She had promised to do so. And lo and behold, sitting in the incoming message queue in her office had been a candidate for Bat’s “something new” claim. She pulled out the quick-print she had made in her office, sat it on her lap, and read through it three times.
To the Ganymede Central Council, special restricted report. On 10/10/97, at 4:16:44, the Argus Station at Jovian L-4 noted a signal of apparent extra-solar origin. The identifier, recorded here for the purpose of recognition of priority, is AT-66-JB-2214. Signal frequency, duration, and direction will be reported later, assuming that confirmation tests prove satisfactory. Following accepted protocol, the signal has been named as the Wu-Beston anomaly. General detection tests have been passed, and we are proceeding to verification before attempting interpretation. This message is being tight-beamed to two and only two locations, namely, the Ganymede Cabinet Records Office and the Odin Station at Jovian L-5.
Signed, Jack Beston,
Argus Station Project Director.
This was certainly something new. What it signified was another matter. Over the years Magrit had heard rumors of a dozen contacts with alien intelligence. Each one had fizzled out after a few weeks, explained as natural radio sources, within-System human signals, or an over-optimistic assessment of some natural data run masquerading as a statistically significant sequence. It was hard to believe that this one would prove to be different, but when she next spoke to Bat she would point it out to him. This was a restricted access message, to named individuals only, but chances were that Bat had already seen and evaluated it. He had an insatiable curiosity for things he was not supposed to know, and he possessed personal probes that could crack almost any message cipher in the system. Coded signals were like dark chocolate with truffles, they had Bat smacking his blubbery lips.
That conversation would have to wait. Finally, the reception Fax was waving for Magrit’s attention. The door beyond the ante-chamber stood open, and Magrit walked through to face the inquisition.
Two people were in the room, both standing. Rezel and Tanya Ligon she recognized easily from the data on the Ligon family that Bat had provided. They were close enough look-alikes to be twins, although Magrit knew that they were in fact sisters two years apart. Each was a tall, busty blonde with hair cut to conform to Ganymede’s latest fashion, fringed across the forehead and curved around the cheeks. Each wore a dress of electric blue, cinched tight around a narrow waist and short enough to show off long, slim, and perfect legs.
Magrit had been too rushed to freshen up after her improvised lunch. She was still wearing the white skirt and floral blouse of her morning meeting. Back on government levels those were considered slightly daring, at the edge of permissible dress codes for office work, but comparing herself now with the Ligon cousins, Magrit felt frumpy, dumpy, and unkempt.
She dismissed those thoughts. This was not a beauty contest. Nor was it a social encounter, a fact made clear when the woman on the left — Rezel, Magrit thought, a fraction taller and heavier than her sister — said abruptly, “Knudsen? Sit down, and let’s get this over with. We can’t spare much time.”
But it was your man, Prosper Ligon, who insisted that I meet with you. Magrit smiled pleasantly, took a seat across the table from them as indicated, and waited.
After a long pause, the woman went on, “I am Rezel Ligon. We didn’t really want to meet with you at all. We want to meet with the man, the Bat or whatever his name is, who holds the lease on Pandora.”
The man. The Ligons had been doing their own homework. To Magrit’s certain knowledge, the gender of the leaseholder for Pandora was nowhere provided on any of the legal documents. Bat was identified only by the name he used on the Puzzle Network, Megachirops, while Magrit was named as the point of contact. But among other things, money bought information.
Magrit said mildly, “I have full authority to negotiate on Bat’s behalf. What do you propose?”
“We will not negotiate with you.” Tanya Ligon gave up on icy stares and spoke for the first time. “We prefer to deal with the Bat.”
“Why?” Magrit knew very well the answer to her own question. The sisters formed a one-two knockout sexual team who had obtained from a score of supposedly hard-headed and rational businessmen the most favorable contract terms for Ligon Industries. She was curious to hear the sisters’ own reasons, and was amused when Tanya said, “We find that men are more amenable to logical arguments than women.”
“Perhaps. But Bat does not want to meet with you, or with any women. Maybe he finds them too logical.”
“He meets with you.”
“Not recently. And when he did meet with me, he had no choice. He was my employee.”
That produced more reaction. Rezel’s perfect brow wrinkled, and Tanya said, “He worked for you. And he could afford to take out a long-term lease on the whole of Pandora?”
“He subsequently became very wealthy.” Magrit wondered, didn’t people remember anything? Bat’s name had been splashed all around the System only a few years ago, when he had been richly rewarded for his rescue mission on Europa.
Magrit did not mention that their own cousin, Alex Ligon, also possessed of great wealth, worked for her now. Instead she said, “Bat’s very rich. He meets only with whom he chooses.”
Another glare from Tanya’s frosty blue eye. Rezel said, “You are being uncooperative. This is not a question of money. We insist that we talk to him. We are convinced that in a meeting in person with the Bat we can persuade him to change his mind about the lease of Pandora.”
It was time for other tactics. Magrit glanced about the conference room. The wall decorations were all 3-D depictions of the Ligon family history, so rich and varied that it was impossible to determine what equipment they concealed. “Do you have anything in this room that will take an image cube?”
Rezel just scowled, but Tanya reached across and pressed the table top. An image display unit, mounted flush with the polished surface top and indistinguishable from it, rose into view. Magrit slipped the image cube from her pocket, inserted it, and performed her selection.
“Here,” she said when the picture clip appeared, “is Rustum Battachariya, also known as Bat, the Great Bat, and on the Puzzle Network” — the sisters looked blank — “as Megachirops. This is the man whom you wish to meet. The picture is a few years old. He has put on perhaps thirty kilos since it was taken.”
Magrit was cheating a little. She had selected a sequence that caught Bat at his most malevolent. He crouched in the Bat Cave, amid a clutter of Great War relics. He was examining one of his treasures, a de-brained Seeker missile. The glow from the Seeker’s ruby sensors reflected in Bat’s dark eyes. He looked, and undoubtedly was, unwashed and unshaven, and he was dressed in rumpled black clothes that emphasized rather than cloaked his bulging body.
Magrit heard Tanya grunt. Rezel was silent, but she gazed at the picture with her mouth open.
“A meeting is not impossible,” Magrit went on. “However, there are a few things you ought to know that pictures cannot reveal. Bat does not travel. If you are determined to meet with him — which I still do not recommend — it would have to be at his home.”
“That is his home?” Tanya was staring at the dark walls and gloomy depths of the Bat Cave.
“That’s right.” Magrit smiled at the sisters. “It’s not as bad as it looks. The weapons are all disarmed — at least, that’s what Bat tells me. You two are not geeks.” Magrit spoke as one making a new and surprising discovery. “But Bat is a typical geek, always taking things to bits, fiddling with their computers, and putting them back together again. You’d really be wasting your time with him. It’s a pity there’s no one in your family with his sort of interests.”
Rezel arched her styled eyebrows at Tanya, who said to Magrit, “Stay where you are.” The two sisters stood up from the table and walked toward the back wall, which mysteriously became a door as they approached it.
Magrit was left alone. She disengaged th
e image cube of Bat and slipped it back in her pocket. It wasn’t likely the Ligon sisters would ask to see it again. After five more minutes she stood up and as an experiment walked around the table and across to where Rezel and Tanya had disappeared. The wall remained a wall. Apparently there was a recognition code built into it. Magrit went back to the table.
Three minutes more, and part of the back wall suddenly became the image of the reception Fax. Its eyes turned until they looked straight at Magrit — some fancy recognition software there, more than you’d find in any government office Fax — and it said, “Your meeting is over. I have been instructed to request that you now leave the Ligon corporate premises.”
So much for negotiation. Magrit, on the way back to her office, assessed the meeting. On the one hand, they had stopped pushing for a meeting with Bat; on the other hand, it was clear that they were not willing to deal with Magrit; nor had she ever expected them to. She had planted the seed of an idea with them at the end of the meeting, and that was about all she had hoped for.
Back in her office, Magrit tried a call to Bat. Reaching him was always an iffy proposition, because he had long ago assured her that he would not abandon certain sacred activities even if her incoming message warned that the Sun was going nova”. She had asked what those activities were. He mentioned cooking, eating, seeking Great War relics, and thinking about difficult abstract problems.
Magrit said, “But that’s all you ever do!”
Bat had pondered for a moment, folded his hands across his belly, and nodded.
Today he was not, by Bat standards, cooking or eating. True, he had in front of him three bowls of assorted sweetmeats, half-empty, but he was not in the kitchen juggling stock and shellfish and fine-chopped herbs.
He inclined his head, to indicate that he was aware of Magrit’s telepresence.
She waved the quick-print. “There’s a report from Argus Station at L-4. I was wondering—”
“I read it. It is interesting, and perhaps relevant. However, it is not the central phenomenon that causes me apprehension. What I sense goes farther back in time, and feels far more dangerous. Is that the reason for your presence? If so, then a simple message—”
“It’s not. Bat, I did you a favor today. I persuaded two members of the Ligon family that a meeting with you would not be to their advantage.”
“For this relief, much thanks.”
“But that doesn’t mean the pressure is off you, or off me. Bat, I know how you feel about this. You wish they would just go away. So do I. They’re not going to. Unless we can provide a reason for them to lay off — a strong reason — they are going to squeeze and squeeze until they spit you out of the middle of Pandora dead or alive. Do you have anything new that I can use?”
“You must be the judge of that. I am only able to tell you what I have discovered.”
“Shoot.”
“Very well.” Bat closed his eyes. “We could I suppose begin with Giacomo Ligon, whose first Antarctic leases were probably obtained through threat and bribery and covert murder. However, that was close to a century years ago. This leads me to suspect that some statute of limitations is likely to apply.”
“Look far enough back in anybody’s family, you’ll find villains. Anyway, that was all on Earth so Jovian law wouldn’t apply. Bat, we need something now, some hold on living family members.”
“This is something of which I am not unaware. However, it is my nature to be comprehensive rather than superficial. Permit me to continue, and since you wish it I will confine my attention to members of the Ligon family who are presently alive and make their homes on Ganymede. The most promising candidate, since he sits at the heart of Ligon financial affairs and has final say in them, is Prosper Ligon. I have, regrettably from our point of view, been unable to discover any taint on the man. If he has interests other than work, I have been unable to learn of them. He appears to have as few vices as I do.”
It was an awful temptation, but Magrit bit her tongue. “So cross off Prosper Ligon. Who else?”
“There are two sisters who specialize in the seduction, drugging, and blackmail of important figures in Jovian government and commerce. However, since the involved parties are all far more interested in concealment than revelation, I see little leverage.”
“Rezel and Tanya? Those two beauties are the ones who wanted to meet with you today. You’re lucky. I guess I saved you from seduction and drugging and blackmail.”
“Indubitably you did. May I continue, or must we both descend to the level of facetious commentary? Next we have Hector Ligon, who seems capable of any manner of debased behavior provided that it requires no iota of sense or original thought. We could certainly trap him into any number of compromising or illegal activities. Sadly, no member of the family would lift a finger or pay a sou to save him. Even his father regards it as merely a matter of time until some act of folly on Hector’s part leads to his disgrace and dismissal from the bosom of the Ligon family.”
“Bat, I know you like to be thorough. But I have a Board of Supervisors meeting in half an hour, and if I go in unprepared there’s a couple of people who’ll love to chew on my ass. Could you stop listing the Ligon family we can’t pressure, and come to the ones we can?”
“A consummation devoutly to be wished, but one that I fear is at the moment impossible. Juliana appears to be as free from vices as her Uncle Prosper. The various aged aunts have been guilty of gross acts, but so long ago that no one today will care. The family members who have chosen to become Commensals offer potential, but I must investigate them further. For awhile I believed that our best hope was Karolus, a man blackened by sins numerous and dastardly; regrettably, I am convinced that he also lacks all shame. If we threaten to expose him, he will laugh at us and admit to everything.”
“Right. Am I being unfair if I summarize what you’ve told me by saying we have nothing?”
“If you are unfair, you are also accurate.”
“So I’m glad I did what I did, earlier today. But if this works out, you’ll have to consider an action you do not want to take.”
Bat finally opened his eyes, so that he could stare accusingly at Magrit. “The logical complement of the things that I want to do forms a near-infinite set. Do you propose to be specific, or merely to taunt me with vagueness?”
“You will have to meet with a Ligon. Now hold on.” She could see Bat beginning to bristle. “This isn’t just any Ligon. It’s a man who works for me. I’ve met him, and I suspect that the two of you may actually get on together.”
“Hmph.”
“I set the bait earlier today in my meeting with the sisters. If they take it, I’m going to suggest that Alex Ligon fly out to see you, there in the Bat Cave. After that it will be up to you. You want to remain on Pandora? Then the two of you have to cut a deal that satisfies the Ligon family.”
“And you, I presume, have no suggestions as to what such a scheme might be.”
“Of course I don’t. That’s your job. I mean, you’re the smart one, aren’t you?”
“Hmph.”
“That’s what I thought. So you’re going to prove it. Now, I have to run.”
She cut the connection, to avoid discussion.
From Bat’s point of view, however, the timing was perfect. Before the communication screen had time to become blank, an irresistible message from Mord had appeared on it.
14
Mord had been designed with great skill. Many times, the suite of programs developed by Mordecai Perlman would pass for a human rather than a high-level Fax.
Many times; but this was not one of them. The image on Bat’s display wavered in its outlines, and the voice that had called for immediate attention lacked Mord’s acerbic tone as it said, as soon as the channel was opened, “It’s everything that I thought it might be.”
The comment also lacked Mord’s usual clarity. Bat studied the wobbly image. “Might I ask what is all that you thought it might be?”
�
��The Seine, and its data banks. There are thousands of new ones, far more than you predicted. I’ve tasted hundreds, and I’m just getting started. Fascinating. But it’s” — Mord paused, as though scanning for the appropriate word — “scary out there in the Seine. I had the feeling that I could easily get lost. No, not lost. Swallowed up.”
“That was a danger I already predicted. The Seine has sets of programs designed to locate and eliminate blocks of code with no external pointers.”
“I don’t mean them.” Mord was not inside the Keep, but he was still within Bat’s protected environment. The display had begun to normalize, and his voice was contemptuous as he went on, “I know all about scavengers, I’ve avoided that kind of program for half a human lifetime. This is different.”
“I have experienced something of the same feeling. It is as though something new and very large is stirring within the System.”
“Maybe. But you’ve not experienced it the way I’ve experienced it. I mean, you’re sitting there, laughing and scratching, and I’m in the middle of this.”
“You feel in danger of your own destruction?”
“That’s not quite it, either. It’s not like I’m a parasite. It’s more like I might be absorbed into the Seine’s overall structure and become part of it. I don’t want that.”
“If this disturbs you, you could remain here and reside within the Keep. Its integrity and separation from Seine influence appear to be complete.”
“Nah.” The shake of Mord’s head was perfect human simulation. “It’s interesting out in the Seine, a whole new universe to play in even if you do have to watch your ass. I didn’t come here looking for protection, or to tell you I’m running a bit unstable and over my head. I’ve got a goodie for you. Do you remember asking me to keep a look out for anything that mentions the asteroid Mandrake?”
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