Primary Inversion (38 page)

      
The inner door slid open.

      
A corridor with glass walls stretched before me, lined with offices on both sides, each with one person inside. Telops. They wore full exoskeletons plugged in at the wrists, spine, and neck, with visors over their eyes or even helmets. Most sat still, though a man on my right was slowly rocking his head back and forth. They didn’t need to move. Just think. In one office, a woman without a visor was leaning back in her chair, watching holos rotate above her console with views of the Hub.

      
Security menu,
I thought.
Personnel files, Security telops, Hub, current.

      
The face of a woman with grey hair and lean features formed in my mind. Stats appeared under her: name, age, security clearances, other pertinent data from her ISC files.

      
Simultaneous displays,
I thought.

      
Her image shrunk to an eighth of my mindscape. Seven more faces appeared, all the telops who monitored security here. As I walked down the hall, my node matched the faces to the men and women in the offices, giving me stats on each. Although I had learned to deal with the “double exposure” created when my mindscape produced images at the same time I was looking at something, it was still disorienting to see the telops in my mind and these offices at the same time.

      
The corridor ended in another security airlock. This time when I plugged in its psiphon, a metallic thought entered my mind.

      
Name?

      
Sauscony Valdoria, Primary.

      
Purpose?

      
I kept my mind as smooth as the surface of a lake on a windless day.
To recode T12.

      
The inner door opened.

      
I walked into a circular lobby with white walls and a blue carpet. Blue chairs stood against the walls. In the center of the room, a white metal staircase spiraled up to the ceiling. The carpet muffled my footsteps as I crossed to the stairs. As I climbed, around and around, even the clink of my boots on the metal sounded subdued. At the top, I faced a blank wall with nothing but a psiphon cradle breaking the flat expanse. I plugged its psiphon into my wrist socket.

      
A new voice entered my mind, cool and impersonal.
I have no record of your assignment to work on T12.

      
Override and open.
I stood relaxed, using programmed routines to control my muscles so they wouldn’t tense. The lobby below, the white walls, the stairs—I knew what hid within their innocuous surfaces. Monitors were checking everything from my breathing rate to my brain waves. Any questionable reaction would sound the alarm. Hell, it might sound anyway. This door opened only to users on an access list provided by Kurj. Sometimes I was on the list, sometimes not. My node calculated a 76 percent probability he had me on it now, in case I needed to come here while I prepared for Jaibriol’s interrogation. But I couldn’t be sure.

      
I waited.

      
And waited.

      
Sweat started to form on my brow, which wasn't good. But then the wall opened, revealing a tunnel about a meter long. I ducked my head to enter, then straightened and walked through the tunnel. It exited into another white room with blue carpet. Behind me, the wall closed into a featureless surface.

      
This room had no furniture. Nothing but mesh nodes. Each stood in its designated place, some isolated, some connected by hardware. The acoustics muted the hum of their operation the same way the lobby downstairs had muted my footsteps.

      
The network dedicated to Imperial Space Command was spread across the Imperialate, with built-in redundancy and multiple back-ups, increasing its resistance to compromise. This location had ten nodes—including EM16, a cylinder of black glassplex near the center of the room. It stood two meters high, had a diameter of one meter, and the thickness of a finger. Lights glowed within it, and an opening in one side offered entry into its interior. I stepped through the entrance into a cylindrical cavity with a domed roof and a bench running around its perimeter.

      
Moving quickly, I stripped off my boots, jumpsuit, and underwear, leaving my skin bare to the cool air. Then I stood in the center of the cylinder on a weight-activated circle. A tube rose around me, higher and higher, until it locked into the dome above my head. Its silvery walls were just translucent enough to let me see my clothes as a shadowed lump on the bench.

      
A metal framework rose out of the floor, whirring as it closed bands around my ankles and snapped psiphons into the sockets. When the framework reached my torso, a belt locked around my waist, its psiphon snicking into the socket at the base of my spine. Bracelets closed my wrists, inserting psiphons. The framework rose higher and a collar fastened around my neck, plugging a psiphon into the base of my brain stem. I fought down my fear of being trapped inside a coffin sized tube. I had to hide it. Anyone with a valid reason for linking into EM16 had no cause to feel threatened by a cage designed to imprison intruders. If I gave it cause for suspicion, it would refuse to release me until the authorities came.

      
The room faded from my awareness. I seeped darkly into EM16, sliding along the potential hills and valleys of psiberspace like a ghost drifting over virtual countryside.

      
System privileges,
EM16 thought.

      
My relief flared, but I kept my face impassive. My gamble had paid off. Only two ways existed to gain system privileges on the Kyle-Mesh. One was to be in the Triad. The other was to use one of the Hubs. I had just entered the Mesh with the highest clearance available to a non-Triad telop.

      
The network appeared in my mindscape as a grid of translucent fibers flashing with iridescent sparks. Psiware stretched across grid squares like filmy lace that sparkled each time a user accessed it. Those sparkles were too faint for most users to detect, including Kurj, but I saw them clearly.

      
I didn’t feel the immense flux of power Kurj generated in the mesh. He had been here earlier; his operations left a potent signature. He was probably sleeping now, alone with his security systems and bodyguards. Although my EI had claimed Kurj was staying at the palace, that had to be a cover; until Kurj finished with Jaibriol, he would remain in his city tower, close to his center of operations.

      
The danger here wasn’t Kurj. A subtler mind permeated the web, one always present, even now when its owner wasn’t in the system—my aunt, the ranking member of the Triad. Her operations had an unparalleled delicacy; had I not known to look, I would have missed her signature. Kurj rumbled like a giant trawler through Kyle space, and my father was the ocean that supported it, but it was my aunt who had woven that mesh into the far-reaching web of power it had become.

      
She had security monitors everywhere. As soon as EM16 acknowledged me, one of my aunt’s watchers had recorded that information and stored it in a security cache. I saw it happen; the words
Systems Privileges
sparkled in a grid square, caught like a moth in the lace, and then vanished.

      
I wrapped a security cloak around my mind, creating a silence that was the mental equivalent of standing motionless. Then I concentrated on the square that had registered my intrusion. It swelled in size while the grid streamed past me in a tunnel of filaments. When it reached me, I saw the data about my entry lodged in a cell within the grid, under a film of lace, trapped in that location of memory. I slid into the cell, taking care to disturb none of the filmy psiware that floated lazily around me like sealace under water. Then I wiped the memory clean. My passage back out was so smooth, not one spark revealed my progress.

      
I next erased all record of my entrance into the Hub. Then I brought up my file of the telops downstairs and used it to find them in the Mesh. By manipulating the grid, I created false memories so they would forget my visit. It was harder to erase memory in telops than in conventional nodes, but I set it up so that unless they specifically searched for tampering, they probably wouldn’t detect it. Had my aunt rigged EM16 to look for me, I doubt I could have hidden, but she had no reason to suspect I would do anything as illogical as skulking around here with the deliberate intent to violate security.

      
Sauscony?

      
I froze. That was my
father.
The mesh warmed, and I had an odd sense the strands
smiled.
Nothing on the grid moved, but the sense persisted.

      
My father was the last person I had expected. He and my mother were at home on Lyshriol, visiting the multitude of grandchildren they kept reminding me I had yet to contribute to. It had never occurred to me that he would link up from there. He had to use the console room in our house, which he intensely disliked. Although Kyle space fascinated him, he was wary of machines, even those that allowed him to access to the Mesh. He used them when necessary, but that certainly didn’t include visits to his grandchildren. However, he was definitely here. I hadn’t noticed before because he filled Kyle space, surrounding every strand and film and sparkle. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was on Diesha, linked in through one of the central nodes used by the Triad.

      
I hid from him, pulling on security routines like a black cloak. As he searched for me, the grid rippled with his efforts like a net in the ocean rocking with the swells. Gradually his certainty that he had detected me faded to doubt, then to embarrassment that he could have made such a mistake. Finally his attention turned elsewhere.

      
I moved on, careful to avoid him while I sought out the data I had come to find. But it didn’t appear. I found no path, no pipeline, no hint leading to information about our capture of Jaibriol.

      
I did, however, discover an inconsistency. It was one psicon among hundreds grouped in a section of the grid dedicated to our trade agreements with the Allieds. Each psicon represented a world. Set innocuously in with them was the colorful image of an island on Earth, a place called Delos.

      
At first glance, it looked reasonable. We used that symbol for the planet Delos—except we had no trade agreement with them. I was one the few people who knew Kurj had dissolved the treaty because his disliked their policy of giving asylum to Imperialate citizens. He kept his actions a secret to avoid igniting a controversy should people find out he had acted to block his own citizens from seeking sanctuary.

      
I concentrated on the Delos psicon, and the island grew until every detail showed, from grey and brown rocks jutting along its shore to the turquoise waters of the Aegean sea lapping its beaches.

      
Open,
I thought. 

      
The island split down the middle and opened like a pair of doors. The smell of salt and sealace tickled my nose, accompanied by the murmur of breakers. A menu of psicons appeared, indicating what functions I could use while I worked with the Delos records. One showed a small scroll tied with red ribbon.

      
List files,
I thought.
Written records only.
Although it was easier to view the files using an interactive simulation, it required more system resources, which increased the chance it would draw attention to my actions. Relying only on written records was like using swords for combat when battle cruisers were available—but swords were far less conspicuous than battle cruisers.

      
The ribbon whisked off the scroll, and the parchment unrolled in a crackle of old paper, filling my view with a list of files. It was written in my aunt’s script, with well formed letters and just enough flourish to please the eye. Then the font changed into the amber text I preferred.

      
Damn. EM16 might as well have turned on a speaker blaring my presence to the next person who opened the file.
Undo font change,
I thought.

      
The list reformed with my aunt’s font.

      
Psicon,
I thought.

      
The display winked out, leaving me in the grid. The island psicon waited in the lower corner of my mindscape, a green dot glowing on it to show it was active. I went deeper into the mesh, and strands of light streamed past, sparkling, glimmering, changing hue and color and texture. Even the smells varied: metallic, sharp, sweet, acrid. Finally I reached the inner layer I sought. Master psicons waited here, each dedicated to a function of the programs that ran the grid environment. I picked out the one that showed a doctor holding a surgical laser…and my mind went black: no images, words, sounds, smells, tastes, textures.

      
Specify memory location,
EM16 thought.

      
Delos psicon, most recent font change,
I answered.

      
A string of numbers and letters appeared, white on black.
Specify change.

      
Replace the third A with an 0.

      
The A changed into 0, erasing all record of the fact that EM16 had altered the font when I opened the Delos file.

      
Changes complete,
EM16 thought.

      
Delete record.
I followed my command with the password EM16 required to execute it.

      
The mesh reappeared. In the process of returning me to it, EM16 deleted all record that I had doctored its memory. My aunt had installed the
delete record
option so she could interact with EM16 and leave no trace. I knew about it because she had asked me to reprogram Hub security last year—and she didn’t trust anyone else enough to give them that much access to the system.