This Alien Shore Read online

  When at last he was done, he set the encryption program to running again. Later he would go into his log and remove all traces of the operation, so that no one could ever discover what he had done. As far as anyone was concerned, he had devoted this hour to decoding a packet for the Guildmistress’ use.

  The small chip on which the message was recorded burned in his hand as he picked up a clean headset, trying to bring his brainware up at the same time. This time there was no doing it naturally; he used the headset to take control of his wellseeker, and injected enough sedative into his bloodstream that at last he was capable of feeding it the start-up icon again. Clearly the biological safeguard he had been so proud of was not a good thing to have around at moments like this.

  He loaded the transmission’s contents into his headset, and from there into his brainware’s permanent storage. Five lines and a short packet of supporting data. Shadows of a project that was ultra-secret, that involved the outpilots and Earth, that might—just might—be the break he’d been waiting for. Reijik had hijacked it from Earth. Delhi had hijacked it from Reijik. And now he had hijacked it from Delhi....

  And that, he thought darkly, is the most dangerous part of all.

  But well worth it. God, yes. Well worth it.

  “Mistress?”

  Delhi turned slowly; her mechanical carapace did not allow for quick movement.

  It was Jovanne, her secretary. “I have that log you asked for.”

  “Yes, of course.” She waved absently to an empty spot on the table, where she might set it down. “Leave it here, I’ll take a look at it.”

  She did not watch as the data chip was laid down on the table, nor as the tall Anduluvian bowed and left. Her mind was on something else.

  Her web.

  She was perusing its lesser strands now, and it took all her concentration. Not vast concourses of data, these, but delicate lines built of single facts, that rippled like delicate cilia in her mind’s eye. Each time a fact was added to her collection she saw it thus; if one was removed, she could sense the gap forming, as a true spider could sense some alteration in his own creation. At times she even lost sight of the fact that it was data she was looking at, and lost herself in the sheer beauty of it all: fractal patterns of interlocking facts, complex beyond all imagining. The outernet that most people saw was barely a reflection of this ultimate truth, a pale and clouded image in a distorted mirror. How many could see the world as she did? How many understood that the reinterpretation of a single datum could cause shivers to vibrate through the entire web, until the vast supporting strands themselves were threatened? She knew, and she could see the changes directly, without the need for intellectual interpretation. That was the gift which the Hausman Effect had given her, when it robbed her of her mobility.

  She was more than content with the trade.

  With care and delicacy she focused in her analytic programs on the anomaly she had sensed. There were over five thousand programs embedded in her headset which were running constantly, requesting and receiving data from her inhouse system, analyzing it, requesting data from the outernet, scouring it clean for safety, sorting the two sets together and searching for patterns ... it was partly her own programming, partly that of a lover (now dead), and a security chief (now dead), and a favored hacker (still alive, but without any memory of his work). Only the end results of the data search were fed into her brainware, where her specialized senses devoured them and displayed them in this, her chosen metaphor. Through it, she had learned to spot data trails so fine, so hidden, that her own hackers had passed them by. With it, she had leveraged herself to the Mastership of this station. Using it, she would defend her seat to the death.

  Not her death, of course.

  The web resolved in her mind’s eye, sparkling with activity not unlike the brain’s own. After a time she could see the fine strand divide, and identify which part she needed. It’s on the station, she mused, how interesting. Then, a few seconds later, new patterns resolved. In my citadel. Even more interesting. Her expression was dark as she studied the web further, looking for the anomaly’s source. It was subtle indeed, this thing which her search programs had found, well beneath the level of data with which she usually concerned herself. Perhaps it would have no value at all. But she reminded herself of the first tenet of chaos theory—infinitesmally small input can alter infinitely large systems—and continued her search, wondering what it was that her brain and its attendant programs had found worthy of notice.

  At last she was at the trail’s end, and to her amazement found herself amidst the biologs of her employees. She glanced over the tables presented to her, but there was nothing unusual that she saw. She refined her vision further, using the search program for a guide, and found herself reading the biolog of one of her code hacks, a Stivan Dici. Like the others, he had no idea that she regularly tapped into his wellseeker’s readings. Oh, he could figure it out if he wanted to; he had the skill to spot such a thing ... if he looked for it. No one did. Who would think that one’s employer kept an hourly watch on one’s blood pressure, one’s pulse rate, one’s breathing?

  And there it was, in just those terms. A spike the day before, and two at night. A long, tense plateau during REM sleep. And a series of spikes today, closer and higher and more significant than any which came before.

  He had found something, she guessed. Or heard something. Or thought of something. A piece of data that excited or upset him, that tormented his dreams, and that today—right now—received his full attention. His pulse rate was well out of bounds for a man of his age and condition; she checked it against his medical files and whistled softly. Well out of bounds. He had always been something of a hothead, and spikes in his biolog were far from rare, but the intensity of these, and their sustained nature, hinted at some outside cause. And given his nature, she would have put money on it being some some choice piece of data that had come into his hands.

  She called up the work he had been doing when the first spike hit, and found herself reading the Reijik packet. He had decrypted most of it, but it still made little sense, being mostly specifics of shipping and communication between Earth conglomerates and their Reijik counterparts. A rich harvest, to be sure, and one that her analysts would comb through for useful data ... but there was nothing she saw that should excite the kind of agitation Dici’s biolog had recorded. Delhi’s hackers dealt with this kind of data all the time.

  LOCATE STIVAN DICI, she instructed her headset. It took little more than a second for the request to be transmitted to the inhouse computer, which responded, PRIVATE QUARTERS. She asked, ACTIVITY? Another second passed, then the words flashed before her eyes: DATA SEARCH/ OUTERNET.

  That wasn’t like him. Usually her prime hack lived in his lab, where paper-thin monitors adorned the walls, and cabinets full of sterile equipment attended his most dangerous exploits. This wasn’t like him at all, this ... secrecy.

  No, this attempt at secrecy.

  Like so many who did not truly know her inner workings, Dici had underestimated her. She had the computer switch on the cams hidden in his quarters, and put their gleanings on screen. There she saw him sitting on his bed, with beads of sweat running down his face. Most uncharacteristic. His hand lay on a keyboard of some kind, marked in symbols she didn’t recognize; most likely a personal code of icons he had developed himself. She brought a cam into close range and began to record the symbols themselves, and the dance of his fingers across them. There was knowledge here, and she wanted it, but the only way to eavesdrop on such an encoded soliloquy was to obtain its template directly from the man’s brain. And while that was not impossible, its cost was considerable. One could not remove information from a dead brain, for the brainware systems expired upon death; one could not force it from a fully functioning brain, for a man like that would have safeguards in place that would erase sensitive data at the first hint of invasion. No, there was a way to get what she wanted ... but only once. She had to make sure that
she wanted it enough to sacrifice this servant, and then strike with stealth and surety.

  She was receiving a feed from her house computer now, listing all the data requests that this man had made. She watched as he continued what was clearly some kind of private investigation, citing corporate names that were among the elite of Earth’s power brokers. Something very big was clearly at stake here, and if her guess was right, the first hint of it had been discovered in the Reijik data packet. She called up the packet in her own head and compared it to a list of his search items. No match. So whatever it was that had inspired his investigation, had been removed from the packet before she saw it. And that—by the standards of her house—was a crime.

  You have betrayed me, she mused coldly. If so, then there was nothing left worth saving, was there? Other than the data itself, which was lodged within his brain. It was commonly said that you couldn’t get to such information without the subject’s cooperation. That the brain invariably protected itself too well for such invasion.

  How unfortunate that would be, if it were true.

  Stivan visualized the search icon, and spelled out in his mind’s eye: JANET.

  1. PROPER NAME WITH VARIATIONS IN THIRTY-SEVEN LANGUAGES. FROM THE HEBREW JANE, MEANING “GOD IS GRACIOUS.” 2. THE SEVENTH MOON OF HYDRA, NAMED FOR EXPLORER JANET WITHERS. 3. COMPANY FOUNDED BY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CLOTHING DESIGNER, JANET DYMACEA, NOW A SUBSIDIARY OF MARANECK CORPORATION. 4. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY VIDDIE KNOWN FOR EXPLICIT—

  He scanned the twenty-odd definitions with a careful eye. Any of them might have been right. None of them felt right. At last he sighed, and signaled for the house computer to SEARCH: UAOABBREVIATION FOR “UP-AND-OUT,” A PHRASE USED ON EARTH TO INDICATE OUTWORLD (AINNIQ ACCESSIBLE) CIVILIZATION. COMBINES SLANG TERMS FOR OFF-PLANET (UP) AND PREFIX FOR THE AINNIQ SYSTEM [OUT)

  SEARCH/EARTHBIO, he directed it. JAMISIA SHIDOMEMBER OF SHIDO CORPORATION, BORN 1.11.37 (EARTH STANDARD CALENDAR) IN SOL CITY, USNA. PARENTS KILLED IN COLLAPSE OF HAIDO CITY CENTER, 12.12.43. FORMAL ADOPTION BY SHIDO INTERNATIONAL, 1.03.44. RESIDENT SHIDO HABITAT 1.30.44 to 3.21.54. LOST DURING HOSTILE TAKEOVER BY TRIDAC ENTERPRISES. CURRENTLY PRESUMED DEAD.

  Not by everyone, he thought darkly.

  After a moment he visualized, TRIDAC ENTERPRISES. A flurry of bright words scrolled into his field of vision.

  EARTH CORPORATION, FOUNDED 2013 (OLD CALENDAR). MAIN BUSINESS, BIOTECH RESEARCH. NET ASSETS—

  No, this would get him nowhere; the file on a company that vast would take hours to study, and the information he wanted, if it was there at all, would probably be so buried beneath paragraphs of businesspeak he’d pass it right by.

  Frustrated, he stared into space. After a minute his attention saver kicked in and started to display enticing holos of nude women, as a reminder that he was still online. He banished them with an irritated snort and tried to think.

  Janet. A name. The project had been named for someone. Maybe not in the corporation that had started the project. Maybe this was a code term used by those who were trying to get control of it.

  JANET TRIDAC, he visualized, interrupting its scrolling of financial statistics. HOW MANY EXIST?

  It took the computer a good five seconds to go through all its databanks for that information. It could have taken as long as five minutes, if the data hadn’t been stored on Delhi’s station.

  15, it told him.

  PLANET/STATION OF ORIGIN?

  CASPAR

  EARTH (2)

  EUMENIDES

  HELLSGATE

  LORD’S KEEP (2)

  NEW HEBRIDES (2)

  NEW TOKYO

  NEW WASHINGTON (3)

  OBANTU

  SINCLAIR

  Two from Earth. He called up their bios and studied them. Janet Austria Tridac was a research technician in Tridac’s main lab, on Earth’s surface. Janet Dian Tridac was a maintenance worker in the company’s orbiting habitat. The one he wanted was unlikely to be the second one, he thought, why would they name such a vital project after her ... but at this point he was not about to rule anything out. There was only a slim chance the project had been named after someone currently working for Tridac; Earth corporations didn’t like to give that kind of recognition to a single worker, lest it inflate their own sense of importance. A worker who knew his own worth was a risk to security, the old axiom stated. Stivan called up all the data he could find on past Janet Tridacs—there were nearly thirty in the databanks, and probably more had existed on Earth whose files had never been outloaded to the nodes—and studied it all. There wasn’t much. The corporate giants of Earth were notoriously secretive, and this one was no exception; the bios were short, superficial, and utterly unhelpful. He did the same historical search for Janet Shido, and again came up with nothing. Or perhaps the answer was there in front of his face, and he just wasn’t seeing it. Damn.

  He stared at the five lines again, tasting their mystery with a dry tongue as he licked his lips. This wasn’t his forte. He was good at finding data, brilliant at decoding it, but when it came down to using the foreign bits and pieces that came his way, he had always been blissfully ignorant. It wasn’t his job.

  Now it was.

  His security program flashed him a warning, alerting him to the fact that he had been online for an hour already. He had programmed it years ago to warn him of that, when he first realized that someday he might wind up doing research he didn’t want Delhi to know about. An hour of research was high risk, in this situation; the house computer would have logged it, and anyone going over the records would surely wonder what a hack was doing in a data search for so long. He’d better erase his tracks, and fast. He visualized one of the icons that would give him access to the security programs Delhi relied upon——and a flash of pain seared through his brain. No, not pain exactly. Disorientation, so sudden and so powerful that for a moment it felt as if his brain had been put through a blender. The sensation was sickening, and though it didn’t hurt in a physical sense, his inner senses reeled in agony. What the hell was going on? He tried to—

  Tried to—

  Tried to—

  Oh, God....

  Didn’t try.

  Didn’t do.

  Anything.

  Silence, within and without. Where thoughts normally scurried through his head, there was nothing. The sound of his pulse, now beating wildly, resounded in his ears. BLOOD PRESSURE/PULSE RED ZONE, his wellseeker informed him. CORRECT? He could give it no answer. After a moment the system defaulted to a health option, and he knew that instructions were being given to his heart, his brain, his adrenal gland. Seconds passed. The pounding slowed to a mere fevered thud. The pressure in his head seemed to ease a bit.

  He couldn’t think.

  He couldn’t think!

  Emotions poured into him without analysis, without explanation. Primitive emotions, such as the lowliest life-forms must know, bereft of any rational trappings. Terror as raw as an animal knows when the scent of a hunter suddenly comes from behind it. Desperation such as would cause a trapped beast to gnaw off its own foot, in an effort to escape a trap. The emotions filled him to bursting, till tears came out of his eyes. But there was no thought accompanying them. No brain activity at all, that anyone would label human. He couldn’t even wonder what had happened to him ... for that in itself was a thought, and thought—all thought—was denied him.

  After a brief time, an endless interlude of terror, he heard the door open behind him. He didn’t turn around to see who it was—didn’t even want to turn around, for wanting was a complex thought process—but fear stoked his blood pressure to new heights. CORRECTING, his wellseeker repeated. Whomever it was that had come in remained where he was for a moment, then began to move toward him. And it was with the terror of a trapped and dying animal that he recognized the almost inaudible hiss of Delhi’s mechanical carapace.

  After what seemed like an eternity she moved into his field of vision. Her expression was unreadable.

 
“Well, well. Stivan Dici. My most loyal servant.” Her clear eyes fixed on him, icy in their depths; in the folds of her aged and mechanically supported flesh they seemed to almost take on a life of their own, and he cringed beneath their scrutiny. “Perhaps I should tell you a story, Stivan. Not that you’ll be able to appreciate all its fine points, of course. Your mind is quite frozen in the here-and-now, and hardly in a state for speculation. But I think the points that matter most will be clear.”

  She began to move then, a bizarre sort of mechanical pacing, until the softly whirring carapace had brought her around behind him. He couldn’t turn to watch her. He couldn’t even want to turn. Some vital link had been severed in his brain, and he could only listen.

  “You of course do not know,” she began, “the ceremony that accompanies the rise to guildmastership. It’s quite secret, and steeped in a symbolism centuries old. At the end of it, when the investiture has been completed, the new Master or Mistress stands before the Prima and is permitted to make one request. A sort of gift, to celebrate her new position. Also a test. Not all realize that, of course. The first free interaction between a new guildmaster and his superior says a lot about what their relationship will become. Few realize the potential of that moment.”

  Pictures began to form before his eyes, misty images which the house net was feeding into his optical center. Then, like an uploaded vidlink, the details slowly crystallized. He saw a room, all in shades of gray. A woman in black robes, with the mark of the Guild in gold upon her chest. A man behind her and to the side, some sort of waiting attendant not fully admitted to the circle of ritual. Delhi was visualizing her memories and using the house net to feed the images into his brain. It wasn’t an unfamiliar technique by any means; what child of the outworlds hadn’t done the same thing at some point, mimicking telepathy in order to transfer dirty or shocking pictures to a friend? But combined with his inability to edit the input—combined with his total helplessness—the sensation of having someone else’s memories fill his brain was doubly terrifying.