Resurrection Inc.

“Your Servant Danal reporting for duty, Master Van Ryman.” He remained on the porch, drinking in the details of the wood, seeing an artificial hornets’ nest carefully mounted under one of the eaves. He stared at the ornate door knob, at the hideous brass gorgon’s head that gripped a door knocker in its fangs.

A voice struck at him from a speaker hidden in the gorgon’s jagged mouth. “Open the door and come in, Danal.”

The interior hall was dimly lit by a hanging chandelier that left the corners in a deep murk. Plush purple carpeting cushioned Danal’s feet as he took another step forward, and stopped. His Master Van Ryman stood in shadows at the end of the hall.

“Welcome, Danal.” His attitude seemed to show an irregular mix of excitement and terror, masked by an effort to seem calm.

Danal voluntarily used the microprocessor to think and examine with greater speed, filing the details in his growing mental database. Van Ryman was almost exactly the same size and build as Danal, but he had dark, lanky hair grown long and square about his shoulders; his face was wide and somewhat rough, but receptive. A rich green robe loosely covered his tight-fitting black clothing. Van Ryman’s forehead was damp and glistening clean, reddened as if he had just scrubbed it vigorously.

They stood frozen, staring at each other, and Danal felt oddly like an animal squared off at a territorial boundary. Van Ryman’s face sparked a strange reaction in the Servant. He seemed familiar, oddly so. Danal wanted to ask a question, but he felt queasy inside, uneasy, even though his synHeart carefully regulated his pulse. Without the subtle control of his facial muscles to show and release his anxiety, the turmoil reflected back into his mind.

To break the frozen moment Danal reflexively turned away to close the heavy clonewood door.

Vincent Van Ryman chuckled to himself and took two steps closer; Danal could hear his quiet sigh of relief like thunder in the muffled silence of the house. Under the better lighting of the chandelier Danal saw his Master’s eyes, and realized that they had struck a lance of disorientation in him, the eyes—somehow wrong. Something didn’t fit, but Danal turned his mind inward and beat down the feelings, uneasily desperate to keep his identity as a Servant.

“Once again, let me welcome you into my home, Danal.” Van Ryman’s gaze was marginally fearful, flicking over Danal’s face, penetrating, as if waiting for some reaction. The Servant fought to keep from staring at his Master, at the man’s familiar features, at his unfamiliar eyes.

Van Ryman surprised him by stepping forward to grasp his gray Servant’s jumpsuit, pulling it open at the chest. With a discernible shudder of excitement or revulsion, Van Ryman touched the lumpy pale scar of Danal’s death wound on his pallid skin. The man smiled to himself, nodding. Incapable of resisting, the Servant stood motionless for the inspection.

In the close light Danal could see nearly invisible red pinpricks clustered behind Van Ryman’s ears and dotted unevenly along his jawbone. They would have been indistinguishable in less dramatic lighting, with less intensive observation. Danal noticed similar pinpricks on the tips of his Master’s fingers.

Van Ryman pursed his lips and placed hands on his hips as he stood quietly, staring at the Servant with a faraway look in his eyes. Then, nonplussed, he straightened Danal’s gray jumpsuit again as if nothing had happened and rubbed the palms of his hands rapidly together with a scouring sound.

“Please, won’t you come into my study? Command: Follow.” He spoke cordially but firmly, with enormous self-confidence. Van Ryman started down the hall, then turned to keep his eyes on Danal, as if uncomfortable at having his back to the Servant. They passed a small control room for the Intruder Defense Systems and a bathroom. Danal followed, wide-eyed again, gulping in the details of the house as he walked.

He felt a sense of skewed antiquity in the dark elegance: many things old and valuable, but with no common focus or period, as if a collector had gathered them simply because they were old, not caring whether they belonged together in the same decor.

Had it always seemed like twilight

in this house before?

Danal mentally slapped himself to drive away the buzzing voice in his mind. The flashbacks emerged like the memories of a stranger, someone he had never known, someone vastly different from Danal himself. But he fought against an even greater fear of asking questions.

Van Ryman padded around a corner, and they emerged into the firelit study. Van Ryman turned again, looking at him with a hopeful and desperate expression.

“I’d like to have a long talk with you, Danal. I need some answers.”

7 (#ulink_5e9c2999-a65a-58e4-9674-bfabf9296099)

The thrumming background noises in Rodney Quick’s apartment barely penetrated his concentration. He didn’t hear the heat exchanger working against the damp night air, or the tickings from the pipes, the clock, the appliances. The soundproof walls kept the city noises out and trapped the silence in.

Rodney stared at the dead surface of his Net terminal. Behind the thin glass, behind the phosphors ready to merge and regroup to spell out messages from the terminal, lay the gateway to The Net, the maw of the greatest source of information in the world.

Everything was on The Net—if you knew where to look.

Rodney cracked his knuckles and tentatively reached toward the terminal keyboard, but he abruptly got up instead and went about the apartment, switching off the lights one by one until he had blanketed the entire living area in protective, comforting shadow. In the dimness he made his way back to the terminal, moving carefully around the sometimes cushioned, sometimes hard corners of furniture. It was his own apartment, but often he felt like it turned into a stranger when all the lights were out.

It was irrational to think that anyone would see him now. But what he was about to do seemed better done in secret, in the darkness.

The terminal remained powered on always, and now the faint glow of amber phosphors seeped through the murky black background, waiting for the touch of the cathode rays. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen the rectangular cursor throbbed slowly, hypnotically. Rodney reached forward again and found the keys. His fingertips instinctively went to their familiar positions. In the darkness Rodney could barely see the ghosts of the main Net menu burned into the screen from many previous logons.

Upon returning home, he had procrastinated for a long time. He flicked glances over his shoulder at the terminal. Wanting to logon, to begin the search, to get it over with.

But first Rodney moved toward the shower chamber as he pulled off his clothes, dropping them on the floor wherever they fell. He wanted to stand under the hot needles of water blasting away the cold sweat and the musty stink of fear, purging the day from his system.

And after the shower Rodney walked back into the main living area, naked. He looked at the terminal again and impulsively decided to wear one of his old robes made from Sri Lankan vat-grown silk fibers. He had not worn the robe in so long, he wasn’t sure he could find it at first. Rodney wasted time looking for it. Eventually he pulled the limp wad of glistening fabric—sleek and black with a garish dragon etched onto the back—out of his low-priority storage bins, watching as all the wrinkles slithered into nothingness as he shook out the robe. He slipped it over his shoulders, feeling the slick, cool touch against his still wet skin. Rodney tied the sash tight across his waist, then went to the terminal.

Before he could begin to think again, he let his fingers race over the keyboard, logging on. Rodney had never learned how to type, but countless hours of practice had taught him to use four fingers and a thumb with lightning speed.

He pushed the Return key, waited for the system to acknowledge.

“WELCOME TO THE BAY AREA METROPLEX NETWORK.

“USERNAME:”

Rodney typed in his name with spontaneous flicks of his fingertips.

“PASSWORD:”

He hammered in his password. A few beads of sweat appeared of their own accord on his forehead. Rodney had a sixth-level Net password, two steps above the fourth-level passwords most adults had. He had worked his way up, sharpening his computer finesse and using it to advance himself. Net passwords were one of the only things in the world that were still truly earned. You had to earn each upgrade yourself, through your own merit skill.

“WELCOME TO THE NETWORK, RODNEY QUICK. HOW MAY WE HELP YOU TODAY?

?”

At the prompt, four other major menus appeared, asking him to choose between Communications, Entertainment, Calculations, or Information Services. Rodney chose the latter, then cracked his knuckles as he lifted his hands away from the keyboard. Steepling his fingers, he blew on them and half-closed his eyes, trying to think of the best way to attack the problem, to ask his question.

A sudden shudder whipped up and down his spine. His eyes flew open again.

Supervisor was an Interface. She could tap into what he was doing—even in his own home—if she wanted to. …

He had come home that evening in a sweat, trembling, barely seeing anything around him. Supervisor had renewed her attacks with a greater vigor, finding subtle ways to stretch Rodney’s nerves, snapping them one by one.

This morning, before starting the workday routine, Rodney had inspected the roster and the banks of frozen pre-Servants. Other Servants milled around, monitoring temperatures in the vats, cleaning up, keying in data as they stared at the display panels in front of each tank. Rodney logged on to The Net, using his work account and password, and skimmed down the day’s schedule.

He found his own name on the list of bodies scheduled to be resurrected.

Too astonished even to consider the coincidence of someone else having his name, Rodney called up the file. It contained only one line of text.

“WE ARE ALMOST ON SCHEDULE WITH YOU MR. QUICK.”

His skin felt cold and white enough with fearful anger that he almost looked like a corpse already. Rodney tried to delete the file, but found that it had been password-protected.

The feelings of persecution and rage grew strong enough for a moment to drive down his terror, and he stormed about the room, shouting at the Servants, who obediently moved out of his way. One male seemed so intent on his tasks that he almost walked into the raging tech. “Go screw yourself.” Rodney snapped, and the Servant looked down at his crotch in total bewilderment.

On one of the vats Supervisor had mounted a plaque with his name on it. “FOR RODNEY QUICK.” Rodney’s anger drained away like spilled milk. All that day Supervisor never showed herself.

Rodney couldn’t run away. They held him in a web of dependence that had damned him. No matter where he went, he would have to use The Net and his password for money, for transportation tickets, for food, for identification. And every time he logged on, he would pinpoint his location, screaming out “Here I am!” to anyone who bothered to look. Supervisor was an Interface—she could find him herself, and she could come to get him if he ran away. Supervisor would do it quietly, at her own speed—but she would do it.