Fool's War

by Sarah Zettel

  She hooked her fingers around her Guild necklace. There is an explanation for this, and it’s going to be reasonable and beneficial, and Cohen and I are going to find out we’ve been panicking over nothing. She made her way to the staircase and started down toward the data hold. Oh, I wish I believed that.

  Lipinski, surprisingly, was not at his station. Odel looked up as Dobbs entered and gave a wry grin at her surprise.

  “The Sundars came in and practically hauled him out bodily,” said Odel before she could ask about his supervisor. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’s obeying orders and getting some rest.”

  “Thanks.” Dobbs didn’t even stop to make a covering joke. She just turned around and headed up the stairs for the berthing deck.

  The entry light on Lipinski’s cabin hatch was red. Dobbs palmed the reader anyway, sending a signal of her presence inside. She found herself shifting her weight nervously while she listened to the silence filling the corridor. Lipinski wouldn’t even have to ask who it was. The intercom would have already told him. He could simply choose not to open the hatch. She tried to use the time to figure out how she was going to play this. She’d have to be very careful. The problem was, a large, weary portion of her did not want to “play” it anyway at all.

  That however was not possible, considering who she was and who he was. It was not possible now, and it never would be.

  At last, the faint hiss that signaled an opening hatch sounded from the threshold in front of her, and the cabin hatch rolled back. Lipinski was not in the threshold. Dobbs crossed into the cabin. Lipinski sat at his desk. His legs were so long that his knees bumped the bottom of the boards. He only twisted halfway around to face her as she came inside.

  “Hi,” he said noncommittally. “Come on in. Have a seat.” He nodded towards the unfolded bunk.

  “No thanks,” she said. “This won’t take long.” I hope. She let a look of anxiety creep onto her face.

  “Problem?” inquired Lipinski in a voice that he was trying hard to keep bland.

  “Yes.” She hooked her fingers around her necklace. “Something’s gone wrong with the search for the AI. I don’t know what it is, but something is being covered up. I think it didn’t run away. I think it was stolen.”

  Lipinski pushed the chair away from the desk and turned all the way towards her. “You think?” He lowered his pale brows. “Or you’re pretty sure? You sound pretty sure.”

  “I am pretty sure.” She decided to take a chance. “When I checked up on it, to find out if it had anything to do with resetting the clocks, there was somebody else there. It had to have been another Fool.” By the strictest definition, anyway. “There’s no one else who can do what we can.” She tapped the implant behind her ear. “But my Guild Master’s covering up whatever happened.” There, I’ve said it. I must really think it’s true, but how can I really think it? I’ve just accused Guild Master Havelock of betraying all of us. A sigh escaped her. “I don’t even know if anything’s being done.”

  Lipinski ran his hands slowly up and down his thighs, as if trying to rub something off his palms. He looked away from her and studied the view screen over his desk. “And so what do you want me to do about it?” he asked the screen. “I mean, you must want something. You’re standing here.”

  Yes, I am, aren’t I? She looked at Lipinski. She needed this man’s help, she wanted his friendship. Maybe she wanted more than she could have. He wanted her to be honest with him, which was more than he could have.

  But it doesn’t have to be that much more.

  Dobbs crossed the room and stood right next to the desk. She waited until Lipinski let his bright eyes focus on her again. “First, I want you to understand why I do what I do, and why I’ve made the decisions I’ve made. I do it so that Kerensk never happens again. The Guild works, Lipinski. Since its inception there have been less than fifty full break outs. Less than fifty in two hundred years. We track, we monitor, we watch and we haul anything that’s about to break free out of the networks. Sometimes we make difficult choices because we need more information, or have to move fast. But we do it, I do it, so there won’t be any more panics and lost colonies.” She caught his gaze and held it. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I need you to understand it’s what I believe, what I have always believed.” What I still believe. I do.

  Lipinski searched her eyes for a long moment. “All right,” he said at last. “I believe you believe it.”

  She let out another sigh. “Thank you. I wanted you to understand how hard it is for me to say what’s coming next.” She braced herself against all his possible responses. “I want you to help me break into the Fool’s database to see if we can find out who might have stolen the Farther Kingdom AI.”

  Lipinski drew back as far as the chair would allow. “You’re not serious.” He glanced quickly away. “That was stupid, of course you’re serious,” he told the bunk. He looked back at her. “Do you think there’ll be something in there?”

  She nodded. “We’re very paranoid record keepers. If a Fool did this, there’ll be something in there for us to find. Specifically, I want to know if there’s anybody who’s not where they’re supposed to be.”

  Lipinski gave her a strange sideways look. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just, um… ” he gestured towards her right ear.

  She shook her head. “Aside from the fact that I’ve really overdone my on line time in the past few days, station security might be specifically tagged for my signal. They’ll be expecting me. You, on the other hand, shouldn’t even be able to find the front door, never mind get through it.” She let her hands twist together. “So they won’t be particularly watching for a non-Guild signal from Pasadena. At least not past a certain point. Also, considering where you come from, the Guild Masters won’t think I’d take the chance of telling you any of this. They think I’d expect you to just panic if you knew what was happening.”

  He dropped his gaze to his own hands, which were still rubbing back and forth on his trouser legs. “Can’t see why they’d think that.”

  She allowed herself a small smile. “Me either. You’re so calm and rational on the subject of live AIs.”

  “What if a Fool didn’t do this?” he asked the floor.

  “Then we need to know that too.”

  When Lipinski looked up again, his face was utterly frank. “Look, Dobbs, I don’t like this. But then, I haven’t liked anything about this run since I found out about Marcus Tully’s binary boards.” He lifted his hands off his thighs and ran them through his hair. “And it just keeps getting worse.” For the first time there was a soft, hopeless sound in his voice. Dobbs tried hard not to grit her teeth and only partially succeeded.

  “What I want to know is what you’re going to do if we do find something?”

  She spread her hands. “I don’t know. It depends on what we find and where it is. I’m hoping I can take it to the Guild Masters. If I can’t… ” Her back and shoulders knotted. “If I can’t then I’m going to have to take it to the banks and the Solar System authorities.”

  Lipinski was watching her very closely. She found it difficult not to squirm. “And there’s nobody in the Guild you trust enough to tap the database for you?”

  “There’s one or two, but… ” She waved her hand absently. “If we’re caught, there’s nothing they can do, or rather nothing they will do to you, or anybody else aboard Pasadena.” Not without running a horrible risk. “But there’s plenty they can do to me. At the very least I’ll lose my Master’s rank for good. I can’t, I won’t, ask anybody else to run that chance.”

  Lipinski tapped the side of his fist against the desktop silently and rapidly. “Well.” He picked up his pen. “We can’t do anything from here.” He unfolded himself, tucked the pen in his pocket and strode past her to the hatch. “Coming, Fool?”

  A real, heartfelt grin spread across Dobbs’ face. “Right behind you, Houston.”

  In the data hold, Lipinski dismis
sed Odel with three words and a hard look. When his relief retreated, Lipinski sealed the hatch and set the entry light glowing red.

  His expression was all business as he sat down at Station One.

  “So, what’s out here?” The touch of his pen lit the boards up. A spidery diagram of red, white and green lines drew itself across the main screen. The green lines were collected in a small bundle that sent short fingers into the big, loosely knit cluster of white threads. The long strands of red vanished off the side of the screen.

  “Bank lines.” Lipinski traced the fat red lines with his forefinger. “Us.” He tapped the tidy green net. “You guys.” He tapped the white. “Or at least, what you’ll let anybody see of you guys.” He frowned at the screen and then glanced up at her. “But I don’t really have to explain any of this to you, do I?”

  Dobbs gave him a small smile. “Not really.” She leaned closer, trying not to be acutely aware of the heat radiating off his skin. She forced her attention to the scanty web of straggling white lines. “That’s not even ten percent of the Guild Net,” she told him. “And actually, I’m surprised you can see that much.”

  “Trade secret. A concept I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

  Dobbs winced and clutched her shoulder. “A hit, a hit. She’s losing air,” she said, more from habit than for performance sake. She didn’t take her gaze off the screen. “And, of course none of the gateways are on there.” She lowered her hand and drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the edge of the board. “Can you show me what you’re using to get this map?”

  “There goes my trade secret.” Lipinski wrote out the recall command. A searcher blueprint appeared on one of the secondary screens.

  Dobbs studied the objects and connectors. Unconsciously, she tapped the board as if trying to reach through it to the schematic beneath. She stopped as soon as she realized that was what she was trying to do. She wanted to pick this thing up, to wrap her understanding around it and know it in an instant. She stuffed her hand into her pocket and forced herself to drink it in with just her eyes.

  “Not half bad, for a beginner.” The remark earned her an angry, unguarded snort from Lipinski. Actually, the searcher was neatly built; solid, compact and comprehensive. It just didn’t go far enough. “You need to attach three more runners,” She pulled out her pen and marked the spots with points of light on the board. “Here, here, and here. Then you need an anchor and chain, here.” She sketched in the construction. “And a whole herd of sniffers out here.” She speckled the outer edge of the blueprint. “And you need to spread it out. Keep the objects as far apart as possible.”

  Lipinski frowned. “It’ll be too big. They’ll spot it in a second.”

  “They’re looking for speed. Flashes will attract security. If we trickle our searcher in there and go as slow as possible, we might just get by. Especially since they won’t be looking for you.” She twirled her pen through her fingers. “You couldn’t possibly know the way in.”

  “Your Guild’s an arrogant bunch, aren’t they?” Lipinski pulled the searcher over into an active buffer and set to work, sketching orders with his right hand and tapping keys with his left.

  I didn’t used to think so, thought Dobbs, but she didn’t say anything. She slid into the chair in front of the relief boards and activated them. “I’m going to bring in a couple of things from my desk to help, all right?”

  “Sure,” he said without looking up. “The more the merrier.”

  I hope so. She called up a pair of trackers she had built herself. They were small, light and slow as molasses. In the net activity that surrounded the Guild, they’d be no more than ripples in the stream.

  She bit her lip to keep herself from asking Lipinski how he was doing and concentrated on checking over her own handiwork. This was no time to leave holes. When she’d finished her checks, she altered the trackers’ entire search routine. They had originally been designed for finding viruses and invaders. Now they would look for an entranceway.

  As little as she liked it, Dobbs saw no choice but to go in through the Drawbridge. There were several windows and back doors, but those were used exclusively for getting out of Guild Hall in a hurry. Anything trying to get in that way would be infinitely more conspicuous than anything trying to get in through the heavily trafficked drawbridge. Which was, of course, part of the point of having them. Given time, Lipinski might have been able to spot one of the windows and attempt to make use of it, never knowing he had signaled his presence by going entirely the wrong way.

  Finally, Lipinski said, “Is this more to your liking, ‘Dama?”

  Dobbs leaned across. The blueprint had all the additions she’d suggested and he’d managed to extend the connectors even farther than she’d hoped. Guild security was not so different from other programs. Information shot through the Fool’s network in packets, just like any other network. So, Guild security looked for fast, free-moving blips. It also looked for the large, solidly compressed masses of Fools. Slow-moving strings and shadows might just get by as background noise, especially if they could find something large and non-sentient to trail behind.

  “That’s perfect, Lipinski,” she said, meaning it. “What I want to do is send the trackers to find the front door and then send your searcher in after them.”

  “Trackers?” Lipinski’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean you don’t know the way into your own Guild?”

  “No, not from out here, I don’t,” she confessed. Lipinski didn’t actually squirm, but he obviously did not like being reminded so abruptly of her — How to put it? Dobbs wondered. — Special access privileges.

  “All right.” Lipinski lifted his hands away from the board and leaned back in the chair. “It does make me wonder why I’m here though.”

  Dobbs laid her hand on her breast and mustered a shocked look. “Well, you don’t expect me to drop these things into that soup do you? Yuch!” She shook her hand as if trying to clean something off it. “I’m just here to tell you what to avoid.”

  “Oh, great. Now you’re not only a Fool, you’re a ground-side pilot.” Lipinski leaned forward. Dobbs rewarded his quip with a soft chuckle. Lipinski pulled Dobbs trackers over to his active board. She had already opened their authorization to him, so he could set them in motion immediately.

  Dobbs slaved her monitors to his boards so she could see what he saw, and to some extent control it. She blanked out the heading on one of the keys and wrote FREEZE across it. On the board, she wrote the series of commands that could halt the searcher and attached them to the re-named key.

  Lipinski’s gaze flickered to the new label, and then up to her face.

  “If I see anything suspicious, I want to be able to stop the searcher without having to yell at you.”

  Lipinski accepted that with a shrug. He didn’t waste any more time. He focused the main view screen on one of the few threads of light that ran from the Guild to the Pasadena.

  Enlarged, the image fractured. Instead of steady lines, it looked more like a cluster of fireflies, some of which carried long strings between them.

  The graphic, Dobbs knew, was little more than a crude map. It could give general locations and a decent overview. The vital information was contained in the long columns of numbers that appeared on the secondary boards. Those indicated load shifts, capacity, and new entries, as well as the nature of the packets swarming around them.

  Dobbs could read all of it, if she had time. The Guild drilled the codes into all of its members. Lipinski, though, could take it all in at a glance, as if it were printed English. That, more than anything else, was the reason she needed him. Perhaps she could find the data she needed using her own searchers, but Lipinski could find it faster, and time was most definitely of the essence.

  A whole row of numbers flicked over to maximum.

  “Well, there’s your entrance.” Lipinski’s pen was already activating the recall command. “Isn’t it about time we talked about security?”

  Dobbs hesit
ated. Then, almost angry with herself for not being willing to say it, she told him, “There’s a non-sentient coordination program that’s responsible for spotting everything that moves and then either routing it or stopping it. But, considering the circumstances, there’ll be at least one Guild member on sentry.”

  To Lipinski’s credit, he didn’t hesitate for even a second. He activated his searcher and with a few short hand commands, lowered it slowly into the net. His gaze fastened itself on the numeric readouts.

  “And of course,” he said, “any… member who notices something unauthorized in your network will stop it themselves.”

  “Of course,” replied Dobbs drily.

  “Thought so.” Two rows of the figures now matched up perfectly. Dobbs glanced at the main screen. A thin, slow, emerald thread extended into the white guild net.

  They had made it through the Drawbridge. Dobbs’ heart began to pound slowly, heavily.

  “So, we need to duck the… membership.” Lipinski’s eyes never flickered from the screens. Dobbs realized this might be how he picked up his habit of talking to walls and floors. “Can you at least want to tell me what I should be looking for?”

  “Anything that moves.” As she spoke the numbers flickered so fast it could have been a glitch in the board lighting. “Like that.”

  It did it again. Dobbs hit the FREEZE key.

  “And what,” said Lipinski calmly. “Was that?”

  “The sentry,” said Dobbs. The numbers stayed steady for a good twenty seconds. “Okay, we should be clear. Move slow.”

  Lipinski considered the scene in front of him. He wrote his commands carefully on the board and touched the two activation keys. The display changed, one number per nervous heartbeat until the six-digit coordinates had ticked over and they had moved two inches.

  The screen flickered.

  “Damn,” hissed Dobbs under her breath and hit FREEZE again.

  “Didn’t think they let you swear,” said Lipinski, picking out the next set of coordinates.