A compliment, an apology and a warning all in one. Not what she had expected. ‘I haven’t had my head in the sand, Commander. I know there are schemes afoot. If you want the Amazons’ help, you have only to ask. If not, don’t worry. We would not fare well under Colda, but we would outlast him.’
She tried to stand but her legs were too tight. Quartermaine pulled her to her feet. ‘Only one thing,’ she told him. ‘The Greys are mine now, whether they know it or not. Until Trahern gets back on his feet. Anybody that goes for them will have the Amazons to deal with, and we won’t hold back.’
Quartermaine slipped the helmet under his arm to open the door. La Mar took it from him. ‘I’ll take this as a souvenir for Rhone. Show her that her head is not as hard as she thinks.’
The pain in her limbs eased to an almost pleasurable ache as they walked through the training sector. Everyone they passed stopped to stare. ‘Am I walking that funny,’ she asked Quartermaine.
‘No. It’s just that no one has ever bested Trahern before.’
La Mar smiled. She did not see it that way, but she would never tell anyone. I turned a man’s will from death to life. I seduced a man of stone with my grace. The thoughts tingled through her whole being before becoming a memory to join the others.
CHAPTER 25: ELSEWISE, NATA AND THE BOX
Elsewise remembered the first time he had been in this room. It had served as a fine introduction to Base. Internal politics, a life at risk and the varied responses to that circumstance, external threats both old and new, all of these complimented his research to yield an appreciation of the working of Base and its role in the sector. His previous studies broadened the sphere of reference all the way back to the Inner Belt and added the depth of time to form an historical perspective. The problems with this approach were well known to him. The flow of great events seems inexorable. It is a human attribute to ‘make sense’ of all the myriad occurrences of a passage of time by linking these with the perceived pre-eminent outcomes or dismissing them as inconsequential.
Elsewise knew he was prey to this fault. He was human, after all. The ascendancy of the Houses and the passage of the Ships would be decided here. These were the great events he recognised. Yet at this moment he wondered about Nata’s, and his own, present task. Was it part of a greater thread or was it ‘without consequence’? Was it a last echo from an earlier time, as he suspected, or because it was happening now, was it a contributor to events to come? Was it an ending or a begin…. Everything went black.
*
When awareness returned he was lying on his back in a corridor. That much he knew from the relationship of walls and ceiling. Nata sat at the edge of his vision.
‘You passed your nominated time limit for contemplation in there.’ The small man pointed back up the corridor to the door of the eval room. ‘I used a pressure point so there will be some pain, but it should pass. There will be no bruising.’ He returned to the study of his notebook.
Elsewise lifted his upper body off the floor. Pain accompanied a wash of disorientation. Nata steadied him with a hand and helped him to the wall.
Have I been caught in a pattern? Elsewise stepped through his thoughts. Out here, his discipline held and he easily saw the artifice. A logic loop. This particular one had been used against AI. ‘No endings or beginnings, everything is linked.’ In the words of Marcus Aurelius, ‘All things are implicated with one another.’ It led to an attempt to ‘know everything’ resulting in endless calculation or a prediction of that result and subsequent shut down.
The susceptibility of his breed to similar contemplation was tempered by early training. He could harmlessly consider the concepts while still a child. What an apt trap! Something so simple. Somehow, a pattern in that room had laid him open to it. He shivered when he thought how close he had come to permanent dysfunction.
‘You were not affected in this manner during your previous time in that room. What has changed that it could touch you now?’ asked Nata.
‘A shift in the light may have been all that was necessary to provide a new sequence of images,’ answered Elsewise. He pushed himself up a little straighter against the wall. ‘Where was my attention focused when you noted my inaction?’
‘You faced the bank of panels to the left of the tech’s station. Those that run the old evaluation program. It was active and there were indicator lights flashing.’ Nata stopped to stare intently at him. ‘It was preparing a summary of all candidates tested in the Box over the last ten years. A simple exercise. Could there be something in that data that AI would not like one of your ilk to be aware of? Something that could shed light on their purpose?’
If so, it would be a momentous discovery, thought Elsewise. He was wary of trying to analyse it. I will leave this to others, if that possibility remains. ‘Have you copied or transmitted that data?’
Nata smiled again. ‘You know, this business of scholarship, I do not find greatly different from my previous vocation.’ The small man paused to take a breath and Elsewise knew he was in for a story, or a lesson.
‘The teachers of the One Path set tasks to test their disciples. In one of these, you are placed blindfolded in a room and told that also in the room are a deadly snake, a scorpion, a poisonous spider and a sleeping dog. You are then left to see what your actions will be. No directions are given.’ The small man halted to give Elsewise a moment to consider. His smile became broader. ‘When I was tested thus, I first held very still and listened. But I could not detect any movement.’ Nata acted out his story, arms lifted and a comical look of intense concentration on his face as he tilted his head this way and that. ‘Then I yelled to awaken the dog, reckoning that his activity would stir the others, allowing me to locate them and strike as necessary.’ He stopped dramatically.
‘And how did you fare?’ asked Elsewise.
‘Nothing happened. I yelled again. Again nothing. Then I heard the door open and the steps of my master. He led me from the room. Outside, he removed the blindfold, then said to me, ‘Don’t you know it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.’ At this he laughed greatly, taking joy from his words, not my confusion. I was left to ponder the lesson.’
Nata pointed back to the eval room. ‘This situation seemed similar to me. I hope, in this case, we have simply removed the blindfold and carefully left the room.’
Elsewise was amazed at his friend's acumen. He is a fine scholar already. This is the role he should fill in the Guard. It was the only shortcoming Elsewise had noticed in the organisation of this strange community.
‘All the snakes are still in that room, I hope,’ continued Nata. ‘I have only removed yourself and my notes.’ He held up his notebook. Originally an awkward accessory, it had become a practical accoutrement. It was rare for him to be seen without it and he had developed a habit of flicking back and forth through the pages when he concentrated. The notebook fell open to a sketch from the post mortem room.
Elsewise felt a chill run through him. Nata noticed and froze.
The wounds! thought Elsewise. He slowly drew a folded paper from his deep pocket. The printout from Trahern’s time in the Box. From the bank of panels to the left of the tech’s station. The old program. He opened it to show Nata. A colour trace of the route taken, rows of abbreviations with matching numbers - the stats that were mostly no longer understood, and along the bottom, a series of small illustrations.
‘Trahern’s evaluation from the old program. These marks at the bottom are the symbols of the most committed military groups involved in the War of the Crosses,’ explained Elsewise. ‘The maddest, to put it another way. The Mad Command’s enemies, for the most part. The Maltese cross, or eight-rayed cross of the St Johns, this one here, would have been an ally. The others definitely not.’ He identified each in turn. The infinity cross of the Immortals, the upside down cross of the Sataans, the weeping or bleeding cross of the Penitents, the lightning cross of the Sturm und Drang, the three tiered cross of the Hang Sen - not a cross at all but
rather an ancient oriental letter, its meaning disputed to this day. The scarred cross of the Unbelievers, and finally, the heartless or empty cross of the Ardent, known as such because the arms do not meet at the centre, also known as the six-rayed star.
Nata took his pen and drew a straight line where the stroke that had opened the young psych’s chest curved. Now the patterns matched, a six-rayed star.
‘Method in the madness and more evidence linking the Box with the death,’ said Elsewise. Sadness, not exultation, coloured his words. His head sank onto his hands.
*
Now I see why he said this study would be a cruel one, thought Nata. Again he was struck by the similarities with his lifelong discipline. Satisfaction at the defeat of one’s enemy was always tempered with the realisation of damage done to a living thing. Many of the higher teachings of the One Path dealt with this concern and its cumulative effect on a being. Do scholars or investigators have their own philosophy? To buffer them from the cruelties they study? he wondered. He made a mental note to discuss it with Elsewise at another time. At the moment we have more menacing matters to consider.
Their path that morning had taken them through most of Base. From Med, they had taken the results of Briodi’s scans and models of the cuts to the armoury only to find the Armourer indisposed. Elsewise had suggested the Engineers and their odyssey had begun. To engineering to have the particles found in the wounds identified - structural steel of odd composition and great age, and abrasive dust, the same in all of the wounds. To Supply to check records for this material - no record of the steel, the abrasive common to grinding wheels used in all the workshops on Base. To Services for a list of workshops and a demonstration of the tool - hundreds of locations and a simple tool to use. Their journey might have ended at this point but for advice from the service supervisor that Burnt Thomas was the one to talk to about steel, this talk necessitating a trip to the hangars. Burnt Thomas happily assisted after he found out that Steamsetter was well.
‘Personal bodyguard for the Commander, himself,’ advised Nata.
‘He’s a big lad, he would do,’ confirmed the workman. ‘What’s this steel you’re looking for?’
Nata told him what and why.
The old man bowed his head and kicked the ground. He is no stranger to pain, thought Nata. The pebbled scar of a burn ran up the side of his face. He has seen action, this one, maybe an old cadreman or marine.
‘Terrible thing that, that young girl.’ Thomas’s head came up, tilting to the side as he studied Nata and Elsewise. ‘Give us the specs,’ he said. ‘We’ll sort this out.’
They followed him through the hangars and down to a storage area in a bay opening out to the plain. ‘We keep all sorts of junk here. Never know what you’ll need,’ said the old man. Holding the readout from the scans up in one hand, he walked along the racks. ‘Structural steel, older than stone from the look of it, lots of carbon, manganese too. Could be black steel. The miners use it, way up the Arm. Good resiliance in low atmosphere.’ His head stayed canted to the scarred side, and the arm and leg on that side tended to move as one.
The scar goes all the way down, realised Nata.
‘This is strange though … sodium, potassium and magnesium in more than trace amounts. Don’t know why you would want that crap in structural steel. Doesn’t look like anything you would get from a manufacturing planet. Nothing we would order in. Maybe made on some poor place like an asteroid, with what was at hand.’ They moved deeper into the racks. ‘We get the odd bit of strange metal, from repairs for customs and stuff they can’t fix at the port. Not much structural steel though, more specialised usually.’ He studied the specs again. ‘Black steel, I think,’ he said to himself, turning to head in a new direction. He sorted through some oddments of dark steel in a bin along the side wall then moved back toward the light. He fell silent as he walked. Nata and Elsewise exchanged glances. The silence was ominous after his near continuous rambling. Thomas led them outside to a rough pile of packing plastron, rusted sheet steel and broken cement. Rubbish from the plain. He bent down to pull a twisted section of steel beam free. ‘That’s about as close as you’ll get,’ he said tersely. ‘Without going all the way out, that is.’ They all turned together to survey the plain.
‘Fuckin’ Box. Never did like that thing,’ said burnt Thomas.
*
Nata had chosen not to investigate the Box. A full inspection was not possible. Portions of the higher framework were reportedly inaccessible, to examine the rest would require time and manpower, and depend on a crew that contained one of the prime suspects. Instead, he had taken a surprised Elsewise to the eval room. It made perfect sense to him. A complete record of everyone that had entered the Box was kept there. And that was everyone in the Guard.
My tall friend should be pleased, thought Nata. Elsewise was critical of the technique of nominating and eliminating suspects commonly used by Security. It was not logical. Although it could lead to quick success, if the perpetrator was not on the list he or she would never be found. ‘Hit and miss,’ the Scholar called it. Nata had pointed out that in practice the list was constantly updated, expanded with new data until the perpetrator was included. ‘Working backwards,’ Elsewise replied. The Scholar preferred to amass physical evidence and then test the possibilities this led to. We would be working our way through the hundred workshops of Base right now collecting dust if he was in charge, mused Nata. But soon I will have a list that contains all suspects and their evaluation.
Those had been his thoughts when they entered the eval room. Now, sitting in the corridor outside, he wondered if there was any use to predictive logic at all. Rationalisation seemed more effective. The discoveries he had made in the eval room were not the ones he sought. The list was not complete. To be fair to himself, he had harboured a faint suspicion of this from the start. Elsewise could not approach the Box. Myriad threats to his sanity would lie in wait there. This episode in the eval room only confirmed the efficiency of the traps. So if a Scholar could not suffer the Box, how could one apparently of his breed pass through? The tall PlanCon aide’s results were the first he requested, along with Colda’s. To allow for comparison, he asked the tech to pull up records for each of the cadre commanders and their aides or sub-commanders. He meant to use the data to gain a feel for the evaluations. He knew all of these officers. Once he understood the tech’s criteria, they could screen all the rest of the tests for the aspects of anger and frustration he read in the murder. The routine checks inbuilt in the Guard had not uncovered this aberration, at least until the young psych’s contact, but perhaps the Box had.
The officers’ results were fairly uniform, with similar heights attained and comparable ratings for most attributes. Except for the Greys. Trahern was higher on most of the positives, completely off the scale for a few. Gati had come up as sub-commander because there were only two Greys listed. His rating for risk was twice most of the others, Oulte of the Far Rangers the only one close. Not surprisingly, Gati’s rating for ‘energy expenditure on non-productive activity’ was also very high.
‘Jammed his beam in the wall, Sir’ said the tech in response to Nata’s raised eyebrow.
There, we have one of the fields we will check, thought Nata. Trahern’s rating for this was very low, near minimal on his last set of results. A blank at the bottom drew Nata's eye. ‘Why is this?’ he asked the tech.
‘That’s where the data from the old program goes in. We don’t have the print out from the Grey’s last test.’ The tech brought one of his hands up close against his chest with a finger pointing over his shoulder. ‘The printout was taken away, Sir.’ His motions indicated the Scholar behind them.
‘Don’t you just merge the programs?’ asked Nata, his curiosity aroused. The tech had turned both sets of panels on when they started. Their attention was on the ‘new’ screens but lights flickered on the other set.
‘No, there are problems fitting them together and we only use a few of the
stats from the old program so we usually copy the ones we want straight from the printout and re-enter them on the new side.’
I wonder what we lose, pondered Nata. This should be studied. But not today, he told himself.
He had the tech return to the PlanCon pair. Both had results that surprised him in the ‘energy expended on non-productive activity’ field. Colda’s he would have expected to be much higher and the Aide’s much lower. ‘There is something wrong here,’ he said to Elsewise behind him. He received no answer. ‘Could results be tampered with?’ he asked the tech.
‘No, Sir. It’s all protected. Written once. Any changes show up as a second layer. That’s why we have trouble merging with the old program. Both are protected so you can’t change one to merge. The old one is copy protected also, in a way. You can review a section on the panels but you can’t cut it out. If you want to copy you have to take the whole thing all the way back to the Mad Command.’
It hit Nata like a slap. They don’t merge because they are different. ‘Can we bring up a series of records on the old program and make calculations?’
The tech thought a minute. ‘Yes, we can do that. They will then go in to the old data set though, make it even bigger.’
‘Another scale on the Great Carp,’ said Nata. ‘Let us proceed. Results for the past ten years. When they are up, we will start with simple things.’ He wondered why Elsewise had not contributed. This was fascinating. He turned to find his friend in deep contemplation. Ah, he goes further than I.
While the tech set up the program, Nata studied the officers’ results on the screens. Something tugged at his mind. He could not make it clear. He ran down through the stats, deciphering each of them in turn. Above the old program data there was a number. It repeated between sets on Trahern’s sheet and hung lonely above the blank space at the bottom. ‘This number is an identifier?’ he asked the tech.
The Return of the Grey Page 18