The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time) (14 page)

15

ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2080, a week and five days after Trent’s arrival at Halfway, Melissa du Bois appeared without warning in the open doorway of Trent’s office aboard the
Unity
. “Chief Yovia.”

Sitting at his workstation, Trent had to turn his head slightly to see his door. He hadn’t recognized the voice, the flat newdancer’s accent spoken across half the System, but there was no mistaking the shape – an exquisitely fit woman poured into the magslips, black shorts, and the buttoned black and silver short-sleeved shirt that constituted casual station and ship wear for PKF.

She looked like a beach bunny. “Chief du Bois.” As though she were preparing for a
serious
volleyball game. Trent turned in his chair to face her. “Can I help you?”

She smiled at him. “Certainly. If you’re free for lunch, I’ve been going over your daily reports. I’ll be starting my end-of-week report tomorrow, and it all looks quite good; but if you have time, I’d like to sit down with you and go over some items I don’t quite understand.”

Trent smiled back at her. It was a real effort, and he hoped it didn’t show. “Sure. I’d love to. Noon?”

“How about one o’clock? I’m supposed to sit down with the Space Force forward bridge security detail at eleven o’clock. It won’t take long to put the fear of God into them, I don’t think, but twelve o’clock is a bit tight. Conference room 22? It’s at 18,940,4. I’ll have lunch served there.”

“I’ll be there.”

She grinned at him, a flash of white teeth against tanned brown skin. “Wonderful.”

THE
UNITY
’S INTERNAL transportation system was one of the first pieces of support equipment to come online; it had been put in place along with the hull and the ship’s spine, and had been used to ferry materials and people even before the ship’s interior had been pressurized. The nearest access was just aft of Trent’s office; at 12:40 he got in line behind four waiting Space Forcers and one Peaceforcer, none of whom Trent recognized, and waited about three minutes before the line had emptied and an open capsule appeared for him. He got inside and said, “
Command
, 18,940,4.”

The capsule accelerated to sixty kph and stayed there for several minutes before beginning to gently decelerate.

At just after 12:50 the capsule deposited Trent at the station nearest 18,940,4, about two hundred meters aft and port of conference room 22. Trent got slightly lost finding the conference room; he got turned around on the capsule and ended up heading starboard before catching his error. He turned around and headed the other direction, and reached C22 at 01:00 exactly.

Melissa du Bois glanced at the clock holo against the wall when he came in. “Just on time, Chief. I much admire punctuality.”

Trent smiled at her, tried to hide a flash of absurd pride in himself. He hadn’t been late once yet while being Eugene Yovia, not once. He barely recognized himself – certainly no one else was going to. “Yes indeed,” said Trent cheerfully. “Promptness is next to
...
next to
...
well, I’m sure it’s next to something. How did your chat with the Space Forcer boys go?”

She sat at the empty conference table, intended for eight or ten persons, with only her handheld in front of her. She gestured to Trent to sit next to her, and turned on her handheld. “One of them’s a woman.”

“In Space Force security?” It actually surprised Trent. “When did they break the gender line?”

“During the TriCentennial, Chief, men were subverted by Rebs and Claw more than four times as frequently as women.”

Trent had known that; his post-rebellion analysis had been thorough. He was mildly surprised that the Unification had caught it, though, and genuinely surprised it had acted upon the knowledge.

He let himself looked suitably impressed by her statistic. “So how did your chat with the Space Force people go?”

Her smile wasn’t the least forced. “Quite well, Chief. Gene. We have problems at times, procedural questions between our services, but they get settled. In the final analysis, we all want the same thing.”

It was not out of character for Yovia – but even so it was nothing that Trent had intended to say. It popped out of his mouth. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

The dryness, and the words, caught her attention. She glanced at him sharply. “Peace. Peace in the service of the Unification.”

A smile touched Trent’s lips. He couldn’t stop it. “Of course.”

Her lips tightened noticeably. “You find that amusing?”

Trent wiped the smile off his face and gave her the most thoroughly blank look he could manage. “Me? Not at all. No. No,” he reassured her. “I think that building the largest weapon in human history is a
great
way to have peace.”

She leaned back in her seat as Trent sat in the seat beside her, putting distance between them, regarding him with a thoroughly professional demeanor, with gleaming black Elite holocam eyes. “You know, Gene, I had this problem with you during your security check, too. At times you remind me of – someone else.”

In his best Eugene Yovia accent, Trent said, “Dare I guess Adam Selstrom?”

She nodded, but Trent didn’t make the mistake of thinking she was saying yes to his question. “I don’t spend much time on entertainments, and I concede, I did not recognize your sculpture.” She grinned abruptly. “Your file refers to ‘that godawful biosculpture;’ I suppose the person writing it thought anyone meeting you would know what he meant by that. But your face isn’t what I was referring to, Gene. It’s your manner, your attitude. You’re a very arrogant man, Gene.”

Yovia
was
arrogant; it was one of the few things Trent completely admired about the man. So it was not out of character for Trent to say, “I have reason to be.”

“Why did you agree to come upside, Gene? The goals or the process?”

Trent understood her perfectly. He gave her Yovia’s answer. “The process, Melissa. I love my work. I wouldn’t be any good at it if I didn’t, would I. I don’t necessarily agree with what you’re going to do with my work once I’m through with it, but ...” He smiled at her. “You know this is the classic argument between military and scientists.”

Melissa nodded. “Of course,” she said, then continued with a noticeable reluctance, “Well, shall we discuss the process? I’m happy with your approach to the rework, and to the evident response of your teams to that approach. I’ve gone through your dailies, and theirs as well, and so far there has been nothing but mutual praise.”

“We do good work.”

“Apparently,” said Melissa pensively. “Based on your dailies, to the degree that I understand them, you’re well ahead of schedule. Your current estimate to completion –”

“Twenty-five days,” Trent said instantly.

“Yes.” She studied her handheld. “For a total, to completion, of thirty-five days from the moment you took over this project.” She looked up at him. “Ship Security was originally Sub-Chief Wilson’s responsibility. You took it away from him. Why?”

She’d had that cop voice down ten years earlier, when she was only twenty-three. Today –

Trent had to shake himself. “Why do I feel like I’ve just been accused of a crime?”

She gazed steadily at him. “Answer the question, Gene.”

“Well, you intimidate me, luv.” At the familiarity she quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s true,” he assured her. “I knew you’d be asking about Ship Security, didn’t I. So I took it over so that I could answer your questions.”

“There was a memo in my mail this morning,” said Melissa, “from Mohammed Vance.”

Trent’s heart stopped beating.

He said politely, “The Elite Commander? Really.”

“The Elite Commander wants to know how a hundred twenty day rework – Chief Yohannsen's estimate – has turned into a thirty-five day rework. At this rate you’re going to be done by April 15.”

Trent said, “New people.” He tried to listen to his heart – surely it had started beating again by now –

“Chief!”

Trent looked up. “What?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Did you say something?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“I asked if ‘new people’ was your entire answer.”

“I didn’t hear that question,” Trent admitted. “I may have been listening, but I wasn’t hearing.”

A disturbed look crossed Melissa’s features. She looked off to the side and her lips worked silently. Listening, but I wasn’t –

“I got sidetracked,” Trent told her quickly.

She shook her head and refocused on him. “Really.”

“I think my heart stopped for a moment. But it’s all right now.”

“I see.” That damn cop voice again. “Perhaps you should see the medic.”

“No,” Trent assured her. “No, no, I’m fine. I’ll probably play some dropball tonight before I go to bed, that’s how good I feel right now, I might even beat Ken. Listen,” he said in a confidential voice, “you tell the Elite Commander everything is under control, and he’s not to worry.”

“ ‘Everything’s under control, and he’s not to worry.’ ”

“Exactly. We like the hardware, and the hardware likes us. We have mutual respect and admiration.”

She stared at him. “You have mutual respect and admiration. With the hardware. And this has trimmed seventy-seven days off your completion estimates.”

“Plus new people.”

“New people.”

“And over-time. We work late. Every night.”

“I know,” she said, “I’ve audited your dailies. I don’t understand them, but I’ve sure audited them. Gene?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you have biosculpture?”

“My wife wanted me to.”

Melissa du Bois sat back in her chair, hands clasped behind her head, looking him over thoughtfully. Trent had the strangest impression that she
knew
– knew who he was, knew what he was thinking. And that was impossible. “Don’t you feel a little stupid?”

Trent said, “Well. Not often.”

“HOW ABOUT SOME midnight chess?”

Trent looked up from his workstation, from the library listings he was wading through, and stretched. The vertebrae in his neck cracked audibly.

Ken floated in his doorway.

Trent said, “Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead,” said Ken. “You and me need to talk.”

IT WAS ALMOST one o’clock by the time Trent and Ken reached Highland Grounds. The place was quiet. Guido sat behind the counter, wearing a sensible traceset and goggles. Aside from Ken and Trent the only other occupant was an elderly woman who was also wearing a sensible traceset, and knitting at the same time.

Trent and Ken sat together in the corner, playing chess.

“I was thinking we might go over to the InfoNet Relay Station tomorrow,” said Ken.

Trent had made Ken put the clock away. They played without hurry and Trent took his time answering. “What for?”

Ken shrugged. “Traffic analysis asked for me. I thought you might enjoy coming with me. After the Rebellion” – Ken was an American; you could hear the capitalization of the word – “they had me over to supervise the installation of the new security routines. Trent the Uncatchable had his hands on that station for most of three days during the Rebellion.”

Trent said, “I heard that.”

“They thought he might have
done something
with it while he had his hands on it. They tore that place apart, top to bottom.”

Trent nodded. The InfoNet Relay Station at Halfway had been, back in ’76, the primary orbital trunk for the entire InfoNet; more data had passed through it than through all the rest of the Relay Stations combined. That had changed – having been made aware of the weakness in the setup, the Unification had, predictably, changed it. The system was far more decentralized than it had been as recently as ’76; today half a dozen new auxiliary Relay Stations were online, each capable of carrying nearly as much traffic as the Relay Station at Halfway.

Trent said, “Find anything?”

Ken shook his head. “Nope. If Trent did anything to it, he did it – careful-like. I stripped out the system software and expert systems myself, rebuilt from libraries. Installed traffic analysis with tight encryption; hasn’t been a byte passed through that Station in over three years I couldn’t tell you where it came from and where it was going.”

Trent nodded again. When he’d taken the Station, he’d expected that. The truth was they should have scrapped all the hardware and started over again – but there was no point saying so, or putting ideas in the man’s head. “So something interesting’s happening in traffic pattern analysis?”

Ken shrugged. He pushed a pawn forward one space. He was playing black and marking time, waiting to see how Trent intended to develop his attack. “The activity log is blank about four seconds, two days back. And we lost another second yesterday.”

A startled look crossed Trent’s features. “Four seconds?”

“Yep. We’re so far ahead on the rework, they asked if I could come on over and look over my bindings on the Station security libraries.”

“That doesn’t sound like a software problem.”

“Nope. We got hardware going down, most probably.” Ken didn’t look up from the chess board. “I expect we should have replaced the hardware from scratch. That Uncatchable fellow,” he shook his head, “he’s a tricky bastard.”

“So they say.” Trent castled.

“You’re in trouble now,” said Ken.

Trent studied the board. “I’m kicking your butt.”

“Look behind you.”

“I know that trick,” said Trent. “I turn around and you knock over the board and claim –”

“Look behind you,” said Ken again.

They were sitting up on the second level, overlooking the stage and the bar; Trent turned in his chair, and looked down, toward the entrance. The airlock had just finished cycling, and the woman stepping through, already half out of her p-suit, looked both younger and prettier than she did in uniform.

It was Melissa.

TRENT JOINED HER at the bar. “Came looking for me, did you.”

Trent liked pretending to be English; he liked finishing his questions with periods. It made everything sound more amusing.