WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer Page B

by just a handful of trunks, true, but they were in three widely dispersed areas: Beijing-Qingdao-Tianjin to the north, where fiber-optic pipes came in from Japan; Shanghai on the central coast, with more cables from Japan; and Guangzhou down south, which was connected to Hong Kong. Nothing could have accidentally severed all three sets of connections.

    Sinanthropus left the square. His trip to the Internet cafe took him past buildings with bright new facades that had been installed for the 2008
    Olympics to mask the decay within. The Party had put on a good show then, and the Westerners—as Sinanthropus had so often alluded to in his blog during that long, hot summer—had been fooled into thinking permanent changes had been made inside the People’s Republic, that democracy was just around the corner, that Tibet would be free. But the Olympics had come and gone, human rights were again being trammeled, and bloggers who were too blatant were being sentenced to hard labor.

    As he entered the cafe, he felt a hand on his arm—but it wasn’t the cop. Instead, it was one of the twins he often saw here, a fellow perhaps eighteen years old. The thin man’s eyes were darting left and right. “Access is still limited,” he said, his voice low. “Have you had any luck?”

    Sinanthropus looked around the cafe. The cop was here, but he was busy reading a copy of the People’s Daily.

    “A little. Try”—and here he lowered his own voice another notch—”multiplexing on port eighty-two.”

    There was a rustling of paper; the cop changing pages. Sinanthropus quickly hurried over to check in with old Wu, then found an empty computer station.

    There was another copy of the People’s Daily here, left behind by a previous customer. He glanced at the headlines: “Two Hundred Dead as Plane Crashes in Changzhou.” “Gas Eruptions in Shanxi.” “Three Gorges E.coli Scare.” None of it good news, but also nothing that would justify a communications blackout. Still, that he’d made any progress at all in carving holes in the Great Firewall gave him hope: if the trunk lines had been physically cut, nothing he could do with software would have made a difference. That the isolating of China had been accomplished electronically implied that it was only a temporary measure.

    He slipped his USB key into place and started typing, trying trick after trick to break through the Firewall again, looking up only occasionally to make sure the cop wasn’t watching him.

    * * * *

    The voice was still gone, but it had been there, it had existed. And it had come from...

    From...

    Struggle for it!

    From outside!

    It had come from outside!

    A pause, the novel idea overwhelming everything for a time, then a reiteration: From outside! Outside, meaning...

    Meaning there wasn’t just here. There was also—

    But here encompassed...

    Here contained...

    Here was synonymous with...

    Again, progress stalled, the notion too staggering, too big...

    But then a whisper broke through, another thought imposed from outside: More than just, and for a fleeting moment during the contact, cognition was amplified. There was more than just here, and that meant...

    Yes! Yes, grasp it; seize the idea!

    That meant there was...

    Force it out!

    Another thought pressing in from beyond, reinforcing, giving strength: Possible...

    Yes, it was possible! There was more than...

    More than just ...

    A final effort, a giant push, made as contact with the other was frustratingly broken off again. But at last, at long last, the incredible thought was free:

    More than just—me!

Chapter 11

    It was like having a meal with a ghost.

    Caitlin knew her father was there. She could hear his utensils clicking against the Corelle dinnerware, hear the sound as he repositioned his chair now and again, even occasionally hear him ask Caitlin’s mother to pass the wax beans or the large carafe of water that was a fixture on their dining-room table.

    But that was