She lay down and kissed me on my forehead.
“Try as we sometimes might, we of the dome can never take competition so seriously as you Earthers. Listen to yourself. You are here. I am here. And you are still thinking about business. Let the day take care of itself. There are other opportunities in life worth seizing in the here and now.”
The word “seizing” seemed particularly appropriate, but still curiosity made me delay. I could not believe she was able to so completely divide her private and professional lives like this.
She returned her attention to my forehead, kissing me lightly on the bridge of my nose, once on each eyelid, and on my mouth—then we came together with as much passion as we had the night before. But I still could not rid myself of the suspicion that I was being used in some way I had yet to understand.
One hour later, I found out. I arrived at our field office to find Otis in a panic and the rest of the staff sitting in paralyzed disbelief as the most easy-going team leader in the Universe ran about shouting, tearing his hair, and grabbing things off other people’s desks to throw against the walls.
“Shade! Thank God you’re here! I’ve been trying to reach you all night but your comlink was in call-reject mode. What were you doing?”
“Otis, I’m not going to tell you. Let’s just say I had a visitor and didn’t want to be disturbed. What is the emergency?”
Otis had obviously not slept all night. He was even more unkempt than usual, the blue paisleys wrinkled and sweat-stained.
“The Wags began construction last night! All the equipment they brought in for earlier projects… I was a fool not to notice—it was far more than they needed and it never left after they were complete! They stockpiled it! Now they’ve run all their ’dozers at once through the patera! A spoiler strategy, trash the land first so it can’t be preserved, then on to the development stage. They’ve done it! Damn them, they’ve done it!”
“Calm down, Otis! Calm down. So they’ve done it—you knew there was a helluva good chance they’d do it anyway. Why act surprised? Your next job is to figure out how to restabilize the system without anopheles. My job is to figure out what’s really going on here. There’s no way in hell that all this scheming and sneaking about after dark can be motivated by the desire to build a VR Entertainment Complex. There’s got to be something else, something the Wags will go great lengths to do covertly.”
Otis still looked as though he wanted to continue destroying office implements, but I knew he could never resist a challenge. In a few hours, he’d be completely wrapped up in redesigning the habitat’s ecology to survive without mosquitoes.
“And Otis, use an isolated terminal. The Wags have been reading your files. Any system we have which is part of the dome’s network has been compromised. Until we’ve got a better idea of just what’s going on, security’s a priority.”
“Work without the ’net? But Shade, that’ll… that’ll…”
“Make everything much harder. I know. But at least they won’t know what we’re planning before we ourselves do. So we work harder. So what? That’s what we get paid to do.
“Also, while you’re doing that, we’re doing our own snooping. I need an I-tech operator—one who’s a damn smart hacker.”
3
Honolulu Loki still had the round face and girlish smile that disarms instantly. I should have known the only hacker Otis would trust for this job would be his wife. He usually regards people who interface with technology for a living to be members of an enemy nation. Except Lulu, who had taken possession of both his gonads and his soul sixteen years ago.
OK, I confess. I told her to do it—it was my sacrifice.
She’d been fresh out of the service then, newly made civilian after ten years as an I-tech Ops Officer aboard some starcruiser out on the fringe. She’d been twenty-five, very pretty, and we’d been… acquainted… until I had learned that Villeggiatura, S. A., one of our less principled competitors, was going to offer Otis a chief conservatorship in one of their projects out around 61 Cygni. Lulu had been involved in something not quite legal in our Copernicus office, which I’d caught her at, effectively ending our relationship. But she’d agreed to do me this favor in exchange for my losing certain files. And now here she was, sipping absinthe and smiling at me over the lip of the glass. It was almost like old times, but not quite. It’s hard to catch one’s deeper mind reevaluating a past decision, especially in a crisis when one is trying to focus elsewhere.
We were sitting in a small restaurant with the improbable name, “Ragougnasse a Gogo,” built in a large treehouse looking out onto the central lake through a tangle of leafy boughs. I’d wanted to meet away from the office. Not only were Otis and his team already working with that blindly frenetic zeal which creates a sense of total chaos for anyone not part of the project, but I thought our conversation might just drift into areas her husband didn’t need to know about.
Lulu wore a wig of colorful anodized aluminum beads, hanging down below her shoulders. I think the fashion world calls the look “techno-Egyptian.” She’d always covered her naked scalp—like all service I-tech Operators, she’d been depilated so the interface skullcap wouldn’t have to read the electrical activity of her brain through an insulating layer of hair. And bright colors set off her smooth coffee-no-cream complexion very well.
Like Otis, she’d gone native, and wore a sensuously draped gown of knitted silk the color of fresh snow. It flowed about her so loosely, that it would have been quite impractical in any environment where even the gentlest of breezes might blow. She’d gained weight, and was probably dressing to conceal the extra kilos. She probably wouldn’t have been as sexy as Cheri Millefiori in a sari, but she still looked good to me.
Fate can be a quirky thing. I’d expected her sex appeal to give Otis one more compelling reason for staying with the Big Word and eschewing other offers. I hadn’t expected the marriage to work out so well. None of mine ever had. But here they were, sixteen years, three kids later, and I couldn’t even remember what it was I’d caught her at anymore. I could remember feeling certain pangs at giving her up to keep Otis, though.
“Have you tried cracking Wag systems before now?” I asked.
“Same old Shade, eh? Always the action-man, still moving and shaking your way across the Universe without even saying hi?”
“OK… hi… and I hope your husband remembered to tell you how beautiful you looked this morning.”
“Oooo! That’s a new Shade. I think I like him! And of course he didn’t, he’s Otis Fremont, remember? The most important ecotechie this side of 61 Cygni. That’s one of those things old Otis never remembers to say.”
“Well then I’ll say it, Lulu. You look terrific. Really. But, have you tried cracking the Wags’ systems?”
“I never had any reason to,” she replied coyly, and let her lips touch the glass again. And I knew she had, reason or not.
I looked her straight in the eye, but my fierce penetrating stare didn’t stand a chance against the disarming smile.
“How much success did you have?” I asked as I surrendered.
“More than they’d believe, somewhat less than you’re hoping.”
“Well, it still sounds promising,” I said. “I need to know what’s really going on with that VR complex. Stands to reason they’ve got a data trail somewhere that’ll tell me what they’re ultimately shooting for. Think you can find it for me?”