by Janet Morris
The Hangers that NAMECorp had brought in for the session were in the middle of the conference hall, and that made the debate emotional. It was harder to control tempers when living things were staring at the people deciding their fates.
Remson wouldn't have changed places with Croft for all the money in the Threshold Interstellar Bank. But troubleshooting was what Remson got paid for, and Croft needed to know what Remson had to tell him. And Mickey needed to know it now, before this meeting broke up for the night. And before Ayatollah Forat cornered the Secretary publicly to field his accusations.
Croft saw Remson waiting in the wings. The Secretary was a professional's professional. He leaned sideways, whispered in the ear of the dignitary next to him, and was out of his chair and striding toward Remson before the man in the chair next to his now-empty one could announce that the Secretary had passed him the moderator's job for the rest of the night.
"To what act of Providence do I owe your presence?" Croft asked gratefully, clapping Remson on the arm as he reached him.
Remson turned with his boss and the two of them walked behind the curtains, toward a side exit.
"Sir, I wish I had better news, but you'll understand my urgency ..."
Croft shot a glance at him and kept walking, his sharp chin lowering just slightly, watching the toes of his shiny wingtips as they hit the floor. He didn't say a word, just waited.
"Sir, Ayatollah Forat's daughter, Dini, is missing, so her father claims. He's blaming Dodd, both for her purported tardiness last night, her general bad behavior since then, and now this. That is, he's blaming Dodd when he's not blaming the general corrupting influence of Threshold, with its 'sybaritic lifestyle.' "
"Where were the Medinan bodyguards, the purported 'sentient service staff' members whom he brought with him? Are you sure this isn't a stunt staged to cut our legs out from under us tomorrow, when those very subhumans come up for discussion? These people are virtual slavers. You can't trust them not to be concocting the whole thing to prove that the bodyguards are fallible subhumans, rather than what we're saying they are: a bioengineered species that's close enough to the template to deserve full human rights."
"Yes, sir," Remson sighed. "I thought of that, sir. They've got two bodyguards, an Ali-4 and an Ali-5, who are slated for destruction because of this mess. I assume we'd like to halt any such act until the Ali-4 and Ali-5 entities can be examined by an impartial panel, but ..."
"But?"
"Well, sir, I wonder if we're not playing into their hands.
Their bodyguard class is still technically a class of support system, nothing more. If we interfere with the Medinans' replacement of what they insist are biological machines, then where are we?"
"In the soup, as my father used to say. What do you suggest, Remson?"
"I'd like to make a stab at finding the girl, sir. I'd like access to your modeler." Remson held his breath.
The modeler wasn't legal for government work. Its results wouldn't be admissible in any court as evidence, nor would its use be clearly within guidelines, even to find a missing person.
"If you do, I don't know about it. You realize that we haven't enough information on the Forat girl to do a successful model? So whatever you get is just for your own edification."
Nicely done, Remson thought admiringly. "Well, sir, the girl had brought a mocket—that's a pet indigenous to Medina—along, and maybe I could use the mocket to build a template, if the Medinans will let me have the mocket. Or maybe that's too risky—" He backed off, seeing Croft's face.
"I certainly wouldn't ask. Of course, if the thing got lost, or if it could be used to track the girl like a bloodhound ..."
"Right, sir. I'll get right on it."
"See that you find her fast, if she's somewhere to be found, Vince."
"Yes, sir. I'll try, sir."
"And Vince—good work, so far. I'll try to stay clear of the old man. If that's not possible, at least I'm prepared. How's our Relic doing?"
"Waiting for his negotiating team, sir. I've got discharge papers, signed and sealed, if we'd like to employ them in any way."
"No, don't push that angle. If they're the originals, we wouldn't want to say how we came by them; if they're not, that's worse. Unless the Relic should kill himself or be killed during this interval, we won't be using those."
"Yes, sir. That's what I thought. But I had to check."
"Go work me a miracle, Vince." Again, the squeeze on Remson's arm.
Croft paused, and seemed surprised that he was standing before the exit. "Well, back into the fray. I'll probably be seeing our dear Ayatollah for drinks, now that I've had a chance to think things through, rather than attempt to avoid him."
To take the heat off me, and the attention, Remson realized.
He'd never worked for anyone remotely as capable as Michael Croft. He wanted to say that, but he couldn't find a way. He merely waited until his boss went through the door before he headed off to the Medinans' hotel, where, with luck, he could finagle the mocket that belonged to Dini Forat.
Vince Remson needed to find out who'd been helping that girl, because it sure wasn't Dodd. Some of what lay ahead was pure police work, some was databank searches, some was the sort of thing that Remson did best: the impossible.
Well, he was about to see if he could still earn his keep.
He delegated tasks from his car on the way to the Medinan hotel. Then it was time to knock on the suite's ornate door and ask to speak to whoever was in charge at the moment.
It was the first time he'd ever been in a position to relate directly to one of the Ali-class bodyguards, and it gave him the creeps. Or rather, the thought of them being considered disposable machines gave him the creeps.
The Ali who ushered him into the suite was designated Ali-7 and it was decidedly unhappy. Could machines perspire? There were beads of sweat on the Ali's lip. He knew it wasn't really a machine, just a vat-grown piece of genetic engineering, and that its hundred or so human parents shared the pride of the vat's produce with a team of bioengineers who'd taken a snip of DNA from here, and a bit from there, and added some source code that never occurred naturally in human beings.
So what was it?
Damned if he knew. Whatever it was, it was nervous, standing eye to eye with him. Remson was six foot two and stocky, pure Scandinavian peasant twenty generations back, and there were few men on Threshold of his displacement. There also were few with his combination of skills.
He evaluated the Ali and his experience told him he was looking at a well-trained fighting . . . being.
Not a machine. A being.
He said to the Ali, "I'm from the Secretary General's office." He flashed his ID. "I'd like to pick up some effects of the missing girl, to help me find her. Also, her mocket, who might be able to trace her like a bloodhound."
"Blood hound?"
"Scent its master."
"I can do that," said the Ali out of a broad, square face with wideset eyes and a hawk nose.
"Well, then you're welcome to come along, if you've got the time." Could the Ali help him? Would it?
It would, and it could, it seemed. The Ali came back with a woman's veil and the mocket, which looked like a little white dog at the moment, and put the creature down. He handed its leash to Remson.
"I have permission, sir, to aid you. My brothers' lives depend upon it." There was a very human gleam in Ali-7's eyes. His voice came from deep in his throat, a voice with a passable English accent.
Feeling heartened, Remson said, "Come on, then. Let's go."
He peered around. The suite seemed empty, but for Ali-7, but it was clear to Remson that he was supposed to surmise just that. Dini Forat could be locked in her room's closet, for all he knew, or might have been smuggled onto the Medinan ship in one of the oriental rugs that the Medinans had brought with them.
But out he went with Ali-7, wondering whether he dared have the Ali around when he used the modeler on the mocket. The big bodygua
rd moved with a grace that Remson envied, and a certainty only special kinds of men possessed.
Not men, he reminded himself. But the Ali-7 was more of a man, in Remson's terms, than most of the diplomats he'd been squiring around the conference.
Once they were out of the hotel and in Remson's long, low government car, he said, "Ali-7, tell me everything you can remember hearing about Dini Forat's disappearance, and I'll record it for our records. Even the smallest thing will help." He hit a toggler.
How smart were the bodyguards? The Medinans had avoided IQ tests, for the obvious reasons: You gave IQ tests to people.
Ali-7 absently lifted the little white mocket onto his lap and stroked the shivering pseudo-dog. It quieted immediately.
"The details, seen by Ali-4 and Ali-5, are as follows . . ."
Once the AH started reeling off street names and club names and a detailed itinerary of Dini Forat's movements until she'd slipped out on Dodd, Renison knew he was on the right track.
When Ali-7 stopped for breath, Remson offered the bodyguard a drink from the car's bar. It was just habit.
Nobody could convince him that this wasn't a person, or at least a candidate for personhood. He wondered what would happen if he modeled an Ali. Then, because he was getting excited about the possibility, he said, "Can the mocket become any kind of dog? Can it be bigger? Can it have other attributes?"
The mocket was a Medinan life-form that molded itself into a pleasing image. It was some sort of chameleon life-form.
"You must show it a picture of what you want it to be. Also, it cannot be more than three times its current size."
"That's big enough. We'll show it a bloodhound—a talented sniffing dog—and see if it'll take that shape."
"Shall I continue?" the Ali wanted to know.
"I'm sorry, Ali-7, I cut you off. Surely. Tell me where Dini Forat was today."
"First she arose and left her bedroom for the bath. . . ."
The detailed account continued until they were nearly back to Remson's office before he interrupted the Ali: "What did you say?"
"She called a number from a public booth: 0237-9047509."
"How can you know that?" Remson was so intrigued that he sat forward.
"I have Ali-5's word on it. He was surveilling her."
"Okay, that's good enough. Then what happened?"
"Mistress Dini went into a place where Ali-5 could not follow." The Ali shook its head ruefully. Its mouth tightened. Then it looked up. "We are not permitted into some places. It makes the job of protecting our charges exceedingly difficult."
"It's okay, fella," said Remson, as if it were one of his own men who'd been frustrated in the performance of his duties by red tape and protocol.
"When she did not come out, he went looking for a back entrance. We think now that Mistress Dini got into a car that came to the front during that time, but this is only supposition."
"Supposition?" The idea of putting this Ali-7 down like a dog, or pulling his plug like a piece of outboard equipment, was increasingly bothering Remson.
"Ali-5 and I went back to the place and questioned the staff—very politely."
"I'm sure. Tell me more."
By the time they parked under Remson's office complex, he wasn't sure he was going to need the modeler after all. He had a phone number; he had an approximate time of pickup from a vehicle at a specific location. Even a ConSec sergeant could get a plate number on the car, scrolling for general surveillance data. It would be easy to verify whether someone had entered the car, if the surveillance angle was right.
Remson was going to get a location and name on the phone number. Then he was going to take Ali-7 and the mocket out hunting with him.
After that, once he'd found the girl (if she was still on Threshold and hadn't been smuggled out by an accomplice), he was going to talk to Croft about the Alis.
But first he needed to check with Security to see if anyone had called in a ransom for Dini Forat. If she hadn't run away purposefully, maybe they could just buy her back from a captor.
And he needed to double surveillance and security on outgoing flights, in case she was intending to slip away but hadn't done so yet.
"Come on, Ali-7, you're going to like the way we do police work on Threshold."
Remson held the door open for the Ali and the mocket he cradled so tenderly, which had belonged to his mistress.
Vince Remson knew then and there that he was going to run this Ali-7 through the modeler. He couldn't resist finding out whether the modeler thought it was dealing with a man. Vince Remson certainly did.
If the two of them could find the missing mullah's daughter together, it might help the Alis' case. At least, it might save the lives of Ali-4 and Ali-5.
CHAPTER 13
Do It Yourself
These scavengers were dangerous customers. Sling knew that all too well. He looked at the old guy with the yellowish white ponytail and smiled as if this Keebler were exactly the sort of client Sling specialized in servicing.
"What can I do for you, exactly, Captain Keebler?" Sling asked casually, but carefully, putting his rubber-soled boots up on the desk he'd made out of the wing flap of an antique spaceplane.
The fat old fart bared scummy teeth at him and settled into a slouch against the door that separated Sling's tiny office from the business end of his business: the shop, lab, and garage bay.
"Well, sonny, heard from folks that yer the best there is, with custom work."
"Sometimes folks exaggerate, Captain Keebler. Which folks did you mean?"
You couldn't be too careful. This old guy was too perfect to be for real. Maybe he wasn't a scavenger at all, but some kind of undercover cop trying to start up a sting operation. When you were as vulnerable to being caught on the fine point of the law as Sling often was, you went very slowly with people who just showed up on your doorstep.
Keebler named the two top men in the Salvagers' Local. Sling had done work for both of them, some of which wasn't anywhere near legal.
"Well, what can I do for you, Captain Keebler?" Sling repeated the question, still not sure he really wanted to hear the answer.
"I need a special kind o' tool."
"Doesn't everybody?"
"One to get me inside somethin' that don't have no obvious entrance."
"Let me guess," Sling proposed. "You tried telling it 'Open, Sez Me' and it wouldn't, right?"
"Close enough, sonny."
"Name's Sling." Sling's feet came down off the desk. He picked up a corroded intake nozzle and tapped it against his palm. "And you've got to do better than that, if you're trying to tell me anything about your problem. If you're not ready to do that, there's no way I can help you." He dropped the nozzle on the desk.
"Got anythin' t' drink around here, Sling?"
"Sorry, fresh out." These scavengers usually had good reason to be nervous. Salvage rights weren't enforceable until you brought whatever you'd found into port and registered it. Sometimes what you'd found was nasty, therefore very valuable, therefore you didn't want to register it because the government would confiscate it and you wouldn't get diddly from them. There were whole classes of weaponry and fusionables and contraband (everything from drugs to explosives) on the Controlled Items list that would go— went—for a high price on the black market.
Sometimes that price could be your life, if you had what somebody wanted and he thought killing you would be cheaper than paying you for it.
So Sling tried to stay away from the scavengers. They were all mean. They were all crazy. They were all trouble. But Keebler was a well-connected scavenger; the union bosses whose names he'd dropped could make Sling's life a living hell if he didn't at least consider this old scumbag's problem.
So maybe, if Sling wanted to continue in the aftermarket business, he'd better be more polite: "Tell me what you need to get into and I'll tell you if I think I can help you, or who might be able to do the job if I can't."
"I need to get into
somethin' nobody's ever gotten into before. Somethin' nobody's ever seen before. Somethin' real special." There was a glazed look in the scavenger's eye as he spoke. He came over to Sling's desk and leaned on it. "There's lots in it for y', sonny, iffen y' can gimme what I need."
Sling sat forward as well, leaning into a shower of garlicky breath without so much as a wince. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I got me an art-i-fact, is what. And I want a tunable AI, coupled with an electronic locksmith, so's I c'n open 'er up."
"How about a zero-point torch? Cut your way in?" A torch wouldn't have Sling's signature on it the way a custom black box would. He could sell this guy a torch and it'd be legal. What the scavenger did with the torch, that was up to him.
"Nope. Tried that. Do I look like some greenhorn to you?" The scavenger's scruffy eyebrows came together over his nose. "C'n y' do it, sonny? Or are y' just another pretty face?"
"I can do it, no sweat," flared Sling. "But how do I know you're not going to try robbing a bank with something like that? I got a legal shop here. I got records to keep. I got people to answer to."
"That's right, sonny. People t' answer to. Remember that."
"Lookit, you damn puddle of nuclear waste, you back the hell off." Sling came out of his chair. The old guy straightened up. But he didn't back off.
"Yer not legal enough t' mess with me about this, sonny. I been tol' that." He put huge hands on his love handles.
"Don't threaten me. You're not giving me squat to work with."
"You don't need to know but what I'm tellin' you. I said, tunable. I want a EHF freq range—you ever heard of a bank vault locked up with a combination in the extra-high freqs?"
Whatever this was, the old guy was right—it wasn't bank robbery. It wasn't hijacking, either. "How can I do . . ." Sling closed his mouth. He probably could put together some kind of tunable EHF safecracker. It wasn't that hard. It was just weird. Nonstandard. Maybe not even illegal.