Marin smiled and reached up and took hold of his sunglasses. A flash of inexplicable dread went through me.

“Because, Mr. Cates,” he said, removing his glasses. “I’m programmed not to.”

Tiny cameras sat like mechanical bugs in the midst of his smiling face.

“The eyes,” Marin said with a sigh. “The eyes are the hardest part. You can make a machine look remarkably human, but the eyes never turn out right, and never fool anyone.”

Kieth was staring happily at Marin. “You’re a… Monk?”

“An avatar, actually, Mr. Kieth,” Marin replied. “One of thirty-four Richard Marins in the System at present. There were thirty-five, but one of me got destroyed in a bombing in Yerevan yesterday. It’ll take a few days to get a replacement.”

He waited a few moments, looking from face to face, smiling. I got the impression the fucker was enjoying his effect on us.

“I was a prototype-the aforementioned all-avatar SSF. I was pretty much a failure as a System Cop, so they figured it wouldn’t be much of a loss if I got pureed by the procedure, which almost every other candidate had been. They digitized me, added in the basic programming restrictions to control me-obeying orders, never breaking rules, protecting the secretaries, etc.-and then made their one huge mistake: They charged me with eliminating Squalor and the Electric Church, which had begun to worry them as it spiraled out of control.”

The booming sound coming from the door had grown steadily in volume, and was now accompanied by the sad terrible sound of metal warping.

“All right!” Marin suddenly animated, replacing his glasses and gesturing at the black box. “History lesson’s over. Things are going to spiral out of control in here very soon, so please, put Mr. Squalor out of his misery. I am programmed to obey all Joint Council resolutions, standing orders, and enacted laws, in both spirit and letter, so I cannot directly harm a citizen of the System or act directly against a certified religion. Mr. Cates? I think you’ve earned the right.”

Belling glanced at me, chewed on this for a second, and then made a sarcastic show of bowing and sweeping his hand toward the box. I stepped forward and took aim.

“Quickly, Mr. Cates,” Marin said behind me. “Squalor is attempting to defend himself.”

The hammering on the door filled the room with noise, and I imagined the dust being kicked up by the vibration alone. My eyes stung, and I found it difficult to pull the trigger: Weeks of effort, so many dead people around me, and here it had all come down to a programming workaround for a robot named Dick Marin. I felt like a goddamn cog in a machine.

There was a cracking noise from behind me. In my peripheral vision I could see Belling and Marin each pull weapons and take up defensive positions.

“Mr. Cates!” Marin shouted.

Well, I thought, if this is how it ends, so be it. I fired three times, the armor-piercing bullets leaving crumpled craters in their wake, diagonally across the blank surface of the black box. A brief crunching sound and a whiff of ozone was the only reaction at first, and I stood there dumbly, gun aimed in shaking hands. Without warning, the pounding behind me ceased, and in the same instant the lights went off, and there was a subtle stilling of the air as the ventilation switched off. We were in total silence and complete darkness.

I heard Kieth breath the single word “Well?” as if it were the most important question he’d ever asked. Then a sharp intake of breath. “Holy shit-the mod boards! They weren’t-”

“Oh, yes,” Marin-or his avatar-said. “Congratulations, Mr. Cates, you’re a wealthy man. Unfortunately, that was actually the easy part.”

This uncorked a hidden reserve of hysterical laughter I hadn’t suspected existed within me. It overflowed my control and I started to bark laughter there in the dark, gasping for breath, my ribs aching and my eyes watering.

“Sweet Christ,” I managed to gasp, my head between my knees. “What’s the hard part?”

Marin’s voice was a marvel of programming as it managed to convey amusement through the pitch darkness. “We have to get out of here.”

This time it was Kieth who barked crazy laughter, putting both hands on top of his bald head. “Through a few thousand Monks whose mod boards were directly linked to that piece-of-shit black box,” he said quietly.

As the words floated by me, invisible, the silence was shattered by the sound of a thousand Monks going simultaneously crazy.

XXXV

THE GODDAMN TIME OF MY LIFE

The noise was terrifying. It was all around us in the darkness, simultaneously distant and not distant enough. It sounded like hundreds of people screaming, interspersed with gunshots.

A light flared painfully into existence and I instinctively shielded my eyes. Ty Kieth stood holding a flashtorch up over his head, giving the whole room a strange, pale glow. Wa Belling and Dick Marin were still crouched defensively, guns aimed at the door. I lowered my own weapon and tried to relax, but my body refused, remaining tense and electrified.

Kieth was pacing, one hand still on his head as if he was keeping it from popping off. “We assumed the mod chips were closed, but they were receiving a signal. We never noticed with West, because Gatz took over that role. But Squalor’s been in some sort of contact-probably just an authorization beacon-and now that he’s gone, there’s nothing modifying behavior out there.”

“How exactly do we get out?” I shouted.

“Well, Mr. Cates, I thought you might have something planned for that.”

I swore, a stream of pent-up obscenities dribbling out of me in a breathless, uninterrupted flow for five or six seconds. “Whatever I might have planned for exfiltration, Marin, it involved not having a thousand fucked-up Tin Men shooting the place up.”

Marin’s grin in the ghostly glow of Kieth’s lamp was the single most irritating sight I’d ever witnessed. “Not my problem, Mr. Cates. I am merely an avatar. If I am lost, there are currently thirty-two others in existence.”

Belling glanced at me and then back at the King Worm. “You said thirty-four of you just a moment ago,” he pointed out.

Marin nodded, and just kept nodding as if he’d forgotten to stop. “What is happening down here, Mr. Orel, is also happening on a global scale. Every Monk in the Electric Church’s network was directly linked back to Dennis Squalor’s digitized intelligence. Their mod chips, in fact, relied on this connection. It has been rather inelegantly severed, and globally things are, shall we say, chaotic. My presence in Manila has been terminated. Spectacularly, in fact.”

He looked at each of us as he continued. “This avatar, in fact, represents all the resources I’m willing to allocate to your survival. This is pretty generous, I think, considering that you were hired to eliminate Squalor-there was nothing in the original deal about your exfiltration. Whatever this avatar can do to help you escape, fine. Other than that, you’re on your own.”

The hysterical laughter was still there, in my throat, choking me. “That’s fucking fantastic,” I said cheerfully. Who gave a shit if I made it out or not? It didn’t make any difference. “Mr. Kieth, if you would open that door, Mr. Orel and I will clear a hole for us.”

Belling nodded. “That we will.”

“All right,” Kieth said, swallowing. “Mr. Marin, can I ask you to hold the lamp, or does that fall outside the services you’re providing us here?”

Marin stepped forward to take the lamp. “I like you, Mr. Kieth. I hope you survive.”

Freed, Kieth strode purposefully toward the door, pulling tools from his pockets. “This won’t take long. Jesus! They really beat the shit out of this. Ty bets one of you could just yank the goddamn door in, but let’s be professional and pop it, why not.”