Paradox (27 page)

They were using corneal smart-gel, photomultiplying and IR-sensitive, but it didn't matter because Tom's entire skin and body were a sensory organ, creating a doppler-map in three dimensions. He
felt
attack-vectors as proprioceptive flow.

—and a heel-kick stabbed close to Tom's spleen—

Sweeping block, without looking.

—with follow-up hook-punch.

The man was big and murderously fast, punching for Tom's throat, but as the hand came close, scarlet spots sprang out across the man's inner forearm—
targets
—and Tom went for the lung-8 point over the radial nerve, elbowed the radiobrachialis and whipped a sword-hand strike against the carotid sinus, and the big man dropped.

Pause.

One stumbled, but—glint:
watch out!
—another, bringing a graser rifle to bear—

Crescent kick, deflecting the weapon, then Tom concentrated on limb destruction until the rifle clattered to the floor. Hip-throw.

—and the other four were dangerous, moving in pairs: trained attack team—

Overdrive. Pure Zen. He rolled over the glass conference table, using the environment, driving off the wall.

—lattice blade crackling—
arm, burning
—very close—

Tom's kick took out the knee with a crunch as he tangled the man's arms together, twisted, whipped his leg up high and dropped an axe-kick.

—three left—

Sidestepped as a graser beam split the air apart—
move now
—and he dropped low, grabbing the weapon as he shoulder-barged—left stump good for something—tossing the man against his comrades.

—one man in the clear—

A spinning kick faster than thought, and he was down.

—but three were still moving on the floor, scrabbling for weapons—

And Tom's motion became a blur as he darted among the shadows, striking out, choking, until seven shadowed lumps lay motionless.

Victory.

Sudden bright lights sprang into being as the door membrane dissolved and glowclusters blazed with full intensity. Squinting, Tom froze as four mirror-visored troopers entered, rifles locked on.

But their officer was dissolving her visor, looking at him with clear grey eyes. She frowned.

“I know you.”

An unmarked skimmer picked her up at the
pension
(which was quaint, overdecorated in the alpine mode, with precise cuckoo-clock charm), and dropped her off at the lakeside, far from habitation, where waves gently lapped against the deserted shingles. Then, in less than a minute, unseen endothermal filaments created an ice bridge, greenish blue and solid, arrowing across the surface. Karyn had walked perhaps ten precarious metres from shore when a bullet-sub surfaced, and its uniformed crew waved her aboard.

The ice bridge was already dissolving as they sank beneath the waves.

“Isn't there a public-access tunnel?” Karyn asked, made nervous by the apparent subterfuge.

“Closed for inspection.”

Have I overplayed my hand?
After the flurry of h-mail—denied requests—had she hinted at too much?

Her paranoia intensified as they drifted closer to the crystalline complex which was Genève-sous-Lac.

After docking, she was taken to an empty waiting-room, and left alone. One wall was convex, transparent, looking out upon the clear, dark waters. Small white-and-gold fish nibbled at it.

Damn!
She paced restlessly, then forced herself to sit.
What the hell am I doing here?

Her leverage, for the forthcoming meeting, was in the handful of crystalline splinters tucked away in her jumpsuit's pockets.

Decision.

Risk everything.

To save Dart, she had to be prepared to throw away their only chance.

“Frau Doktor Schwenger,” said an automatic system in English, “will see you now.”

“
L'affaire
,” said Karyn peevishly, “
est dans le lac.
”

Colloquially it meant: everything's a mess. The AI made no reply.

A holo arrow indicated the way she should go. Reluctantly, Karyn stood again and followed; the arrow moved, projectile-like, ahead of her.

Doktor Schwenger's suite spectacularly looked out upon the lake's bed: low lighting glittered on quartz insertions, and shadows played among tendril-like aquatic plants which Karyn could not have named.

“Sit down.” Schwenger was small and blonde, and wore her authority easily. “Please.”

“
Vielen Dank.
”

A small smile crossed Schwenger's face. “
Sie haben aber viel gut Deutsch, nichtwahr?
” Karyn shrugged, as Schwenger added: “
Wir
können uns auf irgenden Sprache unterhalten.
”

“
Also gut
,” replied Karyn. “But I bow to your superior command of English.”

“So.” Schwenger's smile was a little too quick.

I shouldn't have conceded that
, was Karyn's first thought. But her aikido training gave her deeper insight:
I need to blend and flow, not score points.

“Thank you for seeing me so quickly, Doktor Schwenger,” she said. “You must have a busy schedule, as do I.”

A tiny frown. “I understood you were on leave.”

Disingenuous: Schwenger would not have rearranged her schedule to meet a mere Pilot Candidate without suspecting something.

“Some PR matters.” Karyn tried to appear nonchalant. “An interview with TechnoMonde Vingt-Deux. Other things.”

“Unusual, for a Pilot Candidate.”

Ice-blue eyes. A disconcerting hint of ironic smile.

“Isn't it?” Karyn nodded. “I was hoping to talk about the
projected rewiring
of my nervous system.”

Schwenger was very still.

Zero points for subtlety, McNamara
, Karyn told herself.
But at least she's got the message.

“In what respect?” Schwenger asked quietly.

What Karyn really wanted was all-out search-and-rescue, using the entire fleet; but no amount of leverage would give her that.

“Bringing forward my Phase II.” Centring herself, Karyn added: “And giving me the next new ship.”

Frau Doktor Ilse Schwenger was a divisional director, with board-level responsibility for the Commissioning Programme. She could do this.

“That would not be very easy, as you must appreciate.”

Atemi is 90 per cent of aikido
, O-Sensei Ueshiba had allegedly once said. The founder of that most gentle of arts knew when to blend and when to strike.

Show her.

Nerves screaming—flashes of Dart: alone and dying—Karyn laid out the crystal shards upon Schwenger's desk, knowing that in the next few seconds her own career in UNSA might be over.

Blue toroid, engineered foetus. Blurred text and graphs.

Damn the career. But Dart needed her.

“Low-res images,” murmured Schwenger, as she slid each fragment in turn through her desktop's lasing slot. “Hard to make out detail.”

The last image hung there: actinic blue.

“Not in the original crystals.”

Tear the corner off a photograph. In that corner, one has a small piece of the picture. Any piece of a still hologram, though, contains the whole solid image: the smaller the shard, the lower the resolution.

“Who has the crystals?” Schwenger's eyes were glacial blue. “You or TechnoMonde Vingt-Deux?”

She knew, all right.
Schwenger had hardly had to glance at the images to understand what they were.

What should I do?

One option: play hard to get. The other—

Gamble.

“They're in my room at the Gasthaus Irving, in Lausanne. Can you send someone to pick them up?”

Schwenger frowned, then nodded agreement.

“Let me call the reception desk there.” Karyn waited for Schwenger to hand over control of the desktop holo, and made the call, authorizing UNSA personnel to visit her room.

I hope I'm doing the right thing.

“The crystals are time-stamped and logged,” Karyn added, closing down the comms display. “Along with the camera. Full set. Nothing missing. No duplicates.”

The Frau Doktor made the arrangements for pick-up, closed the call, then opened up a second session. But she minimized and silenced the display, then clasped her hands and looked directly at Karyn.

“Thank you, Pilot Candidate McNamara. We appreciate your cooperation.”

“Just doing my duty: we can't let misguided UNSA personnel put our public standing at risk.”

“I agree with you, of course.”

“Sheer good luck I found out about them…You know, I take my career very seriously.” Meaning: she was prepared to throw it away, if she had to.

The slightest narrowing of ice-blue eyes. “That's good, Pilot Candidate. How are your plans progressing?”

“I'm speaking openly”—both of them smiled at that—“when I say how much I hope you'll change the new vessel's mission profile. As well as put me on board, of course.”

“You're referring to Pilot Mulligan.” It was as though a mask had
dropped: Schwenger's concern looked genuine. “An effective rescue mission, though, given the timescale—”

Before Dart's ship disintegrates.
Karyn knew what she meant.

A subtle hand gesture, which Karyn almost missed. Then Schwenger leaned forward: “Officially, I accept that there are no additional copies of the stolen data. But this is off the record.”

She's switched off a holo-log.
Everything had been recorded, until now.

Assume trickery: a second holocamera might exist.

“Your price for silence,” Schwenger demanded, “is this assignment? Am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“Even if—”

“It's not futile. Please look at this.” Karyn handed over a crystal: the projections which she and Chojun Akazawa had laboriously put together.

Holo, blossoming.

“Please.” There was no disguising the desperation in Karyn's voice as she begged Schwenger to believe the data. “See here.” Her finger traced a trajectory through a twisting manifold: a representational phase-space, not physical mu-space. “It's a kind of reverse relativity: I can reach Dart in minimal time, according to
his
timeline, by following this subjectively longer geodesic.”

Schwenger shook her head, but Karyn could see that she was following the technical argument, gaze skimming across numeric dataflows. “Dangerous,” Schwenger said.

“Feasible.”

“Yes.” Schwenger leaned back in her chair.

“Yes, you think it's possible? Or—?”

“The mission profile's changed, as of now.” Schwenger's control gesture magnified and unfroze the suspended comms holovolume. “Fully urgent, Willi. We're changing the new vessel's mission profile.” Muted sounds from the holo. “We'll need field enhancers, details to
follow. Bump the current Pilot off the list. We're going with Pilot Candidate McNamara.”

The conversation became silent.
Anti-sound protection
, Karyn realized.

Then: “Downloading the annexe now. Endit.” Schwenger cut the comms session and ejected a small wafer from the desktop. “Sign this, please.”

She held out the wafer.

“What is it?” Karyn took the wafer, holding it by the edges.

“An addition to your contract of employment. It makes you part of Project Rewire, and binds you to the terms of its non-disclosure agreement.”

“But—”

“But the project originators are going to get into a lot of trouble—off the record.” Schwenger leaned back in her chair. “Nevertheless, I require your acceptance.”

“OK.” Karyn agreed via voice and thumbprint.

“You can read it first.”

“Not necessary.” Karyn placed the signed wafer on the desktop. “Thank you. I'll cancel my interview with—”

“Please don't. A personal contact with a major NewsNet could be very useful…so long as we keep sensitive information out of the frame.”

“I'll do that.”
And I'm in a lot of legal trouble if I don't.

The price she had to pay.

“There'll be some senior board members stepping down shortly.” Schwenger tapped a crystal shard. “Opening up interesting opportunities.”

Your rivals, about to fall.

“Foolish of them to sponsor such a misguided project,” Schwenger added. “Interesting coincidence, that I should be the one to learn of it.”

Coincidence, right.

Karyn said nothing. Blend and flow.

“You wouldn't ever try to move against
me
this way, would you, Pilot Candidate?”

Karyn bowed her head. “I wouldn't dream of it, Frau Doktor Schwenger.”

Short silence.

Then: “Please, Karyn”—a smile lit up the blonde woman's face—“call me Ilse.”