And Free Lunch had seen Calm Horizons moving to intercept Trumpet’s escape, supported by a small flotilla of illegals sent out by Billingate.
That was bad enough; full of surprises and unexplained possibilities. But there was worse.
Before their departure, Captain Scroyle and his people had spent as much time as they could around the installation, studying scan and communications, listening to rumors, looking for information. They had witnessed Captain’s Fancy’s arrival from the direction of Enablement Station, harried by warships. They had seen Captain Succorso’s ship launch an ejection pod which had veered away from Tranquil Hegemony in order to be intercepted by Soar. And they had heard stories—
The story that the Amnion had revoked Captain Succorso’s credit on Billingate.
The story that he, the Amnion, and the Bill were locked in a three-way conflict over the contents of the ejection pod.
The story that Captain Succorso had spent time together in a bar with Captain Thermopyle and his second from Trumpet.
The story that the Bill’s guards had been attacked and the contents of the pod stolen.
The story that Soar’s captain, a woman named Sorus Chatelaine, had a mutagen immunity drug for sale.
The story that Captain Succorso had bartered one of his own people, a woman, to the Amnion in order to obtain—so the rumor went—Captain’s Fancy’s freedom to leave Billingate.
Taken all at once, such information might have given Godsen Frik the vapors with a vengeance—the worst case of collywobbles in his adult life. It had a different effect on Hashi Lebwohl, however. In a sense, he lived for such crises: oblique events with disturbing implications which called for all the cunning, misdirection, and initiative he could supply. The fact that he took nearly an hour to consider the situation before sharing what he knew—or some of what he knew—didn’t mean that he was frightened. It simply meant that he wanted to give his best attention to this particular conundrum.
Soar and Captain’s Fancy. Trumpet and Calm Horizons. Tranquil Hegemony and an Amnion shuttle.
Joshua, Nick Succorso, the Bill, Milos Taverner, Sorus Chatelaine, the Amnion. Not to mention Morn Hyland, who must have played some crucial part in Nick’s decision to visit Enablement, and who therefore simply could not be irrelevant to Nick’s conflict with the Amnion—or with the Bill.
If you can get her, you bastard, you can have her.
Morn?
No: not possible.
There were too many players; too many pieces moving across the game board. In particular Hashi wanted to know more about this Captain Chatelaine and her ship. Was she Nick’s “her”? Could the rumors about her conceivably be true? If they were, where could she have obtained a mutagen immunity drug, except from Nick himself? Then why would he have given it to her?
But even while he accessed his personal board to call up whatever information Data Storage had on Sorus Chatelaine and Soar, Hashi considered deeper possibilities.
He was by no means an unintuitive man. And he knew himself well. He recognized from experience that the issues which first focused his attention when he studied a problem often proved to be of secondary importance. Those issues frequently served as mere distractions for his conscious mind so that other parts of him could work more efficiently. Therefore he didn’t waste his time wondering why Nick’s message continued to nag at him, suggesting doubts he could hardly name. Nor did he worry about how many of Nick’s intentions were contained or concealed in the rumors Darrin Scroyle reported. Instead he concentrated deliberately on gleaning data; deflecting himself from the questions he most needed to answer.
Unfortunately that took time. Under the circumstances, he wasn’t sure he could afford it.
Well, he required the time. Therefore he would afford it as best he could.
You deserve her.
While Data Storage spun retrieval routines over its mountains of information, he keyed his intercom and told DA Processing—which was what he called his center of operations—that he wanted to see Lane Harbinger. “At once,” he added laconically. “Right now. Five minutes ago.”
A tech replied, “Yes, sir,” and went to work.
Lane was the granddaughter of the famous explorer/scientist Malcolm Harbinger,. but that meant nothing to Hashi. Its only significance was that she’d come by her meticulousness honestly. He wanted to see her because she was the hardware tech he’d assigned to help ED Chief of Security Mandich investigate Godsen’s murder.
He could not have said what connection he imagined or hoped to find between Captain Scroyle’s report and Godsen’s murder. He was simply distracting himself; allowing his intuition the time and privacy it needed in order to function. Preserving himself in that fertile state of mind in which the least likely connections might be discovered.
Lane Harbinger responded to his summons promptly enough. When his intercom chimed to announce her, he adjusted his glasses by sliding them even farther down his thin nose, rumpled his hair, and verified that his lab coat hung crookedly from his shoulders. Then he told the data tech who served as his receptionist to let Lane in.
She was a small, hyperactive woman who might have appeared frail if she’d ever slowed down. Like any number of other people who worked for Data Acquisitions, she was addicted to nic, hype, caffeine, and several other common stimulants; but as far as Hashi could tell these drugs had a calming effect on her organic tension. He assumed that her meticulousness was yet another kind of drug; a way of compensating for internal pressures which would have made her useless otherwise.
Presumably she was also a woman who talked incessantly. She knew better than to do that with him, however.
“You wanted to see me,” she said at once as if the words were the merest snippet of a diatribe which had already been going on inside her for some time.
Hashi gazed over his glasses at her and smiled kindly. “Yes, Lane. Thank you for coming.” He didn’t ask her to sit down: he knew that she needed movement in order to concentrate. Even her most precise labwork was done to the accompaniment of a whole host of extraneous tics and gestures, as well as through a cloud of smoke. So he let her light a nic and pace back and forth in front of his desk while she waited for him to go on.
“I wanted to know,” he said, peering at her through the haze she generated, “how your investigation is going. Have you learned anything about the kaze who brought about our Godsen’s untimely demise?”
“Too soon to be sure,” she retorted like a rushing stream caught behind a check-dam of will.
“Don’t worry about being sure,” he countered amiably. “Just tell me where you are right now.”
“Fine. Right now.” She didn’t look at him as she paced. Her eyes roamed his walls as if they were the limits, not of this office, but of her knowledge. “It’s a good thing you sent me over there. ED Security is motivated as all hell, and careful as they know how, but they don’t understand what ‘careful’ really means. Let them stick to shooting people. They shouldn’t be involved in this kind of investigation. Five minutes without me, and they would have made the job impossible.
“It could have been impossible anyway. That wasn’t a big bomb, they never are, there’s only so much space you can spare inside a torso, even if you only expect your kaze to be able to function for a few hours, but it was high brisance, I mean high. No particular reason why it shouldn’t have reduced his id tag and credentials to particles so small even we couldn’t find them, never mind the embedded chips themselves.
“But Frik’s secretary knows more than she thinks she knows.” In full spate the tech’s tone became less hostile; or perhaps simply less brittle. “Ask her the right questions, and you find out that after she did her”—Lane sneered the words as if they were beneath contempt—“ ‘routine verification’ on this kaze, he didn’t put his id tag back around his neck. He didn’t clip his communications credentials back onto his breast pocket, which is so normal around here we don’t even notice it anymore, hell, I’m
doing it myself”—she glanced down at the DA card clipped to her labsuit—“you’re the only one who gets away without doing it. But he didn’t do that.
“He shoved them both into his thigh pocket, the right one, according to Frik’s secretary. Which is not the kind of thing you do if you’re trying to plant evidence when you blow yourself up, because the bomb is still going to reduce everything to smears and scrap. But it is the kind of thing you do if you’re new at this and you know you’re going to die and acting normal in secure areas isn’t second nature. So his id tag and credentials were just that much farther away from the center of the blast.
“I found part of one of the chips.”
Hashi blinked his interest and approval without interrupting.
“You know how we do this kind of search.” As soon as she finished her first nic, she lit a second. “Vacuum-seal the room and go over it with a resonating laser. Map the resonance and generate a computer simulation, which helps narrow the search. When we chart the expansion vectors, we can tell where the kaze’s residue is most likely to be. Those areas we study one micron at a time with fluorochromatography. When you’re operating on that scale, even a small part of a SOD-CMOS chip emits like a star.”
He did indeed know all this; but he let Lane talk. She was distracting him nicely.
“As I say, I got one. Two, actually, but one was driven into the floor so hard it crumbled when I tried to extract it. Even I can’t work with that kind of molecular powder. So there’s just one.
“I don’t know much about it yet. We can assume its data is still intact, that’s exactly what this kind of chip is good for, but I haven’t found a way to extract it yet. SOD-CMOS chips add state when power is applied to the source and drain. They read back by reversing the current. But to do that you have to have a source and drain. This particular piece of chip doesn’t include those conveniences.”
Another nic.
“But I can tell you one thing about it. It’s ours.”
Fascinated as much by her manner as by her explanation, Hashi asked, “How do you know?”
“By its particular production quality. Legally, nobody but us is allowed to make them, that’s part of the datacore law. Of course, we don’t actually manufacture them ourselves, the law simply gives us the power to license their manufacture, but we’ve only granted one license, Anodyne Systems”—she didn’t need to mention that Anodyne Systems was a wholly owned subsidiary of the UMC—“and they supply us exclusively. In fact, everybody in Anodyne Systems actually works for us. The whole company is really just a fiction, a way for the UMC to keep a hand in what we’re doing, and for us to get SOD-CMOS chips without having to find room for an entire production plant in our budget.
“There’s only one way to make a SOD-CMOS chip. On paper, they should all be identical, no matter who produces them. But it doesn’t work that way in practice. Quality varies inversely with scale. The more you make, the more impurities creep in—human error, if not plain entropy. The less you make, the fewer the impurities. Unless you’re incompetent, in which case I wouldn’t expect the chip to work anyway.”
“So if a chip were manufactured illegally,” Hashi put in, “you would expect it to be purer than ours.”
Lane nodded without breaking stride. “This chip came from Anodyne Systems. It’s indistinguishable from the chips in our most recent consignment, which we picked up and brought here six days ago.”
“In other words,” he concluded for her, “we have a traitor on our hands.”
She corrected him. “A traitor or a black market. Or simple bribery. Here or in Anodyne Systems.”
“Quite right. Thank you.” He beamed his appreciation. Meticulousness was a rare and treasurable quality. “A traitor, a black market, or bribery. Here or over there.” After a moment, he added, “It fits, you know.”
She paused in her pacing long enough to look momentarily breakable. “Fits?”
“It’s consistent,” he explained casually, “with the fact that our kaze arrived on the shuttle from Suka Bator. He had already been cleared by GCES Security. That detail enabled him to succeed here. If he had come from any other port, the estimable Min Donner’s people would have scrutinized him more closely—and then he might not have been allowed to pass.”
Lane had resumed moving. “But I still don’t see—”
“It is quite simple,” Hashi replied without impatience. He enjoyed his own explanations. “Min Donner’s people were not negligent. They had reason to rely on GCES Security. Routine precautions around Suka Bator are as stringent as ours at the best of times. And at present, so soon after a similar attack on Captain Sixten Vertigus in his own office, those precautions were at their tightest. Surely no threat would be allowed to pass. Our kaze would have presented little danger if he had not already been verified—in a sense, legitimized—by GCES Security.
“But how was that legitimacy achieved? Was GCES Security negligent? Under these circumstances, I think not. Therefore our kaze’s various credentials must have been impeccable.”
The smoking tech couldn’t keep silent. “All right, I get it. Whoever sent the kaze didn’t just have access to our SOD-CMOS chips. He also had access to GCES Security codes, not to mention ours. So he must be GCES personnel. Or UMCP.”
“Or UMC,” Hashi added. “They own Anodyne Systems.”
“Or UMC,” she agreed.
“But we can dismiss the GCES,” he continued. “Unlike the United Mining Companies and the United Mining Companies Police, our illustrious Council has no access to Anodyne Systems.
“Conversely, of course, the Dragon in his den holds enough votes to obtain whatever he desires from the GCES.”
Lane considered this for a moment, then nodded through a gust of smoke. When Hashi didn’t go on, she asked, “So where does that leave us?”
“My dear Lane”—he spread his hands—“it leaves us precisely where we are. You have gleaned a certain fact. Each fact is a step, and enough steps make a road. We are one step farther along our road.
“I am eager to see if you will be able to provide us with another fact, or perhaps two.”
She didn’t hesitate. “I’m on it,” she announced brusquely as she turned for the door.
“I am sure you are,” Hashi said to her departing back. “Thank you.”
For a useful distraction, he added while the door closed. And for some intriguing possibilities.
Sitting nearly motionless at his desk, he considered them.
If the list of suspects in Godsen’s premature effacement included only those men and women directly or indirectly involved in the manufacture and transshipment of SOD-CMOS chips, that was daunting enough. The prospect became actively appalling if the list were expanded to name every minion who might have been able to draw on Holt Fasner’s clout with the GCES.
Hashi was neither daunted nor appalled, however. Such lists were self-winnowing, in his experience. Each new fact uncovered by Lane Harbinger, or by ED Security, would narrow the range of suspects. No, his thoughts ran in other channels.
What, he wondered, would be the Dragon’s reaction to the provocative information that Nick Succorso had brought some sort of cargo or prize back from Enablement Station? Hashi could hardly guess what it might have been—but he could estimate its value. It was so precious that the Bill and the Amnion were willing to fight over it; so precious that Captain Succorso was willing to sell one of his own people in order to buy it back. So precious that someone would risk stealing it from such formidable adversaries.
The Dragon, Hashi concluded, would want that cargo or prize for himself.
Hints and possibilities. He needed more than that.
Kazes are such fun, don’t you think?
If you can get her, you bastard, you can have her. You deserve her.
What was the malign and unreliable Captain Succorso talking about?
For a moment he scrutinized his covert mind, probing it for answers. But the intuitive side of his intell
igence wasn’t yet ready to speak. Perhaps it still lacked sufficient data.
He consulted his chronometer; he considered the hazards involved in contacting Warden Dios and saying, I have received some information concerning events on Thanatos Minor, but I decided to withhold it from you temporarily. Then he shrugged. Some processes could not be rushed.
Whistling tunelessly through his bad teeth, he keyed his intercom again and issued another summons.
This time he was less peremptory; more subtle. He meant to speak to Koina Hannish, but he had no wish to betray the nature of his connection with her. So he instructed Processing to seed Protocol’s routine data stream with an update on one innocuous subject or another—an update which would catch her eye because it contained a preagreed combination of words. Then he set himself to wait.
Unfortunately waiting didn’t constitute distraction.
You deserve her? he inquired. Was it possible that Nick meant Morn Hyland?
How could that be? Hadn’t Warden Dios explicitly refused—over Min Donner’s and Godsen Frik’s strenuous objections—to allow any provision for her rescue to be written into Joshua’s programming? Whatever Joshua did to Thanatos Minor—and, not incidentally, to Nick Succorso—his actions would not include any effort to procure Ensign Hyland’s survival. Therefore she was dead. She wasn’t aboard Trumpet, and only Trumpet could hope to escape the destruction of Billingate.
It followed impeccably that Morn Hyland was irrelevant.
Yet the DA director found that he couldn’t let the matter rest there. It reminded him of other questions which he hadn’t been able to answer.
You need me, but you blew it.
One was this: Why had Warden Dios decided to sacrifice Ensign Hyland? The UMCP director had no history of such decisions. Indeed, he had often displayed a distressing resemblance to Min Donner in situations involving loyalty toward his subordinate personnel. Hashi had presented arguments which he considered convincing; but he was under no illusions about Warden’s ability to ignore those reasons, if he chose. So why had the director made such an atypical decision?