"What did they tell you at the Institute?"
"They didn't," Derec said. "We… aren't really supposed to be looking at it."
"Excuse me?"
"Special Service assumed jurisdiction over the entire investigation. Threw us out."
"Special Service doesn't have any positronic experts."
"Maybe they're talking to your people at the Institute,"
Derec said.
Ariel's mouth compressed tightly. She looked troubled. "So what are you doing with it?"
"We set up surrogate function through our RI and transferred a complete copy of Union Station 's here before we were shut out. They don't know we have it."
"And you don't want to go through normal channels to ask… I see." Ariel nodded. "You think I'll act as go-between for you? Believe me, the last thing I need now is a problem with Special Service. I've already got panicked Aurorans ready to leave Earth at a heartbeat. Any kind of problem with Earth authorities that might lead to-"
"Ariel," Derec said, cutting her off. "No. I want you to look at what we have and give me your opinion."
She gave him a dubious look. "That's all?"
"We'll see. First, I want to know what you think."
Her eyes narrowed. He knew she understood what he was doing. He hoped she would acknowledge a stake in this, that perhaps she already had found inconsistencies in the situation, that her involvement would outweigh her resentments. He watched her work through all of that and more he could not guess.
"All right," she said finally. "Show me what you have." "It's been a while since I've seen a collapse this thorough," Ariel said, staring at the screen. "Did anything function?"
"Nothing," Derec said. "According to the staff, everything had to be switched to manual. Fortunately, some of the systems had their own parallel processing units, so it wasn't a complete loss, but…"
Ariel pointed at one of the spirals. "What is that? It looks like a paradox loop, but I don't see a resolution point."
"Neither do we," Rana said, "and I've been looking. I started an excavation, but it looks like the loops resolve somewhere outside the positronic matrix."
"That's absurd, there is no 'outside' a positronic matrix," Ariel said. "Not like this. Unless it's a connection with another positronic matrix."
"A comlink," Derec said.
"Basically, yes. You know this stuff, Derec. This is freshman-level pathway schema."
"But in this case," he said patiently, "it doesn't go through any comlinks. We traced a good number of the comlinks, mostly the supervisory connections with the mobile staff. None of them match these sites. These loops are leaving the matrix and going somewhere else through a channel we can't determine."
"Just what sectors are they in?"
"It's too damaged to tell about all of them," Derec said. "Once it began collapsing, everything randomized."
"At some point it should lock up. The whole thing shouldn't devolve into chaos."
"That's what I thought," Rana said. "Basic salvage protocol, ever since the stasis modifications went in-what? Twenty years ago? But this did exactly the opposite and became more fluid."
Ariel started tapping the keyboard before her. "You said too damaged to tell about all of them. Does that mean you could tell for some of them? What about a scan for mirror sites… where do these sectors link to the station systems?"
"Maintenance," Rana said.
Ariel waited, then glanced at the other woman. "All of them?"
"So far."
"Hm. How did you determine that?"
"Like I said, I'm running an excavation. Layer by layer, sector by sector, and matching it to design specs from our RI, which, for the time being, is running Union Station."
Ariel blinked at her. "I admire your ambition."
Rana shrugged. "No option. But…" She waved at the screen.
"Maintenance…" Ariel mused. "What about the reference template? Did you check it?"
"Can't find it," Rana said. "Everything is so random-"
Ariel leaned forward and worked the keyboard. She entered a few more commands, then sat back. Two of the peripheral screens began to display new patterns.
Rana stared. "How did-?" she began, but Derec gave her a minute shake of the head.
"Every positronic brain has a reference template," Ariel said quietly, more to herself than to them. "A basic pattern of behavior and attributes against which the working brain can refer…" She frowned. "I don't understand this. They're randomized, too." She tapped more commands. The screens changed.
Ariel touched one of the screens. "This comline isn't right. It's one-to-one, no buffer to shield the matrix. Same with this one. What kind of accessory systems were installed on this?"
"Don't know," Derec said.
She scowled at him impatiently. "What do you mean, you don't know? Didn't you do an on-site inspection?"
"We didn't get a chance to before we were taken off the job and barred from the site."
"What about before this? Are you telling me you only looked at the system during the install and not since?"
"We went back in once, a few months after the installation. After that it was supposed to be on an as-needed basis and we never received a call. Now that we need to get in there, we're blocked."
"That's ridiculous. Who issued that order?"
"It came from the director's office of Special Service," Derec replied. "Their authorization was legal."
"But Phylaxis-"
"We were removed, Ariel. Period."
She stared at the screens before her, but Derec was sure she saw nothing on them. She absently scratched her chin once.
"I see. And you think I-we-had something to do with that?"
"The thought had occurred to me," Derec said drily.
Ariel nodded slowly, still looking at the screens. "You said no one knows you have this copy?"
"No one has shown up yet to take it away from us." That elicited a grin.
"Do you have any theories about what this is?" She pointed at the screen.
"The staff told me that just before the assault, the RI took itself off-line to play a game. It was completely unaware of what was happening in the gallery until it came back online and witnessed the aftermath."
"And that's when the collapse began."
"Exactly," Derec said. "Now, the paradox loops and the mirror sites suggest that something was physically attached to the RI network. When I asked about problems with the RI before this, I was told that a few glitches had occurred, but they were minor and they'd been told that 'adjustment errors' were to be expected, to contact the Calvin Institute about them before contacting us. Most were dismissed."
"Adjustment errors…" Ariel stood and walked slowly around the lab. After one full circuit she stopped directly in front of Derec. "What do you want from me?"
"To Start with, I'd like to know who issued that maintenance directive."
"You want my help."
"Just-" Derec began.
"You want me to pry into the operations of my own people to see if any of them are somehow culpable." Her voice was growing edged, caustic.
"Ariel-"
"You want me to help you figure out why the RI went insane."
"Well"
"You want me to forget about everything else, drop my responsibilities, and be a spy for you." Ariel folded her arms across her chest and grunted derisively. "I have to credit you, Derec-you have nerve."
Derec could feel his own irritation grow. He feared a repeat of their last fight. "Are you going to tell me you're not interested in this?"
Ariel glared at him briefly. "Damn you, yes. You knew that would happen, once I saw this." She slapped the top of the console. "You relied on that. You used it."
"And you hate being used. "
"Damn it-!"
"Then help us," Derec said softly. "Whoever did this is using you in a much worse way. Whoever did this did it to kill Galiel Humadros and Clar Eliton. They also killed the two surviving members of Eliton's security team. It will get worse. At the very least, this completely discredits positronics on Earth. This undoes everything Eliton hoped to do. Even if the conference goes on now, without finding the people responsible nothing will be accomplished. Tell me this doesn't concern you."