HASHI

Freed from his responsibilities as Acting Director, Hashi left Center and headed for Lane Harbinger’s lab.

Despite his shambling gait and his air of distraction, he moved quickly: by his own standards, he was running. In the past hour crises had multiplied around him at an alarming rate. Quantum uncertainties expanded in chain reaction. At the same time—and by the same logic—the window during which he could hope to help shape events shrank. Endorphins and necessity burned in his synapses: his blood felt rich with urgency. He had work to do.

UMCHO had charged its guns. However, they were pointedly not aimed at Calm Horizons. The great worm in his lair wished Marc Vestabule to know that he was prepared to defend himself, but that he would not treat the huge defensive as an enemy unless he was forced to do so.

Time had become exquisitely short.

In subtle ways this pleased the DA director. Lesser men and women, lesser minds, had already been left behind by the burgeoning emergency. Now only genius might suffice to fend off ruin.

Hashi Lebwohl was eager to prove himself equal to Warden Dios’ vast and dangerous intentions.

Lane’s lab was several levels and several hundred meters away from Center. Lifts and service shafts shortened the distance, however, and Hashi knew them all. He reached her workroom scant minutes after confirming Min Donner as Acting Director.

But when he entered the lab—a large space by the constricted measure of an orbital platform—he stopped in surprise.

Lane was alone. Apart from the complex clutter of tables and terminals, instruments of all kinds, sterile chambers and autoclaves, retorts and flasks, probes and sensors and keypads, packets of stim and hype, pots of coffee, bowls overflowing with ash and butts, the room was empty. The numerous aides and techs he’d assigned to her were gone—sent away, he assumed, since he declined to believe that any of his people would have abandoned a project so vital.

And Lane herself was sitting down. In itself that was profoundly uncharacteristic: Hashi wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her in a chair of her own volition. As a rule she consumed enough stimulants of all kinds to make a block of wood hyperactive. Yet her condition was worse than uncharacteristic. She sat with her legs sprawled gracelessly in front of her as if she had no further use for them. Her head hung down, unclean hair dangling before her face: he couldn’t tell whether she’d glanced at him; whether she’d noticed his arrival at all. Only her mouth moved as she sucked, arrhythmic as a limping heart, on one of her foul nics. Smoke curled up into her face and filtered away through her hair as if she were exhaling her life.

For a moment Hashi was stunned. He lacked Warden’s talent for responding to the emotions of his people. Indeed, he seldom cared to let them distract him. By nature he was unprepared and ill equipped to deal with any woman in a state which resembled catatonia.

He had no time for Lane’s despair; no time at all. Yet he knew instantly, intuitively, that he would be unable to reach her unless he attended to it. Without warning he discovered that he would be lost unless he could prove himself Warden’s equal in completely unexpected ways.

“My dear Lane,” he asked softly, “what on Earth has gone wrong?”

She didn’t react. Smoke seeped out of her hair as if the mind under it had been burned to the ground.

Before he could decide how to approach her, the lab intercom chimed. “Director Lebwohl?” a voice asked nervously. “Director Lebwohl, are you there? This is Center. Director?”

Hashi swallowed an arcane curse. Briefly he forgot where Lane’s intercom was. The voice from Center seemed to arise from a source he couldn’t locate. Then he remembered that the console where she usually worked held her pickup and speaker.

Four vexed strides took him around a worktable to her terminal. With a jerk of his thumb, he toggled the pickup.

“Director Lebwohl,” he announced like a wasp. “Did I mention that I’m busy?”

“Sorry, Director,” the nervous voice replied quickly. “I have a flare for you. From Director Hannish. At the emergency session.”

Hashi wanted to retort, I know where she is. I stepped down as Acting Director. I wasn’t fired for incompetence. But he restrained himself. He didn’t have time to indulge his ire. Instead he drawled, “Then perhaps you should tell me what it says.”

“Yes, Director.” Hashi heard the sound of keys. “To DA Director Hashi Lebwohl,” Center reported. “From PR Director Koina Hannish. ‘I’m running out of time here.’ That’s all.

“Any response, Director?”

Hashi flapped his arms. The urgency in his blood needed an outlet. At the same time he couldn’t justify covering a mere communications tech—or Koina herself—with his exasperation.

“Inform Director Hannish,” he said brusquely, “that I do not wish to be disturbed.”

At once he silenced the pickup and turned back to Lane.

Past her hair he caught the glint of one eye. Her nic had been smoked out. She dropped it to the floor beside her, produced another from somewhere, lit it with a small magnesium torch hot enough to start a fire which would gut the station.

He concealed a thin sigh. Not comatose, he thought. Not unreactive. So much was encouraging.

On impulse he reached up, removed the glasses he wore for obfuscation, folded them carefully, and dropped them into a pocket of his labcoat. A feigned absence of pretense was the easiest stratagem he could devise on short notice.

“Lane, I can’t afford this.” He filled his voice with a vibration of sincerity. “I need you. Director Hannish needs you. You heard her message. It would be impossible to overstate how sorely you’re needed.

“I have no time to play therapist for an autistic child.”

At first he feared she wouldn’t answer. And what if she didn’t? What then? He could log on to her terminal, access her notes and records, attempt to reconstruct her results. But such a task might require hours. Even if he accomplished miracles of celerity, it would take too long—

Fortunately she’d heard him. She may have been overwhelmed by despair—or perhaps just utterly exhausted—but she was possessed by a mind which had always responded to the demands he’d placed on it. Her voice seemed to ache with reluctance as she murmured past the screen or her hair, “I failed.”

“What, failed? You?” Deliberately he stifled the avuncular tone he normally used in times of stress. Nor did he reveal his relief. Despair was in some sense unanswerable—a neurochemical wound which no words could heal. Mere failure was an altogether simpler issue. Perhaps she experienced something akin to the shame he’d felt when he’d realized that Warden’s game was far deeper than he’d imagined: the wound to his self-esteem. “Forgive my doubt. You could only fail by trying to answer the wrong questions. If you appear to have failed, it must be because I have misnamed your assignment in some way.”

After a moment she shook her head—the only movement she’d made except for those required by smoking. “I can’t find any proof,” she murmured listlessly. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that what you need?”

If she’d been any other woman—even Min Donner—he might have believed that she was on the verge of tears.

Her vulnerability sparked a reaction in him which he hardly recognized. It may have been that his heart went out to her. Slumping on the heels of his old-fashioned shoes, he moved toward her until he was near enough to touch her. With both hands he eased her head back, then parted her hair away from her face so that the smoke of her nic was no longer trapped in her eyes.

“Do I need proof?” he answered. “Assuredly. But it’s an ambiguous notion at the best of times—which these are not. Don’t trouble yourself with what I may or may not need, Lane. Tell me what you’ve learned.”

She didn’t meet his gaze. Her attention was fixed on a landscape of pain he couldn’t see.

“I found the hollow tooth. Where they stored that apoenzyme.” Nathan Alt’s chemical detonator. “He bit into it and blew up. But I can’t prove that. I can’t prove some other trigger wasn’t destroyed in the blast. I can’t tell you who did it to him.”

“We expected that,” he murmured to encourage her. “Go on.”

A small tightening that might have begun as a shrug seemed to pull her in on herself. “I tried to locate the original research.” Smoke and grief made her voice husky. “Somebody must have developed that apoenzyme. Made it. It didn’t just happen in his body. But whoever came up with it has done a better job than usual of keeping it secret. Or my clearance isn’t high enough. Or it came from the Amnion. I can’t find it.”

Hashi let his mouth twist with regret. He would have been delighted to learn that the research had been done by some subsidiary of the UMC.

“The code engine is current and correct,” Lane continued dully. “I told you that. It doesn’t prove anything.”

“No,” he assented. “But it is fascinating. And it serves to eliminate”—he fluttered a hand—“oh, any number of misleading possibilities.”

Apparently his reassurance meant nothing to her. She pulled herself tighter.

“I did a complete readout of the chip.” Her tone hinted at weeping. “Took a long time. My last hope.” She discarded one nic, lit another. “But it didn’t tell me anything we didn’t already know. Alt’s retinal signature wasn’t superimposed on Imposs’ credentials. Nothing was superimposed. That’s not Imposs’ id tag. It’s a new one. An authentic forgery. Designed to be exactly the same as his. Except it says Alt is him.”

Between one beat and the next, Hashi’s pulse accelerated. A new one. Excitement began to throb like hope in his bloodstream. An authentic forgery. She’d told him that earlier; but at the time he hadn’t entirely grasped its significance. Now it rejuvenated him.

“That doesn’t prove anything, either,” she went on. “Whoever did this has resources the native Earthers would kill for. So we can ignore them. But you knew that already, too.

“I don’t have anything for you,” she finished as if she’d reached the end of her strength. “We need to trace that chip.”

Perhaps he should have sustained his mask of sincerity for a few more moments. To some extent, however, he’d already forgotten her distress. Excitement carried him elsewhere. Unselfconsciously he snatched his glasses from his pocket, slapped them back onto his face.

“Then we will,” he announced like an affectionate uncle.

His sudden rush of confidence must have struck her as smug, condescending. She flinched as if he’d struck her; recoiled so hard that she nearly lost her seat. Then her despair ignited to fury with such brisance that it staggered him.

She flung herself at him; bunched her fists in the lapels of his labcoat; drove him backward.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” she yelled into his amazed face. “My God, what do you think I’ve been doing here while you flit around smiling at everybody and pretending to know everything?” When she’d pushed him as far as the wall, she held him there. “What do you think I’ve been tearing my heart out about?”

Hashi blinked at her in confusion. “Do you mean you’ve been unable to identify the id code for that chip?”

“It’s too damn small!” Lane shouted; tried to howl. “Haven’t I told you that? If I dropped it in your mouth, you couldn’t find it with your tongue. It doesn’t have a source or a drain, and it doesn’t have a goddamn id code! I can’t produce evidence that isn’t there!”

Abruptly he understood her.

He made no physical effort to pull away. That wasn’t necessary. Instead he said gently, kindly, “Forgive me, Lane. You’re speaking of the SOD-CMOS fragment you recovered from Godsen’s office. Naturally you were unable to identify its id code. I didn’t intend to imply otherwise.

“I was referring to Captain Alt’s id tag.”

Her mouth fell open. With a visible effort she closed it. Her breath came in ragged gasps. As if she’d just become aware of what she was doing, she let him go and stepped back.

“Well, shit, Hashi,” she panted. “Of course I traced it. I’m still not stupid. But it doesn’t prove anything, either.” Gradually her respiration slowed. “It was part of a routine shipment delivered to UMC Home Security three weeks ago.

“I suppose you could say that’s incriminating. I mean, how did an HS SOD-CMOS chip end up in a GCES Security id tag? But it isn’t evidence. It just indicates UMCHO isn’t exactly secure, that’s all. Which is something else we already knew.”

“Lane, Lane.” He waved his arms generously, distributing reassurance in all directions. “As I say, proof is ambiguous. If you could have asked yourself the right questions, you would have seen that you’ve already found a strand of evidence.”

And enough strands made a rope.

At the same time, however, he berated himself in silence for not having foreseen this. A routine shipment to Home Security. He could have saved time if he’d guessed that the trail would be so direct; could have taken advantage of his brief tenure as Acting Director—

Perhaps he was no match for Warden Dios after all.

Yet the pressure of the situation left no space for self-recrimination. Without pausing, he remarked, “Three weeks ago, forsooth. And yet the illustrious Cleatus Fane asserts that Nathan Alt was fired twice that long ago.”

“Fired?” Lane asked quickly.

“From his position as UMC Security Liaison for Anodyne Systems,” Hashi explained.

While she absorbed this information, he went on, “The fault for your misapprehension is mine. You were inadequately briefed. I have been distracted with other duties.” Other people’s emotions. “Despite my failings, however, you have commenced the work we must do.” The work which had to be done before Koina ran out of time. “You have begun to trace that chip. Now we will go further. Perhaps we will find strands enough to weave a noose.”

As he spoke, Lane appeared to regain her mental poise, her focus, by measurable increments. “How’re we going to do that?” she asked sharply. Only the trembling of her hands as she extracted and lit another nic betrayed the strain she felt.

In response Hashi allowed himself to resume his accustomed avuncular manner.

“My dear Lane, it has perhaps not come to your attention that I have placed ‘screaming red’ security locks of the very loudest sort on all Anodyne Systems’ logs and records. In addition, I have covered much of UMCHO with similar seals.

“Here.” Hurrying now, he moved to her terminal, opened a DA authorization query screen, and tapped a flurry of keys. Then he pointed a thin finger at the readout. “I have entered the codes which will grant you access to Home Security records.”

“That won’t help,” she objected. Her hard eyes studied him as if she wasn’t sure she could trust him. “They’ve had plenty of time to edit anything. Or cover it up.”

He shook his head. “Doubtless that’s true. Nevertheless I suspect they have not done so. From their perspective, it was inevitable that Captain Alt’s false id would be destroyed in the blast. Therefore no one would ever inquire into its provenance.” He shrugged. “More recently, of course, both the great worm and his prime spawn have been too heavily occupied to undertake the challenge of tampering with Red Priority locks.

“I believe you will be able to determine the use Home Security recorded for that chip.”

For a moment Lane scrutinized him warily. Something in her apparently wanted to hold back. She was too tired: too much had been asked of her. Or she’d seen through his pretense of concern—and didn’t like what she saw. Yet her gaze seemed to slide of its own accord away from him to the terminal. The lure of the investigation tugged at her. Almost against her will, she moved toward the keypad.

He stepped aside to make room. Sucking hard at her nic, she stared at the screen. Tentatively she reached out through a swirl of smoke and began entering commands.

Impelled by a pang which might have been relief or fear, Hashi turned to his part of the task. Trusting Lane to concentrate in spite of him, he thumbed the intercom toggle.

“Center,” he announced peremptorily, “this is Director Lebwohl. On my personal authority, with the utmost priority, I must speak with Chief of Security Mandich at once. Instantly would not be too soon. Then I require a tight-beam transmission channel to Acting Director Min Donner aboard Punisher.

“I will speak with Acting Director Donner as soon as I’m done with Chief Mandich.”

The voice from Center hesitated for a second, then answered, “Right away, Director.”

Right away, Hashi snorted to himself. Right away would hardly be soon enough. By degrees Lane’s hands gained speed on the keypad. As she typed, the tremors of her distress receded. Still the job he’d given her was complex. How much time did Koina have left? How long would Special Counsel Igensard indulge the Council in diatribes and perorations? What scale of obfuscation would the Dragon’s First Executive Assistant put forward? I’m running out of time here. What did that mean?

While urgency coiled around his heart, he asked himself whether he should have been more explicit with Min; perhaps even with Morn Hyland. He’d given out enough hints to stupefy a half-wit. On the other hand, he had no mandate to direct events. Warden had told him, Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do—hardly a definitive assignment. This was Warden’s game, not his. He believed he understood it. Nevertheless he might cause it to fail if he neglected to concentrate on fulfilling his own role.

And he’d already made too many mistakes—

He was forced to wait another fifteen seconds before Chief Mandich responded.

“Leave me alone, Director Lebwohl,” the harried man rasped without preamble. “This job is already impossible. I can’t do it with all these interruptions.”

Hashi swore to himself. A pox on such emotional people! Was there no one individual anywhere around him who could summon bare intelligence without being coerced? However, he rejected the luxury of sneering at Mandich.

“Chief Mandich, your point is precisely the one I was about to make.” He leaned over the pickup as if he were abasing himself. “Your duties are impossible. You simply do not have the time to search out and acquire the sort of evidence you have been asked to procure. That’s why I’m interrupting you. I require your help here.”

He told the Chief of Security where he was.

Unfortunately Mandich seemed oblivious to Hashi’s restraint. “Don’t insult me, Lebwohl,” he snapped. His shame shook in his voice. “This is bad enough as it is. You know I can’t help you. You know I know it. I’m out of my fucking depth with this.

“If I can’t do my job, at least let me fail in peace.”

Lane flashed a speculative look at Hashi, but didn’t pause in her search.

Hashi resisted an impulse to knot his fists in his hair. “Chief Mandich,” he pronounced with all the force he could command, “I would not waste the effort of insulting you in such an emergency. I require your assistance. I demand it.

“In another minute I will speak to Acting Director Donner. If you refuse me, she will order you to comply. But that will take time. Director Hannish has very little left.

“Give me that time,” he ordered. “Postpone feeling sorry for yourself.” Just this once. “Come here.”

He didn’t allow the man time to answer. Fuming, he hit the intercom toggle; then hit it again.

“Center, I’m ready to speak to Acting Director Donner.”

The speaker emitted muffled sounds which suggested consternation. Indecipherable shouts came from the distance.

Almost too swiftly to be read, Lane’s screen scrolled as she hunted for data.

“I’m trying, Director,” Center’s voice replied abruptly. “But we’re going crazy here. We don’t have any spare tight-beam capacity. And Punisher has even less.”

“Whelp!” Hashi wanted to roar, but he produced only a beehive snarl of frustration. “Did I neglect to mention that the entire future of humankind depends on this? I must speak to Acting Director Donner.”

“I’m sorry, Director,” Center said in chagrin. “I am trying.”

The intercom reported more shouts. Hashi was sure he heard someone yell, “Just do it!”

At last arrhythmic staccato clicks filled the speaker like static as Center rerouted the lab’s intercom channel.

“Hashi.” Min’s voice seemed to appear as if it had resumed tard in the room. “Make it quick. This is getting more complicated by the minute.”

Despite his concentration, his heart lurched like a wounded thing. Obliquely he wondered whether his health was good enough to sustain the stress. Nevertheless he did his best to be brief.

“As Acting Director, Min, you’re in command of UMCPHQ. You have authority for Administration. I require the Administration codes which enable terminals here to access the dedicated design computers at Anodyne Systems.”

“Good God, Hashi!” she shot back. “Why in hell do you want to do that?”

Under other circumstances he might have enjoyed her surprise. Or he might have tried to justify himself. But Lane’s distress had taken a toll on him: Chief Mandich’s frank outrage had left him raw. The sudden poignancy of his desire to be trusted took him aback.

“You don’t have time to hear an explanation, Min,” he answered softly. “I don’t have time to offer one.” He sighed at her doubt. “I’m attempting to carry out Warden’s orders.”

At least she hadn’t asked, Why didn’t you take care of it while you were Acting Director? She’d spared him the indignity of having to say, Because I didn’t think of it.

“All right,” she returned decisively. “Give me a minute. I’ll have to route my authorization through Center to Administration so you can open that file. The system isn’t set up for this, but I can invoke disaster priorities.”

The speaker went dead as Punisher stopped transmitting.

Hashi bowed his head. That may have been as close as Min Donner could come to giving him what he truly wanted. For a brief moment he allowed himself to be grateful.

When he looked up, he found Chief Mandich standing across the room from him, just inside the door.

Mandich’s fists were cocked on his hips; his jaw jutted like the head of a cudgel. “This better be good, Lebwohl,” he snarled. “The last time a man treated me the way you do, they had to put a plate on his skull afterward to keep his brains in.”

Hashi couldn’t hold back. He loathed being held responsible for other people’s faults and furies. “Sadly,” he retorted, “they neglected a plate for you. Without being noticed, your brain must have fallen out on Suka Bator.”

Lane hid a grin behind a fringe of unclean hair.

Hashi ignored her. Before Mandich could muster a reply, he demanded in a tone of utter exasperation, “Are you not able to grasp the fact that you are essential? Lane and I cannot discover the evidence we seek without your help.

“A terminal, Chief Mandich,” he ordered. “There.” His arm rigid and trembling, he pointed at the console he wanted Mandich to use. “I will work here.” Two quick strides planted him in front of a terminal near Lane’s.

The Chief didn’t move. Apparently Hashi had caught his attention: the belligerence in his eyes had turned to uncertainty. Nevertheless he stood where he was.

“Tell me what we’re doing,” he insisted harshly.

What we’re doing. He’d said “we.” That was all the opening Hashi needed.

With a few quick keystrokes he logged on to his terminal and began hunting for the file which Min had promised to open for him. As he typed, read the screen, typed again, he asked in a calmer voice, “Lane, what have you learned?”

“One”—she fired instructions at her keypad—“more”—bit her lip, tried another approach—“minute,” Then she shouted in triumph, “Ha! Got it.”

Abruptly she looked up from her terminal. The vindication in her voice was so intense that it sounded savage.

“Chief Mandich, nobody tampered with Clay Imposs’ id tag. They didn’t superimpose Alt on it. They made a new one, one for Alt himself, one that gave him all of Imposs’ clearances.”

The Chief frowned, plainly baffled.

“I traced the SOD-CMOS chip,” she went on. “From his id tag. I just finished.

“It was delivered to UMC Home Office three weeks ago in a routine shipment for Home Security. Ten days later”—she indicated her screen accusatively—“that chip was assigned to the office of the UMC Security Liaison for Anodyne Systems. To be used for testing code designs.”

Hashi wanted to applaud; cheer aloud; shout at the ceiling. Hidden by the lab table which held his terminal, his feet danced a brief jig. If Mandich hadn’t been there, he might have invoked a blessing on Lane’s weary, brilliant head.

The Chief of Security stared his incomprehension across the tables.

“‘Ten days later,’” Hashi echoed eagerly. “Eleven days ago. Yet great Cleatus Fane in full spate informs us that Nathan Alt was fired as Security Liaison several weeks previously.

“How do you imagine he came to possess a chip which can be traced to eleven days ago? If he indeed conspired with the native Earthers, as our good FEA claims, how did he do so with source code which is both current and correct?”

“But—” Chief Mandich protested inchoately. He tried to close his mouth; couldn’t.

“But it is not proof,” Hashi said for him. “There you are correct. For that reason, Lane and I must depend on your help.”

The Chief still didn’t understand: that was clear. Nevertheless his truculence had vanished. He lifted his hands uncertainly, then took a step or two toward the terminal Hashi had indicated.

“What do you want me to do?”

As if on cue, the file Hashi sought opened on his screen. Min Donner may have been self-righteous and unyielding: she may even have been obtuse. At that moment, however, he loved her. She’d kept her word.

He addressed Chief Mandich more kindly now. Min had restored his benevolence.

“You described the precautions which defend the security of our code designs for the chips produced by Anodyne Systems. First, Administration codes authorize a link between our terminals and Anodyne Systems’ computers. After that, DA codes are required to negotiate the necessary datalink protocols. Then ED Security codes must be supplied to grant the terminal operator access.

“We are three.” He waved his arms expansively. “I will take the part of Administration. Lane represents DA. You are ED Security in person.”

As if he were entirely sure—and had all the time he could need—he concluded, “Together we will break into the Anodyne Systems computers and extract the information we need.”

Lane brandished both fists in a mute cheer.

Chief Mandich didn’t respond. Clenched in silence, he reached his terminal.

When he was ready he met Hashi’s gaze over the top of his screen. His eyes were as feral as the fire in Hashi’s blood.