Iris

and paced over to the bulging, deopaqued exterior wall and looked out into the darkness. 'Where's Hu?' Demogorgon giggled at that and the Selenite turned to stare at him. 'Idiot.' He sounded surprisingly like Sealock when he said it. He sighed and came to the center of the room. 'All right. Before we do anything else, let me give you a little synopsis of what's going on:

'As you must already know by now, Brendan and I have managed to inspect the alien Artifact at the center of Iris via the W± virtuosity of the quantum conversion scanner. We, um'—he glanced at Sealock—'haven't managed to get a physical organization construct simulation running yet, but there has been a heavy data flow.'

'You mean,' said Cornwell, his interest in the proceedings seeming to quicken, 'you've received signals from it?'

Krzakwa had to grin a little at that. 'Well, no,' he said, marveling, as always, at how little most people knew about their technological world. 'Maybe it would help if you thought of QC scanning as being a little bit like radar. What happens is, the particles making up the real world interact via vector particles, and these also affect the structuring of the cosmic neutrino flux. The scanner reads this structuring and reports back information to us . . .' He saw incomprehension

on the man's face and thought, Oh, well . . . 'Anyway, the scanner picked up the presence of a very large, dynamic data matrix from the Artifact, something like what was known in pre-Comnet times as a computer.'

That made Methol sit up abruptly. ' Functioning?'

'Uh, we don't know yet—but the data's not static. It could be just a random memory sparkle, the kind of thing the 'net interpreters are designed to mask, but maybe not. We'll have to find out.'

'How,' asked the woman, 'send it an IRQ?'

Though she was being facetious, he took her comment at face value. 'Well, it'd have to be a nonmaskable interrupt, but if we can find the right coupler, sure.' He turned back to the rest of the room, to a surround of faces mostly still, to personalities unsure of how to react. Might as well get this farce over with now, he thought. He cleared his throat uneasily and said, 'I think Brendan has something to say about all this.'

The other man stood up, looming over the group like some kind of massive and unsightly totem. The rigors of his recent experiments had made his face paler, so that his usually indistinct boxing scars stood out plainly and the 'net-induced capillary damage had left his eyelids looking bruised.

'First thing,' he said, 'is that, if the Artifact is alive, I think we may be able to open a channel of communication to it. With a little help from Tem and Ariane in writing the OdP OS-controls and step-up relators in Tri-vesigesimal, I think I can build an assembler for Torus-alpha that will permit an exchange to take place. That should be tedious but doable.' He looked the group over and then smiled.

'It's not important. What I really want to do is modify Polaris again, this time for a direct descent into Iris. I want to see this thing! Is anyone interested in going along for the ride?' There was silence.

Finally Cornwell looked up. 'Are you crazy? What's the pressure down there, a billion atmospheres?'

'It wouldn't be difficult to modify the Magnaflux generator to make a hull-reinforcing field. . . .' Krzakwa snorted and said, 'I told you before, it's not possible. It'd be impossible to make an em-field that would be gas-tight at those pressures. Even if it was possible, the gauss density of the field would fry you. Not to mention the fact that you're ignoring the effect of the high winds—hell, fluid currents—that must be down there. The technology we have simply wasn't made to withstand those kinds of conditions.'

Sealock's face was starting to redden. 'Look, asshole, if I say something's possible, it is! I'll take the chance. It's my life . . .'

'But it's our equipment you'd be taking with you,' said Cornwell.

'You mean your equipment!'

He shook his head. 'I meant what I said.' He looked around at the others. 'How do the rest of you feel about this? Beth?'

'I don't know. It seems too dangerous.'

'Axie?'

The woman shook her head silently, an ambiguous gesture.

'Demo?'

'Please, Brendan . . . no.'

Sealock glared at him, then at the rest, spat, 'Fuck you all,' and stalked from the room. Frowning, Krzakwa stood