robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain Read Free Page B

him. He let the door slip closed, holding on to make sure it would be quiet.
    John gave the man time to make his way to his door, more time to open it and go inside, and a little more time just to be sure. He was certain Mr. Johnson would recognize him, and he didn't want to be recognized. When he thought he'd waited long enough, he headed down the corridor Mr. J had taken. He didn't count doors or look at apartment numbers; he knew exactly how many steps it took. He stood, at last, in front of the door.
    There was no name card in the slot above the lock.
    Did his mother still live here?
    The missing card wasn't an answer. That sort of thing had happened before, petty vandalism by the Rezcom kids. Hell, he'd done it himself.
    So here he was. Now what?
    Getting past this lock wouldn't be as easy as the one downstairs. This was a private residence door; the lock would only recognize the registered inhabitants. He didn't know too many dead people living in Rezcom 3 and registered with the security computer. It would have been part of the normal practice for the filing of his death report to result in his access authority being wiped from the computer's memory.
    He could press the visitor's button and call the resident to let him in. If his mother wasn't here anymore, he could say that he'd gotten the wrong floor or something equally harmless. But if his mother was here, it didn't seem like the right way to announce his return.
    Should he try the lock? Systems glitched sometimes; his recognition code might still be in there. What would be his mother's reaction if he just walked in alive and whole and missing for nearly a year without a word? And what if someone else had moved in? He'd been told that his mother had moved, but his source was a proven liar. Standing stupidly in front of the door like a fuzzed dode wasn't getting him anywhere.
    He pushed the visitor's button.
    Ten seconds.
    Twenty.
    Thirty.
    A minute went by. No one answered.
    He knew his mother's habits well enough; she'd have the call set to repeat in the bathroom, in the bedroom, and even as an interrupt flasher on the wallscreen. She hated missing visitors. Of course a stranger might do things differently. He pressed the button again.
    Nothing.
    He looked at the card slot and palm plate of the lock. He didn't have a card anymore, but the lock was supposed to open when the system recognized the handprint of a resident and the person punched in a code; a safety feature for lost cards. He remembered the code well enough and his handprint hadn't changed. Did the safety feature mean that the apartment's system had a link with the building's mainframe, or did it keep the codes in its own tiny silicon brain? He'd never worried about such things when he lived here, but hidden computer links were the sorts of thing he had to worry about now. Would an attempt to open the door be logged somewhere in the Mitsutomo computers, where people interested in finding him would see it? He wished he knew. He wished he knew a lot of things. Like how to force the lock or hack the codes.
    Hell, he hadn't come here to stand in the hall.
    He palmed the plate and punched the old code. Almost immediately, he heard the sound of the bolt snicking back. Still not quite believing his luck, John tried the handle and found that it moved. Some security tech somewhere had saved himself some work by not bothering to cancel a dead person's codes. Not surprising; most people coming back from the dead wouldn't need to open a door. At least none of the ghosts he'd read about ever worried about such things; they just walked right through doors. Maybe the tech had read the same stories, maybe not. But however it had come to pass, he had his entry. He opened the door and went inside.
    The apartment looked exactly as he remembered it, save that it was dark, empty, and the vid wall was on standby mode. His mother never left the vid that way; it was always on when she was home and recording when she wasn't. But