Branegate (26 page)

“It could be just a title used to confuse things,” said Thos. “It could also be industrial sabotage by a competitor. Trae worked on important projects, and was clearly a prodigy.”

“But who? We have no competitors, not in transportation or communications technology. Everyone sub-contracts from us.”

“Maybe someone wishes it otherwise,” said Thos, and a few heads nodded in agreement.

“We’re exploring the possibility. The perpetrators will be found and punished, no matter who they are. In the meantime we salvage what we can. Trae’s abilities are lost to us in the future, but we have his residual scan and it includes an important testing sim he’d just finished. For the present, at least, the project will move swiftly. We’ll soon test a shuttle-sized ship in opening a gate large enough to retrieve vacuum state energy. Wallace has the details in a file he calls ‘Anton R’, but it’s quite technical. And scaling up to produce a gate large enough for ship transition remains a project for the future.”

The subject then changed to marketing matters. Meza bored them for half an hour, and the meeting broke for lunch. He went back to his office, passing Wallace’s on the way, and knocked softly on the door.

“Come!” An anxious voice; Wallace was expecting him.

Meza closed the door, spoke softly. “Watch closely. I think it’ll happen soon.”

“I have markers on every machine in the building. Everything going out is being recorded, too.”

“I won’t tell you who I think it is. I don’t want to bias your surveillance.”

Wallace nodded, then, “Anything new on the cloning front? I really need Trae’s help here, and Myra’s efficiency has dropped to nothing. Just seeing him alive will pick her up. She’s the best model maker I have.”

“He could have a new persona,” said Meza.

“She knows that. Just get him back here. Myra needs his presence, but I need his brain, and so does the project.”

“He’s in the tank. Better part of a year. Focus on the field tests for now.”

Meza left Wallace there, and went to his office, past Trae’s old cubicle. Myra was still there, working on Trae’s machine. Her shoulders were hunched over, her chin resting in the palm of her hand. She stared at a geometrical simulation on the screen, the same picture she’d been looking at since early that morning. Nothing on the screen had changed.

A cold sandwich awaited him in his office. He ate it quickly while sending a pile of notes answering morning mail, then went back to the Board Room.

Everyone was there, and Thos Hyeran greeted him with a faint smile. “Perhaps we can hear some better news this afternoon,” he quipped.

“Absolutely,” said Meza with a big smile at Thos.
Make your move, you old bastard, and I will nail your body to the wall.

He was wrong.

The man he was after did indeed make his move, only three hours after the Board meeting had ended and most of the staff was down in the cafeteria for dinner. But it wasn’t Thos Hyeran.

Wallace called him to his office, and Meza joined him there for more whispers behind a closed door. Myra didn’t even notice him, and hadn’t gone down for dinner.

“Bugger didn’t even examine the file, just went right to it and downloaded the thing. It was encrypted, you know, but he had the code. Wonder what other files he’s stolen from me. The whole project’s in here.” He thumped his keyboard with one hand, pointed at the screen. “Marcellus Rosling? Who is this guy?”

“I’d call him a minor member of the Board,” said Meza, clearly surprised. “Minerals and chemicals, some substantial holdings inherited from his family, a lot of interplanetary business, but no political leanings I’ve ever noticed. Rarely voices an opinion, attends regularly, has never missed a vote. Just sort of there, in an unobtrusive way. I’m amazed.”

“Maybe someone knows the access codes to his system,” said Wallace.

“Only if he gave it to them. The codes are changed weekly from his own list.”

Wallace’s fingers moved on the keyboard. “Well, he downloaded the file, then uploaded it again and sent it out to a relay. Here’s the final address. Sent to a unit director. No name. Do you recognize it? It’s on Gan.”

“Thisken and Ost. It’s an explosives and hypergolic fuel refinery. We’ve done some business with them in the past. Part of a big conglomerate there.”

Meza’s face suddenly flushed in sudden recognition. “Oh, my, that is interesting.”

“What?” said Wallace.

“That conglomerate is owned and controlled by the recently elected president of Gan.”

“Well, well,” said Wallace, and grinned nastily. “Now what?”

Meza thought for a moment, then, “We begin feeding these gentlemen false information: theory, test results, new materials, that sort of thing. Send them on a lot of dead end tracks. Try to include something dangerous, if you can.”

“I’ve been badly in need of a hobby,” said Wallace. “Mind if I monitor his correspondence while I’m at it? Slip in a virus or two?”

“Don’t go too far. I want him to feel safe. Be subtle about your misdirection. There are a lot of good scientists and engineers on Gan; they’ll spot anything too obvious. Another thing, we need to find out who these messages are directed to. ‘Unit Director, T Section’ must be a routing code. It could be anyone in the plant, or a very important person on Gan. I need to know who it is specifically.”

“I know a way to get a more personal response by controlling the server. Get him to try some other addresses,” said Wallace.

“Keep me posted on everything. What I really want to know is who ‘The Bishop’ is. And if we can kill him.”

Wallace’s smile faded at that, and he nodded soberly.

“Right now, I need to take care of someone. See you in the morning.”

Meza left the office, closed the door and took two steps to the cubicle where Myra was still huddled over her computer.

“Myra, get up,” he commanded.

“What?” She turned to look at him. Her eyelids were droopy, as if she’d been dozing.

“I said get up. You’re not eating or sleeping, and I’ve had enough of this moping around. Come with me -- now, please.” He held out his hand, a bit surprised when she took it in hers.

He led her down the hall and into an elevator, pressed the button for third level.

“Where are we going?”

“Cloning. We’re going to see Trae.”

“No.” She tried to pull her hand away.

“Stop it. You’re torturing yourself, and it’s affecting your work. I need you at a hundred percent. There’s a lot of work to be done before Trae is back with us, things we can do without his help.”

The door opened. He pulled her out of the elevator and down the hall to research wing. After a few steps she quit resisting, but was near tears. They went through the security station and two doors past the morgue to another station manned by a bored-looking male attendant who noticeably became alert as they approached.

“Good evening, Mister Meza,” said the man. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re here to see Zylak, C3. This is my assistant.”

“There’s really not much to see yet,” said the man.

“We’ll look at it anyway.”

They followed the attendant to a heavy steel door, unlocked. The room inside was cool and looked like a bank vault, with rows of large drawers on every wall. Each drawer was labeled. They went to one at eye level at the back of the vault. Labeled Zylak, C3.

The attendant pulled at the front of the drawer. A flap opened down on hinges, but it wasn’t a drawer inside. It was clear polymer, and behind it a soft, red light in a viscous liquid, and in that liquid was suspended a dark shape in a net of wires and polymer tubes woven in an ellipsoid a foot across.

“There he is,” said Meza, and pulled Myra close up so she could look inside. “Already the first little bit of Trae is there, coming out of a chip in that mesh all around him. Memories of the womb, Myra. We all have them, we just don’t consciously remember, but they’re a part of us. Mothers sing to their unborn babies, talk to them, right up to birth, without thinking.”

The shape was not an instrument, but a person: tiny hands and feet, a face with fine features. The eyes were tight shut, the fists clenched. One foot pressed against the surrounding mesh, and withdrew.

“You can talk to him if you like. Just put your hand on the window and speak to him. Growth is rapid in this medium. He’ll be out of this tank in weeks. A few months to adulthood, and all the while those transcribed memory cubes will be fed into him. Every bit of it is Trae, in this life and the life he had before.

“But not his body,” said Myra.

“Don’t know. We used the Zylak library. This will be the body of Anton, Leonid’s murdered son. He’ll be Anton, now, but then that’s who he always was.”

Myra looked at him, but was silent, her lips pressed together. Meza squeezed her hand gently.

“You can come here anytime, at any stage of his development. Only you, and myself. Wallace is the only other person who knows about this outside of this lab. We’ll harvest around age twenty-eight; it’ll be a few months. The last cube we download will be the one involving you. We did get a good residual scan, you know. I’m willing to bet good money he’ll remember everything about you, even things left unsaid.”

But would he? The conversations without words, no words to convey the feelings. Had Trae ever known how she felt about him? Had he ever had deep feelings for her? Could any of that be transcribed to a memory cube packed with long-chain molecules?

“I know you’re trying to make me feel better,” she said. “I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, and I miss him, that’s all.”

“I know,” said Meza, “but I need you, too. The lab needs you, even Wallace. I think he has a little crush on you.”

That brought a little laugh from her, and a sparkle in her eyes. “That’s not possible.”

“Oh yes, I think so. He worries about you, and it’s not just the work. We both want you to stop being sad.”

Now she squeezed his hand. “I will,” she said softly. “Maybe it would be good if I came here once in a while, just to be sure things are going as planned.”

“Good idea. And now I’m taking you to dinner, and then you’re going home to get a full night’s sleep. But you must agree to be a company slave again in the morning.”

“For you and Wallace,” she said, and it was a beautiful smile that made his heart flutter.

CHAPTER 27

T
he grand temple of The Faithful went up in one year without a single sovereign of government money involved. Two spires towered over the city, a symbol of Gan as the religious capital of all the populated worlds known to man. Within two years of its construction, people from other worlds were arriving on pilgrimages to worship there.

Working with their president, the elected members of The People’s Congress considered and decided on laws. They worked well together. The laws they passed seemed fair and just, following the will of the people. Nobody noticed the defeat of laws that might not favor the industrialists, or the close ties building between the military and giant business conglomerates on Gan. Nobody saw the flow of money and gifts either begin or increase as industry leaders bought their favors from men and women the common people had elected to represent them. And working above all of them, coordinating everything, was Azar Khalil, the President of Gan.

The honeymoon between Khalil and the populace went on for two years. By this time, The Church of The Faithful was a dominant force in the spiritual lives of the people, yet only forty percent of them regularly attended masses and tithed. The other sixty percent, most of whom actually professed a belief in The Source, were constantly bombarded by propaganda from The Church and subjected to unwelcome visits by zealous, neighborhood missionaries. They began to complain about this, first to local authorities, then to their elected representatives. They complained that their president wore his religion on his sleeve, and by his example gave The Church reason to expect all people to attend services, tithe, and pay the hundred sovereign tax the government imposed on all churchgoers. They complained that in a true democracy The Church and The State were distinct and separate, and one should have no influence on the other.

Khalil told them in a public speech he was sympathetic to their opinions, but did not agree with them. “To govern wisely requires a wisdom and spirituality based on principles set down by a higher power than humankind. We have that in The Source, and the teachings of His Church. I will follow those principles in every decision I make as long as I serve the people of Gan.”

Shortly after that speech, the president sent a letter, each copy signed personally, to every priest on Gan, inviting them to a colloquium on the interaction between church and state. Four hundred people attended, discussed the laws of life as set down by The Source, and the applications to congressional lawmaking. With the urging and persuasion of Khalil, a study committee was formed, consisting of seven Bishops, one from each of the seven districts of The Church of Gan. The committee would study the issues, formulate a list of basic principles on which to base laws, and present their findings to the People’s Congress to enter it as law. And in a press release after the colloquium, President Khalil first referred to that committee as ‘The Council of Bishops’.

He gave the committee an opinion paper on what he felt should be first principles to be obeyed in the making of laws, principles requiring total unity of religious faith on any planet. There was one power beyond man, and it was The Source. There was only one Church, that of The Faithful. Unbelief in The Source was unbelief in His Principles, and thus tantamount to non-acceptance of the laws of The State. He knew they would incorporate most if not all of his paper into theirs, for they were all Bishops, the most conservative of the priests. In his last meeting with them he fondly said, “When I stand in your presence, and feel the warmth of your faith washing over me, it occurs to me I’m not just a president but a kind of bishop for the people, for I must lead in mind, body and spirit.”

They were flattered by his remark, but did not understand the partial truth of what he’d just said.