by Corey Ostman
I guess I’m just as crazy to go along with it, she amended.
“Okay. Assuming I can get Martin to point me in the right direction, how do I tap into ITB?”
Raj shrugged, turning toward Tim. “Seems like he had a plan.”
“Finally,” Tim said. His mimic surface shimmered.
“If Ms. Donner could introduce a small amount of the liquid computer into the ITB network,” he said, “we would have access. Bi-directional.”
“How would that work?” Grace said.
“The liquid computer is entangled,” Tim replied. “Remove a piece and it’s still connected to the whole.”
“You would have found that out if you had put on that dermal dot instead of Flora,” Raj said.
“I thought you said that dot was unique?” Grace frowned.
“It is. We can’t produce more. We lost access to equipment when Tim went into hiding,” Raj said.
“So where are we going to get it?” Grace asked.
The PodPooch trotted over to one of Raj’s workbenches and pointed his snout upward.
“Ms. Donner, if you would be so kind as to grab that empty vial and unscrew the lid?”
Grace walked over to the bench, reached out, and picked up a tiny glass cylinder. “This one?”
“Yes. There should be a neural scalpel near it. It’s the one with the yellow handle.”
“Yeah, Tim. I see it.” She turned to Raj with the scalpel. “Shouldn’t you be wielding this?”
Raj smirked. “Just follow his orders. I think I know where he’s going.”
Tim’s surface briefly flashed a brilliant blue-white. “Ms. Donner, attention please. Hold the vial under my snout. And try not to spill any.”
“Spill any what?” she said.
He opened his mouth, ignoring her question.
“Now carefully, carefully prick my tongue.”
Chapter 19
Martin reclined in his chair, stretched his arms behind his head, and put his feet on the desk. He would be off-duty in five minutes. It had been a long day, longer still after the two-hour bull session with Mrs. Galena. Did she really know every species of desert flower? He was willing to believe it now.
His ptenda beeped. Martin glanced at the display and saw ITB’s newest protector striding down the hallway toward his office. Martin smiled. Much better than Mrs. Galena. He straightened his jacket and ran his fingers through his hair.
He looked up as Grace Donner turned the corner and entered his office. He started to rise, hand extended.
She bridged the distance rapidly, holding blackened metal aloft, and released it on his desk in a cascade of mechanical bits.
Had she smashed something in her apartment? Oh well. It wouldn’t be the first time a cloister-bred freaked out at mechanized life. He dropped his arm and eased back into the chair, professionally calm. “May I help?”
“This broke into my place last night,” Donner said. “How in the hell did that happen?”
Martin studied the garbage on his desk. No, not garbage. Wreckage. A loafer. There wasn’t much left.
“My friend says it belongs to ITB. Is that true?” She stood at attention, demanding.
Martin shuffled the pieces into a tidy pile.
“Your friend is correct. ITB uses loafers to patrol its buildings. And, these days, employees. Haven’t you read your contract?”
“People should stop asking me that.” She sat in a chair but failed to relax. “You mean this is standard ops?”
“Probably.” He turned the green egg over in his hands. “Why’d you destroy it? You could be slapped with wanton destruction of property, you know.”
“Me? What?” Her eyes opened wide as her back stiffened. She was tightly coiled, ready to lash out. “I didn’t smash it. It was suicidal. Exploded in my bedroom.”
“A newer model, then. ITB has increased surveillance over the last month,” he said. “Everybody’s upset about the scrutiny. Including me.”
He looked across at Donner. She stared at him.
Martin sighed. “So what do you want to do? File a complaint?”
Donner shook her head. “I want to find the people responsible and make them stop.”
Martin crossed his arms and sat back. “Look, Grace. May I call you Grace? I like you. You seem like a good kid. But you really don’t want to go digging any deeper. There’s trouble.”
“What trouble?”
Martin’s ptenda beeped. Finally.
“I’m off-duty now. You want a cup of coffee?”
Grace looked confused, then returned a little smile. “Sure, thanks.”
They left the office and took the lift to the lobby. As they exited, Grace pointed to the coffee shop to the right of the lift. “Want to go there?”
Martin shook his head. “Awful coffee.” And still too close to home. Somebody might be listening. He looked around. Or watching.
They kept walking. As they neared the curb, Martin pointed across the street to the only proper coffee house this side of town.
“Café Mongrel?”
“Mutts are best,” he winked.
Having worked with cloisterfolk, Martin wasn’t surprised at the way Grace crossed the street. She sprinted across three lanes, paused for a few seconds in the middle, and then leisurely walked the rest of the way. Martin kept pace, amused. There were crosswalks on either side.
They sat down at a small table near the window. Martin fingered his ptenda for double espresso.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Just coffee, Mr. Randgarten,” Grace said. “Black.”
“Call me Martin, remember?” He quickly appended her order.
Two minutes later, one of the café’s old PodPooches arrived with a tray attached to its back. Martin took their drinks.
“I understand this place’s name now,” Grace said. “A waste of a PodPooch, isn’t it? My friend Tim wouldn’t like it.”
“Is he a pooch fancier?”
Grace took a sip of coffee. “Not exactly.”
Martin reached into his pocket and pulled out his silver hipflask. He unscrewed the top and offered it to Grace.
“No thanks,” she said, curling up her nose.
“You sure?” He swished the amber fluid in the flask and poured a bit into his espresso. He’d need it.
“Well, look at me,” he said, a few sips later. “An old robo-mutt, drinking coffee with the next new model.” He chuckled at himself. Grace seemed to take it in good humor.
“Used to work deep inside ITB. Now,” he shrugged, “they’ve got me running an apartment block for bright young things like you.”
“I thought you just managed the Frawley. Heck, I thought you just managed the floor I was on,” Grace said, eyebrows raised over her cup. “What did you used to do?”
Martin waved a hand. “Everything. I used to work directly for Eugene Bransen. The ‘B’ in ITB. The company was different back then.” He took another sip of hooched espresso. “After he died, I received this lovely promotion,” Martin said, gesturing across the street at the Frawley.
“What happened?”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I know how that feels,” she said.
Martin nodded, not pressing for information. He didn’t like to gather up the bitterness in other people’s lives. He saw enough of that on the job.
They drank in silence for a while, considering one another. Grace ordered a second coffee.
“I can’t just let this slide,” Grace said, picking her cup off the PodPooch. “It may be normal to you, but they spied on me. They violated my privacy.”
Martin leaned forward. “So talk to Maud Van Decker. She’ll understand, right? With all of those eyes hunched around her office carapace, I’m sure your sense of privacy will be important to her.”
Grace set her mug down hard and glared.
“If you brought me here just to be a sarcastic bastard—”
Martin held up his h
ands. “Hey, that’s just the way she is. Believe me.”
“She’s been fine to me.”
“Yeah, well, you’re both cloisterfolk. It’s a soft spot with her. And space travel. You noticed her windows, right?”
“Overlooking the spaceport.” Grace nodded.
“I’ve known Maud for years,” Martin explained. “She came into power the same time as Varghese, but she’d been working for ITB long before that. She was already a senior protector when he showed up. Now all protectors report to her.”
“That’s natural, isn’t it?” Grace said. “Even at the academy, no matter who the range master was, I was ultimately under the commandant’s thumb.”
“It was different at ITB. We used to have protectors assigned to specific departments, operating independently. But Maud cleaned house in Research and Development—that’s where I used to work. She moved everybody out just after Junior and Simone died. She did the same with Security, Communications— even Marketing.”
“Back up. Who were Junior and Simone?”
“Junior was Eugene Bransen’s son. Simone was his fiancée. They were responsible for most of the tech at ITB. Not only responsible: they created some of it. Family of geniuses, they were. Anyway, it was a straight-up accident, or so I thought until Eugene died too. It was ruled a suicide, and sure, he was heartbroken, but he wasn’t the type. I should know. I’d been with them for ten years.”
Grace digested the news. He wondered how much of it she believed. His espresso was gone, so he ordered another and took a swig from his flask.
“What was it like, when you first joined?” she asked.
“The same as it had been from the beginning. ITB isn’t that old. It started, what? Fifty years ago, give or take. Eugene merged his Wyoming-based motor tech and mine engineering business with a European space firm. Went from Bransen Electric to Italitech-Bransen. ITB.”
“The long-term plan was to establish an automated ore and aggregate processing station in low-Earth orbit. It would act as a refueling and repair stepping-stone for mining operations on the Moon. Worked so well that they set up a sister station on Mars. Elysium Planitia services the Belt now.”
Martin had Grace’s attention: she was leaning forward, her coffee untouched, people at other tables unnoticed. He admitted to himself that he enjoyed unspooling the tale to a new employee—someone who’d follow in his footsteps, maybe.
“Now,” he continued, “understand that Eugene’s choice of the city of Casper was never an ideal location, being some forty-three degrees north of the equator. But what it lacked in latitude, it made up in available land. And no one complained about the noise, smoke, chemicals, electromagnetic disturbances, or fission byproducts.”
Grace shifted uneasily.
“Well, there were the cloisterfolk,” Martin said. “But most of them welcomed him as a native of Wyoming Compstate. They were proud he made the business local. And huge. ITB’s research and launch facility turned the sleepy town into a port and a megapolis.”
“So Eugene Bransen turned ITB into a space tech success. How did he do it?” Grace asked.
Martin’s refill arrived. He took a long sip of the hot espresso. Its rich aroma and bitter tang fortified him.
“ITB reduced the maximum payload cost using Simone’s engine design. And Eugene pushed the station’s orbit beyond Earth’s junk belt. They funded a mining colony on the Moon, removed the good stuff, and got it back to the high orbit shipyard.
“There were problems with the colony’s infrastructure at first—always are when you have to create your own atmosphere—but once the Helium-3 went to fusion sales, ITB more than made back the investment. Everything bigger than a mover needs that stuff.”
Grace nodded appreciatively.
“It wasn’t all easy, mind you. Eugene saw his moon base as a heroic plan to bring profit to Earth, but the Pure Moon movement saw it as strip-mining a precious international resource. There were demonstrations, minor sabotage. Things got really tense for a while after a pair of miners died. And from the beginning, there were pirates waiting for lunar capsules to become profitable enough to steal. ITB shareholders had to be placated more often than not. The Moon Project went from being an Italitech pipe dream to a political lightning rod. Hard to believe now, but it was a profit drain for most of its existence.”
“When did the company actually turn a profit?”
“About two years ago, the total profits caught up with the total losses over forty-eight years—forty years, if you go from the launch date. ITB had been pulling in money hand over fist as a whole by then, but it was a large initial investment. Junior went around with a big ‘I told you so’ grin for weeks. Until that point, no other public or private space concern had ever been profitable.”
“Was Junior running the company by then?” Grace said.
“Eugene was still in charge,” Martin said, “but all the ideas flowed up from Junior.”
“You said Junior was something of a phenomenon?”
“Yeah. He and Simone both. Junior had a knack for business and engineering. Sometimes I swear his charisma alone kept things running. And Simone—she knew software, hardware, genetics…”
Martin stopped. The memories still stung.
“What happened?” Grace said when the silence lengthened.
“It was very sad,” Martin said. “Shortly after their wedding announcement, Simone fell ill and died. Two weeks later, Junior was dead, too. Then Eugene himself.” He tipped his flask, but it was empty. “The ITB I knew disappeared with him.”
Martin looked up as Grace shifted in her seat. She looked agitated, and he found himself hopeful. He had been trying to dissuade her from making waves, but retelling the story brought the old feelings back. Nostalgia for a company and people he used to believe in. Maybe she wouldn’t let the spying thing rest. And he found he didn’t want her to.
“Look, Grace,” he said, leaning forward and meeting her eyes, “I’m not going to pluck this web. My time is done. But if you want to find the spider at the center of your mess, look to Maud.”
Chapter 20
“What now?” Grace hissed. Raj and Tim had chattered through her dermal dot for the past hour. Wasn’t that enough? She was only three meters away from Maud’s office and wanted to concentrate.
“Remember to keep your ptenda connected to us and your mimic fabric,” Raj said for the third time.
“Right, got it, now please be quiet!”
“And remember, the access port nearest the window. Good luck, Ms. Donner,” Tim said.
Grace thought about removing her dermal. She smiled benignly at three ITB employees as they passed and entered the lift down the hall.
Maud’s door was to the left. She listened. Faint sounds, but no voices. Raj and Tim were finally silent. She took a deep breath, straightened her jacket, and entered.
The inner door was open. From her position, Grace could see several blank displays. She moved forward silently. There was the corner of Maud’s desk. Grace craned her neck.
Maud wasn’t there.
Grace’s mind raced at the possibility. Could she just waltz in and deposit the gel? Like mini grinder Charlie. Should be easy: just dive in and swim for it.
She stepped forward.
“Donner? What are you doing here today?”
Grace nearly jumped out of her boots. Maud had been standing in the corner, staring out at the spaceport. Now she turned and walked over to Grace.
“Is there some confusion with the duty log? Wilmer mentioned there were some problems with the last uplink,” Maud said, fingering her ptenda and looking down at the screen. “No: three on, three off. You’re back the day after tomorrow.” She quirked an eyebrow and smiled at Grace. “Enjoy the rest.”
Maud started to turn away, then stopped.
“Well? What is it?”
Grace took a step forward. Always good to begin with the truth.
“I have a concern.”
“Something im
portant, Donner?”
Grace nodded.
Maud motioned for Grace to sit down.
“I’d prefer to stand, Protector Van Decker.”
Maud shrugged and sat down at her desk. She touched a small panel and the office door closed.
“What’s on your mind, Donner?” Maud leaned back in her seat and waited.
“Protector,” Grace took a quick breath before plowing ahead, “did you send a loafer into my apartment?”
Maud blinked, crossing her arms. “We have hundreds of loafers patrolling Port Casper, Donner.” She smiled, but there was a pucker of tension between her eyes. “Where do you live?”
You know where, thought Grace. “1964 Frawley.”
“Hmm. I see you chose our best property,” Maud said. “I lived there two years ago while my house was being constructed.”
She tapped her ptenda and one of the wall displays lit up with a map of Port Casper. Orange dots crowded the display. Maud rose and walked over.
“These are all the active loafers,” she said. “Zoom, Frawley.”
The image magnified Grace’s building. No dots.
“No, not today,” Grace said. “Last night.”
“She’s stalling.” Raj’s voice. Grace felt like removing the dot and throwing it to the floor.
Maud turned to the display. “Paths, prior twenty-four hours.”
Lines extended from the orange dots, all snaking around the Frawley except one, ending in a red X. Maud reached out and touched the line. The display read, “L-4R661.”
“Looks like you did have a loafer last night. Sorry it startled you. Standard procedure, you know. Should have been somewhere in your employee handbook.”
“It is not standard procedure to deploy loafers with auto-destruct.” Tim’s unexpectedly loud voice made her flinch. She hoped Maud didn’t see.
“Is it standard for loafers to auto-destruct?” Grace asked.
“Some of them do. Not the sort we’d use with a rookie protector.” Maud smiled, but her eyes were hard. “Why so uptight, Donner? Are you a cloister technophobe?”