New Title 1 (44 page)

Kris watched him go, and Julian noticed Kris. After a moment, he said in a low voice, “He’s no idiot, you know. Just because Silver fooled him—”

“I know,” Kris replied quickly. “He’s just more concerned about himself, than about Verdant. And I’m more concerned about Verdant, than about him.”

~

“There’s not a damned thing we can do about it,” Enu Thompson told Stearns. He regarded her calmly, taking note of how well she fit her uniform when standing at attention before him, but mindful of how much of a mistake it would be to approach her in her present state of mind. “There are a lot of ships that are going to be left behind, not just AF1.”

“I know, sir, but it’s AF1!” Stearns insisted. “If there’s any ship we shouldn’t be leaving here, it’s that one!”

“I know, I know,” Thompson nodded sourly. He was as well-aware as Stearns what technological and political secrets could be obtained from that ship, if it were examined by an enemy state. He honestly doubted that the leaders of Verdant would go so far as to try to break into Aerospace Force One, however, so he was relatively sure it was in no risk from—

Something occurred to him. Stearns was about to speak, but he put up a single finger, and she stayed silent. After a few seconds’ consideration, Thompson started speaking in a very deliberate manner. “The United States is at a serious disadvantage here… at the mercy of a foreign power, who could at any time decide to turn on us. Under the circumstances, they can be considered to be taking actions that are hostile to us. All the same, I do not believe they will try to
board or search Aerospace Force One
. So my recommendation would be to secure the ship and prepare to return to Earth on the freighter.”

Thompson paused and eyed Stearns carefully, to make sure she was following him. He saw a distinct light in her eyes, and he nodded slightly. “Now, if, after the freighter has left, something were to happen in CnC… and their command structure should have a change of heart… we might be able to return to Verdant, and secure our rightful property. I think we shall have to plan for that contingency. Do you understand, Colonel?”

Stearns lifted her chin perceptively. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Make your preparations, then,” Thompson said. “Dismissed.”

Stearns turned and marched out of Thompson’s office. Thompson leaned back in his chair, and considered that he might, if he was very, very lucky, have solved their problems once and for all. Smiling in satisfaction, he reached for the desk and tapped an icon. “Miss Taurus? Please come into my office, and bring your mission kit. The
red
one.”

~

When Calvin returned home, he noted the quiet in the flat. Often Maria would have music playing in the room where she was working or relaxing, but today he heard no music. As he moved further into the house, however, he realized he did hear voices. He moved in the direction of the bedroom, and before he reached it, he could tell that the voices he heard were Maria, and one other, speaking conversationally.

He pushed the door open, and saw Maria sitting at the edge of the bed, speaking to the com on the nightstand. She looked up and smiled when Calvin entered, as the voice from the com went on.
“Eddie says he’s going to have to leave a lot of his business assets behind, and he’s very upset. He said to me, it doesn’t matter how temporary this is, it’s going to cost me a lot of money!”

“I’m hearing that from a lot of people,” Maria said, nodding, and glanced at Calvin. “Listen, Cathy, Cal just got home. Let me call you back later. Tell Eddie it’ll be okay.”

“All right. Talk to you later.”

The com clicked off, and Maria turned to Calvin. “Hi, honey. I guess you know, the news is everywhere.”

“Sure,” he said, coming over and sitting by his wife. “I was in the meeting. We decided to get the word out immediately. By now, every non-Verdant has been notified.”

“It’s on the news, too,” Maria added. “A lot of people are upset. It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Calvin agreed. “We can only hope the governments cooperate, and we don’t have to drag this out.”

Maria looked at Calvin, catching his meaning. “It could be awhile before we get back to Earth, couldn’t it?”

Calvin shrugged. “It could. I sure hope not.” He glanced around the bedroom. “Are you feeling okay today? I didn’t think—”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Maria replied, patting him on the knee. “Cathy’s call caught me in here while I was straightening up.” She indicated the fact that she was, in fact, fully clothed. “I wasn’t hanging out in bed, I promise!”

“Good,” Calvin smiled. “Later today, I’ve got to go to the studio, then do some shoots about our new transportation system. Want to go for a walk before I have to go?”

“Sure. I’ll find my walking shoes.”

“Jules? Something you should see.”

Julian turned to Reya as she approached him, juggling a datapad in one hand as if she was about to toss it to him. She inclined her head in a silent signal to move away from the nearest workstation, and give them a bit of privacy. Julian cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at her, but he complied, shifting to the corner of the room away from the CnC technicians.

“I’ve been examining the data from the GLIS,” Reya said in a voice pitched so only Julian could hear. “Trying to figure out how Silver’s supplies got rerouted without our seeing it. But I came across something else.” She handed the pad to Julian, and he looked at the supplies tracking tables displayed on it. She used her pinky to point out individual cells on the tables, which she had already highlighted in yellow. “It seems the GLIS has been stockpiling all kinds of things in the last month… not just Silver’s quantum-thingy.”

Julian looked at her with a slight smile. “You don’t like to call it the Silver Drive?” he asked, using the name that had begun to be bandied about among the senior CnC staff.

“I’d rather call it the bane of my existence,” Reya retorted lightly. “But enough about my pet peeves. Jules, look at these. These supplies levels are considerably higher than our standard usage procedures dictate. Apparently, supplies orders have been undergoing a creative method of rounding figures up or down, in such a way that we’ve been taking in more supplies than we’ve been using. In a lot of areas.”

“Basic atmospheric chemicals,” Julian said aloud as he read the tables. “Fertilizers. Manufacturing carbon. Vitamin supplements.” After a moment, Julian shook his head. “This is odd. Who’s behind it?”

“That’s the part that makes it doubly odd,” Reya told him. “There’s no sign that these orders were manipulated by Aaron, any of his staff, or any of the departments on the receiving end of these orders. They were all handled automatically, as they always have been, by the GLIS.”

Julian met Reya’s eyes in puzzlement. “All of these are things that would benefit Verdant to have during an extended cessation of supplies deliveries from Earth.”

“Right,” Reya nodded. “And according to this, they’ve been in the process of being hoarded for the past month.”

“But by the GLIS? No,” Julian shook his head more insistently this time. “I don’t suppose you asked the GLIS about the orders?”

“Sure,” Reya replied. “It gives me dates and times for every order. But when I ask about the amounts and surpluses, it just starts throwing dates and numbers at me, that it knows I can’t keep track of. Like it’s trying to confuse me!”

“You’re anthropomorphizing,” Julian said. “The Governing Logistics Intelligence System is just a big intelligence system… that’s all. You must have missed something. It must have been someone on Silver’s staff. Or maybe Aaron really is that good at his job.”

“No one’s this good,” Reya maintained. “Look at the time stamps. Those orders were placed, edited, and processed, in milliseconds of each other. Even a specially-written program input into the GLIS would take longer than that to process each order, because of the anti-tampering protocols it would have to clear. I’m telling you, the GLIS itself has been independently stockpiling supplies for us.”

Julian stared hard at the datapad, looking for an alternative to her conclusions… but seeing none. After a few moments, he let the datapad fall to his side, and he stared at Reya. “That’s just impossible.”

Reya shot him a wry look. “We’re over
Mars
, Jules. You tell me what’s impossible.”

~

“What do you think, Doctor?”

Calvin glanced again at the data Julian had forwarded, then looked dubiously at Julian’s image on his com screen. “Sir, this isn’t a nineteen-hundreds movie. Unlike the early days of buggy computer processors, people nowadays know that intelligence systems can’t do things that weren’t programmed into them in the first place. There’s nothing conscious or spontaneous about ISes. I can only assume someone managed to get into the GLIS and reprogram its supplies protocols in such a clever way as to have that reprogramming escape your ability to locate it. And now that we know how long Dr. Silver has had this drive of hers working in the background, I can’t imagine it being anyone other than someone on her staff… or Dr. Silver herself.”

“Those were my thoughts, too,”
Julian said,
“but it’s better to hear you say them.”

“At least,” Calvin pointed out, “if it’s true, it means that much more of a supplies buffer, keeping us farther from a level two conservation state. I’m thinking of an old saying about gift horses.”

Julian smiled.
“Good point. We can always look into that mystery later. You’re going to do your reports on the workings of the Silver drive today, right?”

“Right, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” Calvin said. “The plan is still to do a presentation that stops short of providing essential details about the system… something for general consumption. That’s still right, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,”
Julian confirmed.
“Something for the masses, the politicians and the media… everyone but the scientists, basically. Until we decide on the future of this drive system, we’ll keep the essential details to ourselves.”

“No problem for me,” Calvin said wryly. “If they captured me, drugged me, and threatened to turn my guts into guitar strings, I still couldn’t give them any essential details!”

Julian signed off, and Calvin went back to assembling his wardrobe for the studio sessions, which he would take with him and change when he arrived. He glanced up when he realized Maria was at the door.

“Please tell me you didn’t hear that,” Calvin said.

“That our Ceo thinks an IS is conscious?” Maria smiled. “No. I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Good,” Calvin nodded. “And make sure none of your friends hear about it, either. A silly rumor like that would just upset people.”

“If it didn’t make them keel over laughing,” Maria said. She watched him as he collected his clothing and folded it into a bag, having seen him prepare for studio sessions before. “How long do you think you’ll be?”

“I should be home by dinner,” Calvin replied. “Possibly sooner. But this is pretty new, and we may have some back and forth figuring out how to best present some of it. Are you going to be okay?”

“Sure, I’ll be fine,” Maria said. “Go get your work done. I have some shopping to do, myself.”

Calvin gathered up his suit bag and headed for the door. On his way, he gave Maria a kiss. “See you tonight, honey. Be good.”

“I will,” she said as he headed for the front door.

~

“All right, cut, cut! Cut!”

Calvin stopped walking and speaking, and mentally kicked himself. He didn’t have to ask his director what he’d done wrong… he’d screwed up his pacing.
Again
. He turned about to face his director, Pete Bell, as he shuffled over to him in frustration.

“Cal, come on, that’s six times today! What’s wrong with you? You’re stumbling around the set like a blind-deaf rookie with club feet! You’d think you’d never been on a set!”

Calvin, in response, looked around at the room he was standing in, essentially an open-sided and empty space with bright green walls, floor and ceiling, decorated only with tape that demarcated the objects that would be added in later by the special effects teams. Pete was right, he’d worked in a thousand stages like this, and it was second-nature to him to be able to imagine his surroundings well enough to move naturally through them, to properly time his pace and motions to the IS-generated backgrounds, and to present the impression that he was in actual surroundings.

But today, it was just a big green room.

Calvin raised his hand to scratch his head… then refrained, mindful of getting dandruff flakes on his dark jacket. “I know, Pete, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re catatonic!” Pete and Calvin had worked many times before, and they knew how to talk to each other. Though Pete’s words were harsh, Calvin knew the kind of words Pete used when he was really mad, so he didn’t take the abuse personally. “I mean, six times! You are not in this game! Where are you?”

Calvin immediately thought of Maria. Pete couldn’t miss the change in his expression, and he closed his mouth and took a harder look at Calvin. After a moment, he turned around and said, “Okay, shut it down. We’re done here today.” Calvin looked up in dismay as the crews began shutting down the lights and scanners around the stage, and started to protest to Pete. But before he could speak, Pete said, “There’s no point continuing the stage work today, you’re just not getting it. Tell you what, though: Let’s try the location. Maybe if you can walk around real objects, it’ll help your focus.”

Calvin paused only a moment before nodding. “Sure, Pete. I’m game.”

“Good,” Pete said. “Okay, remote unit, pack up. Let’s hit the freighter.”

The crews assembled their remote gear, as Calvin removed his jacket to keep it wrinkle-free, and an aid brought him his suit bag to slip it into. Pete appeared again at his side, and said, “Let’s go. We’ll scope out the space before the guys get set up.”

~

The engine bays of the
Makalu
were still abuzz with people and equipment, constantly coming in and out… it seemed to Roy that the activity had not stopped, even for sleep. As Verdant security guards constantly looked on, lab-coated technicians and engineers swarmed over the strange apparatus and its attendant plumbing, in the bay next to the main engine control bay.