“I wish to maintain our right to make our mistakes and learn from them.”
“Well, you’ve surely made a very big mistake. You call a coincidence a proof. You have no tangible evidence for your accusations because there is no tangible evidence.”
I leaned forward and looked him straight in the eyes. “Oh yes, there is evidence. You are doing exactly what in my talk last night I said you are doing. I have very tangible proof.”
“Then produce your proof.”
“That is what you want, isn’t it? That’s what this meeting is really about. And if I were to give it to you, and not to a committee of investigation, the proof would disappear.”
“Ridiculous.”
“You know it and I know it.”
His face flushed red. He said nothing.
“Let it go, Dr. Larson. People are more responsible than you think. You’ve spent too much of your life waist-deep in fixing dysfunction. Cut those little micro-lines leading into our personal maxes and let us live our own lives.”
Still, he said nothing, just examined my face with a whole lot of analyzing going on behind his eyes. There was a new look there, one that worried me. Too late, I realized I had given him an important piece of information. No one but a person very astute about computer technology could have discovered the micro circuit. And I was clearly not that sort of person.
“Has anyone been tampering with your max?” he asked in a deceptively quiet voice.
“Why do you ask?”
“It could be that this fabricated crisis is the product of some hacker’s game.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” he asked, and again the specter of the intelligent hunter materialized in those cool and calm eyes.
I had said too much. He knew it and I knew it, and he knew that I knew.
I stood up.
“I think our meeting has come to its conclusion”, I said. “I am most willing to convey everything I know to the committee of investigation.”
“There isn’t going to be a committee of investigation”, he said without rising from his chair. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Hoyos. My secretary will see you to the door.”
Day 2254:
I’ve alerted the others by word of mouth, telling them that there will be no committee, no investigation. Most of them were upset by the news, in their non-emotive fashion. A few looked resigned. Xue was particularly disturbed, by which I mean his face went totally immobile, and his eyes became like a deep, cold lake. In the end, we concluded that there’s not much we can do about the situation, except to keep discussing it with passengers and crew, one by one.
DSI has sent out an official response, delivered to every mailbox on every max in the ship, worded in typical smarmy socio-speak: a statement that the Department had concluded, after a thorough investigation, that there is no basis whatsoever to the allegations. Followed by remedial soothing and stroking of raised hackles. They are masters of putting out spot fires.
Dwayne has not called me. I have refrained from calling him in order to keep suspicion away from him. I’m now wary even of his secret mail-code. If the authorities are onto us, they may put a team to work and crack all unauthorized channels.
Maintenance personnel are changed periodically. Dwayne was my cleaner, dustman, yardman during years one, three, and five. Not since then had he had an official reason for knocking on my door. It goes without saying that even a lowly servant in the egalitarian universe is free to visit the exalted ones, and this he had often done. But I now guessed that he, like me, was wondering if they were watching my door to see who I conspired with.
Do the hallways have surveillance cameras? I don’t see any sign of it, but, on the other hand, new technology may have been developed, a seeing eye in the ceiling or walls, too small to be detected by the human eye. I must watch that I don’t become paranoid. Reasonable discretion, yes, but I must guard against fear taking hold. Once they make you afraid, they’ve won half the battle. Frightened people opt for uniformity. Free people opt for unity.
Dwayne is smart—smarter than “they” are. He’s lying low.
Day 2255:
Pia rapped on my door this morning. What a lift to my heart when I saw her standing there. She’s my appointed physician, so if they do have watchers on duty, there needn’t be any suspicion cast on her. Just to make sure, I exclaimed through the open doorway:
“Dr. Sidotra, how nice! Do you have my test results?”
She looked blank for a second or two, then said, “The urology report is causing me some concern. That’s why I didn’t waste time making an appointment for you. I thought we should discuss this as soon as possible.”
“Won’t you come in?”
She hesitated, then began to blink rapidly, involuntarily. Was it a disinclination to be alone with a man in his room, or was there another reason?
“Why don’t we take a walk?” I suggested.
As we set off on a stroll along Concourse B, she said nothing at first. There was no need to discuss urology, since I hadn’t had a test in years.
“Is there something wrong?” I asked.
“Can we find a private place to talk?”
“I know just the spot.”
Down the staircase we went to deck C, and ten minutes later arrived at an art alcove containing a Renoir painting of a family in a park.
“Neil,” she began, “your presentation was tremendous. I was so proud of you and the others who stood up like that. I felt sure it would blow the lid off the surveillance. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“You must have seen the mail from DSI.”
“Yes, I saw it. They stomped pretty fast, I’d say. There’s not going to be an investigating committee, since they’ve completed the investigation and found that all hands are clean.”
“How convenient. The fox investigating the crime in the henhouse.”
“Precisely. Nice of them to save us all that trouble though.”
“Neil, there’s more. The morning after your talk, I received a DSI requisition for all your medical records. I refused on the grounds that such records are strictly confidential. Then they sent two of their people to talk to me, and they showed me some article in the Manual that takes precedence over doctor-patient privacy. I told them that nothing—nothing—takes precedence over medical confidentiality, but if they could show me any law to the contrary, made on Earth by a legitimately elected government, I would consider their request.”
“And what did they say to that?”
“They basically told me, in the nicest possible language, that they are the Law onboard this ship. Even that didn’t budge me.” She stopped, tears welling. “Neil, they just walked around me and opened up my records terminal. They had some kind of code that jumped over my security password.”
“I see. But what were they after?”
“I think they were looking for something that would call into question your sanity.”
“My sanity?” I laughed, torn between anger and disgust. “Well, I’ve never been overly endowed with that stuff.”
“You’re a very sane man, Neil. You know that. I know it too. But they were looking for anything that would discredit you. They wanted to find out if you’re on anti-depressants or sedatives, anything that alters brain chemistry.”
“I do well enough altering my brain chemistry without taking pills.”
“Please stop joking.” She took three deep breaths. “I gave them a piece of my mind they’ll never forget. They found nothing, just your wrist and leg surgeries and the general check-up I gave you last year, vital signs, the annual EKG. When they realized there was nothing useful to them, they asked me point-blank if I had sensed any personality change in you lately, and if I had considered prescribing medications for it. They told me it would be advisable to do so.”
I patted her shoulder. “Every ship has rats, Pia. Don’t let it get under your skin.”
“
It is under my skin, and on a number of issues too. I filed a formal complaint.”
“Hmmm. Now that the subject has been raised, may I ask who is the final arbiter of complaints?”
“DSI, of course.”
“The fox and the hens.”
“I also filed a complaint with the ship’s captain.”
“Really? Do we have access to him? I thought the command crew were not to be bothered by people below KC deck.”
“That’s what the Manual says. But you remember the friend I mentioned to you, the one I’ve grown close to?”
“I do. Was he in the audience the other night?”
“Yes, he was. Paul thought your talk was great. And he’s as angry about what you’ve uncovered as I am. Of course, I told him about it some time ago, and we’ve been more careful about our messages. But when you brought it all out into the open, he thought it was time to get moving.”
“In what way?”
“He’s talking to his friends up on KC. He has a few of them convinced that the problem is real. Not everyone believes him, but enough of them that it could make a difference.”
“You say you’ve sent a complaint to the Captain.”
“Paul wrote a letter outlining everything we know. He and I both signed it. He gave it to the Captain this morning.”
We fell silent, pondering.
“There’s more. I have a friend in the clinic on C. She told me that DSI got into the records terminal of one of her colleagues, Dr. McKie’s physician. He’s also Dr. Pagnol’s.”
“So it looks like the Elf is really waging full-scale damage control here.”
“The Elf?”
“The deputy director of DSI. El-if Larson. He’s a cagey character, Pia, and I advise you to avoid him. If you should ever have to talk with him, be careful.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. I’m beginning to understand a few things about what goes on in this ship. It’s all so reasonable and democratic, isn’t it?”
She suddenly put her hands to her face and began to cry. I put an arm around her trembling shoulders, and patted her distractedly.
“There, there”, I murmured. “There, there, now, it’s going to be all right.”
For some reason, this made her laugh. She dried her eyes and gave me a few shoulder pats in return. Then we went our separate ways.
Day 2269:
The past two weeks have been existentially creepy, by which I mean, I suppose, that my social Gesellschaft has gone all strange on me. People shift away, avoid me, or if a meeting is unavoidable (for example, the food line at the cafeteria), they grow vague, say platitudinous things without eye contact. Politeness rules all such exchanges. Beneath the tactful manners is suspicion. They are no longer convinced we have a problem. For them, I have become the problem, though they don’t voice this. It’s as if the curve in space is manifesting through the curve in men’s perceptions.
On the other hand, a few have approached me quietly. They are convinced we have a big problem, despite DSI’s disclaimers. They’re worried. I’m worried too. Not a word from Dwayne. I sent him an inquiry through his secret code address. It wasn’t blocked, wasn’t bounced back to me, but after I did a cross-check, the auto-mailer informed me it had not been delivered. It gave no explanation.
I called the maintenance main desk down on PHM and complained about too much dust in my room. The man on duty assured me that a cleaner would be sent up as soon as possible. I asked if he could send one of my old maintenance guys, a fellow named Dwayne—he’d left his pen in my room, and I wanted to return it to him. The voice on the other end of the max told me there was nobody named Dwayne working for the department.
About an hour later, a cleaner showed up and dusted my room with a vacuum sweep, though there wasn’t much dust to speak of. He suggested I might want to be more regular with my suction bath. I asked him if he knew a guy named Dwayne who worked in his department. He shook his head, and said, no, there was no one by that name working in Maintenance—never had been.
“Anyone on your staff who’s in his early to mid-thirties, dark-haired, lean, kind of quiet, American origins.”
“That describes several of us”, the man answered.
“I’d like to meet them.”
He shrugged. “Sure, if you want. Come down to M anytime. I’ll mention it to the boss. Course, you’ll have to get security clearance first. They don’t let anyone onto our deck who isn’t cleared for it.”
“I see. Where do I go to get clearance?”
“Just drop by the DSI office on deck C. They’ll give you a pass and temporary code for the elevators.”
“Thanks.”
Just drop by DSI and ask for a code? Uh, nope, I don’t think I’ll be doing that.
“Would you mention to your coworkers that Dr. Hoyos in B-124 is looking for someone in your department and has forgotten the exact name?”
“Sure, no problem. Mid-thirties, dark haired, sort of American, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“Will do.”
After he left, I got out the Manual and checked through the index and found personnel, sorted into departments. Nobody named Dwayne was listed—not in any department. I now realized he had been using a pseudonym.
“Good for you, Dwayne. Good thinking”, I murmured to myself. However, this did not solve the problem of how to reach him.
Day 2273:
Remembering that he had once told me his personal room was on Concourse D, I went down there and roved along the corridors on the chance that he would pop his head out of a doorway. No such luck. I spent a day or so wandering thus, and people passing in the corridors began to eye me with uneasiness.
These long, long walks were beneficial to my health, though not to my mood. There were three main corridors or avenues stretching the length of the ship, starboard, port and center, each of them just short of a kilometer long. There were numerous cross streets, each a quarter of a kilometer long (I estimated thirty of these). There were hundreds upon hundreds of doors on this floor alone. All were numbered, but only a small minority had personal name cards magnet-beaded beneath the numbers. A few balloons and other decorative items relieved the monotonous decor. There was nothing in the Manual that would have prohibited affixing one’s name beneath a number, but I supposed most people wanted to be Gesellschaft about their personal spaces, handing out the room number only to their selected friends.
It was like wandering through Manhattan hoping to run into an acquaintance. From time to time, I stopped pedestrians along the way and explained that I was looking for a friend but couldn’t recall his room number. Some of them took this at face value, but a larger number had either seen my talk or heard about it, and recognized me. They had also read the DSI denials, which put me in a pretty bad light. Invariably, people were courteous, but none of them divulged the information I was looking for—if they knew it. A few made tactfully expressed comments about the need to preserve unity and to avoid paranoia. The phrasing of their advice was straight out of the DSI sooth-and-desist letter.
Clearly it was a hopeless cause, unless I wanted to become the ghost that haunted deck D, or worse, be categorized as the deranged old man who needed to be institutionalized for his own good.
Day 2275:
I had an inspiration. In one of the library terminals, I word-searched the main computer for Kosmos, found a million links, and then narrowed it down to sites referencing staff and passengers for the big expedition. Again, a lot of links, thousands, actually. On the main official site for the voyage, I noted that the last entry had been made a day before departure from Earth. And there I found what I’d been looking for: a complete list of personnel, each name accompanied by an identiphoto and short biography.
It took a few hours to go through, and when I reached the end of it I stood back with my heart thumping unnaturally. According to the companion article, this list included every person who would be on the ship, a total of 676 individuals, none exce
pted. But nowhere in all those photos had I seen Dwayne’s face.
I knew that he was on board. I knew what his face looked like. He was no phantom. But he simply wasn’t there. I cross-referenced to maintenance personnel and discovered fourteen young men who visually fit his description, but none of their faces were his. Fearing that I might have sped too quickly through the photos, I entered more cross-references to every other department. Again, nothing.
I went back to my room to think about it.
Dwayne—whoever he was, whatever his name really was—had been deleted from the files. Why?
I examined the possible explanations:
Perhaps he had never been entered in the files. An oversight? Hardly. Not on an expedition as well-planned as this one.
A stowaway? Maybe. But if he was a stowaway, how would he have managed to procure a job in Maintenance, taking his shifts year after year? If he had been a fake cleaning man, surely Maintenance would have sent the real cleaners to my room on schedule, and the duplication of labor would have come to my attention. Not once during the three six-month shifts when he vacuumed the hallways and scrubbed my room had anyone else shown up.
He was a master cyber-hacker. Maybe he had deleted himself from the files. Now this was a possibility. But why would he do it? It struck me that he would do it only if he felt himself endangered in some extreme way. But this did not make any sense. Our controversy with DSI was heated and unpleasant, but surely it wasn’t dangerous.
Was Dwayne a “plant”, a “mole”, quietly working for the authorities? Obeying orders, had he been taking the psychological pulse of a few select passengers? Perhaps a stress-test on potentially problematic individuals such as Stron and myself? Or was a grander study underway, originating in the fervid imaginations of the director of DSI and his assistant, the deputy director? Was Elf, even now, writing a thesis for a new degree to add to his name? After all, the voyage was absolutely sui generis, a first of its kind, prime material for a unique experiment.
Of all the possibilities, this last one began to make more and more sense to me. It all added up to a project, approved from above. After all, how could a janitor have come by skills that outwitted a computer system as sophisticated as ours? Maybe he hadn’t outwitted the system. Maybe he had been going through the motions just to pull the wool over my eyes. I never saw him at work. No one had seen him do what we conspirators believed he had done. And wasn’t it odd the way he and I shared so neatly our Southwest riders-of-the-open-range culture? A bit too good to be true, that one.