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recombination could easily reproduce a Sol-Belter genetic profile; the Serpent
Swarm was only colonized three centuries ago, and there has been immigration
since. Our records from the Belt are not complete;
you know the trouble we've been having getting them to tighten up on
registration."
Axelrod-Bauergartner shook her head, smiling thinly.
"Less than a three percent chance, when you correlate with the probability of
that configuration, then eliminate the high percentage of Swarmers we do have
full records on. Beautiful job on the false idents, by the way. If we hadn't
been tipped, we'd never have found them.
"And this," she said, calling up another analysis, "is the female. Also young,
ten years post-maturity, and a Swarmer for sure. No contemporary record."
Montferrat raised a brow and lit his cigarette, looking indifferently down at
the abstract. "We'll have to pick them both up on suspicion," he said, "and
ream their memories. But I'd scarcely call this a positive
ID; nothing I'd like to go to the kzin with, for certain." A pause, a delicate
smile. "Of course, if you'd like to take the responsibility yourself . . ."
"I may just take you up on that . . . sir,"
Axelrod-Bauergartner said, and a cold bell began ringing at the back of
Montferrat's mind. "You see, we did find a perfect correlate for the female's
DNA pattern. Not in any census registry, but in an old research file at the
Scholarium, a genetics survey. Pre-War. Dead data, but I had the central
system do a universal sweep, damn the expense, and
there were no locks on the data. Just stored out of the way . . ."
"This doesn't make sense," Grimbardsun said. He was
Economic Regulation, older than Axelrod-Bauergartner and fatter; less
ambitious, except for the bank account he was so excellently placed to feed.
Complications with the kzin made him sweat, and there were dark patches under
the armpits of his uniform tunic.
"You said she was young."
"Biological," Axelrod-Bauergartner said triumphantly.
"The forensics people counted how many ticks she had on her biological clock.
But the Scholarium file records her as . . ."
A picture flashed across the data, and Montferrat coughed to hide his
reaction.
Grateful for the beard and the tan, that hid the cold waxy pallor of his skin,
as the capillaries shrank and sent the blood back to the veins and heart, that
felt as if a huge hand had locked them fast.
"Ingrid Raines," Axelrod-Bauergartner said.
"Chronological age, better than sixty. Qualified pilot and software wizard,
and a possible alternate slotter on one of the slowboats that was launched
just before the end."
"I was a possible alternate myself, if I hadn't been taken prisoner,"
Montferrat said, and even then felt a slight pleasure at
Axelrod-Bauergartner's wince. She hadn't been born then, and it was a reminder
that at least he had fought the kzin once, not spent his adolescence scheming
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to enter their service. "There were thousands of us, and most didn't make it
anywhere near the collection points. It was all pretty chaotic, toward the
end."
His hand did not tremble as he laid the cigarette in the ashtray, and his eyes
were not fixed on the oval
face with its long Belter strip that turned into an auburn fountain at the
back.
"Which was why the ordinary student files were lost,"
Axelrod-Bauergartner said, nodding so that her incipient jowls swayed. "Yah.
All we got from the genetics survey was a name and a student number than
doesn't correlate to anything existing. But the DNA's a one-to-one, no doubt
about it at all. Raines went out on that slowboat, and somehow Raines came
back, still young."
Still young, Montferrat thought. Still young . . .
and I sit here, my soul older than Satan's. "Came back. Dropped off from a
ship going point-nine lightspeed?"
he scoffed.
A shrug. "The genes don't lie."
"Computer," Montferrat said steadily. "All points, maximum priority. Pictures
and idents to be distributed to all sources. Capture alive at all costs; we
need the information they have."
To his second. "My congratulations, Herrenfrau
Axelrod-Bauergartner, on a job well done. We'll catch these revenants, and
when we do all the summer soldiers who've been flocking to those Resistance
idiots since the attack will feel a distinct chill. I think that's all for
today?"
They rose with the usual round of handshakes, Grimbardsun's hand wet,
Axelrod-Bauergartner's soft and cold as her eyes.
Montferrat felt someone smiling with his face, talking with his mouth,
impeccably, until he was in the privacy of his office, and staring down at the
holo in his desk. Matching it with the one from his locked and sealed files,
matching the reality with forensics' projection. Feeling the moisture spilling
from his eyes, down onto the imperishable synthetic, onto the face he had seen
with the eye of the mind every day for the last forty years. The face he would
arrest and turn over to the interrogators and the kzin, along with the last of
his soul.
"Why did you come back?" he whispered. "Why did you come back, to torment us
here in hell?"
* * *
"Right, now download," Jonah said. The interfacer bleeped quietly and opened
to extrude the biochip.
"Well, this ought to be useful, if we can get the information back," Ingrid
said dully, handing him the piece of curved transparent quasi-tissue.
He unwrapped his hand gingerly and slid the fingernail home, into the
implanted flexible gasket beneath the cuticle. "Provided we can get ourselves,
this or a datalink to the Catskinner," he said, wincing slightly. Useful was
an understatement; intelligence-gathering was not the primary job for which
they had been tasked, but this was priceless load. The complete specs on the
most important infosystem on Wunderland, and strategic sampling of the data in
its banks. Ships, deployments, capacities. Kzin psychology and history and
politics, command-profiles, strategic planning and kriegspiel played by the
pussy General
Staff for decades. All the back doors, from the human systems, then, through
them, into the kzin system. UN Naval Intelligence would willingly sacrifice
half a fleet for this. . . .
"That's it, then," Jonah said. "It's not what we came for, but it can make a
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difference. And there-"
Ingrid was not listening. "Hold on! Look!"
"Eh?"
"An alert subroutine! Gottdamn, that is an alert!
Murphy, it's about us, those are our cover-idents it's broadcasting. We're
blown."
"Block it, quick." They worked in silence for a moment. Jonah scrubbed a hand
across his face. "That'll hold it for a half-hour."
"Never make it back to Munchen before the next call gets through," she said.
"Not without putting up a holosign that this system's been subverted down to
the config."
"We don't have to," Jonah said. He squeezed eyes shut, pressed his fingers to
his forehead. "Finagle, why now . . . ? The aircar shuttle. Computer," he
continued. "Is the civilian system still online?
Slaved to the core-system here?"
"Affirmative, to both."
"That's it, then. We just get on the ten-minute flight. Right. Key the
internal link to that one. Code, full-wipe after execution, purge. Ingrid,
let's go."
* * *
"Is the system compromised?" Chuut-Riit asked, looking around the central
control room of his estate. His nostrils flared: yes, the scent of two of the
monkeys, a male and . . . He snuffled further. Yes, the female was bearing.
Grimly, he filed the smell away, for possible future reference. It was
unlikely that he would ever encounter either of them in person, but one could
hope.
One of the kzin technicians was so involved with following the symbols
scrolling by on the walls that he swept his hand behind him with claws
extended in an exasperated protest at being interrupted. The governor bristled
and then relaxed; it helped that he came from the hunt, had killed and fed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]