'Nah.' She examined her flawless complexion, leaned close, and wiped a strand of blond hair away from her forehead. 'Scan me, baby,' she said huskily. 'Scan me good. '
A stream of physiological data materialised in the air beside her image.
Height: 69 inches
Weight: 140 pounds
Body fat: 14%
Pulse: 54
Alex brushed her throat with his lips, and the pulse corrected to 67.
Temperature: 98.8
'I've always been a tick warm,' she said.
'I'd noticed.'
'Do you mind?'
'Please, Miz Fox, don't throw me in that briar patch…' He shut down the scan. 'We'll be able to do a full medical on anyone in MIMIC, and they'd never know it. Impressed?'
'Be more impressed if you promised to stay off duty for the next four days. You've got the leave.' She nibbled on his ear, wrapping her arms around his neck. 'Things got interesting last night. At least I thought so.'
'Want to see a playback?'
'Alex!'
'Joke! ScanNet doesn't peep into executive bedrooms.'
She pushed herself away from him a little. 'It wasn't a joke to me, Alex. Maybe it was a mistake to get involved on the job.' Her mouth curved in a calculated pout. 'I'm not sure you're a free man.'
'So I'm married to the job-'
'These are the Fabulous Fifties.' Her eyes were challenging. 'Cheat a little.'
'Just wait till the Voodoo Game is over, and we get Barsoom on line. ' He snaked his arms around her and pulled her in close. She smelled of strawberries and lime and healthy female animal. He kissed her throat. 'I promise I'll make it up to you.'
'Uh-huh. When Barsoom is on line, you'll be back in la-la land, and I'll be up to my ears.' She intertwined fingers with him and leaned over, soft and warm and supple as they kissed. Then she pushed herself away, suddenly one hundred percent professional. 'I've seen your dossier, Alex. I know people who knew you in Intelligence. You're wasting yourself at Dream Park. The terraforming of Mars will bring out the very best and worst of humanity. Worst is your domain, yes?'
His eyes had become distant.
She stopped. 'I said something wrong.'
He managed a dry, unconvincing laugh.
Sharon took the hint. 'Let's leave that, okay?'
'Might be best.'
'Truce. All right I know the internal ScanNet system is coordinated with the externals: synchsec satellite network, groundlevel sensors, that stuff. You have to teach me the rest.'
Suddenly, levels seven through twelve flashed with orange neon urgency.
'Another damn blackout,' he muttered. 'Bugs in that software. '
'It should be finished by now.'
Alex was relaxing a little-he understood the irritation in her voice. 'I've heard it was a miracle ScanNet got written at all. The problem isn't gathering the information, the problem is organizing it. ScanNet's an artificial brain. Well, if the scanners are eyes and ears, and the central processor is the frontal lobes, then according to Norman Vail, ScanNet's substations are the reticular activating mechanism.'
'Duh…'
Alex laughed. 'They filter the information. Each substation decides what is important and what isn't, before it sends it upline. Only about a thousandth of that reaches the main banks, and that's still probably a gigabyte a minute.'
'How much of ScanNet was developed in-house?'
'Nobody said. 'Need to know' and so forth.' His eyes narrowed speculatively at her. 'Come to think of it, I should be asking you, lady.'
A sphinx.
'Yeah. That's what I thought. ' He remembered the complete briefing. ScanNet was a massive neural- modeling project, an outgrowth of speech-recognition and artificial-vision research in the last century. It was able to sample, digitize, and record any sound, light, or vibration in MIMIC. Thousands of miles of copper wire cocooned the corridors, acting as antenna, impedance sensor, and Faraday cage, alternating between modes several thousand times a second. All transmissions would be either authorised and filed, or monitored. ScanNet could block unauthorised transmissions in a few milliseconds.
Sharon interrupted his reverie. 'Alex,' she asked, 'isn't it dangerous letting Gamers in with the system incomplete?'
'There's computer equipment and tools in shops… maybe some industrial diamonds. But those areas are sealed off, and ScanNet's external shield is solid nothing comes in or out unless we know. We can scan Gamers before they leave. Should be pretty safe.'
Sharon brooded. 'There are a hundred and sixteen countries participating in the Barsoom Project. Most are bringing their best resources into the fold: technology, the nimble minds, raw materials, money. If we don't keep them safe, the Barsoom Project fails.'
Virtually indistinguishable black and grey dots, a stream of lilliputian workers labored in MIMIC's central well.
MIMIC rose sixteen stories tall against the cliff, and another three stories above the edge. Light-transport landing systems were up on Clark's Ridge at level sixteen. Heavy cargo chopper pads were at MIMIC's base. Four miles away, landing strips for Earth-to-orbit cargo and passenger transports were under construction. Roads and railroad tracks splayed out from the ''ground' floor.
Pull out the convertible floor panels, close down the Mall levels, and MIMIC's industrial capacity tripled with a considerable loss of population density. The internal structure was being reworked. Foamed steel struts and monofilament from Falling Angels' lunar-orbit research-and-manufacture facility allowed a level of flexibility beyond anything the original planners could have dreamed. Immense inner spaces were open for shops. Twelve stories of eastern wall could roll to the side, to allow repair or modification of gargantuan machinery.
Point of view shifted again and again: now they were completely outside the building, floating at about the eleventh floor, facing the raised bronze letters spelling out M.I.M.I.C.
Now they were above it, a view provided by geosynch satellite, or survey plane, or perhaps computer animation. DreamTime technology was simply too good to show a difference.
'The power of a dream,' Alex said contentedly. He leaned back in his seat. 'You know, there must be a thousand stories about Earth uniting to face a threat from space. Who ever thought we could do the same thing peacefully?'
'Travis Cowles and all the little Cowlettes?'
'Cowlettes? Are those like raingear for little duckies?'
Sharon scooted in close to the console. 'May I?'
Alex watched her fingers sink down into the holographic matrix, felt sympathetic constrictions in his throat as she slid into the controlled mumble an experienced computer operator used in the information maze. 'Sharon Crayne,' she said. ScanNet accessed her file, analyzed her personal collection of fricatives and glottal stops, and was ready to go.
As she began moving effortlessly around inside the security guts of MIMIC, Alex felt an uneasy mixture of pride and alarm.
The project was so big.
And Dream Park had been essential to its creation. Although the actual physical park lay seventy miles southwest, its influence infused MIMIC's every level.
Sharon was deep into her routine, exploring the labyrinth that was MIMIC. Within a few weeks, he would hand over responsibility of the structure to Sharon, and whomever the board of directors appointed security chief for
