"Oh," she replied lightly, "I found a few other things to occupy my time. . . ."
* * *
The comlink was live, and Alex was on his very best behavior—including a fresh, and only marginally rumpled, uniform. He sat quietly in his chair, the very picture of a sober Academy graduate and responsible CS brawn.
Tia reflected that it was just as well she'd bullied him into that uniform. The transmission was shared by Professor Barton Glasov y Verona-Gras, head of the Institute, and a gray-haired, dark-tunicked man the professor identified as Central Systems Sector Administrator Joshua Elliot-Rosen y Sinor. Very high in administration. And just now, very concerned about something, although he hid his concern well. Alex had snapped to a kind of seated "attention" the moment his face appeared on the screen.
"Alexander, Hypatia—we're going to be sending you a long file of stills and holos," Professor Barton began. "But for now, the object you see here on my desk is representative of our problem."
The "object" in question was a perfectly lovely little vase. The style was distinctive; skewed, but with a very sensuous sinuosity, as if someone had fused Art Nouveau with Salvador Dali. It seemed—as nearly as Tia could tell from the transmission—to be made of multiple layers of opalescent glass or ceramic.
It also had the patina that only something that has been buried for a very long time achieves.
Or something with a chemically faked patina. But would the professor himself have called them if all he was worried about were fake antiquities? Not likely.
The only problem with the vase—if it was a genuine artifact—was that it did not match the style of any known artifact in any of Tia's files.
"You know that smuggling and site-robbing has always been a big problem for us," Professor Barton continued. "It's very frustrating to come on a site and find it's already been looted. But this—this is doubly frustrating. Because, as I'm sure Hypatia has already realized, the style of this piece does not match that of any known civilization."
"A few weeks ago, hundreds of artifacts in this style flooded the black market," Sinor said smoothly. "Analysis showed them to be quite ancient—this piece for instance was made some time when Ramses the Second was Pharaoh."
The professor was not wringing his hands, but his distress was fairly obvious. "There are hundreds of these objects!" he blurted. "Everything from cups to votive offerings, from jewelry to statuary! We not only don't know where they've come from, but we don't even know anything about the people that made them!"
"Most of the objects are not as well-preserved as this one, of course," Sinor continued, sitting with that incredible stillness that only a professional politician or actor achieves. "But besides being incredibly valuable, and not incidentally, funneling money into the criminal subculture, there is something else rather distressing associated with these artifacts."
Tia knew what it had to be as soon as the words were out of the man's mouth. Plague.
"Plague," he said solemnly. "So far, this has not been a fatal disease, at least, not to the folk who bought these little trinkets. They have private physicians and in-house medicomps, obviously."
High Families, Tia surmised. So the High Families are mixed up in this.
"The objects really aren't dangerous, once they've been through proper decontam procedures," the professor added hastily. "But whoever is digging these things up isn't even bothering with a run under the UV gun. He's just cleaning them up—"
Tia winced inwardly, and saw Alex wince. To tell an archeologist that a smuggler had "cleaned up" an artifact, was like telling a coin collector that his nephew Joey had gotten out the wire brush and shined up his collection for him.
"—cleaning them up, putting them in cases, and selling them." Professor Barton sighed. "I have no idea why his helpers aren't coming down with this. Maybe they're immune. Whatever the reason, the receivers of these pieces are, they are not happy about it, and they want something done."
His expression told Tia more than his words did. The High Families who had bought artifacts they must have known were smuggled and possibly stolen, and some members of their circle had gotten sick. And because the Institute was the official organization in charge of ancient relics, they expected the Institute to find the smuggler and deal with him.
Not that any of them would tell us how and where they found out about these treasures. Nor would they ever admit that they knew they were gray market, if not black. And if they'd stop buying smuggled artifacts, they wouldn't get sick.
But none of that meant anything when it came to the High Families, of course. They were too wealthy and too powerful to ever find themselves dealing with such simple concepts as cause and effect.
Hmm. Except once in a great while—like now—when it rises up and bites them.
"In spite of the threat of disease associated with these pieces, they are still in very high demand," Sinor said.
Because someone in the High Families spread the word that you'd better run the thing through decontamination after you buy it, so you can have your pretty without penalty. But there was something wrong with this story. Something that didn't quite fit. But she couldn't figure out what it was.
Meanwhile, the transmission continued. "But I don't have to tell either of you how dangerous it is to have these things out there," Professor Barton added. "It's fairly obvious that the smugglers are not taking even the barest of precautions with the artifacts. It becomes increasingly likely with every piece sold at a high price that someone will steal one, or find out where the source is, or take one to a disadvantaged area to sell it."
A slum, you mean, Professor. Was he putting too much emphasis on this?
Tia decided to show that both she and her brawn were paying attention. "I can see what could happen then, gentlemen," she countered. "Disease spreads very quickly in areas of that sort, and what might not be particularly dangerous for someone of means will kill the impoverished."
And then we have a full-scale epidemic and a panic on our hands. But he had to know how she felt about this. He knew who she was—there weren't too many "Hypatias" in the world, and he had been the immediate boss of Pota and Braddon's superior. He had to know the story. He was probably trading on it.
"Precisely, Hypatia," said Sinor, in an eerie "answer" to her own thoughts.
"I hope you aren't planning on using us as smuggler hunters," Alex replied, slowly. "I couldn't pass as High Family in a million years, so I couldn't be in on the purchasing end. And we aren't allowed to be armed—I know I don't want to take on the smuggling end without a locker full of artillery!"
In other words, gentlemen, "we ain't stupid, we ain't expendable, and we ain't goin'." But this was all sounding a little too pat, a little too contrived. If Sinor told them that they weren't expected to catch the smugglers themselves . . .
"No—" Sinor said soothingly—and a little too hastily. "No, we have some teams in the Enforcement Division going at both ends. However, it is entirely possible that the source for these artifacts is someone—or rather, several someones—working on Exploration or Evaluation teams. Since the artifacts showed up in this sector first, it is logical to assume that they originate here."
Too smooth. Too pat. This is all a story. But why?
"So you want us to keep our eyes peeled when we make our deliveries," Alex filled in.
"You two are uniquely suited," Professor Barton pointed out. "You both have backgrounds in archeology. Hypatia, you know how digs work, intimately. Once you know how to identify these artifacts, if you see even a hint of them—shards, perhaps, or broken bits of jewelry—you'll know what they are and where they came from."
"We can do that," Tia replied, carefully. "We can be a little snoopy, I think, without arousing any suspicions."
"Good. That was what we needed." Professor Barton sounded very relieved. "I suppose I don't need to add that there is a bonus in this for you."
"I can live with a bonus," Alex responded cheerfully.
The
two VIPs signed off, and Alex turned immediately to Tia.
"Did that sound as phony to you as it did to me?" he demanded.
"Well, the objects they want are certainly real enough," she replied, playing back her internal recording of the conversation and analyzing every word. "But whether they really are artifacts is another question. There's definitely more going on than they're willing to tell us."
Alex leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "Are these things financing espionage or insurrection?" he hazarded. "Or buying weapons?"
She stopped her recording; there was something about the artifact that bothered her. She enhanced the picture and threw it up on the screen.
"What's wrong with this?" she demanded. Alex leaned forward to have a look.
"Is that a hole bored in the base?" he said. "Bored in, then patched over?"
"Could be." She enhanced her picture again. "Does it seem to you that the base is awfully thick?"
"Could be," he replied. "You know . . . we have only their word that these are 'alien artifacts.' What if they are nothing of the sort?"
"They wouldn't be worth much of anything then—unless—"
The answer came to her so quickly that it brought its own fireworks display with it. "Got it!" she exclaimed, and quickly accessed the Institute library for a certain old news program.
She remembered this one from her own childhood; both for the fact that it had been an ingenious way to smuggle and because Pota had caught her watching it, realized what the story was about, and shut it off. But not before Tia had gotten the gist of it.
One of the Institute archeologists had been subverted by a major drug-smuggler who wanted a way to get his supply to Central. In another case where there were small digs on the same planets as colonies, the archeologist had himself become addicted to the mood-altering drug called "Paradise," and had made himself open to blackmail.
The blackmail came from the supplier-producer himself. Out there in the fringe, it was easy enough to hide his smuggled supplies in ordinary shipments of agri-goods, but the nearer one got to civilization, the harder it became. Publicly available transport was out of the question.
But there were other shipments going straight to the heart of civilization. Shipments that were so innocent, and so fragile, they never saw a custom's inspector. Such as . . . Institute artifacts.
So the drug-dealer molded his product in the likeness of pottery shards. And the archeologist on-site made sure they got packed like any other artifacts and shipped—although they were never cataloged. Once the shipment arrived at the Institute, a worker inside the receiving area would set the crates with particular marks aside and leave them on the loading dock overnight. They would, of course, disappear, but since they had never been cataloged, they were never missed.
The only reason the archeologist in question had been caught was because an overzealous graduate student had cataloged the phony shards, and when they came up missing at the Institute, the police became involved.
Tia ran the news clip for Alex, who watched it attentively. "What do you think?" she asked, when it was over.
"I think our friend in the dull blue-striped tunic had a strangely fit look about him. The look that says 'police' to yours truly." Alex nodded. "I think you're right. I think someone is trying the artifact-switch again, except that this time they're coming in on the black market."
She did a quick access to the nets, and began searching for a politician named Sinor. She found one—but he did not match the man she had seen on the transmission.
"The trick is probably that if someone sees a crate full of smuggled glassware, they don't think of drugs." Tia felt very smug over her deduction, and her identification of Sinor as a ringer. Of course, there was no way of knowing if her guess was right or wrong, but still. . . . "The worst that is likely to happen to an artifact-smuggler is a fine and a slap on the wrist. They aren't taken very seriously, even though there's serious money in it and the smugglers may have killed to get them."
"That's assuming inspectors even find the artifacts. So where were we supposed to fit in to all this?" Alex ran his hand through his hair. "Do they think we're going to find this guy?"
"I think that they think he's working with one of the small-dig people again. By the way, you were right about Sinor. Or rather, the Sinor we saw is not the one of record." Another thought occurred to her. "You know—their story may very well have been genuine. There's not a lot of room in jewelry to hide drugs. Whoever is doing this may have started by smuggling out the artifacts, freelance—got tangled up with some crime syndicate, and now he's been forced to deal the fake, drug-carrying artifacts along with the real ones."
"Now that makes sense!" Alex exclaimed. "That fits all the parameters. Do we still play along?"
"Ye-es," she replied slowly. "But in a severely limited sense, I'd say. We aren't trained in law enforcement, and we don't carry weapons. If we see something, we report it, and get the heck out."
"Sounds good to me, lady," Alex replied, with patent relief. "I'm not a coward—but I'm not stupid. And I didn't sign up with the BB program to get ventilated by some low-down punk. If I wanted to do that, all I have to do is stroll into certain neighborhoods and flash some glitter. Tia—why all that nonsense about plague?"
"Partially to hook us in, I think," she said, after a moment. "They know we were the team that got the Zombie Bug—we'll feel strongly about plague. And partially to keep us from touching these objects. If we don't mess with them, we won't know about the drug link."
He made a sound of disgust. "You'd think they'd have trusted us with the real story. I'm half tempted to blow this whole thing off, just because they didn't. I won't—" he added hastily, "but I'm tempted."
He began warming up the boards, preparatory to taking off. Tia opened a channel to traffic control—but while she did so, she was silently wondering if there was even more to the story than she had guessed.
* * *
There was something bothering Alex, and as they continued on their rounds, he tried to put his finger on it. It was only after he replayed the recorded transmission of Professor Barton and the bogus "Sinor" that he realized what it was.
Tia had known that Professor Barton was genuine—without checking. And Barton had said things that indicated he knew who she was.
Alex had never really wondered about her background. He'd always assumed that she was just like every other shellperson he'd ever known; popped into her shell at birth, because of fatal birth-defects, with parents who would rather forget she had ever been born. Who were just as pleased that she was someone else's problem.
What was it that the professor had said, though? You both have backgrounds in archeology. Hypatia, you know how digs work, intimately.
From everything that Jon Chernov had said, the shellperson program was so learning-intensive that there was no time for hobbies. A shellperson only acquired hobbies after he got out in the real world and had leisure time for them. The Lab Schools' program was so intensive that even play was scheduled and games were choreographed, planned, and taught just like classes. There was no room to foster an "interest" in archeology. And it was not on the normal course curriculum.
The only way you knew how digs worked "intimately" was to work on them yourself.
Or be the child of archeologists who kept you on-site with them.
That was when it hit him; something Tia had said. The Cades met while they were recovering from Henderson's Chorea. That kind of information would not be the sort of thing someone who made a hobby of archeology would know. Details of archeologists' lives were of interest only to people who knew them.
Under cover of running a search on EsKay digs, he pulled up the information on the personnel—backtracking to the last EsKay dig the Cades had been on.
And there it was. C-121. Active personnel, Braddon Maartens-Cade, Pota Andropolous-Cade. Dependent, Hypatia Cade, age seven.
Hypatia Cade; evacuated to station-hospital Pr
ide of Albion by MedService AI-drone. Victim of some unknown disease. Braddon and Pota put in isolation—Hypatia never heard from again. Perhaps she died—but that wasn't likely.
There could not be very many girls named "Hypatia" in the galaxy. The odds of two of them being evacuated to the same hospital-ship were tiny; the odds that his Tia's best friend, Doctor Kennet Uhua-Sorg—who was chief of Neurology and Neurosurgery—would have been the same doctor in charge of that other Tia's case were so minuscule he wasn't prepared to try to calculate them.
He replaced the file and logged off the boards feeling as if he had just been hit in the back of the head with aboard.
Oh, spirits of space. When she took me as brawn, I made a toast to our partnership—"may it be as long and fruitful as the Cades'." Oh, decom it. I'm surprised she didn't bounce me out the airlock right then and there.
"Tia," he said carefully into the silent cabin. "I—uh—I'd like to apologize—"
"So, you found me out, did you?" To his surprise and profound relief, she sounded amused. "Yes, I'm Hypatia Cade. I'd thought about telling you, but then I was afraid you'd feel really badly about verbally falling over your own feet. You do realize that you can't access any data without my being aware of it, don't you?"
"Well, heck, and I thought I was being so sneaky." He managed a weak grin. "I thought I'd really been covering my tracks well enough that you wouldn't notice. I—uh—really am sorry if I made you feel badly."
"Oh, Alex, it would only have been tacky and tasteless—or stupid and insensitive—if you'd done it on purpose." She laughed; he'd come to like her laugh, it was a deep, rich one. He'd often told her BB jokes just so he could hear it. "So it's neither; it's just one of those things. I assume that you're curious now. What is it you want to know about me?"
"Everything!" he blurted, and then flushed with embarrassment. "Unless you'd rather not talk about it."
"Alex, I don't mind at all! I had a very happy childhood, and frankly, it will be a lot more comfortable being able to talk about Mum and Dad—or with Mum and Dad—without trying to hide them from you." She giggled this time, instead of laughing. "Sometimes I felt as if I was trying to hide a secret lover, only in reverse!"
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