— «» —
Novak and Naguchi had been up all night and half of the following day. It had taken Novak twelve hours to create a new identity for Trager from scratch, one that cross-referenced with Earth’s database and couldn’t be traced back to the EIS or SecuriTech. Naguchi had spent the same length of time creating a strand of RNA that would eventually contain all the information from the datawafer. In another 48 hours, the Stragori soldier named Trager would wink out just as the document on the screen had done, reappearing as Max Karlov, an Eligible Human with a fondness for brawling. The data-laden retrovirus would be ensconced inside the body of a black hooded rat named Akiko. And the two of them would then be quietly transported to a place where, with luck, nobody would think to look for either of them — Daisy Hub.
“Max will be a fine addition to the Hub’s crew,” Naguchi remarked, peering over Novak’s shoulder at the display on his light screen.
Novak’s lips quirked in a brief smile. “Yeah, he’ll blend right in. It’ll be the perfect cover for his mission.”
“You’re giving him a covert assignment? We’re already pushing the envelope by smuggling him and Akiko aboard the Hub. Are you sure this is wise, Barry?”
Privately, Novak didn’t think anything they’d been doing lately could be called wise; but about this one thing, at least, he felt confident. “He’ll be carrying a message for Drew Townsend. After it’s delivered, Townsend’s safety will be his personal responsibility. That was Patel’s first job for the EIS, by the way. He wasn’t officially an agent at the time, but Forrand hired him to guide the kid along while he was in detention and make sure he came to no harm. Now that we’ve seen how far Trager is willing to go to complete Patel’s work…”
“You’re anticipating trouble on Daisy Hub?” Naguchi murmured.
Novak turned and met the other man’s thoughtful gaze. “You heard Madame Vargas at that meeting yesterday — she’s planning a putsch. A coup d’état. That was never part of Forrand’s agenda when he established the EIS, and it isn’t what you and I signed on for. When she makes her move, we’ll make ours. The EIS will split down the middle, and Townsend will have to choose a side. Before that happens, he needs to know everything we’ve found out about Vargas and about the people under his command. And he needs to know about the Warrior Kings. And then, if he jumps the way I think he will, trust me, he’ll be glad to have a super-soldier watching his back.”
CHAPTER 8
One week later, bribes had been generously distributed and Karlov and Akiko were safely stowed aboard a long-range freighter making stops at colonies and hubs in three different sectors of Earth space. Novak and Naguchi turned their attention to the next phase of the operation.
Clearmeadow University was housed in a building at least three hundred years old. Its walls were assembled out of rough-hewn blocks of gray stone and pierced at intervals by narrow arched windows. Its main entrance was impressive, a massive concrete stairway fronting a pair of heavy wooden doors with wrought iron fittings. At the foot of the stairs sat two large bronze statues, one to each side. The one on the left was of a man wearing a classical-style draped tunic and looking wonderingly over his shoulder. The one on the right depicted a woman in modern dress with her hands on her hips, gazing with determination at the sky.
Study the past, conquer the future, thought Naguchi. If only it were that simple.
First he had to find a way through the present, which took the form of several armed guards in tailored blue uniforms, stationed at the building’s front door. They were part of an elite unit commanded by the Earth High Council, carefully chosen and rigorously trained to protect state secrets at any cost. Apparently, that was what Susan’s current project was.
That she would be difficult to get to was an understatement, Naguchi now realized. The men outside were just a forewarning of the security surrounding her temporary office in the restricted area of the building. Every stairwell and corridor leading to her workspace would be both surveilled and watchdogged, and probably guarded as well for good measure. And classes had evidently been suspended, meaning that there would be no movement of students to provide cover for anyone trying to slip inside the building unnoticed.
Novak had been right to talk him out of taking the direct approach. Now Naguchi was wondering whether he should have come here at all. Subterfuge was not his forte. He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to simply turn around and walk away. Then he noticed that one of the guards at the door had begun watching him.
What to do? The longer he stood there looking indecisive, the more likely he was to be approached and challenged. He knew his creds would stand up to scrutiny — Novak had forged them personally, and his work was impeccable — but the scientist had had similar details of blue-uniformed security officers assigned to him in the past. Randall Chin’s face and biowafer wouldn’t count for much if this suddenly attentive, obviously armed guard were to recognize Naguchi’s voice. Just considering the possibility was enough to raise beads of perspiration across his forehead.
“Doctor Chin?” A large, muscled man was striding across the lawn toward him, wearing the tan shirt and trousers and brown shoulder patch of an enclave patrolman. As the man drew nearer, Naguchi recognized Zane DeWitt’s face under the peaked cap. “You’re expected, sir. Please follow me to the quadrangle.”
“Thank you,” said Naguchi, feeling buoyed by a powerful wave of relief. As he fell into step behind DeWitt, a sidelong glance confirmed that the guard at the door had turned his attention elsewhere.
Located around the side of the building, the quadrangle was a large paved courtyard surrounded on three sides by the stone walls of the university and on the fourth by a fence made of tall, sharply-pointed iron posts. There was only one sentry on duty here. DeWitt had clearly spent some time chatting him up earlier, for he waved to them as they approached, and then stood aside to let them pass through the gate.
Always cautious since his faked death, Naguchi paused on the threshold to scan the area. It had been thoroughly secured. There was only one way out, and he was standing in it. The double doors opening onto the quad from the main building had once had handles on their outer surfaces. Now the handles were gone, leaving a matched pair of featureless black metal slabs set into the unyielding gray stone. No doubt there were eyes already trained on him from the upper floor windows. Weapons as well. Just thinking about that made his legs want to run away, but he was committed at this point and overruled them. Susan was waiting for him. Forcing down the lump in his throat, he entered the quadrangle.
It was lined on all four sides by long, inward-facing wooden benches, separated from one another by raised flower beds brimming with pink and white blossoms. On the bench farthest from the gate, her gaze resting expectantly on Naguchi’s altered features, sat a woman with short auburn hair and a fair, freckle-splashed complexion. As he approached, she invited him with a gesture to sit down beside her.
“Talk to me,” she commanded him, staring stolidly ahead. “Let me hear your voice.”
He sighed and leaned back against the bench. “It’s me, Susan.”
“I knew it,” she muttered and turned to face him, a storm brewing in her eyes. “You’re the first outside visitor I’ve been permitted since they picked me for this damned assignment. When they told me my outraged lover was demanding proof that I was still alive, something told me it had to be you. I never quite swallowed that story about you dying in a laboratory explosion.”
Her voice remained low, but it sizzled with intensity, reminding him once more why he had first been attracted to her.
“How have you been, Susan?”
The storm began blowing in. It was, he reflected sadly, no more than he deserved.
“How have I been? I’ve been cooped up here for the past three months, micromanaged half to death by a government agency demanding that I figuratively spin straw into gold and becoming more frustrated by the da
y. That’s how I’ve been, Randall, and you’ve got one hell of a nerve showing up here after fifteen years of silence, pretending to care.”
“I understand your anger—”
“You could at least have told me you were breaking up with me before you went into hiding. I would have cursed you out and cried for a while, and then I’d have gotten on with my life. But this—! This was just cruel.”
“You’re right. You deserved better. But I was never trying to leave you, Susan. I was keeping you safe. When I broke that contract with EuroGenics, they came after me, and I don’t mean in the adjudication halls. They already had most of my work, but it wasn’t enough. They wanted everything. I went off-world for nearly five years, hoping they’d lose interest. No such luck. When I returned, one of their enforcers met me at the airfield. He threatened to ruin you if I didn’t cooperate. I knew I had to do something drastic to put an end to the situation. Fortunately, I had friends by then with the wherewithal to help me. I never meant to hurt you, I swear it. But the only way to shake off those thugs and ensure that you wouldn’t be harmed was to make everybody — including you — think I was dead.”
Stubbornly facing forward once more, she gave him a long sideways look. “You expect me to believe that?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. I’ve never stopped loving you. In fact, I’ve been following your career.”
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and pretended to count the blossoms in the nearest flower bed. He recognized the tactic. She was giving herself time to think, to decide how to feel. To pick the sharpest words in her arsenal to throw at him. After a moment, her choices made, Susan Rosenberg straightened her shoulders, stared into his face, and said in a surprisingly soft voice, “You’re not here for old times’ sake or because you suddenly felt the need to mend fences, are you, Nayo? You need a favor.
“I don’t care whose face you’re wearing. I know you. I know that you’re a fearless scientist and a gifted educator; but you’ve never been a soldier, and you’re certainly not a spy. Only a desperate man would challenge the wall of security the Council has thrown up around me, so I’m guessing that you’re neck-deep in trouble and I’m your last hope. How am I doing so far?”
Her expression was unreadable. It planted a sudden uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Not my last hope,” he protested. “My first and only choice. This isn’t just for me, so if you’re thinking of saying no to punish me—”
“I’m saying no because there’s nothing I can do for you,” she said, her gaze filling with reproach. “I wish I could help you, truly. But you have to understand, I have minimal privacy in my home, and at work I’m under constant surveillance. This meeting is an exception, made under duress. After today, they’ll probably keep me incommunicado again until I’ve completed the current assignment. And quite honestly, the last thing I need right now is another impossible task on my plate.”
The pleading he heard in her voice brought a lump to his throat. Once upon a time, he would have done anything she asked. He would even have gone away forever if it would make her happy. But not today. Today the stakes were far too high. And she had said she wanted to help.
Steeling himself, he assured her, “We can do this, Susan. The task is not impossible, just not my area of expertise. And I’ve already set up a way for us to communicate without anyone else knowing about it. Do you still have my old playback device, the one that isn’t linked to the InfoComm system?”
She frowned uncertainly. “You’re in luck. It’s one of your few belongings that I didn’t recycle or give away. Do you need it?”
“No, but you will,” he said, leaning in closer and lowering his voice as he palmed the datawafer in his pocket. “What I’m about to give you is keyed to your DNA. The data on the wafer will decrypt at your touch and re-encrypt if anyone else handles it. Encrypted, it sounds like a staticky recording of a Trash Bin concert. Take it home with you tonight and read the file it contains, using the playback device. Make sure you’re somewhere private, and disable the vox. Use the keypad only. Under no circumstances show the file to anyone else. Don’t even bring it near an InfoComm unit. Follow the instructions on the datawafer when you’re ready to contact me again. And, Susan…?” he added, taking her hand in both of his and slipping her the wafer in the process. “I don’t blame you for being angry with me. I’m just grateful that you’re someone I can trust with this.”
She gave him a wary look. “Nayo, what the hell are you dragging me into?”
“We’re going to change the world,” he promised her.
“Again? Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, pulling him closer and planting a kiss on his lips that he could feel right down to his ankles. “We’re supposed to be lovers stealing time for a tryst,” she whispered while nibbling on his ear, “and people are watching.”
As he wrapped his arms tightly around her, savoring once more the delightful curves of her body and the intoxicating fragrance of her hair, Naguchi realized just how much he had missed her. Judging from the cover story Novak had provided for him, he must have realized it as well.
When DeWitt finally opened the gate to escort Doctor Chin past the slyly grinning sentry and off the campus, the scientist felt a drop of nervous perspiration slither down the side of his neck. Susan was right. Cloak and dagger was definitely not his style.
— «» —
Three days later, a pale, plump woman sailed through SecuriTech’s front door, followed by a broad-shouldered man in a business suit who remained close by, watching her carefully.
“I’m here about a special order,” she told the receptionist. “I commconnected earlier and was told I should come in and pick it up. The name is Rosenberg.”
The woman smiled at her and pressed an intercomm button. “Mr. Novak handles those himself. He’ll be here in just a moment.”
Darting a glance over her shoulder, Susan saw her “shadow” pull a compupad out of his pocket. Checking out this Novak fellow, no doubt.
“It’s Susan Rosenberg, right?” The man who had materialized to the left of the receptionist’s desk stood medium height, with sharp features and neatly trimmed dark blond hair. He was holding a small box marked with a series of numbers. “I apologize for the delay. Since the manufacturer released the upgrade, our supplier in Indo-Asia is having trouble keeping up with the demand for parts. If you’ll give me your compupad, I can replace the component right now.”
“Of course.”
She reached into her pocket for the device. Before she could hand it over, however, her escort leaped forward and snatched it away.
“And what exactly does this new component do?” he demanded.
The smile on Novak’s face didn’t even flicker. “It’s a third-generation reliable transtator. It stabilizes the image on the compupad screen. Unifies it, prevents it from pixelating when signal strength stutters. Keeps horizontal lines straight as a page scrolls up.”
“And she ordered this upgrade herself?”
“Yes, three months ago. Normally these things take three weeks, but—”
“Funny that you didn’t mention this when we were doing your Security interview,” commented the man, his gimlet eye now trained on the rapidly reddening face of Dr. Susan Rosenberg.
It was a flush of anger. “You told me to answer every one of the two hundred questions that you asked, and that was what I did,” she pointed out in a voice that could have cut glass. “If you wanted to know about every little piece of technology in my possession, including my battery-powered toothbrush and my personal compupad — which I keep in a drawer in my living room and never bring to work — then you should have asked me. I’ve already paid for this upgrade and, trust me, it wasn’t cheap. Now, give the man my compupad so he can install it.”
“Not until I’ve reviewed every file on this device.”
“It’s called ‘p
ersonal’ for a reason,” she informed him stiffly.
“You can change your password when I’m done, Doctor. Right now I need to verify that there’s nothing classified on here.”
“Fine. But I’ll be entering the password,” she told him, snatching back her compupad and unlocking it before thrusting it once more into his hand.
A minute later he was satisfied. “I had to do that, you understand.”
“Unfortunately, I do. Working on this project has given me tremendous insight into systemic paranoia,” she hissed at him, her expression darkening again. “In fact, it’s been contagious. So you should understand that I’ll be programming my InfoComm unit to alert me if even a single sentence of any of my personal messages turns up anywhere else on the system. If it does, I’ll be reporting this shameful violation of my privacy, first to the Data Management Department and then to your superiors. And after that, I’ve no doubt, you’ll be lucky to end up cleaning out drains in a waste management facility.”
The guard turned to the man beside the counter. “Can she—?”
“Program her unit? Yes, any user can. There’s even a way to have the system generate an automatic message to the local Security Council if there’s a breach of any kind.”
His confidence visibly shaken, the guard handed over the compupad and watched as Novak expertly took it apart and, smiling inwardly, made the switch.
Susan Rosenberg was tough and smart. Nayo had chosen their translator well. And once Novak finished installing her keystroke-activated encryption module, she would be able to update them regularly on her progress.
CHAPTER 9
Nayo, you wonderful Rumpelstiltskin, do you know what you’ve given me? Have you any idea what this document is?
Susan’s first encrypted message arrived on the computer in Naguchi’s lab in the Zone, one week and four days after her visit to SecuriTech. Her excitement fairly leaped off the screen. Reading the words, he could almost visualize her dancing around the room with delight as she keyed them in.
The Relativity Bomb Page 9
