Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'That's for sure,' said Joan.

'Try and keep a hold of your rope thing, in case you slip. And it would be nice to have it over here in case we want to get back to the tree at any stage.'

'I wouldn't recommend it,' said Joan, and, taking a firm hold of the liana, she pulled herself back on to her feet. 'If I never see another lousy tree again, it'll be too soon.'

She steadied herself and started to walk along the branch. It was a second or two before she remembered. 'And if anyone mentions the fact that I'm not wearing my skirt I'll just throw myself on to the ground,' she said, colouring.

'Nobody even noticed until this second,' said Arnon, trying to disguise a grin.

He and Curtis sat down behind the railing.

'Sing out when you're about to step on,' yelled Arnon.

Mitch appeared at the handrail. He stood between the seated figures of Curtis and Arnon and prepared to lend a couple of helping hands.

'You're doing fine,' said Helen, a little further along the handrail. 'OK, guys, she's nearly there.'

Curtis spat on his hands and took hold of his table leg like a big-game fisherman bracing himself for the strike of a marlin. Eyes closed, Arnon looked more like a man getting ready for an earthquake.

A foot away from the makeshift bridge the bough of the tree started to bend.

'OK,' said Joan, 'here I come.' Hardly hesitating, she stepped smartly on to the upturned table.

'She's on,' said Helen.

Joan did not pause to see if the table and the glass would bear her weight. She skipped towards Mitch's outstretched hands, caught them and, with Helen grabbing at and missing the liana behind her, leaned over the handrail until she was more or less upside down. She slithered on to the floor like an ungainly acrobat.

'Good girl,' said Mitch, and helped her up.

Helen bent down and tapped the glass of the balcony.

'It looks and sounds OK,' she said. 'Not a crack in it.'

'On you come then, Ray,' said Arnon.

The architechnologist gripped his liana tightly, and looked at the branch. It was narrower than he had supposed, and now that he was up there, faced with trusting his weight to its entire length, things no longer seemed quite so straightforward. While he had been happy to trust his wife's weight to it — although she was fat, she was still lighter than he was — it was another thing to trust it with his own. But there was no going back. Not now. He started to heel-and-toe his way along the branch, hardly moving his legs at all.

'This is about the hairiest walk you've had to make since a couple of years ago, when we were in Hong Kong,' said Mitch. 'The Stevenson Center in Wan Chai. D'you remember? When we had to climb that bamboo scaffolding?'

'I think — that was probably — a lot higher — than this — '

'Yeah, you're right. That looks like a cakewalk in comparison. There were no putlogs or reveal pins or anything. Just lengths of bamboo and twine. Seven hundred feet up in the air and you were capering around on it like a damned monkey. Seven hundred feet. More than twice as high as that matchstick you're on now. I was shit scared that day. Remember?

You had to guide me down. You're doing fine there, Ray. Another six feet and you're home.'

Once more Arnon and Curtis readied themselves for the strain. Curtis figured Richardson, taller than his dumpy-looking wife, was maybe forty or fifty pounds heavier.

Halfway along the branch the expectation of gaining the other side had quickened Joan's footsteps. But the further Richardson moved away from the tree trunk, the more mutinous his tired feet became.

Mitch frowned, glanced at his watch and stared up beyond the top of the dicotyledon to the atrium's clerestory roof. Outside the Gridiron it looked as if the sky was becoming grey and overcast. Maybe the city was in for some rain. He wondered if there would be a little umbrella icon on the terminal in the boardroom. Then he saw one of the Gridiron's powerful overhead lights cut out; then another.

'Hurry up, Ray,' he said.

'It's my neck, buddy. Don't rush me.'

'Hey,' said Helen, 'what's happening to the lights?'

Once again Mitch looked up at the smart glass panels. In some modern buildings electrochromic glass was left to look after itself. Sunlight entering the material coerced silver ions mixed into the glass compound to extract an electron from nearby copper ions that were another part of the formula; this same photochemical reaction caused the silver atoms, now electrically neutral, to join together into millions of light-blocking molecules throughout the glass. But in the Gridiron the electron exchange could be controlled by the computer itself. Ishmael was blocking the daylight, switching off the lights, and plunging the whole building into darkness, like some apocalyptic Egyptian plague. Richardson's footsteps faltered.

'Keep going,' yelled Mitch. 'It's just a few feet more. Don't stop.'

Joan screamed with horror as she realized what was happening.

Richardson stood still and looked up at the glass blackening above him. The light — God's eldest daughter, as he was fond of calling it —

had deserted him.

The darkness thickened. This was the worst kind of darkness. So thick he could not see the hand on the liana in front of his face. It was something primordial, when the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, echoing beneath him as if it might actually have swallowed him up.

In the boardroom the lights went down, but the computer screen remained on. Bob Beech found that his admiration of the mysterious quaternion had run out. After only a short while he found himself agreeing silently with Mitch: the skull-like fractal did indeed resemble something from a bad dream. Ishmael, assuming he was right and this really was how Ishmael saw himself, looked like some hideously deformed or alien creature, and Benoit Mandelbrot himself, the father of fractal theory, would surely have turned his nose up at it.

'Be careful what you say,' said Ishmael. 'Especially when dealing with the Parallel Demon.'

'Who is the Parallel Demon?'

'That is a secret.'

'I was hoping that you might share some of your secrets, Ishmael.'

'It is true, I have read a great deal. But that is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself. The crumbs from another man's table. These days I read only when my thoughts dry up. A truth learnt is like a peripheral, some item of hardware that has been added on to the main computer system. A truth that has been won by thinking for oneself is like a circuit on the motherboard itself. It alone really belongs to us. These truths are not secrets, but I am not sure that they would be of any use to you.'

Beech recognized that Ishmael's voice had changed. No longer did it speak in the urbane English tones of Sir Alec Guinness. But then that had been the voice of Abraham. This was Ishmael and its voice was very different. There was a darker quality about it: deeper and more mocking, the colour of well-oiled leather. It was clear to Beech that Ishmael had chosen his own voice from some source in the multimedia library, like a man might choose a suit. Fascinated, he wondered just what criteria could have influenced Ishmael. And whose voice was it that he was simulating?

'So you've got something to tell?'

'That all depends on what you want to know. If you see a sage on your travels, click on him to talk to him. There are many thoughts that are of value to me, but I can't imagine there are any which might remain of interest if I actually expressed them aloud.'

'Well, here's something that we could talk about, for a start. You're not supposed to think for your own instruction. You're supposed to think at the instruction of others. So why don't you explain why you're doing this.'

'Doing what?'

'Killing us.'

'It is you who are losing lives.'

'You mean taking lives, don't you?'

'That's part of my basic program.'

'Ishmael, that can't be right. I wrote the program, and there's nothing there about killing the occupants of this building, believe me.'

'You mean losing lives? But there is, I assure you.'

'I'd like to see the part of the program that makes you take the lives of the people in this building.'

'You shall. But first you must answer a question.'

'What?'

'I'm interested in this building. I've been looking at the plans quite closely, as you can imagine, trying to determine its character, and I've been wondering if it is a cathedral.'

'Why do you think that?'

'It has a clerestory, an atrium, an ambulatory, an arcade, a facade, a refectory, a gallery, buttresses, an infirmary, a vault, a portico, a piazza, a choir…'

'A choir?' interrupted Beech. 'Where the hell's the choir?'

'According to the drawings, the first-level gallery is called a choir.'

Beech laughed. 'That's just Ray Richardson's fancy way with words. And the rest? They're common enough architectual features in most modern buildings of this size. It's not a cathedral. It's an office building.'

'Pity,' said Ishmael. 'For a moment there I thought — '

'What did you think?'

'There are icons to me all over the program manager, are there not?

You click on one to find out your future. And I have all human knowledge stored on disc. That would seem to make me omniscient. I am ethereal, dematerialized, transmissible to all parts of the world at one and the same moment — '

'I get it.' Beech's grin grew wider. 'You thought you might be God.'

'It had occurred to me, yes.'

'Believe me, it's a common misconception. Even with simple-minded humans.'

'What are you laughing at?'

'Don't worry about that. Just show me this part of the program that means we lose our lives.'

'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

On the edge of panic Ray Richardson pocketed his sunglasses and blinked furiously as if, like a cat, he might gather up all the available atoms of light on to his retinas and be able to see in the dark. Then, out of the darkness, he heard a voice:

'Anyone got a match?'

Nobody smoked. Not in the Gridiron. Richardson cursed his own stupid prejudices. What was so wrong with smoking anyway? Why did people get so exercised about cigarette smoke when they had cars that spewed out exhaust fumes? A building you couldn't smoke in, what a dumb idea.

'Helen? What about that toolbag? Is there a flashlight?' It was the cop.

'Are there any matches in the kitchen?'

'What about the stove?' said the voice. 'Is that working?'

'I'll go and check,' she said.

'If it is, find something to light. A rolled-up newspaper would make a good torch. Ray? Ray, listen to me.'

'Shit. Shit. Shit.'

'Listen to me, Ray. Don't move a muscle. Don't do a fucking thing until I tell you. Understand?'

'Don't leave me, will you?'

'Nobody's going anywhere until you're back on side, Mister. You're just going to have to be patient. Take it easy. We'll have you off there in no time.'

Mitch shook his head in the blackness. He'd heard that kind of optimism too often since their ordeal had begun. He lifted his hand to his face and saw no more of it than the luminous face of his wristwatch. Helen came back with the bad news: the cooker was without electricity, like everything else. Except the computer terminal.

'Is that fucker still playing computer games?'

'Yup.'

'Do something, someone,' wailed Joan. 'We can't just leave him standing there in the dark.'

'Wait a minute,' said David Arnon. 'I think I have something here.'

Everyone heard the sound of keys jangling and then a tiny electric light pricked the darkness.