by Barry Kirwan
"I need to see Mr. Kane, the Director."
"I know who Mr Kane is." She let the words dissipate, and it appeared she was going to say nothing more, least of all take his request seriously.
"It’s urgent."
She sat back. "I see. And what is it about?"
Micah tried not to squirm. "I can’t say. It’s, uh, sensitive."
She propped a finger to the corner of her mouth and cocked her head to one side, raising her eyebrows. "And I don’t suppose you would have something like an appointment?" She looked to her screen, beamed back at him, and said, "Ah – no, I would know that, wouldn’t I?"
Micah frowned. He hadn’t thought it through – why would Kane see him, an analyst way down in the hierarchy? But it was important; he had to break through this bureaucratic wall guarded by Kane’s assistant. He switched into analysis mode. It took only a second, his mind flickering in saccades while his eyes remained fixed on hers: highlighted hair in a bob; expensive make-up making the best of an almost-pretty face, a blemish under her right eye; taut body; professional but slightly revealing suit accentuating her assets up top and drawing the eye away from her legs for some reason; hazel eyes, alluring and open, flints of bitterness in the background. He made his assessment.
"Look, Miss Mindel. I know you probably think I’m just a nerd, but this is very important. I need to see him – please." He gestured to the double doors at the other end of her office.
"Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Better still, I’ll talk to Mr. Kane and see if he can speak to your manager later in the week, okay?" She reached for the off-switch on her console. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and leaned forward over her desk.
"No. I need to see him now." He held his ground. The air temperature between them freefell. She stood up.
"Listen very carefully," she said. "In five seconds my foot is going to activate the security button, and you’ll be in big trouble, little man, unless you’re gone." They stood, locked onto each other’s gaze, the only sound his breathing. He took a few steps back, towards the entrance. She sat down, and began shutting down her console.
Nothing to lose. He hoped to God the rumors were true. He tried his best to sound confident, worldly – like his father, dammit.
"Of course it would be in your interest for me to see him."
She didn’t look up, but paused. "Excuse me?"
"I mean, if he hears me out, he’ll need to work late. Very late."
Her face darkened. Her eyes flared, and what he’d sensed earlier came into the foreground. It wasn’t pretty. She trod hard on something, picked up a silver-handled paper knife, and skirted round the desk towards him, much faster than he’d anticipated. She stopped very close, her breathing labored. He tried to ignore the paper knife in her right hand, level with his groin.
"Look, you little piece of shit. I don’t know who you think you are, or what you think you know, but you’d better cut this crap right now, or so help me –"
The double doors opened with a sharp click and a swish. Kane, elegantly tall with a shock of white hair, around fifty yet still exuding the strength of an ox, stood framed in the doorway, the shaded early evening sun behind him.
"What’s going on, Sandy? What does this gentleman want?" His voice was as commanding as it was reassuring.
"He was just leaving, Sir," she said, facing off Micah.
Micah knew it was now or never. The next few words counted more than anything. He turned to Kane. "Sir – Ulysses is in trouble. There’s been a security breach." He held back the rest. Nothing else could be said here.
Kane met his eyes head on. "Then why haven’t you taken it to Mr. Vernt, our Head of Security?" he asked.
Micah had no choice but to confess. "Because… because I inserted my own security check into the Ulysses’ telemetry systems. It’s unofficial."
Sandy raised a disbelieving eyebrow, shook her head and walked back to her desk.
"A moment, Sandy," Kane said, holding up a hand.
She leveled the paper knife at Micah. "Sir, he said something to me, of a personal nature, so I de-activated the recorders. But now he’s confessed to a misdemeanor, probably a stackable offence. We should record it. Even if he’s right, Vernt will want to see it."
Micah looked from her to him. He was, as his aunt would have said, in the boiling pot, or at best dangling above it. At least the cameras and recorders were off. He remembered his aunt had also said that in times like these, words were just so much extra rope. He stayed quiet.
"All in good time, Sandy. First, I’d like to hear what this young man has to say. And if I have any trouble, clearly you are ready to defend me." He nodded to the paper knife, still in her right hand. She replaced the knife on the desk, and folded her arms.
"Now, please do come in, and sit down. You’d better tell me about it." He gestured to the open door into his executive suite.
"Oh, and Sandy, you’d better call my wife. I’ll be home late tonight. She should understand – it has been a while since I had to work late. And… I might need you here later on, would that be possible?"
"Of course, you know I’m always…" Her voice trailed off. "Yes, Sir. And I’ll switch the cameras back on in here."
Micah walked into Kane’s office, feeling Sandy’s eyes burrow into his back.
Kane closed the doors behind them, gesturing to an antique leather chair.
"Alright, Mr. Sanderson – Micah, isn’t it? You’d better start from the beginning. And don’t worry, there are no cameras or recorders in here."
Kane spread his hands flat across his varnished desk. "So, let me see if I’ve got it straight. Four months ago, you inserted your own covert security program into the telemetry software for Ulysses, because you’d been worried on account of the Heracles and Prometheus. I applaud your motive, even if I cannot condone your method." He cast Micah a stern look, then continued. "The program is called a lighthouse, because it only shows up periodically, meaning it’s hard for our system’s anti-virus security systems to detect and clean it. Essentially it says the telemetry hasn’t been tampered with. If the signal disappears, it means that we’re not receiving valid data. Is that a reasonable summary?"
He nodded. His faith in Kane had intensified in the past hour. In any case, he had to trust someone – he couldn’t figure this out alone.
"So," Kane continued, "we’re receiving telemetry that says everything is okay, and in fact it is not, or may not be."
"It could be used to mask something happening on the ship."
"But we don’t actually know what the real telemetry should be?"
"No, just that we’re receiving false telemetry, module four being the longest one having disguised readings."
"And the parameters affected are?"
"Environmental and visual."
Kane planted his hands on the desk to stand up. Micah followed suit.
"This is very serious. And you did the right thing to bring it to my attention. Well, it will take us a couple of days to communicate this to the Ulysses crew. I’ll need one of my people to check all this out of course. Tonight, before you and your colleague return to work tomorrow morning."
"But Sir, I could stay – "
"No, go home young man, we’ll take it from here. We’ll talk again, very soon. And say nothing, not a word, to anyone, understood?" He nodded to Micah and to the doors.
Micah hesitated at first – he’d imagined himself being involved in the investigation, playing a key part. But Kane’s statesman-like smile continued to indicate the way out. Micah got up and walked to the double doors, Kane following him, as they swung open automatically. They shook hands in full view of Sandy. Micah nodded briefly to Kane, threw a sideways glance at Sandy, whose eyes were glued to her screen, and made a quick exit.
***
Kane waited until Micah was gone, then walked over and handed a piece of paper to his assistant.
"Please call these people for a conference at nine o’clock this evening i
n my office, and get Vernt on the vidphone right away." He headed back to his office and closed the doors.
She made the calls. When she saw the line between Kane and Vernt disconnect, she transferred all incoming lines to the answering system, switched off the surveillance cameras, and input her leaving time into the system as 19:00.
She opened her drawer and inspected her reflection in the small mirror inside. She sighed. She’d looked far better – and worse. She rose, adjusted her skirt, made sure the lace-stocking top covered the fencing scar on her right thigh, undid another button on her blouse, went over to the entrance door and locked it. She walked to Kane’s suite, knocked gently three times, and then entered, closing the doors behind her
***
Micah took one of the tubes heading below ground to the Bubble station. He thought about his dead father and the psych assessment. You see? I can act when required. My way – not yours.
But as he sardined his way home amongst other commuters, his thoughts turned to the mechanics of telemetry manipulation. It had to be someone inside the Eden Mission. His first thought was Rudi, but he didn’t fit the profile – he had everything he wanted, and was too laid-back to get involved in espionage. Drawing a blank, he switched to thinking about Ulysses. The false telemetry was environmental and visual. Something was happening to their environment. He wondered if they were aware of it. He shivered, despite the balmy temperature.
As he crossed one of the myriad pedestrian bridges in underground Sylmar, he felt his neck prickling. He spun around, sure someone was behind him in the shadows, watching him. It wasn’t that late, and usually there were more people around, but not tonight. The lights were dim, and all he saw was a stray cat; but the cat was looking in the same direction as Micah, towards a closed street booth that sold coffee and snacks in the daytime. Micah waited half a minute to see if anyone emerged. No one did. He carried on, quickening his pace till he arrived at his door. Some distance behind him, a cat shrieked as if in pain. He had the prickling feeling again, but didn’t turn around. He fumbled with the lock, slipped inside his apartment, and double-locked the door.
Chapter 4
Ghoster
Pierre’s wristcom twitched twice: twenty-four hours of breathable air left. He closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb, the way grand-pere used to. Eighteen hours after discovering the oxygen depletion, the crew were still no nearer finding where it was going. This looked like the last day of their lives. As a scientist, dying without even knowing the cause was the worst end.
He and Kat re-checked environmental systems, while Blake and Zack worked in the cockpit on ways to put them all into stasis for the remaining five days before their arrival in Eden. But even if that plan succeeded, they would wake up on an airless ship. Both tasks reeked of futility.
Kat’s incessant finger-drumming on the console made it difficult for Pierre to concentrate. They’d checked all components related to atmospheric control for three hours, manually and via main and back-up computers. The onboard diagnostic wizard had drawn a blank, its only output being "insufficient data; good luck". Neither he nor Kat had said a word – not even an expletive – during the last sixty minutes. He stared at a holo of a neural-wiring cluster, unable to focus on account of Kat’s dashboard arpeggios. He strode through the holo-image and thrust his hand over her drumming fingers, flattening them.
She glared, but didn’t start up again. He returned to his writhing spaghetti.
She kicked something he didn’t see. "We’re too stupid to work this out, and we’re going to die."
He shook his head. "We’re missing something. Either it’s defying the known physical laws of gases, or else –"
"Somebody’s screwing us over. Somebody’s pissing themselves laughing ninety light years away. You’re supposed to be the clever one, remember? Figure it out!"
He winced. As the principal scientist onboard, everyone expected him to find the answer. It reminded him of the bad old days at home, solving problems under pressure, battling saber-toothed enigmas unleashed by his father into the supper-time coliseum of their dining room. But he liked Kat, though he hid it – buried it, to be precise. He’d never told her, and the way things were going, he wouldn’t get the chance.
He was getting nowhere. Normally, whenever he worked on a problem, whether his father’s conundrums or scientific puzzles he’d faced back at the Sorbonne, it was like a yacht’s sails catching the wind, his mind billowing like a spinnaker, the boat surging ahead with a clear direction and land in sight. This time, however, he’d been adrift in a windless ocean.
He gathered himself, and picked up his air-pen. "Let’s try one more time."
Kat adjusted her slouch.
He wrote in licorice-black in the ether between them, reading out each premise. "One: Oxygen is being depleted." He paused with the pen, filling in the narrative gap orally. "Normally the carbon dioxide we exhale can be re-cycled to recover the oxygen, but –" he flourished the pen again "– two: something is stripping it out; three: no condensation or ice outside; four: no sign of hull depressurization; five, no airflow disturbance that would signify a leak." He stopped. The first line had already started to melt. He folded his arms, staring at the premises as they lost cohesion, dripping out of reality. "We’ve checked everything organic that uses oxygen, and anything inorganic that could, in theory, bond with it." He tossed the pen back onto the table, then smeared the last of the holo-words out of existence with his hand.
Kat’s face softened. "I like it when you skywrite, Pierre – you should teach me sometime." Her voice snagged on the last word. She put her heels onto the chair’s edge, bringing her knees up to her chest, muttering something he didn’t quite hear. He tried not to stare at her, but her eyes caught his. He coughed.
"One of our assumptions is wrong," he said.
"Obviously – but which one? Nothing you wrote just now – something so basic we don’t see it." She folded her arms. "Killed by our collective blindness; not a great epitaph."
He sat down. "How to see what you don’t see…?" He pictured his father lecturing him, striking the dinner table with the blade of his right hand with each argument he made. Right now, Pierre would welcome the childhood ritual torture as long as his father could solve this particular riddle. If only he were here.
The wind caught the sails of Pierre’s mind. If only he were here…
"Of course!" His hand chopped onto the table, bouncing the pen onto the floor. He shot to his feet. "It’s been here all along, but it changed state!"
"What?"
He fished around in a sheaf of a dozen flimsies, found the one he was looking for.
"What? Talk to me!"
He stared at the figures and charts on the transparent sheet. "Merde," he whispered. He lowered it and looked at Kat, his eyes unwavering.
"You’re starting to scare me, Pierre, which is pretty good going, considering."
He took in every feature of her face. He’d been worrying about them dying – about her dying. But this… He walked towards her, wanting to take her hand. Instead, he touched her arm gently. "Come on."
Kat followed him.
"You’re absolutely sure?" Blake said, just as Pierre and Kat entered the cockpit. Zack nodded once, heavily.
"Sir," Pierre said, almost standing to attention, "I have a new hypothesis." His pulse raced, sure he was on the right track.
"So have we," Blake said, as he and Zack turned to face Pierre and Kat. "Sabotage: we’ve found evidence of a Minotaur virus planted deep in the comms software."
Pierre dismissed it in a flash. "That’s not it, Sir. The comms software has no primary or even secondary functional connection with life support. The neural clusters use immunity protocols to prevent cross-functional contamination. I’ve checked them three times."
Blake and Zack exchanged a quick glance, and then Blake stood up, facing Pierre. "I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying, so let me
make it pulse-beam clear for you – we’ve found a level six labyrinthine virus in the software that links us to Earth. We haven’t been able to disable it yet – "
"Is it active?"
"Excuse me?"
"The virus – has it been activated? Or is it still inert? Because if it’s not activated, it isn’t the cause."
Pierre felt Blake’s eyes burn into him. Logic wasn’t always appreciated in moments of crisis, and Zack would always back up his friend.
Blake spoke softly. "It would take someone very knowledgeable on software to hide such a virus – an expert scientist, perhaps."
He didn’t at first grasp what Blake meant – of course it would – but then he saw the sideways look from Zack, and stepped backwards as if slapped. "Sir – no – never…" His throat dried up. It felt like the time as a boy when his father had wrongly accused him of stealing money from his mother’s purse. He almost turned to Kat, but maintained eye contact with Blake.
Zack intervened. "Maybe we should hear him out, Skip."
Blake’s glare slackened off. "You’re right. Sorry, Pierre – I know it’s not you – it was most probably uploaded on Zeus, in any case. And you’re right about the software, it hasn’t activated – yet – I’m just damned annoyed about it. God alone knows what it’ll do when it is triggered."
Pierre noticed how tired Blake looked.
"So, Pierre, why don’t you tell us your theory."
He collected himself. "My father used to say that when you’ve ruled out everything and still have no solution, it’s because you’ve dismissed something incorrectly, something unthinkable. We’ve been looking for either a leak, or something which could strip out oxygen from the air."
Blake leaned back. "You have our undivided."
"The most obvious thing to strip out oxygen is one of us. That is, not exactly one of us, but… someone else."
Zack slapped his thighs. "A stowaway! Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? Now you mention it, I saw someone I didn’t recognize just the other day in the kitchen making coffee –"