"There's a screen in your room for personal transmissions, Honored Fru," the girl said.
"I know, but the silly thing isn't working. I can't even get a local connection for room service!" It had taken Annemari half an hour of delicate fiddling to remove the back of the deskvid in her room, break two vital connections, and insert a dead moth as a possible explanation for the minor damage. Getting the cover back on had been the hardest part of the job.
"Oh. You want me to see if I can get a tech out to fix it tonight?" the girl offered reluctantly, glancing at her own screen.
"Oh, no, there's absolutely no hurry." Annemari had counted on the tech support staff working regular hours and had timed her own visit for well after hours. "If you'd just be a dear and let me slip in and use a screen for one teeny moment to reach Aristide?"
The name of Rezerval's top stylist and colorist worked its magic on the girl. As her eyes widened, Annemari silently blessed Nunzia Hirvonen for keeping up with all the fashion nonsense that bored Annemari herself to tears.
"You go to Aristide? I should have guessed, nobody else could get that color—it's really wonderful, such a pale gold without looking grey at all."
Annemari had always thought it was grey. Names really were magic.
"Clients aren't really supposed to use these screens . . ." the girl added reluctantly.
"Oh, fiddlesticks, I won't do any harm. I'll just slip in and out so quietly you'll never know I'd been there!" More to the point, the inquiry Annemari really planned to make wouldn't raise any red flags if it came from a screen in the business center. She was perfectly capable of hacking through the clinic's firewalls to get the information from her room screen, but she wasn't quite sure she could do so without tripping hidden alarms.
"I sure wish I could afford a consult with Aristide," the girl hinted. "But even if I could, I hear he won't even take appointments from somebody who isn't already on his personal list."
Annemari smiled sweetly. "Oh, you can always get around that sort of thing. If the right person recommends you, I'm sure he'll make time for you. What's your name, and when's your next day off?"
"Jenna . . . Jenna Berg, and I'm off every fifth-day . . . Can you really do that?"
"It won't be any trouble at all," Annemari said, quite truthfully. If anybody went to the trouble to setting something up with Aristide, it would have to be Nunzia; he'd never even met Annemari. "And as for the costs, why don't we just add it in to my clinic bill?" And Evert would pay that. Her friends were certainly coming through for her in style—even if they didn't know just how much style, yet.
She took a chair facing the now helpful girl, so that Jenna would be unable to see exactly what she was doing, and tapped the deskvid to activate it. As she'd hoped, these screens automatically gave every user full system privileges. Lousy security; if Cassilis Clinic was still in business next year, she'd have to suggest to one of her friends in the private sector that they demonstrate the loopholes and bid for a complete overhaul of the system. But for now, the clinic owners' carelessness made her life incomparably easier. It took only seconds to bring up and memorize the information she wanted; then she sent a message to Aristide after all, so that the log would have something to show if anybody checked it. The colorist wouldn't have any idea why he was getting urgent requests for toner from someone who wasn't even one of his clients; she added a suggestion that he check with Nunzia Hirvonen, and hoped Nunzia would pick up from there.
"All done!" she announced brightly, rising to go.
"And . . . my appointment?"
"He'll have to see when he can work you in. Otherwise it might be months," Annemari lied. "I'll let you know when something is arranged."
"I could probably switch shifts with one of my friends, if he's got something free on another day."
"Good, that'll make it easier. See you soon!" The longer she stayed chatting with Jenna Berg, the better the chance that somebody a little more intelligent would show up and want to know what she was doing here; Cassilis Clinic security couldn't be that bad. Annemari slipped away with a few more promises to let Jenna know as soon as Aristide could fit her in. If the information she'd just gotten off the system screen was correct, she had just a short time to make it to her next destination—and first she had to look in on Niklaas.
"Doing all right?" she asked, probably unnecessarily. Niklaas was sipping something icy and lemon-colored through a transparent straw that went through several acrobatic loops between the flask and his lips, and watching one of those disgusting war vids that filled the room with booms and bangs and screams.
"Fine," Niklaas waved a languid hand to acknowledge his mother's presence.
She sniffed the air suspiciously. "What's in that flask? You know you're not supposed to—"
"Little muscle relaxant, s'all. Nice nurse brought it. They're taking me down for scanning prett' soon," Niklaas slurred. "Said they want me nice and calm first."
"So soon!" Maybe she should stay with him and catch up on her other plan later.
"Y'can't come," Niklaas said when she mentioned that possibility. "Told me . . . restricted area . . . near surgery, y'see."
"You mean they won't even let your mother in?" Annemari put one hand to her throat, fingering the ornate necklace she wore, and then placed her palm on Niklaas's shoulder. She sighed as if in resignation. "Well then, darling, maybe I'll try out the spa facilities while you're busy, and meet you for dinner after the tests." She went behind the head of Niklaas's bed, dropped her silky grey tunic and pants on the floor, and wrapped herself in one of the fluffy pink robes provided by the clinic. No time to hang anything up; she had only minutes now to reach her destination.
Annemari had to pass her right hand through a palm scanner to open the door to the Rejuvenating Chemical Soak Therapy Room. Inside she found a small, steamy tiled room with a circular tub of greenish gunk bubbling away in the center. Annemari hung up her robe and groped through the steam to dip a cautious foot in the tub. The stuff wasn't all that hot; there must be subsurface air jets making the bubbles. It stung her skin, but not too badly.
She let out a small sigh of relief as the steam cleared enough to show her that there was only one other person in the tub, a small woman with a cloud of dark curls surrounding an olive-skinned oval face. The schedule she'd sneaked a look at in the office had been accurate, then. Annemari nodded to her companion, found a comfortably curved bench under the surface of the bubbling gunk, and sank slowly into what the Cassilis Clinic described as their rejuvenating chemical soak. After the first sting it wasn't bad at all; more stimulating than actually painful.
"This is really quite pleasant," she said to the other woman. "Perhaps I'll sign up for a course of regular treatments while I'm here." She tried to trace a message on the surface of the mud, but the aerating bubbles erased the lines as fast as her finger could move.
"Oh, yes, it's wonderful for the skin, and you feel so fresh and relaxed afterward!" the other woman babbled. "Aren't you here for the treatments, then?"
"No, I brought my son for some . . . rehabilitation therapy. I hear they do miracles with hopeless cases here."
"I've heard that too," said the other woman. "But as long as you're here, you really ought to take advantage of the facilities yourself. I'm doing art therapy after this. Good for the nerves, you know. Modern life is so stressful, it's wonderfully relaxing to do simple work with your hands."
"Sounds good," Annemari said casually. "Will anyone object if I join you?"
"No, just give the palm scanner your hand and it'll record that you've joined the group and put the charge on your bill. Those scanners are wonderful, they let the clinic staff keep track of all the clients all the time and if you don't remember what's next on your treatment schedule, or can't find the room, they send a staff member to guide you. So restful!"
Annemari nodded to show she had taken in the information, and lay back to enjoy the aerating bubbles and the stimulating chemical skin bath for the few m
inutes before her companion indicated that it was time to move on to the Art Therapy Room. After showering they found fresh pink terry pajamas laid out for them—two pairs, and in the right sizes; the palm scanner had done its work.
"You'll really like art therapy," Annemari's new friend said cheerfully as they paced down the corridor. "It's very freeing, you just express yourself with great splashes of color and draw whatever you want, and it's amazing what messages come to you. I'm Thecla Partheni, by the way."
"Annemari Silvan." They had reached the art room; Annemari and "Thecla" joined the line of pink-clad ladies passing their hands through the palm scanner and kept up a bright meaningless chatter until they were stationed side by side with drawing screens and a pile of art supplies.
"These screens are supposed to be wonderful for working out ideas," "Thecla" said. "You just trace out your design and indicate the medium effects you want to apply—pastels or oils or whatever—and you get a nice clean printout with no blots or mistakes. But to me it's just not the same as getting your hands in the actual medium, you know? Call me old-fashioned, but I really like the primitive act of making colored marks on paper, like this. She scribbled Anything on the screens can be read by the central monitor, held her paper pad so that Annemari could read it, and quickly covered up the writing with a scrawl of energetic dark blue spirals.
"I think you're right," Annemari said, "the real therapeutic effect is in working with your hands." Calandra, why haven't you reported in? And what brought you here? It was easy to cover up her light pastel writing with a crude spring rainbow.
"That's right, you're really getting the hang of it!" No chance to report. We forgot to give Thecla's identity administrator privileges. Am I glad you're here! Can you get me central database privileges? I want to download this place's construction permit blueprints and anything else on record. There's a lot of space unaccounted for—places we're not allowed to go. All that required a vigorous execution of a cityscape in glowing colors, followed by a muttered imprecation, ripping the paper off the pad, and dropping the crumpled page into a recycler that hummed into action, instantly reducing the paper to an indistinguishable mass of bright pigments and cellulose shreds.
I might be able to get some information directly. But this is going to take forever. Isn't there any place around here we can talk safely? Annemari stared at her own paper, sighed, then tore up the sheet and dropped it into the recycler. "I just can't make this picture come out right!" she said aloud for the benefit of the art therapist, who was looking their way with a frown of concern.
For the rest of the "art therapy" hour Annemari and Calandra chatted out loud about nothing in particular and covered paper with brightly colored shapes, none of which they recycled, just in case the "therapist" should want to inspect their work. Afterward Calandra invited Annemari to join her in a healthful stroll in the clinic gardens. "I have a free recreation hour now, if you're not scheduled for anything?"
"I don't have a schedule," Annemari said as they paced along a soft path of close-cropped grass between flowering hedges. "I'm just here with Ni—with my son. He's the one who really needs the clinic treatments. They more or less told me to run away and play while he was having the preliminary tests done. I'm not even allowed back in the area where the testing happens."
"Poor little boy," Calandra cooed. They came to a branch in the path and she turned to the left, away from the attractive fountain playing at the end of the right-hand path. "Will he be scared without you?"
"Goodness, no, he's nearly seventeen. More likely to be embarrassed by my presence!"
"What lovely flowers!" Calandra exclaimed, pointing at a nondescript shrub with small puce blossoms. "Let's break a teensy rule and get a closer look at them." She hopped over the low shrubs bordering the path and led Annemari across the grass. "Right here," she said in a lower voice just as they reached the shrub, "there's a spot none of their monitors cover."
"How did you—oh." Annemari nodded as Calandra tapped the side of her head. "I may not have all the downloaded files I'd like, but my scanners are still working. We can talk here, but not for long; there's a limit to how long even a couple of total idiots would spend admiring this filthy bush. Now fill me in. Are you really going to get Niklaas a 'mat implant here? They charge an arm and a couple of legs, you know."
"Evert Cornelis transferred enough into my account to cover the charges," Annemari said. "But I still don't know where they're getting the bacteriomats. Are they stolen from the Barents Trading Society's stock?"
Calandra shook her head. "I'm almost sure not. What led me here was a 'mat transport canister addressed to the Clinic. It wasn't a BTS canister—for what that's worth. But it was coming off Kalapriya. I've been trying to find out more, but they've got most of my time so scheduled I hardly have a chance to snoop. I checked in as Thecla Partheni with a case of nervous prostration brought on by too many high-stress social activities. Fortunately they don't do a really thorough workup on the public-side clients. I must have appeared convincingly stressed out; they took one look at me and assigned a nutritionist, an exercise counselor, art therapy, and daily chemical soaks. I may not find out much, but I'll sure be healthy when we get out of here."
"Why Thecla? Oh, well, I suppose you wouldn't want to use your own ID here, they might check and find out you're a Diplo assigned to my office," Annemari worked out. "But you traveled here under the Partheni ID."
"The Calandra Vissi ID is compromised," Calandra said. "Somebody tried to kill me on Tasman."
"Tasman? Not Kalapriya?"
"I never even reached Kalapriya."
"But—"
"I'm telling you, the Tasman smugglers were following me from the moment I got there. Whatever's going on, that end of the investigation has been well and truly leaked. And what's more, somebody among the smugglers is a good enough hacker to recode the partition locks on the lower levels of Tasman—either that, or my data download for Tasman was badly out of date. I had to deduce one of the partition lock codes from scratch to get away from those creeps."
"I didn't think you could do that."
"You probably couldn't," Calandra said, "but I did Cryptography and Ciphers for my optional at the School. Of course, it helps that my augmented retinal implants let me scan the keys for recent fingerprints; that cut down on the number of combinations I had to try. Still, it was a near thing. Those are very determined people. And very unpleasant." She massaged one hand with the other as though rubbing away a painful memory.
"And they caught you?"
"Yes, but they didn't keep me. And they think I spaced myself to get away, so they didn't follow me back here, either."
Annemari felt her head whirling. "Why would they think you'd do that?"
"They were going to torture me," Calandra said calmly. "They gave me a little taste on account, and thought I was scared witless."
"I put you in that much danger?"
"Annemari. It's part of the job. You didn't think 'mat smugglers were going to be nice people, did you? Forget about it; I have. Now, can you sign on from your room screen and authorize Thecla Partheni to access Rezerval databases? Because if you'll do that, I can probably get enough data to map out exactly where the concealed areas of the clinic are and where we need to be snooping."
"Probably," Annemari said. Her head was whirling. "Wait a minute, there's something else we need to clear up first. Somebody showed up on Kalapriya as you, right on schedule. She toured a 'mat cave and attended an official dinner and ball and disappeared that night. I'd been assuming that was you, that you found out something on Kalapriya that sent you back here."
Calandra shook her head. "Nope. Told you, I never even got that far."
"Then who was impersonating you?"
"I don't know," Calandra said, rather grimly, "but from what you say, she isn't doing it anymore. Being Calandra Vissi doesn't seem to be a healthy occupation these days. Now what about the authorization? I feel half blind without my data accesses."<
br />
"That's easy. I'll send Jeppe a list of stuff to do while I'm out of the office, a long list, and somewhere in the middle I'll put in a general statement about giving all Diplo IDs full security privileges. That way your name won't show if they're intercepting my email, and the actual access permission will happen completely off-screen as far as the clinic's concerned. And we can probably find out a little more about the reserved areas right now, a little more directly."
"How?"
Annemari grinned. "I slipped a spyder under Niklaas's skin before they took him off for testing. You think I'd let them wheel my boy off to parts unknown with no way for me to track him?"
* * *
In a locked, soundproof room deep in the surgical section of the Cassilis Clinic, Tomi Oksanen moaned and twitched. An aide checked the tubes that kept nutrients flowing through his unconscious body while his primary neurosurgeon conferred with the head of the clinic.
"It can't be the bacteriomats. I've done three hundred installations now and hardly any have failed."
"To be precise," said his superior in a chill, knife-edged voice, "in the first year of operation, a five-percent failure rate was reported, mostly from implants that failed to mesh with the recipient's nervous system as desired. All dissatisfied clients were of course given a full refund, which was a nontrivial cut in our profit margin. The reported rate of such failures in this year has been less than two percent."
"You see? It's getting better, not worse."
"But there have been over thirty cases this year of total system failure, like this one. And that's just the ones that have been reported back to us; there may be others that the clients concealed for fear of scandal or investigation." The clinic head gestured at Tomi Oksanen's naked, thrashing body. "The clients—or rather, their heirs—are not going to be satisfied with a refund and an apology. God of Chaos, man, the Oksanens alone could close this place down! What are you doing with these patients?"
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