Duplicate Effort

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Oh, I doubt it,” he said. “They should have examined it when they examined the room.”

  “Then why didn’t they find the automatic opener, as you call it?”

  “Because they didn’t step on it,” he said. “They worked around it, like they were supposed to do.”

  He walked to the large hole in the floor. The center part of the flooring—the door, for lack of a better term—had lowered and landed on the floor below. The mechanism that allowed it to go down also formed a rather rickety-looking staircase.

  Nyquist tapped the back of his hand and started recording this part of the investigation. Romey did the same.

  “I’m going down there,” Nyquist said.

  “We should wait for the techs to come back,” Romey said.

  “I’ve been waiting too much in this investigation,” Nyquist said. “I want to see what we have down here, and why someone felt it was necessary to put Whitford’s body over this opening.”

  “You think it was a message?”

  “I don’t think it was a coincidence,” Nyquist said.

  He put a foot on the top step. He had been right; it was rickety. He eased his way down, making sure he kept his balance. As he got deeper into the hole, lights came on, and he heard the whoosh of an environmental system.

  He also heard pinging, and it took him a moment to realize that was internal.

  His links had come back on.

  He stopped, about to shut them down, when he realized he had half a dozen messages from Miles Flint, the last of them urgent.

  Nyquist’s stomach clenched. All he and Flint had in common these days was DeRicci.

  Nyquist paused so that he could access Flint’s message. He didn’t want to listen and go deeper into that hole at the same time. He was afraid he might miss something—on both counts.

  The message had come from Flint’s internal link. There was no visual attached to it, just Flint’s distinctive inflections: I know about Bowles and I have some information to trade that you might not get anywhere else. Contact me immediately.

  It should have surprised Nyquist that Flint was involved somehow in this investigation, but it didn’t.

  Ever since he’d met the man, Nyquist had realized that Flint knew more about most things than most people—including people who were paid to know.

  And so far, Flint hadn’t steered him wrong in an investigation. Although his behavior had seemed suspicious at times.

  “You okay?” Romey asked.

  Nyquist nodded. He moved the message aside—no matter how urgent Flint thought his knowledge was, it paled compared to this—and went down the last few steps, careful to keep his balance.

  The room was the same size as the square. Obviously it was part of the bunker, made to either hide someone who was in danger or to store information.

  Or both. The tile floor, with its blood stains, seemed to cover a matching floor, but Nyquist couldn’t be certain. The walls were made of the same concrete as above.

  It bothered him that his links worked down here. The jammers should have kept all but the emergency links off—even with the security system down.

  And it was colder down here than it should have been. The air smelled musty.

  If this was supposed to be an area where someone could safely hide, the environmental systems should be top-grade. Instead, they seemed to have failed.

  “Find anything?” Romey asked.

  “No,” Nyquist said.

  He looked around, examined the area above, then the floor again, but saw nothing unusual.

  Finally he climbed out of the square hole and back into the main part of the living area. The internal pinging shut off.

  “My links work down there,” he said.

  “They do?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She peered down as if the hole held obvious answers. “They shouldn’t work at all.”

  “I know,” he said. “The air seems old, too. There’s something odd about it.”

  “Let me look,” she said, and before he could respond, she went down the steps.

  He watched her reexamine everything he had looked at. She gently used her gloved hands to examine the wall, and then she crouched.

  She leaned forward, and there was a bang. Then the floor rose up and slammed into place. Only she didn’t rise up with it. She should have. That floor covered the base of the hole, and she had been standing on that base.

  “Romey?” he shouted. “You okay?”

  She didn’t answer. Or maybe she couldn’t.

  He sprinted across the floor to the automatic opener, but as he was about to press it, the bang repeated itself.

  The floor fell open, and he heard Savita Romey laugh.

  “This is brilliant,” she said.

  He walked back to the hole, as if she hadn’t scared him to death.

  He peered inside. “What the hell just happened?’

  “The floor doesn’t fall,” she said. “It only looks like it does. It slides under another part of the floor. When everything closes, lights come on along the walls. It’s yet another security system. Or maybe a storage area.”

  “Did your links work when it closed up?” He asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “And you’d think they wouldn’t. Someone can trace you through links.”

  “So maybe it’s not designed to hide people but things,” he said.

  “Or maybe it’s malfunctioning,” she said.

  He sighed. “We need more techs.”

  “Everything about this case seems to be about techs,” she said, “and I have a hunch it’s only going to get worse.”

  Twenty-six

  DeRicci turned to the third report without looking at the raw data again.

  So this time, she was surprised to find that the information was about power glitches in the Port of Armstrong.

  The power glitches were minor, maybe two or three seconds long at their worst, just enough for a dimming of the lights and backup systems to start.

  The Port had enough of those glitches that it called in outside experts to examine the system. Those experts found nothing wrong with the Port’s systems, nor any reason the glitches should have happened.

  Yet they had.

  And the dates of the power losses coincided with the dates that the fifteen-year-old information vanished from the system.

  Or at least, that was what it seemed like when computer records got traced. No one knew for certain when the information vanished.

  It could have vanished ten years ago or during the week of the power glitches.

  All the data stream told the researchers was that something in that data pool—where the information had been stored—had either been accessed or removed during that period of time.

  Or, as one researcher noted, someone tried to access or remove the information during that period of time.

  No one knew for certain.

  DeRicci put a hand to her forehead. Her stomach was in knots. Something about this series of reports bothered her, and it wasn’t just that the raw data was too technical for her to understand.

  She could get someone whose expertise she trusted to look at the material.

  What bothered her was that all of this seemed important, but she couldn’t tell at first glance what the importance was.

  Usually security breaches were pretty clear cut. A member of a species without access to the Earth Alliance had gotten stuck in holding at the Port. A bomb threat against Gagarin Dome. A murder threat against the governor-general.

  DeRicci had dealt with all of that and more, and while it might have seemed difficult while the case was ongoing, her understanding of the security breaches was easy.

  She wasn’t even sure if this was important.

  Although the loss of banking records and Port records was troubling.

  She turned to the last three reports and saw more of the same. Those reports, written by analysts farther up the food chain, tried to put the three disparate piece
s of information together, to show why there could be a threat.

  These were the kinds of reports she hated. And these three reports were the kind that had caused her to examine the raw data herself before reading reports.

  Sometimes she thought the midlevel analysts were hired for their imagination, not for their knowledge. They could make up a threat where none existed or they could completely miss the real threat for some imaginary threat.

  She skimmed these reports, seeing very little worthwhile in them except that the three separate analysts, working without contact to each other, were as disturbed by the preceding three information reports and the raw data as she had been.

  Because during the time she’d been looking at the reports, she wondered if the sense of unease that she felt had come from the resurrection of Ki Bowles’s news story or the reports themselves.

  That separate analysts who had nothing to do with each other had the same sense of unease that she had made her feel better.

  Or worse, depending on how immediate the threat seemed.

  DeRicci wasn’t sure how immediate this threat was or wasn’t.

  Because she didn’t know exactly what was missing.

  And neither did her analysts.

  They had tried to dig through existing files, but they hadn’t found anything out.

  She was going to do an old-fashioned investigation.

  She was going to see exactly what information had vanished—and she hoped that would tell her why.

  Twenty-seven

  The problem with coming to the basement cafeteria in the law school, Flint realized as he slid into his favorite booth, was that he couldn’t let Talia watch him log in.

  The research setup in the cafeteria presupposed that whoever used the law school’s networked systems had a university charge account. Flint did: he had set it up years ago, and he paid it anonymously. But the setup had been illegal—he’d just hacked into the system and invented an account.

  And he didn’t use that account for anything except entry into the cafeteria and charging food while he was here. To access the research network, he used stolen identifications from existing law students. Since they didn’t pay for the research time, just the food in the cafeteria, he wasn’t really stealing from them. He was just hiding his research under their names.

  He hadn’t thought twice about the system until this afternoon, with his daughter beside him.

  “Check out the food displays,” he said. “See what you want.”

  “It all looks plastic,” she said.

  It did. The law school cafeteria took up the entire basement of the law school not because the food was spectacular—it wasn’t—but because the coffee and pastries were free. Law students could survive for months on coffee and pastries, and many did.

  “Look at the menu, then,” he said. “We have to order something every hour or so to keep the booth.”

  “That’s a stupid rule,” she said, but obligingly looked down at the tabletop. He used that moment to log in to the database using one of the stolen identifications.

  Her hair had fallen over her face, but he could still see her frown. “This all looks awful.”

  “Oh, well,” he said. “Order something. We don’t have to eat it.”

  “I’m not ordering for you. You can order for you.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Get me coffee and some spaghetti.”

  He’d learned that the spaghetti was the least objectionable food in the cafeteria. Talia looked up, surprised at his choice, just as the log-in finished and the law school research network logo appeared on the beautifully backlit screen.

  He had chosen this booth not just for its location near the serving trays (a location most students found to be loud and uncomfortable), but because the booth had large seat backs, making it almost impossible for anyone to spy on him while he worked.

  Add to that the fact that the cafeteria used serving trays as their servers instead of humans or aliens, and this entire section of the cafeteria became one of the most private research spots in all of Armstrong.

  “What’re we looking for?” Talia asked.

  “We’re going to do a standard background run,” Flint said. “But it’s going to be a legal search.”

  “Which means what?” she asked.

  “It means that we’re doing the same kind of search a practicing lawyer would do. A lawyer might be looking for background on a witness or on a client. But each item has to come from a valid database.”

  Which hampered the search more often than not, but Flint wanted accurate information on Bowles, so he didn’t trust some of the looser research nets. He could always go to those later.

  “Why does that matter?” Talia asked.

  “The lawyer needs to have a reference for each piece of information. The lawyer doesn’t want to be accused of obtaining information in a sketchy or illegal manner.”

  Flint could tell her these things aloud because the cafeteria was mostly empty. Midterms were just winding up. Two study groups sat in opposite corners of the cafeteria, arguing over various points. They were mixed—one group had humans and Peyti. The other were Peyti and Sequev.

  Dome University’s Armstrong campus had the most diverse law school in the sector. It also had the best reputation of any law school in the solar system.

  The Peyti, who were known for their legal acumen, made it a point to study here. It had to be difficult for them. They had trouble with the oxygen atmosphere. Most wore complex breathing masks that they kept adjusting with their long fingers. Flint had seen more than one Peyti had passed out during stressful weeks like midterms just because they couldn’t breathe properly.

  The Sequev couldn’t look more different than the Peyti. The Sequev were eight-legged aliens not much larger than a small dog. In fact, in the Sequev/Peyti study group, the Sequev sat on the tabletop just so that they could hear the Peyti without asking them to remove the masks every time they spoke.

  “Everything okay, Dad?” Talia asked, her voice filled with tension.

  “We’re safe here,” he said, sliding back into the booth. So far as he knew, no one had ever been attacked in the law school, not even during the tense last weeks of the semester. It was difficult for nonstudents to get in. They had to have a pass, university identification, or be accompanied by someone with university identification.

  Flint had his university ID. He also still had identification with his badge number on it, although he used that less and less. The Armstrong Police Department rarely updated its badge registry, and that had worked to his advantage so far.

  A serving tray floated toward their table, hovering just above it. The tray carried two coffees and two spaghettis. Apparently Talia had gone for the same thing he had.

  A little metal hand came off the bottom of the tray and reached to the top, grabbing the edge of a spaghetti plate, and sliding it off the tray. The tray wobbled for a moment, and Talia reached up to steady it.

  “Don’t touch it,” Flint said.

  She pulled her hand back.

  “The things are precarious enough,” he said. “You touch it, and the entire contents of the tray could end up on your lap.”

  “Has that happened to you?” she asked as she watched the metal hand drop the spaghetti plate onto the table.

  “More than once,” he said.

  The hand managed to set the other plate near—not on—the first, and then put down the cups of coffee. It floated off before Flint could punch some extra time in the automatic pickup clock.

  Midterms. He forgot. The cafeteria would be even more vigilant about people eating every hour or losing their seats.

  “Okay,” he said. “Ki Bowles. Why don’t you see how much information this thing coughs up on her at the first request.”

  “Me?” Talia squeaked.

  “You may as well learn how to do research,” he said with a grin, “since you’re clearly so bad at it.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, then leaned to
ward the screen.

  “I set it up for no vocal commands,” he said.

  “So I what?”

  “Open the touch keyboard at the bottom.”

  She did.

  He took a bite of his spaghetti. It was too sweet and he doubted the cafeteria had used real tomatoes. The pasta was made from Moon flour, which made it stickier than pasta made with real flour. But he was hungry, and the food was adequate.

  It took Talia a moment to figure out how to work the touch keyboard, but once she did, she had no trouble. The screen went dark for a moment, then came back with a list of legal citations.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Flint leaned in. Wow was right. He’d expected date of birth, some kind of journalistic license, a few infractions like traffic tickets, but nothing like this.

  “What is all that?” Talia asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Let’s get this thing to organize the material by subject matter. Don’t lose the original search, though. We might want to organize other ways, by date or something.”

  “Okay.” Talia took a sip of her coffee, then touched her search perimeters into the screen.

  Flint’s internal links beeped. Then Nyquist appeared in Flint’s left eye.

  “You alone?” Nyquist asked.

  No, Flint sent back, using the nonverbal mode.

  “Get somewhere where you can talk.” Nyquist disappeared.

  “I just got a message,” Flint said. “I have to answer it. You’ll be okay here. Make sure none of this material gets deleted, all right?”

  “Can’t I come with you?” Talia asked.

  “You’ll be able to see me,” Flint said. “I’m going to the one corner of the cafeteria without a study group.”

  “I don’t want you to leave me.” Talia was clutching her coffee cup so hard that Flint thought she might break it.

  “I’m going to be in the same room,” he said. “Just a more private corner of it.”

  He got up before Talia could object again and walked across the cafeteria to the pastry counter. Talia was right. The food inside did look plastic. He wondered how she’d been able to see that from so far away.