by Isaac Asimov
“Switch to security setting,” Welton said. There was a click, and then a roar of static.
Cinta punched her own security code into the answer plate and the static cleared. “I am on secure setting,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve just finished reading the preliminary reports from the computer tap on Lentrall. And I think we need to make contingency plans, in case we decide to look after Lentrall ourselves.”
Cinta frowned. She couldn’t have heard that right, or else she had misinterpreted. Welton couldn’t seriously be considering a snatch job. “Say again?” she asked.
“I said we might want Lentrall for ourselves. More accurately, we might want to keep him, and his work, from the Infernals, if only for a little while.”
“Madame Welton, that would be madness! Absolute madness! If he’s as important as you say—”
“He might well be that important,” Welton replied. “Important in the way a plague or your local star going nova might be considered important. He’s a disaster waiting to happen. And if there is any madness about, he’s the one who has it. You will establish a full, round-the-clock watch on Lentrall—and you will prepare a contingency plan to kidnap him and hold him. Plan on the assumption of an attempt within the next few days, and hold the operation in hot-standby. I want a plan we can adapt to as many circumstances as possible, and one we can carry out within one hour of my giving the command.” There was a pause on the line, and for a moment, Cinta thought Tonya Welton was finished speaking. But then she spoke again. “And while you’re at it,” said Tonya Welton, “you might consider praying we’re not too late already.”
4
“RUN IT AGAIN, Gervad,” said Justen Devray. “With full enhancement and magnification.”
“Yes, sir.” Gervad activated the controls, and ran his own downloaded memory sequence one more time.
Devray watched as the imagery bloomed to life one more time. The bald head of Barnsell Ardosa appeared on the screen, the image rendered grainy and jerky by the magnification routine. Justen had run this imagery, and the images from Sapper 323, a dozen times by now. The Sapper’s imagery was a trifle sharper, but Gervad had had a very slightly better angle. Once he had downloaded a copy of the Sapper’s pertinent surveillance imagery, Devray had left the Sapper on the scene, with the surveillance aircar, and orders to watch for Ardosa’s reappearance. Sapper 323 was to follow him wherever he went, as discreetly as possible.
“All right, Gervad. Freeze on the clearest frame, and show me the image you got a match pattern from next to it,” Justen said, his voice eager, his expression alert. There was, in every good law officer, at least a bit of the hunter, of the pursuer, of the tracker who would follow the trail and never give up. That part of Justen had been very much awakened by the appearance of Barnsell Ardosa. Or at least by the someone who called himself that at the moment.
The robot obeyed Justen’s order, and the two still images—one grainy and slightly distorted, the other a sharp, clear identity scan—appeared on the flat screen.
There were times that robot identity matches failed altogether, when a robot declared an identity match between two images that a human would reject instantly as being of two different people. But not this time. The surveillance image might be of extremely low quality, but it was unquestionably the same man as in the university’s identity-scan image.
Justen stared hard at the surveillance image. The enhancement system had cleaned it up at least somewhat, but there were limits to how much one could use that sort of thing. Justen knew he could have ordered the robot to clean it up even more, but they were already at the point where the enhancements were close to guesswork. They would start losing information instead of gaining it if they did any more to the pictures. A more enhanced version might look better, but it would also look less like Ardosa.
Less like Ardosa. That thought resonated with Justen for some reason; but he was not sure why. Not yet. Let it ride. Let it come to him.
Justen Devray allowed himself a small smile. There were few things easier than not looking like Barnsell Ardosa. After all, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Ardosa did not exist. Justen had gotten his first clue to that interesting little fact when he starting trying to find out why Sapper 323’s pattern-match lists did not show Ardosa. The Sapper’s database should have included everything that Gervad’s had.
The explanation had turned out to be remarkably simple. Alarming, but simple. When Justen compared the dates on Gervad’s ID database against Sapper 323’s, he discovered that Gervad’s was only a few days old, while Sapper 323’s list had not been updated in a year and a half. That was not surprising, given the fact that the Sappers were not the most popular model in the world. The rental shop where Justen had gotten it had had a dozen Sappers powered down in the back.
Gervad’s database had Ardosa, but his database also showed that Ardosa’s records had been entered five years before—although Sapper 323’s eighteen-month-old database had no record of him at all.
In short, it was painfully clear that someone had managed to manipulate the police data files, and gone to that effort at least in part to insert an operative into the University of Hades faculty. It seemed unlikely that they had gone to all that trouble just for this one man. They were going to have cross-check the entire identity list—and start the long, dreary search for the security breach as well. Tiresome stuff. Justen gave silent thanks that he was not an officer in counterintelligence. They were going to have a mind-numbing job ahead of them.
But where had they—whoever “they” were—decided to put their man? Justen checked the listing a bit more carefully. In what part of the university did Ardosa spend his days?
When he got his answer, the hairs on the back of his head seemed to stand on end. The University’s Center for Terraforming Studies. That explained a great deal—a bit too much for Justen’s comfort. He had been quite mystified by the notion of someone bothering to insert an agent to watch over the moribund confines of the university. But terraforming was quite another matter.
The struggle to reconstruct the planet’s climate was at the core of all the other issues of the day. Whoever controlled the reterraforming project controlled power, and not just the raw, physical power of the terraforming machinery, but every other sort of power as well: financial, political, intellectual, everything. It made all the sense in the world for the Settlers or the Ironheads or anyone else to insert a man into the Terraforming Studies Center.
But something didn’t fit. Ardosa—whoever he really was—was not at all the sort of person Devray had been looking for outside the entrance to Settlertown. That stakeout was an ongoing operation, an attempt to establish a pattern of routine comings and goings. Casuals and walk-ins, as they were known in the trade. A deep-cover agent would know better than to use the front entrance, and thus risk blowing his cover. Unless there was something so urgent and important that it was worth risking all.
But terraforming was a project for the generations. It moved, of necessity, at a leisurely pace. Any given project was likely to take years to accomplish. What sort of terraforming information could be as urgent as Ardosa’s behavior suggested it had to be? Why go in the front door? Why not send word some other way? It was plainly impossible to shut down all forms of communication. There was always some way to pass a message in reasonable safety, provided you were willing to take a little time. You could send a written message carried by a robot. You could use a dead-drop, something as simple as a scribbled message hidden under a rock. You could send a perfectly normal hyperwave message saying something like, “Your shoes are ready to be collected,” or “Please order porridge for my breakfast,” with each phrase having a prearranged meaning.
Ardosa had to have some such way to contact the Settlers.
So what could be so vitally important that he would throw all that over and dive for the front door?
And who was Ardosa? Devray was certain he had seen that face before. B
ut where? He studied both images again. It was a distinctive face, not the sort that would get lost in the shuffle. In the surveillance imagery, it was wearing a worried look, and the identity scan image had that awkward, glazed, expressionless look of so many identity photos, the subject caught by the camera the moment before deciding what to do with his or her face.
As Justen stared at the images, there was one thing he became more and more sure about. He had never seen whoever it was in the flesh. He had simply seen an image of this man before. A flat-photo, a hologram, something like that.
A case file, then. That was what it had to be. The mug shots from some case he had worked on, or studied. A case big enough that Devray had studied every mug shot hard enough and long enough to have them burned into his skull. But Ardosa had not been a central figure in whatever case it was. Otherwise, Devray would have known him instantly.
A thought that had flitted through his mind a few moments before came back to him. Less like Ardosa. Was that part of his subconscious whispering that Ardosa no longer looked quite the way he had, whenever Devray had seen him? And it would have to be an older case, or else, Justen knew, he would remember the face clearly. He studied the images one more time. “Gervad,” he said, “delete the mustache from both images. And give me a range of reverse age regressions. Not in Spacer mode. We age too slowly. Do it in Settler mode. Go back ten chronological years or so. Standard spread.”
“Yes, sir.” The robot operated the image control system with a smooth skill, and the two images shrank to take up only a small fraction of the screen before the mustaches faded away from each of them, leaving a vague patch of simulation, the computer’s best estimate of what sort of upper lip existed under the man’s facial hair.
Then the faces multiplied, and began to shift and change, transmogrifying into younger variants. Some versions of the face grew thinner, or sprouted new hair. Wrinkles vanished, the slight double chin melted away. But there were so many ways for a man to age, and so many ways a man could prevent the aging, in whole or in part, if he chose to do so. Spacers, of course, made every effort to stop the aging process completely—but Settlers did not. They let themselves grow old.
Spacers were not used to people aging, not used to seeing their appearance change over time. If a near-ageless Spacer became friends with a youthful Settler, lost track of him, and then encountered the same Settler twenty years later, the Spacer would have a great deal of difficulty recognizing the older version of the Settler as being the same person. But Spacers had not lost this skill altogether. It could still be brought into play with a little encouragement.
The computer graphics system manipulated the images at a rapid clip. Within seconds, Devray was faced with two dozen versions of the same face, shifted and changed and re-formed. He studied each of them in turn. He was tempted to reject most of them at once, but resisted the urge to move too fast. He trusted his instincts, but only so far. Suppose the face he rejected turned out to be the one that spurred his memory? But still and all, he had to trust what his subconscious was telling him. Number One had too much hair. Number Two looked far too young. Three and Four were plainly too thin, while Six and Eight were far too portly.
Justen Devray stared at the images, slowly, carefully, one at a time. Something in the back of his head whispered that he was close, that he was going to get the answer, that he was about to make the connection.
And then he saw it. Face Number Fifteen. That was the one he knew. He was sure of it. And suddenly, in a moment like a piece dropping itself into place in the puzzle, he knew. He knew who it was.
He had seen Ardosa’s mug shot before, all right. And the man calling himself Ardosa had been involved, if on the periphery, of a big case. The biggest case Justen Devray had ever been on. The murder, five years before, of Governor Chanto Grieg.
JUSTEN RUBBED HIS face and blinked hard. “I’m sorry I’m a bit punchy, sir. I’ve been up all night on this one. I came straight from the archives room to here.” He blinked and stretched, trying to bring the room into focus. Apparently Kresh’s wife was waiting in the main office, just down the hall, and that was why Kresh had brought him in here, to an assistant’s office, for the meeting. Kresh had assured him the assistant would not be in for another hour, but even so… The paintings on the wall, the tastefully chosen furniture and decoration, made it seem a strangely personal space. Justen felt as if he were intruding.
“It’s all right, son,” Kresh said. “Sit down.” Kresh sat on one end of a low couch, and gestured for Devray to sit down on the other end. Justen did so, gratefully. “Donald, bring the Commander something hot and strong with a dose of caffeine in it.”
“At once, Governor,” Donald replied, and went off to take care of it.
“All right then, Commander. My wife and I have a rather important meeting at ten this morning. That gives us just about an hour. Will that be enough for whatever it is?”
“I don’t think it’ll take five minutes, sir.” Justen hesitated a moment, and then decided to plunge ahead. “This appointment at ten, sir—would it by any chance be with a Davlo Lentrall?”
Kresh looked surprised. “It would indeed, Commander. I haven’t told anyone I’m meeting with him again, outside of my wife. Might I ask where you got that particular tidbit of information?”
“Thank you, Donald,” said Justen. Kresh’s personal robot had returned with a cup of what seemed to be remarkably strong tea, and Justen took it from him. Like most Spacers, Justen rarely bothered handing out “pleases” and “thank yous” to robots, but, somehow, Donald 111 was a special case. He took a quick sip of the tea, and found it as reviving as he had hoped. “I got my information from two sources,” he went on. “From our old and dear friends in the Settler Security Service, and from the Ironheads. Neither of them gave me the information on purpose, of course, and neither of them knows what I’ve found out. But I learned it from them, all the same. If they don’t know all about him by now, they will, very soon. And whatever he’s involved in has got both outfits about to go ballistic.”
“Do you know what Lentrall’s been working on?” Kresh asked.
“No, sir. But if the Settlers and the Ironheads don’t know by now, they will by lunchtime. I can tell you they are both digging as hard as they can.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning, son?” Kresh suggested.
“Yes, sir. I’ve been sitting in on the various ongoing operations, just to see how things are going, to get a feel for what my officers have to deal with, and so on.”
“And it gets you out of the office now and then,” Kresh said with a smile. “I used to do the same thing when I was running the Sheriff’s Department.”
Justen smiled back. It helped a great deal to have a governor who used to run a law enforcement agency. He understood things without needing too much explanation. “Yes, sir. In any event, I sat in on the Settlertown main entrance stakeout. Normally the officer assigned to that duty is expected to provide his or her own vehicle or other watch post, and his or her own robotic assistance, and is later reimbursed. The thinking is that keeps us from using the same three vehicles and the same three robots over and over. It should make us harder to spot. It also encourages the officers to be a bit more creative, show some initiative. In any event, I did the drill myself. I brought my own personal robot, and rented a second robot and an aircar. That stakeout is sort of a grab-bag affair, more than anything. Every once in a while we spot someone going in who shouldn’t be, and we can run some checks.”
“But something a little different happened.”
“Yes, sir. My robots spotted someone not on the watch lists. My robot could ID him, but the rental unit could not, even though it was a security model. I later found out that the ID database in my personal robot had been altered. My robot’s list is a copy of the standard CIP list—and I’ve confirmed that the standard list has been altered as well.”
“Someone inserted a false ID profile into the CIP database?”
“Yes, sir. And I might add that the real identity of the person in question is not in the file. I’m not sure if that’s because he was deleted by the same people who inserted the false idea, or if the real identity’s file was culled in a routine file purge.”
“I see. And who is someone pretending to be?”
“Dr. Barnsell Ardosa, of the University of Hades Center for Terraforming.” Justen pulled hardcopies of the original images out of his carry bag. “This is the university’s ID image,” he said, handing them over. “And this is the surveillance image.”
Kresh took the two images, and let out a low whistle. “Norlan Fiyle. The rustbacking Settler in the Grieg case. The mustache hides some of him, but it’s not exactly an impenetrable disguise.”
Justen Devray looked at Kresh in impressed surprised. “The face looked familiar to me,” he said, “but it took me hours and hours, and every image-manipulating trick in the book, before I was able to place him.”
“You’ve been a working cop since then,” Kresh said, still looking thoughtfully at the images of Fiyle/Ardosa. “There have been a lot of other faces for you to deal with, on a lot of other cases. Fiyle—I never met him, of course, but he was part of the last case I ever worked. I can still shut my eyes and see every page of the case file. Did you ever meet him?”
“No, sir. I wasn’t in on that interrogation. Maybe I should have been.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Kresh said, his voice gentler than his words. “You were running a big part of a vital case. He was picked up on the far side of the Great Bay from where you were working, and he gave up the one piece of information we needed almost at once. Why in the devil should you have chased after him? Just in case he popped up five years later?”
“I suppose you’re right. But even so, right now I wish I had gone to get a look at him.”
“Hmmmph. Water under the bridge. Let’s get back to the point. You’ve had a chance to check the files, and maybe my memory isn’t as infallible as I’d like it to be. Give me a quick summary on friend Fiyle.”