Found his luggage, maybe. He couldn’t think of a call else he had in, unless Dekker’d taken a spell of something.
Couldn’t be he’d broken anybody’s neck. They had him too far out for that. Please God.
He plugged in his personal reader—never use a TI card in an unsecure device—and keyed up playback.
TECH/2 Benjamin J. Pollard
CTVSS/UDC 28 DAT 2
CURRENTLOC: UDC SOL2B-HOS28
1719JUN20/24 SN P-235-9876/MLR 1923JUN20/24
TRANSFER TO: ACTIVE DUTY: UDC SYSTEMS TESTING
RANK: TECH3/UDC SOL2D-OPS/SCAN G-5: PILOT RATING C-3 WITH 200 EXPERIENCE HOURS LOGGED.
REPORT TO: 2-DECK 229, BARRACKS C: JUN21/24/ 0600h: ref/ CLASSIFIED: OUTSIDE COMMUNICATION SPECIFICALLY DENIED.
He sat down. He had that much presence of mind. He punched playback again with his thumb, and the same damned thing rolled past.
Transfer? Systems Testing? Pilot rating?
Shit!
The committee wanted another go. Immediately. The shuttle was two days on its way from Sol One, due in at maindawn, and, informed it wouldn’t be held, senatorial demands notwithstanding, the committee decided to keep going through maindark, if that was what it took. You didn’t snag a senator for a five-day to Sol Two—no famous restaurants, no cocktail lounges, no ‘faculties1 the way they legendarily existed downworld: the senators had important business to do, the senators wanted out and back to Sol One and down to Earth and their perks and their privileges, and they’d talk with the company reps over gin and tonic the whole way back.
Graff had hoped, for a while, after things went to hell, that some few members of the committee might want to ask him questions over gin and tonic, if they had the clout to ask him in for a go-over; or rec-hall coffee, if they had the clout just to get past Bonner. He’d kept his phone free. He’d hoped until he got the notification of the resumption of the sessions—the committee wanted a chance to review testimony and wanted certain individuals to ‘stand by’ a call.
Demas and Saito weren’t on the list. Much and Jamil certainly weren’t. No audience. No guarantee mere would be any questions Bonner didn’t set up. Graff sat there tapping a stylus on the desk and thinking about a fast call to Sol One via FleetCom; but that was still no use—if the captain hadn’t noticed a shuttle-load of senators, contractor executives, and UDC brass headed to Sol Two’s B Dock, there was no hope for them; and if the captain hadn’t known something about the character and leanings of said senators and contractors and Gen. Patrick Bonner, Fleet Security was off its game. So the lieutenant was still left out of the lock without a line, and the lieutenant had to get his butt out there right now and give the senators what they asked as best he could.
So the lieutenant in question put his jacket on, straightened his collar, and opened the door.
“Mr. Graff.”
Face to face with Tanzer.
“I’d like a word,” Tanzer said as he stepped into the hall.
“About my testimony?” He didn’t have an Optex, didn’t own one and it wasn’t legal for a private conversation; but he hoped Tanzer would worry.
Tanzer said, “Just a word of sanity.”
A trap? A smear, if Tanzer was carrying a hidden Optex. He could refuse to talk; he could tell Tanzer go to hell; but he had to face Tanzer after the committee was long gone. “Yes, colonel?”
Tanzer said, quietly, “You could screw this whole project. You’re a junior, you don’t know what you’re walking into. And you could lose the war—right here, right in this hearing. I’m advising you to answer the questions without comment—no, I’m not supposed to be talking to you, and no, I can’t advise you about your testimony. By the book, I can’t. But forget that business in the office. We both want that ship. We don’t want it canceled. Do we? —Can we have a word inside your office?”
No, was his first thought. There were aides milling about down the hall. There were potential witnesses. But not knowing what Tanzer wanted to tell him could be a mistake too. Bugs, there weren’t, inside. Not unless the UDC was technologically one up, and he didn’t think so. He opened the door again, let Tanzer in and let the door shut.
Tanzer said, directly, “The companies aren’t going to support finding a basic design flaw; that’s money out of their pockets, do you understand me? That’s not what we’re going to push for.”
Tanzer and a 4-star? Politicking with a Fleet j-g? What in hell was going on at Sol One? “I wasn’t under the impression that was seriously at issue.”
“You don’t understand me. Those companies don’t want the blame. They’re perfectly willing to put the accident off on the service. To call it mishandling—”
Oh-ho.
“A control redesign, existing technology—that, they’ll go for. As long as it’s our design change, out of our budget. You listen to me. This is critical. We’ve got some Peace-nows kicking up a fuss—they want to grab that appropriation for their own programs. They’re talking negotiation with Union. Partition of the trade zones. They’ve got some tame social scientists down in Bonn and Moscow talking isolation again.”
They’d talked it off and on for two hundred years. But Union was very interested in Earth’s biology. Very interested.
“They won’t get it.”
“They can dither this program into another five-year redesign with political deals. The Earth Company can end up deadlocked with the UN. We need the AI on top to let us get some successes with this ship—make it do-able, so we can go public as soon as possible. The thing can have another model, for God’s sake, build the old design and lose ships to your heart’s content, after we’ve got the first thirty out of the shipyards and trained pilots who know its characteristics. Prove your point and have your funerals, it’ll be out of our hands, but let’s get this ship online.”
“The effect will be training your pilots to pull it short—to worry when they’re taking a necessary chance. Combat pilots can’t have that mindset; and you can’t train with that thing breathing down your neck.”
“You’re not a psychiatrist, lieutenant.”
“I’m not an engineer, either, but I know the AI you’ve got won’t accommodate it, you’re talking about a very complicated software, a bigger black box, and that panel’s already crowding armscomp, besides the psychological factors—”
“Cut one seat. One fewer tech. The tetralogic’s worth it.”
“That’s ten fewer objects longscan can track, and that’s one damned more contractor with an unproved software and another unproved interface to train to.”
“That’s nothing getting tracked if the ship doesn’t get built, lieutenant, come down to the point. You’re not going to get everything you want.”
“If you want to cut a deal, you need to talk to the captain, I’m under his orders.”
“What are his orders?”
“To keep that ship as is.”
“Or lose it? You listen to me. You don’t have to agree. Just don’t raise objections.”
“Talk to my captain. I can’t change his orders.”
Tanzer was red in the face. Keeping his voice very quiet. “We can’t reach your captain.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know why. We think he’s in committee meetings.”
“Go to Mazian’s office, colonel, I can’t authorize a thing.”
“We’ve been trying to reach him, lieutenant, and we’ve got your whole damned program about to destruct on us, out there—you’d better believe you’re in a hot spot, and I wouldn’t take you into confidence, you or your recruits, but we can’t afford another shouting match for the committee. We’re trying to save this program, we’re not arguing the value of human hands-on at the controls: you know and I know there’s no way Union’s tape-trained clones are any match for real human beings—”