Mirage

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  “None to speak of.” He gestured at the datum. “Uh, the RI?”

  “Oh, yes.” She touched a few more contacts. “There’s the schema for this branch.”

  Derec leaned over the desk and studied the screen. “All right... there’s a service entrance here for the robot staff. It says it’s been sealed off.”

  “Be my guest.” She smiled ruefully. “If you get caught, this office will deny any knowledge”

  Derec snorted and turned away. Ariel laughed.

  The hallway outside the offices made a sharp turn at the very back and narrowed even more. It was barely wide enough for a single person carrying a tray now, which was more than enough room for a robot with the same tray.

  It opened into a circular chamber containing three wall niches, now empty of robots. As a concession to Terran authority, even the embassy robots had been slaved to the RI here. To his left was a plain metal door with a simple positronic scanner. Below the scanner was an override control.

  From his jacket pocket, Derec took out a small square that resembled an ID chit. Its surface, however, showed the faint outlines of a keypad and one edge was thicker than the rest of the square. He was proud of this device, though he had never before found it necessary to use. He slid it into the override scanner and pressed one of the contacts. A moment later, one contact lit up. He pressed the next and so on until the door accepted the code the device had developed from its interaction with the mechanism and slid open.

  The only illumination in the tunnels beyond came from clusters of readylights. Derec felt his way along until he came to a brighter area, then he stepped from the robot accessways into a human-use passage lined with dim amber panels. He followed it until he came to a branch, then guessed from memory which way he needed to go.

  The machinery that operated all the station facilities surrounded the public areas, hidden in the walls and beneath the floors. Peel away the skin inside and outside Union station and a network of tubes, corridors, conduit, shafts, and cables would be revealed, resembling in its complex density the internal organs of a living thing. Since it had been retrofitted for the RI and robotics, a good deal of the network contained open spaces for humans, service nodes and maintenance stations, which made it easier for Derec to find his way. Signs were posted giving locations and directions.

  It was late. Derec thought it unlikely that he would run into any workers at this hour, but he walked carefully anyway.

  He wanted to find one of the maintenance nodes, since the curious data loops Rana had found all centered on maintenance nodes. They were scattered throughout the complex network, junctions which served several purposes, beginning with the monitoring of the data traffic that rushed throughout the system at light -speed. The junctions broke down the task of maintaining, repairing, and supervising the day-to-day functions that kept Union Station working into discreet units, each with its own supply and repair staff. Until the Incident, that staff had been robotic. Prior to the installation of the RI and the station’s conversion to positronics, humans did the work. Now, Derec imagined, they would again.

  He turned a corner and lurched back at the sight of a row of people. He waited for them to come after him. When they did not, he looked again and saw that it was only a row of robots in their niches.

  Pulse racing, he quickly walked by them.

  A maintenance node stood at the end of the row. Derec squeezed through the narrow opening, into the hexagonal chamber. A worklamp came on automatically at his presence.

  The node was being disassembled. Cables and router boxes hung from their places, forgotten for the time being, a mess. Derec tried to piece together how it would operate, but too much was missing. He lifted one of the router boxes and turned it over. One face looked pitted, hundreds of tiny holes allover it, the plastic casing discolored as if it had been heated. He found two more in about the same condition.

  The next one, though, was intact.

  He opened the access doors and peered in at the neatly organized components. Nothing looked disturbed. He pushed and pulled at cables to get his hands inside the mass, feeling around for... he did not know.

  But he found it in one of the racks at the base of the walls.

  The space was filled with transfer buffers, large memory dumps that held the millions of bits of data required by the station until needed. Tucked between two of them was a mass of greenish-blue corrosion.

  No, not corrosion. More like mold or some other fungus. Derec prodded it, but the surface did not yield, nor did it seem brittle. It appeared to be grown to the transfer buffers. He worked a fingernail into the join between a buffer wall and the growth and pried. Fibrous tendrils had sunk into the buffer.

  He had nothing on him to work at the material. He went back to one of the other maintenance nodes, where the work crew had left some tools, and took a plain screwdriver. He pried and chipped at the growth until a small amount flaked off. He wrapped it in the printout from the station and slipped it into his pocket.

  He made his way back to the embassy branch, unable to shake the growing sense of dread that seemed to spread over and through him.

  _

  SIXTEEN

  The robot caused Ariel to flinch every time she saw it. She brushed past it, impatient with her own reactions, and strode into her living room, Derec close behind.

  Mia was still on the sofa, her datum in her lap, the subetheric on, frozen at a scene from the massacre. It showed, magnified, a clutch of people huddling together, faces stretched in panic, bodies twisted and angled as if about to fall to the floor. From the clothing, the group was Terran. Ariel recognized no one. The image was so different from the scene she had seen in Union Station not two hours ago that it seemed from another reality.

  Mia looked up.

  “And?” she asked archly.

  Ariel stared at the image. “All present and accounted for, including you. Someone has thoughtfully put a burned body in your morgue stasis drawer.”

  The expression on the younger woman’s face made Ariel immediately regret her words. Mia’s mouth fell partly open and she paled visibly, her eyes seeming to go darker still and more desolate.

  “We checked at Union Station,” Derec said, “and someone calling himself Tro Aspil did show up to take his seat on the shuttle. So either the corpse in the morgue is Aspil and someone else is heading for Aurora--”

  “--or Aspil’s body is a fake,” Mia said, nodding. “Like mine.”

  “But your double doesn’t even have to look like you,” Ariel said. “The only way to prove it isn’t you would be a DNA scan.”

  “I’m sure that has already been flied,” Mia said. She gave her shoulders a twist as if to relieve tension, then pointed at the screen. “I’ve been doing a tally.”

  Ariel sat down on the sofa beside her. Mia’s datum screen showed two columns of names.

  “Bogard had a master list of everyone scheduled to be at the ceremony,” Mia said. “I pulled a list of casualties from the newsnets and started running the vids for a match.”

  “Any discrepancies?” Ariel asked.

  “None so far, but I began doing trajectories. When we found out that several of the assailants were just projections, I wondered then just how many real shots were fired. Bogard helped me edit the newsnet recordings you have into a single composite.”

  “How are you doing the tracking?” Derec asked. “Bogard’s sensory net is as good as it gets, but even subetheric recordings don’t have that kind of detail.”

  “Bogard was able to identify nine actual shooters out of the twenty-one apparent assailants. By studying the recoil of their weapons, it gives us a reliable estimate of how many shots were actually fired. Then it’s just a matter of tracing the consequences.”

  “Nine,” Ariel mused. “You caught three of them. Three of them were killed on the scene.”

  “So we can assume three of them are still at large. There may have been accomplices outside the gallery waiting to facilitate an escap
e. We don’t know.”

  “Six bodies I couldn’t identify are in the morgue, in the same section with all the victims,” Ariel said. “I have a list of names and tracking codes.”

  Mia frowned. “The three I captured were still alive when Bogard brought us back into the gallery.”

  “These six may not be anything more than innocent bystanders who got in the way. We have to check the names.”

  Mia shrugged. “I’ve tried running enhancements on them, to see if facial features show through the masks, but they padded the masks. What I have found so far is an emerging pattern of targeting. I’m not finished, so this isn’t final, but it appears they were working from a specific list. It wasn’t just a capricious act of terror.”

  Ariel blinked at the image on her subetheric. “Well, we know they wanted Humadros and Eliton...”

  “Maybe. At least, yes, they were part of it. Let me finish this before I say any more.” She turned to the robot. “Bogard? Let’s continue.”

  “At some point,” Derec said, “I’m going to have to have Bogard back to do a full diagnostic and debriefing.”

  Mia did not look up from her datum, only nodded. Ariel saw clearly that she did not like the idea of giving up the robot. Not yet.

  “How are you feeling?” Ariel asked. “Can you walk yet?”

  “Oh, I hobbled to the bathroom twice while you were gone. Things are improving. Your medical robot said another three days for the healing accelerants to work through completely.”

  “No problem. I can guarantee privacy for that long. Of course, this is ruining my social life.”

  Mia smiled thinly. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t have anything this exciting planned for at least another month.” She stood and gave Derec a significant look, then headed for her bedroom.

  As she had hoped, Derec followed.

  She closed the door behind him.

  “Stop pestering her for Bogard,” Ariel said.

  Derec frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “She’s terrified. Right now Bogard is the only thing making her feel safe. Every time you ask to have it back she gets scared. Stop it.”

  “Look, Bogard has data we need. We can’t just ask for it, I have to download it from its buffers. In order to do that, I need Bogard back at Phylaxis.”

  “Give it a little time--”

  “How much do you want? We have a situation here and I don’t think we have the luxury of a few days or a week before we get at the information Bogard has.”

  “Right now we have’ more information than we know what to do with. None of it’s making sense.”

  “And neither are you. Since when can you have too much information?”

  “When most of it’s useless--noise. Like that mess you’ve got from the Union Station RI.”

  Derec drew himself up and Ariel braced for a fight. She knew that look and could predict all that followed it, and suddenly she felt extremely tired. She held up her hands.

  “Just back off asking for Bogard for now. I’ll talk to Mia in the morning and see what I can do. She’s my friend.”

  Unexpectedly, Derec let out a long breath and nodded.

  “All right. I need to check in with Rana, anyway.” He turned away, hands on hips, and surveyed her bedroom. ”Nice,” he said. “You’ve been doing well for yourself.”

  “If I had time to enjoy it, life would be wonderful,” Ariel said. She winced at the sharp look of hurt he gave her. “Derec, I’m too tired to think straight anymore.”

  “I’m going.”

  She followed him to the apartment door.

  “I’ll call first thing,” he said. “This whole situation...”

  “A mess, isn’t it?”

  Derec grunted.

  “Watch your back,” Ariel said.

  He nodded, lingering a moment longer, as if he had something more to say. But he only smiled tightly and left.

  On the sofa, Mia typed at her datum while Bogard stood motionless before the subetheric. People moved on the screen, molasses slow, dying again.

  Ariel went back to her bedroom. She did not remember lying down.

  “Ariel.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Wake up, Ariel. Ariel.”

  “Wha--who--?”

  “Ariel, wake up. I have to ask you something.”

  “Go ‘way.”

  “Ariel.”

  Someone grabbed her right shoulder and shook her. Ariel’s eyes snapped open and she rolled away from the touch. ”What?”

  “Ariel.”

  She rubbed her eyes, groggy and disoriented. “Mia? What time is it?”

  “You don’t want to know. I need to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Who made the final list of invitees for the podium?”

  Ariel sat on the edge of her bed. She noticed then that she still wore her clothes. ”Jennie,” she called, “bring me a cup of coffee.” She stood and stretched. Her limbs vibrated from weariness; not enough sleep. Again.

  Mia stood on the opposite side of the bed, waiting.

  “Who made what?” Ariel asked.

  “The final list of invitees. Who did that?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “We’re just security--all we got was the finished list and a set of orders.”

  “Well... it was a joint decision... Humadros had her end already finalized and simply sent us a copy of her list... then Ambassador Setaris and Ambassador Chassik worked with Senator Eliton on the list here. Why?”

  Mia hobbled toward the door. “Someone else must have gotten hold of it. Like I said before, from what I can tell the targets were preselected. They knew exactly who they wanted to take out. Bogard verified that assumption.”

  Ariel watched Mia limp out of her room. Who had put together that list? she wondered, irritated then at how muddled she felt. R. Jennie entered the room with a tray bearing a single cup of steaming liquid.

  “Get me a stim as well, Jennie,” Ariel said, taking the cup and brushing past the robot.

  She glanced at the time as she entered the living room and groaned. Only four hours of sleep. She felt on the verge of lousy now; the rest of the day would be little better. She sipped coffee, wincing at the hot fluid.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Mia dropped onto the couch. “Bogard, explain to Ariel what we found.”

  Bogard stood alongside the subetheric screen, with the remote in its hand. The scene projected shifted several times until it showed a wide view of the stage and the mass of black-clad attackers huddling at the edge.

  “Once we isolated the corporeal subjects from the projections,” Bogard explained, “we began making a determination of the number of shots fired and targets struck. This was accomplished through a combination of identifying each impact and backtracking the trajectory to a given weapon and counting the number of times each weapon was fired.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “The explosive charge used to impel the projectiles appears to be a fast-burning, high-heat substance which burns up its own residue, therefore producing no visible, debris upon exit of the projectile. However, there is a heat bloom at the end of the barrel which distorts light passing through it. Linking each instance with a given sound, we have determined the number of shots fired to within ninety-eight percent accuracy. Coupled with the impact traces, we have a positive number of shots fired to wounds inflicted.”

  “Which is?”

  “Point nine-three.”

  Ariel stared at the robot for a number of seconds. She took a mouthful of coffee, then noticed R. Jennie standing beside her with a tray containing a single pill. Ariel took it and swallowed it.

  “Wait,” she said to Bogard. “You mean they never missed? Not one stray bullet?”

  “Two stray bullets. Twenty fatalities, thirty-three wounded. Fifty-five actual shots fired by the corporeal attackers.”

  “One of the misses was me,” Mia said. �
�Apparently. Given that Gel and Mattu, my teammates, were killed.”

  “There were other shots?”

  “Yes,” Mia said quietly. “A few of us returned fire. We did kill three of them, but I’d wager that they must have been wearing diffusion harnesses to divert the energy. But mainly we shot the projections.”

  “But if they were just projections--”

  “The bolts went through and struck bystanders. Several of the injured among the spectators were from our weapons.”

  Ariel looked at Mia. Her eyes were closed and she looked pale. The side of her jaw worked delicately, angrily. Clearly the realization that she may have harmed or killed innocent people hurt in ways Ariel found hard to imagine. She waited while Mia worked through the spasm of conscience.

  Finally, Mia ‘s eyes opened. “Interestingly enough, we found one major discrepancy in these numbers. It seems clear that the intention was to kill all fifty-three of the people hit. Those who lived survived by sheer luck. But one of those fifty-three was not Senator Eliton.”

  “Not...?”

  Mia looked at Bogard. “Bogard?”

  “There is no correlation between the injury manifested in any of the recordings and a shot from the attackers,” the robot said. “All of fifty-three shots fired are accounted for among the casualties, one miss is accounted for by Agent Daventri, leaving one stray shot which from appearances was fired in the direction of Senator Eliton, but which missed.”

  “Eliton was a casualty, though,” Ariel said.

  “That cannot now be verified,” Bogard said. “No actual shot struck him. Though he appears injured, there is no correlation that I can determine with an assassin’s bullet. I am not, therefore, counting him as one of the casualties.”

  “The recording shows a wound,” Ariel said. “I saw his body. He had--”

  Ariel stopped, remembering the corpse in the stasis tube. She thought about it carefully, questioning the memory, but it was accurate.

  “The body I saw had three wounds,” she noted.