Aurora

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  The work of the wise is one thing and the work of the merely &-ver is another The revolution came to a stop. The instant a revolution runs aground, the clever tear its wreckage apart.

  The clever in our century, have chosen to designate themselves statesmen, so much so that the word has come into common use. But we have to remember that where there is only cleverness there is necessarily narrowness. To say, "the clever ones" is to say, "the mediocrities",- and in the same way to talk of "statesmen" is sometimes to talk of betrayers.

  Mia worried at a knuckle and finally snapped the book closed- " 'The Miserable Ones,' indeed," she murmured, staring at the title. She glanced at her desk screens. The flow charts she had pulled from the encryptions in the endpapers made a convoluted but traceable path from Earth to the blockade and through various points among the ships, where everything came and went on Nova Levis as though a military interdiction was merely thicker air to shove through. If the numbers were to be believed, traffic in and out of the planet had decreased by less than forty percent since the line went up. That was hardly a sanction at all. Luxury goods had accounted for nearly forty-eight percent of trade goods prior to the blockade. The necessities still flowed Her comm chimed" Yes?'

  "It's Yalor," her aide said- "Can we talk?'

  "Come by my cabin."

  A few minutes later, Mia admitted Ros Yalor. He spotted the bound volume of Les Miserables lying on her desk and stood over it, gazing down with a bewildered near reverence. Books, Mia reflected, are generally outside common experience; books like this are nearly alien objects apocryphal, arcane, somehow magic, and not quite real.

  "Do you have something for me ?' she asked finally.

  "Um ... yeah. Reen's off-duty time seems to be spent mainly with Illen Jons. A lot of time in her cabin. When they go out, it's either to the officers' lounge or over to one of the Keresian ships. I haven't been able to follow them there, obviously, but four hours ago I picked Reen up without her, going through the machine shops next to the recon patrol docks."

  Mia looked at the flow chart still displayed on her desk screen. "What did he do there?'

  I didn't get too close. But he waited for nearly forty minutes. A tech sergeant showed up then and they spoke, and Reen left. I thought about following Reen, but I stuck around- About ten minutes later, a row of supply trucks rolled into the dock."

  "Containing what?'

  "Nothing. They were empty. Half an hour later, a ship docked. The tech sergeant met the pilot and the two of them started unloading a cargo. Packages-I couldn't see what was in them, but they filled the train. The pilot went back to his ship, and the tech sergeant removed the trucks."

  Mia thought for a moment. "Tech Sergeant Utiskis."

  Yalor started. "Exactly. How-?'

  'The routes through the regular cargo bays seem to be dodges. A lot of them get through~ but they always plan on them getting caught That's why we never find much of any consequence in them-food stuffs, fabric, data. Always nice when it gets through, but nothing vital. The real smuggling is going through the recon docks military, secured areas, with Reen controlling the surveillance. I needed proof"

  Mia tapped keys on the desk. Data shifted on her screens. 'That---2' she pointed'~--is a list of officers ordering and receiving copies of these things." She held up the book. 'All of them are recon. All of them are cleared for overflights on Nova Levis. All of them have access to the seven docks listed her&---2' she pointed at another screen. 'These are what I culled from the encrypted data in the endpapers of the books I took from Corf. There's a network of connections throughout the blockade, but they all funnel into these seven docks. All of them are recon patrol. Finally, I have this." She indicated a third screen. "The books were all purchased through the same supplier. The names were different on all the orders, but the payment came out of one source. That source uses the same bank as Commander Reen. Reen maintains a joint account in that bank."

  ,,with who?

  'A Keresian named Lavis. Till recently, he was a personal aide to the Solarian ambassador on Earth!'

  Yalor looked confused- "How ... where ... ?'

  "You thought what? I was just an out-of-favor field operative transferred out here for disciplinary reasons?'

  Yalor frowned- "No, 1-2'

  Mia laughed- 'Forget it. Actually, the hardest part was finding the bank account. It's held under a corporate blind. But someone has to sign the receipts."

  "So there's a contact on Earth supervising that end ... and Reen here supervising incoming and outgoing. . . and a cadre of corrupted recon officers actually moving the merchandise ... it still doesn't quite add up."

  "What's wrong?" Mia asked

  "Well, I can understand what Nova Levis wants, what they're importing. But what's coming back out?'

  'And where is it going? Good question."

  "Do you have a good answer?'

  'A good suspicion ... but I don't want to say anything till I know. There are only a few places where Tech Sergeant Uliskis could stash contraband near that dock. How long ago did you leave him?'

  "Half-hour at most." He glanced at his watch-L "Twenty-three minutes."

  Mia closed up her desk. I want a took inside those trucks." She opened a drawer and took out a holster and blaster. 'Are you armed?'

  'A stunner," Yalor said.

  Mia handed him another holster. She shrugged off her jacket and slipped the rig on over her shoulders. She zipped her jacket and waited for Yalor to do the same.

  He looked uncertain. "What if-?' he began.

  "We're going to be prowling around a thief's property," Mia said- "How do you think he'll react if he catches us?'

  Yalor put on the shoulder rig.

  Mia squeezed through the space between two columns, into a short, low-ceilinged platform above an equipment locker. Below, Yalor's train of drone trucks stood near the hatch. Voices came from within the locker. Mia palmed her stunner and leaned out to peer into one of the open trucks.

  Neat rows of long blue packages filled the last car. As Mia stared at them, she experienced an intimation about their nature that made her shudder.

  A shadow reached out from the locker and she pulled back.

  The tech sergeant and another man came out and began removing the packages. Each of them hand-carried about six of the objects. She rejoined Yalor.

  "Once they seal that locker," she whispered, "we might not be able to get in without setting off an alarm."

  "What do you want to do?' he asked

  Mia considered- "I don't see anyone but those -two. I'm going down."

  "Let me," Yalor said

  "You think you're a better thief than I?'

  He frowned.

  "No," she said, "you stay up here and cover me."

  She found a ladder down to the lower level. As she descended, she worked through her reasoning. She needed evidence to break into that locker officially. She needed something she could accuse Reen of smuggling in that would draw enough attention to effect appropriate action. If she was correct in what she believed was in those packages, no amount of bribery would keep an inquiry from falling on Reen like a rock.

  And she wanted to justify her own mounting rage.

  Mia kept to the walls and shadows as she worked her way close to the trucks. She could hear the two men within the locker, talking in reasoned., calm voices. They did not seem to be in a hurry.

  She wished she could get to the other side of the train, use it as cover, but that might be too risky. She came as close to the open locker door as she dared and waited. The sergeant and his assistant came out, gathered a load of the packages, and reentered the locker.

  Mia stepped up to the truck. She glanced back quickly. She saw neither man.

  She reached into the truck and grabbed one of the packages. Her hand closed around a familiar shape within the loose blue wrapping, and she knew at once what it contained

  Her body seized as if waves of electricity had been suddenly poured over her. Sh
e could not move. Her jaw ached from clenching. She felt simultaneously weightless, her feet barely touching the deck, and enormously heavy.

  After what seemed like minutes, the current stopped- Her head lolled back on her shoulders, her vision danced with sparks, and she never felt the impact as she hit the floor.

  She opened her eyes to darkness and rumbling. It took seconds for her to identify her surroundings, for her mind to confirm what her senses already knew.

  I never expected death to be so laud, she thought.

  Then she was fully conscious, and she knew. She groped in her jacket for a hand light, felt the ominous shape of her blaster-cocky bastards, leaving her armed, but what difference would it make on impact?-and then found the little flashlight She thumbed it on.

  The light scattered over a jumble of shapes that refused to make immediate sense. Gradually, she recognized them as shipping webs, containing cargo nacelles.

  She reached out in the near weightless space and grabbed one of the straps. She pulled herself forward-at least, toward the direction she faced-until she got to the end of the row of cargo.

  Yalor floated in the harsh beam of her light, tied loosely to another web. The side of his head looked swollen, dark.

  "Shit," she hissed

  She probed the nacelles within the webbing. Hard casing, no telling what was within them unless she could get one loose and open it. Mia began pulling herself frantically through the hold of the drone. Somewhere, on board all these boats, there ought to have been crash couches, "just in case," as the tradition of using anything and everything as a life raft dictated

  Near the aft engine housing she found them. But cargo had been lashed to the bulkheads all around. Even strapped into the couches, if the boat slammed into the ground they would be crushed by the cargo that would no doubt pull free.

  She took out her blaster and set the beam for a narrow, low intensity bum, and cut through webbing. One nacelle floated out. She wrestled into onto one of the couches and cut the seals.

  It was filled with bubble packs containing, as best she could see, pharmaceuticals. She checked the 'packs impact resistant, unbreakable, opened only by a molecular key.

  Mia managed to secure the nacelle to the couch, then wrestled another one into the next couch. She emptied out several of the bubble packs to make room, then towed Yalor's limp body over. She got him inside the nacelle and shoved 'packs around him as best she could, then resealed the nacelle. It was a risk., she knew, unsure how long they still had in the descent-average for a drone was half an hour, but she had no idea how long she had been unconscious-and they might suffocate before hitting the ground- Either way, they would be dead, but there might be a chance inside the well-packed confines of the nacelle

  She heard a high keening sound, at first distant, but growing Atmosphere raking the hull.

  She climbed into her own coffin and jerked the lid to. She groped through the 'packs until her hand brushed the inner surface of the lid and found a molded form. She took hold of it with both hands, held tight, and waited.

  A few minutes later, the first impact yanked the lid from her fingers. Somehow she stayed inside, even while all the bubble packs spilled through the air above her.

  The lid slammed back down, and the boat began its skipping and plowing crash into the dirt of Nova Levis.

  Derec opened his eyes in the silver-blue darkness of his new apartment. His skin felt cool, all his muscles pleasantly stressed. Clin lay beside him, her breath deep. The sheets were tangled around their legs; the room smelled of them, their heat and urgency, a lingering reminder that now stirred Derec's belly with returning interest.

  He did not move, though., enjoying the reverie.

  Mat wake me ... ?

  He heard a dim whisper of air or movement elsewhere in the apartment, so low that he was uncertain it was a sound outside his own skull. He could hear, faintly, his pulse, just behind his left ear, so maybe it was just that but he blinked and listened

  It was like one piece of paper sliding over another.

  He turned his head to look at Clin's back. Her breath still came heavily with sleep, the one arm draped along her right side rising and falling with each breath. Derec swallowed. He had forgotten in the last few years how delightfully erotic he found a woman's back, especially one that showed the delicate musculature

  Derec sat up. He heard it again. Now his pulse kicked up as he peered through the darkness to the bedroom door. It seemed the more closely he listened, the more all sound receded, even Clin's restful breathing.

  He slipped out of bed and padded to the door. Glancing back, he saw that he had not wakened Clin. He leaned carefully into the hallway. Nothing.

  Just as he was about to return to bed, though, he heard a distinct tick like metal against plastic, from the direction of the lab. Derec moved slowly down the hall.

  He came up to the doorway to the lab and paused. Now he could hear an almost constant moil of small, delicate sounds, most too low to be heard much beyond the threshold of the room. A score of possibilities shot through his mind-theft, sabotage, an unannounced inspection-as he rounded the entrance and entered the lab.

  All at once, the sounds ended as everything before him froze into a bizarre tableau.

  Robots, poised above the supine form of Bogard, stared at him. Derec counted four of them, all advanced models, one step from full humaniform. Bogards body~-Derec reached for the light seemed partially disassembled- The lab lights came on dimly, but bright enough to make him squint.

  'Thales," Derec called

  "Yes, Derec."

  "What's going on?'

  "Repairs."

  "On whose authority~`

  "Yours."

  I didn't give permission for this work to be carried on without my presence."

  "You authorized me quite some weeks ago to continue upgrades on Bogard as opportunity arose. Opportunity has arisen.

  Derec, frowning, cast about for the memory. It sounded right, he probably had said such a thing. But still ...

  "You didn't think it necessary to inform me?'

  Forgive me, Derec," Thales said in characteristically reasonable tones, "but you have been occupied. I did not feet that this warranted what may have been an unwelcome intrusion."

  Derec almost laughed- Thales' sense of discretion surprised him. Where had that come from? But again it felt right, Derec conceded. Under normal circumstances, he may very well have resented Thales interrupting his time with Clin. Or any other woman with whom he might have become involved, if his work on Bogard and for the now-defunct Phyla is Group, his company, had not taken up every waking minute of his life for so long he had forgotten nearly every other pleasure life had to offer ...

  I suppose," lie said, stepping toward the table bearing Bogard, "you have permission from Auroran authorities?'

  "Yes."

  Nodding, Derec leaned over the table to examine the work being done. The robots remained motionless, as if waiting for a RESUME command

  The basic DW--12 body into which Thales had loaded Bogards positronic encoding back on Earth-and which Derec had begun altering in order to try to bring the physical capacities of the robot more in line with its mental abilities-was being replaced piece by piece with new components. Derec had already rebuilt the arms and head casing, and added some of the memory buffers that had enabled the original Bogard to function in the slightly less constrained fashion which had so troubled Ariel. Now the legs were new, and the torso had been entarged- New components occupied some of the now-available space within. Derec moved to the head of the worktable where more parts waited to be added

  'This is state -of-the -art," Derec commented- "How did you-?'

  'Requisitions are made through the Calvin Institute oversight intelligence," Thates reported. "I am endeavoring to bring Bogard back to full function as originally conceived and built"

  Derec was -impressed by what he saw. '-This is very good. How did these robots get in?'

  'T
here is a robot's service access in every structure on Aurora," Thales said. "Look to your left."

  Derec turned and saw a doorway appear in the wall, between two of the robot niches.

  "I see," he said, slightly uneasy at the idea. He had forgotten the pervasiveness of robotic access on Spacer worlds. T11inking about it now, he was surprised at how quickly the eccentric

  privacy habits of Earth had become part of his basic expectations. 'Um ... so how long before Bogard is back in service?'

  "We will be completing the final modifications tonight By morning Bogard will be fully functional."

  Then what? Derec wondered- How will Aurorans take a virtually autonomous bodyguard robot that can bend the Three Laws as much as I programmed Bogard to?