Disclosure

`Just a minute." She pulled away. "What is this?"

"The headset has two small display screens. They project images right in front of your eyes. Put it on. And be careful. These things are expensive."

"How expensive?"

"A quarter of a million dollars apiece." He fitted the headset over her eyes and put the headphones over her ears.

"I don’t see any images. It’s dark in here."

"That’s because you’re not plugged in, Louise." He plugged in her cables.

"Oh," she said, in a surprised voice. "What do you know . . . I can see a big blue screen, like a movie screen. Right in front of me. At the bottom of the screen there are two boxes. One says `ON’ and one says ‘OFF’.

‘Just don’t touch anything. Keep your hands on this bar," he said, putting her fingers on the walker handhold. "I’m going to mount up."

"This thing on my head feels funny."

Sanders stepped up onto the second walker pad and brought the headset down from the ceiling. He plugged in the cable. "I’ll be right with you," he said.

He put on the headset.

Sanders saw the blue screen, surrounded by blackness. He looked to his left and saw Fernandez standing beside him. She looked entirely normal, dressed in her street clothes. The video was recording her appearance, and the computer eliminated the walker pad and the headset.

"I can see you," she said, in a surprised voice. She smiled. The part of her face covered by the headset was computer animated, giving her a slightly unreal, cartoonlike quality.

"Walk up to the screen."

"How?"

`Just walk, Louise." Sanders started forward on the walker pad. The blue screen became larger and larger, until it filled his field of vision. He went over to the ON button, and pushed it with his finger.

The blue screen flashed. In huge lettering, stretching wide in front of them, it said:

DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS DATA SYSTEMS

Beneath that was listed a column of oversize menu items. The screen looked exactly like an ordinary DigiCom monitor screen, the kind on everybody’s office desk, now blown up to enormous size.

"A gigantic computer terminal," Fernandez said. "Wonderful. Just what everybody has been hoping for."

"Just wait." Sanders poked at the screen, selecting menu items. There was a kind of whoosh and the lettering on the screen curved inward, pulling back and deepening until it formed a sort of funnel that stretched away from them into the distance. Fernandez was silent.

That shut her up, he thought.

Now, as they watched, the blue funnel began to distort. It widened, became rectangular. The lettering and the blue color faded. Beneath his feet, a floor emerged. It looked like veined marble. The walls on both sides became wood paneling. The ceiling was white.

"It’s a corridor," she said, in a soft voice.

The Corridor continued to build itself, progressively adding more detail. Drawers and cabinets appeared in the walls. Pillars formed along its length. Other hallways opened up, leading down to other corridors. Large light fixtures emerged from the walls and turned themselves on. Now the pillars cast shadows on the marble floors.

"It’s like a library," she said. "An old-fashioned library."

"This part is, yes."

"How many parts are there?"

"I’m not sure." He started walking forward.

She hurried to catch up to him. Through his earphones, he heard the sound of their feet clicking on the marble floor. Cherry had added that-a nice touch.

Fernandez asked, "Have you been here before?"

"Not for several weeks. Not since it was finished."

"Where are we going?"

"I’m not exactly sure. But somewhere in here there’s a way to get into the Conley-White database."

She said, "Where are we now?"

"We’re in data, Louise. This is all just data."

"This corridor is data?"

"There is no corridor. Everything you see is just a bunch of numbers. It’s the DigiCom company database, exactly the same database that people access every day through their computer terminals. Except it’s being represented for us as a place."

She walked alongside him. "I wonder who did the decorating."

"It’s modeled on a real library. In Oxford, I think."

They came to the junction, with other corridors stretching away. Big signs hung overhead. One said "Accounting." Another said "Human Resources." A third said "Marketing."

"I see," Fernandez said. "We’re inside your company database."

"That’s right."

"This is amazing."

"Yeah. Except we don’t want to be here. Somehow, we have to get into Conley-White."

"How do we do that?"

Chapter 25

"I don’t know," Sanders said. "I need help."

"Help is here," said a soft voice nearby. Sanders looked over and saw an angel, about a foot high. It was white, and hovered in the air near his head. It held a flickering candle in its hands.

"Goddamn," Louise said.

"1 am sorry," the angel said. "Is that a command? I do not recognize `Goddamn.’ "

"No," Sanders said quickly. "It’s not a command." He was thinking that he would have to be careful or they would crash the system.

"Very well. I await your command."

"Angel: I need help."

"Help is here."

"How do I enter the Conley-White database?"

"I do not recognize `the Conley-White database.’ "

That made sense, Sanders thought. Cherry’s team wouldn’t have programmed anything about Conley-White into the Help system. He would have to phrase the question more generally. Sanders said, "Angel: I am looking for a database."