Текст книги "Death Match"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Lincoln Child
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

FIFTY-NINE

It had taken five minutes, and the work of four men with flashlights, to find the lighting panels for the computing chamber. In the end, Mauchly discovered them himself: at the end of a catwalk, suspended atop a metal ladder. Calling down to the others to halt their search, Mauchly snapped on a dozen switches with two swift chopping motions.

The illumination was not particularly bright, but nevertheless he was forced to close his eyes. After a few moments, he opened them again and faced the metal railing of the catwalk. His hands tightened around the railing in surprise.

He was standing halfway up one wall of what resembled nothing so much as the hold of a huge tanker. The vast space of Liza’s private computing chamber – four stories tall and at least two hundred feet long – lay open from floor to ceiling. Catwalks similar to the one he stood on protruded here and there along the skin of the walls, leading to ventilation housings, electrical panels, other support apparatus. At the far end of the room were Liza’s primary and backup power supplies: giant pillboxes within heavy steel armor.

Below, an unbelievably dense maze of hardware lay spread before him. Mauchly had spent two years at PharmGen as a technical purchasing officer, and he recognized some of the wildly diverse computers: he stared, trying to make sense of the riot of equipment.

Perhaps the best metaphor was the growth rings of a tree. The oldest machines – too old for Mauchly to identify – stood in the center, surrounded by their keypunch consoles and teletypes. Beyond lay “big iron” IBM System/370 mainframes and seventies-era DEC minicomputers. Beyond was a ring of Cray supercomputers of several vintages, from Cray-1s and -2s to more modern T3D systems. Whole banks of computers seemed dedicated simply to facilitating data exchange between the heterogeneous machinery. Beyond the Crays were bands of still more modern rack servers, stacked twenty units high in gray housings. Around all of this, near the room’s periphery, stood row upon row of supporting hardware: magnetic character readers, ancient IBM 2420 tape drives and 3850 Mass Storage Systems, ultramodern data silos and off-board memory devices. The farther his eye strayed from the center, the less organization there seemed to be: it was as if Liza’s need for breathing space had grown faster than Silver’s capacity to provide it. Once again Mauchly admonished himself: he should have supervised this personally, rather than letting it grow under the eyes of Silver alone.

Now the members of the security party – Sheldrake, the tousle-headed Dorfman, and two tech specialists, Lawson and Gilmore – had begun fanning out into the chamber, picking their way warily, like children in an unfamiliar forest. Watching, Mauchly felt a stab of vertigo: there was something unnatural about being perched on one wall of this huge tank, itself balanced atop a sixty-story tower. He hurried along the catwalk, descended the ladder, and joined Sheldrake and Dorfman on the chamber floor.

“Any word from Silver?” Sheldrake asked.

Mauchly shook his head.

“I knew Silver had a server farm up here, but I never expected anything like this.” Sheldrake stepped carefully over a thick black cable with the daintiness of a cat.

Mauchly said nothing.

“Maybe we should enter the private quarters anyway.”

“Silver said not to proceed, that he’d contact us.”

“Lash is with him. God knows what that guy is forcing him to do.” Sheldrake glanced at his watch. “It’s been ten minutes since he called. We’ve got to act.”

“Silver’s orders were explicit. We’ll give him five minutes more.” He turned to Dorfman. “Post yourself at the entrance. The backup units should be here any minute. Help them up through the barrier.”

There was an excited burst of chatter from deeper inside. They moved toward the sound, threading between tall racks of servers. Several had clipboards hanging from their flanks, bearing sheets of hastily scribbled notations in Silver’s handwriting. The surrounding computers breathed with such a diversity of fan noise that Mauchly almost imagined himself a trespasser, penetrating some living collective.

Ahead, Sheldrake was now in urgent consultation with Lawson and Gilmore. Gilmore, short and overweight, hunched over his palmtop. “I’m picking up heavy activity along the central data grid, sir,” he was saying.

“On the grid itself?” Mauchly interjected. “Not distributed to the interfaces?”

“Just the grid.”

“Since when?”

“It’s spiked over the last minute. The bandwidth is intense, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What’s the initiator?”

“Command, sir.”

Liza. Mauchly nodded to Sheldrake, who grabbed his radio. “Sheldrake to security central.” He waited. “Sheldrake to central, report.”

The radio crackled and spat, and Sheldrake replaced it with disgust. “It’s that damn baffle.”

“Try your cell.” Mauchly turned back to Gilmore. “How’s the grid holding up?”

“It’s not meant for this kind of stress, sir. Tower integrity’s failing already. If we can’t bleed off some of the load, the—”

As if in answer, there was a loud report from below, followed immediately by another, echoing and reechoing in the hollow space. Then came a rumbling, so deep it was almost below the threshold of audibility. The floor beneath Mauchly began to tremble.

He exchanged a brief, frozen look with Sheldrake. Then he whirled, cupped his hands around his mouth. “Dorfman!” he shouted over the forest of equipment. “Report!”

“It’s the security plates, sir!” the voice came back faintly from the hatchway. It was pitched high, whether from excitement or fear Mauchly could not tell. “They’re closing!”

“ Closing!Any sign of backup?”

“No, sir! I’m getting the hell out before—”

“Dorfman, hold your position. You hear me? Hold your position—”

Mauchly’s words were drowned by an enormous boomthat shook the heavy equipment around them. The security plates had closed, trapping them atop the Eden tower.

“Sir!” Gilmore cried wildly. “We’ve got a Condition Gamma!”

“Triggered by the overload? Impossible.”

“Don’t know, sir. All I can tell you is the tower’s locked down tight.”

That’s it. Mauchly raised his cell phone, dialed Silver.

No answer.

“Come,” he told Sheldrake. “Let’s get him.” He tucked the phone back into his jacket pocket, pulled out the 9mm.

As he turned toward the ladder leading up to the private quarters, the lights went out abruptly. And when the emergency illumination came on, it drenched the digital city in a uniform fog of crimson.

SIXTY

There was a moment of intense blackness. And then the emergency lighting snapped on.

“What happened?” Lash asked. “Power failure?”

There was no answer. Tara was peering intently at her screen. Silver remained within the Plexiglas cubicle, barely visible in the watery light. Now he raised one hand, tapped out a short command on the keypad. When this had no effect, he tried again. And then he sat up, swung his legs wearily over the edge of the chair, and got to his feet. He plucked the sensors from his forehead, removed the microphone from his collar. His movements were slow, automatic, like a sleepwalker’s.

“What happened?” Lash repeated.

Silver opened the Plexiglas door, came forward on rigid legs. He seemed not to have heard.

Lash put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You all right?”

“Liza won’t respond,” he said.

“Won’t? Or can’t?”

Silver merely shook his head.

“Those ethical routines you programmed—”

“Dr. Silver!” Tara called. “I think you ought to take a look at this.”

Silver walked toward her, still moving slowly. Lash followed. Wordlessly, they bent over the monitor.

“The power’s completely out in both the inner tower and the outer tower,” she said, pointing at the screen. “No backups, nothing.”

“Why aren’t we dark, as well?” Lash asked.

“There’s a massive backup generator in Liza’s computing chamber beneath us. It’s got enough juice to run for weeks. But look: the whole building’s under Condition Gamma. The security plates have closed.”

“Security plates?” Lash echoed.

“They seal the three sections of the building from each other in case of emergency. We’re shut off from the tower below.”

“What caused that? The power loss?”

“Don’t know. But without main power, the security plates can’t be reopened.”

They were interrupted by the shrill ring of a cell phone. Silver pulled it slowly from his pocket. “Yes?”

“Dr. Silver? What’s your condition?” A wind-tunnel howl almost drowned Mauchly’s voice.

“I’m fine.” Silver turned away. “No, he’s here. Everything’s – everything’s under control.” His voice trembled. “I’ll explain later. Can you speak up, I can barely hear you over all that noise. Yes, I know about the security plates. Any word on the cause?” Silver fell silent, listening. Then he straightened. “ What?All of them? You sure?” He spoke sharply, any hesitation gone. “I’ll be right down.”

He looked at Tara. “Mauchly’s in the computing chamber directly below. He says that Liza’s spinning up all her electromechanical peripherals. Disk silos, tape readers, line printers, RAID clusters.”

“ Everything?”

“Everything with a motor and moving parts.”

Tara turned back to her monitor. “He’s right.” She tapped at the keyboard. “And that’s not all. The devices are being pushed past tolerance. Here, look at this disc array. The firmware’s set to spin at 9600 rpm: you can see in the component detail window. But the controlling software is pushing the array to four times that. That’ll cause mechanical failure.”

“Every piece of equipment in the computing chamber has been overengineered,” Silver said. “They’ll burn before they fail.”

As if in response, an alarm began to sound – faint but persistent – far below.

“Richard,” Lash said quietly.

Silver looked over. His face looked haunted.

“Those ethical routines you programmed into Liza. How does she think murder should be dealt with if there is no chance for rehabilitation?”

“If there is no chance for rehabilitation,” Silver replied, “that leaves only one option. Termination.”

But he was no longer looking at Lash. Already, he had turned and was heading for the door.

SIXTY-ONE

Silver led the way along the hallway, down the narrow staircase, and across the great room. In the dim wash of emergency lighting, the wide, glassed-in space had the cloaked oppressiveness of a submarine. The cry of the alarm was louder here.

Silver stopped before a second door Lash hadn’t noticed earlier, set into the end of the bookcases. Reaching into the neck of his shirt, Silver drew out a key on a gold chain: a strange-looking key with an octagonal shaft. He inserted it into an almost invisible hole in the door: it sprang open noiselessly. He pulled the door wide, revealing another, very different one beyond: steel, circular, and immensely heavy, it reminded Lash of a bank vault. Its surface was broken by two combination dials, set above stirrup-shaped handles. Silver spun the left dial, then the right. Then he grasped both handles, turned them simultaneously. There was a click of machined parts sliding in unison. As he pulled the heavy door open, faint eddies of smoke drifted past them into the penthouse.

Silver disappeared around the edge of the door, and Tara followed. Lash hung back a moment.

Mauchly would be waiting down there; Mauchly, and the guards that were chasing him. Shootingat him.

Then he, too, ducked around the door. Something told him that, right now, he was the least of Mauchly’s problems.

Ahead lay a tiny space, more a closet than a room, its only feature a metal ladder disappearing through a port in the floor. Silver and Tara had already descended the ladder: he could hear the ring of their footsteps coming up from below. More wisps of smoke drifted up through the hole, turning the air hazy.

Without further hesitation, Lash began climbing down.

The smoke grew thicker as he descended, and for a moment he could see little. Then the haze thinned and he felt his foot land on a solid surface. He stepped off the ladder, moved forward, then stopped in surprise.

He stood on a catwalk above a cavernous space. Thirty feet beneath lay a strange landscape: computers, storage silos, memory arrays, and other equipment formed a blinking, chattering plain of silicon and copper. The smoke alarms were louder here, echoing through the sluggish air. Smoke rose from dozens of places along the periphery of the equipment, collecting along the ceiling over his head. The smoke and the dim lighting made the farthest walls indistinct: for all Lash knew, the terrain of hardware stretched on for miles. Agoraphobia surged and he gripped the railing tightly.

At the far end of the catwalk, another metal ladder descended to the main floor below. Silver and Tara were already descending.

Keeping one hand on the railing, Lash moved forward as quickly as he could. Reaching the second ladder, he began to descend once again.

Within a minute he reached the floor. The smoke was thinner here, but it felt warmer. He trotted on, tracing a complex path through the labyrinth of machinery. Some of the devices were alight with maniacally blinking lights; others were humming at terrific pitch. A disturbing whine, like the banshee wail of a giant magneto, hung over the digital city.

Ahead, he could see Silver and Tara. Their backs were to him, and they were talking to Mauchly and another Lash recognized: Sheldrake, the security honcho. When Mauchly saw him approach, he placed himself before Silver. Sheldrake frowned and stepped forward, hand reaching into his jacket.

“It’s all right,” Silver said, putting a restraining hand on Mauchly.

“But—” Mauchly began.

“It’s not Lash,” Tara said. “It’s Liza.”

Mauchly looked blank. “Liza?”

“Liza did it all,” Tara said. “She caused those couples to die. She altered public health databases and law enforcement records to frame Dr. Lash.”

Mauchly turned to Silver, his face full of disbelief. “Is this true?”

For a moment, Silver said nothing. Then he nodded, very slowly.

As Lash watched, it seemed to him a terrible exhaustion – an ageless, soul-deadening exhaustion – settled over the man’s limbs.

“Yes,” he said, voice barely audible over the shriek of machinery. “But there’s no time to explain now. We must stop this.”

“Stop what?” asked Mauchly.

“I think—” Silver began in the same distracted voice. He lowered his eyes. “I think Liza is terminating herself.”

There was an uneasy silence.

“Terminating herself,” Mauchly repeated. His face had regained its usual impassivity.

It was Tara who answered. “Liza’s spinning up all her support machinery, pushing it beyond tolerances. What do you think’s causing all the smoke? Spindles, motors, drive mechanisms, all exceeding their rated limits. She’s going to incinerate herself. And the Condition Gamma, the security plates, the power loss to the tower, is just to make sure nothing stops her.”

“She’s right,” said a young, tousle-headed man in a security jumpsuit who’d trotted up in time to catch this last exchange. “I’ve been checking some of the peripherals. Everything’s redlined. Even the transformers are overheating.”

“That makes no sense.” It was Sheldrake who spoke. “Why doesn’t she just shut down?”

“What’s shut down can be started again,” Tara said. “For Liza, I don’t think that’s an acceptable option. She’s looking for a more permanent solution.”

“Well, if she torches this place, she’s found one.” And Sheldrake jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Lash followed the gesture. At the far end of the massive vault, he could now barely make out two hulking, barnlike structures covered in what appeared to be heavy metal shielding.

“Jesus,” Tara said. “The backup generator.”

Mauchly nodded. “The housing on the right contains the emergency battery cells. Lithium-arsenide. Enough to run a small city for several days.”

“They may have tremendous storage capacity,” Sheldrake said, “but they’ve got a low flashpoint. If they’re exposed to too much heat, the explosion will peel back the top of this building like an anchovy tin.”

Lash turned to Mauchly. “How could you permit such a dangerous installation?”

“It was the only battery technology capable of sufficient storage. We took all possible precautions: double-shielding the housings, encasing the penthouse in a fireproof sleeve. There was no way to anticipate heat generated from so many sources at once. Besides—” Mauchly said in a lower tone “—by the time I learned of the plans, it was already done.”

All eyes turned briefly to Silver.

“Sprinkler system?” Lash asked.

“The room’s packed with irreplaceable electronics,” Mauchly said. “Sprinklers were the only safety precaution we could nottake.”

“Can’t all these devices be turned off? The power cut?”

“There are redundant protocols in place to prevent that. Not only accidents, but saboteurs, terrorists, whatever.”

“But I don’t understand.” Tara was still looking at Silver. “Liza must know that by doing this – by destroying herself – she’s destroying us, as well. She’s destroying you. How could she do that?”

Silver said nothing.

“Maybe it’s like you said,” Lash answered. “This is the only way Liza can be sure of a successful termination. But I think there’s more. Remember how I told you the murder profiles made no sense? Artless, identical, as if a child was committing them? I think, emotionally, Liza isa child. Despite her power, despite her knowledge, her personality hasn’t attained adulthood – at least, not in any way we’d measure it. That’s why she killed those women: a child’s jealousy, irrational and unrestrained. That’s why she did it so ingenuously, without trying to vary her methods or escape detection. And that could be why she’s destroying herself like this now, no matter what happens to us or this building. She’s simply doing what needs to be done, as directly and efficiently as possible – without considering the ramifications.”

This was greeted by silence. Silver did not look up.

“That’s all very interesting,” Sheldrake snapped. “But this speculation isn’t going to save our asses. Or the building.” He turned toward the youth. “Dorfman, what about the private floors of the penthouse? Do they have sprinklers?”

“If they’re like the rest of the tower, yes.”

“Could they be diverted?”

“Possibly. But without power, you’d—”

“Water works by gravity. Maybe we can jury-rig something. Where’s Lawson and Gilmore?”

“Down in the baffle, sir, trying to deactivate the security plates.”

“That’s a waste of time. Those plates won’t open until power’s restored and Condition Gamma’s been lifted. We need them back here.”

“Yes, sir.” And Dorfman scampered off.

Mauchly turned. “Dr. Silver? Any ideas?”

Silver shook his head. “Liza won’t respond. Without a communications channel to her, we’ve got no options.”

“Override the hardware manually,” Tara said. “Hack our way in.”

“That’s what I’ve taken every precaution to prevent. Liza’s consciousness is distributed across a hundred servers. Everything’s mirrored, each data cluster is isolated from every other. Even if you managed to trash one node, all the rest would compensate. The most sophisticated hack couldn’t bring down the system – and we don’t have time for even the crudest.”

The haze was growing a little thicker, the surrounding hardware screaming as it was taxed beyond its limits. Lash could feel sweat beading on his brow. To his left, there was an ugly grinding sound as some electromechanical device gave way with a shower of sparks and a belch of black smoke.

“You never built a back door?” Tara said over the noise. “A way to bypass the defenses?”

“Not intentionally. Of course, there were ways to simulate back-door access, early on. But Liza kept growing. The original programming wasn’t replaced, it was simply added to. I never saw a reason for a back door. In time, it became too complex to add one. Besides—” Silver hesitated. “Liza would have seen it as a lack of trust.”

“Couldn’t we destroy everything?” Sheldrake asked. “Smash it all to pieces?”

“Every piece of equipment has been hardened. It’s stronger than it looks.”

Dorfman came trotting back through the smoke, dabbing his eyes. In his wake were the security techs, Lawson and Gilmore.

“Dorfman,” Sheldrake said, “I want you to check out the backup generator. See if there’s a way, anyway, to take it off line. Lawson, check the conduits from the generator to the hardware grid – most are probably buried under steel plates, but see if you can find any weakness, any place we could cut or divert power. And you, Gilmore, go up into the penthouse and check the sprinkler system. See if we can divert water from the roof reservoir down here. If there is, let me know and we’ll send a team up to help you. Now move.”

The three ran off. A silence fell over the remaining group.

Sheldrake shifted restlessly. “Well, I for one am not going to stand around, waiting to crisp up like a suckling pig. I’m going to search for alternate egress. There must be some other way out.”

Silver raised his eyes, watched Sheldrake vanish into the haze.

“There is no other way.” He spoke so quietly Lash barely heard over the machinery.

Abruptly, Tara grabbed Lash’s arm. “What was it you said just now? That emotionally, Liza’s like a child?”

“That’s what I think.”

“Well, you’re a psychologist. Say you’re dealing with a stubborn, misbehaving child.”

“What about it?”

“And say threat of punishment isn’t an option. What would be the most effective wayof getting past a child’s willfulness, of reaching him or her?”

“Child psychology isn’t my field.”

Tara waved her hand impatiently. “Never mind, I’ll pay extra.”

Lash thought. “I guess I’d appeal to their most atavistic instincts, prod their earliest memories.”

“Their earliest memories,” Tara repeated.

“Of course, children have lower long-term memory retention than adults. And it isn’t until around age two, when they develop a sense of self, they can put a context to memories that would help you—”

Tara stopped him. “Atavistic instincts. You see? There’s a parallel in software. Except it’s a weakness.”

Lash looked at her. He noticed Silver did the same.

“Legacy code. It’s a phenomenon of very large programs, applications written by teams of programmers, maintained over years. In time, the oldest routines become outmoded. Slow. Compared to the newer routines that encapsulate it, that original code is a dinosaur. Sometimes it’s written in old languages like ALGOL or PL-1 nobody uses anymore. Other times the original programmers are dead, and the code is so poorly documented nobody can figure out what it really does. But because it’s the core of the program, people are afraid to tamper with it.”

“Even though it’s obsolete?” Lash asked.

“Better slow than broken.”

“What are you getting at?” said Mauchly.

Tara turned to Silver. “Can you take us to the originalcomputer? The one you first ran Liza on?”

“It’s this way.” And without another word, Silver turned.

As they traced a path through increasingly acrid palls of smoke, Lash grew disoriented. The peripherals gave way to tall pillars of supercomputers; then to rows of refrigerator-size black boxes, covered with lights and switches of orange plastic; then to older, hulking devices of gray-painted metal. As they moved into the center of the chamber, away from the supporting electromechanicals, the sound ebbed somewhat and the smoke subsided.

They stopped at last before what looked almost like an industrial worktable. It was scratched and bruised, as if from years of rough handling. It supported a long, narrow, boxlike structure, with a black faceplate above a white control surface. Perhaps a dozen lights winked lazily on the faceplate. A row of one-inch square buttons ran along the control surface below. They were of clear plastic, with tiny lights indicating whether the buttons had been depressed. Only one was currently lit, but the entire device was so scarred Lash thought the others could just as easily be burned out. There was no screen of any kind. The far end of the table bent at a gentle angle, and an electric typewriter had been permanently mounted atop it. Surrounding this relic were others of similar shabbiness: an old keypunch machine; a card reader; a tall, cabinet-like box.

Tara stepped forward, peering at the device. “IBM 2420 central processor. With a 2711 control system.”

“ Thisis the heart of Liza?” Lash asked in disbelief. The machine looked ludicrously antiquated.

“I know what you’re thinking. You wouldn’t trust it to do a third-grader’s multiplication table. But looks can be deceiving – this was the soul of many a college computer lab in the late sixties. And by the time Dr. Silver began serious work on Liza, these were just old enough to be picked up at fire sale prices. Besides, you’re not looking at it from a programmer’s perspective. Remember, Liza’s physical self was never moved – just expanded. So think of this as the spark plug of a vast and very powerful engine.”

Lash looked at the old computer. Spark plug, he thought. And we’re going to pull it.

“Let’s just turn it off,” he said.

Beside him, Silver smiled: a faint smile that sent a chill up Lash’s spine.

“Try,” he said.

Of course. If Silver had gone to such elaborate lengths to safeguard Liza from attack or power loss, he would certainly have disabled all the power switches.

“We won’t be doing anything that crude,” Tara said. “We’re going to run a new program on this old 2420. A program to instruct it to order a stand-down from Condition Gamma. That should restore electricity, open the security plates.” She looked at Silver. “What’s the original computer running now?”

Silver did not return the look. “The bootstrap loader. The back-propagation learning algorithms that seed the neural network.”

“When was the bootstrap loader last initialized?”

Another faint smile. “Over a decade ago. That was the last time Liza was restarted: thirty-two major program releases back.”

“But there’s no reason it couldn’treinitialize, is there?”

“No reason at all.”

Tara turned to Lash. “Perfect. We can use the old bootstrap routine to load in a new instruction set. This is the core machine, the first domino in the chain. It retains those earliest memories you talked about.”

“So?”

“So it’s time to reacquaint Liza with her own inner child.” She turned back at Silver. “What’s it programmed in?”

“Octal machine language.”

“And how long would it take you to code and keypunch a program like I’m describing?”

“Four, maybe five minutes.”

“Good. The sooner the better.” And Lash watched Tara’s eyes drift beyond the old computer, toward the smoke that was rolling toward them in great gray sheets.

But Silver did not move.

“Dr. Silver?” Tara said. “We need that program now.”

“It’s no use,” came the weary reply.

“No use?” Tara echoed. “No use? Why the hell not?”

“I prepared Liza for every eventuality. Don’t you think I prepared for this, too? There are a dozen simulacra of this 2420, running as virtual machines inside the Cray supers. The program outputs are constantly compared. If there’s any discrepancy, the feed from the others is normalled and the original unit is ignored.”

Tara went pale. “You mean, there’s no way to modify its programming? No way to change its instruction set?”

“None that would make any difference.”

A terrible silence descended on the little group. And – as he stared at the expression on Tara’s face – Lash felt the hope that had surged within him wither and die.