"That will be sufficient." When Jene completed his schooling, he would automatically become Basq's superior, but if he was unable to handle the tasks his station required both in terms of complexity and etiquette, he'd have nothing to thank Basq for.
Basq fixed his gaze on his work alcove and headed straight for it. His apprentices stepped around him without a word. Praise and greetings to his Beholden would be handed out once Jene's report had shown him what they had earned.
Let it be seen I run my team properly. No one in this atmosphere will be led to inappropriate ideas or manners. Let it be seen that if Jahidh had not been removed from our care, he would have never even thought of defecting.
Pointless fear, Basq scolded himself. Why can I not let it go? If anyone had any thought that his actions reflected on me, on us, I would not have been assigned to the committee.
Without needing to be asked, Caril retrieved two extra chairs from the main room. Winema did not sit down immediately. While Basq pressed the contract holosheets into the fiber-filled walls, Winema opened her bag. She took out two cubical system taps and typed in their activation codes. Caril stepped around her to raise the privacy walls. Grey-white optical matter spread out from the walls, building on itself until it fenced in the entire work area.
Winema affixed the first tap to the arm of Basq's terminal chair. When her hand released it, the red warning light blinked on. If the tap were moved or if its dataflow was disturbed without the proper signals being given, Winema would see a warning on her camera set. So would all the other active Witnesses. She hung the second tap between the contracts.
Visible taps on his terminal, of course, were no guarantee that Winema had not ordered invisible ones to be placed on his Beholden's terminals. It was well within the bounds of her contract to order the entire area to be placed under a continuous data scan.
Winema took her seat next to Caril, and Basq settled himself in the terminal chair. He swung the keypads into place. Although he had meant what he had said to Caril when he greeted her, part of him knew that home for him was really in front of his terminal. This was where he had made the discoveries about Eric Born that led directly to the location of the Home Ground.
Basq's terminal was not the standard type, like the ones his students and Beholden used. Those were designed with processing layers of generalized organic chains between the silicates. The means for making organic/inorganic chips was another of the private technologies. The integration of organics ensured that no outside machine could tap into the Vitae private network because it would be unable to decode the chemical signals that diffused them. The organics in Basq's terminal took the technology a step further. They had been designed from maps of his cerebral cortex and cloned from his own cell structure. Basq's terminal could be used to assemble information in a way that matched the way Basq thought. It was, in many ways, his learning and skill directly enhanced by the speed and precision of a machine.
Basq settled his hands into position on the slip-keys that covered his control pads. There were those who used vocal interfaces, giving orders to their terminals and receiving answers as if they were dealing with apprentices or Beholden. Basq had never liked that. He liked to shuffle and manipulate tangible results. It gave him a better feel for his work.
It only took a moment to slip the keys into new positions so that the board was reconfigured to lock the posted contracts into the main dataflow. Now, the sheets could be read through the network by anyone who needed to verify Basq's authority, but their contents could not be changed without a direct signal from either Avir or Kelat.
The next thing to be done was to call up Jene's report of the current resources and status of the terminals in the main room. Basq slid his keys into the proper positions. The main display space showed him a tidy series of graphs indicating available storage space as well as a chart of the channels that had been opened or reserved.
As it stood, he could instantly contact the persons of Ivale or Uary, or read through the information in their datastores. He also had an open line to the main datastore of the Hundredth Core and one of the ISAs, Paral, wasn't it? Basq squinted at the ID code under the chart; Paral had thought to draw up contracts for time on the lines between the Grand Errand and each of the ships in the encampment, just in case they were required. Basq made a mental note to give the ISA his warmest personal greeting.
All the resources he might need were available and all of them ready for his orders. Basq felt a bit dizzy. He was used to juggling budgets and time and angling for the attention of various Subcontractors and supervisors. Those concerns were wiped away. Now he advised the Reclamation Assembly and the information he required to serve them would be delivered whenever he asked for it.
Basq poised his hands over the keys and considered his assignment. An analysis of the level of danger that the human-derived artifacts presented to the Reclamation efforts. How to even begin to answer such a question? Then he remembered his secondary assignment. Assess the level of danger represented by the missing artifacts. It was dangerous to theorize from a sample of one, but if specifics known about Eric Born could be supplemented by the generalities known about the human-derived artifacts populating the Home Ground, then some useful conclusions might be drawn. The new revelations regarding Eric Born's abilities added an extra dimension to the calculations. If Born could manipulate physical objects more massive than streams of photons or quanta, then he might…He might…Basq felt his heart contract.
He might even be able to tap into the private network.
Basq's hands leapt into motion and the terminal responded immediately. It snatched up his report on the escape from Haron Station and all the conclusions that had been drawn. Basq barely noticed that most of those conclusions bore Uary's stamp. He slid the keys back and forth with deft, determined strokes. The new findings had to be shuffled into the existing files on Eric Born. All observations had to be reinterpreted and a new pattern established that could provide an answer to the new questions. Could Eric Born tap the Vitae network? And, just as important, if he had that ability, would he realize it?
The implications were vast. Assuming that Eric Born was not the only artifact of his kind and he did have the ability to tap the network, the other artifacts did too. Were there range limitations? What would the duration of the tap be? Was there a significant energy expenditure? Answers to all those questions would be needed to prepare for a direct encounter during the Reclamation. No totally accurate information would be available at this point, since no empirical tests had been carried out, but with the terminal he could at least provide a reasoned estimate. Basq had employed all the usual observation practices from the beginning. He had made sure that Eric Born was, at random intervals, given assignments that could be recorded for analysis. When those observations had yielded evidence that Born had not evolved naturally, Basq had watched him even more closely. The majority of Born's assignments had required him to work on space stations or other networks the Vitae Ambassadors had direct access to.
Basq watched grimly as the results of his work unfolded for him. The display space divided itself into three separate areas. One ran direct recordings of Eric Born's observed activities, one showed stylized representations of the results of those activities, whether or not direct visual data were available, and one showed single-phase graphic enhancement of the multiphase information.
There had been less truly useful information in datastores than Basq had hoped for. Eric Born was cautious. He would only use his abilities after all other avenues had been explored. Of those instances when extramechanical intervention had been required, it appeared he did not use it simply to snatch his prize out of its storage space. Instead, he used it on a secondary or tertiary system where he could acquire the information, like a code sequence or secured ID, that he needed to reach the main objective.