The day began early, long before dawn. Masid dressed neatly. The weapon fit in a small pouch in the hem of his jacket, right at the bottom snap, where the temperature control unit had been before Masid had removed it. The device seemed made of an inert material that should appear innocuous on a cursory inspection.
Filoo fetched him shortly thereafter and led the way to the elevator, then up to the rooftop. A pair of guards ran a wand over him at the entrance into the party. Masid waited anxiously for them to find the weapon, but the detector passed it over without a chirp. He walked in among the forty or so guests.
The party assembled within a secure perimeter on the edge of the building- From here they had an excellent view of the port. Bright lights spiked the broad field, setting everything into sharp relief below a black sky.
A buffet offered d[rinks and small snacks. Masid took a glass of what appeared to be nava and strolled toward the edge.
Conversation was subdued. He sensed the tension and worked to stay calm. Filoo carefully avoided looking at him. Masid studied the scene and decided that if he did anything here, there was absolutely no way of escape. He had decided already how unlikely that would be, but still hoped to find some avenue out. But beyond that, aside from the scanners and the guards' blasters, there appeared to be no power source from which his little dead weapon might draw a charge.
Thunder rolled from the sky. Everyone quietened.
A pinpoint of light start to grow. As he watched, Masid recognized the approach pattern of a large shuttle. The shape took on clear lines, became a definable object, and settled loudly into a blast pit.
The engines died abruptly, leaving only the sound of cooling metal crackling in the distance. The shuttle bulked in the pit for nearly ten minutes before a hatch appeared.
An aircar leapt from its pad to the shuttle. People appeared in the hatchway and climbed aboard the car. As it came toward them, guards motioned people out of the way to give the transport room to set down. Masid's heart raced
The vehicle lowered onto the platform. The canopy opened and two more guards stepped out, followed by a thickset man in rich dark green clothes.
The audience began to applaud. The man-Kynig Parapoyos, Masid realized---stood there, slightly before his bodyguards, grinning hugely and reveling in the adoration. Almost too late, Masid remembered to set down his glass and clap his hands. He was surprised. He had imagined countless possible scenarios of finally meeting Kynig Parapoyos, the most powerful criminal in settled space. What he had never imagined, never considered, was that he would know who Parapoyos was-that he would, in fact, recognize him.
But the man standing before them all now was someone Masid recognized instantly. It was a shock.
Kynig Parapoyos was the Solarian Ambassador Gale Chassik.
Mia thought she understood where she was and why she was being allowed access so easily, but she needed to get to a place where she could do a better analysis of the systems. T1iLe decontamination chamber console did not provide much in the way of information about the rest of the structure.
The cyborgs rushed through the opened isolation door and ranged out along the corridors, checking rooms, and searching for active sensors and monitors. Mia followed unhurriedly. She felt flushed from the fever, but, oddly, her headache was diminishing.
The construction appeared archaic, but nothing she had not seen aboard dozens of old ships. Starships were expensive and much more practical to overhaul than to scrap. She had been on Spacer ships over three hundred years old, lovingly maintained and thoroughly upgraded throughout their lifetimes.
'Where do we need to go?' Kru asked
"Depends," Mia replied- "What do you want to do?'
"Shut it all down."
The pair of cyborgs with them listened silently, but Mia thought she recognized agreement in their eyes.
'That might be difficult," Mia said. "In any case, I need to get to some kind of main control station." She pointed at a hatch "That should open on an access shaft to the next level. Communications center is one ... no, two decks up."
Mia pressed the button to open the door. Nothing happened, but she could hear the grinding of motors behind the wall. One of the cyborgs then worked fingers into the jamb and shoved the door open.
The shaft was dark, but she could make out the ladder rungs. She leaned out, ignoring a mild wave of dizziness, and grabbed hold- She climbed up.
The door on the second deck up worked and she stepped into the corridor. A short way down, she saw a wider doorway standing open. She approached cautiously, but she was becoming convinced no one was in this part of the complex.
Within, vague shapes mounded in the darkness. Kru came up behind her with a lamp and in the sudden bright light Mia recognized the consoles hugging the walls comms, Hyperwaves, decryptors, all nearly forty years out of date, but nothing she did not understand
Anxiously, she touched the power-up on a datum interface. The screens glowed to life.
"First thing," Mia said, sitting down, "is we find out if anyone knows were here." Slowly, because of minor differences between this and the equipment she had learned on, she began making inquiries. Two screens were dead, but the rest filled with information.
Masid hung back, dismayed, while the territory bosses came forward to pay respect to Kynig Parapoyos/Gale Chassik. The implications threatened to overwhelm him-the Solarian ambassador to Earth ran the largest black market enterprise in human history. That he had never been caught both made sense and seemed incredible. He had been in a nearly ideal position to conduct business between all the fractious elements of dozens of special interest groups.
But Masid choked off the speculation welling up. None of that mattered right now. The immediate task was to find a way to be effective.
One question required an answer What was he doing here?
The ship carrying Chassik back to Solaria-in disgrace, Masid thought-had been attacked- Everyone now believed Chassik dead, along with all the other passengers.
Why?
Masid worked through the logic tenuously. Chassik had been recalled from Earth, which suggested that Solaria's involvement with him was aboveboard- They considered him an ambassador and nothing more. Perhaps a few Solarians knew who he was and had arranged the attack as cover for diverting Chassik from a hearing which could prove embarrassing.
But Nova Levis was a Solarian property. If Chassik-Parapoyosran it, then more than a few Solarians knew and understood- Solaria's reluctance to get involved in this debacle now acquired a more sinister aspect
The moneyed interests with a stake in Parapoyos and his various enterprises numbered in the hundreds, touching nearly every Settler world and doubtless a good number of Spacer Worlds. Such a coalition of diverse interests might welcome a single resource, one place where illicit trade could be conducted with impunity.
It might also suit them to have Parapoyos himself on one planet where everyone knew he could be watched
Then why am I here?
Obviously, not everyone was privy to this situation.
Parapoyos-somehow, now that he knew, the change of names came easily--moved through the gathering, talking to people. Masid stiffened as the arms dealer approached him.
"I don't know you," Parapoyos said
"My name's Masid- I'm with Filoo."
'A Noresk. Worked for him long
triust started, really. I was independent for a long while."
'And Filoo trusts you. Impressive. Welcome."
'Thank you."
Parapoyos searched for Filoo and smiled, nodding. "Time to move the festivities, I think." He turned toward his bodyguards. "Get the transports now. I want to see the lab."
As Parapoyos moved away, Masid thought of the weapon in his jacket hem, and felt utterly helpless. He had always wondered what kind of situation might render him ineffective and yet leave him in harm's way.
Now you know ...
The gathering shifted to make room for two more aircars, one
of which was quite large. Masid boarded that one and found a place by a window.
They lifted off and flew in a staggered line to the northwest
From above, Masid studied the lab when it hove into view. The compound had clearly been added to over time, new sections coiling outward from a central form that looked vaguely familiar.
As they descended, he stared at the shape. The centerpiece was a bulbous structure, connected by a long, enclosed arcade to an oblate, fan-tike section that formed part of the northwest wall. Against this the rest of the lab huddled, diverse shapes and sizes ...
That one structure, though . the more he stared, the more he thought he knew what it was.
They dropped down onto a platform just in front of the central bulb. He emerged along with the others and stared up at the curved building. In the wall, a door slid aside
It's a ship, Masid thought instantly, recognizing the external airlock hatch Nova Levis laboratory is a ship ...
Parapoyos turned at the hatch and raised his arms.
"We've been working toward a day when we can come out of the shadows of illicit trade and black marketeering," he said, his voice amplified- "The tool upon which our ambitions have depended is this place, right here. Within this lab, we have developed the future. A small thing, really, but with tremendous impact. You have all been field testing the various scenarios over the last few years. My arrival here is premature, but not so much so that the schedule is in any way threatened- I'll simply be among you to see the first export of our new product.
"It somehow seems inappropriate to talk about the future in terms of the trivial, but, in fact, all history has been made by two factors: the impact of the unnoticed, and the advantage taken by those who understand change when it comes. This differs only in the first instance. People will definitely notice. They cannot help but notice. Every time they settle a new world, what we have created here will be waiting for them. Every time they set foot where no one has before, what we have sown will take root in their very beings. And they will have to come to us to live."
He laughed. "What every businessman wants! A ready-made market and no competition."
The gathering laughed
"So," Parapoyos went on, 'let's go in now and see how our future is doing."
In single file, they followed him through the airlock.
'Arrests are being made throughout the capital," Penj informed Derec and Ariel as he entered the security operations room. "Byris is wasting no time for a change. I doubt most of the people he's detaining are directly involved in any of this, but a few are bound to be part of it."
Derec did not take his eyes from the array of screens before him, and listened with only part of his attention. The shapes filling three displays shifted through geometric and polymetric configurations. He knew this, had seen it before, though not with this complexity. The Resident Intelligence on Earth had been corrupted for less than a year, but what he saw here revealed the effects of decades of invasive counter-programming and viral restructure. He wished he had Rana with him she possessed a gift for breaking down unusual numeric structures.
The other screens showed the actual numbers. These, too, were familiar. Most of it conformed to what he had developed from the analysis of the Union Station D.C. brain, but ...
'Ariel," lie called, "take a look. What do you think?'
Ariel came over and sat down beside him. She studied the screens. "Set point topology . . . interface iterations ... this resembles the cyborg brain."
hmm-hmm. More than just misdirection was going on here." He tapped commands into the console and waited. 'Ah-ha. Look. Those points, here and here, are one cell of the Three Law programming."
"Shit," Ariel hissed- "If it's not broken . .
"Then it's severely impaired- It's possible this RI was actually cooperating."
"Not sanely."
Derec shrugged- "Does that really matter? They found a way to co-opt it and corrupt the Three Laws."
Ariel glanced at Bogard, standing nearby, watching the room. ,,if I had to choose, Id accept your approach at once."
Derec did not reply. He was tempted to ask her if she really understood the difference, which would be insulting. Of course she did-Bogards makeup, even with its flexibility, still adhered to the Three Laws, while what they saw here in this RI seemed severed from those laws. Still, he doubted Ariel would ever fully accept Bogard, but as long as she allowed that he could be depended upon, even within limits, Derec was content
The room contained several Aurorans now, most of them security people, but quite a few from the Council. First Advisor Maliq had been shamefacedly explaining the situation to his associates since Pon Byris had brought them here. It had quickly become apparent that he had not known what Lea Talas had been doing, that she had manipulated him along with many others. Still, he was chagrined at having been gulled. But he was not allowed to see what Derec and Ariel were doing.
Derec was shutting down the corrupted RI, piece by piece. Like any Resident Intelligence, it had multiple responsibilities. Arrangements had to be made to transfer those duties to other RIs. But before anything, he had closed off its communications links-again, one by one.
Dr. Penj sat with them now and studied the screens.
'What is that he asked, pointing at a stable form amid the fluctuating fractalscape on one screen.
'That is a VR. environment," Derec said- "We have no idea what it contains-it's encased by a very sophisticated security shell. If we just open it up we might destroy whatever's within. Almost everything we've been able to identify as an illegal dataline feeds ultimately into it, so it must be very important."
"What do you have attacking it?' Penj asked
"I'm using my RI, Thales, to apply a sequence of algorithmic keys. Even at that speed, it could take days. Thales?'
"Still working, Derec. No progress. However, I have found something else of interest."
"Show me."
A new screen winked on. Numerical coordinates appeared in the left-hand comer. In the center, a routing tree scrolled up, showing a series of cross-connected links.
'Among the masked hyperwave connections we have discovered," Thales said, "this one I thought unique. It has been operating continuously for nearly a year, and except for one short period of data exchange, one direction only with no responding traffic of any kind."
"So something has been receiving constantly," Ariel said, "and sending nothing back?'
"With the exception I mentioned, that is correct. The nature of that exception appears to be in the form of remote programming algorithms. I traced the signal. It has been difficult because of the complex routing. There are at least sixteen connections which switch constantly, according to an algorithm I was able to break without too much difficulty. I discovered that its endpoint is within the Nova Levis blockade."
"To whom?' Penj demanded.
"N o, sir," Thales said- 'To what. It is in continual communication with an At system on board part of the perimeter."
"Doing what' Derec asked.
"It is operating a location and identification system which seems to be the main trunk feed for the entire blockade. It is, in fact, masking incoming and outgoing ships. Compromised in this way, the blockade has little way of detecting, identifying, and locating ships coming through these coordinates."
New numbers spread across the bottom of the screen.
'711-1afs nearly thirty degrees of arc," Ariel said
"Of course, this would not affect independent sensors," Thales continued. 'A single ship would not be prevented from detecting traffic in this segment. However, there are strict protocols in place determining which ships patrol which areas."
"Who has this area?' Penj asked
"Earth
"So what would happen," Derec asked, "if you disconnected that line?'
I cannot say with certainty, but if my understanding of the specific At system is correct, then the masking will simply end Any ships in that section w
ill become quite visible to the entire blockade."
Derec glanced at Ariel, who turned to survey the others in the room. No one seemed to be paying much attention to them. Penj was the Calvin liaison to this operation-by his own insistence and security was preoccupied with what was becoming a purge. Ariel gave Derec a small smile.
"Do it,', Derec said
Mia moved to the next console.
"What's happening Kru demanded- "We have to move."
Mia shook her head. "No," she said- '-This part of the ship has been closed down. No one has been in here in years. There's a firewall between these systems and the rest of the complex. I dont know who built it, but it's designed to prevent meddling from outside. We have not been detected by any systems outside these because that link could be used to get back in here. Paranoid programming. Anyway, the result is, we can do what we want here."
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