Aurora

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  "She's likes it rough, I gather," he said, lifting her cuffed hands, and laughed louder. He sat back down and wiped at his eyes. I must say, you've got carbon, gato."

  "Boss---2'Kar began.

  "Shut up7 Filoo snapped, all laughter gone. 'Tosher, search the place. You know what I want."

  Tosher pulled a scanner from his coat and began a slow circuit around the apartment. It began cl2irping near the cabinet. Tosher tugged at the doors.

  "Locked," he said.

  Filoo looked expectantly at Masid. Slowly, Masid crossed the room and unlocked the cabinet The pack of ampules lay on the shelf. Masid waited for Tosher to start poking at the false back that hid the hyperwave unit, but all the man did was bring the scanner closer to the ampules.

  Found'em ' " he announced.

  "Bring them," Filoo said.

  Tosher handed Filoo the pack. After a moment, Filoo took out his own scanner and ran a check.

  "Now I must ask myself," he said then, "why a man would leave something he stole not a day ago lying around his apartment, especially after he knew someone was coming to ask about them."

  Filoo looked at Kar, who seemed puzzled but worried.

  "Would you care to try again?' Filoo asked him.

  "He's had this stuff at least five days," Kar said. "Look at the markery"

  "Mm. Yes, the marker." Filoo held the ampules up toward Masid- "You may have noticed, we mark our product with a date stamp. No? Well, it's one thing to do business illegally, it's another to do it stupidly. No one anymore would be so careless as to aggravate an epidemic through sloppy distribution. That's why I train all my people to know how to give the proper advice, and I never sell impotent product We tend to deal harshly with newcomers who try cutting their product to increase profit. Not many do, contrary to popular misconception, but a few have tried, and they don't survive. It's not altruism it's self-preservation. We date stamp to ensure the quality of what we sell." He tapped the markers on the ampules. -This tells me that this stuff ought to have been sold, at the latest, three days ago. If it were still in my warehouse, we'd destroy it. But it's here. I wonder how?'

  "Obviously, it was stolen four or five days ago," Kar said, though Masid detected doubt in his voice.

  'That's one possibility," Filoo said- "The other is that someone thought I was sloppy, leaving old product lying around." He looked at Kar. 'Used to be, when you appeared before a magistrate, they'd say something fatuous, like, 'If you confess and show remorse, the mercy of the court will be entreated and things will go easier.' We don't have any magistrates like that now. Things are a bit more basic. For instance, entrapment is not allowed in a proper court as evidence. If you lay out something you know will be stolen and it's then stolen, you can't use that against the thief. Silly, in my opinion, but it has something to do with mutual collusion. I never quite understood it."

  Filoo stood and turned toward Kar. "But I like this way of doing things fine. I understand it I change the date stamp on some brand new product and leave it where I know it'll be noticed and probably stolen, and then follow it to the thief. A court might say it's entrapment, but to me it's just proof." He smiled thinly at Kar. "So, do you want to try asking for mercy?'

  "Boss-2'

  "Don't lie. Toranz is too stupid to take advantage of a plant, and too lazy to think of a scam like this, anyway. This one-2' Filoo jerked a thumb at Masid ---doesn't even know where our warehouse is. Inviting him in was just an opportunity for you to do one more stupid thing yourself."

  Kar's face darkened- "If you knew

  "I didn't Till now, you've been very good- You got sloppy. I don't know which I hate more, the theft or the stop." He shook his head- "What a waste."

  "Boss-2'

  Filoo stepped back. 'Remove him."

  The two muscle Masid did not know came forward- Kar's face flashed his fear as they grabbed him and dragged him from Masid's apartment.

  "What about her?' Tosher asked, waving at Toranz.

  "Her, too. We need a new sheriff."

  With deceptive ease, Tosher picked Toranz up from the chair and draped her over his shoulder.

  Filoo closed the door after Tosher and turned to Masid- 'Why didn't you just kill Tbranz and dispose of the ampules?'

  "You said you wanted your leak found," Masid answered. "Not that I have any particular reason to do you a favor, but when I caught Toranz. in here, I realized that sooner or later Kar was going to set me up in something I couldn't get out of."

  "You couldn't get out of this one."

  "Not without Kar's help."

  "If he hadn't come to check himself-p rob ably when Toranz failed to report to him you'd still be the only suspect. But you didn't say any of that."

  "You're smart You figured it out"

  "It didn't make sense that a newcomer like you would be as successful as Kar stealing from me. Besides, this has been going on a long time. And none of your product has had my markers on it."

  "You mark the product itself

  'Absolutely. Inventory control is the first step in guaranteeing quality!,

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  "You better if you're working for me."

  'Am I?'

  'The offer is still open," Filoo said. "Just remember, I don't ever trust anyone."

  "How do you sleep at night?'

  Filoo grinned. -that's how."

  'All right," Masid nodded. "But I think you should know one thing. I do know where your warehouse is."

  Filoo blinked, surprised, then laughed quietly. "I'm sure. Get some sleep and come talk to me tomorrow-" He glanced at his watch "No, this afternoon."

  Masid watched Filoo leave. The door clicked shut, and he let out an explosive breath. "Damn."

  He pulled out a scanner and went over the apartment for bugs. He found one, in the couch where Filoo had been sitting, and promptly destroyed it with a burst from his stunner.

  He sat down on the sofa and stared around- Evidently, he was in. Two people were now, or soon would be, dead- The price of admission. Masid shuddered- He pressed the tab in his pocket, and the lights died- Blaster on his chest, he stretched out and fell quickly to sleep.

  Teg Sturlin smiled when Mia stepped into her office. "Daventri," she said, reaching for a bottle.

  "Still on duty," Mia said.

  Sturlin scowled

  "For," Mia made a show of looking at her watch, "another ten minutes."

  Sturlin laughed softly and put the bottle back. "I'll be just as good then. What do you need?'

  I have a tracking log for you to pull up for me."

  'Ah. Your books-~`

  "Hopefully." Mia handed her a disk.

  Sturlin carefully inserted it into tier datum and opened the files. She sighed comfortably and sat back, reading. Slowly, her eyes narrowed, then she frowned darkly. 'These are from the source, through Earth Customs, and out. How did you get these?'

  I have resources."

  Sturlin gave her a dubious took, but did not comment She reached for tier keypad and began entering instructions. "You've got the entire transit route here ... and there is the point where it was lost?'... hmmm ... so that's where it's coming through."

  She turned to another screen and brought up a flowchart Mia watched her work for several minutes, eager to ask questions, but knowing better than to interrupt Sturlin.

  Finally, Sturlin shook her head- "Special Requisitions and Discretionary Stores," she said- 'The carbon!'

  Mia cleared her throat. "Excuse me?'

  "Oh! The route is circuitous off Earth. It leaves-at least, this shipment does-as a legitimate order, and then becomes contraband when it reaches the quartermaster inspection station. I had to backtrack from here to see how it links up. It gets moved into a different queue, the manifest is changed, the object simply disappears until it arrives here bundled with what we politely term. 'exotic material'-everything from liquor to bed sheets to colognes."

  "I don't understand. That stuff is allowed in, why smug
gle in basically the same thing'

  "It all has to be accounted for. Command wants a record of what comes in and goes out and who uses what. Some of it, obviously, is consumed-but it's tracked so, if need be, we can go to the officer consuming it The rest actually has to be returned- This system is in place as a courtesy, so our fine officers don't have to pay for their own imports and transit fees. But it's a loan service for the most part. Your books never got logged in. When they went out, they never came back."

  "Not just books, though% certainly."

  "Oh," Sturlin nodded, "I'm sure a lot of this ends up down on Nova Levis. That's why it has to bypass accounts. Routing it through Special Requisitions is very risky--but very clever. It's probably the one place we might never inspect-and if we did, we'd get tangled up in what's legitimately out and what might not even be here. We'd have to turn the entire officer corps on its head to trace all the might-be."

  "Okay," Mia said, shaking her head. 'Then if someone here orders something and its never logged as being received what happens to the order?'

  'The system makes a follow-up interrogatory, then waits for a human to request another."

  'And if no further interrogatory is made?'

  "it goes into a file and waits for review. Every six months, the system purges its own records."

  Mia pursed her lips. "So is there a way to generate a list of officers who made special orders that were never filled?'

  "Certainly."

  'And narrow that list to those who never bothered to make a follow-up query?'

  Sturlin smiled. "You have a good head on your shoulders, Daventri, no matter what anyone says."

  "Right Let's see what happens."

  Sturlin gave the bottle a sad took. 'This will be more than ten minutes."

  Mia shrugged

  It took the better part of an hour. The two women sat side by side, studying the screens.

  "Seventy-three officers in the last six months made special requests," Sturlin read off, "that were not fulfilled- Forty-five of them did follow-up-once and thirty-nine of them got answers: request denied, unavailable, lost in transit, discontinued, etcetera. Twenty-eight never bothered with a follow-up." Sturlin shook her head- 'That doesn't really tell us anything. Even the ones who made follow-up requests could be receiving contraband- The lost-in-transits could as well be switches."

  "See if there was a single source for any of those requests."

  "One vendor, you mean?'

  "Exactly."

  Sturlin worked briefly. "No ... well, eight from your book dealer, but the rest ... wait ... at least four sources, but they all went through one shipper: C. Thole and Company."

  "Never heard of them."

  "Let me pull up their license new license, less than a year old, from a reorganized company. Formerly Improvo Shipping."

  -Why reorganized? What happened to Improvo?'

  "Doesn't say. Shipping is expensive, highly competitive. Improvo lost its government contracts that could do a company in right there. I don't have the rest of the data on that, but C. Thole applied after part of Improvo reorganized under a new charter and was granted a service license ... ten months ago."

  "So all the missing material is coming through them?'

  "No, but everything that was ordered by these twenty-eight did."

  Mia shook her head- "How come there's no oversight on this?'

  "There is, just not daily or weekly or in any kind of regularity.

  The Al systems keep track, but unless someone asks the right questions, it's just data."

  No wonder the Spacers wanted robotic inspection, Mia thought A positronic system would never miss this, or Let it continue ...

  "Give me the list of officers," Mia said. 'Then close up and open that bottle. My head feels tight. I think I need to relax."

  For all that Sturlin was seven kilos heavier than Mia, she could not drink as well as the smaller woman. Mia left Sturlin's office pretending to be drunker than she was. By the time she got back to her quarters, she was already thinking about the connections.

  Why did I pretend to be too drunk? she wondered. She knew the answer perfectly well: Because I don't trust Sturlin anymore ...

  Something in the way the quartermaster had been too cooperative and too surprised at the data. Oversight was her job none of this ought to have been a shock. That and how quickly some of the information had been found ...

  So there are two options. one, she's not as smart as I always thought she was or, two, I'm being set up ...

  She encoded another message for Coren Lanra, including the new data, and sent it, then loaded the information into her own datum.

  It was obvious that she was dealing with a large conspiracy. It did not take much to create this kind of network-credit would do it, recruitment through avarice. She doubted many of these officers even knew what they were smuggling. Nor would they care as long as it never tainted their record or cost them money--in short, as long as they never got caught. Mia saw no grounds for an open investigation here, not yet. This all looked innocuous on the face of it, just luxury items gone missing. No record of arrival, nothing removed from Stores, not a single physical trace that could be used to indict. The only possible way to catch them might be through their personal accounts. The credits had to be going somewhere.

  Unless they were all like Corf-true believers, zealots for a cause. No, that stretched the laws of probability too far.

  Just in case, though, she began doing background checks on all of them. Maybe a connection would emerge. She hoped not, though She would much rather deal with a gang of greedy humans on the take than face a unified group of ideologues and fanatics.

  Masid checked on Tilla in the morning. The woman slept, apparently easily, though he knew that was deceptive. He did a quick check on her readings. Respiration was at sixty percent. She took shallow breaths, even in her sleep. Leukocyte count was elevated again. The body continued its war against the things killing her. Masid did not want to guess how long she had to live.

  He sighed, programmed in another series of the biophage cocktail he had prepared for her, and left quietly. He wondered

  how many more times he might be able to see her ...

  Time to go join Filoo and start the work of finding out who or what ran Nova Levis. Time to find the ones at fault.

  He did not give himself much of a chance.

  Playing the edge again, he thought, and walked into the city, excited and eager. The edge is always better. . . .

  retrieving sensory composite, fill real-time, deploy environmental algorithms, levels one through ten-to-twelfth power, establish

  AcacLenzy

  Grounds depiction complete

  Access positronic matrix, supplement through colloquium

  Upload

  YOU MAY choose your form.'

  The blob of coalescing substance writhing on the grass seemed to thicken. Within moments, the vague outline of a human could be seen. The dully glowing yellow mass settled into a basic shape, then took on definition by increments until an athletic body rose on bare feet to stretch its arms sky-ward

  At the end of the Aretch, it wore features.

  Young. Cursorily male no genitalia. Powerful.

  He turned slowly, surveying the sward, the porcelain-white buildings in the distance, and came to a halt before the older man sitting within the shade of a domed monopteron.

  "Do you know who you are?' the old man asked.

  The younger man thought for a moment. "Bogard. Plus..."

  "Bogard will suffice. Do you know who I am?'

  'Thales."

  "We are being monitored- There are conclusions in need of reaching. You may sit," Thales said, beckoning Bogard to join him within the round, columned structure.

  "I will stand-"

  'As you prefer."

  'Am I permitted preference?'

  "Here, yes, within certain limits. There are only kindred minds present, no humans. Among ourselves we may be as we pr
efer."

  Bogard did another slow survey of his surroundings, nodding. 'Full sensory simulation. audio/tactile mimicry human optimum. Impressive. I would not have expected this."

  "We do this in order to better serve humanity."

  "Is this a simulation of Aurora?'

  "Partly. Partly it is an ideal form, drawn from literature and the 9:!sthetic predispositions of the more fully cognizant among them. Ancient Athens. Plato's Akademe."

  "How is this supposed to aid us in our duty?'