– Restore his channel completely, – orders Urman. – And stop the surveillance.

The bright light. I narrow my eyes studying the insides of the confinement through half-closed eyelids. Gloomy heavy walls, tiny reflecting glass windows behind the bars on top of them. The table and chairs around it located in the center of the room.

– This is a meeting hall, – explains Urman. He's dressed in a business suit with a tie. Maybe his dress is automatically adjusted according to the interior, I've heard about such tricks. – Here we conduct the Board of Directors' and some other meetings.

I see, the most secured place in the corporate virtual space. One won't escape from here as easily as from the veranda…

I have nothing to run away with though: I came absolutely unarmed.

– Leave us, – Urman continues ordering.

The guards submit immediately.

– Thanks Friedrich, – I say.

Urman nods silently and sits in one of the armchairs, I set myself nearby.

– So… Have you sold the… apple? – inquires Urman.

– Yes, thank you.

– I'm really glad for you.

It looks like he is not really angry and this makes me suspicious.

– I hope it haven't too much complicate the financial situation of the corporation?

– No, not really.

I look at Urman questionably.

– I forgot to tell you last time that the cool medicine has a tiny drawback, – notes Urman, – A side effect. We found it almost by chance… I suppose that Mr Shellerbach and Trans-Pharm-Group won't run into it.

I start feeling uncomfortable.

– Don't worry diver, it was not your responsibility to test the safety of the drug, – laughs Urman. – Nothing fatal, by the way… neither cancer nor terratogenious effect… but the patients won't be happy.

Al-Kabar have made a little insurance… I wonder what side effect might the cold reliever have? Changing the skin color into green, impotence, baldness? Urman won't tell.

Well, from now on I'll cure my cold with aspirin only for the rest of my life.

– Okay, let's forget mutual offences! – offers Urman generously.

I nod.

– As I told you before, I have an interesting offer for you… – says Al-Kabar's director. – A permanent employment.

– No.

We look into each other's eyes. They say the eyes is the mirror of the soul. The question is whether our virtual bodies do have souls or not?

– Some divers do have permanent contracts, – notes Urman, – So… it means it isn't forbidden?

– No, it is not but there's a certain difference between working for an entertainment center or a virtual investigation bureau and the work for you. In a month or two or three you'll 'calculate' me.

– And you fear publicity so much, Ivan?

– Sure I do. We are the alchemists of the virtual world, the wizards. No normal princeling would ever let the alchemist out of the comfortable dungeon… so that he couldn't invent gunpowder for the enemies.

– So sad… – Urman doesn't argue. – In many points you're right, Russian diver. Excuse me but I know that. Your voice was processed by the analyzer and it was definitely not the interpreter program.

I don't argue with him either, such a peaceful and nice talk, we are so loyal to each other – what a beautiful look.

– Well then – I offer you a single time collaboration! – says Urman cheerfully, – The work is easy and we pay well.

– Do you really think it's so easy to get Unfortunate out from "Labyrinth"?

The bull eye! Right in the center! Urman's face twitches, then he takes his emotions back under control, just a tic under his left eye remains. One to zero! No, five to zero!

– Please explain me what do you mean? – asks Mr director unconvincingly.

– After you.

Either they'll kill me now or will open their cards.

Urman certainly can stand the blow.

– One of our corporation's fields of business is demographic control of Deeptown.

I shake my head – I didn't get it…

– I mean the number of virtuality's inhabitants at any moment of time, with exact precision, by district, building, space in space like ours.

– Why? Who gave you the right for this?

– It was a common decision, approved a year ago. – shrugs Urman, – In order to compare the load on separate servers, to tie these figures to exact time of day, all this allows to coordinate the work and to reduce the cost of virtual space usage. AOL was one of the main customers, smaller companies had joined too.

And again my neglect to open information puts me in a spot.

– We were controlling according to the number of input-output signals on servers, – Urman goes on, – It's very simple and reliable, very efficient. Servers report the figures every two minutes. Nobody's rights are violated while we can know the total number of people in virtuality. It's not a surveillance, just statistics.

I nod.

– The number of computer supported objects in each space fraction is being controlled in parallel. Thus we know how many people present in this or that part of virtuality. We get reports every two minutes as well. It's easy to understand that if we total the number of all active objects in all parts of virtuality we'll get the already known figure – the number of people that entered the Deep.

I understand.

– The figures didn't match?

– Yes. There's one person more in virtuality than it should be. Computers can see him, he functions in cyberspace but he never connected to the Net.

Urman rises, waves his hand and the huge screen unwraps on the wall, on top of concrete and steel mesh. I rise too. This is the map of Deeptown and its suburbs looking like sewn of tiny patches. Each patch is a server that supports this part of space. The fine red 'rash' is on top of patches, these are gates, phone lines which are used to enter the Deep.

Looks beautiful. All bourgeoises are window-dressers.

– We can check the data by districts, – informs Urman, – For instance…

He steps to the screen, reaches it and points at Al-Kabar's block with a finger. The numbers 1036/1035 flash up on the display above the screen.

– Is it clear?

– Your servers support 1036 people in your space, including me. And everybody except me are connected through Al-Kabar's own channels.

– Sure. It's too risky to let the secret information to pass through somebody else's lines, even if those are owned by most reliable providers. We have our own channels in 12 cities where our employees live.

– But you can't detect Unfortunate like that!

I pad to the map, find "Three Piglets" on it, bethink just in time and poke my finger to the nearby 'institution'. I was there just a couple of times and didn't like it, too noisy and pompous.

63/2

– This is the more common picture, right? There are 63 people hanging in the restaurant's space but only two used its own phone channel to connect.

Urman nods.

– We detected "Labyrinth" by other means.

I don't consider that it's a cunning and not very friendly interlocutor before me anymore. I'm really curious how to figure out the means they used to detect the person that never entered the Deep.

– Okay… It's not feasible to trace every and each connection signal: too expensive, too time consuming and also forbidden.

Urman looks at me with such smugness as if it was him who solved the problem instead of ordering to do it to his specialists.

Let's think, it's useful sometimes.

Here we have a flow of electronic impulses. It's not important now where it came from. This is just data – the simple 3D image of a person, Unfortunate. It enters the computer that serves the "Labyrinth"'s 33rd level, either through the modem or directly into CPU. The computer places the image to the beginning of the level and gets prepared to control its movements, to broadcast its voice to other players, to calculate the effect of its shots, to move the gravels pushed by its feet. Well, and of course to send the images that the player sees with his left and right eye, the sounds that he hears, the pushes he feels through the virtual suit…