Up Against It Part 31

"And in return you agree to keep silent about your suspicions regarding the feral sapient," Obyx said, "and to give us a berth on Sisyphus, Sisyphus, to use as we see fit, no questions asked. Without alerting anyone that something out of the ordinary might be happening." to use as we see fit, no questions asked. Without alerting anyone that something out of the ordinary might be happening."

"Yes."

Obyx looked at her askance, as though doubtful she could bring herself to do such a thing. Ze extended both upper sets of hands, and Jane brushed hands with hir, both right and left, thinking, and now I've made my own deal with the devil. and now I've made my own deal with the devil. Sarah was shaking her head in dismay. Sarah was shaking her head in dismay.

"Draw up the papers for us, won't you?" Obyx said to Sarah. "For your usual fee."

"I think I deserve hazardous duty pay for this one," Sarah muttered.

While Sarah and Obyx stayed behind to discuss other matters, Harbaugh took Jane down the way to outfit her waveware. Jane felt as if she were walking through an amus.e.m.e.nt park ride that had gone overboard with the biologicals. Inside one room they pa.s.sed she got a glimpse of someone in a nutrient coc.o.o.n, reaching out to adjust a monitor, and realized that that must be how they hacked themselves.

Harbaugh took her to a chamber with several different nooks and technology stations. "Have a seat," he said, gesturing at a chair. "This will only take a few minutes. What waveware do you use?"

She removed her ear unit and handed it to him.

"It's Intel's latest quantum processor, I forget the model. Plenty of free memory-I keep it clean. I have a cortical interface with standard gold and an RS-1482 bus." She tipped her head to show him the tiny gold connector that rested in her ear ca.n.a.l.

"Good. This will just take a minute." He pulled down a screen and plugged her computer into it, and started the download. Then he leaned against the counter, arms folded, eyeing her. She sensed he did not truly trust her.

"Was Ivan Kovak really a Viridian?" she asked.

"Depends on your definition. He wasn't modded. But he and his family attended services occasionally. We never turn people away."

"I can't help wondering about him," Jane said. "He surely knew he would not be able to get out alive. The mob doesn't inspire the obsessive, delusional sort of mind-set that leads people to throw their lives away in a grand gesture. What could have led him to end his life in such a way?"

Harbaugh frowned. "From everything I saw, up till near the end, he seemed... content. He loved his spouses; he loved his kids. They had money struggles-they were trying to survive as artists by doing skilled and unskilled labor. But of the three partners, he seemed least disturbed by it. He said to me one time that wealth begins when your belly is full, which always struck me as a healthy att.i.tude." He shrugged. "All I can surmise is that the financial strain ultimately split the partnership, and their leaving broke him. They were everything to him. The kids especially."

Jane shook her head, lips pursed. "Learned, we don't have firm proof yet, but the police are convinced that the Ogilvies used their connection with him from his days on Vesta. They promised him that his family would be provided for if he would do this thing."

She could tell she had shocked him. "What makes you think so?"

She recapped what she knew, including how Marty's death seemed connected to the attempt to cover up a meeting in Kovak's old neighborhood. "From everything you've told me," she said, "he seemed a decent sort, and not easily bribed. The most likely alternative, then, is extortion. Blackmail."

Harbaugh looked troubled. "If that is true, and you are able to find evidence, then we will want to know."

"If you will allow me access to the city web to check my e-mail, I may be able to confirm it now," she said. Harbaugh eyed her speculatively.

"All right. Let's finish the installation first." He looked back at the monitor. "And... it's done."

Harbaugh removed her ear unit from its slot in the station and handed it back to her; she plugged it in, hooked it back over her ear, and got a bad case of reboot nerves-sparks in her vision, tinnitus, a tingling in her fingers and toes. Then her waveware settled down. She wiggled her hands and feet, twitched muscles here and there; her menus and her heads-up overlay responded as usual. Some shiny new icons appeared in her waveface, beneath her usual suite. A sapient appeared: a luminescent spider with a human face. Harbaugh said, "The program is named Arachnid. It is pretty straightforward. Just follow the instructions that pop up. It records directly from your visual and auditory nerves. You can test the antisurveillance disabler first, if you like, and check your e-mail at the same time."

"Where is the data stored?" she asked.

"The default is to beam the video to multiple social and news sites throughout the Solar Wave, where it gets scooped up by the Upside-Down folks and folded into 'Stroiders' as they do with other tourist and supplemental material. However, under Preferences Preferences you can choose whether to livestream it to the wave, or to simply archive it." you can choose whether to livestream it to the wave, or to simply archive it."

"Is it archived locally, or beamed out onto the Solar wave?"

"It's stored locally with two remote mirrors. I understand your concern. Since we only have the one trunk line up to the surface, and it is currently under repair, there is a small risk that your recordings could be hacked and deleted before escaping into the Solar wave. But our firewalls are the best there are, and it won't be long till the transmission cable is repaired. Phocaea owns twenty percent of Upside-Down's transmission capacity, and we find that sufficient for avoiding destruction of information. You saw for yourself how hard it was to stop the feral from escaping, and that would have been a much, much bigger packet dispersal than we are talking about with snippets of video and audio."

"It will have to do. Good enough."

She downloaded her e-mail. She had a message from Masahiro Takei. She opened it, and read: "Here are the files you requested, from three different Uraniaville loci that fit your parameters. Hope they are of use."

"This may be it, but it will take me a few minutes to review," she told Harbaugh. "I'll call you if I find the proof you ask."

"Take your time." He stepped out.

She played Takei's recordings at 4x speed. They were all of a fourteen-minute stretch of time. All three showed different angles on a location at or near a grocery kiosk. The neighborhood in question must not get much mote or mite activity, because there was no sound. All three showed Ivan Kovak shopping at the kiosk, and walking away from the kiosk with his groceries, holding the hand of a little girl, maybe seven or eight, who resembled him. She must have been his daughter.

It was certainly interesting that Kovak showed up in the video. But why go to the trouble of killing Marty over a shot as trivial as this? She put in a call to Masahiro again. To her delight, a bar crawled across her screen, scanning the transmission and confirming it as surveillance-free. She began to understand Sarah's appreciation of the Viridians.

"Masahiro-san," she said, "am I remembering correctly that some 'Stroiders' subscribers Downside record their experiences while plugged in, and later share them with their buddies?"

"Yes, there are several such sites, as with other commercially successful waveworlds. They are quite popular. Some even insert themselves into the action, and play with the outcomes. A whole secondary economy has grown up around the phenomenon."

Jane suppressed a shudder. As always, the notion of being used as a doll in other peoples' inwave fantasies gave her a case of the grues. "Could you poke around some of those sites and see if you can find any downloaded video/audio recordings made before the disaster-as close as possible to when the event took place?"

He seemed perplexed. "But they will be much lower quality, and there is a possibility of their having been hacked in some way."

"For my purposes, that won't matter. Do what you can."

Harbaugh was in a chamber down the way, with Thondu. Jane paused at the door. They stood at a computer and had not yet noticed Jane's presence. Thondu was looking down at the cl.u.s.ters of biocrystals that made up the computer bank, and hir hand rested on hir belly.

"Will it be OK? If anything were to happen to me-"

"Don't worry." Harbaugh rested a hand on Thondu's shoulder. "We'll keep the backup safe. If your experimental version fails to thrive, you'll still have the genetic map, too, which can be decoded and reconst.i.tuted in digital form on one of our servers, once you are back on Earth."

"But it's untested tech."

Jane cleared her throat. Both started. Thondu looked aghast at the sight of her, but Harbaugh shook his head. "It's all right. We have an arrangement."

Jane looked at the glittering crystals and tubes. "So this is it, eh?" Harbaugh nodded.

Jane thought of her dream, and the fetus trapped in the crystal. She realized that this was the moment the Voice had warned her of. Are you done with me so soon? Are you done with me so soon? she thought, and felt relieved, and a bit sad. she thought, and felt relieved, and a bit sad.

So be it; she was glad to shed the role of prophet. She said to Harbaugh, "I have more research to do before I can provide you with that information we spoke of," she said. "I'll get it to you as soon as I have it."

On their return to Heavitown, Sarah was excruciatingly monosyllabic. Jane realized she was still angry over Jane's scene with Obyx. They reached the Promenade, and she said a curt good-bye. Jane touched her arm. "I'm sorry for surprising you like that."

Sarah frowned. "OK, here's the deal. Next time you want my help, I need to know what you are up to ahead of time. With an opportunity for me to advise you on the legal ramifications-and even decide whether I want to be involved!"

Jane winced. "You're right. I screwed up. I should have told you. But it's not that simple." She sought for a way to explain. "I'm operating on instinct, Sarah. I didn't know quite what I wanted to say to Obyx till I had hir in front of me. I just knew I needed to talk to hir, and there you were with a way to reach hir. Perhaps I shouldn't have involved you. But I didn't see any other way. Nor any way to explain it that would have made sense."

Sarah sighed. After a pause, she said, "It was good that I was there. Ze'll trust you better, because ze knows ze can trust me." She slugged Jane lightly. "Just keep me in the loop."

Jane made an X over her heart. "I will. I promise."

25.

The ship's engines kicked in: deceleration had begun. Xuan had maybe another twenty minutes before they touched down. While he waited, Xuan studied the stroid's stats from the original claim.

The original prospector had extensively surveyed it. The stroid was primarily metal ore. It was a big one: about three by three by ten kilometers in size, roughly barbell-shaped. Its albedo was high-typical for nickel-iron rocks. Its mean density had been 5.8 grams per cubic centimeter-nearly three times Phocaea's. One end of the barbell consisted of a big lump of crumbly silicates; the result of a collision with a silica rock sometime in the distant past. But the bulk of the stroid was high-grade ore.

When the claim was first filed, a hundred fifty years ago, the stroid's ma.s.s was 16,300 gigatons. Its gravitational pull had been a little less than a thousandth of a gee back then, comparable to that of larger but less dense, silicate-based Phocaea. Now, of course, as a mined claim, its ma.s.s would be reduced, and thus so would its gravitational pull. How much less was the billion-troy question. The extent of gravitational decrease gave astrogeologists their first estimate at how much ice a tapped-out claim might have. The lower-gee the rock, in comparison to its pre-mined gee, the more porous it was now-and thus, the more ice its tunnels could hold. In short: lower gee, more sugar.

Just because the rock had lots of tunnels did not mean that all those tunnels would be filled with ice. But you had to start somewhere. So you always started with a gravitational survey, and subtracted that measurement from the original-claim gee.

The general rule was: over two-thirds, holdin' a t.u.r.d. Sugar-rock prospectors didn't bother going any further with a claim, unless its tapped-out gravity was below about sixty-five or seventy percent of the original. It took a lot more disa.s.sembler to process rock than it did ice, and when the number of pores was too few, the amount of energy needed to mine the ice was greater than the energy locked up in it.

If the tapped-out stroid's gravity was substantially lighter lighter than the original survey gee, on the other hand, this was a big flag that the rock had sugar-rock potential. They would then expect him to do seismic testing to calculate how much of the rock's void s.p.a.ce was filled with ice. And than the original survey gee, on the other hand, this was a big flag that the rock had sugar-rock potential. They would then expect him to do seismic testing to calculate how much of the rock's void s.p.a.ce was filled with ice. And those those results would be exceedingly difficult to falsify. No, the simplest way to shut this expedition down would be to falsify the stroid's gravitation. And Xuan knew of a way. As long as he could make the sleight-of-hand work. results would be exceedingly difficult to falsify. No, the simplest way to shut this expedition down would be to falsify the stroid's gravitation. And Xuan knew of a way. As long as he could make the sleight-of-hand work.

Xuan felt the deceleration and vibrations that meant they were approaching their target; a lurch and a thud meant they had touched down. Mr. Mills radioed Xuan, instructing him to suit up and meet the others in the cargo bay. When he got there, Mills was nowhere to be seen. The pilot and the four-well, cargo workers, Xuan supposed he should call them, though he was unable to think of them now as anything other than thugs-were there, however. And it did not escape his notice that they all carried sidearms. As they gathered Xuan's field equipment and stacked it at the hatch, Xuan sensed the pilot looking at him, as if daring him to say something about the weapons. Xuan played dumb.

"Are you expecting trouble from claim jumpers?" he asked.

"Yeah," the pilot said.

Xuan refrained from rolling his eyes. "Do stay sharp, then, won't you? This will take a while, and I certainly don't want any trouble."

"We will. Wait here. We're going to check things out first." Which was an odd thing to do-at least for a claim they had permission to test. Xuan figured it was best not to bring this up.

"All right-um, what is your name?" Xuan asked.

"Jesse."

"Jesse. And you may call me Professor Xuan."

The young man seemed uneasy. "You wait here, then, Professor Xuan, till I give you the all-clear."

Xuan finished suiting up and turned on his air. The pilot bled out the cargo bay air, and then opened the side hatch all the way and extended the ramp. The five men left. Xuan perched on a cargo container and waited. Near the back of the bay he saw racks filled with stacks of crates labeled "Glock" and "KBR." K. B. Rand was a Martian weapons and tactical systems manufacturer. They made missiles and bombs. Glock specialized in rifles and handguns.

Xuan sank against a crate, appalled. What had he gotten himself into?

The pilot reentered ten minutes later and told Xuan it was safe to come out. He joined Jesse at the head of the ramp. The hired hands had posted themselves at positions where they could see the entire site, as well as much of the surrounding terrain. They had their weapons out.

Xuan left Jesse at the top of the ramp, and bounded down onto the stroid to find a good spot to set up. As he would expect of an abandoned mine, all was quiet. Near the shuttle's nose stood the mine entrance, which was fitted with a metal bulkhead and an entry port. Portions of the stroid's interior were likely habitable, then. At least, they had once been.

Also nearby were four big tanks, marked as methane, oxygen, nitrogen, and peroxide. They were unusually large. Whoever owned this stroid was obviously a h.o.a.rder. Directly behind the ship were what looked like makeshift rocketbike launch ramps. Close to the ridge at the mine entrance squatted two ma.s.sive machines: a tunneler, spare cables and reels, grinders, a big hopper, and a bagging station. Over all this towered a Brobdingnagian mechanical earthmover for cutting, compressing, and shooting mined ore into s.p.a.ce. Racks of smaller equipment parts, several slag piles, and a mountainous midden also stood nearby.

Xuan bounded around, pausing to poke at the ground with a rod. Quite compact, and in some areas there was no dust-only solid nickel-iron ore. Very high quality. He looked up. The sun-near zenith now-moved swiftly across the dark sky, making shadows crawl across the ground. This rock had a rotational period of only a few minutes. It would be good, then, to arrange things so that the sun was rising behind him and into the others' faces when he opened the back of the machine. It would make it more difficult for them to see what he was doing inside the gravitometer.

Xuan ordered the others to bring his equipment. "Leave the rest there for the moment," he said, pointing at the bags and boxes lined up at the cargo bay door. "We won't need any of that unless the gravitometer gives us a low reading."

He looked for a good place to set up: a place where the ground was firm, stable, and flat. The ore was close to the surface here. Dust and clots of dirt collected in dips and valleys. As a quick test, he dropped a wrench and surrept.i.tiously counted as it drifted downward: sixty seconds to touch down in the dust? Eighty? Quite a bit less than on 25 Phocaea, at any rate. Old claim; big, high-end equipment; well-stocked supplies; high-quality ore: all his instincts were telling him that this rock had been extensively mined-a prime sugar-rock candidate. He only hoped these men were not experienced enough rock hoppers to detect these clues.

He found a spot as close as he could make it to a pile of slag-this would make it harder for them to move behind him while he set up the gravitometer. He prepped the site, sweeping away dirt with a hand brush-tossing small stones and nuggets of metal out of the way-and measured the grade in several spots with a laser level, pausing to wipe away dust that had settled on his faceplate. Meanwhile, the others milled around. The sun set and rose twice while he was prepping the site. He had to time this right.

"We'll do it here," he said finally, and pulled a paint can and some lights out of his kit. He marked four points on the stroid surface with phosph.o.r.escent paint. "Bring that big box and that table-yes, that one. Put them right here, where I've marked with paint. Careful! Don't jostle the box. You might throw off the calibration."

Two of the hired hands shuffled and wobbled over, steering the box. s.p.a.ce neophytes, s.p.a.ce neophytes, Xuan thought. Jesse the pilot brought the table. Xuan had them move the table around while he adjusted leg lengths and took measurements. Then he fired the bolts that fixed the table to the stroid's surface. He instructed them to put the box on the table and bolt it on. The flood lights he positioned such that they would cast a shadow on him when he stood behind the gravitometer. Sunup came again while he did this, and sundown. Xuan thought. Jesse the pilot brought the table. Xuan had them move the table around while he adjusted leg lengths and took measurements. Then he fired the bolts that fixed the table to the stroid's surface. He instructed them to put the box on the table and bolt it on. The flood lights he positioned such that they would cast a shadow on him when he stood behind the gravitometer. Sunup came again while he did this, and sundown.

Gravitometers had been around for centuries. In concept, they were simple. A pendulum's period-how quickly it swung from peak to peak of its arc-depended on two and only two things: how long the pendulum cord was, and how strong the gravity was. It didn't matter how hard you swung it or how high the peaks were, the period was always the same. The quicker the swing, the stronger the gravity. The slower the swing, the weaker.

Xuan's gravitometer was designed to measure the very faint gravities of asteroids, a meter-and-a-quarter tall metal box with a light inside and a window through which you could see the pendulum. The box was bolted to a table that had shock absorbers in the legs. The weighted pendulum inside the box was attached to an actuating trigger for the pendulum, and a counter. Since asteroids varied greatly in volume and density, the pendulum length could be varied using three settings. The machine took the setting into account in its calculation. This was crucial to his plan. In addition, the weights could be changed out, to reduce vibrations that might affect the results. This was also crucial to Xuan, as it gave him access to the pendulum chamber to trick the machine.

Xuan had to a.s.sume that the men watching him-and they were watching him, though more out of boredom than suspicion-were familiar with the process of measuring a stroid's gravity. They had probably taken his students out on other claims.

Here was the tricky part. He had to take care not to deviate too much from what they were accustomed to seeing, while making the gravitometer lie about the stroid's density-but only only if the rock was highly porous. Otherwise, the device had to tell the truth, or the measured gravity would be higher now than when it had first been discovered. This, as a practical matter, wasn't possible and it would clue his watchers into the fact that he had tampered with the instrument. if the rock was highly porous. Otherwise, the device had to tell the truth, or the measured gravity would be higher now than when it had first been discovered. This, as a practical matter, wasn't possible and it would clue his watchers into the fact that he had tampered with the instrument.

According to Xuan's calculation, a fifty-seven-second period for the pendulum swing would put it at its original density. Anything between fifty-seven and about eighty seconds, he could leave alone. Any more than eighty seconds or more to complete an arc meant the rock had big pores, and he'd have to work fast.

The sun was sinking toward the horizon again. Once down, it would rise behind him again in less than two minutes. Time to act. Xuan drew a deep steadying breath, took his wrench and a large screw bolt from his field kit, and radioed Mills. "We're almost ready. First I'll do a calibration, then readjust the machine as needed and take the measurement."

"All right. Fine," Mills said. "Jesse, you copy?"

"Roger that," the pilot replied.

"Report his findings as he receives them."

"Will do." The pilot moved over next to Xuan and looked over his shoulder at the device. He again touched a glove to his weapon in a mixture of bellicosity and anxiety. Jesse the pilot was obviously even more nervous than Xuan, who surmised that he was not used to his role as a thug.

Xuan released the pendulum and counted in his head as it arced lazily down: one, cryptocrystalline; two, cryptocrystalline, three... By the time he got to thirty... forty-choi oi! The pendulum had not even reached the halfway point! He stopped the test. His heart knocked insanely against his ribs. Sweat poured down his face and torso. Calm; stay calm. The pendulum had not even reached the halfway point! He stopped the test. His heart knocked insanely against his ribs. Sweat poured down his face and torso. Calm; stay calm.

This rock had to be more than half vacuum. Or ice.

"One last adjustment should do the trick," he said. His voice quavered. Get it under control. He thought of Jane. Be like rock. Be like rock. He jumped over the table, opened the back of the gravitometer, and wrapped the pendulum wire many quick turns around the bolt. Quickly now, but calmly. Shorten it by half. He jumped over the table, opened the back of the gravitometer, and wrapped the pendulum wire many quick turns around the bolt. Quickly now, but calmly. Shorten it by half.

Sunrise could occur any second, and he needed to be done with this adjustment before it did. d.a.m.n it, Xuan. At this rate you'll ruin everything, and not just for yourself. Focus! d.a.m.n it, Xuan. At this rate you'll ruin everything, and not just for yourself. Focus! He eyeballed it as best he could, then closed the back of the instrument, as the sun rose again. It'd have to do. He eyeballed it as best he could, then closed the back of the instrument, as the sun rose again. It'd have to do.

"Time to measure," he said. He returned to the front of the device, c.o.c.ked and retriggered the pendulum. As it arc'd downward, on its now-much-shorter arc, he said, "What we are hoping for is a period of substantially greater than fifty-seven seconds. The longer it takes for the pendulum to complete its arc, the more likely we have a good sugar-rock candidate."

While he talked, the others came over to watch.

"Please!" he snapped, and they all jumped. "Don't touch the table. You'll throw off the measurement. It's a sensitive instrument."

All of them edged nervously away.

They waited almost twenty minutes-the device required ten full arcs to complete its internal calculation. He counted in his head; it looked as though the average swing was coming out at about sixty seconds or so. A much shorter period than the real thing... but would it be enough? Then the display on the device's front gave its reading.

Xuan had fooled the machine! He did not allow his relief to show, but made a big deal out of tapping out a calculation on his heads-up. "Hmm. I'm getting a reading of about 0.0102 gee, or a net decrease in density of about fifteen percent. Sorry, gents. It looks like this claim is a bust. No chance of there being enough ice to trouble with here."