InterstellarNet- Enigma

by Edward M. Lerner

  Almost certainly, the humans had had no chance from the outset. Almost certainly. But had they prevailed, it would have been catastrophic. For all that, Glithwah had to respect the humans’ valor. She found herself glad that this Lyle Logan, instigator of the rebellion, had come through it alive.

  In ordinary circumstances she would have demoted Pimal for negligence, for having allowed matters, however briefly, to come to armed resistance. But circumstances were far from ordinary. At this moment the clan needed heroes more than a tutorial on the importance of proper crowd control. Only let her plan succeed and, if such should be the will of the clan, she would gladly step down. Even in favor of Pimal.

  But not yet.

  “Your conclusions,” Glithwah asked directly. Weeks had had to pass after the explosions, after Carl Rowland’s fortuitous and ignominious departure. Long enough to smuggle Pimal back to Ariel aboard a routine scoop-ship flight. Long enough for her to hazard the occasional hinterlands inspection tour without drawing unwelcome attention. Pimal had had more than ample opportunity to consider the evidence.

  He did not hesitate. “A conspiracy against the clan.”

  “By whom? And to what purpose?”

  “Intracranial bomb no random occurrence. So, Banak, of course.”

  “Of course.” She waited for Pimal to expand his list, or to address her other question. He did neither. “How strange a thing: a conspiracy of just one.”

  “More than one, Foremost. But whom else? Long study in search of an answer. Detailed study of Banak.”

  “The conspirators? UPIA?”

  “A strange thing about Banak.” Pimal’s eyes glittered. “Banak absent from clan records prior to Victorious.”

  Many of the clan’s records had been lost or abandoned in the chaos of evacuation. “Not without precedent,” she reminded.

  “Banak unfamiliar also to other evacuees.” A talon point flicked into sight and as quickly retracted, as though to dismiss the obvious rejoinder: sole survivors bereft of family had been all too common. “And yet not.”

  “Not the time for riddles,” she growled.

  “My pardon, Foremost. Among the elders, his art familiar. From earliest days aboard Victorious.”

  Too long ago for Banak to have created them. She said, “By a parent, then, or a mentor or”—what was that human term?—“a role model.”

  “Perhaps, though as parent doubtful. Earlier sculptor without any resemblance to Banak. And yet …?”

  “The other conspirators?” Glithwah reminded.

  “Almost there.” Pimal’s eyes glazed, whether marshalling facts in his implant or netting to an aide. “That earlier sculptor also without any youthful presence in clan records. A metallurgist, a supposed refugee of the clan wars.”

  “Not impossible,” she said.

  “Nor this impossible.” He netted an image: a charred metal structure, much taller than a Hunter, the dominant feature its long central cavity. A twisted ruin from Banak’s workshop. Ground zero of that explosion. “Except for the isotopic analysis. Metal origin on K’vith.”

  “A moment, Pimal.” While I think.

  Human organized their prehistory around metal tools: the Bronze Age, the Iron Age. K’vith, though, was almost without metal. The earliest Hunter eras marked stages in the development of ceramics. What very little metal a Hunter-built ship carried was in trace amounts within electronic devices.

  Nor were only the humans so fortunate. She had been a cadet, little more than a child, but she remembered her first glimpses of Victorious. What a shock that had been! Metal walls. Metal shelves. The Centaurs had even squandered metal on mere toys and table utensils.

  That cadet could never have foreseen commanding a metal army—but on Caliban, such a force grew stronger by the day. A fleet sheltered there, too, on which to transport her robot warriors. Thanks to Pimal’s diligence. Thanks to her scheming.

  None of that could explain the twisted metal sculpture.

  To have possessed so much metal back home denoted incredible wealth and stature. Someone among the clan should have recognized Banak’s mentor. And yet, no one admitted to.

  “A longstanding conspiracy,” Glithwah concluded. “No other option believable. Agents of another clan?” From among the accursed Great Clans that had driven Arblen Ems to exile among the comets?

  “Perhaps,” Pimal allowed.

  Suppose that metallurgist was another clan’s agent. Suppose he recruited and trained Banak. How better, light-years from home, to serve his clan than by spying on Arblen Ems? How better to misuse Arblen Ems than through sabotage and by revealing clan secrets to the UPIA?

  Pieces of the puzzle still eluded her. “And Carl Rowland’s near-death?”

  “An accident, perhaps.”

  Such as had befallen the “insurance” woman? In the wrong place at the wrong time, Rowland had phrased it. Glithwah had not believed the warden, either. She didn’t much like him, but she had grown to respect him. Hunters took their first lessons in b’tok as children. Coming to it when he had? The pace at which he had been mastering the game was impressive.

  “No accident,” Glithwah decided. Banak, knowing he had been caught, must have tried to clean up after himself. Likely he had summoned Rowland to a trap.

  Pimal peered into distance, into the murky depths of the abandoned mine shaft. “No accident,” he agreed.

  • • • •

  With Earth looming in the bridge view port, Carl was as ignorant as when he had first set foot aboard Admiral. About Corinne’s location and well-being. About whether Grace DiMeara was an Intervener operative. About the goals of the Interveners. About where the Interveners came from, and whether Discovery—through Robyn’s intercession—might yet carry a human mission to wherever it was they came from. And about, in contrast, an almost trivial matter: whatever plans the UPIA had for him.

  Just let him get to Earth, and all that could change.

  Any sec-gen of the ICU was a formidable figure. Robyn Tanaka Astor, besides, was an Augmented. With Augmented intelligence and the ICU resources at her command, surely together they could find Corinne.

  If no better option presented itself, Discovery had been Corinne’s last known destination. He’d take a ship to Prometheus and backtrack. Any ICU ship would do. Or a ship he hired. Twenty years back pay ought to cover it. If need be, on a ship he stole.

  “You want to sit?” Admiral’s pilot said. He was a scrawny guy, on the squirrelly side, but he’d been genial enough throughout the long flight. Mostly they had talked hockey, with Carl left to rely upon boyhood memories. Devon, the taciturn engineer and copilot, had mostly grunted. Devon had no use for sports.

  Carl shrugged. “I’m fine, Brad.”

  “That wasn’t really a question.”

  “Right.” Carl buckled into the jump seat behind Devon.

  Between exchanges with Traffic Control, Brad asked, “So who do you like in the playoffs? The Rangers or—”

  “Whoa!” Devon interrupted. “Sorry. Not us; the ship’s fine. It’s something on the news.”

  Admiral was barely in range for Earth’s commercial broadcasts. Carl had yet to link in. When he reached the ground had seemed soon enough to start catching up.

  “What channel?” Brad asked.

  “Any channel.”

  That sounded ominous. Carl let his implant choose among the available channels. And then he froze. The breaking news involved a car bombing.

  Robyn Tanaka Astor was dead.

  • • • •

  “Your orders, Foremost?” Pimal asked.

  Because, at last, their consultation was complete.

  She commanded a robot army and a war fleet in which to transport it. She commanded yet more ships, sufficient to evacuate everyone yearning to be free. Apart from a gargantuan ice miner, too lumbering to keep pace with the fleet, the clan retained every human vessel they had ever seized. Her crafty UPIA watchdog was discredited and banished. Of her Great Clan opponents, their
saboteur was no more than smears on a wall. Across the solar system, Discovery’s outfitting would be almost complete.

  The pieces were in place. The opportunity would never be better.

  Her voice firm, her bearing proud, Glithwah directed, “Onward to capture of human starship.”

  THE XOOL EMERGENCE

  CHAPTER 25

  Carl was not under arrest—exactly. And yet, two somber men had met him at the spaceport. A courtesy, they said. Just expediting, they said. They whisked him around Passport Control, past Customs, straight to UPIA headquarters in Basel.

  Where he wasn’t interrogated—exactly. No bright lights shone on his face. No restraints held him in his chair. No one played good cop, bad cop.

  But neither was any of this routine. Routine was a lot to expect after arriving with a colleague in a body bag. Maybe too much.

  “Let’s go over it again,” McBride said, “this time from the top.” The agent was a broad-shouldered, middle-aged guy with pig eyes and a phlegmatic manner.

  “All right,” Carl said.

  What else could he say? What did McBride—and whoever observed from behind the wall of one-way glass—suppose yet more repetition would reveal? And how much further back was “the top?” The founding of the Snake settlement on the Uranian moon, Ariel? Snakes showing up unannounced in a hijacked starship they tried foisting off as their own? Carl’s own, even earlier, shadowed past?

  “Any time now,” McBride prodded.

  “Danica was loitering in the Snake spaceport terminal. Her job was to stall Dolmar Banak if he headed back too soon. I was planting a bug in his workshop.”

  “Banak, the Snake sculptor.”

  Was there another Dolmar Banak? “Right.”

  “And Banak is now …?”

  “Bloodstains.” As Carl had almost become in the sculptor’s workshop. If he had been even a few seconds slower in spotting the bomb arming itself …

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Carl lied.

  Officially the inquest was into Danica’s death. Not the doubtless self-serving comments on the incident offered up by Carl’s ambitious weasel of a former deputy. Not Snake factions trying to blame Carl for their internecine rivalries. Not, he fervently hoped, curiosity about what he knew about Banak.

  McBride rubbed his chin. “Why did you request Agent Chidambaram come to Ariel in the first place?”

  “My CI”—confidential informant—“believes the local Snakes are making illicit tech buys through InterstellarNet. That takes serious money, and an insurance scam could’ve explained the spate of industrial accidents. I brought in Danica, posing as an insurance investigator. Maybe the incidents weren’t accidents.”

  “Okay.” McBride gave an earlobe a tug. “And did Danica find anything questionable?”

  “Not the point.” Carl had begun to wonder what was. Apart from Danica’s death, of course.

  “And why were you two investigating a sculptor? Art fraud?”

  Carl made a sip of coffee last. Keeping secrets didn’t make this debrief any easier, not with his almost certain knowledge the UPIA had been compromised. “Look, this is simple. After my many years on Ariel, I know most or all of the Snake counter-intel types. The Foremost had her agents watching Banak. I wondered why. Danica was helping me look into that.”

  All of which he had already explained—twice.

  McBride leaned back in his chair, appearing comfortable. Appearing set for hours and hours more of this. “So tell me more about this insurance scam.”

  “Hold that thought.” Carl turned toward the one-way glass. “How about a break, people? It was a long flight”—from wrong-side-of-nowhere Uranus!—“and this is about forty times the gravity I’m used to.”

  He had spent that flight in endless exercise, popping capsules of grav-adapt nanites, swilling calcium-laced protein shakes, and feeling old. Even the tenth gee at which, of a mercy, Admiral had begun the trek had been torture—but by the time they reached the Belt, he had been able to walk brisk laps through the ship’s corridors under a half gee. He wondered how long Earth would take to feel normal, and if he would be here that long. He wondered whether the chalk-and-seaweed aftertaste of all those shakes would ever fade.

  But mostly he wondered how much longer this not quite an interrogation would drag on.

  McBride also turned to the mirrored wall.

  A door opened. Carl didn’t know the young, distinguished woman who entered. She was spacer-born, to judge from her height, at least two meters, and the hesitancy of her gait. Her tailored gray suit, tasteful facial nanornaments, and no-nonsense demeanor all screamed boss. “This will suffice for now, Agent Rowland. We appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Am I cleared for work?” Carl pressed. Without his clearance restored, without an official Agency task, he would not have access to Agency resources for what he really wanted: to search for Corinne and her mysterious Interveners. If he could pull off getting himself assigned to the investigation into Robyn Tanaka Astor’s death …

  Boss Lady shook her head. “Matters will take a while to sort out. Until that happens, consider yourself on administrative leave. And stay close.”

  • • • •

  Among Earth’s teeming billions, Carl did not know a soul. Well, he knew McBride, to stretch a point—but no one would expect them to hang out. As for the woman Carl had planned to seek out—

  More bloodstains.

  Banak’s suicide by bomb on Ariel. Robyn Tanaka Astor’s assassination by car bomb, here on Earth. Did anyone besides Carl see a connection?

  Knowing no one, his Agency reactivation possible at any time, he had no reason to set down roots. No one should give a second thought to him wandering about, taking in the planet’s sights. How not, then, to pass through Manhattan? And while in Manhattan, why wouldn’t he call on the wife of a friend?

  Because any such visit might get Denise killed. Or himself.

  All Carl knew for certain was that Corinne Elman, worlds-famous investigative reporter, and Robyn Tanaka Astor, secretary-general of the Interstellar Commerce Union, had been in league. Now Robyn was dead. Corinne’s ship could not be reached by radio. What were the chances someone wasn’t watching Corinne’s wife?

  Corinne’s best hope—refusing to believe it was too late for hope—was Carl.

  That left him following up his one lead, also in New York City.

  • • • •

  Ten minutes by subway from LaGuardia, the apartment complex had only location to recommend it. A bit of data mining—no challenge for a seasoned operative; scarcely enough to count as an invasion of privacy—showed many of the tenants to be spacers. They weren’t often in residence for spaceport noise to bother them. When they were on Earth, they had to appreciate the convenience.

  Corinne’s rent-a-pilot was one of those absentee tenants. Grace DiMeara, who, on her layover on Ariel, had met with Banak. Odyssey had departed Ariel with a Banak sculpture in its hold; that meeting may have been no more than an art purchase.

  Or not. Carl, endlessly revisiting in his mind his encounter with Grace in an Ariel cafeteria, kept remembering little things. Turns of phrase. Mannerisms. Like something in her eyes, she seemed older—much older—than the age indicated by her records.

  Like Banak?

  When he spotted the strand of hair spanning the gap between jamb and door, he guessed he was on to something. He captured the image in his neural implant, pocketed the hair in a handkerchief to replace on his way out, bypassed the alarm systems, and entered her apartment.

  The plainly furnished living room could have been anywhere. A loveseat and one chair. Wallpaper set to a simple rustic scene. Low coffee table with nothing on it. The bedroom (bed, dresser, nightstand) was as impersonal. In the kitchen, a few canned and frozen groceries and a mug in the dish drainer offered the only suggestion anyone had ever been here. Drawers and closets revealed nothing, nor did a deeper search turn up … anything. Apart from the lack of fast-food ca
rtoons, the ascetic rooms reminded him of every safe house he had ever seen.

  Anyone choosing to fly billions of klicks to shop for a sculpture, even as an investment, ought to have some art in her apartment. Grace did not. In particular, she had nothing to resemble the coffinlike structure Banak had had in his workshop—and that the sculptor had taken such care to blast into shrapnel.

  If Grace were an agent of the Interveners, she kept her exotic gear elsewhere.

  Carl made certain he had left everything in the apartment as he had found it, rearmed the alarms, restored the hair to the crack of the door, and exited the building.

  No wiser on how to proceed than when he had arrived.

  CHAPTER 26

  Augmentation: the blending of an artificial intelligence and a biological intelligence into a composite sapient. Those who have so combined commonly refer to themselves as Augmented.

  The augmentation process migrates the AI member from a conventional computer to biochips implanted within the brain of the biological member. Approaching end of life, the composite mind can be uploaded to a computer, just as can a purely human mind—the synapse-by-synapse readout of the biological brain in each case being destructive and irreversible. At any time prior to upload, the AI component may offload data snapshots from its biochips as a precaution against the death of the human component (e.g., in a traffic accident).

  Process overview: the human partner undergoes minor surgery (as needed) to upgrade their neural implant with expanded capacity. Program and data contents of the AI are then encoded into strands of artificial messenger RNA, which are spliced into a customized retrovirus for delivery. The retrovirus, designed to pass through the blood-brain barrier (mimicking microbial carriers of such neurological diseases as viral meningitis), is then administered with a simple injection. The retrovirus reproduces the AI’s program and data as DNA incorporated into the implant’s genome. Next, the upgraded implant stimulates synapse formation across the cerebral cortex (whereas a standard neural implant interfaces only with the visual and auditory cortices).