Chapter 17


Roger Xyrghyz used Rick's emergency number to reach a 24-hour crisis center. He was surprised to find himself shouting.
  "At least ten armed bandits are attacking my house! My robot killed one, making them madder! I need UN support at my coordinates now!" He was identified by voice stress patterns, as expert systems sorted his words.
  Most law enforcement functions went to the lowest bidder. The operator had heard many strange stories in her Sao Paulo cubicle. A man walking around the world had called from between Siberia and Alaska, asking to be airlifted off the ice.
  Trained to interrogate, she learned Roger occupied a campsite three kilometers from his rented house. He was surrounded by what appeared to be a self-organized militia. No current warrants or alerts. Despite his best efforts, he had disputes with several governments and customers.
  "They're closing in. I don't want to die."
  "Calm Xyrghyz," she said cheerfully. "Contacting UN Inspectorate, O-Group, agent 631436."
  ". . . tampering with my radio . . ." Roger faded out. Interpolated gaps made him sound drunk.
  The hierarchy list was a row of elevator buttons. She called Tina Kinner. At shift's end, the operator only remembered Roger's final message. "If I can't stand it for one second, how am I going to stand it the rest of my life?"

  Rick was southbound on a forest highway when Tina called. He was headed to Tokyo to meet a group of insurance middlemen. They worked in a somber palace with indoor fog, overlooking the floating blossoms of Gyoen gardens. Humanity suffered from a case of chronic denial, insisting on permanently repeating the same blunders.
  The insurance brokers lobbied game designers to make players feel actual pain, and add trauma and depression. A tiny electric shock to the toe could radically alter behavior. Had there been another island east of Japan, it would have ruled the world.
  Rick was fifty zeroes away from anything he could imagine, roughly the number of digits describing what could go wrong in the next minute. There might be another Zondyne attack, and he wanted them to report whatever they learned. Most Softwar victims were too secretive.
  "Roger Xyrghyz requests your help," Tina said. "Shots were fired at his house, and someone is tampering with his phone. He says he's hiding in the woods. Apparently, a small army is trying to kidnap him."
  Anyone who could find Roger was dangerous. "Did he call the cops?"
  "No, he doesn't trust them after yesterday, and doesn't want anyone to follow them to him. A friend betrayed him. He's using soft radio, one hour from your location." His visor turned the car's interior into a giant screen.
  Rick checked his rearview and pulled over. The highway shimmered bronze with printed markings. He let a truck pass before bumping over the central divider and turning around. He saw a long road ahead. The world leaped forward.
  "Roger isn't being forthright," Rick guessed.
  "He probably tried to sell DEEFx to the highest bidder." The Back Room was still studying the illegal exchange.
  No one could harass the UN. "We'll have to make him disappear before someone else does."
  The passing trees started to ripple. His rental car was inspired by the classic off-road 2012 Citroen DS2. It had intricate flowlines and patterns, "diamond" encrusted wheels, headlights like bubble streams, and a multistage thermoelectric engine. Gradients replaced edges, glass blending into metal.
  He tapped the foldable steering wheel, and called UN-Vladivostok for more authority. They notified Donitz, State Security in Uralgrad, and the Depot inspectors. He could requisition local forces for assistance, but couldn't direct the operation.
  Rick put his plan into words for Tina, elaborating the obvious parts, and leaving out a crucial step. After finding another flaw, Tina called Roger, who compiled a script to defeat his attackers. He was well-camouflaged, had cloned his scent to distract search dogs, and had apparently tried to hire another group to rescue him.
  At District police headquarters, a machine tried to take Tina's first call. Instead, she called commissioner Simansky, still restoring order in the tower after twenty-four hours. He focused on the details, careful to follow every regulation.
  "Did you answer the questions I sent you?" he asked.
  "We're working on them. We need you to persuade the District to help us."
  She had modified Roger's script to capture the attackers instead of killing them. Simansky made a call. Officers were spread through the area, with an average response time of twenty minutes. Civilians could be deputized, but they had trouble following orders.

  Rick entered an immense construction zone. Dirt roads cut through the forest, still with ample distance between empty lots. Three-story earth movers rolled behind the trees on wheels that dwarfed his car. The excavated dirt was stacked in huge bricks.
  Newcomers were arriving in the region by the planeload, hundreds a day. Even Russia's "North Beach" was opening up, a place where houses sometimes sunk without a trace. Immense clouds of DDT-derivatives helped tame the mosquitoes.
  The scenery changed suddenly into a Eurasian suburb, built under a local density exemption. Bright, bold colors; spotless after the dusty road. Surrounded by public gardens and separate tracks for service vehicles, the houses resembled machines and crates, bulges and blobs. Some mobile homes had visited other continents. By reducing some forms of secrecy and deception, the world had become much safer.
  At the next intersection, the automatic controls came on. Lights activated in his steering wheel, as reliable as instinct. The car barely responded when he turned the wheel, edging a few centimeters to the side.
  He entered a main road with light evening traffic, and began to read. The car hurried through a brief but crowded downtown area. Other cars were smaller, with bumpers at eye level.
  Entering a tunnel, Rick began the script. Boxes popped up with YES/NO questions: do you wish to become a licensed telecom? To keep his attention, the answers varied.
  With his UN key, he cloned Roger's phone codes, and broadcast a 200 Megahertz acquisition signal. Then he transmitted Roger's daily syndicated Net report, as if nothing unusual had happened. Roger had also set up some fake appointments in the area this evening. Whoever was chasing him would think they had chosen to attack a friend's house by mistake, and go after Rick instead. It was crazy enough to work.
  Driving through the long evening, he stayed on the mapped route, in perfect harmony with the traffic. His weight changed slightly up and down the hills, never deviating a minute from the random transmission/location plan. He remembered the illusion of control human drivers had once known, even at traffic lights. Directional roadside screens now sent individual messages to different cars.
  A convoy of heavy trucks carried an unassembled village, while an unmarked patrol car raced the other way. Somewhere overhead was a police copter and a flying car. The UN had unlimited back-up. Tina claimed she could summon a military vertol in twenty minutes.
  The traffic cameras showed no signs of pursuit. At one point, he imagined he heard a soft voice reciting numbers. Then Tina called by directional satellite. Her image cast a shadow on the passenger seat. Simple tricks were the best. Earlier, she had sounded distracted. Tina was involved in hundreds of lives, and was always fixing other peoples' problems. Rick was amazed at her ability to maintain discipline without resorting to threats. She didn't get mad, because she wouldn't define her goals.
  Now she sounded alert again. "You want the good news first or not?"
  "There is no good news," he guessed.
  "You've made a new friend. The traffic cams show at least one van consistently moving in your general direction, also on a semi-random trajectory. We were lucky to spot it. There must be others."
  "I'm better than I thought."
  "Roger lied to us. The group we're chasing probably hired him to get you. He'll claim he had no choice. It's an A-0 violation, but we must act as if we planned it. I can stop the traffic if necessary." She didn't sound eager.
  "We can't trust the locals," he said. "Tell . . . Malevich to start transmitting on Roger's frequency to cover my escape."
  His route was selected for its evasion opportunities, but this segment had fewer exits. When grid roads had gone out of fashion, the maps got too complicated.
  His car's cameras stared in eight directions. A large building was embedded in a spiral hillside. A steeper hill behind it resembled a squat pillar. Passing an old car, he noticed the bright reflections it made. He saw a distant sunlit bend in the road, but the area around him was dark.
  Before the next overpass, Rick pulled onto the rough grass, driving between two buildings onto a forest trail. Branches washed over his windshield, as a carpet of dried wood crunched below. The tunnel ended in an oval of light.
  He braked at the top of a hill, nosing down into silence. The long grassy incline looked smooth, a wedge between tree walls fifty meters apart. An old fortification, turned into a ski slope. A river valley was spread out in the evening light below, a silver extension of the sea turning red in the distance. Hidden in the woods were the remains of a big drum, an obsolete microphone to listen for high-flying spy planes.
  He drove down the grade, eyes fixed forward. It wasn't as smooth as it looked. Rivulets had eroded the flank. His visor and windshield protected him from laser blinding from across the valley. With one hand on the wheel, he clipped on an enhancer, and saw a much wider landscape. Magnified twenty-fold, the countryside looked deserted. No chimney smoke, bright points, or linear movement. The enhancer revealed things that weren't really there, blurs contracting into false sharpness. The hills were cluttered with ovals, pillars, and stairways.
  One shape didn't vanish when he looked away. A tower of smoke was spectacularly lit by the sunset. A yellow plane passed in front of the dark wall.
  Tina called as his wheels sank into a fringe of dried twigs and leaves at the bottom. "They abandoned the van."
  "Assume snipers, avoid visual contact," Rick told himself.
  He turned onto a raised road beside a ditch lit by slanted beams. Light and shadows played over his dashboard. The wheels had independent traction and turning, and could ford small streams with half-meter boulders.
  A truck crested a hill ahead, its mirrored windshield blinking down insignificantly. Tina spoke in his ear. "All available cops have been called away to a forest fire. They sent a security firm to protect you. The lead truck is army green, six wheels."
  "I am avoiding them now," Rick said.
  The truck's headlights brightened. He reached the turn, the world tilting as his belt locked. Trees swept past. No dust billowed up, but the headlights soon glared in his rearview screen.
  Daylight erupted as he crossed a vast corridor cut through the forest at an angle, a canyon of larch and birch trees. He spun onto the rough field, crashing through a row of imposing but flimsy signs. The ride smoothened as he accelerated. Butterflies erupted from the weeds.
  Straight ahead, the Spektr-bunker was an approaching crash barrier. Most of them were well hidden.
  Rick lowered his side window, letting in the smell of earth and hay. Decelerating past the fence, he hit the gate with his fist. Tina's message had gone up the command chain, and he was inside the enclosure before the gate rebounded against his car door.
  Surrounded by a netlike fence, he put on his backpack and searched the armored wall. A dark jewel was set in the corner. He tapped it, and a red laser flashed in his eyes. The biometric scan ended, and an armored door sighed open. A long spider leg unfolded, followed by another and another. The robot crawled out into the open, covered with lizard skin and a red star insignia. Its legs tensed like springs as it scurried around the other side. Rick reached the gate first.
  His car sent back video as it fled down the forest alley toward the nearest parking spot. The pursuing truck had sunk in the dirt the moment it left the road, blocking its side doors. A temporary fortress, spraying mud as it tried to back out. More engines approached in the distance.
  He smelled smoke. Hidden by the bunker, he bent down, and ran through the high grass to the treeline.