“And?”
“And. And so there are cyberlinks. Cerebro-Augmented-Persons. CAPs. There are some who have perfectly normal brains. Most of us have some deficit, usually intellectual. Sometimes there’s an emotional disorder, sometimes a perceptual breakdown. Often there’s an accompanying emotional omission.”
“You mean like one or another emotion doesn’t develop?”
“I mean like one or another isn’t there. Missing hormone, bad wiring, experiential incapacity” Her voice came evenly, without the frustration Mace felt ought to be infusing each word, and her eyes were dry. But she projected a desolation that choked him, made his eyes sting and his fingers close tightly on the arms of the chair. “Quite often it’s a matter of access. The emotion is there, somewhere, but because of the way our brains work—don’t work, actually—we never know or feel... we don’t connect to it... we can be having that feeling somewhere and never know it... until we can learn it through the augment.”
“So when you ask me how....”
“I mean it exactly that way. You tell me you love me. Well, that’s... good, I guess. But...l like you, Mace. I enjoy being around you, you’re fun, I respect you, I want sex with you, I feel good when I’m with you, I’d like it to continue... but I don’t know if I love you because I don’t know what that is. I can’t find that emotion and all the rest don’t add up to it.”
“Do you hate?”
“No. Maybe. I fear. I resent. But trying to figure something out from its opposites doesn’t really work, does it? Not even for a normal.”
“When you listen to music in sensualist, you look like someone in love.”
“Do I? It’s ecstasy, but it’s all internal. I can’t make music, I can’t give it back. I just experience the sensation and when it’s done, it’s done. It doesn’t generate itself. When I’m not listening to music I don’t feel that way about it.” She scowled, a quick rictus. “It’s hard to describe. That’s part of the problem. What is love? Can you tell me? You feel it, you say, but—can you describe it for me?”
“No.”
“No. I’ve read a lot about it. People have been trying to for centuries. Even the best... well, I can do all those things, but it never reaches the level they claim.”
“How do you know you don’t—”
“I know. I don’t. At least not where I can get to it.”
“Is that why you offered to run Helen?”
“Partly. She loved you, you say. If so, then it’s in that encoding. I could learn from it. Find the connections.”
“You said partly”
“Yeah. Partly. The rest was a gift. You’ve been good to me for no reason I understand. I wanted to give you something. You need... completion. You need to talk to her again, if only to say good-bye. I thought....”
“And you claim you don’t know how to love.”
“I don’t.”
“Helen used to say that love is a willingness to sacrifice without reservation.”
“This isn’t much of a sacrifice.”
“Every time you offer someone something you make a sacrifice. Time, resource, feelings.”
“That’s what Helen said?”
“Once or twice.”
“I’d really like to know what that’s like.”
“Well. It will take a day or two to transfer the data into an augment. I’d want to be careful that nothing got jumbled. We wouldn’t want you talking upside down.”
The small reluctance that had clung to his decision disappeared when he saw her face become hopeful.
“Thank you,” she said.
He climbed from the tube station into a crowded plaza. It was well into midcycle, yet the “closed” sign glowed on Philip’s door. Mace pressed the mici and waited, casually scanning the throngs.
“Macefield.”
Philip stood aside and waved him in. Mace stepped into the shop and waited for Philip to lock the door.
“Please,” Philip indicated that Mace should go into the back.
Cambel waited, seated at the low, round table. Philip’s tea service waited in the center of the table.
“Sit down, Macefield.”
There was a brittleness about them both that Mace found infectious. He welcomed the delay of Philip’s tea ceremony. He accepted the cup, turned it, and sipped.
“Very good,” he said and set the cup down. “Well?”
“I brought the data about Hellas Planitia,” Cambel said, displaying a disc. She set it on the table. “What do you intend doing? Showing it to Ms. Dollard?”
“I thought I’d show her the personnel images,” Mace said, reaching for the disc, “see if one of them might be this Glim Toler.”
“It seems, Philip,” Cambel said dryly, “that our search has finally produced a result. The only problem is, she doesn’t know anything.”
Mace looked at her. “You don’t sound very excited about it.”
She shrugged.
“SA,” Philip said. “What did they ask you, Macefield?”
“A list of names,” Mace said, still watching Cambel. “They wanted to know if I knew any of them.”
“Did they monitor your responses?”
“Biomonitoring? As a matter of fact, they did. I believe I passed, even when I lied.” He looked at Philip. “Why?”
“Did you know any of the names?”
“Three of them. Glim Toler and Nemily Dollard. I got the impression most of the names were Lunessa, probably a lot of them living on Aea.”
“But not all?”
“Several were the usual baseline names—entertainers, politicians, artists, public personalities.”
“And the third name you knew?”
“Winston Cavery”
Cambers expression changed then, from somber to surprised. “What about Oxmire?” she asked.
“No.”
“So this could be a fluke.”
Cambel frowned. “Mace, did you know Cavery was Lunessa?”
“No, but at the time why would it matter?”
“You checked backgrounds,” Philip said, “didn’t you?”
“Not at the time, but later. I found nothing in his jacket about his being Lunessa.”
“So his name might have been included for a different reason,” Cambel said. Her surprise turned to suspicion. “What were they looking for?”
“PolyCarb is interested in this Glim Toler,” Mace said. “But he may not be the only one. All Koeln has been asking about is Toler, no one else.”
“According to your new friend?”
“Nemily?”
“Do you have another new friend?”
Philip frowned at her.
“Anything else?” Mace asked.
“Cambel told me about the show at 5555,” Philip said. “Disturbing.”
“That’s an understatement,” Mace said. “If what we saw is true, something is eating away at infrastructure on Earth. You said something the other day about rumors that entire databases were disappearing? This looked like more than data.”
“Did it remind you of anything?”
“Of course. Cassidy Five-Eight.”
“Midline,” Cambel added.
“Hellas Planitia,” Philip said.
“Do you think they’re all connected to what’s happening on Earth?”
“Directly?” Philip asked. “No. But if Reese Nagel can find out about it, certainly SA knows, and, we can assume, Lunase. It’s not exactly secret tech. We’ve been playing with some form of molecular solvent for a long time. Back in the Twentieth Century there were efforts to make organisms that would eat specific synthetics. Before the Exclusion, we knew about tailored micro tech that could dissolve oil spills, reduce plastics content in landfill—”
“What’s landfill?” Cambel asked.
“Garbage,” Mace said. “There are sites on Mars. It’s being reduced in a similar way to promote greenhouse gases, thicken the atmosphere.”
“Exactly,” Philip continued. “Rumor suggest
s that it became a viable weapon at one point, especially for industrial sabotage. Some of it, apparently, got away from them.”
“But who’d bring it upwell?” Cambel asked.
“Why would they need to?” Mace said. “We’d be able to make it ourselves.”
“It’s slightly more complex up here,” Philip said. “A lot of our materials are quite dense and exotic. Simple microtech wouldn’t be sufficient. We proof against failures by layering the different materials.”
“Normally,” Mace said. “But the molifiber on Mars was just a glorified tarpaulin.”
“And even if it had failed through some inherent weakness, its destruction would have impacted the site minimally. Except during a storm.”
Mace cleared his throat. “We always knew it was sabotage—”
“You always believed,” Cambel said. “I didn’t believe until the cover-up. The company couldn’t let it get out that someone might be actively sabotaging our sites. Shareholders get very uneasy about that.”
Mace stared at her. “Is that why Helen was there?”
“What do you mean, Macefield?” Philip asked.
“The company claimed Helen Croslo was never at Hellas Planitia. But they accepted my signature on her death certificate. They never told me—or anyone—where exactly she was supposed to have died. Cambel was directed to make sure I understood that the matter was closed, that
I wasn’t to dig into it anymore. Cover-up. What the shareholders don’t know won’t make them nervous. The company knew there was a problem and sent Helen to look into it. That’s what she did.”
“The company couldn’t have known what would happen,” Cambel said.
“I’m sure they didn’t expect her to die. The nature of the sabotage couldn’t be known. At least, not the way it was conducted. When Helen failed to prevent it, my presence complicated matters. I suppose if I hadn’t managed to get myself to Mars and make contact with her, I would have received a standard notice of death. Accident in space, wherever.”
“It’s taken you this long to figure that all out?” Cambel asked, her voice strained.
“No. But now I understand that maybe she was chasing someone as well as something. Was Glim Toler on Mars?”
“Ask your new friend.”
“Let’s assume he was,” Philip interjected. “What would that tell us? That the company knew about him then?”
“They might not have had a name then,” Mace said. “Maybe they expected it to be internal. A company employee, higher up the chain. Someone had to get Toler in and cover for him. Toler might be nothing but a gun. Someone else pulled the trigger.”
“And that person is still in place?” Cambel asked.
“If we’re looking at a pattern,” Mace said, “starting at Hellas Planitia, then Cassidy then Five-Eight...”
“And now Midline,” Philip continued, “then perhaps it’s become untenable. Getting too close to home, maybe. A name has surfaced. I suspect SA brought you in, Macefield, because of all the senior staff that was at Hellas Planitia, you and Cambel are the only ones on Aea.”
“No,” Mace said, “Piers Hawthorne was there, too.”
“Only as an insurance adjuster,” Cambel said. “His involvement was limited. Mine was...”
“Disciplinary,” Mace said. “You were there to reprimand me and make sure I hadn’t fouled up the investigation. But as soon as you could, you dragged me back to Burroughs, then got the order to bottle me up and keep me out.”
“Do either of you know if Piers has been questioned by SA?” Philip asked.
“I haven’t spoken to Piers since the day after the party,” Mace said. “You?”
“Not since he invited me,” Cambel said.
“We need to find out how the microtech is getting in,” Mace said.
“How much contraband did you get past InFlux while you worked there?” Cambel asked. “How does Philip acquire his merchandise? How do any of us get vacuum?”
“Of course,” Mace snapped, “but you assume then that whatever this destructive agent is, it’s coming through as common vacuum.”
“Not necessarily,” Philip said. “We’re talking about a tailored tech that can attack specific materials. Materials that more often than not have no public specifications, which cannot be analyzed outside a very well-equipped lab. So the primary problem is breaking down the molecular stucture to see how to design this presumed solvent. The chief component is going to be the analysis and design coding of the microtech.”
“Information,” Mace said.
“Exactly.”
“It’s necessary to know how a given material is put together before you can efficiently take it apart,” Mace mused. “If we’re looking at a pattern of sabotage—I assume we are now—then we need to know what materials are being attacked.”
“That’s difficult,” Cambel said. “After all, the samples have all been eaten.”
“But we can make some guesses,” Philip said. “Most of the material that goes into seals and insulation come from Lunase. They’ve been the primary providers of exotic materials since the Exclusion.”
“Glim Toler is Lunessa,” Mace said. “We know now that Cavery was also. Did they know each other?”
“Just being Lunessa doesn’t make someone a criminal,” Cambel said. “Unless you think your new friend is part of this.”
Mace bit back a sharp reply. Cambel’s attitude puzzled him. She was baiting him, but he did not see why. “If she is,” he said slowly, “it’s not conscious. But, Philip, the molifiber on Mars was Aean, not Lunessa.”
Philip smiled thinly. “Aea—specifically, PolyCarb—manufactured it, but the material was a Lunessa design.”
“Sold or stolen?” Cambel asked.
“A large use fee was paid several months after the accident, by
PolyCarb, to a Lunessa manufactory. It was larger than it should have been.”
“Let me guess,” Mace said, “the firm that held the original patent. Damn. PolyCarb pilfered the formula and set up a line to make it.”
“So,” Cambel said, “the incident at Hellas Planitia was retaliatory? But how could Lunase sanction something like that? It’s terrorism.”
Philip opened his hands wide. “Publicly, they couldn’t. But it would not be the first time in history a government fielded a covert operation that it was prepared to deny once its ends were achieved.”
“The trade talks,” Mace said. “They’d been suspended the year before Hellas Planitia. They resumed a few months later.”
“And they’re still going on,” Philip said. “I understand Lunase is being intractable over certain manufacturing issues. Their alchemists are demanding monopolies. Of course, the greater system can’t sanction that, so we continue, deadlocked.”
“Then Cassidy, Five-Eight, and Midline...”
Mace sat back, staring at the ceiling. They had often talked about Hellas Planitia, spun elaborate theories, most of which had gone nowhere because they lacked any real anchor to which the random facts they gathered might attach. Now they had a name, and action by SA and PolyCarb to highlight that name, and—that fast—the theories came together. Mace could not help but think they should have seen this before. Patterns often become meaningful only in hindsight.
Helen had gone to Mars, to Hellas Planitia, looking for Glim Toler. Perhaps she had not even known his name, but something prompted PolyCarb to divert her flight home from Ganymede and send her there. They had known something might happen.
“So what would Ms. Dollard be doing in all this?” Cambel asked.
“Why would she be doing anything?” Mace asked.
“Philip explained to me what you asked him about how cyberlinks are set up. Specifically the way Nemily Dollard is wired. Think about it, Mace. She’s the perfect trojan. She could bring something in and not know it. Never know it. Unless someone else has the program to bring it to the surface. If we’re talking about data, a recipe, then—”
“The vacuum she
brought in would have been a diversion...”
“Or the key to the program.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
Cambel scowled. “When did you get so dense? Think it through,
Mace. Someone—Glim Toler, by her own admission—plants vacuum on her and sends her here with it. She gets searched at Port Authority, the vacuum gets impounded. What then would normally happen to it?”
“Officially, it goes into storage for later analysis and possible inclusion in Aea’s public database. But the reality is that the vacuum just gets in by other channels. Favors, private trade among InFlux employees, other means.”
“And if it were a prearranged delivery? One person, in the right place, could intercept it.”
Mace nodded. “Nemily would get kicked back to Lunase—”
“Or not, depending on what happens at immigration. Say if one of the Port Authority inspectors is also Lunessa and is waiting for her.”
“That might be impossible to track down,” Mace said. “It doesn’t matter at the moment, we have a name. Glim Toler is here. Does that mean it’s time to destroy Aea?”
“He needs to be found,” Philip said. “The trade negotiations are stalling again. Midline has everyone involved scared and uncooperative.”
“We don’t even know what he looks like,” Cambel said.
Mace held up the disc Cambel had brought. “If he’s in here, Nemily can identify him.”
“Assuming she’s not part and parcel of the whole thing.”
“What would you suggest, then? Maybe I should beat it out of her?”
“She might like that.”
“What’s your problem, Cambel?”
“Mine? What about yours?”
“My problem? I have a problem?”
“Yes, I think you do.”
“Please—” Philip raised his hands.
“No, wait,” Cambel said. “I need to know something. Are you still interested in seeing this through, Mace? Or would you rather curl up in your dom with Ms. Dollard and just let the rest of us fumble along as best we can? Because all of a sudden now everything we’ve been poking into for the last couple of years is coming back at us. I think we need to know if you’re all the way involved or if you just want to run away Or if maybe you have a conflict.”
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