“Yes, Senator,” the RI replied. A small circle on top of the cylinder dilated, and Justine dropped the memory crystal in.
“It’s a quantum scanner,” she told Paula. “So it should be able to locate any hardwired ambush in the molecular structure.”
The two of them sat on one of the couches. Its brown leather was so parched from the strong sunlight it was cracking open; Justine enjoyed it for that as much as the softness that came from age. A tatty piece of furniture in a trillionaire’s immaculate household also made the chamber more appealing to her, a little stamp of personal identity.
“What happened at the autopsy?” Justine asked.
“It was all very ordinary,” Paula said. “They confirmed a lack of any memorycell insert. The rest of his inserts were all relatively common. Navy intelligence will track down the manufacturer, and from that we should get the clinic which gave them to Kazimir. I expect the operation will have been paid for either with cash or from a onetime account; Adam Elvin doesn’t make elementary mistakes, but they could get lucky.”
“Is that it?” Justine wasn’t sure what she’d expected, something that made him stand out at least, an aspect that proved how exceptional he was.
“Essentially, yes. Cause of death confirmed as the ion shot. He wasn’t taking any narcotics, although there was evidence of heavy steroid and hormone infusions over the last couple of years, which is understandable for someone born on a low-gravity world. You should know he hadn’t undergone any cellular reprofiling.”
Justine gave the Investigator a frown.
“It really was him,” Paula explained. “They weren’t trying to push a ringer on you.”
“Ah.” She could have told the Investigator that. He was Kazimir, nobody could fake that. “What about his hotel room? Any leads there?”
“It doesn’t look like it. I’m receiving the reports directly from navy intelligence as soon as they’re filed in their database. Of course, if there’s anything they’re not filing, that they’re keeping to themselves, then we have a problem.”
“Is that likely?”
“It’s a remote possibility. Legally, they have to put everything on file, and therefore Senate Security has complete access as we are higher up the security service food chain. However, you and I both know that the navy is compromised. One of the Starflyer’s people could be holding things back.”
“Assuming they’re not, will the hotel room tell us much?”
“Not really. The Guardians seem to be as thorough with their tradecraft in their own homes as they are everywhere else. The only report I really value is Kazimir’s financial record. That should give us a nice breakdown of his movements before you alerted the navy to his presence.”
A fresh burst of guilt at the reminder made Justine tighten her jaw muscles. “When will that be ready?”
“A couple of days. The navy intelligence office in Paris will correlate the data. I’ll review it after that.”
“Paris: that’s your old office, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Do you think that’s where the Starflyer’s agent is?”
“It’s a very high probability that one of them is there, yes. I was running several entrapment operations before I was dismissed.”
“And I went and told them about Kazimir,” Justine said bitterly.
Paula Myo stared straight ahead at the cylinder containing the array. “I will expose the Starflyer, Senator. That is what the Guardians are fighting for; the one thing Kazimir McFoster believed in above all else.”
“Yes,” Justine said with a nod.
“I have completed an analysis of the memory crystal,” the RI announced. “It holds three hundred and seventy-two files of encrypted data. There are some software safeguards against unauthorized access, but they can easily be circumvented.”
“Good,” Justine said. Given the capacity of the array she would have been very surprised if it couldn’t gain access to whatever was stored on the crystal.
“Can you decrypt the files?”
“They are encrypted with one thousand two hundred eighty dimension– geometry. I do not have the processing capacity to decrypt that level.”
“Bugger,” Justine muttered. For a moment her hopes had actually risen; she had expected slightly more help from a piece of hardware that had just cost her over five million Earth dollars. “Who does?”
“The SI,” Paula said. “And the Guardians, of course.”
Justine asked the question that she found very difficult. “Do you trust the SI?”
“In helping us defeat the Prime aliens, I believe it to be a trustworthy ally.”
“That’s a very cautious answer.”
“I do not believe that humans can understand the SI’s full motivation. We do not even know its true intent toward us as a species. It claims to be benign, and it has never acted in any other fashion toward us. However…”
“Yes?”
“During the course of my investigations I have come across instances which suggest it pays considerably more attention to us than it will admit to.”
“Intelligence gathering has been the occupation of governments since the Trojans got a real bad surprise from that little gift the Greeks left behind. I don’t doubt for a second the SI monitors us.”
“But to what end? There are several theories, most of which belong to the wilder realms of conspiracy paranoia. They all tend to concern its incipient ascent to godhood.”
“What do you believe?”
“I imagine it considers us in much the same way as we would regard a mildly troublesome neighbor. It monitors us because it doesn’t want any surprises, especially one which would threaten the neighborhood.”
“Is this really relevant?”
“Probably not, unless it chooses to take the side of the Primes.”
“Damn, you’re suspicious.”
“I prefer to think of it as an extended chess exercise,” the Investigator said.
“Excuse me?”
“I try to see all the possible moves that can be made to oppose me as far ahead as I can. But I agree that the SI being an enemy is extremely remote. On a personal level I have established a useful working relationship with it; and of course it does contain a great deal of downloaded human personalities, which should act in our favor.”
“Now I just don’t know what the hell to think.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to place you under any additional anxiety. It was thoughtless of me given your current situation.”
“You know, the only benefit of my age right now is that I know when I’m too messed up to be making that kind of decision. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just leave it up to you. Do you want to ask the SI to decrypt this for us?”
“The only alternative is to contact the Guardians and ask them directly.”
“Do you know how to do that?” Justine asked.
“No. If I had that kind of lead into the Guardians I would have shut them down decades ago.”
“I see.” The gray-blue icon for the code Kazimir had sent her hovered in the corner of her virtual vision, inert but oh-so-tempting. Once again she knew she wasn’t thinking clearly enough to make that choice. She didn’t even know if she should tell the Investigator she had it. And for a Commonwealth senator to contact what was currently classified as a political terrorist group was a momentous act. Instinctively, she was loath to risk loading that innocuous code into the unisphere. If any such association became public knowledge before the Starflyer was exposed, she would be completely discredited. Not even the family would be able to protect her. And the Starflyer would have won another victory.
“We might not have to ask anyone to help with the memory crystal,” Paula said. “The navy is investigating the observatory in Peru. They ought to be able to find out the nature of the data, even if the actual files remain blocked.”