. He looked longingly at
the beer, left it untouched, dropped change on the counter,
and headed back.

The more he thought it through as he walked along, the

more depressing it became. They wouldn't nail him for
drinking in office hours, but the system would know where
he'd been. He would have to say that he had a migraine, and
needed air and a cold drink along the way. But the fucking
system would know that he hadn't had a migraine. Shit, this
was a bad scene. How long was it to retirement? What if they
demanded he keep the implant in place even after that? It was
a really bad scene.

When he got back, Davis gave him the news about the

strange new data. It left Hudson thinking he might as well
have had the beer. Desperately dry but not daring to take a
drink, he called Miller's mobile, then the landline, but got
only voicemails. He left email and voicemail messages in
language fit to melt the phones.

Ratzinowitz was meanwhile beginning to feel that dealing

with Lamb's lawyers was like opposing a robotic tennis-
player. However often you delivered a dynamite serve, a
deceptive lob, a supersonic smash, somehow it always came
back, and the opponent never tired. His discussions with
them went on for two or three hours at a time.

`We understand your position,' the lawyer at the other end

of the phone agreed. `But Theodore's stockholding has been
constructively oppressed. You supplied fraudulent
information, and moreover since the technology is defective,

244

you're clearly unable to satisfy the sales targets you committed
to. You're in breach of your contract with Theodore, and his
loan stock is thereby prospectively converted to Class A equity
with full voting rights and a stock split of one hundred shares
of A stock per share of loan stock. That means he's in total
control and from now on, any transaction affecting the value
of his equity must be agreed by him. That includes the
contract you entered into with the Federal Government,
which is null and void until Theodore's rights are formally
recognized.'

`We hear what you're saying,' Ratzinowitz said patiently.

`But the fact is that Theodore had no executive power vested
in him at the time we agreed the transaction. Under the terms
of his agreement with Global Health Corporation, he
accepted the right of its officers to make decisions on his
behalf and to exert best endeavours to maximize the value of
his stockholding.'

`Correct,' Lamb's lawyer said.
Ratzinowitz smiled at Clarissa, sitting opposite him at the

conference table.

`And that,' Lamb's lawyer continued, `is precisely the

reason that Theodore sees that he has been oppressed.'

`Wait,' Ratzinowitz said. `Let me get this straight. You

agree that Theodore delegated full responsibility to Global's
executives.'

`Right.'
`And that he himself had no executive power.'
`Right.'
`And that Global's executives attempted to exercise their

power to increase the value of Theodore's investment as they
were obliged to do?'

`Right.'
`So what's the problem?'

245

`The problem is that Theodore's stockholding was

oppressed by Global's actions.'

`Wait,' Ratzinowitz said, throwing the ball up in the air,

and pulling back his racquet for another serve. `Theodore had
no executive power . . . '

Hudson called Miller. This time, to his vast relief, he got

through.

`Peter. This is Ben Hudson.'
Miller's voice crackled in his ear, sounded unusually weary.

`I got your flame-mail. What's the problem?'

`A total fuck-up is what the problem is.'
`What are you talking about? I've been monitoring the

system. It's perfect.'

`Yeah? Then how come it's giving out psychiatric reports?'
`That's impossible. I don't believe it.'
`Don't don't me. I'm looking at the reports now.'
Miller went quiet. Hudson knew he was thinking, probably

doing his trick of visualizing the code. `Well?'

`Wait.'
Hudson waited.
`There might be one possibility . . . I didn't remove the

code for the psychiatric functions, I just disabled it to save
time, you were in a hurry. It shouldn't ever trigger, but there
might be one pathway in the code . . . I could have forgotten
about it. Can you email me the data, and the reports that
show the problem?'

`No.'
`Why not?'
`They're confidential,' Hudson said, Feldman's warning

still painfully clear in his mind.

246

`How do you expect me to track down the error? Just send

me the files.'

`I can't. I don't know how you'll track it down. But you

better had.'

`This is crazy,' Miller said. `You want everything yesterday,

but you won't give me what I need to fix the problem if
there is one.'

Hudson exhaled. `The goddamn implants have been sent

out, for Christ's sake. Believe me, you don't want to know
who they've gone to. Just take my advice. If you want to keep
enjoying life, fix this fucking problem, and fix it fast.'

`Are you threatening me?'
`I'm just the messenger,' Hudson said, `but I'm telling you,

if you want to stay healthy, fix it.'

`The hell with you,' Miller said. `If I fix it, it'll be for only

one reason that no-one says my software is a fuck-up.'

The line closed off with a sharp click.

247

40~ The President's Health

Next morning Hudson dragged himself to the office early.
`You have some important visitors,' his secretary told him

brightly. `They're waiting in your ante-room.'

But they weren't in the ante-room, they were in his office,

Feldman sprawled behind his desk, duCassis leaning against
the window, contemplating the view.

`Well, this is a surprise,' Hudson said. Too late, his mind

screamed, he got to Miller too fucking late. Why else would
they be here?

duCassis turned to face him. `Field work.'
`Gathering humint,' Feldman said.
`Humint?' Hudson stared at him.
Feldman curled his pudgy fingers and studied his nails.

`Intelligence from human sources.'

`There's some other kind? Robots?'
`Nah, not robots.' Feldman shifted his bulk to a more

comfortable position, making Hudson's chair creak
ominously. `Robots, yet,' he said to duCassis.

duCassis snickered. `I guess you might call elint, sigint and

comint robots.'

`Why'ncha siddown?' Feldman said.
`That's OK, thanks,` Hudson said. `Been sitting down.

Drove here. All those ints?'

`Intelligence gathering. Elint, any electronic signal, we

intercept it, radar, wireless, guided missile, you name it.

248

Sigint, any kind of signal that carries meaning. Comint's any
communications signal, phone, fax, internet, radio, TV . . . '

No point taking it further, Hudson could see. `That's

great,' he said. `Now what can I do for you?'

`Right here,' Feldman pulled a folded sheet of paper from

the inside pocket of his suit.

There was an embossed logo at the head of the page, the

words

We Serve

wrapped in an arc around the American Eagle. Below that:

Top Secret
TRACKS Wellness Monitoring Report

Then came several rows of familiar numbers, the

physiological and biochemical readings from an implant
watching over health and looking out for the Wildfire virus.
But below that was a message in bold print:

DELUSIONAL IDEATION.

Severity 7

DELUSIONAL THRESHOLD EXCEEDED
PARANOIA ALERT
PHYSICAL RESTRAINT ADVISED

Hudson eyed his visitors warily. `What is this?'
`You don't know?' Feldman asked, sounding interested. He

took a pencil from his pocket and turned it slowly in his
fingers.

Hudson frowned. `It looks like one of our routine

monitoring reports. But I don't recognize the format.'

249

`You don't recognize the format.' Feldman tapped the

pencil on his teeth. `OK, let's see if I can help. This is the
three-hourly report for the President of the United States.
See, what it seems to say is: the President's crazy. Would that
be your interpretation?'

What the hell was he supposed say to that? When he could

get hold of Peter Miller, Hudson thought, he'd tear him apart
with his bare hands. `I'd, uh, need to check.'

`You'd need to check.'
`With, uh, our technical people '
`That's good,' Feldman said. `We'd like you to call up your

technical people right now, and arrange for them to check out
this fucking system of yours, and get it producing the right
answers. For one thing, if it's giving out wrong information,
we can't trust it to tell us whether the President's got the virus
and all the other health shit besides - whether he's going to
have a heart attack, and all like that. For another thing, if it's
saying the President's nuts, why then, it is wrong. Do I make
myself clear?'

`I'd say pretty clear.'
`Some interfering son-of-a-bitch journalist gets hold of

these reports, we'd have a problem. These days, under the
Freedom of Information Act, we can't even shred the fucking
things. You see what I'm saying?'

`I believe I do.'
`So now you get your people together pronto, and have

every one of them, down to and including the cleaners, sign
up to Federal Secrecy, just in case some shit-head reporter
starts to harass them. Tell them if they want to stay healthy,
they'd better sign up and fix this now.'

`Whoa,' Hudson said. `Cool down. We'll have this under

control in no time.'

250

Feldman produced a bunch of official forms from a

briefcase and thrust them at him. `Yeah? Well, start by getting
the ink on these.' He leaned back, making the chair creak
again, and fixed Hudson with an unfriendly stare. `How the
hell did this psychiatric stuff get in there?' he demanded. `No
way was it in the spec we gave you. So where does it come
from?'

Hudson thought about it, but not for long. God only knew

how much power these guys had not to mention the people
behind them. Enough to make life very unpleasant for a long
time, for sure.

He took a deep breath. `We used a package to boost the

functionality. So we could deliver what you want fast,' he
added hurriedly.

`What package? From where?' Feldman wanted to know.
This is where it hits the fan, Hudson thought, they're

going to discover the truth about what we originally sold
them. Well, he wasn't going to take the rap. `There's this guy,
Peter Miller, a programmer . . . ' he began.

He had to tell them phone numbers and where exactly he

worked. duCassis noted it all down in a small leather-bound
notebook. Then he seemed to lose interest, and slid the
notebook into his jacket pocket. `One other thing,' he said
casually, rubbing his jaw. `Do you know a guy called Theodore
Lamb?'

`I wouldn't say I know him . . . '
`Keep it that way,' Feldman cut in. `The guy is nuts. He

has this, like, crazy idea that he owns the technology because
he's a big stockholder in Global and he thinks he's been
cheated. His lawyers have been beating on our agency,
claiming we need his approval to use the technology.'

`Much good that will do him,' duCassis said mildly. `You

can't beat City Hall.'

251

`City Hall ain't dog-shit compared to us,' Feldman said.

`Just get the fucking forms signed. I mean now.'

`For sure,' Hudson said, picking up the forms. No point

arguing with City Hall.

The vagrant from the cornfield who had escaped the

soldiers had eventually made it to a shelter for the homeless
on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas. Early in the morning he
stood up unsteadily beside his pallet bed, coughed, and
vomited up a couple of pints of blood.

It wasn't an unknown event in that setting, being a

recognized hazard for those who had pushed their livers
beyond the limit. But the staff of the shelter had been put on
notice, knew what had to be reported. Within twenty minutes
the building was surrounded by unmarked cars with flashing
lights clamped to their roofs and an ambulance which had
followed them through the traffic at high speed.

In hospital the victim began to haemorrhage from every

orifice, bleeding that wouldn't stop. It was clearly not the
simple consequence of alcohol.

252

41~ McLaughlin

Sitting in his office, just along from Clarissa's, Ratzinowitz

moodily contemplated the contract documents spread on his
desk. He was caught between a rock and a hard place: the
rock being duCassis and his wretched Agency, the hard place
being Lamb. He called the rock.

`Jean! This is Leon Ratzinowitz. I have an update for you.'
`Good morning, Leon. I trust you're well.'
`I'm good, thank you.' Ratzinowitz massaged his neck

wearily. `Apart from the problem of Mr Lamb, that is. Is he
still hassling your people?'

duCassis laughed. `Forget about him. We're bringing that

little problem under control. Otherwise you've made
progress?'

`We've talked to Mill . . . to our development people.

They're taking out the psychiatric functions. As soon as the
QA group have checked it out we'll download you the new
version.'

A change came into duCassis's voice, something at once

persuasive but unyielding. `Leon, I was about to call you on
that. On reflection we were too harsh on you. But you
understand, after what just happened, we need additional
quality control.'

Ratzinowitz held the phone away, rolled his eyes, put the

phone to his ear again. `Jean, there's full QA built into the
contract. What more do you want?'

`We want closer control - by our own people.'

253

`What are you saying? If you're talking about changing the

contract, I can tell you that would be a very expensive option -
for you.'

`That won't be a problem.'
Since when did Feds not haggle, even in an emergency, at

least briefly? And what had caused this change on their part?
Something more was coming. Ratzinowitz waited.

`We need the source code.'
So that was it. They wanted total control. Whoever had

the source code held the aces, and could do what they wanted
with the system - unlike the `end-user' version that Global
had agreed to supply. That was why Miller had refused to part
with the source code when striking a deal. It kept his
brainchild in his hands, and his clients dependent on him.
Ratzinowitz would never have agreed to that, if it hadn't been
for the severity of the crisis he'd had to deal with.

`Jesus, Jean - we never do that, it's contrary to our

commercial policy. We couldn't even put a copy in escrow for
emergency release. Where would we find an independent
lawyer to hold it? You guys could seize it under emergency
powers.'

`We could do that right now, but we'd rather have your

cooperation. Leon - we have to have the source code.'

Ratzinowitz said nothing. Then duCassis said: `There's

something else. It'll be more efficient if we manage the
monitoring service too. We'll handle first level tracking and
future development. Naturally, medical services will remain
with Global.'

Ratzinowitz felt the ice thinning, beginning to crack under

his feet. `What are you talking about? We're contracted to
provide the whole service.'

`Global won't lose out, Leon . . . '

254

`Be sure we won't. I can tell you that emergency or not,

come hell or high water the courts will protect commercial
interests. Including our interests.'

`Let me finish. I have something that may change your

views. We want you to implement Plan B.'

`What?'
`We've reviewed the options. There'll be a bigger pay-off if

we carry through Plan B.'

`Pay-off?'
`Advantage to you. To us. To the nation as a whole.'
`All of Plan B?'
`Yes. Global gets to implant the whole goddamn nation,'

duCassis said. `Just so long as we manage the monitoring.
And we get to have the source code.'

Later, duCassis met up with Feldman as they strolled

through the corridors of their building.

`Not bad,' Feldman said, as a blonde secretary passed in the

opposite direction, smiling at them. `HR has its priorities
right.'

`Praise be for Human Resources. The last bastion of

political incorrectness,' duCassis said. `Well, I can tell you,
Ratzinowitz nearly wet himself when I told him Plan B is go.'

`That figures. Did he realize where we're planning to take

this thing?'

`No. He's a commercial lawyer. He thinks it's just about

dollars and the Wildfire bug.'

`So did he agree to hand over the sources?'
`He's playing legal tennis with us, but I don't think he has

the merchandise. Tech Group hacked into Global's systems,
and looked through every file. The only copies are way out of

255

date, and they've been over-written with garbage. Looks like
the disc system they were held on went haywire.'

`More likely the guy Miller made sure no-one could read

them,' Feldman said. `How about the London end?'

`Nothing so far,' Feldman said. `Once Tech Group found

out deliveries were being downloaded from the hospital, they
went in there too. They got past the firewalls, but so far no
code. Miller must keep the sources off-line. We may have to
wireless eavesdrop, or even go the humint route.'

`Put in an agent?'
`If it comes to it. Worst case, we snatch Miller. The

potential pay-off's big enough for that. But let's give it a few
days. Tech has McLaughlin on it. He may find a way.'

`McLaughlin? The guy who hacked the North Korean

networks?'

`Right.'
`Jeez, if anyone can crack it, that bastard can.'
`Right. He's some mean coyote. Hey!' Feldman spun on his

heel. `Did you see that? Man, HR are on the ball!'

256

42~ Discrepancies

Simeon had come looking for Miller, and found him in the

computer room, with the lights dimmed, a dark bird-like
shape hunched over the workstations. The programmer didn't
look up.

`Peter, I need to ask you something . . . ' Simeon began. As

his eyes adapted, he saw that Miller was unshaven and bleary-
eyed. `You look exhausted.'

`I've had a lot to get through. And some problems. Do you

know where Gresham is?'

`Gone to a meeting in town, I think. Problems?'
`Someone's been trying to break into the system.'
`A hacker! That must explain what I saw.'
`I can guess who it is,' Miller said. `At least they haven't

caused any damage.'

`Who is it?'
`Never mind. What did you want to ask?'
`Every morning I check through the data from the patients

on the trial.'

`Yes, I know,' Miller said irritably. `So what?'
`This morning there was new data with Sarah's ID on it.'
`That's impossible.' Miller turned to face him. `Show me.'

He moved aside to let Simeon reach the keyboard.

`I can't. When I tried to print it, it had vanished.' Simeon

typed: "Ross S". A response glowed on the screen:
"SUBJECT NOT KNOWN".

`You imagined it.'

257

`No, I assure you I didn't. Is it the hacker, do you think?

Or a bug?'

`I don't think it's either. Let me check the system log.'

Miller turned up the lights and set paper humming from a
printer. He spread it on the bench, and studied the record.

`Unbelievable!' He pointed to an entry: "Ross S T139".

`You did see it.'

`I told you,' Simeon said. `See it's time stamped. It

originated a few minutes before midnight.'

`This is crazy.' Miller ran his finger down the page. `Look!

There was more data for her, too, quite recently.'

Simeon scratched his head. `The person trying to break in

the hacker must be interfering with the system.'

Miller became thoughtful. `I really doubt it.' He scanned

the printout again, turning the pages slowly. `Ahh! It was
transferred to Gresham's research database just after you saw
it. That's why you couldn't find it again. But I don't recognize
the password that was used. OLD37DYL.'

`There's something familiar about that.' Simeon stared at

the line of text over Miller's shoulder. `The letters are an
anagram! David Lloyd, the programmer who used to work
here. But he left a year ago!'

`Isn't anything sane in this place?' Miller said.
Simeon couldn't restrain a smile. `You've noticed.'
Miller ignored the joke. `Let's think about this. The system

works properly, I'm certain of that. Someone's tried to break
in, but I'm sure they didn't affect the data. In any case, why
would they insert new data under Sarah's name? So either
someone else's implant has Sarah's ID, or the signal's coming
from a source that isn't an implant at all.'

`And why did it turn up just now and then get transferred?'
Miller frowned. `A good question.' He rubbed his eyes as if

to drive away a headache. `It makes no sense,' he muttered.

258

`Ah!' He set the printer humming again, tore the output free
and inspected it. `Yes! That explains it.'

`What does?'
`The answer is: Gresham. Lloyd must have set up a

program to divert Sarah's data automatically to his research
database. But this last batch of data went to the wrong place.'
Miller pointed to a line in the printout. `See, a semicolon was
missing from the command code. Probably Gresham deleted
it by accident. That's why the data showed up on your
workstation, otherwise we'd never have seen it. This morning
he must have found the problem, transferred the data
manually, and corrected the command. I guess he didn't know
that the system log would show where the data went, or he
simply forgot about it. And look - ' he stabbed a finger at the
print-out ` a whole slew of earlier data with Sarah's ID also
went to his private workstation.'

`He keeps it on his research database!'
`I want to see what's on that database.' Miller typed and

studied the screen. `Damn! His workstation's switched off.'

`Gresham's very cagey about it. I know he changes his

password constantly. He told me he doesn't want anyone
stealing his research results before he can publish them.'

`There are ways round passwords.' Miller logged out from

the work station and stood up.

`You'd better be careful,' Simeon said. `He's been very

touchy lately.'

On the first floor of the old building, Miller knocked at

the door of Taylor's office. When there was no answer, he
shut his eyes as if recalling a scene from the past, then typed a
sequence into the keypad. There was a click and he turned the

259

handle. But the door did not yield. He cursed, stooped to
examine the Yale lock below the keypad, then walked away.

A few metres along the corridor, the secretary's office was

empty. Her workstation was switched on, and her desk lamp
alight, but there was no sign of her. Miller rummaged in a
desk tidy.

Back at Taylor's door he pushed a paper clip into the Yale,

withdrew it and carefully reshaped it. Then he reinserted it
and manipulated it expertly, till the lock clicked.

Sitting at Taylor's workstation, touching keys, murmuring

commands, Miller began to pick his way through the data,
sometimes pausing to jot notes, tilting his head at the screen
like a tracker dog pursuing an elusive scent.

Soon he sat looking at thumbnail photographs of Sarah.

Some were blurred, perhaps taken by a mobile phone held in
an unsteady hand. In one of them, which was time-stamped
and looked as if a security camera had been pressed into
service to take it, she was half naked. Evidently, even the staff
changing rooms at St Evelyn's weren't sacrosanct.

He touched further keys, and now he was looking at a

collection of graphs, heart rate, breathing and other vital
signs, which resembled a mountain range in a spectrum of
colours. One dark purple trace, labelled "Oxytocin", stood
above a scale with annotations of time, date and GPS
coordinates. Slow, gentle foothills swelled to a wide,
undulating plateau, persisting for a long time before it
swooped up to craggy peaks, rhythmic and spiky, increasingly
dramatic in their leaps, till on the far side a hinterland of calm

260

returned. The legend: "Subject: T139." floated over this
landscape.

Miller checked the date under the mountain peaks against

the calendar on his cellphone. It was the day when Sarah had
returned to St Evelyn's and they'd gone out to the pub and
drunk champagne and gone home together.

What he was looking at on-screen was Sarah except it

wasn't. Sarah was a person. Taylor, using Tracks, had reduced
her to a physiological system, the operation of a human
program. Miller had a pretty good idea how he'd done it.
Sarah had been right to mistrust him.

And if that was the case, what else might she have been

right about?

He sat motionless for many minutes. Then he dismissed

the non-Sarah from the screen and instead called up a
thumbnail picture of Martin Baines. A cluster of new traces
threaded across the display. He ran the cursor back in time,
dates and times unreeling below the shifting graphs, till
jagged surges, violent bursts of activity slid into view. He
pressed closer to the screen to study them carefully.

Again he was still for a long time. Then he began to type,

pausing sometimes to consider what he'd composed. His face
was pale, without expression. Beyond the window, bleak, late
afternoon light hovered over the tower block and the old
buildings.

261

43~ Lilith

At 6 o'clock in the evening, Taylor let himself into his

office. Dusk was approaching, the room shadowed. The
phone was ringing, and he snatched it up. `Gresham Taylor

. . . Oh, Dr Jamieson, how are you? . . . No, I've been out.

I haven't checked my email yet.'

He listened intently, tapping his fingers on the desk-top.

`They released him? When?' He reached for the silver paper
knife.

`The police found no cause to detain him?' He frowned. `I

must say that causes me grave concern. He can show up well
at review, but you've seen his record . . . I see. And he's still on
medication? Well, if you say he's well-controlled . . . I've no
choice but to accept your opinion. Thank you for letting me
know.'

He put the phone down slowly, sat back and rubbed the

base of his neck, near his shoulder. If Miller found out, he
wasn't going to like this: it meant that Sarah was under threat.
But at least Taylor had been prescient enough to leave
Baines's implant in place. It would make it possible to locate
him if he was about to cause trouble. More accurately, when
he was about to cause trouble, because that was certain to
happen. Mr Baines would not comply with his medication
regime for long. It would be wise to find his whereabouts
immediately.

He switched on his workstation. The screen lit up; but

instead of a request for his password, it showed only a faint,

262

iridescent blue, without pattern or text. Taylor was seized by a
sudden feeling of unease. He switched the workstation off,
then on again, and irritably tried his password repeatedly. But
the screen remained blank.

Too much was at stake to have minor problems like this.

Cursing under his breath, he reached for the phone and called
the computer lab. Miller answered.

`Peter, there's a problem . . . '
`It's over.'
`What are you talking about?'
The line closed off.
Taylor went through the door between the bookshelves,

slamming it behind him. At the far end of the tunnel, he took
the stairs to the computer room, not stopping for the lift. As
he entered, Miller was removing a silver memory card from a
workstation. For once, the lights were fully on.

`I need the system,' Taylor said. `It's urgent.'
`I checked out your research database,' Miller said calmly.
`What?' Taylor glared at him. `You've been in my private

office?'

`What would you know about privacy?'
`What do you mean?'
`You've been spying on Sarah and me.'
`What are you talking about?'
`You told her you'd removed her implant, but you left it in.

Didn't you?'

The psychiatrist sat down. He took a deep breath and

something of his usual poise returned, as if he'd willed himself
back on stage. `It's not what you're imagining.'

`I bet.'
`Look, I didn't mean to offend you. To understand the

chemistry, you need to monitor situations where the

263

neurotransmitters are in full flood. You know how research
works. Collecting data's hardly a big deal is it?'

`No, and sex isn't a big deal either - for some of us,' Miller

said. `But the situations you've been studying are a big deal -
for you, aren't they? Especially the ones where someone's
frightened to death, right?'

`You're fantasizing.'
`You got an alert on your pager when Baines came after

Sarah in the operating theatre, didn't you? I've seen the data.
She was terrified, thinking he intended to kill her - and she
was right, his biochemistry had gone crazy. You tracked them
both, and you didn't sedate him till the very last moment.
Then you edited the data so it looked like he was harmless. I
know about data, I could tell where you'd made the changes.
I've seen the copy of the real thing you kept for yourself, too. I
suppose you decided to leave her implant in place hoping you
could record more of the same another time.'

Taylor lifted his hands. `Peter, you're imagining things.

You're tired. Please turn the system back on. It's very, very
important.'

`And after that you watched Baines complete a murder,

didn't you?'

Taylor fell silent, his eyes searching the room, avoiding

Miller's.

`You tracked him into the Tube station, right? You must

have known he was after someone - by then you knew how his
chemistry would look. You waited to see him do it, didn't you,
instead of giving the alarm.' Miller laughed humourlessly.
`That time around you blanked out the data completely and
blamed it on a system glitch. I bet you sit up at night
replaying your copy of the original instead of porn.'

`You're wrong, there was a fault.' Taylor glared at him.

`The data was delayed, I didn't get it till after the event. Blame

264

the wretched computers, not me. Well of course I tried to save
the project. Why wouldn't I? Anyway, since when were you so
moral? All you care about is your software, and screwing that
little whore. That's what feeds your crippled ego.'

`That figures,' Miller said. `You want her. But I bet all

you're capable of is getting off by sneaking into people's
minds. That's not what I designed my software for. I've
deleted the system. It's over.'

`You're insane! It's not your software. Lamb's paying a

fortune for it, and we have a contract with him, and indirectly
with Global, remember? If I tell them you deleted it, they'll
hunt you down and you'll wish you'd never been born. I know
their kind, they'll stop at nothing to get it back.'

`Then you'd better not tell them.' Miller held up the silver

memory card. `If I run into problems, my cellphone will
trigger an email, and a copy of this goes to the police. It has
all of the data the real data - with instructions on how to
view the evidence of your little hobbies. And don't think you
can find the copy. It's encoded and hidden in cyberspace.'

`What about my Institute?' Taylor stood up and hit the

table with his fist. `You little prick, you're ruining everything.'
He drew a deep breath. `Well, let me tell you something. If
you don't restore this system, it's that little bitch Sarah who'll
suffer. Her friend Baines is on the loose, they've discharged
him, God knows why, and you and I both know what Mr
Baines believes he's on this earth to do. So if you value Sarah's
life you'd better bring the system back. He's out there right
now, and if he gets to her, it'll be the end. We'll lose
everything and she'll lose her life.'

Miller looked at him calmly. `I seem to remember hearing

that story before, when you conned me into dealing with
Global.'

`Put Tracks back and see for yourself.'

265

`Forget it. Sarah's coming with me where Baines won't find

us.'

`Don't do this,' Taylor said in a low voice. `Put Tracks

back. We'll have Baines put away, Sarah will be safe, and we'll
have the Global deal. No-one will know anything about any
of this.'

`Forget it.' Miller went out, pulling the door shut behind

him.

As he neared the lift, its doors opened and a figure

emerged. For an instant his heart jumped, imagining despite
himself that it was Baines. Then he saw it was Freddy.

The West Indian was out of breath and agitated. `I heard

Sarah's here.'

`Yes, she's here, with me. She just went to say goodbye to

Simeon.'

`He told me. She left there.'
`What's the matter?'
`The Baines hombre. He here somewhere.'
`Not you too,' Miller said. `I suppose Gresham Taylor told

you that story.'

`No story. I can tell when him around, almost like I can

smell him. Something bad coming to Sarah. Gotta find her.'

`I don't believe you,' Miller said. `In any case, we're out of

here.' He pulled out his cellphone, and dialled Sarah. A tinny
voice echoed from the earpiece. `I can't take your call just now.
Please leave a message.'

`She know it's best to switch off mobile phones in a

hospital,' Freddy said.

Miller looked at him uncertainly. `Alright, we'll find her,'

he said. `We'll go back to my lab.' Freddy followed him along
the corridor.

266

Taylor was still sitting at the table. He turned his head

slowly as they came in. `I thought you'd gone,' he said, his
voice flat.

`Maybe you weren't lying,' Miller said. `We'll see.' He

pulled the memory cards from his pocket, and loaded them
into a server. He set switches, and spoke commands. The
system flickered into life as if light were returning to the eyes
of a reincarnated creature. LED indicators gleamed with
restored energy, motors and ventilation fans hummed as they
accelerated into operation, start-up messages wrote themselves
on screens.

A map of the hospital campus came into focus. `Locate

Ross, Sarah,' Miller said. A position marker began to blink.
`There! She's on her way here. She arranged to meet me.'

`Baines,' Freddy said. `Where he?'
`Locate. Baines, Martin,' Miller said. One marker became

brighter, and next to it a bright red phoboid grew larger,
pulsing menacingly. Miller cursed violently under his breath.
`He's following her.'

Taylor looked at the red amoeba. `He's high as a kite. In

that state the only answer's a strait-jacket.' He picked up the
phone, dialled and listened: `Where are those idiots in
Security? Freddy, find them and bring them here. Tell them
it's an emergency.'

Freddy hurried out.
`He's after her,' Taylor said. `I can't afford an incident.'
Miller stared at him in disgust. `Then you'd better hope we

get to her first.' He grabbed a laptop, and switched it on. As
they hurried out, its screen came alive with the phoboid,
flame-red and ominous.

267

Sarah met them on the ground floor. `Oh, hi,' she said to

Miller. `Simeon sends . . . '

`We have to leave,' Miller said. `Baines is here.'
`We keep out of his way till Security gets here,' Taylor said.

`We'll go to my office. I'll show you.' He brought them to the
door of the hidden corridor, pulled it open, and urged them
through, closed the door behind them, and led the way into
the dimly lit passageway. They stayed close together in the
gloom as they moved deeper into the narrow space, edging
past the shapes of abandoned machines, their feet splashing in
unseen puddles.

Behind them, they heard the squeal of the heavy door on

its worn hinges. As they came to a turn in the corridor, Miller
looked back and glimpsed a tall figure following them. It was
dressed in the uniform of a female nurse.

Then the turn cut off their line of sight. Ahead of them

was the staircase that led to the closed office door. Taylor
fished in his pockets, and uttered a soft despairing moan. `I
didn't bring the key to get back! For God's sake let's get out
of his way. He'll think we've gone through and locked the
door behind us.' He hurried them back to an unobtrusive
entrance on their left, and glanced almost longingly at Sarah.
Then he gestured to them to follow him as he moved forward
into the dark.

On the screen of Miller's laptop the burning phoboid split

into two, throbbing side by side, like twins. As if two people
were following them.

It made Martha angry that Martin would disappear at a

time like this. But she knew he'd reappear when the time

268

came. Best to wait for him to speak, and ignore the other
voices that murmured at her.

At first it was hard to see, but gradually she made out the

surroundings. This place reminded her of the tunnel in the
Tube station where Lilith had somehow escaped. But here,
there could be no way out.

`There!' Martin said in her ear. Something had pleased

him: she could feel him grin inside her head. She looked
down. Lying on the ground was a yellow box with a black
death's head symbol on its side.

Martha halted and looked around warily. Lilith was here

somewhere, had emerged from behind her mirrors. She
wouldn't suspect Martha's purpose - the nurse's uniform
would fool her, make her think she was here to help. As if
anyone in their right mind would want to help Lilith with the
evil things she did! Killing decent men that way. This time
Martha would make sure.

She wrenched open the lid of the yellow sharps box, and

groped through its contents. Oh, how keen the little blades
were! She turned into the side passage, peering into the dark.

As Sarah looked around, her stomach tightened in a knot

and a sour taste came into her mouth. Taylor had switched on
a flashlight that had been lying on a shelf. Its gleam reflected
from the dusty surfaces of giant jars and bottles. The glass
vessels held monstrosities submerged in liquid: a dissected
arm with fingers that stretched towards her, a white growth of
some kind, its lobes pressed against the glass, a pale foetus
with a deformed head, its umbilical cord still attached, its
open eyes watching her. Averting her gaze, she grabbed
Miller's hand as they moved deeper into this grotesque
museum. They came to a halt in a kind of cave formed by

269

metal shelving on which more containers were stacked. A rug
was spread on the floor. A few anatomical textbooks lay
scattered around on it.

Taylor motioned them to crouch down out of sight, and

switched off the flashlight. Miller shut off the laptop, and the
flickering light from the twin phoboids died. Now there was
only a faint glow from the main tunnel, refracted through the
array of glass which shielded them from Baines.

Hiding behind the protective wall of vessels, Sarah heard

slow, heavy footsteps approaching along the passageway.
There was a curious loose metallic sound too, as if someone
were shaking a box of large needles. She buried her face in
Miller's shoulder, holding her breath. The footsteps stopped.
Slowly, unable to help herself, Sarah looked up.

One of the large containers in front of her held something

she couldn't quite make out. Distorted by the curved glass, it
was large and pale, some awful piece of pathology with what
looked like eyes in it, almost like a face. And then it opened
its jaws to reveal jagged teeth.

`You mustn't hide from Martha,' it said.
Sarah screamed and backed away violently, colliding with

the metal racking behind her. A large jar toppled from a shelf,
hit a protruding glass trough, and exploded into falling shards.
Cold liquid with a sharp, choking smell sprayed over her, and
a rubbery mass slithered onto her shoulder. She cried out, and
hurled the thing away with a reflex shudder. Now Baines
came towards her holding something that glinted dully,
pointing it at her. Even in the dim light, she could see that his
fingers were wet with a dark liquid.

Taylor grabbed Sarah's arm and pushed her to one side.

`Listen to me, Martin,' he said loudly. But his voice shook.

Baines looked at him indifferently. He caught the

psychiatrist by the arm, pulled him close, and almost casually

270

pressed the scalpel he held into Taylor's chest to the full
length of its handle. Taylor stared at him with an expression
of surprise. He seemed about to speak, but only a bubbling
noise came from his mouth. Still looking astonished, he slid
into a sitting position.

`Mark the bitch,' Martha heard Martin giggle. She reached

out and with a bloody forefinger wrote a letter `L' on Sarah's
forehead. It was interesting to see how Lilith cringed behind
her servant. Look how the whore was wide-eyed at the
prospect of her own death! It was always the brazen ones who
were most afraid when their time came. The servant hadn't
been able to protect her. Both of them would give up their
useless lives to keep Martha pure, so that she could stay with
Martin.

To Sarah's horror, Baines thrust his face close to hers. His

breath was bitter, as if he were starving. She shut her eyes,
waiting for the slicing impact. She heard a wet, dull impact,
and then a metallic sound, as if the scalpel had fallen to the
floor. She waited through several small eternities for Baines to
pick it up. But the blade did not come.

Ever so slowly, she opened her eyes. Miller was kneeling

by Baines. Lying next to him was the laptop that had smashed
Baines's head, its sharp metal corner smeared with red-
streaked grey jelly.

Tech Group's man in Boston, McLaughlin, lean, narrow-

eyed and hollow-cheeked, had an office in duCassis's

271

building. It had no window, but it was above ground, a
preferred position that was a tribute to his special skills.

Like a technological spider, McLaughlin had grasped the

data networks with a thin claw, had penetrated the firewalls of
Miller's hive, and had anchored a silken thread inside. Ever
since then, he had been monitoring vibrations across his web.
Miller, sharp and careful, was prey that made for good sport,
but the real target of course was Tracks, and day in, day out,
McLaughlin's software had been watching and waiting for
him to make a mistake. Now, at last, it detected the Tracks
source code, alive and accessible on a memory card loaded
into a server at St Evelyn's. With a deep sigh, McLaughlin
typed the command that wound a gossamer electronic
filament around the code from three thousand miles away,
and began to reel it in across his web, from which it would
never escape.

272

44~ Chrysler

Lamb had come back to the Manhattan penthouse to

finalize arrangements, and was poring over the documents his
lawyers had prepared for his takeover of Global. A lamp cast a
pool of light on the papers spread on the inlaid surface of his
writing table. Outside the windows, the cliffs of Midtown
stood in late afternoon light.

As he worked through the legal clauses, Lamb was feeling

weary. He was missing the comforting presence of Julia, who
was out of town, busy with preparations for their move to
safety. He could almost contemplate agreeing a compromise
with Global and the Agency. Time was short, and it would be
as well to wrap up matters quickly. Except that compromise
had never been his style.

When the phone chimed, his head jerked up, and alarm

suffused him. He'd been dozing. That was something which
happened to old people on the down-slope to extinction. He
mustn't lose his grip. He shook himself fully awake and
grabbed the phone.

It was one of his attorneys.
`Theodore? It's Robert.'
`Yes. What's the situation?'
`The Fed's lawyers got back to me.'
Lamb felt better. There was progress. `They're beginning

to see sense?'

`I wish I could say so. Frankly, this thing's looking ugly.

You have to be careful.'

273

`I have to be careful! While those thieves get away with it?'
`Theodore, as your lawyer I'm advising you we'd do well

to be flexible. You should be prepared to back off.'

Lamb stared out angrily through the windows of his

penthouse. The Manhattan skyline seemed suddenly
oppressive, weighing on him. `What are you talking about?'

`They won't give ground. This man duCassis wants to

meet up with you.'

`I don't want to see him again. You deal with him. God

knows I pay you enough.'

`Meet with him, Theodore. Hear what he has to say.

Unless you do, I won't be able to help you.'

duCassis arrived in less than two hours. He declined

Lamb's invitation to sit down, and stood by the windows,
picking out landmarks.

`Jesus,' he said, `the Chrysler Building's marvellous, isn't it?

Did you know the spire's made entirely from stainless steel?'

`I hadn't thought about it,' Lamb said. `Can we be brief?

I've matters to attend to.'

`Chrysler got secret permission from the City authorities to

add the spire at the last moment. That's how he beat a rival to
create the world's tallest building. And you know what? He
never paid the architect.'

`That was theft,' Lamb said. `Something you people seem

to specialize in.'

`I'm sure you wouldn't expect me to agree.' duCassis

touched his finger tip to the window, tracing the outline of
the Chrysler. `You're a hugely wealthy man, Mr Lamb.'

`I would say comfortable.'
`One way to describe it. Any event, you've a lot to lose.

Wealth, health, all of that.'

274

`I've no intention of losing any of it. Least of all to thieves

masquerading as an arm of government.'

`I suppose that's a point of view.' duCassis seemed mildly

amused.

`Be assured, my attorneys will have plenty to say about my

rights to profit fairly from my investments.'

`Your attorneys don't bother me, Mr Lamb,' duCassis said.

`There are more important issues. How's your new Tracks
implant? I heard you have one with the anti-Wildfire
upgrade.'

`Thanks to my intervention, the technology works

perfectly. This entire nation should be grateful for what I've
done.'

`You're right, it works fine. Our office gets reports from

your implant all the time.'

Lamb stared. `That's confidential data. My people will

crucify you.'

`Tracks records all kinds of things these days, Mr Lamb.

According to its data, you lead a how can I put this? a
pretty full life. And not only with your friend Julia.'

`Leave her alone!' Lamb looked directly at duCassis. `Just

what do you want?'

`What do I want? It's not personal, Mr Lamb, I'm merely a

servant of the state. Speaking in that capacity, we'd like you to
forget this notion that you have some hold over the Tracks
technology. You don't. We're looking after it now.'

`You have no right. I was the one who made it happen.'
`So you say. But you`ve seen what the Wildfire bug does,

you understand how infectious it is. We're talking life and
death of the nation here. That makes it vital for our
government to have control of the Tracks technology,
wouldn't you agree? We can't have an individual claiming

275

ownership, hindering decisions about its use - seeking
injunctions, your lawyers tell us.'

Lamb glowered at him. `Why would I hinder it, for God's

sake? The more it's used, the better for me, the better for
everyone. We all want this plague eliminated. I just want a
fair return for my contribution.'

duCassis looked unimpressed. `If you get in our way, the

consequence could be a great number of deaths. Perhaps
including your own.'

`Nonsense,' Lamb said, calmer now. `You've no choice but

to quench the epidemic. You can't let it run and destroy the
population. As for myself, I'll be safely out of the way. I don't
suppose your miserable education extends beyond the recent
history of your barbarian state - but in mediaeval Europe, the
people who could, the important people, left the cities and
waited till the plague died out. And that's what I'm doing. I
deserve to survive.'

`You won't be going anywhere,' duCassis said quietly. `Not

unless we get this issue resolved. We'll require your presence,
enjoying our hospitality. Maybe not here exactly. In an
emergency we have powers of rendition. Tell me, are you
psychic, Mr Lamb?'

Lamb's calm was deserting him. `I can say I have unusually

keen instincts.'

`Then they should be issuing a warning. Here's where we're

at. Right now, we have de facto control of the technology - all
of it. But you're making things a little untidy for us, we want
to be able to use Watchdog to best effect. Technology can be
fallible, of course. Who knows, your implant might stop
functioning. Given your attitude, I doubt you'd be on the
priority list for it to be fixed. Then you wouldn't have any
safeguard against the Wildfire lifeform, and you've seen what

276

it inflicts on its hosts. It's not a pleasant fate. It's even possible
Wildfire might target you personally.'

Lamb's fingers grabbed reflexively for the pulse in his

wrist. `That's obscene.'

`Not really. We just require you to be cooperative.'
`Cooperative.' Lamb went to the window, and stood

looking out over the city. He said bitterly, as if to himself: `In
the circumstances I suppose I can agree to be realistic, if that
will serve.'

`Excellent,' duCassis said. `Then I have some papers for

you to sign.'

277

45~ Inoculation

Hudson watches the product launch on TV. With the

Agency in control, and Lamb and Miller gone - no-one
knows where - Tracks has been rebranded. Tofler has
contributed magnificently to the marketing strategy, now that
he's mostly recovered from the breakdown he suffered when
his implant-phobia got out of hand. To ensure product
loyalty, it's necessary that the American people understand the
benefits of the product, and that citizens are fully motivated.
Which is to say, motivated by fear.

Seated at his desk in the Oval Office, the President gravely

studies a document, before raising his head to look directly
into the camera.

`My fellow Americans. You are all aware of the new disease

that has emerged in our southern states.'

He waits, a dramatic pause.
`Our scientists have worked intensively to determine the

cause of this pestilence. Through their dedicated efforts, we
know that it is not an act of Almighty God. Nor is it an
accident or any kind of natural phenomenon.'

Another pause.
`I have to tell you now that it is an act of terrorism.

Ruthless opponents of all we hold dear have deployed a
biological weapon. Our country faces a deadly threat.'

278

Sometimes there's a little traffic noise in Hudson's street,

and occasionally a plane diverts overhead. But as the president
speaks, an unearthly silence enfolds the house, a stunned and
total absence of sound, which seems to fall not only on the
dwelling and the neighbourhood, but on the city, the state,
the continent.

The President continues: `Some citizens have fled from

this menace, in an attempt to save their families and
themselves. Their reaction is understandable, but it is
counterproductive. It will make matters worse when there is
no need. For I also bring good news.'

He waits.
`The enemy's attack will not succeed. American technology

is even now eliminating the threat. Providing we act calmly,
the citizens of these United States can walk free from fear and
safe from disease. But to achieve that outcome, you must
understand the danger that has confronted us and the way we
will defeat it.'

He turns to a wall-size video screen which flares into life.

And there, staring full-on at the nation, is the corroded,
blood-caked face of the salesman. The camera zooms in till
his red-black eyes fill the screen.

`This is the face of bio-terror,' the President barks. `The

life-form that killed this decent US citizen is virulent.
Without the protection of technology, it's invisible and fatal.
There's no way to know when it's gotten into you, and is
breeding. Let me emphasize again to run from it is of no
avail. You will carry the threat inside you, and you will spread
it even wider.'

The President's eyes narrow. For a moment his voice

becomes a snarl. `Be sure we will ruthlessly hunt down and
punish the perpetrators of this aggression against our way of
life.' Then his face relaxes into a smile. `But today's answer - is

279

this!` He picks up a round plastic container, and holds it out
solemnly to the camera. `A technology that will protect all of
us.' His voice becomes hushed. `This is - WatchDog!' The
camera zooms in, closer and closer, and there at the centre of
the dish is a grey seed that glints under the lights. `WatchDog
technology will keep our citizens safe!'

On the video screen, the frightening eyes of the salesman

are supplanted by a different picture. A large, friendly but very
alert German Shepherd dog sits looking up at a workstation
as if waiting for it to speak.

`A simple one-time injection, no different than a flu jab,

will protect every citizen. And here's the truly good news
safe not only from terrorism ' again the President looks
directly into the camera `- but safe from other diseases that in
the past claimed so many lives. Heart disease, cancer, stroke -
these too will be defeated!'

The President takes off his jacket, undoes his tie, opens his

shirt. The camera zooms in. There's a small scar on his
shoulder. `My WatchDog inoculation,' he says, smiling,
though his eyes are cold. He points to the video screen. `Right
here, see how it keeps me healthy.' And there, rolling
smoothly above a cluster of numbers, is his heart-beat, strong
and steady.

In his living room, Hudson leans forward to look closely at

the heartbeat on his TV screen. Was there some text
flickering below it: "RESTRAINT ADVISED"? He blinks,
and to his vast relief, the message, if it was ever there, has
vanished. It must have been his imagination.

As the camera homes in on him again, the President says:

`Now I want to tell you about an enhancement to our
Medicare and Medicaid programs. With immediate effect -
every citizen is entitled to protection by a free WatchDog

280

innoculation. And with every certificate of inoculation come
tax-credits! Let me explain.'

He does, and in passing he makes brief mention of

Watchdog's integration with the Patriot Acts. Most of the
viewing public are focused on the tax credits. But for those
who notice, it makes sense, it's part of the war against terror.

When the President finishes, Hudson flips channels. On

every station the salesman's eyes appear. He shuts the thing
off, turns on the radio and immediately turns it off again
when it radiates the President's voice. He needs to get out.

Driving to a nearby mall, he passes a cluster of bill-boards.

Men in white overalls are working from a cherry picker. As he
drives by, the salesman's eyes appear, the centre-piece of a
huge poster that's being unrolled. The ghastly stare seems to
follow Hudson as he accelerates away.

He buys a paper at the mall, but throws it away when he

sees what's on the front page. At home again, he finds the TV
networks jammed with talking heads, medical and electronics
experts explaining WatchDog technology in simple words.

Within 24 hours, the WatchDog brand has burned itself

into the national psyche.

It proves less easy than the President made it sound. The

detailed tally, the numeric delineation of WatchDog's
performance, comes to Solnik. The purpose of the numbers is
to ensure that Global HealthCare Inc receives its proper dues
for implanting the technology and delivering the medical
services that follow. But at times Solnik has the eerie feeling
that he's the Recording Angel, inscribing entries in the Book
of Life and Death.

281

On the first day of reckoning: thirty-seven deaths.
In the first week: two hundred and twelve deaths.
The following week, more than four hundred.
Then more than one thousand.

Along with the numbers come the media news reports:

A National State of Emergency.
Quarantine enforced on Lubbock and on nearby towns.
Highway riots quelled by the National Guard: Humvee-

mounted directed-energy weapons that sting like fire, anti-
traction sprays that immobilize vehicles, tuneable rubber
bullets that do not quite kill, malodorant chemicals, teargas.

Roads leading towards the Mexican border closed, armed

border patrols mounted.

Lines of traffic that stretch for miles and go nowhere.

The invisible invader perilously contained.

Despite the mergers and acquisitions which have marked

the healthcare industry in recent years, some 37,000 clinical
units are declared suitable to service the population of the
United States with Watchdog implants. The number includes
hospitals of all sizes, as well as specialized independent centers
such as those which provide dialysis, transplantation,
radiotherapy, diabetic medicine, geriatric care, weight
reduction, diet control, cosmetic surgery, psychiatry in various
flavours, and some larger family doctor practices. All of them
- some glad of extra income, some furious at loss of business
but obliged to obey emergency provisions are subcontracted
to Global under the Federal master plan for inoculation. With

282

a population approaching 400 million, on average each centre
will have to implant more than 10,000 individuals. But the
large hospitals have many departments, in some cases fifty or
more, so that on average each department or centre has no
more than 1,000 patients to implant. It will be tough, but it
can be done before it's too late. When America decides to
move, its energy is formidable. It can act as one giant
industrial complex with an unstoppable will. The immense
capacity to strike back, which first emerged after Pearl
Harbour, is still alive and can be called on.

Feldman gets to check things out on the shop-floor. That

way you find out what's really happening. Having to travel in
times of plague frightens him, and even more so does visiting
the centres where the work is happening, but it has to be
done, and his implant, sitting inside his shoulder like some
high-tech talisman is a comfort - it will protect him if, worst
case, he should pick up the bug.

A very few internal flights are permitted for passengers

with officially approved cause to travel. He flies to Amarillo,
the plane largely empty no-one likes to breathe recycled air
unless they absolutely have to. The stewardesses are masked,
even though they have received priority inoculation. The dark
blue masks, carrying the airline's logo, confers on them a
pleasingly kinky appearance. He wishes he could tell them
how much they have to thank him for how he helped bring
in the technology that is saving them all. But security won't
allow it.

In Amarillo he takes a taxi to a major hospital owned by

Global. The line of those waiting for implantation extends
clear around the block, its tail overlapping its head. He shows
his Federal security clearance to the guards on the door.

283

Under the pressure of numbers, the place has lost some of its
hygienic sheen, the floors scuffed, plastic cups and plates left
around, unscavenged; in normal times, in good American
hospitals you could eat off the floors, and you'd probably be
safer doing that than frequenting some of the greasy spoons
that Feldman has visited in his time. But not now.

The prospective implantees are slumped on chairs in the

waiting room. Despite the long line outside, there are less
than a dozen of them in here. The hospital doesn't want to
crowd them: that could encourage the spread of the bug.
Some clean-cut executive types, a couple who look like
farmers, three elderly black guys patiently waiting their turn
on a bench by the side wall, and unless Feldman misses his
guess, two white hookers sitting opposite, chatting amiably.

On the far side of the room, a young couple sit holding

hands and whispering. The girl touches her shoulder, and
winces. The guy gives her a gentle hug, as a nurse comes to
tell them they can go.

Feldman strolls into one of the treatment areas. A

receptionist behind a workstation is taking details from a
patient, checking his ID. Feldman zaps her with his Federal
badge, and takes a seat. There are five treatment bays, but
only one of them has the curtains pulled across. He waits for a
while, then ambles across and peeks through the gap. A pretty
blonde nurse is finishing up a dressing on a young white guy,
giving him a feel-good smile. She turns as she hears the rattle
of the curtain rings. `Can I help you?'

`Sure you can,' Feldman wheezes. `I'm a Federal agent,

working with Global HealthCare. I'm checking on progress.'

The nurse gives the young guy's shoulder a pat, and tells

him to get his shirt on again. He gives her a nervous, longing
look, gets down from the couch, and makes his way to the
exit. The nurse smiles at Feldman.

284

`How's it going?' he asks.
`It's really interesting work.'
`Say, that's good to hear. Some clinical people tell me they

find it monotonous.'

`No way,' she protested. `Not boring at all. And it's really

worthwhile.'

Feldman stares at her. `What specialty were you in before

this?'

`Specialty?'
`Yuh. What area of medicine?'
`Oh, I wasn't in medicine, till Global recruited me.'
`Really. What was your profession before this?'
`I worked at MacDonald's.'

They are processing one patient every nine minutes,

Feldman figures. Not as fast as he'd have liked, but not a bad
rate all the same. Multiplied up by the number of centres
across the United States, it should get the job done, just
about, in the time they have before the virus gets completely
out of control.

Deeper in the hospital, in closed areas you can only enter if

you are suited up and breathing a safe air supply, they have
the ones who have already been picked up by WatchDog.
Feldman watches with fascination, looking through glass into
the isolation units where the sick are segregated. Unlike the
cases in the military hospitals, these people aren't visibly sick.
Some of them look fine, rosy-faced, full of health. He guesses
it must have been hard for them to accept that anything's
wrong, a drastic shock to their sense of well-being. It's as well
the marketing program has done its job, because inside them,

285

rooted in the rich soil of their cellular mechanisms, the virus is
preparing to wreak havoc with their immune systems, punch
holes in their blood vessels. Only now it won't get away with
it, because the human hosts, the virus's meal-tickets, are
receiving doses of virus poison, the counter-weapon that will
wreck its mechanisms, break apart the complex chemistry of
its life. The hosts will be returned to their own lives, because
the bug will never get past its incubation period to the stage
when it can infect new victims.

As he heads back to the freeway, a group of helicopters fly

low above, swooping down with a raucous flutter of rotors.
Feldman opens the cab window and hears the banshee wail of
ambulances. New infections are being found and corralled.
We're going to win, he thinks, we'll see off the invader that
dared to threaten the human species. And then, he knows, a
new and better way of life will begin.

Back at home office, data floods in from the WatchDog

network, consolidated through the super-computer complexes
in New York and DC. On their screens, Feldman and
duCassis watch the tracks of the spreading virus, the extent of
its growth and the success with which the biochemical
response is fighting back. The screens give them statistics,
maps, the location of new infections, the locations of
treatment centres, the deployment of helicopters, ambulances
and police cars to pick up those newly infected. The doses
administered, the recovery periods.

286

The President appears again on television to say that the

fight is going well, but he has a warning to give, with pictures
of some crazy people who died in Florida. Members of a cult,
they had removed their implants themselves, using surgical
scalpels, believing the chips were the Mark of the Beast
prophesied in the Book of Revelation. They paid the price,
the President explains.

The numbers continue to climb.
In the fourth week of reckoning, 67,600 infections

detected and treated, and 2,400 deaths. In the fifth week,
413,000 infections - but only 4,100 deaths. And then! - in the
sixth week, 1,056,303 cases. And only 2 deaths!

`We beat it,' Feldman says to duCassis.
`Until the next outbreak,' duCassis says with a slight smile.
Feldman studies the screens carefully, uses a mouse to

zoom into the view of a city. `The orange markers. They're the
specials?'

`Right,' duCassis says. `Being taken care of.' He smiles

again. `We'll know more at the review meeting. You'll be
there?'

`It's a hell of a place to hold a review,' Feldman grumbles,

`but I'll be there.'

287

46~ Patterns of Conspiracy

Even though he has difficulty squeezing into the driver's

seat, Feldman insists on driving the mid-range rental Ford
they've collected at the airport. He hurls the car expertly along
the twisting roads of the Southern Rockies, under a clear blue
Colorado sky, duCassis hunched beside him with his foot
pressing on an imaginary brake pedal. Feldman is clearly
taking it out on the car. `Why couldn't they have held the
review in DC?' he demands. This is out of character, duCassis
knows. Feldman generally likes to travel, and there's probably
some domestic issue at the back of it - or perhaps he doesn't
like the claustrophobic atmosphere of the place they're headed
for. `Be grateful,' he tells Feldman. `The fact they've invited
you means they'd have a place for you if the worst happened.'

It was relegated after the Cold War to the status of a

tourist attraction, no longer in the business of tracking
missiles and standing ready to direct nuclear retaliation at any
moment. But it was kept on warm standby and now it's back
in service. Its air filtration is acute enough to repel
radioactivity, and together with its water supply, from pure
underground springs, it can hold the Wildfire virus at bay if
catastrophe strikes. If needed it can provide safe
accommodation for the most senior levels of government till
the terror passes.

It's equipped with super-powerful computers and

communications networks that integrate information from
multiple sources, and now the surveillance eyes of Watchdog

288

have been added, hooked into Homeland Security's Echelon
system and into the FBI's DNA database, Codis. This new
WatchDog complex is the latest in a long series of military
poems: Looking Glass, Dark Angel, Stone Sentry,
Nightwatch.

Feldman swerves the car to a standstill at a parking lot

surrounded by razor wire and guarded by sentries carrying
automatic rifles, who demand ID. A ten-minute walk uphill,
with Feldman grumbling and mopping his forehead, brings
them to an arched portal in the rock where they board an
electric golf-cart controlled by a soldier in combat gear. It
moves into a steel cage and halts, and they wait like mice in a
trap while their ID is verified a second time. Then the cart
eases forward under spectral fluorescent lights, Feldman's
unease growing as they move down into the mountain for a
third of a mile, until steel doors several feet thick pivot to
allow them into four and a half acres of secrecy.

Feldman relaxes once they're sipping coffee in the

comfortable setting of the presentation room. It used to be the
control centre for nuclear holocaust. Now it's been made ready
for a different kind of war. As they wait for proceedings to
begin, there's a buzz of quiet conversation from the small,
select audience.

`The special guest is coming?' Feldman asks duCassis.
`That's what I heard.'
The chairman takes his place on the podium. He's tall,

academic-looking, rimless glasses, thinning hair. He taps his
necktie mic, checks that the wall-mounted loudspeakers boom
in reply, and waits while the chatter dies. Then he says:

`Gentlemen! Welcome to the Watchdog Progress Review.'
There's a stir behind them, and Feldman turns to scan the

audience. An elegant woman in a blue power suit is standing
up, staring at the chairman. He begins again. `Mrs Bergson,

289

gentlemen, welcome.' He smiles. `From now on, let's take it
that the male embraces the female.'

`Right on!' someone calls out, among whistles of approval.
Feldman smirks. `Some tough babe,' he whispers to

duCassis.

`Hey!' duCassis says. `Coyote's here.' McLaughlin's sitting

in the front row, ill at ease, looking around, his long hair
unkempt as usual. duCassis raises his hand to give him a low-
profile salute, and gets a surly nod in return.

`The software extensions are in?' Feldman murmurs.
`I imagine we'll hear about that,' duCassis says.
The chairman looks up expectantly as he presses a button

on the podium. An overhead screen fills with glowing colour:
tables of numbers of infections, treatments delivered,
recoveries, deaths. Graphs showing early projections for the
possible spread of the virus. And for its retreat.

`First things first, gentlemen.' The chairman directs a laser

pointer at the screen, its red dot indexing the columns of data.
`We can congratulate ourselves on our success in eliminating
the Wildfire virus.' A broad smile spreads across his face as
the room bursts into applause, cowboy yells, high fives,
triumph at the successful deployment of technology,
overcoming human limitations.

`A few highlights,' the chairman says. He moves the red

dot over the numbers. `A minor recurrence in Florida. Some
more of our . . . religious brothers decided to remove their
implants. The consequences they suffered were exactly as
could be predicted. I guess we can see that in a positive light
an advertising promotion for Watchdog.'

There's a murmur of approval from the audience, some

muted laughter.

290

Feldman murmurs to duCassis: `Those LA civil liberties

freaks got the message too. Did you see the survivors switched
their website to support WatchDog?'

`Saved us a lot of trouble,' duCassis says. `We still have a

minor Wildfire outbreak targeted on them though. It's on
standby. Just in case.'

The chairman finishes his slide show. `Gentlemen and

our gracious female guest - I want now to turn to the future
for Watchdog. Much of its current effectiveness we owe to a
distinguished worker in this field, and at this point I'd like to
introduce him.' He nods to a figure seated in the shadows at
the side of the platform.

A wheelchair rolls forward silently and halts on stage.

With difficulty, its occupant hauls himself up, and with a
helping hand from the chairman, makes it onto the podium,
where he waits while his introduction is completed.

It's a far cry from what he expected his Institute would be,

Taylor thinks, as the chairman clips the microphone to his
lapel. But if the work has to go on inside a mountain
hollowed out by Philistine troglodytes, so be it. At least these
people have resources on a serious scale. To create a high-tech
subterranean city equipped like this requires gigadollars.

He draws a breath, wincing at the pain in his lung. Baines

made a mess alright, it had meant a long time in intensive
care. Yet for a moment he feels a pang of regret for Baines,
whose disorders exhibited such a beautiful, shifting imbalance
between multiple insane personalities: to observe it was an
aesthetic experience of a high order. Still, the population these
people want to monitor, here in New Rome, has some superb
examples of psychopathy too. Watchdog has already shown
him wonderful instances of the amygdala unbound, and he's

291

heard there are particularly intriguing specimens among the
females, imbued with delusions of power and control. The
image of Sarah comes back to him: there was a woman worthy
of his brilliance. The time might yet come when she'll join
him in his mountain kingdom.

Time to begin. He leafs through the notes he's brought

along.

`Gentlemen - it's a privilege to be here to review our on-

going work in e-surveillance. Before I adumbrate our broad
strategic methodology I'll present some of our current man-
machine interface implementations.' As well use the argot
he'd picked up since arrival. When in New Rome . . .

He takes up the pointer, clicks a button, and another of the

marvellous toys they have here bursts into life. Hanging in
space above the audience a hologram appears, a three-
dimensional phoboid, aflame like a sun, its segments blurring
and rippling, the colours shifting through the palette of
uncontrollable emotions. The spectrum of hate. With the
laser, Taylor marks out segments that burn on its surface.
Annotations appear, floating next to them:

Fear
Aggression
Libido
Repression
Bonding
Delusions
Religious
Disintegrative / explosive
Sense traces
Odor
Chemical / Biochemical

292

`Of course these derivatives of neurotransmitter by-

products are not definitive even in combination. The
diagnosis is incomplete.' Taylor looks around the room. `From
what I understand gentlemen, some of you here aren't short of
aggression or libido.'

Laughter bursts out among the audience. Near the front,

the programmer McLaughlin seems unamused, a sulky
expression on his face.

`I believe many of you have acquaintance with explosive

substances too,' Taylor continues. `In target practice, I
believe?'

`That comes under libido,' someone at the back calls out.

More laughter.

Taylor smiles. `Perhaps. But what completes the

diagnosis?' He waits. `Your own brilliant systems, of course,
Echelon and Codis. When we add to the patterns of location,
travel and commercial transactions the data that WatchDog
provides, DNA identification, the neurochemical face, sense
traces and emotional bonding with other suspects, then we
can compute the probability that we're looking at a potential
evil-doer. A member of what was once well-termed the axis of
evil.'

He presses the button again, and a second phoboid forms

in mid-air, and then a third. Taylor points with the laser, and
the trio silently flatten themselves into images on the screen.
Another phoboid joins them, then more and more, their size
contracting to fit the screen. Soon they form a carpet of
pulsing colour, enclosed inside a boundary line, a familiar
contour that snakes around them. Here's the future. The
phoboid map of America.

`Now I'll apply some filters,' Taylor says. `First I'll select for

patterns of aggression, repression, religious delusion, overseas
travel, meetings with subjects who show similar patterns,

293

financial transactions, exposure to trace chemicals.' He clicks
the button and the phoboid carpet thins, great holes
appearing in its structure, leaving only a few thousand
throbbing red dots.

`Here you have it,' Taylor says. `This is what we call

thought space. Any questions?'

`Can you superimpose humint parameters?' someone in the

audience asks.

`Humint?' Taylor says.
`Yeah. Like you already know the guy's guilty.'
Taylor looks at McLaughlin, his eyebrows raised. With a

lop-sided grin, the programmer gets up from his seat and
climbs on stage. There's a pause while he tinkers with a
keyboard: a buzz of speculation arises in the audience. Then
he hits a key, and abruptly the pattern of red dots reduces to a
few dozen clusters.

`Try Seattle,' someone in the audience calls out.

McLaughlin makes further adjustments, and the map shifts to
Seattle. Near the outskirts, a small cluster of dots hangs over a
low-rent area.

`Can you ID them?'
McLaughlin types again, and now a list of names appends

itself to the picture.

`Goddamn!' the man in the audience exclaims.
`Rendition!' someone else shouts.
The chairman stands up from his chair at the side of the

stage. `It's already in hand,' he says quietly. `It's happening.'

In Seattle the subject has drifted into restless sleep. The

vivid dreams begin again, the dust and animal smells of the
village, images of his wife and children. He wraps his arms
around them. They're safe now, accepted for asylum after all.

294

He need no longer feel the anger that troubled him during the
repeated rejections of his application. Sometimes he's felt
almost vengeful: after all, he didn't cause the conflict that
uprooted him from his home and family. But at last the
nightmare's over. They will be reunited in the Land of the
Free. He'd felt his luck beginning to turn when they'd fitted
him with the WatchDog implant that protects against disease.
It meant they were treating him as if he were already a citizen.

Then the raucous ring-tone jerks him out of his sleep, and

he reaches clumsily for the phone.

`Who is this?'
`Mr Akhbar?' The voice is male, cool, authoritative.
`Yes. Who is this?'
`This is the WatchDog Service, Mr Akhbar. We regret to

disturb you, but we need you to come immediately to our
Monitoring Centre.'

Dread runs through him. It must be something serious for

them to call late at night like this. That's what the implant's
for, they explained that, but the plague is over now. Has it
reappeared? If he falls ill, he may not be able to look after the
family when they get here. Maybe they won't be allowed to
travel here. `What is it?' he asks. `I'm sick?'

`You could call it a kind of sickness, Mr Akhbar, yes. We're

going to take care of it. So please get ready, transport's on its
way right now to collect you. And Mr Akbar?'

`Yes?' He's sweating with anxiety now.
`Be sure to bring your passport and immigration papers.'
`Why do you need them?'
`To ensure you're processed correctly.'
A terrible certainty runs through him. This has to be what

happened to the others, whom he's heard have disappeared.
Word is they were moved to a place where the law doesn't
apply. He pulls on his clothes. He'll make a break for it.

295

But then the door of the apartment yields with a crash, and

they're in the room. Two of them, their fatigue jackets bearing
a logo:

Watchdog Unit 1091.

When Taylor finishes, several hands come up in the

audience. He nods at one of them.

`You can pin-point an individual from his ID? I mean,

where he is right now, where he's recently been?'

Taylor looks towards McLaughlin, who's standing by the

podium. The programmer looks at the chairman in turn, who
nods.

McLaughlin types. On-screen the view of the map swings

dizzyingly downwards, till the outline of Florida fills the
screen. Then closer still. At the Keys, a single phoboid jitters
near the coast. A name attaches itself:

Theodore Lamb

`Does that answer your question?' Taylor asks, grinning.
`You bet! We need to pick that bastard up right now . . . '
Then something strange happens. The map begins to

weave and flutter, losing coherence, breaking up into fizzing
dots and lines, which coalesce into a blurred picture. At its
centre a blonde woman comes forward and raises her hand in
a clenched fist salute.

`Hi, I'm Lee-Ann,' she says, `your Freedom avatar. You are

living in an authoritarian state. Liberty has been oppressed in
the very name of freedom. We call on you . . . '

296

McLaughlin has spun round to stare at the screen, and is

typing frantically, and the image of the blonde woman
vanishes as suddenly as it arrived, and the map of Florida
reappears. But the phoboid that was Lamb has vanished.

McLaughlin is cursing under his breath. `You Limey

bastard, Miller!' Taylor hears him mutter. `Don't think you'll
get away with screwing my code.'

Taylor stares at the audience. `Teething troubles,' he

stutters.

The chairman comes forward. `Nevertheless, I think you

would agree, gentlemen,' he says, `As good a demonstration as
one could wish, that the system can pinpoint the enemies of
freedom.'

duCassis looks around for Mrs Bergson. She's on her way

out of the room, walking hurriedly, looking very pale.

duCassis grins, a wolfish grin. `Contract default,' he sings

in Feldman's ear.

`Winner takes the pot,' Feldman says. He mops his

forehead. He looks satisfied.

297

47~ Dolphin II

`That's so beautiful,' Julia says. From the fore-deck she

gazes up at the green-gold cloak that enfolds Lamb's new
yacht, Dolphin II. Next to her, Sarah turns to look. As the
vessel noses its way into the Caribbean, the sun strikes
rainbow effects from the strange fabric, azure, lapis,
aquamarine.

Miller looks up too, shading his eyes as he squats on the

warm surface of the deck. Beside him in his canvas chair,
wrapped in a beach-robe, Lamb frowns. `God knows it should
be pretty, it cost enough. You're sure it's effective?'

`No way they'll find us,' Miller says. `We're a spook, a

stealth ship. Carbon fibre hull, water-jet propulsion,
camouflage paint, the cloak deployed when the weather's
good. Radar won't see us, sonar won't hear us, we've zero
visual and low infra-red signature. The satellites won't know
us from a shoal of flying fish.'

`Does the cloak really make us invisible?' Sarah asks.
`Yes,' Miller says. `It bends light round us and it also

reflects it away. Any outside observer sees nothing here. One
of the neatest inventions to come out from Tokyo University's
research labs.'

Lamb grunts. `At least it keeps the sun off. The rest of the

equipment?'

`We pick it up in the Antilles, along with the shipboard

hospital unit, no questions asked. Your personal medical team
are boarding there too. With Dr Chen.'

298

Lamb ponders this. `Buying out her clinic wasn't cheap

either,' he says. He looks across to where Julia is talking
earnestly with Sarah. `You're sure about Tracks?'

`Oh yes,' Miller says. `The on-board system will give you

plenty of warning of any medical problems you might
develop, I guarantee. It's our friends in Homeland Security,
who are going to have serious problems - especially
McLaughlin. Watchdog's going to give him the ultimate
killer headache. I wrote it. I know every twist and turn of the
code. I can spot any changes they may make. They should
never have stolen my system.'

`Our system,' Lamb says.
`We'll talk about that,' Miller says.

~