Deadman Switch (9 page)

Including the hand hovering tautly beside the butt of his holstered needler.

I licked the inside of my lip.
No danger,
was my first, back-brain feeling; but under the circumstances that was hardly the sort of conclusion I could afford to trust to a subconscious synthesis of unidentified cues. A schizoid man armed with a needler could almost literally mow this entire roomful of people down in the space of a few heartbeats.

On the other hand, none of the other HTI guards were directing any worry at all in his direction. Was that the cue I'd picked up on, that they
hadn't
picked up any danger themselves? Perhaps; but my sense of had felt stronger than that.

“I think I speak for all of us,” Chun Li spoke up, “when I say that we'll all do our best to make this transition as smooth as possible, both for Carillon and ourselves …”

My phone vibrated its silent call signal. Dropping my gaze with an effort from the twitchy guard, I eased the instrument from its belt case and keyed for nonverbal. Behind me I could hear a faint and unintelligible voice—Kutzko's—while, under the edge of the table, I watched his words flow across the tiny screen:

CALANDRA SAYS TO TELL YOU HIS NEEDLER
ISN'T LOADED. THAT MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?

An eerie feeling crept across the back of my neck. She'd done it again. Read my mind with complete ease … and this time without even having to see my face. She was right, too, of course. Looking back at the guard—his sense that of almost childlike cunning at the moment—it was obvious that his needler was riding much too high in its holster to be carrying even a partially filled clip. That, plus the way it swung against his leg when he twitched—the cues had all been there, and clearly my back-brain had picked up on them in deciding he wasn't a danger to us. I only wished I could have identified them faster. At least as fast as Calandra had.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall …
and, after all, it didn't really matter which of us picked up on which fact, as long as together we got all of it. Taking a deep breath, I chased away the tinge of jealousy from my mind and, my vision clear again, turned my attention back to Chun Li.

“… I presume you'll want to go over our records; we have them for you right here.” Reaching beneath his capelet, he withdrew a cyl. “This is everything for the past five years,” he added, placing it on the formite surface in front of him and giving it a gentle push. The tube rolled across the table, picking up speed as the formite first concaved, then convexed, coming at last to a stop in front of Randon. “All previous records will be on Portslava, where I presume your associates will be picking them up.”

“Thank you,” Randon nodded, scooping up the cyl and pocketing it. “I presume you've also got copies of those older records on hand?”

A touch of uneasiness flickered through Chun Li's sense, though he was able to control his face and voice remarkably well. “Yes, of course,” he acknowledged. “If you'd like copies I can have them sent to your ship this afternoon.”

“Why can't I have them now?”

Blake and Karash were registering heightened tension, too, and it was in fact Blake who answered Randon's question. “The problem is that they're scattered around through the system in rather unreadable code,” he said in clipped tones. “It would take at least an hour to chase them all down and put them into coherent form.”

“Oh, that won't be a problem,” Randon said, voice almost lazy but with a hard edge underneath it. “Schock, here, is quite good at that sort of excavation. If he can borrow a hard terminal for a few minutes he can probably get that out of the way while we finish our talk.”

Blake visibly clenched his teeth. “I don't mean to be obstructive, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos, but the data is really
so
scattered through different files and even different listings that it'll take a good deal of time to gather it all.”

My eyes turned elsewhere, I could still sense Randon smile. “The wonders of modern technology, Mr. Blake. Ever heard of a Templex decoder?”

From the senses of the others, I could tell none of them had … and that none of them was looking forward to hearing about it. “I'm afraid not,” Chun Li admitted cautiously. “I take it it's something used for this kind of data retrieval?”

“And also for bypassing various blockages,” Randon said, choosing his words with care. “Split files, scattered data—that sort of thing.”

As well as for getting around intentional barriers. The three across the table picked up on that one at once, and the play of emotions twisting through them became even more interesting. There was just the briefest hesitation, then Karash rose to her feet. “Well, then. If you'll come over here, Mr. Schock … ?”

Schock pushed his chair back and got up; Chun Li and Blake followed his motion with their eyes. “Now,” Randon said briskly, “while they're doing that, I'd like to hear what sort of projects you've got going at present. Mr. Blake?”

Blake turned his attention back from Schock with an effort. “As you may know, a new Rockhound 606—number four—has recently gone to work in the rings. It's slightly modified to allow it to take in and break up rocheoids of up to a hundred meters across—”

“I was under the impression,” Randon broke in calmly, “that it was the pebble-sized rocheoids that contained the purest ores.”

An almost-glare leaked out before Blake could stop it. “Yes, sir, that's true,” he said with strained politeness. “Though the surfaces of most of the larger rocheoids, down to a few centimeters of depth in some cases, are also rich in heavy metals. However, in this case what turns out to be more important is that the interiors of these larger ones contain a more standard distribution of light and heavy elements, and some of those light elements are used in the extraction and refining processes. Getting them directly from the rings will save us having to ship them out from Solitaire.”

“I see,” Randon said blandly. He'd known all this already, I could tell; as could most of the others. Again simply reminding everyone of his control of the conversation. “So. Rockhound Four is in operation … ?”

Blake pursed his lips, smoothed them out. “Yes, sir. Anyway, we're negotiating with them for a share of their light element harvest, as well as for a contract to handle some of their molybdenum and tungsten output. We're also—”

“I was under the impression that you were at your full transport capacity already,” Randon interrupted again. “You're authorized for, what, a hundred trips in and out per year?”

The twitch-faced guard made an almost-serious reach for his needler. Even schizoid, I noted, he was careful to stop before he got close enough to the weapon to trigger either of our shields' own combat reflexes. “We're already at our full trip capacity, yes,” Blake said stiffly, his tension level rising markedly. “As I was about to say, we also have an order in for a pair of new Fafnir-class freighters. Once those are delivered our total carrying capacity will increase significantly.”

“Assuming the Fafnirs are able to keep flying,” Randon commented off-handedly. “Those things are right up against the Mjollnir Limit, and I don't know as I'd trust them for more than a couple of trips.”

Blake's face darkened; clearly, the Fafnir purchase was his own pet project, and he wasn't the kind to take even implied criticism well. But before he could say anything more, Chun Li jumped in. “We'll make sure they come with an adequate guarantee,” he said dryly. “In addition, we have a petition pending before the Patri seeking to raise our trip quota to one hundred twenty per year.” A soft beep came from the back wall, where Schock was working under Karash's watchful eye, and the sound seemed to throw Chun Li off stride a little. “We think it may be worth trying to revive the old idea of using terminally ill patients and voluntary suicides to supplement the currently available number of zombis,” he went on, a bit distractedly.

“If not, perhaps the crime rate will go up?” Randon said cynically.

Chun Li flushed with anger. “That's not fair, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos.”

Randon met his gaze without flinching … but he realized he'd indeed gone a step too far with that one. “Perhaps not,” he conceded. “My apologies, Mr. Chun Li. Ah—Schock. Finished already?”

The others twisted their heads to look as Schock and Karash returned to the table. “Yes, sir,” Schock nodded, holding up three cyls. “I think I've got it all.”

I had no doubt of that, myself. Karash's face, as she trailed behind him, was a nice mixture of amazement and tension, with the tension winning.

Randon nodded back. “Well, then, I suppose that will about do it for now,” he said, rising to his feet as Schock came around the table. I stood up, too, feeling Kutzko, Calandra, and Ifversn come up behind us, the two shields moving unobtrusively into flanking positions at our sides. “Thank you for your time and hospitality, Mr. Chun Li; Mr. Blake, Ms. Karash. I'm looking forward to our tour of the ring mines later this week; until then, I'll be keeping in touch.”

And that was that. In the space of a few minutes we'd gone in, learned everything of importance—or at least gotten it on cyl—and walked out again … leaving tension and perhaps even the first signs of panic in our wake.

Lord Kelsey-Ramos would have been pleased.

I
T TOOK ME OVER
twice as long as the meeting itself had run to describe my observations of it, and when I was finished Randon was impressed.

Though not yet quite willing to admit it out loud. “Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, gazing up at Calandra and me as he stretched out a bit more at his stateroom lounge desk. “Very interesting indeed. I'd picked up most of the high points myself, but confirmation is always nice to have. So what exactly do you think they're hiding?”

I glanced at Calandra, got a little confirmation of my own, and shrugged. “No way to tell, sir,” I told him. “Also, please bear in mind that they may
not
be hiding anything specific. It could just as easily be a matter of them not wanting to make things easy for you.”

He snorted. “Oh,
that
part of the group psyche came through in gigapix. And I still think they're hiding something.”

“Probably,” I conceded. “I just thought I ought to mention all the possibilities.”

“Turning the other cheek again, huh? Well, I suppose we'll just have to wait until Schock finishes his tapment check on the cyls and we can get a look at them.” He flared briefly with an almost overwhelming impatience, but he knew perfectly well that Schock couldn't plug the cyls into the ship's computer and download them without checking them first. If HTI had encoded some bookbugs or tapsnakes into any of the information, putting them into the
Bellwether's
system would be an invitation to disaster. Not only could we wind up losing all the HTI data, but a sophisticated enough tapsnake could conceivably open every other file aboard ship to HTI scrutiny and remote manipulation via the phone system.

There were effective methods to prewash suspected cyls, but they took time. So with an effort Randon forced down his impatience and shifted his attention to Calandra. “So. Having heard Benedar's analysis, do you have anything to add?”

“Not really,” she said evenly. “I agree that they're hiding something, probably having to do with either their shipment records or trip quotas or the correlation between the two.”

Randon frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it was around those subjects, that the tension seemed to peak,” she explained. “And they were the only subjects that affected all three of the managers in the same way.”

Randon looked at me. “Did you get that, too?”

“I picked up the tension increase,” I acknowledged. “I can't confirm that it was all three—Karash was off to the side with Schock at the time—but the other two certainly reacted strongly when you hit those topics. Oh, and that guard—the one put there to distract me?—he also made a particularly bad jolt at the same time.”

“That one's coincidence,” Calandra shook her head. “The guard wasn't in enough control of himself to turn things on and off that way.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yes. However, I
was
able to watch Karash, too; as I said, she reacted the same way Chun Li and Blake did.”

Randon grunted. “Um. Interesting.”

For a minute the room was silent. I watched Randon closely, trying to detect any subtle changes in his attitude toward Calandra. But if there was anything there, it was buried by the myriad of other things on his mind.

The moment of introspection was ended by the whistle of the phone. Picking up his control stick, Randon waved it toward the instrument. “Yes?”

The picture came on: Brad Seqoya, one of Kutzko's more massively built shields. “Seqoya, sir, at the gatelock. Thought you'd like to know that Mr. Aikman's just returned.”

Randon made a face. “Thank you, Seqoya. On his way to see me?”

“Probably, sir. And he didn't look too happy.”

Randon's sense took on a slyly amused edge. “All right, I'll be ready for him. Anything else going on down there?”

“Nothing much, sir. We had a Billingsgate rep and his customs escort here half an hour ago to pick up the molecule factory shipment, but nothing since then.”

The amused edge disappeared, Randon's sense hardening into distaste. “One of our people went down with them, I hope.”

“Yes, sir, as per orders.”

Randon nodded, trying to clear his mind and not entirely succeeding. One of the laws governing Deadman Switch usage was that even passenger ships had to carry their share of cargo when entering or leaving Solitaire system, and there had been no exception made for the
Bellwether.
To me it seemed the only decent thing to do: if the toll for our passage was going to be a man's life, the least we could do is make that life count for as much as possible. But Randon didn't see it that way. To him the dead man was a zombi, hardly counting as a human being any more, and it irritated him immensely to have all these strangers traipsing in and out of his ship picking up packages. Aikman, I'd been told, had tried and failed to find any free space in the Rainbow's End receiving center where we could unload the cargo all at once … but given the way Aikman felt about us, I didn't entirely believe that story. “How much stuff is left down there?” Randon asked the shield.