Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (44 page)

This commercial building lay on a corner across the street from the backside, as it were, of the security headquarters. The far side, unfortunately, from the little park that had indeed been found to top Grandmama’s old lab site, or most of it; some of the lab had been mapped to run under the street fronting the headquarters. If ImpSec’s subbasements had been dug two dozen meters farther southeast, back in Mad Yuri’s day, they’d have cut right into the lab’s top corner. Tej didn’t see how they could have missed detecting it, but the Baronne claimed they must have. Dada…was perhaps persuading himself to believe.

As Tej, Amiri, and Grandmama exited the groundcar, Pearl detached herself from the shadow of a pillar and waved them over. Amiri removed a hefty valise from the trunk and followed.

“It’s looking good,” said Pearl. “Seems to be a storeroom for garage maintenance, in use, but no one has been in or out since I’ve been monitoring. I’ve adjusted the lock for us.”

She glanced around and led the way into a small, utilitarian chamber lit only, at the moment, by a cold light set on a metal shelf. The chamber and shelves seemed to contain stacks of various traffic barricades, buckets of paint, a ladder, and encouragingly dusty miscellanea. Pearl cracked a second cold light, doubling the eerie illumination.

“We need to leave it looking like no one has been in or out, too,” said Amiri. “At least for now. Where should we start?”

“Let’s shift these two shelves,” said Pearl. “We can shift them back, after. Here, Tej, take one end.”

Tej dutifully lifted her half of the grubby thing. When they were done, a large patch of concrete flooring lay exposed in the chamber’s corner.

From the valise, Amiri handed out breath masks, all marked with logos from the jumpship line the Arquas had traveled in on. Tej was under the impression that such safety devices were supposed to be handed back at the end of the voyage, but oh well. Waste not. He then donned biotainer gloves and removed a bottle from the valise; everyone else stood well back as he squatted and trailed a line of liquid in a smooth circle about a meter in diameter over the concrete, which began to bubble.

While the cutting fluid worked, he laid out other objects, including a long, mysterious padded case. Then they all stood back and stared for a while.

“All right,” he said at last, and he, Tej, and Pearl combined to lever the concrete slab out of its matrix and shove it aside. Revealed was a layer of pressed stones.

Pearl trundled up a waste bin, and she and Amiri and Tel then knelt and began prying up rocks—by hand. “You might have brought a shovel,” Tej grumbled.

“There should only be about a half a meter of this before we hit subsoil,” Amiri said. “Maybe less, if the contractor stinted.”

“Many hands make light the work,” Grandmama intoned, watching. At Tej’s irritated glance over her shoulder, she added, “It’s an old Earth saying I picked up.”

“No wonder everybody left the planet,” muttered Tej. Hired grubbers with power tools seemed a better deal for lightening a load to her.

“I would feel more secure if we could have found a place to rent or buy,” said Amiri. “Really proof against interruptions.”

“But this leaves no data trail,” said Pearl, perhaps defending her find.

This squabble continued intermittently until Tej found herself at the bottom of a half-meter-deep hole levering rocks out of identifiable dirt. Grandmama leaned over, shone the light down, and said, “That’s probably enough.” At least Amiri gave Tej a hand out. She pulled down her mask and sucked on a bleeding fingertip where her nail had broken.

Amiri brought the long box to the lip of the hole, took a deep breath, and knelt to open it.

“You don’t have to handle it like a live bomb,” Grandmama chided. “It’s quite inert until it’s activated.”

“If the stuff eats dirt, won’t it eat us?” said Amiri.

“Only if you are foolish enough to get it on yourself while it’s working,” said Grandmama. “Which I trust no grandchild of mine would be, especially after how many years of expensive Escobaran biomedical education?”

Amiri sighed and redonned his gloves. Tej ventured nearer to look more closely into the box.

It bore a label reading
Mycoborer, experimental, GSA Patent Applied For. Do not remove from GalacTech Company premises without authorization, under penalty of immediate termination and criminal prosecution
. Inside the box were layers of trays holding an array of thin, dark sticks, each about fifty centimeters long.

“How deep should we go for the first vertical shaft?” asked Amiri.

“Since Pearl’s location has given us the first two stories down for free, I think eight meters should be enough to start,” said Grandmama judiciously. “We may have to dogleg down more later, depending on what we find between, but that should put us approximately level with the top floor of my old laboratory bunker.”

“What diameter? A meter may not be very roomy, if we have to bring much stuff back up and out.”

“Mm, we may be able to drive a parallel or diagonal shaft later. For the moment, the chief urgency is to get someone inside to inventory what’s still there as swiftly as possible.”

If anything
, Tej couldn’t help thinking.

“Right,” said Amiri, and gingerly took up a pair of cutters, measured eight centimeters along one of the sticks, and snipped it through. He then took a half-meter-long drilling rod, descended to the hole, and began twisting it down through the hard-packed soil. Everything still all by gloved hand.

“If we’re doing this,” said Tej, “then why do I have to spend all day tomorrow driving Star around to engineering and plumbing supply places?”

“To give your nice ImpSec people something to look at, dear,” said Grandmama. “They will be happier that way, I’m sure.”

“By the time they think we’re ready to start, we should be done,” said Pearl. “How did you find out about this”—she bent to peer at the label—“Mycoborer product, anyway?”

“I did some consulting a few years back for GalacTech Bioengineering, and struck up an acquaintance with one of the developers.”

“Did you steal it out of their labs?” asked Pearl, with an air of incipient admiration.

“By no means,” said Grandmama, with a bit of a sniff, possibly at so crude a concept. “But when I and your mother and Shiv thought of this possible resource, I remembered Carlo, and went to see him. He was happy to give me a large supply. I
thought
it might be needed.” Her tone was a touch smug.

Amiri slipped the stick down his new hole, eyed it for straightness, climbed out, and drew from his valise a liter bottle of perfectly ordinary household ammonia, apparently purchased from some local grocery. He descended again and gingerly poured about half of it in around the stick. It disappeared into the dark with a bare gurgle, only its pungent aroma rising, along with Amiri, from their little excavation. Tej hastily readjusted her mask.

Four people stood around the pit, staring.

“Nothing’s happening,” said Tej after a minute.

“I thought you said this would work fast,” said Pearl.

“It’s not instantaneous,” chided Grandmama. “Macro-biological processes seldom are.” She added after a while, as anything visible continued to not happen, “The Mycoborer was developed as a method of laying pipe without having to dig trenches; the genetic developer hopes it can be trained to build its own custom pipe as it goes, but that seems to lie in the future. For the moment, they’re happy to have it proceed in a straight route with uniform diameter.”

“Pipes,” said Tej, trying to picture this. “Will they be big enough for people to get through?”

“Some pipes are quite large,” said Grandmama. “For civic water tunnels and underground monorails, for example.”

“Oh,” said Tej. “Um…if it’s really alive, what stops it from just growing forever?”

“The tubular walls, which are composed of its own waste products, eventually choke it off,” said Grandmama. “Failing that, there is a suicide gene built-in after it loses enough telomeres, and failing that, there is ordinary senescence. And failing
that
, it can be sterilized by heat. Really, I was
entirely
in sympathy with poor Carlo over his frustration with the delays about the scaled-up outdoor testing. Those Earth regulatory agencies are so obstructive.”

Amiri blinked. “Wait. This stuff has never been tested?”

“Outdoors, no. It has been tested most extensively in Carlo’s laboratory.” She added pensively, “It is supposed to penetrate fairly swiftly through soil, subsoil, and clay. So-so through sand. Poor in limestone, stopped by granite and other igneous rocks and by most synthetic materials. It is possible we may be compelled to reroute a few times, if the Mycoborer comes up against unexpected subsoil inclusions.”

Amiri was staring downward, looking disconcerted. “Never been tested…and we’re betting the House on it?”

“It’s being tested
now
,” said Grandmama, in a voice of utmost reason. “And in a very tidy legal isolation from its Earth-based parent company, too. Biological isolation as well. Although I have promised to send Carlo a full report of the trial,
sub rosa
of course. That was, as dear Shiv would say, our deal.”

She took the cold light from Pearl, knelt, and squinted. “Ah,” she said, sounding suddenly satisfied. “Now you can start to see something.”

All Tej saw was what appeared to be a foam of black goo forming around the lip of the borer hole, but Amiri seemed vaguely impressed.

“No noise, no vibration, no power surges of any kind,” said Grandmama. “Silent and stealthy as a fungal filament. Nothing for sensors to detect, until we start to walk about down there. I trust you all can contain your chatter, when the time comes.”

“Great,” said Pearl. “Now can we go to lunch?”

“Excellent idea,” said Grandmama. “Certainly.”

“Is it safe to leave this stuff alone?” asked Amiri.

Grandmama shrugged. “If it’s not safe to leave, it’s not safe to stay with, now is it?”

“That’s…a point,” said Amiri reluctantly. He didn’t say what kind.

Tej helped shift the slab back, move the shelves, and tidy up. When they finished, there was no sign of their intrusion but a new crack in the concrete, which, since the floor had a few others, ought to pass visual inspection. They exited the garage into a cold afternoon rain, and then she had no attention left for anything but getting them all through Vorbarr Sultana traffic alive.

*
 
*
 
*

As a first step toward re-seducing Tej, Ivan had a splendid dinner waiting her return that evening. And waiting, slowly drying out. About two hours after she’d said she’d be home, the door at last slid open, and voices sounded. Ivan arose grumpily from the couch, schooled his face into a smile, and lost it again as not only Tej, but Rish and Byerly strode in. In the middle of a raging argument.

“—and stop putting bugs in my hair!” Rish snarled to By. “You’d think you were twelve!”

“If you would just
talk
to me, we wouldn’t have any
need
for this roundabout method of communication,” said By, his normally suave voice slipping a bit.

“And where do you get the
we need
, anyway? If I need to talk to you, I will, believe me!”

Tej rubbed her temples, as if they ached. “Hi, Ivan Xav,” she said in a dull voice. She did not advance to kiss him or, as had been her even more charming habit considering her fetching build, hug him. “Sorry I’m late. Things ran on.”

“What things?”

“Just things.”

“Well, dinner?” said Ivan brightly. Yeah, it looked to be hypoglycemia city all around, here.

“I had a late lunch,” said Tej.

“I’m going back to the hotel,” said Rish. Ivan didn’t even get out an
Oh, good
, before she went on, “Are you coming with me, Tej? Or do you want to stay here and be
interrogated
?”

Tej cast Ivan a grimace that had little in common with a smile, and a tired wave. “Yes, all right…”

“Wait!” Ivan called as they reversed direction, shedding By. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, will you be back here to sleep? Should I wait up?”

“I don’t
know
.”

“
I
won’t,” said Rish. “I’m going to bunk in with Em and Pearl. I suppose the hotel can give me a gel-mattress or something.” She glowered at Byerly, and padded past him without looking back. Tej trailed disconsolately. The door slid shut once more.

Silence fell. Ivan and By stared at one another.

Ivan said, “Weren’t you supposed to be the glib, debonair ImpSec agent, here?”

Byerly said a rude word. “Or not, as the case may be. She’s cut me off, she says. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to slip in a few subtle questions during sex. She didn’t like it.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, and mentally edited his own planned ploy for later. If there was a later.

“But I am half
maddened
with curiosity. Arquas have been handing me off one to another for the past three days, all the same run-around going nowhere. They wouldn’t be working so hard if they didn’t have something to hide. Unless it’s a practical joke, I suppose.” He let out his breath in a huff and sloped over to fling himself on Ivan’s couch.

Ivan stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed, reluctantly. “Can’t you call for backup?”

“Did.” By put his head back, eyes closing. “ImpSec, it seems, is busy this week. Galactic, Domestic, Komarran, all the Affairs. That high-level diplomatic conference going on at the Residence, the big comconsole-net security convention downtown, prep for dear Laisa’s upcoming excursion with the crown prince to Komarr to see the grandparents—yes, they promise me help. At the end of the week. Or next week. Maybe. Meantime, I’m on my own. Just me and this ungodly herd of
your in-laws
.” His eyes opened, and shot a look of unmerited blame Ivan-ward. “To whom I am
already outed
.”

Ivan had seldom seen By emit so much emotion at one time. Granted, it was all
one
emotion, frustration, but still. Byerly-the-Smooth was decidedly ruffled.