Control on a platter. Elder Ari had set it all up for her, the way elder Ari had had Base One assemble itself out of bits and pieces and come alive. She’d triggered something without intending it or even knowing it existed, and possibly it would just roll on like a juggernaut, without her being able to stop it.
She thought: I don’t know if I want this. I don’t know if I want to lock Yanni out. I’m not ready to do that. Hicks’ people–they could start shooting. Hicks is Yanni’s man, I’m pretty sure. What am I supposed to do about that?
“Key your receipt of this message so the program is sure you heard it. It will replay on demand, should you need to review it. I recommend that.”
She keyed her login. Said yes to the question. And the screen went dark again, shut down.
She hugged her arms around her and stared at it, feeling the cold go numb, the mind–the mind traveling its own starless space.
Joyesse found her that way some time later, and hovered by her, saying, “Sera? Sera? Are you well?”
She knew it was Joyesse. The surface mind still took account of things, but the deeper thoughts didn’t want to be interrupted. She got up, and walked toward the bed, and got in, letting Joyesse draw the covers over her. She shut her eyes, but she wasn’t asleep, wouldn’t sleep, not while her thoughts were going over the dynamic that was Reseune, and the legislature, and the necessity of appropriating ReseuneSec.
She didn’t want to pull the trigger. She didn’t wantto lose Yanni. She didn’t wantto treat Yanni as an enemy, but Hicks had told Florian they were going to have top‑level access and either Yanni was hiding things from ReseuneSec, or ReseuneSec was hiding things from them.
And that wasn’t good.
Hicks was giving them a gift. Did they trust the thirty agents they were getting?
Assume the worst case where it regards those possessing what you intend to take.
I do have to do something. And something we’ve done put Base One on alert. It had a trigger tripped. Something I did, or that Florian or Catlin did, tripped it, and that means Yanni may figure it out, too, or Hicks might.
If it wasn’t us that tripped the alarm–if Yanni’s moved…
It was the middle of the night. She couldn’t call Justin. She shouldn’tcall Justin and ask him to hurry in his assessments on the security sets. That wasn’t the way to get the best results.
Base One, however, could find out how he was doing. Base One could get into any computer in the Wing.
She got up, grabbed a robe from the closet this time, and said, “Base One, on.”
Base One asserted itself in the computer, and turned the terminal on. She sat down. She searched up computers that were active in the Wing and found Justin’s office net with no trouble at all. It was listed as secure, probe‑proof. That meant nothing to Base One, which ran System in the Wing. She simply had a look into the files, and ran a search for recent files involving betas.
There they were, in a folder labeled goddess1.
Goddess, was it? Sarcastic, maybe. Justin could be that. It was certain he had no interest in her thatway. He’d made that clear when she was, oh, much, much too young. And he was settled with Grant. She’d be a fool to mess with that attachment, a really great fool.
She read the notes on the people Hicks had sent her. Justin had started with the bottom, the gammas. Number one gamma, passed, number two, passed.
She read far beyond that. He had left the betas for last, and was two individuals from finishing, which meant he might be done tomorrow.
“Sera?” From the door. Joyesse again. “Sera, would you like anything?”
“Nothing,” she said, and Joyesse went away. Ari delved deeper, deeper into her own understanding of sets, and read Justin’s notes, and absorbed his comments, which made sense. He saw, clear as clear, where the sets were vulnerable to a command, and noted push‑button items that just had to be patched, was all.
Easy to do. She knew the way to do it. People reacted–to expectation of good stimulus, like praise; to fear, linked to imagination–imaginative people feared a wider range of things. And some people had an “off” switch that routed an idea to the analytic faculties, and some–mus, which they didn’t birth many of, were like that–you started them on a track and they’d follow it without a second thought. Mus wanted everything to be the same all the time–they were happier when it was like that–unless what they were assigned linked to a desire for an adrenaline rush, which was a whole other problem…
Betas, however, tended to overcheck and hesitate, and reconsider, and given an adrenaline rush, they dithered a second and then acted. These were guards. They had lightning‑quick fuses where it came to threat against their Contract holders. But she also had to defuse their “pause” switch where it came to reluctance to report something as yet unresolved.
Report any anomaly to Florian or Catlin immediately, she’d tell them: they’ll take the responsibility.
And being azi, the new people would do that, once they took that order deep: they’d wantthat contact with Florian and Catlin–they’d be uneasy and unresolved until they got it, and they’d run to get it.
And if there was some buried contrary instruction in the stack, say, one to report to Hicks or Yanni, something that just somehow hadn’t gotten into the records, that command to go to Florian, emphasized with a hard drug punch, would send them into profound emotional conflict–enough to show up, fast, in a very, very upset azi. If you ever feel conflicted, she’d tell them, additionally, report to Florian immediately.
If you can’t find a bug in a set, elder Ari’s tape had told her, just do something to make the conflict show itself– makethe subject react, never mind finesse. Present a quandary, contrary to the direction you suspect the bug to react, identify it–and excise it.
So just give me the files, Justin. Quit fretting. I need to get to work, and I need these people. Whatever’s been done, if it was done, it’s not going to be in any record. That’s what we have to worry about.
Justin thought she was still studying the basics–maybe thought she was out of her depth with these security sets; or he was, which was possible, he hadn’t really worked with the type before.
She had. From childhood. She knew Florian and Catlin. She looked at the possibilities in a security azi tape…
And she suddenly had a picture of how to solve any problem in a security azi set. It was right in the same place in the set that they attached the compulsion. Just conflict it, and get angst in the subject, and then resolve the angst, leaving the subject feeling oh, so much better. In azi, deep set work was so much easier. Deep set stuff didn’t need to be unhooked from all sorts of randomly acquired born‑man thinking, which ran like a bad cabling job; and it didn’t even have to be unhooked from the later instructions: if there were conflicts, they’d show. The azi in question, above delta level, was very likely to report his own conflicts. Azi were so, so elegantly clean. A thought led to very planned places, economical, and ideally un‑conflicted, everything structured and architectured and efficient.