The male looked skeptical and the female thoughtful. “Do you mind if we take this,” she asked, holding up his tablet.
“Why do you need to take it?” he asked. “You can upload it to one of your machines and study it at your leisure. It's my only tablet.”
“I think we need the physical object,” she said. “If you don't mind. I'll give you a receipt.”
Harrison knew it was no use arguing. The information and data on the tablet was backed up in the ether anyway and resisting would be more suspicious than grudgingly acquiescing.
“Okay,” he said, “but you're robbing me of a tool I use everyday. I'll need to replace it.”
“You can make a claim with the government,” sneered the male.
“I'll see you get a replacement,” said his colleague.
Sure. With bugs galore, thought Harrison.
When they left with his tablet he felt as though he had accomplished his purpose of professing innocence.
Chapter Eleven
Lucas was still feeling the effects of the altitude. He had made the mistake of climbing a thousand feet up the mountainside to check out a rock formation bearing pre-historic graffiti and was now paying the physical price for his rashness. He was resting against a boulder, trying to make sense of the faint scratches etched into the rock faces around him and trying to get enough air into his lungs so his brain could work.
It took nearly half an hour for him to realize that the scratches were still a jumble in his mind and that the best thing he could do was climb back down and go back to bed until he was recovered.
“I'm glad Maeve can't see me like this,” he thought. “She'd think I'm just a wuss.”
He slowly walked back the way he came, stopping often to rest and aware of an oncoming headache. “I'm going to be useless here until I acclimate,” he thought. “I just wonder how long it's going to take. Maeve said the usual is between a week and a year. I can't take a year of this.”
At the ranch house people were drifting into the dining room for lunch and he drifted with them. “Food will help,” he hoped.
Sam was at the doorway scanning faces and when he saw Lucas he waved him over.
“Get a tray,” he said, “and come with me.”
Lucas did as he was told and filled his tray with liquids to counter the effects he was feeling and followed Sam through the two locked doors and down the elevator to the hacker's room. Once they were seated Sam said, “I want you to listen to this message we got from Harrison. It came in encoded but we've translated it for you.”
He tapped the screen in front of Lucas and Harrison's familiar baritone spoke through the audio equipment.
“I've been asked about Lucas by the Head of Security here at my cube, by a colleague who never speaks to me casually and by two government agents who also confiscated my tablet. They're already looking for him. Hard. Please advise as to...”
Sam cut the voice off at that point and turned to Lucas.
“What do you think? Isn't it awfully soon for them to be doing a full on search for you?”
Lucas studied the big man's face for a moment. “What did he want to be advised about?” he asked.
“You don't need to know.”
Sam's answer sounded final and Lucas moved on.
“I think it's too soon for what they seem to be doing. Let me get on a machine and see if I can learn anything.”
Sam waved at the screen and said, “Go right ahead. Your face scan will get you in.”
“This can take a while,” said Lucas. “You might not want to wait.”
“How long?”
“Hours, probably. I have to disguise every probe and that takes time."
Sam rose heavily to his feet, “Call me as soon as you have anything. I'll check on you in a couple of hours anyway.”
Lucas nodded and turned to the task at hand. He hadn't been entirely truthful with Sam. Before leaving his job he had hidden an undetectable “back door” into the system which allowed him to get in at will but he was unprepared to to give that information out to anyone. “And anyway,” he thought, “I'll want hours to digest this stuff.”
Once into the system he searched for his code name and very quickly found what amounted to a global alert looking for him. It had been posted during the weekend, days before his absence would have provoked it.
“Too quick,” he thought. “They knew I took the dongle. But how?”
He found a way to hack into the account of the security officer who had posted the alert and looked for its source. In the end it did take him several hours of searching and tracking the alert back to its origin and what he saw pulled him up short.
“No way,” he thought, but the chill down his spine told him differently. He heard the door behind him open and Sam's approaching footsteps. He quickly left the screen he was on and turned to greet him.
“Any luck?” asked Sam.
“Not much. I have the name of the Security officer who posted the alert but I haven't been able to get past him. I'll need to keep working on it. But I need a break to think about how to get there.”
Sam nodded.
“Innocent or guilty?” thought Lucas studying his face, he rose from the chair. “I need some more food, too.”
They retraced their steps to the dining hall and Lucas stopped at Moms' door and knocked.
"What are you doing?” asked Sam.
“I have a question for Moms.”
“What is it?”
“It's for Moms.”
Sam shrugged and continued to the kitchen to Lucas' relief. When Moms called “Come in,” he quickly stepped through the door. Thankfully she was alone. Lucas approached her and bent down to whisper in her ear, “Are you positive this room is secure? No bugs?”
Her eyes widened slightly and she whispered back, “Yes. Sam checks it every morning.”
“Can we go outside?”
Moms stared at him but then, with no argument, rose and led the way to a door at the back of her office and then through another door to the outside. They walked away from the building until Lucas was sure their conversation would be private, going so far as to turn his back on the ranch house and hiding her from it with his body. “No lip reading today,” he thought.
“Why the secrecy?” asked Moms.
“Do you know that Sam asked me why the search for me began so quickly?”
“Yes. I told him to. Did you find out?”
“Yes I did.”
“Why, then?”
“Because someone here sent a message saying someone was coming carrying contraband.”
Moms searched his face. “Someone here?” she asked.
He nodded. “No mistake.”
“But then they know where you are. Why search?”
“I don't know. We'd have to ask the message sender.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“No, can't tell that yet. I can probably find out by hacking this system but in case it is Sam I wanted to let you know.”
“Sam?”
“I'm not saying it is. I don't know who it is. But you're the only one I'm pretty sure it isn't.”
Moms smiled, “Pretty sure?"
“Well, if it's you I'm a dead duck anyway.”
“I don't think it's Sam. I'm sure it's not.”
“Okay. But I can't write anyone off yet. What I need is a place to work, access to your code files and secrecy.”
“Sam has control of the code files."
Lucas thought for a while, “If it's Sam there's no way I could physically restrain him.”
They discussed the problem for several minutes and worked out a strategy. Moms would ask for the code file so Lucas could review it for security effectiveness. Either Sam would give it up readily or she would take steps to have him restrained and take the actions necessary.
“There won't be any trouble,” she promised.
Lucas hoped that would be the case. Sam would be more than a double handful to deal with if
it weren't.
Chapter Twelve
In the event, Sam was eager to cooperate and “have a professional review their set-up.” Moms was relieved and showed it and Lucas was grateful on the one hand and resigned to lots of hard analytical work on the other. It would have been an easy explanation if Sam was the mole in the organization but if he weren't, as it appeared, the search could prove to be very difficult. With a sigh he settled down to look over pages and pages of code and hundreds of messages sent from the complex.
After several hours he was getting bleary-eyed from staring at the screen and started thinking about refreshment. At his office in D.C. he would do Jumping Jacks or push-ups to physically re-prime his brain by forcing blood flow but he was afraid to try that at this altitude. “I'd just knock myself out with fatigue,” he thought.
He was standing and stretching when a knock came on the door. Pausing to hide the screen he was working on he opened the door to find Maeve smiling at him and holding a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies.
“I thought you could use a pick-me-up,” she said.
Lucas could not hide his pleasure at seeing her but also could not suppress his suspicions.
“How'd you know where I was?” he asked, taking the pot and plate from her hands but blocking her entry to the room.
“Moms told me. She said you'd been working here for half a day without a break and I should bring you something.”
Lucas' mind raced around looking for meaning in this and decided Moms was giving Maeve a clean bill of health. Since he passionately desired that this be so he stepped aside slightly to let her in.
“Thanks a lot. I really appreciate this. Tell Moms “thanks” for me, okay?”
“Can I help you with whatever you're doing?”
Passion was one thing, thought Lucas, stupidity would be another. Until he knew what, or more importantly, who he was dealing with he couldn't afford to show his work to anyone.
“I'm afraid not,” he said. “I need to concentrate on what I'm doing and you're too much of a distraction.”
Maeve looked both pleased at the compliment and downcast by the rebuff.
“But I can take a break and share a cookie with you and relax for a few minutes.”
Maeve smiled at his gesture of propitiation and took a cookie from the plate.
“Okay, I'll just stay for a few minutes. What are you working on?”
“Uh, reviewing some security codes, looking for possible flaws.”
He hoped that was general enough to satisfy her but hadn't counted on the sharp mind beneath the flaming hair.
“Have we been breached?” she asked.
“No, no. This is just precautionary.”
She peered at him suspiciously and then shrugged. “I know security-speak when I hear it. “If we've been breached you wouldn't tell me and if we haven't it wouldn't matter. You'll tell Moms anyway and she'll tell me.”
“Oh, she would?” asked Lucas. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because she always does. Everybody needs a trusted confidante and I'm hers.”
Lucas sipped his coffee and nibbled on a cookie and thought about the suspicions that clouded all security thinking. It was important to have confidantes but they required trust and trust was the most difficult state to achieve in spy work.
“She's known me from birth,” said Maeve. “That's why she can trust me.”
Lucas nodded but the suspicious part of his mind was thinking, “Who better to be a mole?” He dismissed it, conditionally, as professional paranoia but was still not ready to share his search with anyone, no matter how lovable he found her.
“It's good to be the High Priestess' confidante,” he said lightly.
“She's not a High Priestess,” snapped Maeve, “and Gaia is not a religion.”
“Okay, okay. I was just joking.”
“Don't. It's not funny.
The awkward silence embarrassed them both and their “I'm sorry's” came nearly simultaneously.
They chuckled and grinned at each other, the mutual attraction and desire over-riding the slight rough patch. Maeve stood and smiled at him to show that no hard feelings remained and said, “Okay. I'll leave you alone to your top secret work. Will you come out for dinner?”
“Sure,” he said. “But maybe you better come and remind me.”
“I will,” she said and left the room, followed all the way by Lucas' appreciative eyes. At the door she turned and wiggled her hips provocatively and laughed at his blushing face as she closed the door behind her. Her visit had stirred his blood more than any exercise could have and when he was able to once again concentrate on the task at hand he did so with renewed clarity. Much better than push-ups, he thought.
Chapter Thirteen
When the agents left him Harrison set out for the nearest Grow Tower. He had written several papers on the entwined development of these urban farms and how they enabled the growth of the Cubes. The development of Gro-Glass, a formulation that let sunlight in and trapped it and reflected it until plants had soaked it all up, and robots that continuously tended the aquaponic systems, cleaned the glass and ultimately harvested the crop turned the Grow Towers into viable economic entities.
Most of the Towers, including the one Harrison was heading for, rose nearly one hundred growing levels into the air, each level only six feet high, and an additional twenty or so levels below ground, for distribution, preparation and service. Harrison was aiming for the restaurant level which had cafeteria-style service, fast food takeout, casual dining and gourmet establishments.
The elevator in his cube took him down to restaurant level where he could catch a robo-car that would deliver him to his destination. When the first Cubes were built around a Grow Tower they were required to have a reflective surface facing it so that sunlight they would otherwise absorb was added to the light that fell on the Tower.
The robo-car passed through a tunnel connecting the Cube to the Tower and while he rode Harrison idly speculated on how much scrutiny he was under. “Probably total,” he thought. “I can commit no compromising actions.”
He left the car outside the cafeteria and picked up a tray. The array of food was stunning, a variety of ethnic dishes from every part of the world and overwhelming to the uninitiated. Harrison walked along the rows of offerings and took a small amount of a variety of dishes, catering to his mood rather than his stomach. At the end of the row his tray was weighed and a charge placed on his account.
He scanned the seating area for an empty spot and settled on one against a wall where he thought he could eat in peace and contemplate the past few days. It was not to be. He had scarcely been seated when a familiar sweet voice asked, “May I join you?” over his shoulder. Without turning his head he said, “Certainly, Naomi. Be my guest.”
Naomi Higgins, fifty-something, roundish, soft looking and almost motherly came around to sit opposite him. She wore her hair in a fringe of curls that gave her face a halo effect and disguised the sharp intelligence that lived beneath the hair.
“Thank you,” she said as she sat.
“My pleasure,” he replied and thought, “Is this another spy or am I now over the edge into full-fledged paranoia?”
“You look troubled,” she said.
Harrison hesitated before answering. Naomi was a colleague, worked in the same department, though her specialty was late 21st century world politics, and they often shared notes on teaching. They were good friends, with an undertone of possibly becoming better friends if the occasion offered, but his paranoia was like a wall between them.
“I am troubled,” he said. “People from his office, (he liked that locution better than 'government agents') are looking for my grandson Lucas and they've got me worried about him.”
“Oh,” she said. “That doesn't sound good. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,” he said. “There's nothing definite been said, just enough to make me worried but with nothing I can do.”
He sat up straighter and put a smile on his face. “How about you? How are you doing?”
“Okay. I'm just taking a break from grading essays, some of which make me despair for the current generation of students.”
They ate and talked about the young people who attended their university and the politics of the History Department until their plates were clean and Naomi rose to say, “Gotta go. Still lots to do.”
Harrison bade her goodbye and then went over every word of their conversation in his mind looking for hidden meanings. “I'll make myself crazy doing this,” he thought. “I have to stop or get away.”
Deciding that he was likely to be under observation and that he might as well accept that as a given and act accordingly. “I'll go back to my apartment, try to come up with a foolproof escape route and decide tomorrow when or if I'll use it.”
The CalmDowns were helping him keep his emotions in check and he took another when he returned to his rooms. Relaxed, he lay on his bed thinking about escape from the city. It either had to be unseen and unrecorded or not at all. He fell asleep still searching for a way out.
Chapter Fourteen
Lucas pored over screen after screen, reviewing messages both within the complex and those that left the group, looking for any telltale similarities with the message that had given him away. He thought it odd that no follow up note saying “He's here,” had gone out. He felt it had to mean something but couldn't think of what.
After several hours of fruitless searching he decided to stretch his legs in the fresh air and after securing his work station he went out into the cooling air and nearly setting sun. He walked to the most serene spot he knew of, the spring and stream Maeve had shown him.
Thinking of the possibility of bears he whistled and stomped on his way down the path and looked carefully around when he got to the rock he sat on to contemplate the stream. He was startled when his eyes met another's, pale blue, set in ruddy, wind swept wrinkles in a face that looked like pre-historic Ireland. An old man with stringy white hair, dusty clothing, bare feet and an oak staff stood looking him over from across the stream.
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