Deadman Switch

Chapter 9

They were still there when we arrived: two men in the official capelets and unofficial hauteur of customs officials, sitting at the gatelock guard station under the watchful eye of the Ifversn brothers. Outwardly, they were mad as hornets at being kept from their duties.

Inwardly, they were badly worried.

It didn't keep them from putting on a good act, though. We'd barely gotten inside the outer lock when the elder of the two was on his feet, glaring at Randon with a fair counterfeit of righteous fury. "Mr. Kelsey-Ramos," he snarled, "I want you to know that if you don't call off your shields immediately and let us get about our duties I will be forced to file official and formal charges against you, them, and the master of this ship."

"I'm sure everything will be straightened out in just a few minutes," Randon assured him, giving a good imitation himself of being impressed by the outburst. "Excuse me a moment, and I'll go find out just what the trouble is."

We passed them and headed on into the ship. Calandra and Seqoya were waiting at the door to the first room, the latter looking much more justified than he'd sounded on the phone. "Well?" Randon demanded, throwing a glance at Calandra and then shifting his attention to Seqoya. "What did you find out?"

Seqoya gave him a grim smile. "Something very interesting, sir: our visitors out there don't exist."

Randon frowned. "Explain."

"The customs duty officer at the spaceport doesn't know them," Seqoya said, ticking off massive fingers. "Neither does their central coordination office in Cameo itself. Neither do any of the customs officials, inspectors, or workers that I was able to track down and talk to."

Randon cocked an eyebrow at Kutzko. "Interesting, indeed. How do they explain this?"

"I haven't confronted them with it yet," Seqoya said. "I thought you might want to be here when we did."

Randon nodded. "All right, let's try it." He hesitated, then turned to Calandra. "You have anything to add?"

"You probably won't need to check their equipment," she said quietly. "They didn't seem at all protective of it. But you'll need to search the younger one's capelet—left shoulder, I think."

For a moment Randon looked at her as if she was joking. Then, pursing his lips, he gave her a brief nod. "Call a shield to take her back to her stateroom," he instructed Seqoya, "then meet us back at the gatelock."

Seqoya nodded and stepped to the nearest intercom. Glancing once more at Calandra, Randon led Kutzko and me back to the gatelock. "Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen," he said briskly to the two men. "If you'll be so kind as to remove your capelets, I think we can clear this up right now."

There was no doubt about it: Calandra had zeroed in precisely on target. Both men's faces froze for a second, and the younger's left shoulder actually twitched. The elder recovered first. "Why?" he asked.

Randon didn't bother answering. Behind us, Seqoya ambled back into the room; catching his eye, Randon nodded toward the two men. "Capelets," he instructed. Seqoya nodded back and kept ambling, an almost lazy glint in his eye. The others saw it, too, and by the time he'd reached them both had their capelets off.

"Thank you," Randon said politely as Seqoya collected them. "Now, if you'll just sit back and relax, we'll take a look and see what we can find—"

We all heard the footstep behind us at the same time; and for the four shields recognition and reaction were virtually simultaneous. In a single catlike leap Kutzko was between the intruder and Randon, his and Seqoya's needlers out and tracking past my shoulder. The two Ifversns were just a shaved second slower, their weapons coming to bear warningly on the customs men. Heart thudding in my throat, I spun around and dropped to one knee.

For a moment no one moved or spoke. Randon recovered his voice first. "Hello, Mr. Aikman," he said. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. It's bad for your health."

Slowly, the panic frozen into Aikman's face melted, and he lowered the foot that had ended up in midair. "I'm sorry," he managed. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"You certainly won't do it again, anyway," Randon said. "May I ask what you did mean to do?"

Aikman's eyes flicked past us to the customs men, his emotional balance already coming back to normal. "I heard there was some trouble at the gatelock," he said evenly. "I came to see if there was anything I could do to help."

Randon gazed at him for a few heartbeats, then nodded. "Certainly. The first thing you can do is tell me if you recognize those men over there."

Again Aikman looked, and I could sense him brace himself. "No," he said.

"He's lying," I told Randon quietly.

Aikman spun to face me, a wave of hatred washing toward me like the burning wind from an explosion. "And who are you," he snarled, "to pass judgment on another man's mind—?"

"He's a Watcher." Randon's voice was quiet, almost calm... but there was a steel underlying it that cut off Aikman's tirade in midsentence. "And if it comes to that," Randon continued, "who are you to lie to me?"

Aikman licked his lips briefly, the sense of him abruptly becoming cautious. "I may have seen them before," he admitted grudgingly. "I certainly don't know them personally—"

"Seen them at HTI?" Randon asked.

Aikman's jaw tightened. "Perhaps. I couldn't say for sure."

"I see." Randon nodded. "Well, they've probably changed jobs since you knew them. Happens all the time—people leave low-level corporation jobs for careers with customs."

Aikman ignored the gibe. "What charge are you making against them?"

Randon cocked an eyebrow. "Impersonation of customs officials, for starters. Along with attempted entry into a private spacecraft and probably one or two others as we think of them."

"They have false IDs, then?"

A touch of uncertainty edged into Randon's sense. "Not exactly, but no one knows—"

"Not exactly? What does 'not exactly' mean?"

Randon glared at him. "It means that, yes, their IDs check against the customs records, but none of their allegedly fellow workers has ever heard of them."

"That won't hold up for ten minutes before a judiciary." Aikman was on his own territory now, and he knew it. "An ID record is both necessary and sufficient proof of employment in an official capacity." A grim smile quirked at his lip. "Do you know what the penalty is for illegal detention of customs inspectors?"

Across the room, Seqoya cleared his throat. "Is it anything like the penalty for attempted sabotage?"

We all turned to look at him. In one hand was the younger man's capelet, looking slightly mauled; in the other, a small floppy rectangle that glinted in the light. "What is it?" Randon asked, stepping over for a closer look.

"Not exactly sure, sir, but it looks a lot like the insides of one of our computer data scramblers—see that number on the sicet, there?"

"Probably a scrubber," Kutzko said, giving it a quick glance and then returning his attention to the prisoners. "It's a scrambler gadget for putting into someone else's system."

Randon favored the prisoners with a long, cold gaze, then turned the look back on Aikman. "Any further comments, counselor?"

"Yes," he said calmly. "Do you have any proof that they came here with intent to sabotage?"

"Why else would they be carrying something like this?" Randon snorted.

Aikman's eyes flicked to the prisoners; and the younger picked up on the cue. "We use it to read samples of scrambled data on suspect ships," he said, voice just the right shade of indignation. "Samples that we can then take back and use to decode the scrambler scheme."

Randon glared at them. "Kutzko?"

Kutzko shrugged. "I don't know, sir. You could check with Mr. Schock—he could probably tell you whether this gadget has that kind of capability."

"In other words," Aikman spoke up, "you haven't got proof of any sort that a crime either has been committed or was about to be committed. Correct?"

Randon turned on him. "You can just shut up—"

"No, sir, I will not," Aikman snapped. "My job is the upholding of human rights under Patri law, and I will do that job wherever I find those rights in danger. You will release these men now, or you will hand them over to the Pravilo and formally charge them with a crime. A crime, I remind you, that you'd better be able to prove."

He ran out of wind and stopped, and for a long moment the air was thick with a brittle silence. From Randon's sense I expected him to explode with fury... but his father had trained him better than that, and he waited until his mind was again in control of his emotions. "Benedar?" he invited.

I swallowed. "He's not bluffing, sir. He means it."

Aikman's glance at me glinted with its usual hatred, but he said nothing. "Very well," Randon said icily. "Seqoya: did you run a DNA comparison between those customs IDs and their owners?"

"Yes, sir," Seqoya answered cautiously, clearly wondering if he was about to wind up on the receiving end of Randon's frustration. "They matched perfectly."

"All right, then." Deliberately, Randon turned his gaze from Aikman onto the two prisoners. "They can go. Give them back their capelets."

Seqoya hesitated, then moved to comply. "Not the scrubber, of course," Randon added. "We'll want to let Schock take a look at it."

"That device is customs property," the elder man insisted, his courage clearly having come back with his perception that Randon was giving in. "I must insist on having it back."

Randon gave him a tight smile. "Certainly. Your superior can pick it up in the morning... along with Your IDs."

Both men froze in the act of putting on their capelets. "We need our IDs to do our jobs," the elder said through a suddenly tight mouth.

"Then you'd better get your superior over here tonight, hadn't you?" Randon told him coldly. "Seqoya: escort them to the edge of the perimeter. Make sure they leave."

Seqoya nodded. "Yes, sir."

Behind me, Aikman took a deep breath. Randon heard him, too, and turned around. "You have something to say, counselor?"

Aikman did; and he thought seriously about saying it. But he'd lost, and he knew it... and like Randon, he recognized the futility of simply lashing out in anger. "No, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos," he sighed at last.

Randon watched him for another moment, just to make sure. Then he turned back, and we all watched Seqoya usher the would-be intruders out of the gatelock. "A-minus for effort," he murmured, more to himself than to any of us. "Come on, Benedar, let's go see what Schock can tell us about that scrubber. Kutzko, keep the shields alert—they may not be ready to give up yet."

Behind me, Aikman turned and stalked back into the ship, his sense a silent blaze of anger. "Yes, sir," Kutzko nodded. "Will you be wanting to head back to the governor's dinner later?"

Randon glanced at his watch, shook his head. "No point to it now." He threw me a sly look. "Besides, someone there may be sweating at our sudden departure. Let's give him time to do it right."

—

"Cute," Schock muttered, turning the flexible rectangular mesh over in his hand and peering at its other side with his magnifier. "Very cute indeed. Cute and nasty." He waved Randon over. "Look here, sir—this sicet here, the one with the number partly scratched off? Odds are it's a preprogrammed bookbug, designed to get into the ship's data records and rescramble selected portions according to a new code."

Randon snorted gently. "Pretty primitive," he growled contemptuously. "Also useless. Even if the main sentinel missed it, there are at least two programs in our library for redecoding data that's gotten fouled up."

"True, but then this wasn't supposed to be anything more than a distraction," Schock shook his head. "Something to keep the sentinel—and us—occupied while these other two sicets got to work." He tapped the pair with his probe. "This is the real attack: a highly sophisticated codex mimic, and a miniature phone system switching station. The mimic can—theoretically, anyway—fool a computer into handing control of the phone system over to it, at which point the switching station can set up a link to a phone outside the ship. Without our knowing it, naturally."

Randon swore, the earlier smugness vanished into black anger. The Bellwether's computer could easily defend itself against an autosystem simple enough to fit on a single sicet; defending itself from a human expert with access to a full-range computer was something else entirely. "How hard would it have been for them to hook this into the Bellwether's systems?" he asked.

"Simplicity itself," Schock told him. "There are three induction portals on it, each set to a different voltage and frequency."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning that all they would have had to do was plant it within electronic spitting distance of any of our electronics," Schock said bluntly. "In a phone, a repeater terminal, even one of the remote locks."

For a long moment Randon was silent, and I could feel the anger growing steadily within him. "Could they possibly have had the thing just sitting around, ready to go?"

"You mean was it put together specifically for us?" Schock shrugged. "Hard to tell. For all I know, everyone on Solitaire could be backstabbing each other with these all the time."

Wordlessly, Randon plucked the thing from Schock's fingers and handed it to me.

One look was all I needed. "It was assembled in a rush," I confirmed. "There are traces of connector fluid on some of the sicets that would normally be cleaned off, and the sealant has ripples in it that imply it was force-dried instead of being allowed to set naturally." I handed it back to Schock.

"Huh," he said in a bemused tone, peering at it again himself. "They're there, all right."

"Which means," Randon said thoughtfully, "that they did throw this together solely for our benefit. Hard to do?"

Schock considered. "Not for someone willing to pay the price."

Randon pursed his lips. "There must be something very interesting on those HTI cyls."

"Well, we can find out for sure any time now," Schock offered. "They're clean enough to put into the system and take a look. Incidentally, they'd loaded a passive tapsnake on the cyl they gave us, designed to root around for anything else in our files with an HTI keymark on it. Nothing fancy; it looked almost like they just threw it in out of habit."

"Paranoia," Randon murmured, and I could tell he was remembering the conversation we'd had on the way to the HTI meeting that morning. Remembering the odd tension Calandra and I had sensed overlaying all of Solitaire... "Benedar, you said Governor Rybakov reacted when I had Kutzko pull the fake security matter gambit, right? What was she like when we left?"

I thought back. "Much the same," I told him. "Only worse. But also strangely... resigned, I think. As if she knew she'd lost a battle or something and was mentally preparing to pull back to a new position."

He stared off into space a minute. "Sort of like the way Aikman acted when I told him I was keeping his friends' IDs?"

"Similar, but more intense." I hesitated, sorely tempted to skip over the next point. But omission of truth was just another form of lying. "For the record, though, I don't believe Aikman was actually in on the scheme, at least not beforehand. He was genuinely surprised to find those men trying to break into the ship."

"Then why did he try to get them off?" Randon demanded.

"Oh, he figured out quickly enough what was going on," I shrugged. "It was obvious that he was trying to get whoever sent them off the hot seat with as little damage as possible."

Randon grunted. "The difference between accessory before the fact and afterwards, in other words."

"More or less."

Randon made a face, then shrugged. "All right, forget Aikman for the moment. Back to Rybakov. What was this battle she'd lost, and where was she trying to pull back to?"

I had to search my memory to find the part of the conversation he was referring to. "My feeling is that she was involved, somehow, with the attempt to get aboard," I said slowly, trying to remember every nuance of the governor's sense. "Perhaps only in knowledge—maybe she was just asked to make sure we didn't leave dinner early."

"Or maybe she was asked to provide someone with a pair of official IDs?" Randon suggested.

I blinked. That thought hadn't even occurred to me. "That's... yes, that's possible," I agreed carefully.

"Just a second, here," Schock put in, clearly aghast. "Sir, are you accusing a planetary governor of involvement in industrial sabotage?"

"Why not?" Randon countered. "Just because the Patri thought she was qualified to run a minor system doesn't mean she can't be bribed. Or blackmailed or threatened, for that matter."

"But—" Schock struggled for words.

"Especially if she sees us as a threat to the whole of Solitaire, and not just to HTI," I put in.

Randon paused in the act of responding to Schock and stared at me. "Does she see us that way?" he asked.

I bit at the inside of my lip. The words had just popped out on their own... but now as I reviewed my sense of Rybakov, I could see that my back-brain had again put pieces together ahead of my conscious mind. "Yes," I told Randon.

"How much of a threat?" Schock asked warily.

"It can't be that bad," Randon put in before I could answer. "Logic, Schock. Our would-be saboteurs must have reported their failure by now; if Rybakov thought we had to be stopped at all costs, Commodore Freitag's men would already have boarded us under some pretext and carted us and the cyls away." His voice turned thoughtful. "Which means she still hopes we'll be reasonable about whatever we're about to find."

I watched him weigh the alternatives and come to a decision. "Move aside, Schock," he ordered, stepping around the desk. A wary look on his face, Schock slid out of the lounge chair. Randon dropped into it, scooping up the other's control stick and waving it at the phone. "Governor's mansion," he instructed the computer.

"Mr. Kelsey-Ramos—"

"Quiet, Schock. Yes, hello, this is Randon Kelsey-Ramos. I'd like to leave a message for Governor Rybakov—no, don't interrupt her dinner, just give her this message. Tell her that her friends dropped something of hers before they left our ship, and that if she wants the items back she can pick them up here in the morning... Yes, personally—I wouldn't think of entrusting them to anyone but her. Thank you."

He waved the stick again and got up off the couch. "And that's that," he said, a note of tension underlying the words. "We'll find out in the morning just how much of a guilty conscience the governor has."

"We won't be here—we're supposed to leave for Collet in the morning," Schock reminded him nervously. Clearly, he considered the whole subject perilously close to social apostasy.

"Then we'll just have to postpone our departure a day or two," Randon told him firmly. "I want to stay here until I know what it is about HTI that has everyone so nervous." He cocked an eyebrow at me. "That's good news for you, of course."

It took me a second to realize what he meant... and then it came back in a rush. What with all the intrigue of the evening, I'd totally forgotten the death sentence hanging over Calandra's head. "Yes, sir, it is. If Governor Rybakov does come here tomorrow, I'd like to be present."

Randon's smile was tight, with a trace of bitterness to it. "I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm beginning to see just how potent this Watcher addiction is."

The words were bantering... but the hard edge beneath it was anything but. Like his father, Randon saw himself as a staunchly independent man, master of his life and the people around him. Unlike Lord Kelsey-Ramos, he hadn't yet learned that both independence and mastery had limits. "Good night, sir," I said.

"Okay, Schock, to work," I heard Randon say as the door closed behind me. "Let's get those cyls out and see what in blazing chern-fire is in them."