''A little present for your Auntie Tru?'' she said, putting down the tray.
''A little old and beaten up for a present,'' Kris said. ''More like a puzzle. You still like puzzles?''
''Umm,'' Tru said giving the computer a quick once-over while the others served themselves. The computer was an old wrist unit, fairly thick and heavy, at least 200 grams. It used an old-fashioned display; didn't even jack into eyeglasses. Tru tried and failed to activate it. ''Wiped at a pretty low level,'' she observed.
''Can you get at it?'' Kris asked.
''Probably,'' Tru muttered, eyeing the empty tray.
''I thought I had some cookies, but I seem to be out.''
''I could bake some,'' Kris said, jumping up. Tru had been the one who taught Kris all that she knew about kitchens. It wasn't much, but Tru could whip up a wicked bunch of chocolate chip cookies, and Kris had learned from the expert.
''You talked me into it,'' Tru smiled, her eyes still concentrating on the unit. So, while Tru turned her kitchen table into a hacker/cracker dreamland, Kris led Tom in an assault on Tru's immaculate kitchen. As they had for many years, the pans waited for Kris in the lower right drawer beside the oven. The flour was in the white earthen jar on the back of the kitchen counter. A bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips stood its usual watch from the top shelf in the pantry. So much in the world had changed, but Aunt Tru's kitchen was a constant Kris could always count on.
There is something to be said for the spiritual healing power of turning a little girl loose in a kitchen to bake cookies…or a big girl, for that matter. As the wondrous smells collected around them, she and Tom licked the spoon, snatched scraps of dough, and would have pulled chunks off the main ball if Tru hadn't announced loudly and forcefully her fear that nothing would remain to cook.
Harvey curled up in a corner with his reader, checking all the oddities in the news and sharing the strangest with anyone listening. Tru tinkered with the computer; its cover was now off, its innards revealed like entrails to be read.
''This bit of artificial intelligence is part of a kidnapping investigation, ongoing on Sequim, isn't it?'' Tru asked, attaching chunks of the offending unit to an analyzer she'd built herself.
''Yes,'' Kris admitted, pausing from greasing a cookie sheet. ''But the local cops didn't seem all that interested in it. At least, no one asked where it went. I figured you'd have a better chance of getting at it than anyone on Sequim. And besides, I came near to dying on a minefield set by those punks, brand-new Mark 41 land mines that aren't even issued to my marines, much less to kidnappers. I want to know where all their tech came from.'' Kris pursed her lips.
''And the up-front money.''
''How are they building their case?'' Tru said absentmindedly.
''On confessions,'' Harvey put in. ''The four are singing like fine Irish tenors in a well-stocked pub, wouldn't you say?'' he asked Tom.
''Loud, if not so sweet,'' the young ensign answered.
''Four,'' Kris turned from her kitchen duties. ''We captured five.''
''One had a heart attack the day after you bagged him,'' Harvey said without looking up from his reading.
''Hmm,'' Tru muttered before Kris could ask which dead man was already filling a coffin. ''I'm in, but it seems that paranoid here encrypted everything. Looks like a standard commercial package. Should have some interesting stuff in a few minutes. Who are these kidnappers?'' Tru asked Harvey.
''They claim to be just petty crooks,'' Harvey said, flipping through his reader.
''And they were from?''
Harvey paged back. ''Earth, New Haven, Columbia, New Jerusalem.'' That covered a big chunk of the Seven Sisters, the first planets colonized from Earth. The first two, New Eden and New Haven had been wide open. Yamato, Columbia, Europa, and New Canton drew their original populations from specific regions of old Earth. New Jerusalem had been a unique case…and still was. Five petty thugs from Earth and three of her seven overpopulated sisters had snatched the child of the general manager of a raw rim colony. That invited a raised eyebrow from Tru.
Harvey snorted. ''Damn punks got a government dole to feed them and nothing else to do. Small-time hoods must have figured they could make it big out here hitting on some hardworking rim type and retire to perpetual fun and games back home.''
Kris hid her surprise at Harvey's attitude. She knew a lot of rim folks didn't think much of the billions in the central worlds that wouldn't immigrate. Kris had even studied the situation in college. It wasn't that Earth and the Seven Sisters actually were welfare states; their teeming billions were as fully employed as you'd expect for a mature economy. What they were was self-absorbed, maybe a bit self-important, and more than a bit decadent. It wasn't a mixture to appeal to the rim worlds. Add in an incident like this that only served to solidify misperceptions like Harvey's, and things could get volatile. ''That's the way some folks would perceive it.'' Kris skirted confrontation with her old friend.
''Perception is everything,'' Tru muttered. ''And reality…may be subject to change,'' Tru finished with a smile and sat back in her chair. ''That didn't take so long. Let me copy this to my newest child. Sam can organize the data while we try a few of those cookies,'' Tru said, then mumbled softly to her personal computer to get it working on the project.
''They need a bit more time to cool,'' Kris said, but was already using the spatula to move them to a plate. The chips were gooey and dripping; the cookies were as delicious as when Kris had needed to stand on the chair to get at them. So much had changed in her life; Aunty Tru's cookies had not.
The first dozen cookies were gone, the second batch just out, as a third batch went in the oven, when Tru grew distracted by Sam's report. Tru slipped a phone in her ear, muttered a few things under her breath, and passed up the next offered cookies. She leaned back, eyes going unfixed as she listened, a frown growing on her lips. ''Seems to be a perfect match for the news reports. Too perfect.''
Kris set down a cookie, wiped her hands, and took a close look at the wrist unit. It looked old, battered, pretty much the standard type of unit that anyone could buy for twenty bucks for the last fifty years. Kris reached up to move the overhead light. Inside the back of the unit was a mess. ''What's that crud?'' she asked.
Harvey looked up from his paper, squinting. ''Looks like the gunk that gets in your wristband. You know, the stuff you clean out when you're supposed to be doing your homework.''
''But inside the unit?''
''Bastard must have sweated a lot and never cleaned it. Slopped over inside. Surprised it's still working,'' Harvey shook his head at such slovenliness.
''Let me see that. Oh, Auntie's eyes are getting old,'' Tru shook her head ruefully. She left the room, returning in a moment with a black box that Tom was immediately making loving eyes at. Tru set it down next to the unit, then began muttering orders to her computer. In a moment, tiny filaments sprouted from her box and weaved their way to the unit under study. Tiny, thin strands glistened in the light as they wandered over the surface of the unit's back. Then two attached themselves to something. Those strands attracted others, and the filaments wove together into a solid pair of wires.
''Found the input and the output.'' Tru smiled happily.
Kris frowned. ''Input and output of what?''
''The real computer this bastard was carrying. Your poor old Aunt Tru has been wasting her time on the stalking horse they put there to distract her. Now we'll get at the real stuff. This may take a while. Do I smell cookies burning?''
That batch went into the trash can. While Kris made the next batch, Tru and Tommy leaned over the wrist unit, studying it with new respect. ''What's a two-bit punk doing with this kind of tech?'' Harvey asked.