The Genius Asylum: Sic Transit Terra Book 1 (15 page)

Chapter 20

This was
more like it. Drew stood just inside the entrance and gazed around him with satisfaction at a suite of furnished rooms that comfortably held his leather trunk along with all the worldly goods that he had brought with him from Earth. And it had only taken him four days to move into the space: one and a half to solve the mystery of Khaloub’s death and officially close the case; two to survive the Nandrians’ ceremonial arrival and victory party; half a day to gather Khaloub’s effects and package them for shipment back to Earth; and a matter of minutes to throw his own belongings into the trunk and have it transferred in from guest quarters. When he’d put everything away, reprogrammed the smart paint on the walls to a pale pastel blue, and put his own voice and thumb prints on the door lock, the place was finally his. Drew Townsend was home — in the middle of a former crime scene.

Well, why not? He was a former cop, after all. Drew was glad that Ruby had arranged with Orvy Hagman and the decon team to clean out the station manager’s quarters before he moved in. They’d also switched the vic’s bed with another and rearranged the furniture, all without having to be asked. Of course they had, he mused — they were Eligibles. When people routinely made intuitive leaps of logic, many questions simply never came up.

Not for the first time since coming aboard the Hub, Drew had to remind himself that he was Eligible too. Actually, he’d never stopped being Eligible, even when the Relocation Authority had deemed him undesirable.

Little Drew had been screened at school at the age of eight, like all the other offspring of Eligible parents. He had passed every test and been awarded the magical label that would get him the best education, the promptest access to health care, the choicest foodstuffs, and a ticket to explore the galaxy. None of those things had mattered to him, of course. All he knew at that young age was that he was no longer allowed to have fun. He had to study. He had to behave. He had to look and smell and sound just so. He had to fulfill his potential, or at least meet the daunting list of expectations that the Relocation Authority placed on him.

Being Eligible, Drew rebelled. He racked his brain for a way to escape from this cage that the Authority had dropped over him, and could find only one — acquire a juvenile criminal record. So, shortly before his twelfth birthday, Drew Townsend began misbehaving in earnest. The plan worked perfectly — the Authority revoked his Eligibility. His parents became sad and quiet, but he figured they would get over their disappointment eventually.

And then he awakened from an unusually long sleep to discover that his family had been posted off-world during the night, leaving him alone in an empty house; and a stranger with an eviction notice was banging on the door. That morning the word ‘Ineligible’ had instantly acquired a host of unpleasant meanings.

A sudden beeping just behind him nearly launched Drew out of his skin. In a single motion, he spun and pounced on the comm button beside the door. “I’m here. What?” he snapped.

A startled pause, then, “Mr. Townsend, this is Gouryas. You wanted me to let you know if we made any progress with the paintbrush? Well, I’ve got good news and bad news for you, sir.”

***

When Drew stepped out of the tube car minutes later on Deck L, he saw Gouryas and Singh standing to either side of their experimental door panel in the center of the deck. At their feet lay a flashing, gurgling object with horn-shaped handles that could only be the molecular paintbrush. It was a very dramatic presentation. Either the good news was miraculous or the bad news was devastating.

“All right, gentlemen,” he commented without breaking stride. “You said you’d made some progress?”

They exchanged an uneasy glance.

“We’re not sure it is progress, actually,” said Singh after a pause. “We still don’t know how or why the device works, but we do have an approximate idea of how to operate the controls.”

Drew shook off the uncertainty in the Engineering Specialist’s voice. “Have you found a way to undo what was done to the bulkheads?” he wanted to know.

Gouryas shared another meaningful look with Singh, then replied, “I’m afraid not, Mr. Townsend. If this thing has a reverse button, it’s well concealed. However, we have found a way to do the other thing you were interested in.”

He nodded to Singh, who picked up the device and aimed it at a turquoise-’painted’ section of the door. As Drew watched, Singh depressed and slid a panel on the side of the paintbrush. Meanwhile, Gouryas was quietly counting off the seconds. When he got to five, a visible beam shot out of the device, showing purple where it splashed against the metal and apparently ‘painting over’ the first color. When he got to ten, Singh reversed the control, killing the beam.

Drew opened his mouth to speak, but Gouryas raised a silencing hand. “Just watch what happens.”

Before their eyes, the overpainted swatch of door metal darkened to black, then changed again. It seemed to soften and deepen, revealing straight lines and shadowy, shifting forms, almost as if an artist’s sketch were rising to the surface of the metal. For a moment, Drew stared, mesmerized. Then, suddenly, he realized what it was he was looking at — the legs and lower torsos of the techs moving around at the far end of the deck. The alien device had created a serviceable window in the middle of the metal panel.

Drew grinned and turned to face the two engineers. “Transparent supersteel?”

“Acrylic,” Gouryas corrected him regretfully. “Overpainting not only alters the refractive index, it also changes the atomic composition.”

That was the bad news. Clearly, they didn’t dare let the Muralist get his hands on this device again. Acrylic couldn’t withstand the cold of space, and it couldn’t protect them from Purgatory’s radiation. However, Drew reminded himself, there was another, more urgent use for the device. “How controllable is this effect?” he asked carefully.

“I can restrict the beam to the width of the casing on the Meniscus Field generator,” Singh replied, “and I believe I can restrict it to the thickness of the casing as well. That is what you wanted to know, isn’t it, Mr. Townsend?”

***

AdComm was deserted. Good. Drew sat down at his desk, took the encrypter out of his pocket, and activated the device with a squeeze. Then he inserted it into the port of his InfoComm unit and keyed in a series of coded passwords. The report followed, touch-typed as rapidly as he could move his fingers. For security reasons, Drew tried to keep his updates to the EIS brief; unfortunately, the situation on Daisy Hub seemed to change hourly, making that difficult.

A moment later it was done. Townsend’s next routine status memo to the Space Installation Authority would be carrying a little extra baggage.

“So it’s true.”

Startled, Drew glanced up and saw Lydia Garfield standing at the end of his partition. The woman not only looked like a ghost, she evidently moved like one.

“Gavin predicted this, you know,” she continued, walking slowly toward him.

Drew blanked the screen and leaned back in his chair, in one motion palming and pocketing the encrypter. “Predicted what?”

“He said that if enough bad things happened to enough station managers, they’d give up the pretense that this was anything but a detention center and send in a real warden.”

Her voice sounded flat and weary. Drew gave her a sympathetic smile and motioned to her to sit down. “Lydia, I promise you, I’m not a warden.”

Lowering herself carefully into the offered seat, she remarked, “Well, you’re using SIA reports as carriers for encrypted messages to Earth, so you must be here spying for somebody. Who is it? The High Council? The Relocation Authority?”

“Neither. But how did you know…?”

“…about the messages?” The corners of her mouth curved slightly, just short of a smile. “I spend a lot of time around InfoComm gear. Hardly anything worth reporting to the SIA ever happens around here; but you’ve sent three fat signals in five days, Mr. Townsend. That tells me you’re a man on a mission.”

“In a way, I guess I am,” he replied, nodding thoughtfully.

“Ruby told me about your meeting earlier today. She said that for a moment you sounded as though you were talking to Bonelli.”

“She wanted me to approve eavesdropping on Gavin’s adoption ritual.”

Lydia shrugged and pointed out, “You did allow us to monitor your confrontation with Bonelli.”

“I know. It was a mistake.”

“Only because it blew your cover.”

He had been expecting this eventually. And he’d evidently been correct about Lydia Garfield. The ‘basket case’ had made a miraculous recovery; in fact, the woman sitting across from him right now was cool as an autumn breeze in New Chicago.

“Mr. Townsend, I’ll be blunt. You’re a good man. And you were probably an excellent field investigator back on Earth. But as a secret agent…?” She sighed eloquently. “Listen, whatever your assignment is on the Hub, if you want to complete it successfully, then you’re going to need help.”

“No doubt, the kind of help
you
can provide.”

She nodded. “I’m in charge of data management and communications. Day in and day out, I sit in my little corner, screening incoming and outbound transmissions and monitoring all activity aboard the station. Nobody really notices me, but not much happens on Daisy Hub that I don’t know about. I was Karim’s eyes and ears. If you’ll let me be yours, I’ll try not to fail you.”

Drew heard the catch in her voice and began to understand. Lydia’s show of grief at the meeting in the caf may have appeared a little melodramatic, but it hadn’t been faked. As Karim’s ‘eyes and ears’, she had good reason to feel she had let him down. If she wanted forgiveness, a cop was the last person she should be asking for it. Still, he realized, she’d put so much on the line at this point that it would be cruel to turn her down, not to mention foolish. After all, he’d come to Daisy Hub essentially to form a gang. And what was a gang without a snoop?

Lydia sat quietly across from him, her eyes wide and shining.

“How did you know I was a cop, Lydia?”

“Simple. Your original biofile popped up when the system received your documentation from Earth.”

“And just how did your local InfoCommNet happen to have my original biofile?”

Slowly, her lips curved once more. “Do we have an arrangement, Mr. Townsend?” she wanted to know.

“We do.”

“Then you’d better have a talk with Robert O’Malley,” she said. “Tell him I sent you.” And without another word, she got up and left.

***

He’d been meaning to do it anyway, after what Ruby had told him. Now Townsend was doubly intrigued.

He pulled up the crew manifest on his screen and found O’Malley’s duty schedule. He had to smile when he saw ‘Care for Yoko’ on it, five times per day. It figured. But something else didn’t: O’Malley had been classified as a cargo inspector; and yet, he was assigned to work shifts on half a dozen other details during the current interval, including waste management and hydroponics maintenance. Admittedly, it made sense. There wasn’t a whole lot of work for a cargo inspector in this sector of Earth space.

However, if this was typical scheduling, then it seemed to suggest that everyone not actually in charge of a detail was being treated as an interchangeable part, working at and becoming familiar with every job on the station. A quick look at several other duty schedules confirmed his suspicion. Techs were suiting up and learning how to perform exterior maintenance. Dockworkers were learning how to adjust attitudinal thrusters.

According to Ruby, the duty cycles had been established by Nayo Naguchi, the great teacher who had insisted that every crewmember continue acquiring skills and knowledge. Naguchi must have known that it would take a lifetime and more to get to know Daisy Hub inside and out. It was a brilliant way to keep everyone busy.

And, as a side-benefit, it ensured that the station could continue to operate even if half the crew were lost in an attack. That could come in very handy if Earth Council ever twigged to what Townsend was actually doing out here.

“Drew?”

He glanced up. Lydia was standing in front of his desk again.

“You’re needed in Med Services, right away,” she told him.

Chapter 21

“All right
— what’s the problem?”

As if on cue, everyone in Trauma froze in place. They made an interesting tableau: Doc Ktumba, rigid and smoldering, stood over a girl he assumed was Alison Morgan, who was sitting curled up on a medbed, defensively hugging the largest white rat he had ever seen, while Robert O’Malley hovered to one side, his hands clasped in a conciliatory pose, concern written all over his face.

Which of them had called him down from AdComm?

“Well,” said Drew after a moment, “don’t all talk at once.”

O’Malley spoke up first. “We loaned her Yoko, and now she won’t give her back.”

As if he’d unpaused a video recording, the argument resumed.

“You’re not even allowed to have a pet on a hub,” shrilled Alison, tightening her grip on poor Yoko. O’Malley said nothing, but his knuckles were beginning to whiten.

The Doc uttered an exasperated syllable. “I told you before, Yoko is not a pet.”

“It doesn’t matter what you call her,” the girl declared haughtily. “Article 17 of the Space Installation Protocol categorically states that no live animals are permitted on ships or hubs.”
So there!
She hadn’t had to pronounce the words. The tone of her voice had said them for her.

Eligible kids could be such insufferable brats. Drew wasn’t surprised that the Nandrians had bound and gagged this girl. He would probably have stuffed her into a PLS suit and
towed
her all the way to Daisy Hub.

Making his face as stern as possible, he stepped closer to the medbed and cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Young lady,” he said softly, “my name is Mr. Townsend, and you are a guest aboard my station. Please act like one. If anyone is going to quote chapter and verse of the Protocol to these people, it will be me. Understood?”

She nodded and leaned back on the cushions with a gleam in her eye and a triumphant tilt to her chin.
So there!

Drew spun and met the Doc’s jaundiced gaze. In his most officious voice, he declared, “Doctor Ktumba, I am ordering you and Mr. O’Malley, under Article 17, Section 3, Paragraph 9 of the Space Installation Protocol, to return this rat to the laboratory immediately.” She opened her mouth to protest, then evidently thought better of it.

Meanwhile, Alison gulped audibly and murmured, “Section 3?”

“Paragraph 9,” he supplied, adding in the same stern voice, “Exceptions may be made for laboratory specimens, provided they remain confined to the laboratory and are handled only by authorized personnel. Doctor Ktumba and Mr. O’Malley are running the experiment, and are therefore authorized personnel. They have also been properly immunized. You, however, present a problem.” The girl’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. Good. Drew pretended to think hard for a moment, then come to a difficult decision. “Doctor Ktumba, we need to confer on what to do about Ms. Morgan. She probably hasn’t compromised the experiment, but—”

Without missing a beat, the Doc cut in, “You’re thinking she might have been infected? It’s doubtful, Mr. Townsend. Those pathogens have never jumped species in the past.”

Alison went pale and practically threw Yoko into O’Malley’s waiting hands. “Pathogens?” she wailed. “You gave me a sick rat to play with?”

O’Malley’s features were contorting strangely. Fortunately, he and Yoko escaped from Rehab before he could blow the con.

“Yoko will have to be tested for anything the girl might have transmitted to her,” Drew told the Doc, ignoring the whining child on the medbed, “and vice versa. You’ll have to quarantine her in the meanwhile.”

Reluctantly this time, the Doc went along. “I’ll arrange to put her into Isolation immediately, Mr. Townsend.”

“Good. When you’re done, I want to see you and O’Malley in my office.”

Drew left Med Services, nodding perfunctorily at a stricken Alison Morgan on his way out.

His mother had been right — children who fought over toys deserved to lose them.

***

“Admit it, Townsend — you enjoyed that.”

“And you didn’t?” he countered.

O’Malley just shrugged and grinned broadly at him.

On the other side of the filing cabinets, Drew could sense Lydia, hovering just out of sight.

“All I can say is that you’re lucky Gavin Holchuk wasn’t there to see you torture that child,” declared the Doc.

“I tortured her?” Drew returned. “You’re the one who brought up pathogens.”

“Nonetheless,” she continued with a dismissive wave of her hand, “Gavin feels very protective of her.”

“Would he have let her leave the station with O’Malley’s rat?”

“Yoko isn’t mine,” O’Malley corrected him.

“Then whose is she?” Drew wanted to know. “Who brought her aboard?”

Ktumba hesitated before replying, “Nayo Naguchi did.”

“Rats live two standard years at most, and Naguchi arrived on the Hub at least fifteen years ago,” Drew pointed out. “Are you saying you’ve been cloning Naguchi’s pet?”

She gave him a faint smile. “Not necessary. This is the original rat. And although Nayo named her, Yoko was never his pet.”

Suddenly, Drew was feeling a little light-headed. “So we have aboard this station a rat that has lived for more than twenty Earth years?”

“A very intelligent rat that has lived in excellent health for more than twenty-
five
years, and counting,” she confirmed with a nod. “Her DNA is gumbo. My guess is that she was in the final generation of a genetics experiment and Nayo… relocated her. He left detailed instructions for her care and monitoring. Robert gives her companionship and mental stimulation. And every three intervals I biotest her and record my findings. She’s already lived the equivalent of eight rat lifetimes, and shows no signs of slowing down. Theoretically, she could be immortal.”

And the longer she lived, the more she would learn, becoming more and more intelligent. It was the perfect gift from a great teacher: Yoko, the role model.

“Who else knows the truth about her?” Drew asked, trying to sound casual.

“Not many on the Hub. Robert, of course, and Ruby and Lydia. Most of the crew think, as you did, that I’ve been cloning Nayo’s pet for sentimental reasons.”

“What about Khaloub?” Drew wanted to know.

She shook her head in response.

“Jovanovich?” Drew persisted.

“Not a chance!” blurted O’Malley. “He ordered me to space her.”

“You’re the first station manager since Nayo Naguchi who’s expressed any interest in keeping Yoko on the Hub,” the Doc explained, “so you’re the first I’ve told. At my request, none of the others reported her presence to the Earth authorities; and up until now, we’ve managed to keep her a secret from the Rangers as well.”

“And yet, you allowed Alison Morgan to play with her?”

“Gavin’s idea,” O’Malley piped up.

“He has a soft spot for kids in trouble,” said the Doc.

Yes, he had, Drew thought disgustedly — it was in his head. And the Doc clearly had a soft spot for Gavin Holchuk, in the same location.

He completed his thought aloud: “So now Alison, who knows about Yoko, will be leaving the Hub in four days, and that could be a problem, especially since we’ve had the breathtaking audacity to deny her something she wants. Okay, let’s assume that she’s vindictive as well as spoiled, and that she makes a complaint to the authorities that the crew of Daisy Hub are breaking the rules and keeping a live animal on the station. Considering who and where we are, is anyone on Earth going to give a damn?”

“Of course, they will,” replied the Doc tartly. “And I suggest that we hedge our bets by ensuring that the child leaves here as happy as possible. We could start by removing her from Isolation, since she really hasn’t done anything serious enough to warrant four whole days of solitary confinement.”

She was right, of course. Never argue with the Doc.

A beat, then, “Agreed,” said Drew. “But I don’t want her roaming the station. We’ll need to keep her busy until her transportation arrives. Ms. Garfield,” he called over the partition, “have you got any SPA programs that’ll wear out a teenager?”

A moment later, Lydia appeared with a smile and a trio of datawafers. “I’ve got a few that wear out Orvy Hagman: rock climbing, white water rafting, and extreme skateboarding.”

Drew paused, mouth open. Skateboarding? He would have to try that one himself some time. Then he recomposed his face and sighed dramatically, “All right, Doctor. Go release the prisoner. And hope she stays out of my way.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Mr. Townsend,” she said sweetly as she got to her feet. “She’ll probably avoid you like the plague.”

Drew gestured to O’Malley to remain seated.

When Doc Ktumba had left AdComm, Drew leaned forward across his desk. “Lydia says you and I ought to have a talk.”

O’Malley was a slight man with swarthy coloring, an up-tilted nose, and a mop of unruly dark hair. He widened his eyes ingenuously and wondered, “Oh? About what?”

“You know about what,” Lydia scolded him from across the deck.

O’Malley gazed thoughtfully at Drew for a few seconds, then seemed to reach a decision. “All right, Mr. Townsend. What do you want to know?”

“First of all, how did my original biofile come to be on the Hub’s intranet?”

A slow grin spread across O’Malley’s face. This was a story he would clearly relish telling. “We don’t have an intranet anymore,” he said after a pause. “Shortly after I arrived here, I figured out how to hack into the database on Zulu.”

His nonchalance was astonishing. On Earth, hacking had been a capital offence for some time.

“You stole the Rangers’ database?”

“Copied it,” O’Malley corrected him.

“How did you get past their system watchdogs?”

“I knew they had to be the same as ours. I practiced for a while.”

That simple statement left so much unsaid that it boggled the imagination. “You practiced?” he echoed.

“Lydia set up a sim for me using the SPA system.”

Of course. How could he have forgotten O’Malley’s accomplice?

“Wait a minute — are you saying my original biofile was in the Rangers’ Net when you copied it over?” There was a sudden icy prickling across Drew’s shoulders. Had his mission been compromised from the outset?

“Not exactly. See, once I knew the Zoo was receiving regular updates from Earth’s InfoCommNet, I put us in the loop. Each time the Rangers sent data, I made sure a data request from the Hub was piggybacked onto it. Each time Earth sent an update, it came through us first. So far, I’ve copied just over sixty percent of the InfoCommNet’s data bank into our on-board system. Including your original biofile.” The grin broadened. “And I’ve begun copying the Galactic Database as well, in case the aliens ever decide to freeze us out,” O’Malley concluded.

“And all these databases are kept current?”

O’Malley nodded.

“And you’re sure the Rangers haven’t twigged to this?” Drew persisted.

“Absolutely, boss.”

Drew blew out an admiring breath. “That’s impressive,” he commented, nodding. “But you’re talking about an enormous amount of data. Where have you been storing it?”

“Here and there.” A shrug. “Primarily here for now, but we have storage over there as well, if we need it.”

Over there? Suddenly Drew’s thoughts were racing. There was only one ‘there’ in the vicinity — Platform Zulu. Lydia had installed a SPA system on the Zoo, Ruby had told him. What if—?

“The SPA room?”

“It can hold nearly twelve terasecs of data,” Lydia supplied, wandering over to join the discussion, “with capacity left over for a doubles tennis match or a golfing foursome.”

Of course. Space for four programs to be running simultaneously, but no more than four. That would rule out team sports, wouldn’t it? So Khaloub could pitch nine innings, but not with his own people backing him up. It was a shame, Drew mused. Sports would have been such a natural way to pull this crew together. At the very least, it would have made mission planning a lot easier.

“Was Karim in on your little secret?” Drew asked, in a sharper voice than he’d intended.

Lydia and O’Malley exchanged a startled look.

“We weren’t sure he would approve,” she explained. “I was going to tell him, right after we returned from installing the SPA on the Zoo, but—”

“Lydia became ill,” O’Malley cut in.

“Rob, it’s okay,” she assured him. “He knows.”

The pieces were coming together, and Drew didn’t like the picture they were making. Worse, Bonelli’s voice had begun to repeat on him, like onions:
Cripes, what did
she tell you? They got excited, they crossed the
line. But she shouldn’t have—

No, she shouldn’t have, Drew realized. Not on the Zoo. Not unless she’d had no other choice.

“You went with her to the Zoo, didn’t you, O’Malley? Whose idea was that?”

He shifted uneasily in his seat. “It was Lydia’s. She told Karim she wanted me along to protect her in case the Rangers made trouble.”

“So as far as Karim knew, you were there to fend off Bonelli’s boys while she installed the SPA. In reality, the two of you were there to co-opt the SPA as storage space for your stolen databases. Hey, I’m just keeping the facts straight,” Drew told them pleasantly. “It’s what I do.”

Staring narrowly at him, Lydia leaned back in her chair.

“So, let me guess,” Drew continued chattily. “You’d practiced slipping past the watchdogs, so you knew they wouldn’t be a problem. But Bonelli didn’t trust you, did he? He assigned a couple of guards to watch you. You knew this was your only chance to link the two SPAs together, and you couldn’t do it unless the guards were distracted. So you sent Lydia out to flirt with them for a few minutes. Was that how it went down?”

“Actually,” said O’Malley, “the flirting was Lydia’s idea too.”

“Really?” Drew crossed his arms over his chest and swiveled his chair so that he was facing her. “And was it also your idea to be assaulted? I’ll bet that made one hell of a distraction for Bonelli’s boys. How much extra time did it buy him, Lydia?”

She drew herself up, her eyes flashing.