I did come across references to several attempted sampling missions, conducted first with RPVs. All had failed to penetrate the opaque storm wall, and all had been destroyed in the process. The last mission, conducted by the same Service researcher, Jaesyn Wilms, had involved both two RPVs and an armored flitter, with which Wilms had attempted to obtain more precise data. From the loss of signal data, all three vehicles had vanished at the same time. No traces had ever been found of any of them.
And no one ever tried another sampling mission?
To me, that seemed to indicate a definite possibility of low-grade intelligence, perhaps some sort of aerial jellyfish organization … or maybe something as basic as lashing out at aerial objects that might be dangerous. Yet there was nothing in the Survey records that even hinted at looking into intelligence. Yet I’d heard the argument before … on Bachman.
Had all references to potential skytube intelligence vanished with the older records? Or had they “disappeared” later? Perhaps because far too many duhlars rested on Stittaran anagathics?
By the time I finished the Wilms reports and my speculations, I had even more questions. I was also tired and hungry. I closed down my console and decided to leave for the evening.
36
Getting up reasonably early has never been that much of a problem for me. Getting up at four on threeday felt anything but reasonable, especially since I knew I’d have to hurry, but the thought of struggling up at three-thirty … well … I didn’t even want to consider it. In any case, I was in the Survey van and well away from Passova by just a shade past four-thirty, looking down the tunnel of light that the van’s headlamps drilled through the purpled blackness that was Stittaran night … or early morning
I saw all of three vehicles on the drive to Syntex, each an unmarked lorry, and each reminded me of the outie vehicles I’d seen earlier. When I reached the entrance to Syntex, I noted a small flitter parked on a permacrete square. One of the pilots was walking around the craft, conducting a preflight, no doubt. I should have realized that, given the early hour and the need for prearrangement, the forerunner site wasn’t that close.
No sooner had I parked the van and extracted my equipment case than Aimee herself appeared from the nearest pressure door and walked toward me. She wore another tailored singlesuit, this one two-colored, with black trousers and a white top, over which she wore a short black jacket. “Good morning, Paulo.”
“It is morning,” I agreed.
“You did want to see the site.” She looked at the case. “You can’t take samples, you know.”
“I didn’t think I could, but will anyone protest measurements and observations?”
“Not if you’ll agree not to publish them for profit or in any forum where they could be copied and used in such a way.”
“I can do that.”
“We need to get to the flitter.” She turned.
I followed. She moved so quickly toward a small door beside the main pressure door that I nearly had to run to catch up. The door opened onto a narrow set of steps, one of the few I’d seen since I’d been on Stittara, and the heavy door at the top, both armored and a pressure door, opened on the side of the structure with the vehicle door. Aimee strode along a walkway to the permacrete square where the flitter waited. Since she was in a hurry, and we’d likely have time to talk on the flight, I just walked beside her without saying a word.
The man who waited beside the flitter was slender with black hair graying at the temples, the first time I’d seen that on Stittara. The winged insignia on the chest of his black-trimmed maroon flight suit suggested he was the pilot. The fact that he wore a flight suit also suggested that he was either former military somewhere, or that Syntex’s security types included the pilots. I couldn’t tell if the flitter held concealed armaments.
“Executive Vanslo…” The pilot inclined his head. “Will it just be the two of you?”
“Yes, Josef.”
Aimee gestured for me to climb into the flitter, the smallest in which I’d flown in years. While stepping in front of women went against my anachronistic grain, she was the boss, and it was her flitter in more ways than one, I suspected. I stepped up the two rungs of the extended ladder and into the cabin.
The interior of the flitter reflected what I would have called a mixed configuration. Just behind the bulkhead that separated the pilots from the cabin were two upholstered seats with padded restraints, each one set next to a window with a space between. Aft of the two seats was the entry door on the starboard side with a cargo bin on the right. I put my equipment case there and made sure that it was securely fastened. Behind the entry space and bin, against the fuselage on each side, were padded bench seats, with three sets of harnesses on each side, and cargo stowage underneath with net restrainers.
“Take the left seat,” suggested Aimee. “The view is better on that side going south.”
“You’ve taken the flight on a previous trip.”
She smiled, but only said, “It is the best view.”
I strapped in and waited for her to do the same before I asked, “How far away is the site?”
“Not all that far,” replied Aimee. “About a hundred kays. It’s in the far southeast corner of our lands.”
“Do all the multis control tracts that large?”
“It varies. We do. RDAEX does. Eterna’s lands are perhaps thirty kays on a side. The others are much smaller.”
“The lands dating to the older multis are larger, then.”
“That was carefully phrased, Paulo.” Her tone was almost bantering.
“I try to be careful. I’m not always successful.” I let some irony creep into my last words.
The cabin door closed, and after less than a minute I could hear the turbines start. Then the flitter lifted off the permacrete, nosed down just slightly, and began to accelerate. In moments we were airborne, and I was looking out at an endless, or seemingly endless, expanse of lichen/grass that covered everything. Here and there, I could see patches of darker gray-green, the bushes that seldom grew more than knee-high, except in the mountains or high rocky areas. A thin ribbon of silver-gray wound between two ridges, angling roughly to the southwest. I didn’t see any sign of human habitation, but wouldn’t have expected to on Syntex lands. Farther to the south, I could see skytubes, slowly moving westward, it appeared.
“Very open … and very humbling, don’t you think?” asked Aimee.
“Any time I think about worlds with advanced ecosystems I feel humbled.”
“What do you think about the skytubes?”
“Officially … or unofficially?”
“Both,” she replied with a smile.
“Officially, I have no position until the study is complete. Unofficially, I’d have to say that however they’re organized … structured … whatever … there has to be some level of intelligence.”
“But … why … why haven’t we discovered what that might be?”
“If they are any sort of organism, the penalties for interfering with them are rather stringent. If Syntex, for example, tried to capture a skytube, although I don’t know how you’d do that, without the express permission of the Ministry of Environment, you could lose all holdings and all rights to anything obtained from Stittara.”
She nodded, and I had the feeling she knew that. “But surely … there are other ways…”
“I’ve looked into those. Anyone who’s gotten too close to one hasn’t survived. Neither have any remote RPVs or samplers.” I shrugged, or attempted a shrug under the restraints. “What’s come from Stittara has proved too valuable to jeopardize by trying military-level force on a skytube, and anything less ends up with whoever or whatever tried it destroyed.”
“I can’t believe that…”
Although I had the feeling she was testing me, I gave the straight, and accurate, answer. “The anagathics Syntex and the other multis have developed here have doubled life expectancies in the Arm, at least for those who can aff
ord them. Those who can afford them are powerful. They don’t like the idea of messing with something that allows them to keep power longer. That’s one reason why the Unity even has a deep-space fleet, and why there are regular patrols and posts on the approaches from the Cloud Combine.” I didn’t give the rest of the answer, which was that trying to protect a planet was essentially impossible, and that those patrols were there to wreak destruction on Cloud worlds if a Cloud warship came anywhere close to the Stittaran system.
“Do you believe all that?”
I laughed. “Not all of it. But the patrols and ships are real, and so are the profits and the motives of the powerful on Bachman, Randtwo, and a few other worlds. Do you doubt that?”
She shook her head.
“Will you tell me what problem you’re here to solve? Besides the difficulties with what—and I’m just guessing—appears to be a family trust issue … in both senses of the word.”
“No.”
Her answer was matter-of-fact, but confirmed, in my mind, my surmises about the family trust.
“How is your mother?”
“She’s feeling much better now that she’s here, but she does miss her old friends, those who were still left. How is your study coming?”
“I only have two more multis to visit, and then I’ll have to start doing fieldwork.”
“Why the multis first?”
“It’s easier to deal with the possibility of direct emissions first, before anyone who might be skirting the compliance requirements would have a chance to retool or upgrade effluent and emission controls. I doubted that would be a problem, but it’s something I have to rule out.”
“Do you really think you can learn something from the site?”
I was honest. “I do. I can’t justify it logically, but I think it will tell me something.” I glanced out the window, catching sight of a narrow road. “You also have a road to the site?”
“It’s used mostly for equipment and for the staff. Except for security personnel, no one overnights there.”
“That keeps down contamination.”
“As much as we can.”
“What have you learned?”
“I’ll let the archaeologists tell you. They’re better at it.”
“How many do you have?”
“Three, plus some assistants, and the university supplies some student interns.”
“How long have they been actively working?”
“Something like three centuries … on and off. Mostly off, until recently.”
“Because the Antiquities Commission threatened appropriation?”
“Largely. Also because Mother became interested.” Aimee smiled, then asked, “How did you find Councilor Morghan?”
“Very competent. So is her assistant, it appears.”
I didn’t learn anything else I didn’t already know over the course of the rest of the flight. Aimee was effective at letting me know what she wanted me to know. I was less effective in return.
From the air, the site was unprepossessing—just the road leading to a long and low stone structure barely protruding above the lichen/grass on the top of what once might have been a mesa, millions of years before, but now was a wide flat area slightly higher than the rolling grasslands on each side. To one side of the structure was a short permacrete landing strip, toward which the flitter made a smooth but steep descent … and a gentle landing.
We unstrapped ourselves; the cabin door opened; and I reclaimed my equipment case and followed Aimee out. The site structure protruded less than a meter from the surrounding grass, although it was far longer than I’d guessed from the air—a good hundred meters—and there were no portals or windows—just featureless gray stone, old enough that I couldn’t tell if it happened to be modified native stone or an older formulation of synthstone. The walk led to the north end of the structure ending in an outside ramp that dropped some two meters in the last twenty. The entrance to the building was an armored pressure door.
Once inside the first door, we faced a security type in the maroon uniform of Syntex. Behind him were a stone wall and another armored pressure door. The security type looked suspiciously at me.
“Dr. Verano has been cleared. He’s here on assignment for an oversight committee of the Unity government.”
I almost protested that I hadn’t told her that—except I probably had when she’d put me under truscope.
“I’d feel happier if you’d allow me to scan him, ma’am.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.” I stepped forward, and he ran the scanner over me, then over the equipment case.
He nodded politely to Aimee, then looked back to me. “Thank you, ser.”
We’d only gone through the second pressure door and walked a few meters more when Aimee said, “You’re most accommodating. Don’t you have any awful secrets?”
“I do … but they’re all in my mind these days.”
At that point, another security type emerged from a doorway on the right side of the corridor ahead of us and walked swiftly toward us … or toward Aimee.
“Executive Vanslo…”
“What is it, Manwel?”
“We’ve detained an intruder. I thought you ought to know.”
“Let’s see what he’s like.” Aimee gestured.
Once more, I followed, this time into what was the station room or the equivalent for site security. I waited there, watched by an older, but junior female security type. Her eyes were very intent on me, so intent that I was feeling very uneasy by the time Aimee returned almost half an hour later. When I stood to leave, the smile bestowed on me by the woman who studied me was warm, inviting, and unsettling.
“I’ll have to check back later,” Aimee explained as we left the station room.
“Was it serious?” I asked once we were out in the long corridor that angled downward toward the south end of the building.
Aimee shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. You tell me. It was one of your fellow passengers.”
“Rob Gybyl?”
“How did you know?”
For all that she’d asked a question, she scarcely sounded surprised.
“He made no secret about wanting to do a docu-drama on the site. He said that he’d document the site if you’d let him, and do a documentary on the denial if you didn’t.”
“He was carrying linkcams and relays, and no weapons, but those could be used to record things that would compromise our security.”
“What did you decide?”
“To detain him a bit longer while security makes a few more inquiries. Do you have any thoughts?”
“Just one. Why today?”
“Actually, they found him late last night.”
“Still … the coincidence between his timing and yours…”
“And yours, perhaps?” Her tone was bantering, but I had the feeling she was serious.
“I didn’t know him before I bordered the Persephonya, and I’ve not seen him nor contacted him since. And he certainly hasn’t contacted me.”
“He tried, apparently.”
“He did?”
“He was in the crowd of linksters who besieged you after the … storm incident at your guest quarters.”
“He was?” The fact that Aimee knew more about what was happening around me than I did was disconcerting. “Have you been tracking every passenger who disembarked from the Persephonya?”
“Of course.”
“What have you discovered?”
“That you’re who you say you are, as are some junior employees of various outfits, and almost no one else is.”
“Such as you.”
“Correct.”
“So … who are you?” I looked directly at her.
“Guess,” she said, without breaking stride. Her black eyes almost sparkled in amusement. “You seem to be good at it.”
“You’re Aimee Vanslo. At least, that’s the name you’re known by at Syntex and most likely VLE. You went by another name outsid
e of the multi. You were the chief operating officer, or the CEO, under your mother, who controls the family trust that has the majority interest in VLE. She remains as the chair of the board, and your younger sister is the acting CEO in your absence. You were upset over the death of your partner, and someone tried to use that to oust you. That someone is likely a male cousin, or the male spouse of one of your daughters…” I shrugged. “That’s the best I can do with what I know.”
A faint smile crossed her lips and vanished. “You’re not bad.”
“Are you going to tell me how close I am?”
“No. Not now, anyway.”
“How do we reach the site? I can’t believe it’s anywhere near the surface.”
“I could make you walk down the stairs…”
I groaned, if only for effect.
“… but the elevator is easier.”
“And if I don’t behave, you’ll make me walk back up.”
“Exactly.”
We walked down the inclined corridor, past closed doors, and I finally asked, “All the doors … laboratories, research spaces?”
“Largely. Some of them hold security systems. The level below this is all devoted to the site, in one way or another … except for the vehicle spaces at the north end.”
The corridor ended at two elevator bays. One elevator door was open. The interior was spotless, with shimmering steel walls, and large enough to hold fifteen people without crowding. Since no one else was around, we had it to ourselves.
“Upper site level,” Aimee ordered.
The wide elevator doors closed silently, and we headed downward.
“The site’s never been uncovered?”
“No. We … Syntex was doing seismic mapping and what was below looked just like a city, except flattened. With all the storms, it seemed counterproductive and dangerous to conduct an open dig. Doing it all underground takes time.”
“And far more money.”
“In a way, but there are cost-savings in other areas.”
When the elevator stopped, the rear wall split, and we stepped out into an open space facing yet another armored door. Aimee walked over to it and murmured something. It opened. Beyond was a cavernous space, with an arched roof over it. The roofed area had to extend another half kay to the south, although only one portion was lit, on what I judged to be the west side. The air was cool and dry, about fifteen degrees above freezing.
The One-Eyed Man Page 22
