Isaac Asimov's Aurora

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  “Help you, gato?”

  Coren placed a note on the desk containing the books listed in Mia’s communiqué. The man scanned it.

  “Expensive,” he said.

  “Really? How?”

  With a barely audible groan, the dealer straightened and turned to a flatscreen Coren only now noticed amid the stacks of bound books and paper surrounding it. Coren glanced across the top of the counter, which came up to his shoulders, and saw a nameplate. Black letters set in brass announced SHAL PROST, PROP.

  The doodles the man had been absently scrawling looked like complex geometric forms.

  “We sold one each of those recently,” he said. “The War and Peace went for . . . twenty-eight hundred credits . . . three thousand for Oliver Twist . . . three for Of Human Bondage . . . fifteen hundred for Les Miserables.”

  “Why the drop?”

  “Unattributed translation, retrograde facsimile. Can’t fully authenti­cate the text, so it doesn’t rate as much.” He looked at Coren. “Some gatos are more interested in the pedigree than the content.”

  “Sounds human enough. Who bought them?”

  Doubt flickered in Prost’s eye. “That’s confidential.”

  “Fair enough. Can you tell me this, then—does that customer buy a lot through you?”

  “Quite. We ship at least thirty volumes a year to him. Something of a completist.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “What are you, in competition?”

  Coren was silent. Prost smiled.

  “I see,” he said. “You’re buying for someone. Maybe a newcomer to the field? Wants to know what’s going, what’s not. It’s a fickle field, I can understand someone with reputation using a shill to protect himself from ridicule.”

  “Her.”

  Prost’s relief was almost palpable. Coren placed a hand on the counter.

  “Well,” Prost continued, glancing at the flatscreen, “I’ll warn you up front that this is not a reliable investment. Old books like this, you can get the text from any public data service, and, frankly, folks aren’t as much concerned with the tangible past as they once were.”

  “Then who buys?”

  “Believe it or not, my biggest customers are Spacers. We do a very healthy trade to the Fifty Worlds. So far, it’s either universities or private scholars, but recently we’ve started selling to private citizens.”

  Coren nodded toward the screen and tapped his list.

  “Oh, yes. Solarian. And his taste runs to Dickens primarily.”

  “How many?”

  “He’s bought them all now, I think . . .” Prost tapped the screen and read. “Except Great Expectations and Edwin Drood.”

  “I imagine Spacers would have the time to read all this,” Coren said, interjecting a note of amazement as he shook his head.

  “It’s a status thing. I sell multiple copies to the same customer of the same title. Sometimes they actually come back through, from a different source, so they’re being given away as gifts.”

  “Or sold?”

  “I doubt it. I pick them back up for less than the original fee more often than not.”

  “What would a Solarian find valuable enough to give away?”

  Prost chuckled. “Kind of a contradiction, isn’t it? Well, this one has bought fourteen editions of A Tale of Two Cities over the last three years.”

  Coren made a show of entering the title in his hand reader. “What about those?”

  “None in stock currently. My last copies have all left the planet. However, I have several others by the same authors.”

  Coren let Prost ramble on, trying to sell something. At one point Coren asked to actually see one of the books. Prost shut down his screen and sprinted away, into the caverns.

  Coren took a handful of his little vonoomans from a pocket and scat­tered them on the floor. One he placed on the desk. After a second, it scampered away to hide.

  Prost returned with a musty-smelling volume that crackled when he opened the pages. They dickered over a price, finally agreeing on a few hundred credits. Prost dutifully opened an account for Coren under the false name Coren gave him. Smiling, he slipped the book into a homeo­static container and sealed it.

  “I’ll let you know when these others show up,” Prost said. “And I’ll send you a list of current properties which are making the fashionable rounds.”

  “Thanks.”

  “By the way, how did you find out about us? We like to keep track of our recommendations.”

  “Commander Reen recommended you.”

  Prost nodded. “He gets a discount next time, then.”

  “He raved about you, said he had no idea how he could survive without your service.”

  “He exaggerates, I’m sure, but he has been a very good customer.”

  “Thanks again, then.”

  Coren stepped out of the ancient shop, keeping a carefully neutral face, and, tucking his new-old copy of The Light That Failed, made his way carefully back to the upper levels of Lyzig.

  He returned to DyNan headquarters after dropping the book at his private office. As he made the corner into the corridor to his corporate office, he stopped short, seeing his door open.

  Coren ducked back around the corner and waited, not breathing. He heard footsteps coming toward him. He stepped sideways into the middle of the hall and resumed his path as if he had just arrived, rounding the corner, and colliding with the person approaching.

  “Oh, excuse me—”

  “Damn! Will you—boss!”

  “Shola, I am sorry.” He held her left arm, then stepped back. “I apolo­gize, I wasn’t paying any attention. My mind was a world away.”

  Flustered, Shola Bran laughed, and needlessly straightened her blouse. “No problem. I was looking for you, anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, someone down in biologicals has been trying to find you, a Dr. Willis Jay. He’s been insistent, so I thought I’d come give you the mes­sage personally.”

  “I see. Okay, then. Thanks.”

  “Do you need me for anything, boss?”

  Coren shook his head. “I have some calls to make.”

  He walked away, resisting the urge to glance back at her to see if she watched him. He entered his office and shut the door and waited, listen­ing.

  When he heard nothing from the other side, he went to his desk. Quickly, he brought his system up, then pulled his hand reader out. Coren entered a series of commands into both the reader and the desk, then jacked the reader into its cradle. He sat back and waited.

  Within seconds, the screen showed a schematic of his office. One by one, bright sparks appeared in various places, including one within the icon for his desk system.

  He toyed with the idea of removing the bugs at once. His skin rippled with anger at the thought of betrayal by one of his own. But immediate action would only warn Shola and, presumably, whoever she now worked for.

  Carefully, he tapped in a new series of commands. One by one, over the next several hours, the little spies would be turned and lead him back to the source.

  He closed everything down, retrieved his reader, and headed for Jay’s lab.

  “Found some interesting things about those grass samples you gave me,” Jay said the moment Coren entered his lab.

  Coren glanced around and saw that they were alone.

  “You hinted at that the last time,” Coren said.

  “I know. It took some doing to find out just why I found what I found. Kind of like reverse engineering, trying to figure out how to build something based on its final product.” He gestured Coren to follow.

  They entered another office down the hall from Jay’s. Jay waved Coren into a chair, then activated a collection of screens.

  “This grass is the product of manipulation,” Jay said without preamble. “You know much about plant biology?”

  Coren shook his head. “They grow in the open, in soil, under sunlight . . .”

  Ja
y shook his head, curling his lips in disgust. “Never mind. This—” he pointed to a screen on his right “—is the molecular tree of a normal blade of grass. Over here—” he gestured at a screen on his left “—is the breakdown of what you brought me.”

  Coren examined the two diagrams, both complex assemblages of branching and interconnected lines that reminded him more of circuit pathways than anything organic. He pointed at the left-hand display, which appeared to be a more complex version of what Jay had shown him before.

  “There seem to be some extra—what?—nodes?”

  “There are. A lot, if you keep staring at it. What those are, I have no idea.”

  “What do you mean, you have no idea? You managed to diagram it.”

  “What I mean is, I have no idea where they came from or exactly what they do. It’s all residual, a leftover from some process of the mech­anism which is no longer in place. The other day I told you I’d found beryllium standing in where you would expect to see magnesium; and I’d also found complex silicates attached to what magnesium there was. Both magnesium and beryllium are photosensitive, both will enable photosynthesis, though the beryllium is less efficient. I couldn’t figure out what it was doing there, how it had gotten there in the first place. So I went looking for associated molecules. I found some weird carbon chains, some unexpected occurrences of iron, and silica phosphates. None of this was exactly associated with beryllium, but it was all odd, especially where I found it, which was all over the molecular tree. Then!”

  He brought up another screen. It showed a pair of molecular trees, side by side, various nodes highlighted in bright blue.

  “I went looking for absences,” Jay continued. “Things that ought to have been in the structure but weren’t. I found these missing nodes. Orig­inally, the grass did use magnesium as a photosynthesizer, but its production and implementation of it was blocked at some point until it was forced to use beryllium instead, which changed its growth rate among other things, but also its hardiness. The magnesium ended up being used almost exclusively as a connector for the silicates. And I found these.” He stabbed a finger at one of the nodes, lightly touching the screen, which turned the node to green. “Plant version of fat.”

  “And what would a plant do with fat?”

  “Live on it, like a battery.” Jay grinned. “This is a terraformed variety designed to thrive in harsh environments. The energy expenditure the plant must utilize to conduct photosynthesis with beryllium is higher. Normally, that would make it less hardy. But a system has been put in place to construct these nodules of matter which the plant can then use internally during bad times. This thing is a masterpiece.”

  Coren sat back and stared at Jay. “You said you couldn’t tell me anything about it.”

  “I can’t. I can tell you what it is, but I can’t tell you where it came from, how it works, or who made it. There’s another mechanism not pres­ent at all responsible for this and I don’t have it in my library. I’m betting the silicates are the residue from whatever that mechanism is. It’s also old. As far as I can tell, this variety is now self-sustaining.”

  “What?”

  Jay shook his head impatiently. “Bad term. Look, I don’t know enough about terraforming to give you all the answers. We don’t research this stuff here, Rega never allowed it. Not really my interest, either, but I can appreciate good work when I see it. My understanding is, any alien environment is going to have certain properties, if not inimical, at least unfriendly to Terran flora. A certain amount of fundamental change has to be wrought in the biosphere of any colony to make it support our plantlife.”

  “That’s important?”

  “Absolutely. We can ship a lot of food these days, but you don’t want to do that unless you want to keep the colony in debt forever. Eventually, they have to grow their own food. So in the early days—maybe the Spac­ers still do it—we’d seed an environment with vonoomans that would burrow in and reconstitute everything, change the ratios of nutrients in the soil, alter the nitrogen cycle or even introduce a nitrogen cycle if there wasn’t one. After a few generations, with a lot of effort, the colony would begin to support our plantlife. Once we had it established, the vonoomans were no longer necessary.”

  Coren shifted uncomfortably, conscious of the pocketful of little machines he still carried since returning from Lyzig. “This looks like the plant itself was altered.”

  Jay nodded vigorously. “Sometimes the job was too big and we’d be forced to adapt the plants, meet the environment halfway, so to speak.”

  “And this is that kind of plant?”

  “That’s my guess. Like I said, I don’t have enough data.”

  “All right, where would I go to get that data?”

  “Someone who manufactures biologicals, I’d say.”

  Coren thought for a moment, then nodded. “Can I have a copy of this?”

  Jay handed him a disk. “Already had it prepared. Do you mind if I keep working on this?”

  “I thought it wasn’t your field.”

  “Not now. But who knows what we’ll get into since Rega died?”

  Coren pocketed the disk and stood. “Let me know if you find anything else, would you?”

  “Of course.”

  Jay turned back to his screens, forgetting about Coren in the time it took to become reabsorbed in his puzzle.

  Coren did not return to his office. Disk in hand, he left DyNan and headed for the nearest tubeway.

  To his surprise, Myler Towne’s people brought him directly into the garden where Coren had first met the new chairman of Imbitek less than three months earlier. The ugly patch of dead foliage he had seen on that initial visit was now a flourishing sprawl of green and yellow.

  “Mr. Lanra,” Towne said, stepping forward to greet him. “Good to see you again, sir, and good to see you in full health. I heard about your injuries. If possible, I would like to hear about that. May I offer you a beverage?”

  “Tea would be fine, thank you. Actually, I’m here for two reasons.” He held up the disk Jay had given him. “On this is a preliminary analysis of some plantlife that my people can’t fully explain. I thought perhaps, since Imbitek once worked in the field, I might impose on your good graces to help me out.”

  Towne took the disk, seemed to think about it for a moment, then held it up. An attendant stepped up. “A.S.A.P.” The man bowed sharply and hurried off. “And the other?”

  “I wanted to find out if that job offer still exists.”

  Towne’s eyebrows raised slowly. He was a big man, broad across the shoulders and deep in the chest, and the gesture somehow made him look even larger. He backed up to his chair and sat down.

  “Possibly,” he said finally. “Is our analysis of your disk a factor in your decision?”

  “No, not really. Since Rega died, things are going on in DyNan that I’m not particularly happy with. I had loyalty to Rega, not his company. I’m open to an offer.”

  A man with a tray bearing a pitcher and two tall glasses appeared. Coren accepted his tea.

  “And your opinion of Imbitek?” Towne asked, taking his own glass.

  “Mikels is going to be in prison for a long time, and everything I’ve seen since you’ve taken over suggests I would be working for an honest employer.”

  “I’m flattered by your assessment. I detect a proviso, though.”

  “I’m working on a last detail on behalf of Rega. I don’t know how long it might take, but any change in my status will have to wait till I fin­ish. Could be a week, no more than a month.”

  “I see. And this disk pertains to that?”

  “It does.”

  “Then let us see how quickly we can resolve your situation. We can discuss it further at that time. But I’m pleased, Mr. Lanra. Have you had lunch yet?”

  Lunch was excellent, but Coren was more amazed at the prodigious amounts Myler Towne ate. Coren was not a small man, and he kept himself fit and active, but Towne consumed easily three times
what Coren ate. Conversation ran from one topic to another with almost dizzying abruptness, and Coren could not help but feel tested.

  Halfway through a long ramble about a vacation in the southern hemisphere in one of the nature preserves, a woman approached the table and whispered to Towne. He looked up.

  “Indeed? Interesting.” He finished his aperitif and gestured for Coren to follow. “We have something you can take with you.”

  Coren followed him down a broad, arching corridor. “That was fast.”

  “Perhaps just luck,” Towne said, shrugging. “We do have an excellent staff.”

  They entered a meeting room. A long table dominated, surrounded by plain chairs. A screen covered one wall, opposite a fully-equipped dis­penser. One woman waited for them. She was older than anyone else Coren had seen within the walls of Imbitek, her hair white like Alda Mikels’, the former CEO. Her features were sharp and alert. She frowned at Coren as he entered the room, then gave Towne a brief nod.

  “You brought this disk?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Coren answered.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “It’s an analysis—”

  “I know what it is, young man. I want to know where the sample came from.”

  “An abandoned research lab called Nova Levis.”

  She seemed for a few seconds not to believe him. “I’d love to know how it got there. None of this ought to exist on Earth.”

  “What is it, Dr. Savin?” Towne asked.

  “It’s actually one of our products,” she said. “And it’s an interdicted organic. Not allowed on Earth because the processes by which it was originally manufactured are not allowed here anymore.” She touched a remote on the table. The wall screen lit with the same displays Coren had seen on Jay’s terminals. “Do you know what vonoomans are?”

  “Yes. Tiny machines, semi-autonomous—”

  “Wrong.” She shrugged. “Well, not entirely. That’s what they would be today. But it’s an incomplete definition for what are now no longer com­plete examples of vonoomans.” She drummed her fingers impatiently on the table, staring at the display.