“Gwynne?” Max said, chortling. Heikki waved him to silence, all too aware of the color mounting in her cheeks.
“—so that Heikki could collect them,” Galler went on, “but she didn’t do it.” He shrugged. “So I don’t have any proof. I have to admit, I wasn’t able to tell her they were there, but—” He broke off abruptly, staring at the circles of plastic Heikki was pulling from her belt pocket. Heikki allowed herself a single smile, one smile of triumph for all those years of rivalry, and leaned forward to pass the disks to Max.
“What’s on these, anyway?”
Galler closed his mouth, blinking. After a moment, he said, “You had them all along.”
Heikki nodded. “What are they?”
“Why—?” Galler began, then shook his head. “No. Not important.” He took a deep breath, focusing his attention on Max. “Those disks contain the information I pulled from our files on the original crystal project, including schematics. There are also records of Daulo Slade’s actions after I informed him of the overlap between the historical documents and Lo-Moth’s latest project.”
“Very nice,” Max said, tranquilly, and tucked the disks into his jacket. “But not exactly conclusive.” He held up his hand, silencing Galler’s automatic response, and looked at Heikki. “Heikki—your name’s really Gwynne?”
Reluctantly, Heikki nodded, and Max shook his head. “I was expecting something really awful, after all the fuss you made about not using it. Can you reconstruct the crystal matrix that Lo-Moth lost from the information on the tapes?”
Heikki looked at Santerese, who said, “It was pretty well fragmented, and the fragments were mixed in with a lot of other debris. It looked like they swept it down into the hold.”
“I remember,” Heikki said, softly. There had been a mass of wreckage, objects crushed almost to powder, a powder that glittered in the beams of their handlights…. She shook the thought away, said aloud, “I don’t know. It depends on how big the fragments were, and how many of them we can find on the tape. And, of course, how good the tape is.”
Santerese said, “We can try. But do you really want us to do it, Max? We’re—interested parties, to say the least.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Max said, with a smile that showed a disconcerting number of teeth. “Copies of your tapes are already in my main labs. But you are the best, Marshallin, you and Heikki. You’ll do it?”
“Of course,” Santerese said, with a quirky smile, and Heikki said, “I don’t see you’ve left us a choice, Idris.”
The tapes from the wreck site were already in the workroom. Heikki settled herself at her console, frowning, and called up the menu of tools she had available for this sort of job. At the console opposite, Santerese bent over her keyboard, reloading the raw data. “Was the composition of the matrix standard?” she asked, and Heikki shrugged.
“Galler?”
“What?” Her brother appeared in the doorway, Max looming behind him.
“Was the matrix of standard materials, do you know?”
“I think so,” Galler answered, frowning. “Why?”
Max laid a hand on his shoulder, drawing him away, “Let’s let them get on with it, shall we?”
Heikki was hardly aware of his departure. She stared at the list of programs displayed on the workscreen, tugging thoughtfully at her lower lip. She touched keys to load the restoration program—no question I’ll need that one, she thought—then added the more sensitive of the two modeling programs. After a moment’s hesitation, she added a second construction program, and leaned back to let the three spool into working memory.
“I’m sorting the debris by apparent composition now,” Santerese announced. “Or trying to, anyway. God, I hate working with tape.”
Heikki nodded her agreement. Even with the most sophisticated programs, you were still working with a computer’s best guess, and if that guess was wrong, it was usually catastrophically wrong, so that you thought you were looking at diamonds, and were actually dealing with ground glass. She put the thought aside. After all, the computers weren’t often wrong. Her eyes still on the filling screen, she said, “So what do you think of my brother, Marshallin?”
Santerese looked up from her screen in some surprise. “I’ve hardly seen enough to judge.” Heikki said nothing, waiting, and Santerese shrugged. “Got his eye on the main chance, hasn’t he?”
Heikki grinned. “That’s a polite way of putting it.”
“You don’t like him at all, do you, doll?”
“No,” Heikki said, “I don’t.” She became aware, tardily, of the disapproval in Santerese’s tone, and looked away. “I’m sorry if it bothers you, Marshallin, but that’s the way it is. It’s a little late to change.”
There was a brief silence, and then Santerese said, “I think you’re overreacting, just a little.” Her screen beeped before Heikki could think how to answer, and Santerese said, “I can flip you the raw feed now.”
This was not the time to discuss Galler, Heikki knew. She touched keys on her board, and said, “Ready to receive.” Numbers streamed across her screen, and she pushed the keyboard aside to make room for the more sensitive shadowscreen. The flow of numbers stopped at last, and a single icon pulsed in the center of the screen. Heikki took a deep breath, once again remembering the wreck site, and touched the shadowscreen.
The icon vanished, to be replaced with a strange, washed-out image. There was a scattering of brighter shapes along the bottom of the screen. Heikki frowned for a moment, then realized what she was looking at.
This was a processed image of the latac’s hold, looking down onto the field of debris that had been swept onto the distillery. The highlighted pieces would be the bits the computer had decided probably belonged to the crystal matrix. She ran her fingers along the sensitive edges of the shadowscreen, shrinking that image and opening a new window above it, then began painstakingly to transfer the highlighted pieces from the original image to the window. They hung there as though suspended in space, strange three-dimensional shapes that showed odd rifts and fracture lines.
“I don’t think that’s all of it,” Santerese said.
Heikki looked up, startled—she had not seen Santerese leave her console to come and lean over her shoulder— but looked at the screen again. She had already moved more than half of the highlighted pieces to the working window, and even allowing for the remainder, there was not enough to make up a complete matrix. “I agree,” she said quietly.
“Do you want me to run the program again on what’s left?” Santerese asked, and Heikki shrugged.
“You might as well. I don’t know if it will do any good, though.”
Santerese nodded, and returned to her machine. Frowning, Heikki finished removing the last highlighted images from the lower screen, then ran her hand along the edge of the shadowscreen to shrink the image even further. The pieces isolated in the upper window swelled until they almost filled her screen.
Those fragments weren’t enough to make up a complete matrix, that much was obvious. Heikki studied them for a moment longer, head tilted to one side, then ran her hands across the shadowscreen again, shifting the pieces. Several of the larger shards looked as though they would fit together, and she ran her hand across the shadowscreen, lifting and rotating them until the broken edges meshed and melded. It was a start, she knew, but resisted the temptation to do more. Instead, she called up the first of the reconstruction programs, and let it work while she waited for Santerese to finish the second survey. As she had expected, it displayed “inconclusive” across its tiny window, and when she touched the override, produced a vaguely dodecahedral shape. Most of the lines flashed blue, indicating serious uncertainty. Heikki shrugged, and banished the program.
“How’s it coming, Marshallin?”
“Almost done,” Santerese answered. “The probability is lower, though, by about ten percent. You’ll want to bear that in mind.”
Heikki nodded. A few moments later, her screen flickered
, and Santerese said, “I’m flipping you the new figures.”
“Thanks,” Heikki said. “Ready to receive.”
The image at the bottom of her screen disappeared, and was replaced a moment later by another, this one larger, with a rather sparse collection of highlighted images spread across the lower part of the window. They were concentrated in the center, where the debris field had been deepest, about what Heikki had expected. She nodded to herself and began transferring those images to the larger working screen.
When she had finished, the fragments looked somewhat more promising than they had, almost, she thought, as though there might be enough for the computer to work from. She triggered the construction program again, and this time the machine went to work without immediate complaint. After a few moments, a shape—still dodecahedral, but more clearly faceted, more recognizably something functional—appeared in the working window. A moment later, a second image, a crude cross section, with more lines flashing uncertain blue, appeared beside it, and then a third, this one a rotation of the first.
“Analysis?” Heikki said aloud.
The program considered for a moment, then responded, Function unclear. No recorded parallels of statistical significance.
Heikki had not expected anything else. She sighed, and leaned across the console to fit a disk into the room’s recording system.
“No luck?” Santerese asked, and pushed herself up from her console.
“Nothing conclusive,” Heikki answered, shrugging. “It’s handwork from here on in.”
Santerese grinned, and brought her chair around so that she could sit beside her partner. “I’ve seen worse.”
Heikki nodded, still staring at the screen. This was the trickiest part of any reconstruction, especially when they had only the tapes to go on, not actual samples of the debris. The reconstruction and restoration programs had taken things as far as they could; now she and Santerese would have to evaluate the machine’s work, and use their informed judgement to add to the computer’s construct. “Switch on the recorder, will you?” she said aloud, and Santerese did so. “Report—” She glanced at the string of characters that appeared at the bottom of the workscreen, labeling the work by date and time and session number. “—229.1631.2, Gwynne Heikki and Marshallin Santerese, for Heikki/Santerese Salvage, private report. Data is drawn from tapes 214.1426.a, 214.1426.b, and 214.1426.c, taken under contract to Lo-Moth, of and on Iadara. Data has been processed using Loppi Standard Analysis, and modified Forian Reconstruction and Restoration programs. We are now proceeding under the assumption that the recovered fragments were part of a crystal matrix, deliberately destroyed by hijackers.” She nodded to Santerese, who adjusted the recorder’s setting.
“This machine is now set for sound-activated recording,” Santerese said, “and for realtime recording of all on-screen and in-memory activity.”
Heikki nodded again. “Then let’s begin.”
It took them another four hours of slow, painstaking work to finish reconstructing the crystal. At last, however, Heikki leaned back in her chair, stretching, and said slowly, “I think that’s all I dare do. I can’t really justify adding anything more.”
Santerese glanced at the secondary screen, which displayed schematics for half a dozen different types of standard crystal. “It’s pretty obvious what it was, doll. That was a matrix.”
Heikki nodded her agreement, and reached across her partner to touch a button on the recorder cabinet. “Work is completed on report 229.1631.2. This recording ends.” She flipped off the recorder, and said, more normally, “And that proves it wasn’t an ordinary hijacking.”
“Not that you ever thought it was,” Santerese murmured.
“Well, what hijacker in his right mind would destroy the thing he came to steal?” Heikki asked, and pushed herself up out of her chair. She was stiff from the hours of work, she realized belatedly, and winced as she moved to the door. “Max?”
The commissioner had been asleep, sprawled on the couch, his feet propped up on the monitor box, but he opened his eyes at the sound of his name, contriving to look instantly aware. “Yes?”
“We’ve finished the report,” Heikki said. “I’d like you to see the results, and seal the disks.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Galler?”
Max pointed down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Asleep, I expect. I’ll take a look at your disks.”
Trust Galler to have settled in comfortably, Heikki thought, but there was less malice in the thought than there would have been before. That was not an entirely comfortable realization, and she put it aside, saying, “We’re almost certain it was a matrix—”
“Almost?” Max cut in, and Heikki gave a reluctant smile.
“I’m certain. The almost is there for the courts and the statistics.”
“Good enough,” Max said. He maneuvered his bulk past the banks of machines to perch cautiously on Heikki’s chair. “Show me.”
Obediently, Santerese triggered the media wall, throwing the final projection onto its central field. “This is the complete reconstruction,” she said. “We made a full recording of all procedures used, of course, but this is what we got.”
Max stared at the slowly rotating crystal, his face without expression. It didn’t look like much, Heikki admitted to herself, just a rough cube, its corners sawn off to create smaller planes, and those corners sawn off as well, creating smaller and smaller facets. She leaned past Max to touch keys on the nearest workboard, throwing a second, similar image onto the wall beside the reconstruction.
“That’s a simulated core crystal from a class-5 freighter—just a sample of the approximate form, not a real one.” She touched keys again, and produced a third image. “This is a schematic of the type of crystal used in the Exchange Points’ PDEs.”
“All right,” Max said again, “they’re obviously very similar. What did Lo-Moth tell you this one was, again?”
“A matrix for a possible universal center crystal seed,” Heikki answered.
“Mmm.” Max returned his attention to the media wall. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, and drew out the disks Heikki had given him. “Can you copy these?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the screen. “And then play back the copies?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Santerese said. She took the disks, slid them one by one into a diskprinter, then fed the copies into her workboard. Max tucked the originals back into his jacket. He had never taken his eyes off her during the entire process, Heikki realized abruptly, and wondered if she should be insulted.
“Put it on the big screen, Marshallin?” she said instead, and Santerese nodded. Another window opened on the media wall directly below the slowly rotating crystals, and filled with text that flickered past at an almost blinding rate.
“This is just the record of Slade’s movements,” Santerese translated. “I’m looking for the data on the original crystal.” The text, mixed now with strings of numbers and flashing images, flickered past for a few minutes longer, and then Santerese said, “Got it.”
The flow of data slowed, and then stopped, a delicately drawn schematic filling a quarter of the image. Santerese adjusted her controls, and the schematic expanded, until it had pushed the last bits of text out of the window. It looked surprisingly familiar.
“Bring up the schematic we created, would you, Marshallin?” Heikki said slowly. Santerese smiled grimly, and did so. The two diagrams were very similar.
“So,” Max said, almost to himself, sounding satisfied.
Heikki reached for her own controls, adjusting the images until the two schematics overlapped. There were minor differences, of course, there always would be between plan and actual crystal, but the main lines merged impeccably into one. “So Galler was right,” she said aloud, and Max leaned back to look at her, a crooked smile on his face.
“That’s assuming you’re right, Heikki, in your reconstruction.” He held up his hand, forestalling her automatic protest. “Don’t get me
wrong, I agree with you—but please remember, I have to go to the courts with this, and Tremoth’s lawyers are—well, experts is the politest word I’ve heard used. This is nice, but I’d like to have something solid in evidence to back it up.”
“What about the records of Slade’s movement, this stuff?” Santerese asked. “And his politics?”
Max shrugged. “Again, useful, but not conclusive. The source is tainted, after all.”
He was right, of course, and Heikki looked down at her workscreen, not really seeing the array of figures it displayed. By now, Slade would have covered his tracks, both within Tremoth and on Iadara. Though it might be more difficult on Iadara, where a substantial local population hated Lo-Moth, and not all of Lo-Moth supported its parent…. She frowned. FitzGilbert, in particular, had disliked Slade, and, more to the point, she’d lost people of her own when the latac was shot down. She had not approved of Heikki/Santerese being taken off the job—and even putting all that aside, Heikki thought, with an inward grin, she’s the likely scapegoat if Slade decides to dump the blame on Lo-Moth. All of which just might make her willing to cooperate with the authorities.
“Max,” she said, “what if I told you there was someone on Iadara, in Lo-Moth, that just might be able to come up with the hard evidence you need—if you approached her the right way, of course.”
Max eyed her warily. “If it was true, Heikki, I’d be very happy, naturally. What makes you think anyone in Lo-Moth would have anything useful, even if they were willing to give it up?”
Heikki took a deep breath, marshalling her thoughts. “My contact on Iadara was a woman named FitzGilbert. She’s the operations director on-planet—it was her latac that was shot down, and her people who were killed.” There was a faint look of amusement in Max’s eyes, and Heikki said, stung, “Yes, people still take that sort of thing seriously in the Precincts, Max.”
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