Palace (63 page)

‘You got my word on that.’ Avon reached up and touched one of the chips in the back of his skull. ‘It’s recorded, and I’ll get Dukayn printout.’

Reflexively both men turned toward Vida to see her reaction. ‘Then I was right, and my idea might work,’ Vida said. ‘You know that he tried to kill me, right? Well, then, that’s one thing we can predict. Let’s go ahead with the ceremony. You can use me as bait.’

Jak threw his head back and made a noise halfway between a growl and a shriek. Karlo felt like echoing the sentiment.

‘Vida!’ Avon turned dead-white. ‘You could get killed.’

‘No. Not with everyone ready and waiting for Kata. I was just talking with Se Ri Tal Molos, and he told me that Kata would rather die than fail to make a kill. He’ll risk dying himself to get at me. Molos is Kata’s brother. He knows him better than anyone.’

‘I suppose he does.’ Karlo considered for a long moment. ‘I’m not going to approve this idea, though, until we work out the security. I’ll put Dukayn in charge, of course. But unless he can promise me on his word of honour that you’ll be safe - no deal.’

‘Well, there’s always going to be some risk.’ Vida’s voice was perfectly level. ‘And if you don’t get Kata, he’s going to kill a lot more people.’

‘First Citizen.’ Avon stood up. ‘Pansect’s crews are at your disposal. We can add surveillance chips to the array our pix wear and link them to whatever kind of central control you want.’

‘Good thought,’ Karlo said. ‘Very well, I’ll include you in this. For starters, we need you to make it very clear on the news that Se Vida is going ahead with the ceremony only to raise the city’s morale.’

‘Oh, I’ll go you one better,’ Avon said. ‘We’ll make this our question of the day. Should Vida and Wan go ahead and sign their contract? I’m so sure that people will vote yes that I’ll start running it on the interactives tonight.’

* * *

When Kata woke, just at sunset, the first thing he did was turn on the news. He lay in the sleep web of Zir’s upstairs bedroom and watched, switching from grid to grid to make sure that no scrap of news about the Protectors’ plans escaped him. The officials were being cautious, of course, and keeping their plans to themselves, but even the locations of the various interviews that the Protectors granted gave him information. As he flipped through the grids, a familiar name stopped him at Pansect Media’s evening interactives. He rather wanted to know the answer to that question of the day. Would the citizens approve if Vida went through with her ceremony on schedule?

The screen split into windows. Among holos of Vida walking through the emergency hospital the usual tower graphs built up. The people of Palace, it seemed, overwhelmingly wanted to see her sign her contract. The reasons splayed out into a pie chart. Most of them wanted to see something that made them feel good about Palace for a change. If he’d been outside, Kata would have spat.

‘You’re awake?’ Zir’s voice came from the doorway.

‘I am, yes.’ He shut off the screen, then swung himself down from the web. ‘I need to be gone, my love.’

‘I know that. I’ve got a new set of passes and ID cards from Riva for you.’

‘Any messages?’

‘One. She told me to tell you exactly this: it has been done.’

‘Good. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.’

‘Will you come back here afterwards?’

‘No. It’ll put you in too much danger.’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘I do. The Lep cause needs you.’ Kata laid his hand on the back of her neck and gently rubbed. ‘I’ll miss you, but forget you ever knew me.’

Zir stepped away and stared at the far wall. Briefly her hands dug.

‘I’ll try,’ she said at last. ‘But I can’t promise.’

It was time to run, and running was one of the things Kata did best. With a shoulder sack and a websling full of supplies, he headed off into the night. Before he could disappear, he needed to make a quick foray into Government House - now, in the night, before the enormous security effort that was bound to surround Vida’s contract ceremony got itself put into place. In his sack he had the three pieces of a break-down pulse rifle. Riva could tamper with the scanners all she wanted to, but even the most basic of physical searches would find the weapon. He had several places in mind to hide it until he was ready to pick it up on the morrow.

* * *

‘What the hell?’ Hi stood scowling at the message window on the vidscreen. ‘That’s all I need right now, a summons from His Highness the goddamn First Citizen.’

Rico looked up from his reading and saw an image of Dukayn looping in the message window.

‘The Peronida wants to see you to discuss some matters of increased security precautions. Please call me for an immediate appointment.’

‘Off!’ Hi snarled.

Dukayn’s image froze, then vanished. Hi rubbed his face with both hands and stood for a moment, staring at the floor.

‘Are you okay?’ Rico said.

‘Just tired. Come into my office. While I’m gone, I’ve got some work I need done. It concerns that autogate crash, the one that let Kata on planet in the first place.’

Since Hi had already brought down the data that Rico would be working with, Rico decided against jacking into the Map itself. He was looking for the autogate function triggered by the mysterious pulse that had allowed Kata through planetary security. From the enormous amounts of information and useless noise recorded by the gate, Hi had spent the afternoon recovering the peculiar artifact that the pulse had delivered: a photonic waveform, an incredibly archaic and thus advanced form of an iconic command cluster - if indeed the thing even was a command cluster.

By special dispensation of Port Security, they had the entire autogate system database to consult. Rico ran various search utilities and translation routines, set up some ID analysis runs and tried those, but the waveform stayed unreadable. Although - he’d seen something like this recently - of course, in the data dump archive of the saccule trade! When he found the cluster of photonic waveform recordings in the archive, he also found notes written in Inglis, which his routines could translate. The waveforms recorded the genetic patterning of typical saccule neuters for further study.

‘DNA signatures.’ Rico spoke aloud without realizing it. ‘This thing might have been a deen sig.’

It made perfect sense. The authorities had long ago entered Kata’s deen sig into the databanks of every security system on planet, but the autogate had passed him right through. What had the command cluster done? Overwritten his deen sig with a false one, maybe, or simply deleted it from the records. Deleting would be dangerous; while it wasn’t likely, it was possible that someone might want a copy of the sig and find it missing. A false record made sense, and with a couple of the saccule deen sigs to work with, he could run a compare and match. What they encrypted wouldn’t matter to the raw code analysis, which went by sheer patterning. Sure enough, the agent chugged once and spat the answer onscreen. The middle of the autogate waveform fell into the same category as the two records from the saccule archives. At the beginning and end of the autogate waveform were two short bursts from a different category.

‘Got it!’

Commands at either end, mostly likely, and a deen sig in the middle for sure. Clever Riva, to wait until the last possible moment to corrupt the data! By giving Kata the token that would send the pulse, she’d made sure that no-one could discover that his scan had been changed and restore it before he could get through. Now that Rico knew what he was looking for, finding the list of DNA typing for known criminals in the autogate banks proved easy. Kata’s entry still sat there, marked with the highest priority alarm command. How could he tell if it were accurate? He needed a clean copy, but if Riva could corrupt the autogates, the most secure system on planet, surely she could hack into every other security database. Since he couldn’t read the actual encoded information in the waveform, how was he going to compare it with other files he might find? Rico jacked in and began hunting. He swore aloud at how easy it was to access the outer defences of Government House, since Dukayn had no jurisdiction over the public gates. The deen sig registered for Kata matched the one he’d taken from the autogate bank. Since he already knew how to breach the Protectors’ firewall, he slipped in there as well and copied their version of Kata’s file: another match. Either they were all correct or all corrupted -and who knew if they matched the waveform’s data?

Rico left the Map, brought his finds up onscreen, and leaned back to consider them. Even if he managed to gain access to every scan of Kata’s on the Map, and even if he found one deen sig different than all the others, he would never be certain if the mismatch was a file that Riva had overlooked or a corruption from some other cause. Unfortunately, Kata wasn’t going to come forward and offer him a drop of blood or shed scale to put through a medical scanner. He had better assume the worst and get moving on how to correct it. Vida’s life might depend on how well he solved this problem, how well and how soon. He couldn’t afford the luxury of trying to solve it on his own just for pride’s sake. Rico copied a few key files to the cube, dropped the cube into his shirt pocket, then grabbed his guild jacket from a chair and ran from the suite. The First Citizen’s public office lay several floors up and on the far side of the tower. By the time Rico reached it, he was panting for breath. The door stood half open, and he walked in to find Pero Nikolaides, supervising a military tech at a Map terminal. One other Map work place, deserted at the moment, stood off by a side wall.

‘Rico!’ Pero said with a wave. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I thought there was some kind of meeting going on. My uncle’s there, and I’ve got important data for him. He needs to present it to the First Citizen.’

‘They’re back in the private office. Come with me.’

Beside the hologram of the planet stood a narrow door. When Pero pressed his thumb on the ID plate, Dukayn’s voice crackled through a speaker.

‘What is it, Nikolaides?’

‘Rico Hernanes is here with priority Cyberguild data.’

A moment’s pause; then Dukayn’s voice again, sounding surprised: ‘Send him in.’

Rico walked through to find his uncle, the First Citizen, and Dukayn sitting around a desk with a flat Mapscreen embedded in its top. Onscreen he could see plans for the Cathedral of the Eye.

‘Se.’ Rico nodded at Karlo. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve figured out how Kata got through the Spaceport autogate, and it has a direct bearing on the security of Government House.’

‘Then I think I’ll forgive you for the interruption.’ Karlo waved at an empty chair. ‘Sit down and tell us.’

On the way over Rico had organized the data in his mind, and he managed to present his findings clearly. When he laid the corroborating cube on the table, everyone leaned forward and stared at it as if they could read its molecular coding right through the crystalline surface.

‘So if Riva’s managed to raid the databanks for Government House security,’ Rico finished up, ‘she could get in anywhere.’

‘She sure could,’ Hi said. ‘Well done, kid. Very well done.’

‘Thanks.’ Rico could barely speak. His uncle’s ‘well done’ amounted to another man’s fulsome praise.

‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ Dukayn said. ‘The deen sig recorded all over the Map for Kata is probably wrong. That means he can walk through any security system on planet.’

‘That’s it, yeah,’ Hi said.

‘If we can’t get Kata’s correct data back into the banks,’ the factor went on, ‘I can’t guarantee Se Vida’s safety for the ceremony. Come to think of it, I can’t guarantee it unless she stays shut up in East Tower for the rest of her life. Government House is just too big. There are too many ways he could get at her.’

A cold hand clutched at Rico’s heart. Think, damn it! he told himself.

‘Damn Leps,’ Karlo muttered.

‘Wait a minute,’ Rico broke in. ‘That’s right, he is a Lep. And he has a brother on planet, right?’

Hi leaned back in his chair and nodded Rico’s way ever so slightly, as if telling him to push on with this line of thought.

‘Lep brothers come from the same clutch of eggs,’ Rico went on. ‘They hold over ninety per cent of their DNA coding in common. All I need is a scan from one of his scales or a drop of blood, and I can construct a fuzzy logic ID. It’ll trigger the alarm if anyone from the Tal family crosses the scanners. It doesn’t have to match Kata’s scan exactly.’

‘I’m sure we can find out if there are any other members of that family in Palace,’ Karlo said. ‘Sounds good.’

‘First Citizen?’ Hi leaned forward. ‘There are only two members of the Tal clan left. The rest were purged by the Ri government a long time ago.’

‘Good,’ Dukayn said. ‘Makes the job easier.’

‘One thing, though,’ Karlo said. ‘Hernanes, what if Riva figures out what you’ve done and corrupts the files again?’

‘I can loop it, First Citizen. This will guard against him having another one of those tokens, too. The icon will activate every second and re-enter the correct deen sig. Riva can keep wiping it off if she wants. Keep her real busy.’

‘If she tries, we can trace her.’ Hi was gazing absently at empty air. ‘I’m getting some ideas about that.’

‘Sounds good to me.’ Dukayn allowed himself a brief smile. ‘Huh. Looks like Molos is going to be good for something for a change.’

* * *

At about the same time as the security meeting in the First Citizen’s office was breaking up, Kata walked out of Government House as easily as he’d walked in, using one of the four public access roads through the blueglass walls. On the day of Vida’s ceremony Dukayn would probably close three of them, Kata figured; he certainly would, if he were Dukayn. The wiretrain stations would be temporarily closed as well, most likely, and no doubt an umbrella of police aircars and military choppers would cover the sky. Kata could only guess as to which road would be left open for the ceremony guests, gridjockeys, caterers and the like, as well as all the ordinary sapients who worked in Government House. He’d hidden the rifle parts close to the east gate, the narrowest of the four and thus the easiest to blockade with checkpoints. Not that it mattered, really, since Riva had pulled off one of her miracles again. Two days from now, on the day of Vida’s ceremony, he’d walk through whatever gate Dukayn left open, and judging from this night’s work, no-one would know a thing.