InterstellarNet: Origins (35 page)

“That’s right.”

“Good. GAAS, I think I’ve stumbled onto an insider-trading case. Dennis Feulner left the ICU a few months ago. As S-G, he led oversight of ET auctions, and in particular the biotech deal Life Engineering closed not long ago. Regulatory oversight of bidders makes Feulner an insider for stock-sale purposes. I have reason to believe he’s illegally selling LEI short.”

GAAS adjusted his eyeshade, a meaningless affectation while he considered Gil’s words. More likely, judging from the length of the pause, the AI was mining data that might answer Gil’s implied question. “Yes, I retain access to the stock-exchange and brokerage-trading records. I still look for telltale trading patterns. What I
can’t
tell you is what I find, as you are no longer at the commission.”

“Duly noted.” And anticipated. “
If
my information is correct, though, the SEC will be interested. Tell Pete,” who was Gil’s successor at the lunar regional office, “that there’s a lot more going on. A
lot
. If you confirm illegal trading, Pete needs to check in with me before taking any action.”

“Will do. Thanks for the tip, Gil.”

An urgent call from the SEC interrupted Gil’s breakfast.

■□■

Dennis locked his office door, put on background music, and settled behind his desk. He hefted the printout waiting on the blotter. It was Aareehl-clone’s most recent Request for Proposals—and he found it dismayingly thick. He started slogging through.

The damned agent was inviting parties interested in the latest Moby biotech—the sham process had not yet progressed to disclosing the role of quantum computing—to outline the economic models that would underlie their eventual proposals. It was ores and remote sensing all over again. The agent was soliciting offers that would include royalties and ownership participation. To assess offers other than cash on delivery, the AI needed data it understandably lacked about Blindsided Earth’s economy.

This could be more convoluted than faking satellite imagery! Now he needed an economist savvy in biotech markets, one unlikely to ask questions. Ideally, one who wouldn’t cost much. As Dennis drilled into an online registry of economists, his implant erupted into static. The link died. The computer on his desk emitted a loss-of-connectivity chirp.

“Police,” someone yelled from the outer office, a second before his heavy wooden door crashed open in a spray of splinters. Three men and two women, armed and armored, rushed in.

“Dennis Feulner, you have the right to remain silent.”

10

An invisible elephant mashed Gil into one of the mobile hydraulic-assist chairs favored by spacers visiting “down the well.” He kept sliding down the chair’s inclined back. Recourse to the wheelchair was bad enough; he’d be damned if he would confront Feulner while lying flat on his back.

A door opened into the police “conference room” where Gil waited. “I believe you know each other,” a policeman said, ushering Feulner inside. The door through which they had entered fell shut with a loud click. The cop headed for the room’s other door, which shared a wall with an obviously one-way mirror.

“Officer,” Feulner said. “I think you misunderstood me. I asked to speak with my attorney, not a second-rate business reporter.”

The cop left without responding.

“Have a seat.” Gil lifted an arm, muscles screaming in protest, to point at a chair. The table that separated him from Feulner seemed wholly inadequate. As for second-rate, we’ll see. “I think you’ll find the conversation worthwhile.”

“I prefer to stand,” Feulner sneered. He stood at ease as though to say
Titan’s surface gravity is weaker than Luna’s and see who is coping.

Smirk while you can, Gil thought. Another Titanic has just hit an iceberg. You’re going
down
. “Your choice, Dennis.”

Gil took a folded sheet of paper from a compartment of his chair. His arm trembling, his muscles screaming, he offered the letter to Feulner. The letter documented Gil’s appointment as a consultant to the SEC. “You recognize the handwritten signature?”

Scowl. “A digitally signed file would be more convincing.”

“Really? I don’t see why.” Gil smiled as Feulner’s sneer slipped. Detainees were administered a biochemical agent that disabled their implants. Feulner would have gotten a hypo of the stuff before the arresting officers turned off their jammers. “I’m sure your lawyer will confirm the authenticity of my appointment. Meanwhile, you and I should have a chat.”

“Where
is
my lawyer?”

Gil levered himself once more into an upright sitting position. “The issue here is what sort of case the United Planets might bring. As you saw, I represent an agency that might bring charges. Maybe that won’t be necessary.”

Two
mights
.
An
, not
the
, agency.
Maybe
. Get it?

Feulner nodded cautiously. “It can’t hurt to listen.”

“You’ll have inferred from my new arrangement with the SEC that there are matters of insider trading we could choose to pursue.”

Feulner lifted a chair with one hand, glancing toward the unseen observers behind the one-way mirror. The look was easy enough to read: Think what I could do to this weakling before anyone could stop me. Feulner set down the chair, swiveled by 180 degrees. He sat with his legs straddling its back. “Since when are white-collar crimes—to which I do
not
admit—addressed by such police-state tactics?”

Gil straightened again in his hydraulic chair. “Let’s consider a fascinating, and shall we say, hypothetical situation that has come to my attention. With your extensive ICU experience, you might find it interesting.”

Feulner folded his arms across the back of the chair and rested his chin on his arms. Despite the casual pose, beads of sweat had started to dot his face. “I’ve retired from that line of work.”

“Humor me.” Gil clasped his hands, index fingers steepled. “Picture a group that has lost an ET auction. Their rival has exclusive rights to technology that might put this group at a severe competitive disadvantage. Soon after the auction is completed, faster than the ET agent and the winner can finalize the details of their contract, the losing bidders take a curious action.”

Yet another slide down the chair ruined Gil’s dramatic pause. He levered himself back. “The losers make a huge biocomputer purchase. Gigasols,” he added, to make his allegory as transparent as possible.

“I’m not following.”

Then why, Gil thought, are you dripping with sweat?
This
was why, despite the agony, he was confronting Feulner in person.

Feulner looked away.

Gil said, “Then permit me to clarify. Perhaps this group decided that in a different, shall we say, environment, the ET agent might have accepted their offer. Or should I say
an
ET agent?”

Feulner’s eyes glazed in a reflexive reach for the ’net. To command erasure of the Aareehl clone? A scowl showed the neural blockers still at work. “I’m not interested in your fantasies, Matthews.”

“It’s a Whale of a tale, I know.” Gil flashed his I’m-with-the-government-and-I’m-here-to-help smile. “Here is where I think you can assist me. It takes only a few things to have one’s very own ET agent. Plenty of computer capacity and ‘the group’ has more than enough. A copy of the sandbox code. That’s no problem; it’s in the public domain. A copy of the agent code. Agent code falls out of the sky, just like
everything
ETs have to say…but like all their good stuff, it’s encrypted. That brings us to our last need.”

Feulner licked his lips but said nothing.

“Agents come encrypted in an ICU public key, so only the ICU can decrypt one for insertion into a sandbox. The agent decryption key is among the ICU’s most closely held secrets.” Gil commanded his chair’s hydraulics to lean him farther forward, despite the increased pressure on his gut. “Now suppose one of only two people who have ever held both halves of that ICU key accepted a plum job from that losing bidder. That would be interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

■□■

Sweat soaked Dennis’s shirt. Sweat trickled down his torso. He wanted to lunge across the table and snap this pest like a twig. Like the arms of that jacker. The police who must be behind the mirror could not possibly stop him in time.

That could hardly help his situation.

Think! Using Matthews had been too cute, and backfired. Still, Matthews, once again working for the agency that would bring insider-trading charges, was in no hurry to discuss those. He wanted to talk instead about the clone scam, however much of it he had deduced.

Inference and proof were very different concepts.

Subpoenas would reveal quickly enough where Protein Sciences’ biocomp orders had been delivered. Like the office where Dennis was arrested, the computer center might already be behind crime-scene tape and under police guard.

Locating the booby traps within Aareehl-clone’s encapsulation would not be as easy. Someone might already have triggered an autoscrub. And if the authorities spotted the booby traps in the sim code and held back? Jamming and then neural suppressants had kept Dennis offline. Another day out of touch, and the failsafe would do an irreversible memory wipe.

Matthews coughed. “You still with me, Dennis? Do you understand the scenario that I’ve sketched out?”

Dennis’s mind raced. Perhaps it was for the best he had been unable to destroy the evidence. Aareehl-clone’s safety might be his best—maybe his only—bargaining chip.

But a very dangerous one.

To admit to the clone meant implicating his backers. You don’t blithely incriminate multibillionaires, especially ones willing to bankroll major felonies. He might be better off covering for them despite the insider-trading charges.

Because he needed their money for lawyers. The last of
his
money had vanished two margin calls ago. Protein Sciences’ owners had bigger issues than the few millions they would soon learn he had embezzled. Surely they would see that larger picture….

But not cutting a deal for himself ensured the certain wrath of the United Planets and their pressure in court for a maximum sentence.

“Am I boring you?” Matthews asked snippily.

Dennis’s stomach lurched. What should he do? The room had become stuffy and stiflingly hot.

More data. He needed to better understand his bargaining position. How much did the Loonie weakling truly
know
?

“An interesting hypothetical, as you say.” Unfolding his arms, Dennis rapped on the tabletop in what he hoped was a confident drumbeat. “The point of it escapes me. Who would
want
a cloned agent? It would self-destruct as soon as anything seemed amiss to it.”

“Oh,
that
. For the right party, getting a clone to play along would be easy.” Matthews flopped, like a fish out of water, in his hydraulic chair. “What happens at decryption? A ’net address is passed to the agent, the address where the AI registers itself for all e-commerce. After registration, the agent accesses the first in a chain of archived former memories. Old memories, like trade inventory, are protected by encryption for which even the ICU should not have a key.”

Maybe Matthews
had
figured it all out. Dennis willed his hands to tap out another confident rhythm. “Why bother? An illegal clone with recovered memories wouldn’t resell what it knew its previous incarnation had already sold. And an illegal clone without memories has nothing to sell.”

“True enough,” Matthews said. “However…

“Here’s something about agents I only recently discovered. With your experience, Dennis, I’m sure
you
knew it all along.

“Any agent clone, like the one about which we’re ‘hypothesizing,’ recovers memory by tracing backwards in time. Its latest archived memory file points back to the previously saved memories, which point back…you see the pattern. If the newest memory it recovered from archive were dated—well, let us say, 2123—a clone would have every reason to believe it was still 2123. Before something…interesting…was sold.”

At
2123
, Dennis flinched. There was no time to think—he
had
to cover that slip-up! “Be serious, Matthews. Agents encrypt everything important. They route everything sensitive through anonymizers. The original agent would have gone through an anonymizer to archive its backup memories. How could the most recent memories be kept from your imaginary clone?”

“A moment, please.” A water tube snaked up from an armrest of the mobile chair; Matthews slurped. “Let me know if I can get you something. Anyway, you ask the right questions. It’s as if you’ve given this scenario a good deal of thought.” The flaccid bastard grinned condescendingly. “No clone could be allowed unfiltered access to the infosphere. Any direct access would reveal the true date and no doubt other irreconcilable discrepancies. The clone would then follow its protective programming and self-destruct.”