Curse of the Iris (12 page)

Yana peered into the box. The strange devices were identical—one end flared into a bell, while the other was topped with a box and some kind of readout.

“What are those things?” Tycho whispered to his sister.

“Some kind of scanner,” Yana whispered back. “I've never seen a model like it.”

“A scanner for finding the treasure?” Tycho asked.

Mavry elbowed Tycho and shook his head. The teller pulled white gloves from somewhere within the recesses of his uniform and put them on.

“The key card, if you please,” he said, then stopped, peering into the case.

“What happened to Josef Unger's device?” Tycho asked. “When was it removed?”

“You seem confused about our business, young man,” the teller said, beginning to strip off his gloves again. “We are caretakers, not archivists.”

“But you must have some record of when the device was removed,” Tycho insisted.

“Yes, you must,” Diocletia said. “I'd like to know the answer to that question myself.”

The teller said nothing, concentrating on carefully folding his gloves.

“Any such information would be a private matter between ourselves and Mr. Unger,” he said finally. “And as we determined in rather exhaustive detail earlier, Mr. Unger is not present.”

“But you're letting us use his key card,” Carlo objected. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“It is consistent with our operating principles and business procedures.”

“That's not the same thing.”

“At the Bank of Ceres we hold confidentiality in high regard. Just as we honor our agreements with customers, despite the fact that we no longer deal with businesses such as yours.”

The Hashoones' eyes jumped to their mother's face. Diocletia's expression didn't change, which is how Tycho knew the teller was in real trouble.

“Businesses such as ours?” she asked. “I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by that.”

“I was referring to irregular professions.” The teller sniffed. “No insult was meant.”

“It most certainly was. And I've had quite enough of it. First you abuse longtime customers, and now you act as if we're too stupid to recognize an insult.”

“A fascinating perspective, but since our business appears concluded, I'll leave further exploration of the question to you and your brood.”

“I've got a better idea,” Diocletia said. “Let's go discuss it with Sir Armistead-Kabila.”

“Alfonso Armistead-Kabila? You know our bank's chairman?”

“Since I was a little girl. Does that surprise you, Mr. . . . ?”

“Hohenfauer,” mumbled the teller.

“Surely you're aware, Mr. Hohenfauer, that the chairmen and chairwomen of this bank have known my family since my ancestor Ulrika Hashoone became a founding director some three centuries ago.”

Hohenfauer blinked rapidly, and his fingers twitched, trying to summon the information that would have been instantly available if only he'd been at his desk, where things suddenly seemed much safer.

“I'll lead the way—I remember where Alfonso's office is,” Diocletia said.

“That—that won't be necessary,” the teller sputtered, rushing over to a terminal. “What was it you wanted to know?”

“Don't trouble yourself—Alfonso will be happy to help us.”

“My dear Captain Hashoone, let's not be hasty,” Hohenfauer said. “There's no need to bother the chairman, is there? Ah—it seems the records were incomplete earlier. I have the information right here. The device was removed in 2816, by Josef Unger himself.”

“I see,” Diocletia said. “We'll take the other device now—the one that my grandfather left in your safekeeping.”

“I—I'll need his key card for that,” Hohenfauer said.

“We don't have it. But surely you aren't questioning my identity or my rights under the Collective agreement?”

“No, but regulations—”

“Very well,” Diocletia said. “We'll discuss it with Alfonso. Unlike his subordinates, he is capable of showing a little imagination.”

“Just a moment, Captain Hashoone—let me see what I can do,” Hohenfauer babbled, typing frantically. A moment later he extracted a blank key card from within his uniform, yanked his white gloves back on, and pressed the card into the slot below Johannes Hashoone's name. The light beside the slot turned green. The teller removed the strange device and handed it to Diocletia, who studied it for a moment, brow furrowed.

“Are there instructions?” she asked.

“No . . . there's nothing,” Hohenfauer said, waving for his colleagues to come and take the box away. “But as per the Collective agreement, you are entitled to review the association's articles of incorporation. I can print them out or send them to your mediapad. Or both, of course.”

“Mediapad will do,” Diocletia said. “Now that your records have been magically repaired, what else is in them?”

Hohenfauer scanned his terminal's screen. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead.

“There's a conditional transmission. When a slot is activated, a prearranged message is sent to all other members of the Collective, using receiver codes specified at the time of the agreement.”

“There's no need to send the transmission,” Diocletia said. “We'll see to it that the others are informed.”

“I can't stop it,” Hohenfauer said. “I really can't. It's automatic—set up decades ago!”

Diocletia scowled.

“What does the message say?”

“I don't know that either. But there's something else—it says ‘The quantum signal will now activate for the next twenty-one days.'”

Tycho looked at his father, who shrugged.

“Right, the quantum signal,” Diocletia said. “Now, is there anything else in there I need to know?”

“I—I don't know what that means,” Hohenfauer stammered.

Diocletia handed the strange device to Mavry, then took a step toward Hohenfauer, her lips pressed together in a thin line. The teller took an involuntary step back and bumped into his computer console.

“It means, Mr. Hohenfauer, that you don't want me to come back here because there was something else in those records that you didn't tell me. Because that would be bad customer service. And bad customer service makes me angry.”

“Th-there's nothing like that,” Hohenfauer said.

“Good,” Diocletia said. “Now let's go see Alfonso.”

“But why? Captain Hashoone, please! I've done everything you asked!”

“What choice do I have? When Alfonso learns his old friend Huff Hashoone has been jailed at the Bank of Ceres's request, he'll of course want to know what happened. I'm afraid he'll be very upset.”

“The earlier incident? Why, anyone can see that was a misunderstanding. I'll contact the authorities and have him released right away.”

Diocletia considered that for a moment, then nodded. “In that case, I suppose I could visit Alfonso another day, when I'm not so tired from court. And now, Mr. Hohenfauer, our business really does appear to be concluded.”

The teller babbled pleasantries as he escorted them back to the vestibule, then bade them a good day with undisguised relief.

“You never told me you spent your childhood hanging around with bank chairmen,” Mavry said as they pushed their way through the crowded corridors.

“Please. I looked up the chairman's name on my mediapad while we were waiting in line. Though Ulrika Hashoone really was a founding director—the Bank of Ceres was started to give us pirates a safe place to stash our loot.”

“So you've never met Alfonso Armi-What's-His-Name?” Mavry said.

“Of course not,” Diocletia said. “Hang around with bankers? Honestly, Mavry. As the daughter of a respectable pirate, I was raised better than that.”

8
THE MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE

T
he
Shadow Comet
wasn't scheduled to depart Ceres until late the following day, when the minor planet came into ideal alignment for traveling to Jupiter without burning excess fuel. Despite Tycho's and Yana's frantic warnings that they only had three weeks to figure out how to find the mysterious signal that had been activated, Diocletia insisted that they weren't going anywhere until then.

The extra time, she said as the gig rose from the landing field, would allow Huff and Mavry to ensure the
Comet
was fully repaired and to make another sweep for tracking devices. The children, meanwhile, could use the hours to do something more useful than arguing with her: Yana would study the scanner, while Tycho and Carlo investigated the pirates who had made up the Collective.

Aboard the
Comet
, Diocletia clambered up the ladderwell for a rest, leaving Yana poking and prodding at the scanner while Tycho and Carlo offered suggestions.

“This is one weird machine,” Yana said. “It's only sensitive over a very narrow range of frequencies. It would be pretty much useless for detecting anything outside of that.”

“That sounds like it was made to detect a specific signal,” Carlo said.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Yana said.

“Hohenfauer called it a quantum signal,” Tycho said. “What's that?”

“It works based on quantum physics, which Vesuvia hasn't made you guys study yet,” Carlo said. “Basically, you have a pair of signals, and when one activates, so does the other—no matter how far apart they are. Engineers have never been able to use it for a message more sophisticated than yes-no, but it works.”

“And any kind of signal can be a quantum signal?” Yana asked.

“I don't see why not,” Carlo said.

“Interesting,” Yana said. “Because look at the bell on this thing. It's clearly made to detect sound. But you could make an acoustic scanner by just wiring together a few parts, and this baby was built like an attack cruiser. I'm not kidding—you could use this housing for hull armor.”

“Or the other way around,” Tycho said. “It did belong to pirates, after all.”

“Well, Yana, you've got a couple of hours to play with it before we give Mom an update,” Carlo said. “Tyke, I told Dad I'd run diagnostics on our propulsion systems, but after that we'll try to figure out the workings of the Collective.”

Tycho nodded, then turned at a beep from his console.

“You guys get a message?” he asked, strolling over for a look. Their father probably wanted them to look at something in the
Comet
's fire room. Or perhaps their aunt Carina had sent something to all of them—they'd already been warned that family meetings awaited them at home on Callisto.

“Not me,” Yana said, settling into her chair with the scanner in her lap.

“Me neither,” Carlo said, calling up the diagnostics for the
Comet
's steering and rudders.

“Looks like you're the lucky one,” Yana said. “Let us know what you did wrong.”

Tycho tapped the message indicator on his screen. The sender's recognition code was a scramble of nonsense letters and numbers. But the words were clear enough.

“Good news—somebody's gonna tell me I won the Martian lottery,” he scoffed. “Amazing, since I never bought a ticket.”

“What was that?” Yana asked distractedly.

“Nothing,” Tycho said. “Just a junk message.”

He went to delete it, but before he did, his console beeped again.

“Very funny, Yana,” Tycho said.

“What's funny?” Yana asked, looking up from the scanner.

“Okay, fine. Carlo, cut it out,” Tycho said.

“Cut what out?” Carlo asked. “I'm a little busy for jokes, Tyke.”

Tycho silenced his console's message indicator.

Who is this?
he typed. He looked at the message for a moment, trying to figure out which of his siblings would be laughing at him in a minute, then sent it.

The reply came back almost immediately.

Tycho pulled up the origin code for the message and saw it had been run through one of the public broadcast servers on Ceres, hiding its origin. A message sent from within the ship would have moved over an internal channel. Still, there were ways around that. And both Carlo and Yana had the technical know-how to pull off such a prank.

Help me with what?
he typed.

One second turned into five, then ten.

Tycho sighed.