Authors: Gary Gibson
“Christ, fine,” he said at length. “How long will this take? It’s not like we aren’t in a hurry, and there’s Caroline to take care of. So how long?”
“I don’t know. A day, maybe?”
Buddy groaned and covered his head with his hands. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered. “Right, listen – a day, and that’s it. Any longer and I’m out of there, do
you understand me?”
“I’m not asking any more than that. But, yeah, we do have to take care of Caroline first.”
“It doesn’t need a cryptkey. Just plug and go.”
Kendrick held Buddy’s wand next to the node set in the dashboard and waited until the wand had established a connection. Wide scrubby plains blurred past them a few hundred metres below,
the sun low on the horizon behind them. They were on their way.
In the meantime, Buddy rummaged around until he pulled out a crumpled eepsheet. Kendrick took it from him, smoothing it out. He aimed the wand at the eepsheet and it beeped quietly, confirming
that it had successfully transferred the link from the helicopter to the ’sheet.
In response, the crumpled page of electronic paper lit up, a logo blurring rapidly across it. Images of politicians and actors appeared in rapid superimposition, one fading into the other,
before presenting the front page of Buddy’s default subscription newsfeed.
“What are you expecting to find there?”
“After we finally got out of the Maze, I found that a lot of records had been deleted or destroyed. But whoever did it wasn’t quite thorough enough. The Maze extends for several
kilometres under the jungle, and it goes down a hell of a way as well. I’ve seen a lot of schematics over the years, but they’re all different. Most of the original designs were stored
in Pentagon databases and they disappeared during the civil war.”
“Different how?”
“I need to take a look before I remember.” Kendrick tapped an address into the eepsheet’s search box. A couple of seconds later he heard the sound of crackling, followed by a
graphic of flames burning away the ’sheet’s main information display, a widening pixellated inferno that eventually revealed a demonic face. Insane laughter issued from the
eepsheet.
“What the fuck is
that
?” asked Buddy, bemused.
“Ssh.”
“Who dares summon the sleeper in the dark, that they may seek knowledge?” The voice was a deep baritone, the face itself dark red with wide, staring eyes and a half-crazed grin
filled with sharpened teeth.
“I seek knowledge,” Kendrick replied laconically.
The demonic eyes grew wide and round, before sliding from one side to the other, as if checking whether anyone was eavesdropping. “Are you prepared to pay the price, mortal?”
“Yes,” said Kendrick, in a resigned tone. They’d redesigned the front end, and although it looked slicker it was taking almost twice as long for him to get where he wanted to
be than he remembered from previous visits.
Still, it could have been worse. The kind of information he was after wasn’t something you could get out of any public newsfeeds. For this kind of thing, you needed hackers.
“I’m looking specifically for information on the Maze. I need a schematic of the whole thing, downloadable to this eepsheet.”
The face wiggled its eyebrows. Somewhere out there, maybe in Kazakhstan – which was functionally an anarchist state – was a real live computer geek with a micro-lens mapping the
movements of his face to this devil animation. Probably not even speaking English, since some top-end translation software was virtually undetectable. “Such schematics are available
publicly,” the devil pointed out.
“Not the ones I’m looking for. Check the records for the World Court proceedings, charges of genocide, accused President Wilber and General Anton Sieracki, 2090. I don’t have
the exact date of the investigation to hand, but there was a question of missing schematics concerning to the Maze, how it was built, who contracted it.”
Of course, Kendrick had found his way to such schematics before during his lengthy researches into Draeger’s background. They weren’t legally admissible as evidence since they came
only from highly illegal sources.
Which, of course, didn’t mean they couldn’t be
found
, so long as you knew who to ask and were willing to pay the price. The fact that the schematics had disappeared from every
official database, server and Washington office where investigators might have reasonably expected to find them, along with untold terabytes of information and incriminating data, had done nothing
except convince Kendrick that someone had set out to deliberately destroy evidence of a direct, explicit connection between Draeger and the Maze.
“Mm-
hmm
,” said the face after a short pause. “
Veerry
interesting. You accessed this information once before, yes? 12 March 2093.”
“Yes, but I don’t have access to it any more. I deleted it.”
“Very wise. Also, I note your current position near the border of the former United States, moving approximately south-east. Flying in the direction of Venezuela, perhaps?”
Shit
. “Please don’t spread that around,” Kendrick said earnestly. He hadn’t expected this.
“Of course not. Well, not unless someone pays us to know where you are right now.” The face grinned evilly. “Here are your schematics.”
The face was replaced by a new animation of a taloned hand shaking a dented tin can. Kendrick pointed Buddy’s wand at the eepsheet and watched as a substantial amount of money transferred
itself to the hacker’s account.
A look of alarm spread across Buddy’s face. “Christ, Kendrick, that’s a lot of money. I’m not rich—”
“If you’re right about the
Archimedes
, you won’t need the money much longer, will you?”
Buddy blushed red. “Yeah, true.”
“Look, once we’re in LA I can arrange a fund transfer from my account if you like—”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Kendrick looked back down at the eepsheet. The taloned hand had gone and had been replaced by a list of files. Most of them were useless, the same publicly available schematics he’d seen
before. But he persisted, delving deeper, finally finding what he wanted: rooms and corridors that didn’t exist in other schematics, laid out in a three-dimensional array that he could study
from any angle. He zoomed the POV outwards until he saw tunnels stretching far, far beyond the main body of the complex, their dimensions delineated in crude planes of primary colours.
“Look at this,” he said, holding up the eepsheet.
Buddy squinted at it. “You blew all my money on this?”
“Yeah, and for a good reason. There are tunnels leading several kilometres away from the Maze. They’re well hidden. Los Muertos might know about them, but then again they might
not.”
Buddy let out a long, descending sigh. “You’re going to get me killed, I absolutely know it, and for some reason I’m still going to follow you in there.”
Kendrick grinned. “We’ll be fine.”
Kendrick half-slept as Buddy simultaneously piloted the craft and fired out messages via the helicopter’s ancient gridnode. Kendrick woke when the constant drone of the
rotor blades above his head changed subtly. He looked down with sleepy eyes and saw a crossroads: two intersecting highways cut through an infinity of scrubby desert. As he looked more closely, he
saw a truck kicking up sand and dust as it approached the intersection. Buddy piloted the ’copter down, landing it close to where the two roads met.
Caroline was awake now. They helped her out and she swayed a little as she tried to stand, choking on the thick dust kicked up by the rotor blades still turning slowly above their heads. The
truck had pulled up a few metres away from them. A tall man with shaggy blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard climbed out. Kendrick ransacked his memories, trying to remember where he’d seen
him before.
Samuel Veliz
, he remembered, the memory rushing back. Veliz had arrived in Ward Seventeen only just before the liberation and so had never made it down to the killing levels. Although
Kendrick had never spoken directly with the man before, he remembered that Veliz had given evidence against Maze guards during the subsequent trials.
“Is that the lady?” Veliz strode forward. Caroline peered at him awkwardly, as though she wasn’t sure what was going on. Kendrick kept an arm around her shoulders, more to
support her than anything else.
“Kendrick, I’m sorry,” she murmured. Kendrick shook his head, as if to say
It doesn’t matter
. Together, he and Veliz helped her into the rear of the truck where a
cot had been arranged for her.
“Where are you taking her?” Kendrick asked Veliz.
“Frisco. Then offshore to . . .” Veliz glanced over at Buddy, who nodded that it was okay. “Offshore to the launch ship. They’ve got facilities there that don’t
necessarily involve UN nanoware restrictions. Long as you don’t tell nobody,” he added, grinning slyly.
“I won’t,” Kendrick promised sincerely.
Veliz looked at him curiously. “So how come you two guys ain’t heading there right now?”
Buddy stepped forward. “We’ve got some things to take care of first. When you see Sabak, tell him I’ll be there a little later than expected.”
“Okay, but there isn’t much time left,” Veliz warned. “When we go, we
go
.”
“I know that,” Buddy replied, casting a significant glance in Kendrick’s direction. “We’ll head for LA first, if there’s time. But not just yet.”
Over the next several hours they stopped twice again, dropping into small, private airstrips for refuelling as they continued south. The landscape changed beneath them,
becoming rougher, wilder, before all visible signs of civilization disappeared beneath a verdant jungle canopy. At one point they saw a ruined highway passing through the jungle from horizon to
horizon, cutting the green world into two halves.
With its camouflage on, the helicopter appeared from below as just a pale blue outline that would darken as the day moved on to dusk. From only a few dozen metres away, you could barely hear the
sound of the rotors. Although it looked ready for a scrapyard, hidden under its scarred and dented interior lurked some pretty state-of-the-art technology. In fact, it had been optimized for
smuggling. Of course, good-quality thermal-imaging equipment could penetrate its disguise in a second, but some kind of concealment was better than nothing.
Finally, when it seemed their journey would last for ever, Buddy skilfully guided the ’copter down through a narrow gap in the canopy, somehow managing to drop the craft onto a patch of
even ground. While Kendrick watched his knuckles turn white with terror, Buddy appeared calm throughout this operation, the only noticeable tension in the lines around his mouth.
They stepped out into an inferno of heat even worse than the one that Kendrick had experienced during his trip to Cambodia. Animal noises echoed through the tropical forest and hot mist rose in
occasional wisps from the tree trunks whose vast gnarled roots dug hungrily into rich black soil. A bird with brightly coloured feathers flashed shrieking through the air above them, heading for
the treetops high above. The very air tasted honeyed and thick.
Kendrick felt a fresh chill of fear down his spine. This was Los Muertos territory, and they could have been tracked even before they’d landed.
“That’s possible,” Buddy admitted when Kendrick voiced his worries. “But it’s a chance we’re going to have to take. Remember the last time we were here, with
that kid Louie? Keep in mind that we’re right in the middle of tens of thousands of square miles of jungle territory. Los Muertos can’t cover more than a fraction of that.”
Kendrick eyed the helicopter, seeing the way its camouflage software reflected the vegetation around them like a constantly shifting funhouse mirror. He had no doubt that from further away the
machine would blend in perfectly with its surroundings.
“Do Los Muertos have satellite capability? Could they track us that way?”
“I don’t think so – though I think they have people who hack into commercial GPS satellite feeds.”
Earlier, Buddy had copied the maps that Kendrick had downloaded into his own wand. Now he peered into its tiny screen, lost in thought.
“Okay,” he said, dropping the device back into his pocket. “Your secret entrance is maybe fifteen klicks east of here. We can get ourselves there in a couple of hours, and get
out some time before dawn – with any luck. That’ll give us plenty of time to take a good look around while we’re down there.”
“Couldn’t we have landed closer?”
Buddy shook his head. “Terrain’s no good for landing any further east. And we can’t follow the highway, either: too good a chance of being spotted by road patrols.”
Kendrick shrugged. “So I guess we just walk?” His back already itched from the river of sweat pouring down it.
Buddy flipped open a storage hatch, pulling out some bundles and dropping them to the ground. Then he tossed one of a pair of water bottles over to Kendrick. Next he produced a machete.
Buddy slammed the hatch closed and began to pack some of the stuff he’d taken out into a backpack.
He looked up at Kendrick. “This is not going to be a picnic. It’s going to be a long, hard slog. Do you understand that?”
“I hear you. Remember, I’ve been in places like this with you before.”
“Even so, it’s easy to forget.” Buddy handed him the backpack. “We’ll take turns carrying this. You first.”
Kendrick slung the backpack over his shoulders. Although it looked large and bulky, it turned out to be surprisingly light. The heaviest items they had with them were the water bottles.
At first they made good progress, since the jungle had been relatively sparse where Buddy had dropped them down. They kept within a few hundred metres of the highway but far
enough away so that anyone using it would be unlikely to spot them. This undeniably made the going a lot harder, but both men considered it far better than getting shot at.
After an hour or so Kendrick’s muscles began to ache badly. Though the ground was level, every step taken involved a negotiation of tree roots and tangled vines, to the accompaniment of
the constant shrieks of outraged birds and monkeys. The sun glancing down through the high canopy revealed slippery mosses coating the rocks, and fallen branches seemed to reach out malevolently to
trip them up. They trampled through wide-leaved plants that grew wherever sunlight reached the soil and enormous ferns batted at their faces as they passed.