by Jaine Fenn
‘He won the planetary lottery, which prompted him to take his final vows. So my late father told me anyway.’ Treat this as a test you know the answers to; give those answers clearly and firmly. ‘As for his generous donations … as I’m sure you know, an accident left me without immediate family.’
The detective nodded, a little impatiently.
‘Although I’ve never met Frer Yolson, I think there may have been some unresolved family issues for which he is now making amends. Also, I get the impression he hopes I will use his gifts to live a good life.’ She shrugged in what she hoped was a self-deprecating fashion. ‘I suspect my choices disappoint him, may Osiris forgive me.’
‘I doubt that, on both counts.’ The detective leaned forward and looked Bez full in the face. ‘Given Frer Yolson doesn’t exist.’
Surprise was an allowable reaction. Even so Bez felt her face fall, the careful mask slipping. ‘I’m shocked to hear that,’ she managed to croak.
Detective Hylam narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you?’
Bez said nothing. This was no mere game of data; the woman across the table from her was used to dealing with liars. Despite giving all the right answers, Bez had aroused her suspicions. The detective continued, ‘I appreciate your cooperation so far, however, I’d like to keep you in for further questioning.’
‘But my starliner leaves in less than four hours!’
‘In that case, perhaps you would prefer we institute full interrogation protocols and conduct a more thorough interview immediately?’ With one finger she gave the table, with its hidden tech, a meaningful tap.
Bez saw the trap now it was too late. Agree, and even if she managed to spin a convincing lie - which she doubted she could - the detection equipment would reveal her attempts at deception.
Refuse, and she was admitting she had something to hide. All she could think of was to play for time. ‘I believe I have the right to legal representation during a full interview?’
Hylam looked nonplussed. ‘You do.’
‘And I can choose my lawyer from anyone currently on the law-office roster?’
‘My, you did read your waiver carefully,’ the First Detective said frostily.
‘Then I would like the chance to make my selection before we proceed.’ This was much worse than the first time she had fallen foul of the law all those years ago. Back then, she had just begun her life’s work, and had had relatively little to lose. Now she sat at the heart of a vast hyper web. If the authorities pulled on this one loose thread, everything could start to unravel. Nearly two decades of building up contacts, gathering evidence, preparing to strike: to fail now, when she was finally getting close, was unthinkable.
As the detective muttered into her wrist-com, Bez thought, If only you knew why I’m doing all this … But she didn’t know. No one did. And they mustn’t, not yet.
A few moments later the door opened to admit the booking officer. ‘Follow me please, medame.’ The man looked disappointed, as though he had expected better from someone of her status.
‘Where to?’ Bez said, fighting the sensation that events were slipping beyond her control.
Detective Hylam said, ‘Somewhere you can make your selection in peace. I’ll be seeing you later, Medame Estrante.’
The booking officer led her down another similar corridor, though these doors had numbers on. He stopped outside the third door on the right, numbered ‘6’, and passed Bez a spare slate. Bez took the proffered device and went through the door. It closed promptly behind her. She found herself in a room with a bed, table, chair and sanitary unit, plus a drinks dispenser and basic ents unit built into one wall. No exits, unsurprisingly. Perhaps the station had other less comfortable holding cells for the sort of criminals unlikely to sue for wrongful arrest.
She sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand over the slate to wake it. As well as the list of duty lawyers, the simple menu included an option to access the cell’s ents unit. Bez dialled up some plainsong, choosing a recording by Elarn Reen. The late Medame Reen was not Bez’s favourite but she thought the choice apt.
For the benefit of any surveillance, she began to scroll casually through the info on the slate. At the same time, her mind raced.
She had to get out of here before this went any further and that would require hacking the law. Her mission rarely pitted her directly against law-enforcement organisations’ virtual security, which tended to be as tight as that of banks, and a lot more dangerous. At least she was inside their firewall. She activated her headware, initiating her full hacking suite.
While the tech came online she queried the availability of the duty lawyers. Most of them were free now, or would be within the hour. When she found one whose current availability was listed as ‘3 hour+’ she selected him. Three hours was before the starliner’s departure, so when the law opened the door to an empty cell the cops would most Ekely look for her on the liner. The standard shift change was in just over two hours, and ideally she would prefer different front-office personnel when she left. So, two to three hours was her window of opportunity. She could work with that.
She put down the slate, sat back and closed her eyes, watching her chrono count out two minutes while she let the pure progres-sions of the music centre her. Then she brought her deep overlays online.
The ents unit glowed in her enhanced vision, but nothing else changed. She counted out another thirty seconds just in case, then tuned fully into the local virtuality. The room faded to grey obscurity.
The stats associated with the ents unit confirmed her assumption that it hid a camera. Just basic vid with minimal shielding, by the look of it. The camera might have hidden defences, in which case any attempt to hack the device could trigger an alarm. But that was a lot of trouble to go to unless Detective Hylam already knew about her head ware and was waiting for her to actively condemn herself by using it. This was unlikely: as well as the legal issues surrounding entrapment, Salvatines weren’t renowned for being tech-savvy. If they suspected she was a databreaker, someone would have put an inhibitor cap on her before they allowed her inside their firewall.
She moved her virtual presence across the room, waiting for the subliminal connection as her head ware engaged with the camera.
The link was weak but that was a good sign: she would expect nothing more from a dumb remote.
Beyond the camera she sensed the local virtuality, the salt-sweet taste of the world of logic and data, a world that made more sense than the real ever did. From the safety of the camera she accessed the stats associated with her cell. She made sure she understood the immediate set-up then moved out cautiously, initially only as far as the camera in the next cell. The occupant was a local man in for possible assault. The cell beside that was empty. The one beyond held a woman, but she was too old, in on extended detention for drugs-related charges. In the fourth cell she found another man.
The fifth was empty. The person in the sixth was the right gender and age, and the timing was suitable, but when Bez tapped into the camera’s vid feed for that cell, she saw that the woman was too fat. She might suffice if there was no one else. The seventh and eighth cells were empty. The ninth held another man.
She accessed the local registry, which confirmed that there were only twelve cells in this block. Had she known this beforehand, she might not have been so confident of her plan. Still, there was no going back now.
Ten was empty. Eleven, however, was as near perfect as she was going to get. Arrested for unlicensed sexual commerce, and ten years younger than Bez, but there was a good match on height and build. Only twenty-three minutes until this woman was due to be released, though, which was before the shift change. Was it worth the risk? When a peek into the final cell showed it to be empty, Bez decided it was; with only twelve cells to choose from and no guarantee of any new occupants arriving in time, she might not get another chance. Bez still took care to alter the readouts on the unfortunate prostitute’s cell. She could not risk failure - and further
incrimination - at this stage. Then she drew her awareness back along the line of grey boxes with their clusters of near-identical glowing camera icons.
Reaching the camera on her own cell, she accessed the device’s buffer, where she employed one of the standard tricks in any databreaker’s repertoire. For the next three hours, the footage the camera relayed would bear a remarkable resemblance to the period Bez had spent sitting quietly on the bed before going virtual.
She paused, checked the stats on her own cell, and then blinked herself back into the real.
Sixteen minutes to go. This was going to be tight.
The first five minutes involved more sitting still while she triggered, and then endured, the sensations of crawling skin and itchy scalp that accompanied any physical transformation. She picked the pre-programmed setting closest to the prostitute’s colouration (pale skin; straight auburn hair; blue eyes), adjusting the hair’s length and adding the copper and crimson highlights on the fly.
She opened her eyes, blinking repeatedly to clear them. They would water for a while yet. Raising her hand, she saw her skin was already several shades lighter. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling out the tight curls Madame Estrante had worn; the action also served to lengthen the synthetic strands. The prostitute wore her hair up, so Bez needed to consider that too. But first she had to do something about her clothes.
She unpinned the pointless half-circle hat her tourist disguise had demanded, and shrugged out of the equally flamboyant embroidered coat. She turned the coat inside out then rubbed it, and the hat, across the seat and along the floor by the bed. She wrapped the hat in the coat and stuffed the bundle behind the pillow on the bed. When the items were found, it would be possible to extract samples of her genetic material from among the others she had just picked up, but even if someone went to such trouble, they wouldn’t get a positive trace. Only criminals were subject to detailed genetic profiling and Bez had no criminal record in any of her incarnations.
Now for the blouse. She pulled it over her head and used the hatpin to rip the fabric of one sleeve. If this were a holodrama, she thought, then I would be using that pin as a weapon, or have some hidden gadget in it. The blouse tore easily, as befitted expensive and delicate fabric. She didn’t have time to hack the blouse’s tag so she used the pin to rip it out of the collar.
One of the detached blouse sleeves made a passable hairband, once she’d teased the final kinks out of her hair. Nothing she could do about the lack of cosmetics. She put the blouse back on, knotting it high under her bust to expose her stomach. Her trousers were too smart, but once she had torn out the tag, she tucked the ruined waistband inside to expose a bit more belly, which went some way towards the right image. The shoes were fine: she avoided tagged footwear, to allow for situations requiring a quick change without full props.
All done, with one minute and thirty-four seconds to spare. She shut down her headware.
If the original booking officer was the one that came for her, she was lost; but she had noticed a number of administrators in the front office, and in her admittedly limited experience of such places, roles were strictly demarcated: the booker-in did not also book out.
Time was up but the door remained closed. She counted out a minute. Two. Three. At times like this she almost wished there were a deity to pray to. Finally, what felt like twenty but was less than six minutes after she had assumed her disguise, the door opened.
The man who stood there was a stranger. Bez exhaled and gave him a genuine smile. The admin officer smiled back, his gaze flicking down to her bare midriff.
Bez forced herself to ignore his expression, reminding herself she was meant to be a sassy streetwalker. ‘About time!’ she said, starting across the cell.
The man was looking at her face now. He appeared puzzled.
Was it the lack of makeup?
‘You all right there, “Toni”?’ He glanced at his slate as he spoke.
Toni was the girl’s work-name.
Bez put a hand to her wet cheek. Damn: thanks to the tears from the eye-colour change, she looked like she had been crying.
Was he sympathetic? He sounded like he was mocking her. She settled on saying, not untruthfully, ‘I’ve had better days.’
‘Yeah, well, perhaps you should think about getting licensed?
The law’s here for your protection too, you know.’ He held out his slate. She thumbed it to acknowledge her release. She had only changed the ID, charge sheet and timer on her cell, not the associated biometrics. Nothing beeped. He stepped back and said, ‘I’ll show you out.’
A few people looked up as she walked through the office, trying, not altogether successfully, to keep a provocative swing in her step. When Detective Hylam emerged from a side corridor, Bez’s heart skipped, but she kept walking. She could feel Hylam’s eyes on her. The woman started to walk briskly through the work-stations, heading her way. Keep walking, keep walking, don’t look at her. Any moment now she would shout out, or an alarm would sound-
Out of the corner of her eye Bez saw Hylam stop and raise her wrist to take a call. Bez resisted the urge to break into a run.
When they reached the lobby the admin officer gestured to the door. ‘Now don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but I’m hoping I won’t see you here again.’
‘Me too,’ said Bez fervently, and walked out.
A POSSIBLE LOOPHOLE
You think we live in an age of freedom after millennia of tyranny. You think the Sidhe Protectorate is gone and that we’ve seen the last of those evil aliens who beautiful women.
You’re wrong.
Perhaps you’ll stop this recording now because anyone who claims the Sid he are stili around has to be crazy, right?
At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s precisely what want you to think.
Her heart was still racing when she turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. Even though no alarms rang out and she could see no signs of pursuit, she strode through the admin sector as quickly as possible, even more unwilling than usual to make eye contact. As she got further from the law offices, a modicum of calm returned.
Back in the bustle of the main mall she found an empty public convenience, and unhinged the false top on her left little finger.
From inside this she fished out a pair of spotcams, sticking them to the two walls flanking the furthest cubicle from the door, which she then locked herself into. She had already brought the relevant head ware online so she checked the local infoscape to ensure she was not on any cameras apart from her own. Only when she was certain she was unobserved did she dive fully into the station’s public virtuality. Here she activated a previously hidden dataegg, releasing and synchronising various minor changes around Tarset’s infoscape. Now she was Kenid Sari, a casual worker with a solid Tarset ID and a cashstick containing barely enough credit to buy one good meal on a starliner.
Once her consciousness returned to the cubicle, she initiated the programmed appearance change for the new persona. Two transformations in one day hurt, but the specialist who had installed her adaptive mods claimed the tech was good for up to three complete changes of dermal and follicular colouration in a given twenty-five-hour period. The eyes took longer to recover so they would have to remain blue for now.
After retrieving her cameras she collected the physical components of her new identity from an automated self-storage unit. In another washroom elsewhere on the concourse, she changed into a threadbare tunic, thin slacks and worn deck shoes, all untagged as befitted this persona’s lowly status. A cheap slap-com - the default for anyone whose finances or religion proscribed implants - completed the disguise.
She purchased some strong analgesics and booked into the Salvatine mission house on the dockside. A church hostel was the last place a god-fearing cop would look for a high-living, spiritually lapsed fraudster. She had to endure a half-hour recorded sermon on the godless ways of her fellow hub
bers before she could check into her coffin-sized accommodation, but that gave the painkillers time to work.
Once she was both calm and free of pain she accessed her datadrop from the physical safety of her tiny room. The mission house’s virtual security was laughable, so it took little effort to spoof her signal off the bordello on the level above.
She had no strong expectation of finding a message waiting; her permanent datadrops existed to field unscheduled transmissions from her most trusted agents - the Alphas and Betas. Most of her bee vee messaging protocols changed constantly, and for the day-to-day administration of her huge web of contacts and agents she avoided beevee altogether. But the fact that the permanent datadrops were intended for urgent matters only made it more important to check them regularly.
On finding a datapacket to download, her initial assumption was that it came from BetaI6 and contained a warning that the Yolson cover ID had been blown. But the tag was not his. The message originated from a world called Gracen. Up until a year ago, Bez had barely heard of the place. Then she had come into possession of a fabulous trove of information: the memory-core of an Enemy ship. Along with other gems, the files from the Setting Sun listed the cover identity of every Sidhe in human-space, intel she had been striving to piece together for years. As a result, Bez had surmised that the insular religious democracy of Gracen was essential to the Enemy’s ability to hide amongst humanity. She had recruited an agent there, but up until now Alpha83 had had little to report.
Bez methodically applied the relevant decryption to the message.
She knew better than anyone that codes were made for breaking, and that beevee communications could be compromised; but having a key known only to the sender and receiver, a key that had been physically despatched on a timed-to-erase dataspike, was as close as you could get to unbreakable encryption. Quantum effects might allow secure in-systems communication, but for interstellar transmissions the oldest and simplest techniques were still the most reliable.