you know if it can be done.'
'Okay,' Charlie said, getting up. 'Mark-thanks.' 'Yeah, yeah…' But then Mark looked up, blinking. 'You hear something?'
Charlie looked around. 'Uh, no.'
'I did, though-' Mark slid down off the hood of the Rolls, and looked up. 'Hey…'
Charlie followed his glance. The buzzards were suddenly crowding off to one side of the VAB's upper reaches, and all looking hurriedly for high spots on which to perch, as if on the top of a cliff. Charlie looked up and saw…
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, for he didn't know how to describe what he was seeing. His first thought was The air is thickening. The idea seemed silly. But that was exactly what it was doing-thickening, like steam, like a thick fog, thicker, like smoke-though through it the sun poured from above, untroubled. Charlie shook his head, astounded. Clouds were forming above them, right there inside the VAB, and as Charlie watched, what looked like a thin silvery smoke seemed to start drifting down from them. He walked out into the middle of that space, not hurrying too much, for that silvery drift was taking a little time to come down, and finally he stopped, with Mark behind him, and felt, on his upturned face, the first fine drops of rain.
'Will you look at that,' Mark said, triumphant. 'It does this sometimes, the real one. I knew that if I'd really got this simulation down right, sooner or later it would happen.' He pounded Charlie on the back and laughed. 'Congratulations, Charlie, you've witnessed history!'
'Yeah,' Charlie said, 'and it's wet… ' He brushed the rain off his shoulders and made for the door, smiling slightly… but still thinking about that gallery of smiling faces sitting inside his own workspace, and intent on finding out what had happened to them…
… without becoming one more smile.
Chapter 7
Nick exited Deathworld into the bare white space of his public-access area. He looked around at those white walls with a faint feeling of guilt. Even if they did eventually look better, when he got his decorating done, it wasn't going to be the same as his own space on the family's server. He felt annoyed at himself for not having been more careful with his time, and was starting to be annoyed at himself for getting his mom and dad so angry. He was beginning, much to his annoyance, to be able to see their point.
Pretty soon I'm going to be starting to think I should go apologize to them some more, Nick thought, rebellious.
But would that be such a bad idea? It might do something to change the fact that his life seemed to be completely screwed up at the moment.
You're just freaked because of this stuff Khasm and Spile told you about…
He swallowed. That was true.
And Charlie…
'Charlie Davis's space,' he said to the white walls around him.
Nick was feeling a little ashamed of himself. He should have stopped by days ago. But he'd been busy… 'Trying that workspace for you now.'
That busyness had been shaken out of him, now, by his conversation with Khasm and Spile. Until now Nick had assumed that the suicides were genuine, just people who somehow couldn't cope. It had never occurred to him that something else might be going on… and he still wasn't sure what, but the idea gave him the creeps.
'The space you require is accessible,' said his public space's management program.
Nick got up out of the virtual version of the implant chair and went over to the air, pulling on the doorknob sticking out of it. The door opened, and he looked through into the big, circular, wood-paneled space with its portraits of doctors in frock coats and wigs, the stadium benches, and the steam engine down in the low part in the middle.
The steam engine wasn't there, though. What was there was a group of 2-D and 3-D images of people… kids Nick didn't know. He walked down the stairs between two sets of bleachers, looking at them. There was no sign of Charlie. Either he was out in the real world somewhere, or working on something else…
Or he's in Deathworld someplace.
Nick thought about that, then went back up the stairs and stepped back into his workspace, shutting the access to Charlie's space behind him. Then he opened the doorway he usually used to access Deathworld. Burning red, the copyright information hung there in front of him. 'Yeah, yeah, get on with it,' Nick said. 'Front-door access, please.'
The long copyright warning notice hung there a few moments more, and then showed him the great front gates. Nick walked in and said, 'Deathworld utilities, please…'
In front of him appeared a huge dark-green onyx desk, piled high with ledgers, and behind the desk, a clerk- demon wearing a green eyeshade, and sleeve garters and a bow tie (though no shirt). It looked up at him with a blunt, only slightly wicked face, like that of a cartoon bulldog with the demise of some cartoon cat on its mind. 'Yeah? Oh, it's you, Nick.'
'Hi, Scorchtrap,' Nick said, strolling over to the desk. 'How's the union thing going?'
'Aah, the usual,' said the demon. 'Management says they can't budge on the last offer, we say fine, we'll strike, they say okay, they'll bring in cheaper labor… ' The demon leaned to one side and spat brimstone into an ornately carved spittoon by the desk. Sulfurous smoke rose from it. 'Scabs, that's what they mean. It stinks more than usual, Nick. Our problem is, we got no rights.'
'Well, just hang in there,' Nick said. 'You guys have personality… they'd be nuts to get rid of you.'
'From your mouth to the Boss's ear,' said Scorchtrap. 'Cheapskate that he is. He promised us that this bargaining round, he'd give us a decent profit-sharing agreement. Now he won't even give us the time of day. It's enough to make you lose your faith in market forces.' The demon grimaced. 'But enough of my problems. What can I do for you?'
'Looking for a friend of mine,' Nick said. 'Charlie Davis.'
The demon pulled up a thick scroll from behind this desk. This unrolled out across the floor and into the distance, where it vanished, like railroad tracks converging at the horizon. Scorchtrap made a disgusted face, tossing the scroll to the desk. 'Retrotech,' he said, and reached into the air, grabbing a little cord that hadn't been there a second before, and pulling down a text window. 'This guy come in here recently?'
'The past day or so, I think.'
Scorchtrap studied the text that was scrolling through the window too fast for Nick to read, and finally came to the end of it. 'Nobody by that name.'
'He might be using a `nym.' '
'Yeah, but if he is, we can't disclose it,' Scorchtrap said, pulling on the cord again. The window rolled itself up like an old-fashioned window blind, with the same flapping noise, and vanished. 'Privacy legislation, you know how it is, Nick… gotta keep the nosey-bodies at bay. Even when it's in a good cause.'
'Yeah, I guess.' Nick let out a long breath. 'Listen, do this for me. Let me have a look at the login records for the last couple of days.'
Scorchtrap raised his eyebrows. 'You kidding?' he said. 'You must feel like curling up by the fire with a good book. You know how many people we get in here every day?'
'Just the newbies, Scorchtrap. There can't be that many of them.'
'You wanna bet?' The demon shook his head, and reached up to pull that cord. The window came down again. 'Been busy around here the last week or so, Nick. Lotta trouble upstairs… you know what about.'
'I know,' Nick said, somber, and leaned on his elbows on the desk, looking at the window.
Scorchtrap hadn't been kidding. Deathworld had experienced between five and ten thousand new user logins per hour from all over the planet during the period in which Nick was interested. Even though Nick waded through it as best he could, there was no telling what `nym' Charlie might have chosen… for he was not one of the dim types who pick an anagram of their name, or their mother's maiden name, for a pseudonym.
Finally he sighed and gave up. Scorchtrap made a sympathetic tsk, tsk noise and rolled the log window up again. 'Sorry about that, buddy,' the demon said. 'Anything else I can do for you today? Got some new 'lifts' being
