ftp.ee.pdx.edu/2014.02.ftp.ee.pdx.edu.tar/ftp.ee.pdx.edu/pub/frp/stories/jayhawk/jay44

Text File | 1991-06-11 | 8KB | 185 lines

44. Yoichi

Yoichi jacked in from the hotel entertainment console, wincing at the
static in the connection, and checked his mail in Seattle.  Duende had
warned him not to display anything on-screen, in case the room was
monitored, though his careful eyeball search had revealed nothing.

The first two messages were routine requests for system info.  The third
had a garbage return address, suggesting that it had been sent from the
Matrix.  It was long, too, a good fifteen K.  He pulled up the first
page on the virtual reader he was using.

The name leaped out at him first; the rest of the text only after a
moment.  'Perhaps someday we'll be able to meet again, but for now it
seems best that I not compromise your mission.'

'Anything I knew, they may know now.'

'I miss you very much.'

He jacked out hastily, a stab of discomfort across already strained
nerves, and turned to his roommate.  Duende was stretched out on the
bed, apparently sound asleep.  To Yoichi's taste it was one of his most
annoying traits; he could sleep anywhere, anytime, no matter what
worries they had.

He almost called Duende's name, remembered in time that the room might
be bugged.  "Manuel?  Come have a look at this, will you?"

Graceful as if he hadn't been asleep at all, Duende got up, joined him
at the terminal.  There was no provision for two to jack in; Yoichi
called up the message on-screen, fairly confident that his body and
Duende's would block out any camera.  He'd already checked that the
terminal wasn't echoed elsewhere.  An easy task:  Argentine
hotel security was even worse than South African.

Duende reached over his shoulder, scrolled through the message at a rate
Yoichi couldn't begin to follow.  He caught words here and there:
Jayhawk's name, technical terms, fragments of description.

"Why don't we go out and have a sandwich?" said Duende.  Hastily, Yoichi
cleared the screen, threw on his parka.

Once outside, in the raw cold of the sourthern Argentinian night, he
burst into words.  "What do you think?  Could it really be Jayhawk?  Was
the stuff in the report accurate?  Is it a trap?"

"I'm not sure," said Duende thoughtfully.  "The description of the High
Temple is different from what I remember, but that might be correct.
The description of Martha certainly matches.  The rest would be a priest
matter, something I might not know about."

"But is it *Jayhawk*?  Or a Paradisian trick?"  He slipped on a patch of
ice, caught himself.  "How could she be alive after that explosion?"

Patiently, Duende said, "I think you're missing a third possibility:
that it is both Jayhawk *and* a Paradisian trick.  That would be very
much in their style.  One can imagine several ways they could have
captured her."

"How can we find out?  What can we *do*?  Are we in danger?"

"I don't think we can find out, not readily, not without jeopardizing
what we're doing.  The information is interesting, and it may be of
value, especially as a cross-check with things we learn from other
sources.  I don't know whether we're in immediate danger or not, though
it's certainly a bad idea to stay here past tonight.  We were planning
to leave anyway."

He ducked into a shop, returned in a moment with two steaming cups of
miso.  Yoichi accepted one, wrapped his hands around its warmth.  "How
can we go on," he said slowly, "without knowing?  Whether it's Jayhawk,
whether it's a trick, whether there's something we can *do*?"  He
wanted to throw the cup at Duende, force some kind of reaction out of
that damned blank face.  "What am I going to say in return?"

"Did it sound like Jayhawk to you?"

"Yes.  No, not really.  I'm not sure.  Maybe if she had a lot of time to
revise it.  It sounded more like Channa pretending to be Jayhawk, if you
see what I mean."  She's *dead*.  I finally accepted that, it finally
stopped hitting me from behind when I wasn't expecting it...and now
this....

"It would be better not to answer at all.  But I leave it to your
discretion.  I would not recommend decking in to do so.  Your mailbox is
a very unsafe place right now, whether this message is accurate or not."
Duende sipped at his own soup, glanced around, a quick flicker of eyes.
"You might forward the message to Casey if you can contrive a safe way
to do so.  Channa knew Jayhawk quite well.  Her opinion would be
interesting."

"Right."  A little soup slopped over the rim, burned his fingers.  "I'll
see what I can do."

"We should go back, then.  We have a train to catch at six."

They returned to the hotel room, where Duende promptly went to sleep.
Yoichi read slowly through the tech report--it was quite lengthy, and fairly
hard to digest, let alone believe.  Then he tried to compose a reply.

What tack to take?  Friendly and trusting?  "Jayhawk, let us know what's
wrong--we're your friends, we want to help."  Suspicious?  "Prove you're
Jayhawk."  Curious?  "What the hell is going on?"  Hurt?  "How can you
do this to me?"  That last was pretty close to how he felt....

Or there was the Duende approach:  "Interesting information.  What do
you want in return?"

Or the hostile:  "We know what you're up to, and it won't work, you
impostor."  He only wished he were more sure.  It sounded...it almost
sounded like Jayhawk.

At last, after a great deal of backspacing, he put a message in his own
mailbox:

     Jayhawk:

     I'm grateful for the information, but it would help us use it
     if you explained a little more what's going on.  We're very
     concerned about you.

     Yoichi

He sat up, pretending to read news, waiting for a reply.  It came in
about half an hour.

     Yoichi,

     You must not try to meet me on the Matrix, no matter how much
     you want to.  The Paradisians know exactly where I am at all
     times, and are probably keeping me under surveillance.  You
     shouldn't stay where you are physically, either:  and under no
     conditions tell me where you are or what you are doing!

     Aliantha was killed in the explosion of the Hidden Fortress.  The
     Paradisians want me to be her successor.  I am loose, for the
     moment, but not free.  That's a problem I have to deal with by
     myself; you can't help me, and you'll endanger yourselves if you
     try.

     I will *not* willingly contact you either physically or on the
     Matrix, and if someone comes to you claiming, however convincingly,
     to be me, you shouldn't trust them.

     If you must get in touch with me, try the return address of this
     message.

     Jayhawk

It was a University of Philadelphia student account.  She was probably
using her standard trick of mailing from the account of someone who'd
dropped a course.  Yoichi caught himself.  Did that mean he believed
this was Jayhawk?  But it didn't quite sound like Jayhawk; or, perhaps,
like Jay on the night of the final attack, unnaturally calm and clear-
minded and determined.  Not the person he knew.  What had happened to her,
if it was her?

He tried to imagine what the training of a High Priestess might be.  He
wished he could ask Duende, but didn't have the nerve to wake him up.

When dawn came and it was time to leave for the train station he was
still sitting in front of the blank terminal, brooding.  He'd set it to
beep softly if he received more mail.  Just as he was ready to log off
it did so.

The message was from Kurt at the University of Washington.  Just a short
note--"You know anything about this?"--prepended to a message with a
Matrix-mail address.

     Professor:

     Could you please recommend researchers and/or clinicians who have
     both experience with the Matrix and with issues of mind control
     and deprogramming?  I would be very grateful.

     Seeker

It had an explicit return address at the end of the file, not where it
had been sent from.  The same address.

--

Copyright 1991 Mary Kuhner