“And Jessika Mye, a strategic profiler.”
Kandara shook hands cautiously. “What exactly is that?”
“It means I take a look at the crimes and how they were committed, the motivation behind them, and try to work out what’s coming next.” She shrugged. “I used to work for Connexion Security, so I have some experience.”
“They brought you in, too?” Kandara asked in surprise.
“No, I was already here. I decided I prefer the Utopial life, after all. Long story, but I was Utopial before—lost faith, then regained it.”
“Okay then.” Kandara sat at the head of the table, pointedly refusing the glass of wine Tyle offered. “Not while I’m working.”
Tyle pulled the glass back sheepishly.
“Brief me, please,” Kandara told them.
Akitha’s research institutes had been under attack for years, they said. Teams from Sol’s dynamic and greedy companies got sent to Akitha, where they cracked files on anything that they believed was going to have commercial value. That data got fed into corporate design offices, improving consumer products that were the economic bedrock of Universal worlds.
“Blatant theft,” Tyle said. “And it’s crazy. We release all the data anyway. That’s the Utopial way; we want everyone to benefit.”
“Not quite so crazy,” Jessika said. “It’s a fairly basic market force. If you can get something into production before your rivals, you establish a good sales lead. Also, stealing is a lot cheaper than having a big expensive research team of your own.”
“It is about the assignment of value,” Kruse said disdainfully. “If something people want or need is limited, if it becomes rare, consequently it acquires value. That’s the foundation of old-era economics. Giving a thing value is the end of equality and sharing. That is how so-called Universal culture maintains its status quo, by monetary force, controlled by the unelected elites. By taking our ideas from us and using them to enhance their wealth, they are inflicting a double violation upon us.”
“Sure, I get that,” Kandara said with careful neutrality. “But what we’re dealing with here sounds like standard-issue industrial espionage. That’s been around as long as industry itself.”
“Data theft is just the first crack in the dam,” Tyle said. “It has been an annoyance for decades, but what else can you expect from Universal-culture corporations, right? So we didn’t put as much effort into preventing it as we should. There always has to be a balance between freedom and restriction; that is fundamental to any society. Without law there is anarchy. But too much law, applied rigorously, becomes oppression. Here on Akitha, of course, we favor as little restriction as possible—something that has been exploited ruthlessly by the corporations. Our mistake.”
“Hindsight is always the clearest vision,” Kandara told hir.
“It means our networks are not as secure as they should be, and they’re susceptible to black routing. We’re working to rectify that, of course, but fortifying an entire planetary network is no small task.”
“And the activity of these Universal agents has changed,” Kruse said. “They no longer simply steal our work for their own profit. More recently they have begun launching acts of sabotage.”
“On what?” Kandara asked.
“Industrial facilities,” Oistad said. “It’s relatively subtle. Refineries lose efficiency; component failure in manufacturing facilities increases due to glitched management routines, decreasing productivity. The rate of these attacks has been gradually increasing. We’re upgrading our electronic countermeasures, but we’re behind on security development. Even our G8Turings have trouble defending themselves against the more sophisticated intrusion attempts.”
“Your G8Turings are vulnerable?” Kandara asked in surprise. G8Turings had only been coming online in the last six months, almost in accordance with the Robson law of progression, which said the rate of development would double between each generation. Though they’d taken slightly longer than expected to develop, the G8Turings should have been utterly secure.
“They can’t be cracked, obviously, but defense absorbs more of their processing capacity than I’d like. The G8Turings produced by commercial companies are more evolved in that regard.”
“And this is why you brought me in?” Kandara asked skeptically. “A few items in short supply?”
“No,” Jessika said firmly. “There’s been a tipping point. Three weeks ago, the public biolife center here in Naima was subject to an intense digital assault. The entire production facility was taken offline. Black routing opened a clean channel into the network. They penetrated the management routines so deeply, they even overrode safety limiters; the machines suffered actual physical damage from overloads. That all had to be repaired. And sleeper bugs were left behind. The entire network architecture has to be wiped and rebooted. And even that doesn’t guarantee the bugs are eliminated; they’re highly adaptive.”
“What does the biolife center produce?” Kandara was very aware of the glances the team exchanged as soon as she came out with the question. For a moment she wondered if it was some kind of weapons research, a nice dirty little secret at the heart of Utopial society. They have to have some kind of physical deterrent, surely? A way to defend themselves.
“Naima produces ninety percent of the planet’s telomere treatment vectors,” Oistad said gloomily.
“We’ve had to implement rationing,” Kruse said. “Treatment therapies have been delayed. We’re now buying in vectors from Universal companies, but even they don’t have enough. They use demand-match supply systems; nobody stockpiles anything these days, it’s not economically viable. We were an unexpected new market.”
“The big nine pharmas were delighted, of course,” Jessika said. “But they’re frustrated, too. By the time they expand their production facilities to meet our requirements, we’ll have the Naima biolife facilities back up.”
“So all that’s happened is the price of the Universal vectors has risen, making the treatments more limited for everyone. Supply and demand.” Kruse said it as if she was uttering a profane curse.
Kandara suspected that, in a way, sie was. “That’s not good,” she admitted.
“Thank you for your empathy,” Kruse snapped.
“If you wanted a therapist, you came to the wrong person.”
“They knew what they were doing,” Jessika said. “They knew the effect damaging the telomere therapies would have. It’s an attack on the fundamental principles of our society. In any decent civilization, healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Even their own, the Universals, suffered from this action.”
“I see why you called me in,” Kandara said. “Life expectancy is precious. Take a day away from everyone on a planet, and you’ve killed centuries of human life. It’s subtle, but very real.”
“I hoped you’d understand,” Kruse said.
Jessika gave Kandara a sly conspiratorial smile, which quickly vanished. She drained her wineglass. “So. We’ve been trying to track down where the black routing originated from.”
“And?” Kandara asked.
“We have absolutely no idea. Their routines are better than ours. They left nothing behind.”
Kandara looked around the table, taking in for the first time just how glum some of them appeared. “So you’re not going to find the source, are you? Not now?”
“If you can’t backtrack the load point within a day, then no,” Tyle said.
“What do you need to find it?” she asked. “Better routines? I know some experts we can bring in. Good ones.”
“I’m not that bad. And I have been given the Bureau’s G8Turing to work with.”
“Then how do we catch them? Give me a best-case scenario.”
“The dark routines are easiest to detect when they are being infiltrated into the target network. If we could just be monito
ring that when it happened, we can backtrack effectively.”
“So you have to upgrade security monitor routines.”
“We are doing that, but there are hundreds of thousands of individual networks on Akitha. I told you, it will take time.”
“All right,” Kandara said. “Then we need to narrow it down. Jessika, you’re supposed to be analyzing the strategic pattern. Is this one team or several?”
“We think there are up to fifteen industrial espionage groups currently operating here on Akitha, but most of them are only involved in theft. Judging by how infrequent these active sabotage attacks are, maybe one every six weeks, that suggests a lone team. They’re being cautious and covering their tracks well.”
“Okay. Do you keep track of all non-Utopial citizens in the Delta Pavonis system?”
“Certainly not,” Kruse said.
“Really? Connexion Corp can find anyone using their hubs—any time, any place.”
“Because Ainsley Zangari’s company is an oppressive component of the Universal plutocracy. Our portal transport network is public; we don’t spy on our citizens.”
“Yeah, you’ve got civil liberties busting out of your pants. I get it. How about: Can the public network be used to watch for individual people in an emergency?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Tyle said. Sie grinned at the annoyed glance Kruse directed at hir. “There’s a sensor on every portal. Even we need basic police procedures.”
“We’d need an order from the Superior Court,” Kruse said.
“You haven’t got one already?”
“We thought we could find these criminals through their digital signature.”
“Right. So talk to whoever you have to, and get a warrant.”
“A warrant for every non-Utopial in the Delta Pavonis system? I’m not sure we’d ever get that.”
“A warrant for every region when this team finally tracks down a possible location,” Kandara said. “That’s the absolute minimum we need here. Without that, we’re just wasting our time.”
Kruse nodded. “I’ll call my Bureau chief.” Sie went out onto the patio, leaning on the railing to stare down at the ocean with its distant towering islands.
Kandara looked around at the others. “Seriously, you’ve got nothing after three weeks?”
“I know,” Tyle said bitterly. “It’s a shit result. We’re not used to something of this magnitude.”
“Not just that,” Jessika said. “It’s the nature of the people we’re up against. They are very professional, and experienced. I keep telling the Bureau we should run an exchange program with equivalent Sol agencies; that way our operatives gain experience and understanding. But…”
“Too proud, huh?” Kandara guessed.
Everyone glanced out at the figure silhouetted at the end of the patio.
“Stubborn,” Oistad said. “Self-righteous. Needlessly independent. It’s a big thesaurus out there.”
Kandara looked at each of them around the table. “Have you guys ever worked together before?”
“This collaboration is bright shiny new,” Jessika said, and poured herself some more wine. “The Bureau brought us together because we’re the top of our respective fields. So that’s got to work well, right?”
“We do help each other,” Oistad said.
“Some,” Tyle said. He glanced out at Kruse. “We need direction.”
“It’s called leadership,” Oistad said, flinching. “You don’t get a lot of that here on consensus-world. I’m not criticizing. I love Akitha and what we’ve built here. The trouble is we have no familiarity in dealing with something at this level.”
“Yeah, I see that,” Kandara said. She stood up. “I need to think.”
“You’re not quitting, are you?” a worried Tyle asked.
“Don’t worry; I don’t give up on contracts I’ve agreed to. Professional pride. You’re stuck with me.”
* * *
—
Kandara’s room had a set of wide glass doors opening onto the overhang patio. She unlocked the clothes section of her bagez and let a house servez put everything away in the closet, except her dolphin-skin swimsuit. Her mind was racing as she slipped it on, running through everything the so-called team had given her. It wasn’t good. She was used to working with top-grade corporate security or deniable spooks with bottomless accounts of dark money.
The infinity pool was barely long enough to take five strokes before she had to flip. Warmer, too, than the one in her Rio gym.
So many first-planet problems.
After twenty minutes she took a breather, clinging on to the drop-edge of the pool, so she could look down across Naima. The boulevard lights were coming on as the sun dipped below the horizon, creating a wan blue-green haze over the coastal town. Out on the sea, sailing boats were making their way back to the marinas. All very peaceful and bijou.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she told Zapata.
“In what way?”
“Shutting down factories is an inconvenience, but it’s not going to kill off Utopial society. In fact, all it’s done is wake them up to how shitty their digital defenses are. In another six months Akitha will be immune to sabotage.”
“Sabotage at this level. If digital attacks are thwarted, the perpetrator may step up a level to physical assaults.”
“Sure. So if you’re prepared to attack telomere vector production, why not go straight to inflicting physical damage? And while we’re at it, who the hell genuinely wants to smash a whole planet full of people back into the Stone Age?”
“There are a great many zealots with extreme ideologies, even today.”
“Even today. I hate that phrase. It assumes we’re constantly improving.”
“Is the human race not improving socially?”
“Don’t see it myself. Like I told Jaru, this Utopial society of hirs isn’t the answer. The way they’ve insisted any immigrants’ second generation is always omnia is a dead end structure. All it’s done is create a separate culture—which, incidentally, never stops whining on about its superiority. That always ends well.”
“Then it is not unusual for such a culture to be subject to attack from ideological rivals.”
She pulled a face. “I don’t buy it. This is an odd assault. There’s something else going on here.”
“What?”
“Mother Mary!” she said out loud. “I don’t know. I don’t get hired to figure things out. My bit’s the simple part at the end.”
“Talking to yourself?”
Kandara looked around. Jessika was standing on the other side of the pool, a small smile on her lips as she held up a couple of wineglasses.
“Sorry,” Kandara grunted and climbed out of the pool. “I was trying to work something out. Don’t know why I bother. Altmes aren’t exactly G8Turings.”
Jessika gave her one of the glasses. “Something wrong with this crime-fighting setup? I’m so disappointed you think that.”
Kandara grinned. “It’s fucking amateur hour. If this is how they tackle fanatics, the whole Utopial concept is doomed. You should pack your bow and arrows and head for the hills.”
“Yeah, I’ve been biting my tongue since I got here.”
“Didn’t you tell Kruse we need professionals to work something like this?”
“Actually, Oistad and Tyle are good at what they do. And you and me, we are the professionals.”
“Mother Mary help them.” Kandara raised her glass in salute and sipped some of the wine; it was sweeter than she was expecting, and nicely chilled. Not bad.
Jessika glanced into the kitchen, where Kruse was now back at the table, in earnest conversation with the other two. “What we lack is leadership. Kruse and her Bureau were assuming that if you bring me and Tyle and Oistad together with a decent G8Turing,
we’d have no trouble tracking down the perpetrators. Then all we have to do is stand back while you go in and eliminate them.”
“Yeah. But there’s something about this whole sabotage thing that bothers me.”
“I know. They can’t see it, but the cost-benefit ratio is all wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“People like Kruse, they genuinely don’t get old-economy finance. Too enlightened. Here, if something needs to be done, it is done. Hey presto! With post-scarcity resources, no one thinks about the cost of anything, until you reach macro-projects like terraforming. But those are all political decisions reached democratically, and the manufacturing facilities are incorporated into what passes for this society’s budget. If something is truly expensive in terms of resources, you don’t borrow money to pay for it, you act rationally and spread the cost out, devoting what you can afford each decade. Timescale isn’t so important now that we all live for a couple of centuries. It’s all very nice and rational.”
“Living within your means.”
“Exactly. Which is why they don’t see the problem. It costs commercial companies a lot to place an industrial espionage team here. Most of them pass themselves off as immigrants, converts to Utopials, looking for a better life and embracing the great new future culture. Immigrating here is easy enough; this is the second time I’ve done it. The only real requirement is that you agree to have baseline genome editing for any kids you have after you arrive.”
“So that they’re omnia. Yeah, ideologically that stinks.”
“To you, yes. And it does kind of reinforce the difference between us and them.”
“Actually, I liked Jaru’s equality theory. Fuck knows I put up with enough shit from misogynistic pricks while I was in the military. I just think…there’s got to be a different solution. Write me down as an old reactionary, I guess.” Kandara grimaced at the slip and drank some more wine.