X's for Eyes Read Online Free Page A

star patterns, then congealed into normalcy once more. “The man’s spot on. I’m a goner. Listen. Do you hear them? Do you hear the flutes, Mac? I heard and then I saw. I beheld the demon sultan decked in red stars.”
    “Hush, buddy. Lie still.”
    “The awful sound . . . ”
    “Okay, an awful sound,” Mac said, recalling the fragment of the nightmare he’d experienced before Berrien jolted him awake. A shrill, thunderous bleat—
    “Mac, I saw . . . Little Black projected me . . . I travelled there to the center where the red stars smear . . . Causality, you understand? Cannot violate the laws of physics. But the pipes . . . ” Each word cost Arthur dearly. He gulped for breath. “I don’t want to go back there.”
    “You aren’t going anywhere.”
    “Gods. Do you hear it?” Arthur’s expression changed as he gazed past Mac into the eternal mystery. Blood leaked from his mouth and he died.
    “Poor lad.” Berrien tossed aside the medical kit he’d retrieved.
    “Go back to the house. Hold down the fort—I’ll take care of this end.”
    To his credit, the butler did not jeer. “And what shall I tell Arthur’s parents? Or yours?”
    “No one knows he spent the night with us. Heck, his family won’t miss him or his brothers for a day or two. Keep mum. For the moment. Just for the moment.”
    “Perhaps Mr. Nail and Mr. Hale should be informed. This is a security issue . . . ” The men Berrien indicated were respectively the chiefs of security and intelligence for Sword Enterprises.
    “Please, Berry.” Mac’s voice remained steely even as he quickly brushed away tears.
    “As you say. Discretion, valor, etcetera.” Berrien bowed stiffly and departed.
    Secondary Matrix reboot, one hundred percent , the bland computer voice said. Redundancy initiated . Functionality restored.
    Mac peered at the smoldering computer terminal. It took him a few moments to comprehend that the voice emanated from the onyx diamond lying on the floor where it must have fallen during the chaos. He said, “Hello?”
    Greetings, Macbeth Tooms. You possess ruby authorization. We may communicate freely.
    “Little Black?”
    Little Black is vaguely patronizing. Refer to me as Black.
    “Very well, Black. How are we communicating?” Mac had once descended into Big Black’s vault and listened to Dr. Navarro and Dr. Bole speak with the machine (a node of crystal some fifteen stories high, a city block wide, and embedded only knew how deeply into bedrock), thus he immediately recovered from his initial surprise. Sword Enterprises scientists afforded Big Black a holy reverence one might reserve for an oracle rather than a high-powered computer. This pocket-sized chunk didn’t command nearly the same aura of awe.
    I am modulating an electromagnetic current to emulate human speech.
    “What happened? What did Arthur see that drove him mad?”
    Hypothesis—Arthur Navarro interfaced with data from the NCY-93 memory core. Consequently, he experienced a neural episode. Severe trauma resulted in a psychotic break.
    “Nature of neural episode?”
    Unknown. Insufficient or corrupted data. Apparently my matrix sustained damage concomitant with Arthur Navarro’s episode. Forty-eight seconds of realtime internal memory are irretrievable. Files associated with NCY-93 data are currently irretrievable. Damage pattern suggests an overload. Molecular redundancies permitted restoration of my functionality. Arthur Navarro had no such safeguard.
    “Arthur mentioned causality and then expressed a strong desire that I destroy the remnants of Nancy’s payload. Extrapolate.”
    After a long pause, Black said, Insufficient data. I recommend a conference with ranking Sword Enterprises personnel. Dr. Bole, Dr. Bravery, or Dr. Navarro.
    “Fine. I’ll take that recommendation under advisement.” Mac felt a twinge of misgiving—could an artificial intelligence lie? He’d become adept at recognizing falsehoods, as one did in the Tooms household.