The Vesta Conspiracy

by Felix R. Savage

  “Dang! I’m not even going to listen to this.” Elfrida reflexively pushed off from the bunk, and bumped her head on the ceiling. “Ow! We’re supposed to be professionals, not conspiracy theorists. Tell you what, stick to the data, Mendoza. That’s your specialty. Leave the people to me, OK?”

  “Speaking of data,” Mendoza started.

  The side of the capsule concertinaed. A hand the size of a tiger’s paw, with jagged nails like dried-up orange peels, shot into the capsule, grabbed Mendoza’s leg, and dragged him out. Mendoza clawed at the blanket, taking it with him. There was a thump. Elfrida huddled in the corner, so panicked that all she could do was blink for help. Her contacts, of course, stayed dead.

  A face descended into the cubicle. “Cute sports bra. I’ll give you a free tip, ma’am: never let a guy get your clothes off before he at least removes his shoes.”

  The face had an eagle tattooed on its forehead. Above it a black mohican undulated.

  “José Running Horse. Nice to meet y’all.”

  ★

  “You aren’t from UNESCO,” Running Horse mused. Elfrida did not dare to contradict him. They’d locked Mendoza into his capsule. It turned out that when he was challenged the first time, he hadn’t been coming back from the toilet, but from the rover. He had sneaked out there to transfer a data file containing his observations and theories into Rurumi’s memory. The Big Dig security team had been watching him the whole time. They’d let him talk to Elfrida after that just to see if he would say anything controversial. So much for civilized expectations of privacy. Both their capsules had been bugged.

  Barefoot, wearing someone else’s sweats, Elfrida hunched in an ergoform in Sigurjónsdóttir’s office. Running Horse towered over her. He projected the physical presence of an ogre. He stood 185 centimeters tall, but not because he was spaceborn. He was just that big. And seriously shredded. His muscles popped under his skin, no doubt due to nanotic skeletal enhancement and a lot of lifting.

  He leaned over her, invading her personal space. “We had to check your story. Took a while. Tends to do, when you gotta wait twenty-eight minutes to hear, ‘Your enquiry is not supported by this system,’ and then the fucking customer-service bot tries to upsell you on a premium search enhancement package. I hate the UN. Anyway, we got the goods in the end.”

  Running Horse rested one hip on the edge of Sigurjónsdóttir’s desk. He cracked his knuckles.

  “You’ve got quite the track record, Ms. Goto.”

  Elfrida hugged herself and moved her head in circles. She was too frightened to talk.

  “And the other guy, forget about it. Born in the Philippines of mixed origin, technical high school, wins a UN-sponsored poll design contest, earns an apprenticeship in psephology, but can’t make it at pro level. Accepts an entry-level position in UNVRP and spends the next decade shuttling between his office and his capsule, except for when he splurges on a ticket to the Luna Philharmonic. Like I said, forget it. No one’s life is that boring.” Running Horse pushed off from the desk and stabbed a finger in her face. “He’s in deep cover. So are you, probably, but a big chunk of your record’s sealed.”

  Elfrida squeaked, “That’s because I was involved in a PLAN-related incident a couple of years ago.”

  “Do I look like I care? Here’s what I care about: John Mendoza is an agent of the ISA.”

  Elfrida’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God, that’s completely ridiculous! I mean …” She trailed off. She had, in fact, no way of knowing that Mendoza was not an ISA agent.

  The ISA (Information Security Agency), a top-level agency of the UN, operated system-wide surveillance programs of unknown scope and granularity. Originally established to monitor and preserve the integrity of the internet, it was widely believed to have expanded this remit into physical surveillance and anti-PLAN operations. The ISA was everyone’s favorite boogeyman after the PLAN itself. No one knew exactly what they got up to.

  “It’s a war out there,” Running Horse said. He took out a cigarette, sucked on it, exhaled vapor that smelled like skunk spray. “Right now, right this second, the ISA is trying to hack into our systems. Every private company’s in the same situation. ISA wants to know everything. Period. Everything. Privacy laws? Heh, heh, sucker. It’s Big Data versus the little guy. The Man versus freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of innovation … yeah: all that stuff that the UN supposedly exists to uphold. Ironic, huh?”

  Elfrida had heard this kind of thing so many times before that she started to relax. It was typical private-sector griping.

  Running Horse reminded her of the stakes when he added, “And when they can’t hack us, they get physical. We have excellent information that there is an ISA agent on Vesta.” He blew foul vapor into her face. “And my money says your buddy Mendoza is it.”

  Sigurjónsdóttir came into the office, bearing a tea tray. “You haven’t been scaring her, have you?” she chided Running Horse.

  “Naw. Just proving that I may be muscle, but I’m not dumb.”

  Although Elfrida recognized instantly that they were running a good cop / bad cop routine on her, the presence of Sigurjónsdóttir nevertheless made her feel secure enough to say, “If you think regurgitating conspiracy theories from the internet makes you sound smart, I’m sorry, but try again.”

  “Oooh. Regurgitating. Figure big words make you sound smart?” Running Horse said nastily.

  “José,” Sigurjónsdóttir said, waving her hand in front of her face. “Would you mind not vaping that stuff in my office? Thanks.”

  Running Horse ambled out. At the door, he turned to say, in a passable imitation of a robotic voice, “XX intruder at the given coordinates. Identify yourself, or get fragged.”

  Elfrida let out a scream.

  “Just wanted to remind you that we’ve met before,” Running Horse said. He left.

  “I’m sorry, this must have been a terrible shock for you,” Sigurjónsdóttir said, pouring through the teapot’s tube. “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Both,” Elfrida said faintly. She cradled the hot teacup in her hands.

  “I’m sure you had no idea that your colleague was working for the ISA.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “Well, naturally they haven’t admitted it. We’re seeking confirmation. In the meantime, I’m afraid we will have to ask you both to remain here as our guests.”

  “But you can’t … I mean, you can’t keep us here against our will. That’s illegal.”

  “So is spying. And so, I’m sorry to say, is passing yourself off as an agent of UNESCO, when you aren’t.”

  Elfrida cringed. Totally busted. She felt a momentary urge to say it had been Gregor Lovatsky’s idea. The urge passed. “I suppose … we thought it didn’t matter, or you wouldn’t dare to call us on it. Because you’re breaking the law yourselves.” She raised her eyes to meet Sigurjónsdóttir’s large gray ones. “You’re lying to your stakeholders and the public to cover up what you’re really doing here: Building a habitat for umpty-thousand Han Chinese who are so pureblooded, they don’t even speak English.”

  There was a moment of silence, during which they could hear Mendoza banging on the wall of his capsule, two levels up in the cluster hab.

  Sigurjónsdóttir nodded. “I’m next door to pureblooded myself,” she said, gesturing at the pictures of her daughters. “And they are pureblooded. I had the poor judgement to marry a guy who’s a couple of alleles more Scandinavian than I am. Divorced the rat a few years back, but the damage was done. So I do feel some empathy with the predicament of the pureblooded, as I think most people do.”

  “Oh, I do, too,” Elfrida said. “In fact, I think it’s great, what you’re doing here. But the lying, the false pretences …”

  “If we had announced at the outset that we were building a habitat for a party of Chinese settlers, do you think we would have had a chance in hell of getting it done?”

  “No,” Elfrida admitted.

  “The entire volume would
have been up in arms. The university would have led the charge, on whatever pretext they could find.”

  “So as not to have to share this asteroid with umpty-thousand—”

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  “Two hundred thousand, pureblooded … PLAN magnets.”

  “Who were originally attracted to Vesta,” Sigurjónsdóttir said quietly, “because of the opportunity to construct a genuinely PLAN-proof asteroid colony beneath several kilometers of solid rock.”

  “Like the Bellicia ecohood.”

  “Bellicia, version 2.0.”

  Elfrida grimaced, acknowledging the multiple layers of irony. She drank some of her sweet, milky tea. FUK culture definitely had its points.

  Perhaps because of the adrenaline still pumping through her veins, she felt strangely undismayed by the calamitous turn their investigation had taken. It would all be sorted out when they confirmed that Mendoza was not an ISA agent. In the meantime, it was up to her to make what she could of this.

  “You’re not going to lock me in a capsule, are you?” she asked.

  Sigurjónsdóttir did not answer. Her gaze unfocused, indicating that she was reading off contacts or an implanted retinal interface. “Oh my God. This is outrageous. Shocking! Ms. Goto, I’ve just been notified—I’m afraid something rather odd is happening in the Bellicia ecohood. You’d better have a look at this feed.”

  A screen sprang out of its recess in her desk and spun around to face Elfrida, knocking over the teapot.

  Cydney’s breathless voice filled the office.

  xvii.

  ~As you can see for yourselves, a crowd has gathered outside UNESCO headquarters. Everyone mocks the blue berets, but when the doo-doo hits the fan, it’s ‘Mommy, Daddy, help.’ Like, what can the peacekeepers DO? There are five of them here, versus at least fifty activists holed up in Facilities Management. They claim to be armed with lethal projectile and beam weapons. They might even be telling the truth. You can do a lot with a home printer … and have you ever seen that vid where a modded housekeeping bot goes all Nazi on some kids in Zaire? This might be what’s about to happen here.

  Cydney cued the vid to give herself a breathing space. She pulled out her cigarette and took a calming drag. The mob outside the koban was growing. The Fab Five were holed up inside. Cydney figured they were frantically asking their bosses what to do. With a twenty-eight-minute round-trip signal delay to Earth, that could take a while.

  Cydney had never imagined that Shoshanna and the gang had the nerve to pull a stunt like this.

  They’d broadcast a list of demands. More money for field research, more support for disadvantaged students, faster wifi in the dormitories, the establishment of a Literature degree course, and a new coffee machine for the PHCTBS Studies lounge.

  I could talk to them, Cydney thought.

  Nothing was happening here, anyway. She hurried back to campus. On her way, she explained to her fans what she was planning to to do. Their support—expressed in comments, and a corresponding gush of micropayments—solidified her resolve. Finding Dean Garcia in her office, she offered, “Ma’am, I’ll go talk to them.”

  Garcia was flapping around, fielding questions and issuing statements on half a dozen channels. “We gave them what they wanted,” she said to Cydney. “Why are they doing this?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. But often, when you give people what they want, they ask for more.”

  “That’s very profound, Ms. Blaisze. Go on, go on, if you think it will do any good! You needn’t ask my permission.”

  Cydney had a feeling she’d just been mocked. But this didn’t dampen her resolve. She had to live up to the expectations of 5,022,369 people, and counting.

  She climbed the hill out of town, commenting on the strange cavalcade she passed along the way. It looked like a parade of recycling bins with legs. A couple of quickie interviews confirmed that this was a bug-out movement heading for the Bremen Lock. If the order came to evacuate, these folks planned to be first in line. They seemed to be few (so far), and they were mostly families with young children. But it proved that at least some residents of the ecohood were taking Shoshanna’s threats seriously.

  Cydney felt slightly less confident about her read of the situation. But she bounded on, outdistancing the parade.

  Facilities Management blazed like a theater on opening night. A new banner billowed above the vine-wreathed columns out front: JUSTICE! EQUALITY! TOLERANCE!

  Cydney looked back down the hill. The town and campus lay mired in darkness.

  Suppressing a shiver, she fluffed her hair and bounced towards the entrance. She didn’t have to succeed. It would be OK if she failed. She just had to be entertaining while she was failing. That was her shtick.

  “Hey! Shoshanna! Helloooo!”

  A text popped up in her HUD.

  “Hey, good to see you, Cydney. C’mon in.”

  Win Khin and another student met her at the entrance and apologetically frisked her. Jittery activists milled in the reception area. They’d hacked the smart posters so as to watch themselves on the news. On one poster, this very room now appeared; it was Cydney’s feed. Noticing, they mugged and postured for her.

  Cydney was just getting into the swim of things, firing off questions, screaming with laughter, accepting a puff of someone’s cigarette, when Shoshanna appeared. She pulled Cydney into the services manager’s office and closed the door. “They’re having fun,” she said. “Hope the drugs don’t run out too soon.”

  “Someone’s got stim,” Cydney said, feeling the drug bubble through her adrenal system.

  “Yeah.” Shoshanna folded her arms. She stared at Cydney. Then she reached out and pinched Cydney’s left earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.

  5,068,915 people saw Cydney’s feed go dark.

  “Hey!”

  Shoshanna pulled Cydney closer. Blades flashed in her other hand. She cut off Cydney’s earlobe with the services manager’s desk scissors.

  Cydney screamed. She clamped her hands over her ear, crumpling to the floor. Blood travelled in dotted arcs through the air like movement lines in a manga strip.

  Shoshanna tossed her a box of tissues.

  “Sorry about that. But I want to control the optics here. I’m putting it in this drawer, OK?” She held up Cydney’s earlobe, with its embedded microcamera, and dropped it into a desk drawer.

  Cydney vomited.

  “You can always get it reconstructed,” Shoshanna said. “I thought you were tough.”

  The words filtered like the buzzing of an insect through the unbearable pain. Cydney subvocalized to her fans: ~Hey … guys. Don’t go anywhere. This bitch just cut. My. Fucking. Ear. Off.

  “Well put,” said Shoshanna, who was obviously monitoring Cydney’s feed herself.

  Pressing a fistful of tissues to her ear, Cydney collapsed in the services manager’s ergoform. The office was small and mostly walled with screens. Each one depicted a different part of the habitat. A soycloud dropped its intake tube into Olbers Lake. People were coming out of their homes in the Branson Habs, staring upwards.

  “If … if your demands aren’t met, are you going to follow through on your threats?”

  “I already am,” Shoshanna said.

  “Huh? … Oh.” Cydney gulped. “It should have been getting light by now. You’ve disabled the sun mirrors.”

  “Switched them to ThirdLight settings. It’ll get a bit lighter than this, but not much.”

  “What … what else can you do from here?”

  “I’m still finding out.”

  Cydney’s ear throbbed. The taste of vomit soured her mouth. She subvocalized, ~I … I’m gonna sign off for a few. Need to get medical assistance. But stay accessed for more drama here in the Bellicia ecohood on 4 Vesta!”

  “Make that hostage drama,” Shoshanna said, smiling at her.

  ★

  Elfrida fell back in her ergoform. She felt as shaken and horrified as Cydney must surely be herself
. “This is beyond crazy! Oh my God, poor Cydney.” She rubbed her face with her hands, assailed by guilt that she wasn’t there.

  “Is she a personal friend?” Sigurjónsdóttir enquired.

  “Uh, yes. Yeah, she’s always kept it off the feed, but we’re kind of a thing.”

  “I had no idea. How awful for you.” Sigurjónsdóttir reached out and touched Elfrida’s arm. “Look, it’s going to be all right. The peacekeepers may not be capable of mounting an effective response, but our security corps will handle it. We’ve got several highly capable phavatars in Bellicia. I’m confident they’ll defuse the situation without loss of life or, er, further injury to anyone.”

  “I guess you’re still not going to let me go.”

  “I’m afraid that equation hasn’t changed, no. But in light of your emotional distress, we’ll do everything possible to make your stay here comfortable.”

  Elfrida took a deep breath. “In that case, can I plug my immersion kit in and get some work done?”

  ★

  There was nothing she could do for Cydney. But she could do her job. She’d been away from her desk for four sols, and work had piled up in her inbox.

  After reasoning with Sigurjónsdóttir—OK, wheedling, begging, and bluffing that she knew someone on the President’s Advisory Council—she got permission to use her immersion kit for a telepresence session. The Big Dig undoubtedly had proper telepresence equipment, but they weren’t about to let her use that. So she was stuck with a onetime password for the wifi, and as much sensory realism as a S5,000 gaming setup could provide.

  “Before you slap me,” she said to Petruzzelli, “I ought to warn you that I can’t feel anything. I can see and hear. That’s all. I’ve got limited data transfer capability and the bare minimum of sensory feedback.”

  “Well, what a disappointment,” Petruzzelli said. “I was looking forward to punching you in the kisser when you finally deigned to show up.” She grinned.

  Petruzzelli was wearing an EVA suit, her blue hair flattened by the helmet she’d just taken off. When Elfrida pinged her, she’d been outside the Kharbage Collector, checking recently-loaded cargo against the manifests, she explained—a job that would normally fall to someone much lowlier than the captain. Elfrida had her doubts that Petruzzelli had any crew at all.