Ship Who Searched (22 page)

The two VIPs signed off, and Alex turned immediately to Tia.

“Did that sound as phony to you as it did to me?” he demanded.

“Well, the objects they want are certainly real enough,” she replied, playing back her internal recording of the conversation and analyzing every word. “But whether they really are artifacts is another question. There’s definitely more going on than they’re willing to tell us.”

Alex leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Are these things financing espionage or insurrection?” he hazarded. “Or buying weapons?”

She stopped her recording; there was something about the artifact that bothered her. She enhanced the picture and threw it up on the screen.

“What’s wrong with this?” she demanded. Alex leaned forward to have a look.

“Is that a hole bored in the base?” he said. “Bored in, then patched over?”

“Could be.” She enhanced her picture again. “Does it seem to you that the base is awfully thick?”

“Could be,” he replied. “You know . . . we have only
their
word that these are ‘alien artifacts.’ What if they are nothing of the sort?”

“They wouldn’t be worth much of anything then—unless—”

The answer came to her so quickly that it brought its own fireworks display with it. “Got it!” she exclaimed, and quickly accessed the Institute library for a certain old news program.

She remembered this one from her own childhood; both for the fact that it had been an ingenious way to smuggle and because Pota had caught her watching it, realized what the story was about, and shut it off. But not before Tia had gotten the gist of it.

One of the Institute archeologists had been subverted by a major drug-smuggler who wanted a way to get his supply to Central. In another case where there were small digs on the same planets as colonies, the archeologist had himself become addicted to the mood-altering drug called “Paradise,” and had made himself open to blackmail.

The blackmail came from the supplier-producer himself. Out there in the fringe, it was easy enough to hide his smuggled supplies in ordinary shipments of agri-goods, but the nearer one got to civilization, the harder it became. Publicly available transport was out of the question.

But there were other shipments going straight to the heart of civilization. Shipments that were so innocent, and so fragile, they never saw a custom’s inspector. Such as . . . Institute artifacts.

So the drug-dealer molded his product in the likeness of pottery shards. And the archeologist on-site made sure they got packed like any other artifacts and shipped—although they were never cataloged. Once the shipment arrived at the Institute, a worker inside the receiving area would set the crates with particular marks aside and leave them on the loading dock overnight. They would, of course, disappear, but since they had never been cataloged, they were never missed.

The only reason the archeologist in question had been caught was because an overzealous graduate student
had
cataloged the phony shards, and when they came up missing at the Institute, the police became involved.

Tia ran the news clip for Alex, who watched it attentively. “What do you think?” she asked, when it was over.

“I think our friend in the dull blue-striped tunic had a strangely fit look about him. The look that says ‘police’ to yours truly.” Alex nodded. “I think you’re right. I think someone is trying the artifact-switch again, except that this time they’re coming in on the black market.”

She did a quick access to the nets, and began searching for a politician named Sinor. She found one—but he did
not
match the man she had seen on the transmission.

“The trick is probably that if someone sees a crate full of smuggled glassware, they don’t think of drugs.” Tia felt very smug over her deduction, and her identification of Sinor as a ringer. Of course, there was no way of knowing if her guess was right or wrong, but still. . . . “The worst that is likely to happen to an artifact-smuggler is a fine and a slap on the wrist. They aren’t taken very seriously, even though there’s serious money in it and the smugglers may have killed to get them.”

“That’s assuming inspectors even find the artifacts. So where were
we
supposed to fit in to all this?” Alex ran his hand through his hair. “Do they think we’re going to find this guy?”

“I think that they think he’s working with one of the small-dig people again. By the way, you were right about Sinor. Or rather, the Sinor we saw is not the one of record.” Another thought occurred to her. “You know—their story may very well have been genuine. There’s not a lot of room in jewelry to hide drugs. Whoever is doing this may have
started
by smuggling out the artifacts, freelance—got tangled up with some crime syndicate, and now he’s been forced to deal the fake, drug-carrying artifacts along with the real ones.”

“Now
that
makes sense!” Alex exclaimed. “That fits all the parameters. Do we still play along?”

“Ye-es,” she replied slowly. “But in a severely limited sense, I’d say. We aren’t trained in law enforcement, and we don’t carry weapons. If we see something, we report it, and get the heck out.”

“Sounds good to me, lady,” Alex replied, with patent relief. “I’m not a coward—but I’m not stupid. And I didn’t sign up with the BB program to get ventilated by some low-down punk. If I wanted to do
that
, all I have to do is stroll into certain neighborhoods and flash some glitter. Tia—why all that nonsense about plague?”

“Partially to hook us in, I think,” she said, after a moment. “They know we were the team that got the Zombie Bug—we’ll feel strongly about plague. And partially to keep us from touching these objects. If we don’t mess with them, we won’t know about the drug link.”

He made a sound of disgust. “You’d think they’d have trusted us with the real story. I’m half tempted to blow this whole thing off, just because they didn’t. I won’t—” he added hastily, “but I’m tempted.”

He began warming up the boards, preparatory to taking off. Tia opened a channel to traffic control—but while she did so, she was silently wondering if there was even more to the story than
she
had guessed.

There was something bothering Alex, and as they continued on their rounds, he tried to put his finger on it. It was only
after
he replayed the recorded transmission of Professor Barton and the bogus “Sinor” that he realized what it was.

Tia had known that Professor Barton was genuine—without checking. And
Barton
had said things that indicated he knew who she was.

Alex had never really wondered about her background. He’d always assumed that she was just like every other shellperson he’d ever known; popped into her shell at birth, because of fatal birth-defects, with parents who would rather forget she had ever been born. Who were just as pleased that she was someone else’s problem.

What was it that the professor had said, though? You both have backgrounds in archeology. Hypatia, you know how digs work, intimately.

From everything that Jon Chernov had said, the shellperson program was so learning-intensive that there
was
no time for hobbies. A shellperson only acquired hobbies after he got out in the real world and had leisure time for them. The Lab Schools’ program was so intensive that even play was scheduled and games were choreographed, planned, and taught just like classes. There was no room to foster an “interest” in archeology. And it was not on the normal course curriculum.

The only way you knew how digs worked “intimately” was to work on them yourself.

Or be the child of archeologists who kept you on-site with them.

That was when it hit him; something Tia had said.
The Cades met while they were recovering from Henderson’s Chorea.
That kind of information would not be the sort of thing someone who made a hobby of archeology would know. Details of archeologists’ lives were of interest only to people who knew them.

Under cover of running a search on EsKay digs, he pulled up the information on the personnel—backtracking to the last EsKay dig the Cades had been on.

And there it was. C-121. Active personnel, Braddon Maartens-Cade, Pota Andropolous-Cade. Dependent,
Hypatia
Cade, age seven.

Hypatia Cade; evacuated to station-hospital
Pride of Albion
by MedService AI-drone. Victim of some unknown disease. Braddon and Pota put in isolation—Hypatia never heard from again. Perhaps she died—but that wasn’t likely.

There could not be very many girls named “Hypatia” in the galaxy. The odds of two of them being evacuated to the same hospital-ship were tiny; the odds that
his
Tia’s best friend, Doctor Kennet Uhua-Sorg—who was chief of Neurology and Neurosurgery—would have been the same doctor in charge of that other Tia’s case were so minuscule he wasn’t prepared to try to calculate them.

He replaced the file and logged off the boards feeling as if he had just been hit in the back of the head with aboard.

Oh, spirits of space. When she took me as brawn, I made a toast to our partnership—“may it be as long and fruitful as the Cades’.” Oh, decom it. I’m surprised she didn’t bounce me out the airlock right then and there.

“Tia,” he said carefully into the silent cabin. “I—uh—I’d like to apologize—”

“So, you found me out, did you?” To his surprise and profound relief, she sounded
amused.
“Yes, I’m Hypatia Cade. I’d thought about telling you, but then I was afraid you’d feel really badly about verbally falling over your own feet. You do realize that you can’t access any data without my being aware of it, don’t you?”

“Well, heck, and I thought I was being so sneaky.” He managed a weak grin. “I thought I’d really been covering my tracks well enough that you wouldn’t notice. I—uh—really am sorry if I made you feel badly.”

“Oh, Alex, it would only have been tacky and tasteless—or stupid and insensitive—if you’d done it on purpose.” She laughed; he’d come to like her laugh, it was a deep, rich one. He’d often told her BB jokes just so he could hear it. “So it’s neither; it’s just one of those things. I assume that you’re curious now. What is it you want to know about me?”

“Everything!” he blurted, and then flushed with embarrassment. “Unless you’d rather not talk about it.”

“Alex, I don’t mind at all! I had a very
happy
childhood, and frankly, it will be a lot more comfortable being able to talk about Mum and Dad—or
with
Mum and Dad—without trying to hide them from you.” She giggled this time, instead of laughing. “Sometimes I felt as if I was trying to hide a secret lover, only in reverse!”

“So you still stay in contact with your parents?” Alex was fascinated; this went against
everything
he’d been told about shellpersons, either at the academy or directly from Jon Chernov. Shellpersons didn’t have families; their supervisors and their classmates were their families.

“Of course I still stay in contact with them. I’m their biggest fan. If archeologists can have fans.” Her center screen came up; on it was a shot of Pota and Braddon, proudly displaying an ornate set of body-armor. “Here’s something from their latest letter; they just uncovered the armory, and what they found is going to set the scholastic world on its collective ears. That’s iron plates you see on Bronze Age armor.”

“No—” He stared in fascination, and not just at the armor. At Pota and Braddon, smiling and waving like any other parents for their child. Pota pointed to something on the armor, while Braddon’s mouth moved, explaining something. Tia had the sound off, and the definition wasn’t good enough for Alex to lip-read.

“That’s not
my
real interest though,” she continued. “I was telling you the truth. I’m after the EsKay homeworld, but I want it because I want to
find
the bug that got me.” The two side-screens came up, both with older pictures. “Before you ask, dear, there I am. The one on the right is my seventh birthday party, the one on the left, as you can see, is a picture of me with Theodore Bear and Moira’s brawn Tomas—Ted was a present from both of them.” She paused for a moment. “Just checking. Yes, that’s the last good picture that was taken of me. The rest are all in the hospital, and I wouldn’t inflict them on anyone but a neurologist.”

Alex studied the two pictures, each of which showed the same bright-eyed, elfin child. An incredibly
pretty
child, dark-haired, blue-eyed, with a thin, delicate face and a smile that wouldn’t stop. “How did you get into the shellperson program?” he asked. “I thought they didn’t take anyone after the age of one!”

“They didn’t, until me,” she replied. “That was Doctor Kenny’s doing, and Lars, the systems manager for the hospital; they were convinced that I was flexible enough to make the transition—since I was intelligent enough to
understand
what had happened to me, and what it meant. Which was—” she added, “—complete life-support. No mobility.”

He shuddered. “I can see why you wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone else ever again.”

“Precisely.” She blanked the screens before he had a chance to study the pictures further. “After I turned out so well, Lab Schools started considering older children on a case-by-case basis. They’ve taken three, so far, but none as old as me.”

“Well, my lady—as remarkable as you are now, you must have been just as remarkable a child,” he told her, meaning every word.

“Flatterer,” she said, but she sounded pleased.

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I interviewed with two other ships, you know. None of them had your personality. I was looking for someone like Jon Chernov;
they
were more like AI drones.”

“You’ve mentioned Jon before—” she replied, puzzled. “Just what does
he
have to do with us?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” he blurted—then hit himself in the forehead with his hand. “
Decom
it, I didn’t! Jon’s a shellperson too; he was the supervisor and systems manager on the research station where my parents worked!”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “So
that’s
why—”

“Why what?”

“Why you treat me like you do—facing my column, asking permission to come aboard, asking me what kind of music I want in the main cabin—”