Voice of the Whirlwind

by Walter Jon Williams

  He cycled himself through the airlock and hovered outside, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Vesta was a dim glow beneath him. Floodlights spotted the surface, reflected by the shining skin of dozens of transport ships plugged like oxygen bottles into the rugged flesh of the asteroid. His breathing echoed in his ears. Speed twitched at his muscles. He drifted slowly downward, caught in the asteroid’s slight gravity.

  Orienting himself carefully, he fired his directional jets and winced as a shoulder seal rubbed against his burns. He weaved between huge, glittering transports, then out of the dock area and above the bare rock surface of the asteroid. Networks of red and white lights strobed across the skin of the rock, each pulsing out a pattern that identified a particular manufacturing dome, radar station, airlock. He oriented himself mentally, then jetted toward the white flashing light that marked an airlock, landed on the Velcro strip surrounding the door, his boots adhering to the strip as his knees absorbed the shock. The airlock door was labeled in black Roman letters: lev l, s 33, access 7. This would bring him into a main transport tunnel, South 33, rather than a secure industrial complex that might require him to log his identity on entry. He lowered himself to the lock controls, hearing in the small world of his suit the strange scrunch of Velcro ripping free, and requested the airlock door to open. It accepted his request without comment.

  He stepped through the lock into a large anteroom, armored against radiation, that was supposed to be used in case of decompression in S 33. Two emergency vac suits hung on racks. He put his own suit next to the Brighter Suns suits, straightened his jacket, and opened the heavy plated door. People soared by, tugging themselves along by ceiling loops or kicking themselves from one Velcro strip to another. Steward moved into traffic and flew along the ceiling loops until he came to an intersecting tunnel on which Brighter Suns inhabitants were hitching rides on a moving belt that took them to one of the giant habitation centrifuges. The speed welled up his spine. He pulled himself along the belt from one loop to the next, happy for the activity. Steward moved through a vast door into the central mainline centrifuge.

  Once there, he moved downward to point eight g, a comfortable level of gravity. This level was composed mainly of offices belonging to one or another of the policorporate bureaucracies. It was second shift and there weren’t many people in the area. The speed made Steward want to dance down the corridor. He could feel a grin tugging at his face and he tried hard to look serious.

  He entered a place that rented computer hardware and plugged a credit spike into a unit. He called up the Brighter Suns news bureau and began to look for scansheets dating from the nineteenth of February, the day that Angel told him Colonel de Prey died. There were no notices of violent deaths, no obituaries, no mention of someone named Steward.

  What Steward found were urgent headlines and public announcements concerning a contamination alert in the Power Trade Legation. No details were given, but the Power section of Vesta was sealed, biologic decontamination teams were mobilized, and all trade had ground to a halt. Something approaching martial law had been declared, then rescinded five days later. Scansheets were more heavily censored than usual, but sheets available on file from other policorps, which had themselves been censored during the emergency but put on file later, hinted heavily that some Earth bacteria had got across the seals into the Power section and made the Powers ill. Steward remembered the rumor that the reason the Powers left Earth in the first place was because they’d proved susceptible to Earth diseases.

  No permanent damage had been done, according to the sheets. The Head of Legation, a Power known as Samuel, had expressed his thanks to the Brighter Suns administration for their prompt and effective action during the emergency. The seals were opened on the twenty-fourth and normal trade recommenced.

  So, Steward thought. The Alpha had probably been sent by Curzon to spread some kind of contamination in the Power zone. But whatever contamination it was, it hadn’t lasted long—normal trade had resumed within days. Of course, considering the completely restricted access to the Power zone, it could have been a raging plague that killed hundreds of the aliens, and the news might simply have been censored.

  Someone knocked a stack of printout onto the floor behind Steward, and he almost jumped out of his chair. The speed was making him nervous. He broadcast a self-conscious grin over his shoulder and went back to his machine.

  Steward then realized that the trade might not have resumed at its former levels, that the announcement of normal trade may have been exaggerated. He went from the news sections of the scansheets to the section on ship arrivals and departures. The numbers of ships departing took a dramatic dip during the contamination alert, as might be expected, and then leaped upward after the alert had been ended. He flipped downtime and counted the number of ships leaving each day, finding an average of thirty-five to forty, then did the same count uptime from the twenty-fourth.

  There was a perceptible dip, four or five fewer departures per day less than average, even a week after the alert had been ended.

  Steward wondered if the drop in commerce running through Vesta was sufficient to motivate Consolidated Systems to make their attack. The loss to Brighter Suns was probably colossal, but even at the new, less efficient rate there was still an implausible amount of money flowing in, and the decrease was sure to be short-lived as soon as the Powers could send in more personnel. And of course such a blatant attack was certain to invite retaliation. Steward wondered if Consolidated Systems’ biological defenses were more elaborate than Brighter Suns’, if they were confident in fending off a Brighter Suns strike.

  Perhaps there was a greater dimension to all of this, Steward thought. Perhaps the purpose was to make the aliens doubt Brighter Suns’ ability to protect them against biological hazard. Perhaps the Powers would be convinced to do most of their business with Consolidated from now on.

  Steward logged out, took his credit spike out of the machine, and stepped out onto the silent second-shift street. His next bit of business would require a place more private.

  He walked along the dark alloy, looking at the names and corporate emblems that blazoned the long street. Deciding that Satellite Office Four of the NovaDiv Communications Subsidiary seemed most promising, he walked briskly into the building, nodding at the elderly uniformed security guard as he passed. The security guard nodded back.

  Inside, Satellite Office Four seemed to consist chiefly of small cubicles, each with a comp terminal and desk. Most of them were empty. Steward chose one at random, closed the door behind him, and activated the terminal.

  The first thing he did was jack Angel’s data spike into the terminal, then request a readout on what it contained. There was a complex identification number and a series of twelve telephone listings through which Angel could access various Pulsar Division offices or files. personfile was one of them, number six, and sounded promising. Steward told the computer to dial him number six. Speed was accelerating through his nerves and he kept missing the number on the keyboard. He saw an interface wire on an adhesive disk and stuck the disk behind his ear. Mental commands would be quicker anyway.

  The NovaDiv computer finished its dialing and the video monitor cleared to proclaim, welcome to the far ranger c-71 . The busy light above the needle jack went on briefly, then the screen read, identity confirmed. please choose option and enter correct password. There was no list of options. Anyone requesting the wrong data base was asking for an operator to come on line and inquire what he was doing here.

  The Far Ranger systems, Steward knew, were based on an assembly language called C-Matrix. Steward didn’t know C-Matrix except for a few commands drilled into him during his data-penetration training, but he hoped they would get him where he wanted to go.

  Steward told the machine to dive, a standard command used by C-Matrix programmers to get into the core language itself. The busy light above his spike glowed again briefly, and then suddenly he was in. Apparently Angel had the security
clearance to look at the C-Matrix programming.

  Steward breathed a sigh of relief. He suspected he was as far as the spike would get him, but the Far Ranger C-71 was an old model, dating back to the Outward Policorps’ occupation of Vesta. His Icehawk training would cover getting into a machine that old.

  He gave the machine an LDC command to get access to the directory of commands. He moved through the long file for a moment—the long column of commands and programs scrolled onward in his mind, projected onto the optical centers by the interface wire. The video screen was irrelevant now. There seemed to be a list of files with special prefixes that read, pulsar. One of them was pulsar*filesecur.

  Bingo.

  Steward was suddenly aware of his fingers drumming a long tattoo on his thighs, his feet dancing on the carpet. The goddamn speed was twitching his body like a puppet. He ignored the effect and told the computer he wanted to edit the C-Matrix program that surrounded filesecur.

  The extent of security programs is always a question of balance. The voice of one of his old instructors echoed in his head. Any file can be made safer by adding more and more levels of security, but soon the security will begin to take up more and more space in the system, and will begin to interfere with normal access by working personnel. At some point, security always becomes counterproductive. Balancing security and access is an art. For an outsider trying to gain access, an understanding of that balance is crucial.

  Pulsar was an outfit that by its nature maintained a high degree of institutional paranoia, so filesecur was probably studded with booby traps, sudden-death programs that would either terminate his inquiry or silently inform someone in the Pulsar hierarchy that their data files were being meddled with, allowing Steward to be traced. But the traps couldn’t be too elaborate, or Angel would have difficulty getting to the files himself.

  Balance, Steward thought. Security versus convenience. How well was filesecur guarded?

  Carefully Steward slid through the C-Matrix programming. Blocks of symbols formed in his brain. Most were apparent gibberish. He mapped the program as carefully as he could, tracing every line of programming that led into or out of pulsar* . He was trained to recognize some of what he was looking at, the if/then statements that constituted a trap. Each time he came across such a statement, he modified it so as to accept his own password angel, which, when his intrusion was discovered, he hoped might get the Colonel in some trouble.

  His various trapdoors wouldn’t last for long. A group like Pulsar would have a backup of its C-Matrix core security program on file somewhere, and every so often—every few days or maybe every shift—it would be compared with the working program to see if there were any discrepancies. Steward’s modifications would be wiped and someone would be alerted.

  He worked deliberately, in a trance of concentration. When he came to himself, he realized he had spent two hours in the matrix, that he’d been pacing up and down the cubicle at the limit of the interface wire. The place smelled of sweat. His calves were aching. He flexed his legs, took off his jacket, and draped it on the back of his chair. He sat down again, jacking one of his empty data spikes into the terminal.

  He wiped sweat from his forehead and went out of C-Matrix and back to the login routine. He gave his password angel and asked for access to filesecur:steward.1. When the C-71 gave him the file, he laughed out loud. He didn’t bother to look at it, just dumped it into the data spike. He asked for a directory list of filesecur and found the files deprey.1 , curzon,ac.1 , and curzon,cd.1 , which he also moved into the cube. There was no listing on prime . He found angel.l and took it.

  Steward moved through the directory list again, filesecur: personnel.1 , -.2 , and -.3 seemed interesting, so he took them. Lists of spies, maybe, or security classifications. His spike signaled him that the variable-lattice thread had been coded to its limits. He slipped it out and put in another.

  There were hundreds of files. He began copying them at random, filling up his spikes and moving on. He figured he could sell the stuff to Griffith and let him sort it all out.

  When he’d filled the last spike, he sat and stared at the shimmering monitor for another few minutes. He wondered if he wanted to leave his trapdoors in place, then decided against it. Even though it would be fun to envision the panic that would strike Pulsar, and particularly Angel, when the extent of Steward’s depredations were known, any data stolen would be more valuable if Brighter Suns didn’t know it was gone. He slipped through the C-Matrix programming again and restored it to its original state. Then he sat back in his chair and peeled the interface wire from his skull.

  Reality began to fuse slowly with his mind. His bladder was aching. The speed had largely worn off except for a nervous jitter and a sensation of skin crawling. Phlegm coated his throat. It hurt to breathe. His right arm and shoulder were entirely numb, and he wondered again about neural damage. He put the spikes in his jacket pocket and closed the Velcro seals, then he threw his jacket over his arm and went in search of a lavatory.

  The place was almost deserted, and the lighting was subdued. It must have turned third shift. He found a toilet and walked in to stare at himself in the mirror.

  His eyes had sunken into red-purple caverns. The circular imprint of the interface wire and its adhesive disk was outlined clearly behind his ear. There were blooms of sweat in his armpits and on his chest. He washed his face, ran his fingers through his hair, and took another pill to get him through the trip back to the Born. He put his jacket on, careful of his burns, and walked out toward the lobby, trying hard to bounce as if he were enjoying the light gravity.

  The old security guard had been replaced by a younger man. The cop nodded at him as he stepped into the lobby. “Working hard?” he asked.

  Steward gave him a weary grin. “Inventory,” he said. He stepped to the clear plastic door and gave it a push. It wouldn’t open. A warning tugged at his nerves.

  He looked at the guard. The man was fumbling at his belt. “I’ll need to unlock that,” he said.

  The warning faded away. The guard unlocked the door and Steward stepped out into the tunnel. He said good-night and repressed the urge to laugh out loud.

  Later, near a waste receptacle, he took Angel’s spike, put its needle tip on the alloy floor, and snapped it in half with his foot. He tossed the remains into the trash. Angel would miss it by the next day, and after that it would be far too dangerous for anyone to possess. Pulsar’s software would be altered to look out for anyone using it.

  The spikes would be hidden in one of the cargo holds that had already been filled with goods. He wasn’t going to touch them till he’d left Vesta.

  He wasn’t going to leave the ship again. Not until it was docked someplace where Angel couldn’t get him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was four days since Pulsar had let him go. Steward lay on his rack, watching a telecast of Kawaguchi’s Fourth Millennium. This was a classic visionary Imagist drama from the previous century, set in a mannered future in which a genetically altered posthuman society was confronted by the return of violent human primitives from a forgotten space colony, a comedy of manners laced with acid and appalling violence. The NeoImagist Policorp Pink Blossom had recently produced an elaborate version of it, intended as political propaganda for their perception of the future, starring the free-fall kabuki actor Kataoka XXII. Brighter Suns, being a nonideological policorp, was broadcasting it on the feed link from Vesta. Steward was enjoying the show, but suspected the interpretation was slanted a bit toward the posthuman point of view, having been dictated by contemporary political realities. Pink Blossom was showing a decline in its rate of growth and might have concluded that their vision of tomorrow might need a little polishing in order to get the troops enthusiastic about their work.

  Steward flexed his right hand as he watched the vid. Feeling was almost back to normal. No permanent damage, he thought.

  There was a knock on Steward’s door. “Come in,” he said, setting his vid uni
t on record, and Reese entered.

  There was an annoyed frown on her face. “Out of the rack, buck,” she said. “We’ve been ordered to Vesta in an hour. We’re going into the Power Legation.”

  Steward sat up. Alarms clattered in his mind. “Why?” he asked.

  “There’s a Starbright ship in dock,” Reese said. “The cargo handlers got sick, and some of the autoloaders have broken down. It’s a special cargo, and the Starbright people don’t want anyone but our employees to deal with it. We’re being ordered to help load the stuff by hand.”

  “Why us?”

  “It’s those blood tests we had to take. We tested out okay to work with the Powers.”

  Steward slapped off the vid. Anger was beginning to fill him. “It’s a scheme to get me onstation,” he said. “They’re going to provoke some kind of incident and toss me in a cell again. Or assassinate me.”

  Reese leaned against a padded bulkhead and crossed her arms. “Not likely,” she said. “They let you go once. Why would they pick you up again?”

  Steward hesitated for a moment. He had to think of something besides the fact he was suspected of stealing Angel’s key spike. “Maybe they couldn’t make up their minds till now,” Steward said. He jumped out of his rack and began pacing. “Or maybe they just wanted me dead and it took a while to put a scheme together so that it doesn’t look like their fault.” His mind was whirling. “Look,” he said. “I’ll go to our pharmacy and give myself something to make myself sick. You just tell our bosses I’m ill.”

  Reese shook her head. “Take it easy,” she said. “I’ve got an obligation to our superiors. If you don’t show up, it could cost Starbright millions of its own dollars.”

  He looked at her. “If I do show up it could cost Starbright a promising young trainee.”