A Tapestry of Fire (Applied Topology Book 4)

by Margaret Ball

  For the rest of the game I generally deferred to the others’ opinions, occasionally selecting a statement at random to make it look like I was really trying. To my disappointment, none of them said anything about work. I learned more than I needed to know about Alec’s vacation with his girlfriend in Hawaii, Webster’s army service and Ginny’s social life. All useless.

  Lunch was next on the program, and I sat as far as possible from Webster. It didn’t help much; they were all curious about me, and this was their first chance to ask questions.

  “Do they still divide people up into castes in India?” Ginny began.

  Fortunately I’d read an article about that recently. “Most do,” I said, “but the community of people who are fluent in English is sort of getting past that. More modern. What someone knows and can do is more important than who his parents are.”

  “So it doesn’t matter that Shani is so much darker than you?”

  “Not a bit,” I said truthfully over Alec’s whisper of “Ginny, that’s racist.” He started a long, involved story about the time he had to go to Chennai on business and then asked if that was the way Indians always did business.

  “Um, sorry,” I apologized, “I wasn’t quite listening to all you said.”

  Hien giggled. “Alec talks too much, doesn’t he?”

  A couple more questions about India and I thought of an excuse for my ignorance. “Look,” I said, “I’m American-born, my family isn’t at all traditional, I really don’t know that much about old-fashioned Indian ways. They didn’t even give me an Indian name.”

  They wanted to know how I met Shani and I punted on that one. “Actually it was my father who met Shani first. On business.” And wouldn’t that be a surprise to Dad if he ever heard about it! I clasped my hands in my lap, fighting the urge to touch my cheek.

  They wanted to know what sort of business, and I made some vague noises about international finance.

  Somehow my last name came up. “Bhatia,” I said firmly, that being the only Indian surname I knew, and if Prakash Bhatia hadn’t interned with us this semester I would have been really hard up for an answer.

  “Ah,” Chet said knowingly, “you must be one of those Bhatias, the industrial millionaires. No wonder Shani—”

  I saw an excuse to cut off the India questions. “That’s enough of that,” I snapped. “How dare you intimate that Shani only wants to marry me for the family connection? I’ve had enough of this!” I threw down my napkin and stomped off the terrace. I didn’t want any more of the mystery casserole Margo had served for lunch anyway, and the fresh fruit was all gone. I wished I’d thought to pack some candy bars.

  3. Something fishy

  Austin, Monday

  Meanwhile, back in Austin – though I didn’t know this at the time – Jimmy-the-computer-geek and my fellow topologist Ben were doing their own investigation of SCI. It wasn’t their first such experience.

  Dr. Verrick had started the Center for Applied Topology for the benefit of three of his topology students – first me, then Ben, and finally Ingrid. A year later Colton had found his way to us from one of Dr. Verrick’s introductory classes. We had discovered that we shared his secret and slightly unnerving ability to affect real-world objects by visualizing certain topological ideas – a power of which he’d thought himself the sole possessor or, as he preferred to say, sufferer. When the Center was set up we’d all envisioned a life of stress-free pure research. However, he’d accepted funding for the Center from a secretive three-letter agency which liked us to do useful snooping for them, and there went our purity.

  To be fair, snooping was a lot more fun than writing papers which, by the terms of our non-disclosure agreements, we would not be allowed to publish in this millennium. So we got along pretty well with the agency rep, Brad Lensky, who’d been assigned here to convey requests and, if possible, to prevent us from getting killed.

  Actually, I got along better than “pretty well” with Lensky. At least when we weren’t shouting and throwing things at each other.

  Ben had already been in the lobby of the SCI building on a first, more casual attempt to learn something about the business. The main thing he’d learned was that Chayyaputra was serious about security; he’d never made it past the lobby. But he had also discovered that a huge, showy aquarium was the focal feature of the lobby – a lighted tank at least six feet long by three feet deep, placed on a three-foot stone plinth. That should make just about a perfect focus for teleportation now that the office was closed, allowing them to bypass the locked outer doors of the building. There was just one potential catch. Had Chayyaputra shielded the offices against unauthorized teleportation, the way the Center for Applied Topology was now shielded?

  He had not. Ben and Jimmy arrived without incident in the middle of SCI’s lobby. They took a moment to admire the display of coral and artificial rocks with brightly colored tropical fish flitting around the upper waters of the tank. Actually Jimmy had more than a moment to gawk at the aquarium, because getting past the inner doors was a little trickier; Ben had never been inside the office space beyond the lobby, so he couldn’t just teleport them in there.

  Fortunately, the one aspect of small object manipulation that Ben had mastered had to do with moving tumblers, gears, and latches. His collection of topological tricks was a virtual lockpicking toolkit and a work still in progress. He had even disassembled various locks to help him visualize their inner workings. He still hadn’t found all the tiny parts that hit the floor and rolled into crevices when he dropped the outside lock for the office, but that wasn’t a big problem; as I’ve said, the Center was shielded against teleportation by anybody except us, and none of us had anything expensive and portable to be stolen from our personal offices anyway. Not on the pittance Dr. Verrick, our director, paid research fellows.

  Jimmy had little to do while Ben worked on the lock between the lobby and the rest of the office, so he whiled away the time watching the brightly colored little fish darting around the aquarium. Well, most of them were tiny and colorful. There were a few unattractive fish, mud-colored and lumpy and considerably bigger than the decorative ones, lurking at the bottom of the tank. He supposed they served some practical purpose. Then Ben opened the double doors between the lobby and the rest of the office, and he had more important matters than fish to think about.

  Evidently Chayyaputra believed in the abomination known as an open-plan office. The inside of the first floor was just one large room with a small maze of cubicle partitions like an island in the center of the room. Beyond the cubicles, at the back of the room, Jimmy could see a flight of stairs. Ben had stopped at the cubicles, though. He was squinting at the arrangement as though trying to memorize it.

  Jimmy coughed; he’d learned not to walk up to research topologists at work and tap them on the shoulder.

  “What?” Ben said crossly. “I’m trying to memorize the layout in case we have to teleport again.”

  “Thought that was what you were doing,” said Jimmy. “Didn’t you notice that the cubicle walls are easy to move?”

  “I’m trying to get a fix on this room so if I have to teleport here again, at least I can land in here and save the trouble of picking a lock.”

  Jimmy patiently repeated that the cubicle walls could easily be moved. “I don’t know what would happen if they rearranged them and you visualized the wrong configuration.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Probably nothing. I mean, Brouwer teleportation just wouldn’t happen. We wouldn’t arrive in the middle of a wall, if that’s what you’re worrying about.” Brouwer teleportation obeyed some of the laws of classical physics, like not allowing a research fellow and a wall to occupy the same space. “Not likely to be a problem this week, with everybody out of town, is it?”

  “No, but we might need to come back after this week.”

  “OK, what in this room isn’t movable? I know – the stairs!”

  Ben wandered off in the general direction of the stairs, working
his way through the cubicles with a few false starts and muttered curses. Jimmy looked after him, shaking his head slightly. Sometimes he felt that only half his job involved hacking into databases and doing other covert computing tasks; the other half consisted of gently redirecting topologists from hopeless or dangerous tasks. He wondered if the topologists outside the Center, the ones with no paranormal abilities, were equally prone to doing the equivalent of walking into walls and off the edges of cliffs. Probably not, since he’d never heard about the math building on campus exploding or disappearing or catching fire. But he wouldn’t have taken any bets on it.

  Fortunately, computers made more sense. Jimmy settled down happily to infiltrate SCI’s system.

  In his experience, computer users either had long, complicated passwords that they had to write down somewhere, or simple and obvious ones that they could remember without strain. Though few were idiot enough to use “password” for their password, apart from that one – oh well, most people in politics weren’t terribly computer-savvy, that guy was just at the far end of the bell curve.

  There wasn’t a piece of paper with a string of nonsense letters and numbers on the desk, or in the top drawer, or stuck to the monitor on a Post-It note. That covered most of the places people put their passwords; after all, they had to be easy to reach. Nobody wanted to fish out their keys and dig through a locked filing cabinet every time they logged in. And that fact alone destroyed ninety percent of the effectiveness of complex passwords. Maybe more.

  If he’d known last week that this opportunity would arise, Jimmy could have had some fun inventing identities and phishing the staff members for their passwords. Now he briefly considered checking out the other cubicles for a written password. Oh, well, he could always do that if necessary – but if whoever sat at this desk didn’t need a written reminder, he’d be willing to bet he could guess the password. He grinned and flexed his fingers over the keyboard. Naïve users were so predictable. What would these particular users think was a good idea?

  “Chayyaputra” was his first guess. They’ll think nobody could spell it. Forgetting that anyone who tries to get into the system is already showing interest in the business.

  That didn’t work, and his second guess, “Shani” was kicked back for being too short. Jimmy frowned and, after a moment, remembered what the Indian intern had called Shani. Oh. Shani dev. “Dev” probably meant “god”.

  Not that it mattered. “Shanidev” without spaces opened up the entire intranet of SCI’s computers to him.

  “I’m in!” he called across the room to Ben.

  “In what?” asked a voice behind him. Jimmy whirled and saw a young woman who definitely did not fit into his impression of office staff for a financial company. She looked like a theater arts student who’d somehow wandered out of her proper context. Or maybe music? Performance art? Something along those lines, would be his guess. He catalogued blue jeans, some kind of floaty and semi-translucent top, huge black-framed glasses covering most of her face; bangs down to her eyebrows, freckles where her face was actually visible, mousy brown hair down to her shoulders.

  “Um, I’m with Comtech Computer Services,” he improvised. “Mr. Chayyaputra asked us to come in and optimize the system while everybody’s out this week.” He hoped that rolling the name off his tongue without hesitation would impress her.

  “Oh! Thank goodness! When I saw the parking lot empty, and then the office was so quiet, I thought they’d gone out of business since last Monday. But where is everyone?”

  That, at least, he knew. “Mr. Chayyaputra’s away on business, and since he couldn’t be here, he took the opportunity to send the staff to a team-building retreat. In Wimberley,” he added. “At Inner Light Guest House. Paid for by the company.”

  The girl smiled. “Oh, Inner Light? I’ve always wanted to do one of their yoga retreats, but I never could afford it. Mr. C. certainly is generous to his staff!”

  More likely, he’s afraid to let them work here while he’s away, for fear one of them will stumble on something that makes them suspicious. Jimmy squelched that thought and agreed that Mr. C. was generous indeed.

  The girl put something on the floor – a bucket? What’s she doing with a bucket? Cleaning lady? She doesn’t look like a cleaning lady – and extended a hand. “Well, nice to meet you. I’m Harper, and I come in every Monday to take care of the aquarium. But the folks here are always too busy to talk to me,” she said, sounding regretful. “That’s why I didn’t know about the retreat. In case you were wondering.”

  Now she seemed to be trying to convince him that she was a legitimate visitor. He guessed that meant she didn’t suspect them… yet.

  “Not at all,” Jimmy said. “I was surprised, that’s all. Mr. Chayyaputra didn’t happen to mention you, that’s all. Well, I guess I’d better get back to work. He’s not paying me to stand around and chat with pretty girls.”

  Harper flushed and bent her head slightly forward so that her long hair fell to cover even more of her face. “Yes, well, I suppose I’d better get to work too. This aquarium setup needs a lot of maintenance.” She retreated to the lobby and set up a stepladder. With relief, Jimmy got back to work. He stuck a USB stick in the machine he’d accessed and started downloading files. Then he frowned at the screen and tapped random keys so that he’d look as if he was actually doing something, just in case Harper came back while he was waiting for the download to finish.

  Ben materialized at his elbow and startled him. “Aren’t you done yet?”

  “Where did you disappear to?”

  “Upstairs. About half of the second floor is very securely locked up. Beyond my skills, actually; I’ve never seen locks quite like those. Why do you suppose that area gets special protection? I’d like to know what’s in there. Are you done yet?”

  “Not quite. I’m still collecting data. After that I want to leave a little present on their hard drives.”

  “What kind of present?”

  Jimmy was gratified to see that Ben jumped just as much as he had on hearing the girl’s voice.

  “A, um, a protection against malware,” Jimmy improvised. “Oh, Harper, this is my colleague.” And they were lucky she hadn’t wandered in here a couple of minutes earlier, to see Ben carelessly stepping out of the air. The topologists really weren’t careful enough about this stuff. He turned to Ben. “Harper comes in every Monday to do the aquarium maintenance. I was just explaining to her how Mr. Chayyaputra asked Comtech Computer Services to come in and optimize the system while everybody’s away this week. Only I’ve detected a virus infecting some of the files, so our first job will be cleaning that up.” He faked a sigh. “I can’t believe how naïve some users are about cyber protection.”

  “Never mind,” Ben said cheerfully, “think of them as potential customers for our special services. Are you done yet?”

  Jimmy wondered what Ben’s hurry was, but he didn’t want to ask in front of Harper. Fortunately the computer beeped at him just then. “That takes care of the data download,” he said, pocketing the data stick. “We, ah, we can analyze the data remotely, then come back to do the actual optimization. It’s less expensive for Mr. Chayyaputra that way.” He didn’t want to install his own virus while Harper was wandering around and asking questions. Getting the virus to hide itself on the hard drive and resist cleanup attempts required a bit of poking around, and she might wonder why it took so long to install a simple anti-malware program. Too bad he hadn’t had time to automate the installation process. But they’d been in a hurry, and he’d expected to have plenty of time here. Undisturbed time. Harper-free time. Didn’t the woman have any other aquariums to clean?

  Ben must have been thinking along the same lines. “Don’t you have any other aquariums to clean today?” he asked Harper.

  She flushed and looked at her shoes. Potential mathematician? Jimmy wondered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere with your work. It was just nice having someone to talk to… and I was wonde
ring if you could tell Mr. C. about the fish.”

  “About the fish? What’s the problem? Not that I know anything about aquarium maintenance,” Jimmy added hastily.

  Harper pushed a little hair away from her face. “I’ll show you. If you don’t mind? You see, it keeps getting worse, and everybody here is so busy, I haven’t had a chance to talk to Mr. C. about it.” She headed back to the lobby and he and Ben followed her.

  “It’s the machalees,” she said, gesturing towards the bottom of the tank.

  “Those big mud-colored ones?” Well, comparatively big, at around eight inches.

  “Yes. I didn’t know what they were at first,” Harper confessed, “but Mr. C. told me. He said they’re from India and they make him think of home. Although,” she added, frowning slightly, “he doesn’t spend a lot of time looking at them.”

  Jimmy thought that was quite understandable. They were easily the least attractive fish in the tank. Why Chayyaputra had wanted them at all was a mystery to him.

  “And the problem is…” he prompted Harper.

  “I looked them up,” she said, “and they’re supposed to be pink. I think the dull color is a sign of illness. The first one was pink enough when I spotted it.”

  “The first one?”

  “Yes. There was only one to begin with. Then there were two, then three, and a few weeks ago there were five.”

  Jimmy squinted at the tank. “I can only see four. Is one of them hiding, or what?”

  “No, it’s not hiding,” Harper said, sounding tearful. “A couple of weeks after the last two appeared, I came in and there were only four of them left. Mr. C. said he’d had the janitor scoop the dead one out of the tank because he didn’t want to upset me.”

  “Considerate of him.”

  “Yes, but…” Harper swallowed hard. “I think the other machalees are dying too. They look worse every time I come here. And there’s more.”