Duplicate Effort

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “As in a virus?”

  “As in an alert or a message system, something that might contact whoever set the program up in the first place.”

  Van Alen frowned. She had heard of things like that. “Shouldn’t you be able to find that?”

  “Eventually,” Ito said. “But we’re working with a sophisticated program. For all I know, the power glitch and the resulting trail through our computer networks was a Trojan horse.”

  “Something snuck in here?” Van Alen at least understood that metaphor. She’d used it a few times herself in court cases.

  “And it’ll attack when it’s ready. Or…”

  This woman had irritating speech patterns. Van Alen wanted to shake her.

  “Or?”

  “It will send information out of the system when it finds the information. Not an attack so much as a prolonged search.”

  “In other words,” Van Alen said, “You have no idea what happened.”

  Ito flushed. Her face turned so red it almost looked painful. “No. Something came into our systems during the glitch. I think the glitch was designed to mask that. While we were all dealing with a momentary power issue—which distracted us and shut down our external security—something got into our computer systems.”

  “Which should have shut down but didn’t. Do you know why?”

  “There’s a backup power system on them,” Ito said.

  “I know that,” Van Alen said. “But a backup system should be buildingwide, not just on the computer systems.”

  “Really?” Ito sounded breathless. “Because as far as I can tell, it’s only on the computer networks.”

  “No,” Van Alen said. “It’s on everything. I had that system put in myself. We don’t want to lose information…”

  It was her turn to trail off. She had specifically wanted this building to remain active when there was a problem in the power supply.

  “Ma’am?” Ito asked. “You want me to check to see when the backup equipment got changed?”

  “I’ll have maintenance do that,” Van Alen said. “You find out if there’s some kind of Trojan horse in my network. And even better, see if you can find what kind of information that damn search was looking for.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Can I bring in some help?”

  “Inside help only,” Van Alen said. “I don’t want to have outsiders looking at my systems again today. I think we’ve had a big enough breach, don’t you?”

  Ito nodded, probably because she had no other choice. Then she shifted from foot to foot again.

  “Go,” Van Alen said. “And report back as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Van Alen sighed. She needed maintenance again. She wanted to know when the systems were tampered with.

  Timing mattered, but not as much as the missing information.

  Although she had a hunch she knew what the search was looking for.

  Ki Bowles’s files. Someone from the outside would think that Bowles had case files here. Instead, Bowles came every week for some new tidbit that Flint would send her out to investigate.

  The files Flint kept here were not on the networked computers.

  So the thing that had invaded Van Alen’s systems had done so searching for something it couldn’t find.

  Something that didn’t really exist.

  Still, it made her nervous.

  She felt vulnerable for the first time in years.

  And she didn’t like the feeling at all.

  Forty

  He noticed them out of the corner of his eye: a group of large men who seemed more like athletes than law students. Flint kept his head down but stopped looking at his screen. Instead, he watched them.

  They carried handhelds and one even had a thick book with a green cover, something Flint had seen law students carry before. The men leaned toward one another and began to talk in an animated way. One of them studied the menu on the table, while another opened the book.

  No one else seemed to notice them. The Peyti study group didn’t even look up. Neither did the Sequev and human group.

  Maybe they were used to seeing this group of large men gather in the library in the afternoon. Or maybe they had seen the men around campus.

  It wouldn’t be the first time that a group of humans—maybe from an area off the Moon—had come to the same university to study together.

  For all Flint knew, they could be brothers.

  Talia was still going through the information before her. She hadn’t noticed the newcomers at all, which surprised Flint. He would have thought that she would notice everything new, considering how on edge she was.

  He turned his attention back to the screen before him. Ki Bowles had been an only child. Her parents had lavished her with affection, and given her the best education possible. She had gone to college on Earth, where she majored in, of all things, art history.

  That surprised him, but it explained why she had once said in one of her news reports that Flint looked like a pre-Raphaelite angel—”fallen, of course,” she had added with a laugh.

  One of his links cheeped.

  Talia looked up. She had heard it as well.

  “What now?” she asked.

  A message scrolled underneath his vision: Possible client. Urgent. And then his link cheeped again.

  The link was one of the few contacts he had attached to the sign outside his office door.

  He didn’t need any clients. He probably wasn’t going to take any for quite a while, maybe years.

  But the cheeping continued.

  “It’s a possible client,” he said. “I’m just going to wait until they go away.”

  “Just talk to them,” Talia said. “That noise is annoying.”

  Flint smiled at her, then stood. He didn’t want her to hear how harsh he could be. He walked back over to the pastry counter. The damn things looked no more appetizing than they had earlier.

  His link cheeped again. He wished he hadn’t set the stupid thing up to be audible, but he had. He’d figured he would need it, back when he thought he would need a lot of clients.

  With a sigh, he answered the link—and found no one there. He frowned. He used the link to back-trace the communication, and got a visual in the bottom corner of his right eye. He saw the sign outside his office. The sign had a tiny black dot near the communications chip.

  Someone had set up an automatic page.

  He frowned. He didn’t like that. Automatic pages often had tracking equipment built into them. Whoever had contacted him might have used it to determine where he was located.

  He and Talia would have to find another place to do their research—and they’d have to do so quickly.

  He disconnected the link, then started back to Talia’s booth. As he did, the men got up from their table and casually kept pace with him.

  Then two fell in behind him and one stopped in front of him. The other kept to his side.

  Flint realized that the one beside him was jamming his links. He stopped walking. He didn’t want to lead them to Talia.

  “Miles Flint?” The man in front of him spoke softly. “You’re to come with us.”

  “I don’t do anything people tell me to do,” Flint said. “Now let me pass.”

  One of the men behind him grabbed his arm. The grip was tight.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the first man. “We need you to come with us.”

  “I don’t care what you need,” Flint said, refusing to speak softly.

  But none of the students looked up. No one did. No one seemed to notice his plight.

  “Come with us,” the first man said so softly that Flint had to strain to hear him, “or we’ll take your daughter.”

  “And some of us,” said the man holding Flint’s arm, “are quite fond of young girls.”

  Flint felt his stomach turn. The man’s grip had grown so tight that it cut off blood to his hand.

  He needed to get them out of the cafeteria, away from Talia. Th
en he would take them on. If nothing else, a brawl would bring the campus police.

  “All right,” he said to the first man, “so long as your goon here lets go of my arm.”

  The first man nodded at the other one. The one behind Flint let go. Blood immediately began flowing again, sending a feeling of pins and needles into Flint’s hand.

  The men surrounded him and walked with him toward the door. He hoped Talia didn’t see—or if she did, he hoped that she was sending for help through her links.

  He needed to figure out how to get away from these men.

  He had no weapons, nothing except his own strength and cunning.

  His strength looked like no match for these guys.

  He hoped his cunning would be.

  Forty-one

  Bowles’s handhelds were still in her apartment. The techs hadn’t finished with everything. Apparently Gumiela had instructed them to bag and tag anything that might be construed as evidence, so the techs were being extra cautious.

  As he pulled up beside the building, Nyquist understood why. He hadn’t seen so many reporters in one place, all of them pushing and shoving each other in an attempt to get some kind of story.

  A few were reporting live from the scene. Others were trying to interview the poor street cops who had been assigned to guard the building itself.

  The noise was incredible, and for a moment, Nyquist, who was still feeling wrung out from his memory attempt, didn’t want to go inside.

  But he had to. If Bowles had those files, it might explain why Wagner had gone after her.

  So Nyquist squared his shoulders and walked onto the sidewalk. One reporter saw him, then looked away. Another frowned, and a third stopped interviewing a street cop and headed straight for Nyquist.

  Which started the avalanche of people.

  “Detective Nyquist?” said a man he didn’t recognize. “Are you on this case?”

  “What case?” Nyquist asked.

  “Detective Nyquist?” One reporter asked another. “Wasn’t he the guy who nearly died last year?”

  “Detective Nyquist?” a third reporter shouted. “Who murdered Ki Bowles?”

  He kept his head down. He’d shoved his way through crowds before. A few times, he’d shoved his way through crowds of reporters.

  It hadn’t made him nervous before, but it made him nervous now. He still wasn’t over that attack—and remembering it just a few moments ago, no matter how much it had served this case—only seemed to make him even more uneasy.

  He wanted to brush away anything that looked ropelike. He hated the touch of hair or fabric against his skin.

  His heart was pounding and the distance to the door looked like kilometers.

  “Detective Nyquist, why would anyone want Ki Bowles dead?”

  “You tell me,” he shouted back at them, knowing that sometimes statements like that brought actual results.

  “Is it true that she was returning to InterDome?” someone asked.

  “Do you think this was an in-house rivalry?” asked someone else.

  “How could anyone get killed on the grounds of the Hunting Club?” asked a third. “I thought they had the best security in Armstrong.”

  He finally made it to the door. Someone inside opened it for him and he slid through the crack. Then the two of them leaned on it so that no reporter followed.

  The street cop inside looked even more harried than the street cops outside.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m told it’s only going to get worse.”

  “The story of the year,” Nyquist said. “Nothing reporters like more than a story about a reporter.”

  He sounded more cynical than he felt. He was actually feeling sorry for Bowles. Especially if she had died for her profession. That showed more courage than he would have expected.

  He adjusted his coat, made sure no one had stuck a tracking device or a microphone on him.

  “Can you see if I’m chipped?” he asked the street cop.

  The cop grinned. She held out a gloved hand. He recognized the glove. It was black with gold lining, designed to catch most noninternal chips and tracking devices.

  She ran it across the air near him, but found nothing.

  “Thanks,” he said. He would still run the check himself when he got into the elevator. He hated it when some reporter got news that way. The courts always ruled such actions illegal, but that was long after the story aired and a case was ruined.

  He stopped outside the elevator when Romey appeared in the lower corner of his left eye. He hated that, and wished he could shut off the feature, even though he knew better than to do so in the middle of an investigation.

  “You secure?” she asked.

  “God knows,” he said. “I just ran a reporter gauntlet.”

  “Ooof.” She rolled her eyes. He didn’t recognize the backdrop behind her. Improbably, it was all white. “I’ll try to phrase this as cautiously as I can, then.”

  “Okay.” He decided not to step into the open elevator. He moved away from the doors and closer to the walls. “What do you have?”

  “Did you tell me that a bodyguard is in custody?”

  She meant a bodyguard of Ki Bowles, but she didn’t say so.

  “Yeah,” Nyquist said. “Someone’s doing preliminaries right now. I planned to talk to him when I got back to the station.”

  “Might be worth a conversation together,” Romey said. “You want to meet me there?”

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “I thought you had to do hundreds of interviews,” he said.

  “Whitford Security is the most annoying organization,” she said. “They parcel out information so no employee knows more than one thing. It’s like putting a puzzle together. I’d rather wait for the reports. Hell, I’d rather wait for a computer analysis of the reports.”

  “Well, I actually have something pressing,” he said. “Why don’t you interview him?”

  “Because I know something you don’t,” Romey said, “but I’m pretty sure you know a lot of things that I don’t. The interview will relate more to your side of this investigation than mine. I need you there.”

  “You think this is crucial?” Nyquist asked.

  “If my hunch is right,” Romey said, “I might know the name of our killer.”

  “You think there is only one?” Nyquist asked.

  “Don’t know that yet,” Romey said. “But I suspect we’re going to find out.”

  Forty-two

  Something made Talia look up. She’d been lost in the data, finding the details of these court cases fascinating despite herself. She had no idea how someone could live happily from day to day when so many people hated her.

  Maybe Ki Bowles hadn’t lived happily.

  Maybe she had just lived.

  Talia was beginning to understand that. She sometimes found herself thinking that she didn’t deserve to be happy—she couldn’t be, not with her mom dead.

  And then she’d feel guilty when she was.

  It was bad, but not as bad as some of the stuff she’d been reading about Bowles.

  Talia had just been looking at an interview with some guy who’d followed Bowles around Armstrong for nearly a year before the police managed to find him, when her heart started pounding hard.

  She had grown nervous and she wasn’t sure why.

  She looked up and saw her father standing near the pastries, talking to four guys.

  Why would her dad talk to four guys? And why now?

  Talia almost sent for help along her emergency links, but she could just imagine her dad telling her that she was overreacting. They’re friends, Talia. Calm down.

  But she couldn’t calm down. And there was something about her dad’s expression that disturbed her.

  She tried to send him a message along her links—You okay?—but the message bounced back to her almost instantly.

  It should have gone through.

  He didn’t eve
n look up at her.

  Then some guy grabbed her dad’s arm.

  Talia swore.

  Her dad kept talking to these men and then they started walking with him. One stopped in front of him. Her dad raised his voice a little, but Talia couldn’t quite hear what he was saying.

  The man still had his hand on her dad’s arm.

  She didn’t need to hear. She wasn’t going to let something happen to another parent. Not now.

  She sent for help along all her emergency links. Police! My father’s being kidnapped! Help! Help!

  Then she activated her recording chip, lifting her hand so that she could catch the entire thing.

  The man behind her dad let go of his arm, and her dad started walking with them toward the door. He didn’t glance at Talia. Not once.

  She cursed again.

  He was doing this to protect her.

  Help! We’re at the cafeteria in the law library. Please help!

  But no one moved. The students didn’t seem to notice anything and no one answered on Talia’s links. She got out of the booth.

  In Valhalla Dome, where she had grown up, there were police on every corner. Sometimes even in official buildings, like this one.

  Someone would have answered her by now. Someone might even have made it down here.

  But Armstrong was a big city, and her dad once laughed when she asked why the police weren’t everywhere.

  There can’t be that many police in a free society, Tal, he’d said. As if Valhalla Dome hadn’t been free. As if Armstrong was somehow better.

  He’d thought it was.

  But she didn’t. Not now.

  She set her help message on automatic and then she got out of the booth. The men were marching her dad toward the door. One man had his hand near her dad, probably using a jammer for his links.

  Didn’t any of the students notice? Weren’t their links momentarily checking in and out?

  The guys surrounding her dad were big, but all she needed to do was distract them. Her dad was tough. If she distracted the guys, her dad could fight back.

  And when he did, maybe the students would help, too.

  This was her only chance.