Kismet

by Watts Martin

  Ansel’s ears have folded back into his hair. She supposes she did just implicitly accuse Agent Squarejaw of being in on an intersolar conspiracy that’s left nearly two dozen people dead already, but that wasn’t her intent. She’s accusing someone he works for of being in on the conspiracy and using him as a dupe.

  “That hasn’t been decided yet.” He looks like he’s about to say more, but instead he falls silent, looking away.

  She keeps silent, too, just walking beside him. He’s the one who wanted to meet this way, so he’ll say something when he’s ready. She glances back at Ansel, gives him a surreptitious thumbs-up sign. He looks like he’s ready to sprint off at high speed.

  Eventually Thomas speaks. “The warrant for Mr. Corbett signed this morning was rescinded.”

  “What? Why?”

  “All I’ve seen is the cancellation notice.” He thrusts his hands in his coat pockets. “Within minutes of that cancellation, he showed up in public view again, at the spaceport. He’s caught a shuttle to somewhere called the Rothbard Republic.”

  Gail groans. “So you’ve lost him.” With a population of barely twenty thousand, “Republic” is absurdly grandiose, but the residents are in on the joke. The platform’s famous for two things: being the biggest, most lavish tourist trap in the universe—only a couple cities on Earth might give its casinos, clubs and shows competition—and for refusing to cooperate with anything they consider a “state power,” which includes the Panorica Federation.

  Ansel mutters something that sounds like a complaint about using Rothbard’s name in vain. When Squarejaw turns with a quizzical expression she holds up a hand. “Don’t get him started.” Ansel sighs theatrically.

  She powers down her biomods. Not quite all the way, but enough that she’s not going to exhaust herself in another few minutes. “So you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Whether I think Interpol is working for Quanta Biotechnics.” He shakes his head. “No. There’s still no conclusive evidence the databox belongs to Keces Industries, either. But it certainly seems like someone’s trying to quash any investigation into Mr. Corbett.”

  “What about Purity?”

  “What about them?”

  “Randall lives on Solera.”

  “So do a lot of people who aren’t involved with Purity. But I’ve looked into his past and yours, and yes, that struck me as well. It also strikes me that you’re doing investigation with Mr. Santara on your own.”

  The fox’s ears flat. “Since you and the PFS haven’t done any to speak of, who else is going to? Someone has to be on Gail’s side.”

  It wasn’t just in her head that he’d been standoffish a couple days ago, right? Now he’s rallying to her. It’s good to have the right enemies.

  Thomas looks like he’s concentrating hard to understand Ansel. Has he really been around so few canid totemics that he hasn’t learned their speech quirks? After a moment he nods. “I’m only trying to get at the truth, Mr. Santara. But I’m hampered in a way you aren’t as long as I work this through official channels.”

  “Are you saying you want to work this through non-official channels?”

  He looks straight ahead. As he speaks his voice slows, like he’s carefully considering every word. “I’d like to perform some independent work outside the PFS facility. It’s my understanding of our cooperation agreement that I have the authority to seek contracts with outside assets as long as I have Officer Wolfe’s approval, which I do.”

  “Assets.”

  Ansel snorts. “He means you, Gail.”

  “Actually, Mr. Santara, I’d like to include you and Bright Sky as well.”

  She bites her lip. When a break seems unbelievably good, she’s inclined not to believe it. If she asked Ansel he’d tell her this had to be some kind of weird elaborate trap; by his standards Panorica’s already too much of a state as it is, and adding in an Earth agency makes it authoritarian madness. But getting the databox requires getting it out of the station first, and wait, did he just say— “Sky?”

  “Is that her first name? I assumed either ‘Sky’ was a surname, or ‘Bright Sky’ acts as a mononym.”

  Her voice drops to low gravel. “What the hell does she have to do with this?”

  “She called to speak with me yesterday on your behalf. We talked about what it is she does in New Coyoacán, since it’s not a judicial system I’m too familiar with. They’ve worked with Interpol in the past, but don’t have formal agreements with us.” Infuriating brow-lift. “Which may be an advantage in this case.”

  “And what is it you want me to do?” Ansel’s ears fold back. “You want me to crack the databox, don’t you? Oh, hell no. Do you have any idea what that would do to my reputation?”

  Screw Ansel’s reputation. What’s Sky’s angle? Yes, she said she’d call and she’d help, but this isn’t just about getting Kismet released.

  “Not necessarily. I want to keep pursuing how Mr. Corbett’s connected in with this. But I do want to know if we can find more definitive information about the box’s source without compromising its contents. Is that possible?”

  “I couldn’t tell you that without having the box to examine, and—”

  Oh, of course. That’s it. Single-minded Sky. “She wants you to go to New Coyoacán.”

  Ansel’s rising-pitch rant ends in a choked gargle. “What?”

  “It’s an option Bright Sky brought to my attention.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” The fox looks like his tail might be about to spontaneously ignite. “Even if I had the equipment I’d need there, which I doubt they’ll have given that Gail’s spent ten years telling me the place is a gray featureless shithole, I’ll be damned if I’ll get involved with the basket case government there. Especially to help an agent from the only place I know of in the universe with a worse government. No offense.”

  “None taken. But from a legal standpoint, you wouldn’t be involved with their government at all. I would. I know how unorthodox this idea is, but politically speaking, the Ceres Ring might be the best place to do this work. They’re not hostile to Interpol, and while they’re not hostile to the PFS, either, they won’t just give them jurisdiction.”

  Ansel’s ears remain flat. “But they don’t have any jurisdiction.”

  “No, but as long as Ms. Simmons remains a potential target, they have a legal interest.”

  Gail gives him a sour stare. “So you’re using me as a shield to hide from your own damn agency while you finish an investigation they’re trying to cut short.”

  “I’d put it more diplomatically than that.”

  “Look. If you bring that damn thing to New Coyoacán, that means handing everything over to the Ring Judicial Cooperative.”

  “Not in Bright Sky’s telling.”

  “Jack, trust me when I tell you that if you take this thing there she’ll personally be running your investigation within twenty-four hours tops.”

  “If I—we—go forward with using you as independent contractors, it’s to keep agencies, even mine, from having too much control over this. We’ll manage the same with the RJC.”

  If she understands Squarejaw’s crazy plan, it makes a lot more sense than hers. To the degree she even has one. God, is she talking herself into going back to the Ring after all this time? Why not, though, if it’s the best way to salvage her rapidly crumbling life? And even in the most cynical case—that Thomas is playing some kind of long con—it means getting the databox away from the PFS without having at least two security forces chasing after her. That’s a huge step toward getting this whole damn affair over with.

  “I’m going to need to call Keces in a day or two and either tell them I have the databox or give them a real good reason not to ruin my life. You’re going to have to help me with that.” God knows how, but burn one bridge at a time, or whatever the saying is.

  Squarejaw nods. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  She takes a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll do it.”

/>   Ansel splutters. “We? We most certainly will not.”

  “Ansel—”

  “Gail, no. I’m sorry your life’s upside down right now, but I’m not upending mine as a gesture of sympathy. I am not going to New Coyoacán on the off chance we can find a way to discover information about the stored data that doesn’t involve breaking its lock, even if you pay me over my standard rate. Look, if you can get the databox to my place I can take a look at it with the tools I have there. But I’m not going to touch the encryption.”

  “I’m sure you can do that without leaving a trace if you have to.”

  He rolls his eyes at her. “No, I can’t. That’s why you use quantum encryption. It’s like putting a physical seal over a door lock—even if you fail in breaking and entering, the property owner is going to know somebody tried.”

  “There’s all sorts of ways around that trick.”

  Squarejaw lifts a brow.

  She clears her throat. “From what I’ve heard.”

  “It was an analogy,” Ansel snaps.

  “I know your reputation, Mr. Santara, and I suspect you’re capable of bypassing that metaphorical seal given the right resources.”

  The fox’s tail droops. “Possibly, but not without attracting a great deal of attention.”

  “We’d attract less of that on New Coyoacán, wouldn’t we?”

  “I don’t know, but since we’re not going there, the question is moot.”

  Gail grits her teeth.

  “Then I’ll work with what I have. I’ll let Officer Wolfe know I’m following up a lead in the field.”

  “If you must.”

  “Legally this is his case, not mine.”

  “Are we doing this now? Right now?”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Squarejaw gets out his own viewcard to message Wolfe.

  Gail pats Ansel’s shoulder, trying to be reassuring. He glares at her. They trudge on in silence toward the transit lot a block away, hopping into a four-person tram. Ansel shoves his cap in a hip pocket as the tram picks up speed.

  The silence lasts for about five minutes, about two-thirds of the trip. Then Ansel frowns, looking at the display on his wristband—he uses it instead of a viewcard. Gail’s tried one, but decided she didn’t like things on her wrist. From his expression, it’s telling him something unpleasant. “Is your man going to my apartment?”

  “Officer Wolfe? I didn’t request him to and he hasn’t told me otherwise. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m getting multiple alarms. This time they’re trying to break into my personal data histories, and someone may be doing it from inside my place. The traces say they are, but the interior camera says no one’s there. So at least one of those feeds is being tampered with.”

  She looks at Squarejaw. “You said Corbett was off Panorica!”

  “He is.”

  Ansel grunts. “That’s why I asked if Wolfe might be there already.”

  “If he were there he’d have let us know if something was amiss.”

  “Unless he’s what’s amiss.” Ansel stabs at the tram speed buttons, but it’s already going as fast as its autopilot is going to.

  Squarejaw looks mildly affronted. “You don’t think Wolfe’s breaking into your data.”

  “Maybe not. All I know is, you don’t trust the PFS in this matter, and I’m more cynical about police than you are.”

  Thomas shrugs with his brow-lift again, as if to say point conceded. “When we get there let me go in first.”

  Ansel snorts. “I’d be happy to.”

  When they reach the hallway to Ansel’s front door, it’s empty. No Corbett, no Wolfe, no mysterious persons hidden in shadow. Blissfully, worryingly empty. The fox twiddles with his wrist display, studying the tiny text scrolling past with a furrowed brow. He keeps his voice at a whisper. “Still contradictory signals.” When he motions toward the door, Agent Squarejaw steps forward to stand in front of it. Gail stands behind him, ramping up her hearing just enough to pick up the subtle whine of his biomods coming on. She leaves hers off. She doesn’t know if he knows she has any—he’d have to have dug into her history better than Nakimura’s goons did. He might have heard them engage earlier, but only if he’d had his own mods engaged; baseline human hearing isn’t good enough to pick that up, especially over street noise.

  Ansel steps up behind them, just close enough to the door to trigger the lock. They all move to the side as it swings open. Squarejaw leans in just enough to do what she guesses is an infrared scan—it’s what she’s doing, at least. Nothing.

  He takes a slow, silent step forward. Gail follows unbidden. Ansel takes a couple seconds to follow, wisely waiting to make sure nobody inside starts shooting.

  “See if anything’s disturbed.” Thomas heads toward the bedroom, still scanning.

  Ansel darts his gaze back and forth, tail curled around his left leg. “There’s no alarm lights on, and nothing’s obviously missing.” He hurries to his work desk. Displays flicker to life above the surface as he sits down.

  Thomas walks back up. “There’s no signs of anyone here. You’re sure about your signals?”

  “Yes.” He points at one window as evidence, although from Squarejaw’s expression it’s no more helpful to him than it is to her. “These are the last searches in my history, with times recorded of under ten minutes ago—and the location column says they were made from here.”

  “Someone broke in to do data searches and left without touching anything?”

  “No, I don’t think they broke in physically.” He swipes around on the windows, then types furiously on his keyboard. “They bypassed my first-level security and forged location data to try and open my data vaults.”

  She grunts. A data vault is what she’d thought was the most secure way to store data before she’d heard of databoxes—an extra security layer that requires you to access them from specific locations or devices. She has a data vault that requires her to access it through Kismet, although she doesn’t have much in it.

  The fox scowls. “This is fairly sophisticated code. If it had worked, it’d have cleaned up after itself. My security’s just better than what they’d accounted for—their system got locked out before it finished.”

  “Can you tell who they were, Mr. Santara?”

  “No, but I see what they were searching for.” He looks puzzled. “Something called ‘Shakti.’”

  Gail squints. “What’s that?”

  “A Hindu goddess of creation and change.”

  Both of them look at Squarejaw.

  He shrugs. “I know some history. So nothing you’ve been working on involves that name?”

  Ansel shakes his head. “No. I’ve never heard the word before.”

  Gail exhales sharply. “That’s what’s on the databox.”

  “You said you didn’t know what was on it.” Brow-lift, very high.

  “I don’t know know. But think. The two most important companies in the history of biomods and transformation? The goddess of creation? That’s a project code name.”

  “That’s a plausible interpretation.”

  “Is ‘Kali’ another Hindu word?”

  Squarejaw looks at Ansel. “She’s another Hindu goddess, of time and death. That’s also a search term?”

  “Yes. And there’s a few other terms that seem less…code name. Gail, is this the databox’s serial number?” He zooms in on one line of text.

  “Yeah.” She runs a hand through her hair. “They either think we already have the databox, or they were checking to make sure we hadn’t cracked it.”

  “Creation and destruction.” Thomas rubs his chin. “That’s unexpectedly poetic.”

  Ansel grunts, bringing up more display windows. “I think you mean ‘ominous.’”

  “The keys to heaven and hell.” Gail bites her lip. “That’s what Nakimura said when we first met.”

  “Ominous-er.” The fox leans back, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve already started security audits, but I’m going
to have to do some manual reviews and see how they compromised my system. Until that’s done it’s not safe to work on the databox here.”

  “I’m not sure it’s physically safe for you here either, Mr. Santara.”

  The fox closes his eyes. “Dammit, they want your databox. They want Gail. I should not be sitting here worried about someone trying to break into my place.”

  “You can post a guard outside or something, right?”

  “Not without justifying it, which means aborting this side investigation before it starts.”

  Ansel slumps down further, covering his face.

  She clears her throat. “This might not be a bad time to consider a trip to New Coyoacán after all.” God, she doesn’t sound like she believes that. She does believe it. She thinks. But her tone says she’d rather be hung by her tail.

  The fox sits up again, staring at her morosely. “Jesus, Gail. I don’t want to get involved, any more than I am already, in a political fight that spans the entire damn solar system. And the best argument you two can make is that it might be safer because people might come after me to—to do what? Torture me for information I don’t have?”

  “If it was me, I’d think that was a pretty good argument.”

  Squarejaw clears his throat. “I did mention we’d pay your full consulting rate, didn’t I?”

  Ansel pulls his tailtip into his lap, twisting it.

  “And there’s the challenge.”

  He pauses and looks at her.

  “Have you ever tried to get this kind of information out of a databox? Figuring out how to break that seal without anyone noticing? That’s got to be the kind of challenge the best algorithmists on Panorica would shake their heads at and walk away from.”

  Ansel glares. “Oh, don’t even try this game. I’m one of those people on Panorica walking away.” He lets go of his tail and makes walking motions with two fingers.

  “But you’re already thinking of ways you could do it, aren’t you? You’ve been thinking of them from the moment we got into the tram.”

  “Well, I—” He makes an affronted chuff noise. “I figured we’d be—yes, of course, but…”