Old Man's War Boxed Set 1 (76 page)

“Okay,” I said. “Now I need the long answer.”

Bennett reached over and grabbed a PDA that he had earlier pried apart, lifted the top off it and handed it to me. “This PDA is a fairly standard piece of Colonial Union technology. Here you see all the components; the processor, the monitor, the data storage, the wireless transmitter that lets it talk to other PDAs and computers. Not a single one of them is physically connected to any of the other parts. Every part of this PDA connects wirelessly to every other part.”

“Why do they do it that way?” I asked, turning the PDA over in my hands.

“Because it’s cheap,” Bennett said. “You can make tiny data transmitters for next to nothing. It costs less than using physical
materials. They don’t cost much either, but in aggregate there’s a real cost differential. So nearly every manufacturer goes that way. It’s design by accountant. The only physical connections in the PDA are from the power cell to the individual components, and again that’s because it’s cheaper to do it that way.”

“Can you use those connections to send data?” Zane said.

“I don’t see how,” Bennett said. “I mean, sending data over a physical connection is no problem. But getting into each of these components and flashing their command core to do it that way is beyond my talents. Aside from the programming skills, there’s the fact each manufacturer locks out access to the command core. It’s proprietary data. And even if I could do all that, there’s no guarantee it would work. Among everything else, you’d be routing everything through the power cell. I’m not sure how you get that to work.”

“So even if we turn off all the wireless transmitters, every one of these is still leaking wireless signals,” I said.

“Yeah,” Bennett said. “Across very short distances—no more than a few centimeters—but, yeah. If you’re really looking for this sort of thing, you could detect it.”

“There’s a certain point at which this all becomes futile,” Trujillo said. “If someone’s listening for radio signals this weak, there’s a pretty good chance they’re scanning the planet optically as well. They’re just going to
see
us.”

“Hiding ourselves from sight is a difficult fix,” I said to Trujillo. “This is an easy fix. Let’s work on the easy fixes.” I turned to Bennett, and handed back his PDA. “Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Could you
make
wired PDAs? Ones without wireless parts or transmitters?”

“I’m sure I could find a design for one,” Bennett said. “There are public domain blueprints. But I’m not exactly set up for manufacturing. I could go through everything we have and cobble up
something. Wireless parts are the rule but there are some things that are still wired up. But we’re never going to get to a place where everyone’s walking around with a computer, much less being able to replace the onboard computers on most of the equipment we have. Honestly, outside this black box, we’re not getting out of the early twentieth century any time soon.”

All of us digested that for a moment. “Can we at least expand
this
?” Zane finally asked, motioning around him.

“I think we should,” Bennett said. “In particular I think we need to build a black box medical bay, because Dr. Tsao keeps distracting me when I’m trying to get work done.”

“She’s hogging your equipment,” I said.

“No, she’s just really cute,” Bennett said. “And that’s going to get me in trouble with the wife. But also, I’ve only got a couple of her diagnostic machines in here, and if we ever have a real medical problem, we’re going to want more available.”

I nodded. We’d already had one broken arm, from a teenager climbing up on the barrier and then slipping off. He was lucky not to have broken his neck. “Do we have enough mesh?” I asked.

“This is pretty much our entire stock,” Bennett said. “But I can program it to make some more of itself. I’d need some more raw material.”

“I’ll have Ferro get on that,” Zane said, referring to the cargo chief. “We’ll see what we have in inventory.”

“Every time I see him, he seems really pissed,” Bennett said.

“Maybe it’s because he’s supposed to be at home and not here,” Zane snapped. “Maybe he doesn’t much like being kidnapped by the Colonial Union.” Two weeks had not served to make the captain any more mellow about the destruction of his ship or the stranding of his crew.

“Sorry,” Bennett said.

“I’m ready to go,” Zane said.

“Two quick things,” Bennett said to me. “I’m almost done printing most of the data files you were given when we came here, so you can have those in hard copy. I can’t print the video and audio files, but I’ll run them through a processor to get you transcripts.”

“Okay, good,” I said. “What was the second thing?”

“I went around the camp with a monitor like you asked and looked for wireless signals,” Bennett said. Trujillo raised an eyebrow at this. “The monitor is solid state,” Bennett said to him. “Doesn’t send, only receives. Anyway, I think you should know there are three wireless devices still out there. And they’re still transmitting.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Jann Kranjic said.

For not the first time, I restrained the urge to punch Kranjic in the temple. “Do we really need to do this the hard way, Jann?” I said. “I’d like to pretend we’re not twelve years old and that we’re not having an ‘am to, am not’ sort of conversation.”

“I turned over my PDA just like everyone else did,” Kranjic said, and then motioned back to Beata, who was lying on her cot, a washcloth over her eyes. Beata was apparently prone to migranes. “And Beata turned in her PDA and her camera cap. You have everything we have.”

I glanced over at Beata. “Well, Beata?” I said.

Beata raised the edge of her washcloth and looked over, wincing. Then she sighed and reapplied her washcloth. “Check his underwear,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Beata,” Kranjic said.

“His underwear,” Beata said. “At least one pair has a pouch in
the elastic that hides a small recorder. He’s got a pin of the Umbrian flag that’s an audio/video input. He’s probably got it on right now.”

“You bitch,” Kranjic said, subconsciously covering his pin. “You’re fired.”

“That’s funny,” Beata said, pressing the washcloth against her eyes. “We’re a thousand light-years from anywhere, we have no chance of ever getting back to Umbria, you spend your days reciting overblown notes into your underwear for a book you’ll never write, and I’m
fired
. Get a grip, Jann.”

Kranjic stood to make a dramatic exit. “Jann,” I said, and held out my hand. Jann snatched off his pin and pressed it into my palm.

“Want my underwear now?” He sneered.

“Keep the underwear,” I said. “Just give me the recorder.”

“Years from now, people are going to want to know the story of this colony,” Kranjic said, as he fumbled with his underwear from inside his trousers. “They’re going to want to know the story, and when they go looking for it, they’re not going to find anything. And they’re not going to find anything because its leaders spent their time censoring the only member of the press in the entire colony.”

“Beata’s a member of the press,” I said.

“She’s a
camerawoman
,” Kranjic said, slapping over the recorder. “It’s not the same thing.”

“I’m not censoring you,” I said. “I just can’t allow you to jeopardize the colony. I’m going to take this recorder and have Jerry Bennett print you out a transcript of the notes, in very tiny type, because I don’t want to waste paper. So you’ll have these notes. And if you go find Savitri you can tell her I asked her to give you one of her notepads.
One
, Jann. She needs the rest for our work. Then if you need any more you can see what the Mennonites have to say about it.”

“You want me to write out my notes,” Kranjic said. “In longhand.”

“It worked for Samuel Pepys,” I said.

“You’re assuming Jann knows how to write,” Beata mumbled from her cot.

“Bitch,” Kranjic said, and left the tent.

“It’s a stormy marriage,” Beata said laconically.

“Apparently,” I said. “You want a divorce?”

“Depends,” Beata said, raising her washcloth again. “Think your assistant would be up for a date?”

“In the entire time I’ve known her I haven’t known her to date anyone,” I said.

“So that’s a ‘no,’ ” Beata said.

“It’s a ‘hell if I know,’ ” I said.

“Hmmmm,” Beata said, dropping the cloth back down. “Tempting. But I’ll stay married for now. It irritates Jann. After all the irritation he’s provided me over the years, it’s nice to return the favor.”

“Stormy marriage,” I said.

“Apparently,” Beata said.

“We must refuse,” Hickory said to me. It and Dickory and I were in the Black Box. I figured that when I told the two Obin that they needed to give up their wireless consciousness implants, they should be allowed to be conscious to hear it.

“You’ve never refused an order of mine before,” I said.

“None of your orders has ever violated our treaty,” Hickory said. “Our treaty with the Colonial Union allows the two of us to be with Zoë. It also allows us to record those experiences and share them with other Obin. Ordering us to surrender our consciousness interferes with this. It violates our treaty.”

“You could choose to surrender your implants,” I said. “That would solve the problem.”

“We would not choose to,” Hickory said. “It would be an abdication of our responsibility to the other Obin.”

“I could tell Zoë to tell you to give them up,” I said. “I can’t imagine you’d ignore her order.”

Hickory and Dickory leaned in together for a moment, then leaned out again. “That would be distressful,” Hickory said. I reflected that it was the first time I had ever heard that word provide such apocalyptic gravity.

“You understand I have no desire to do this,” I said. “But our orders from the Colonial Union are clear. We can’t let anything provide easy evidence we’re on this world. The Conclave will exterminate us. All of us, including, you two and Zoë.”

“We have considered the possibility,” Hickory said. “We believe the risk to be negligible.”

“Remind me to show you a little video I have,” I said.

“We have seen it,” Hickory said. “It was provided to our government as well as yours.”

“How can you see that and
not
see that the Conclave represents a threat to us?” I asked.

“We viewed the video carefully,” Hickory said. “We believe the risk to be negligible.”

“It’s not your decision to make,” I said.

“It is,” Hickory said. “By our treaty.”

“I am the legal authority on this planet,” I said.

“You are,” Hickory said. “But you may not abrogate a treaty for your convenience.”

“Not getting an entire colony slaughtered is not a
convenience
,” I said.

“Removing all wireless devices to avoid detection is a convenience,” Hickory said.

“Why don’t you ever talk?” I said to Dickory.

“I have yet to disagree with Hickory,” Dickory said.

I stewed.

“We have a problem,” I said. “I can’t force you to surrender your implants, but I can’t let you run around with them, either. Answer me this: Is it a violation of your treaty for me to require you to stay
here
, in this room, so long as I have Zoë visit you on a regular basis?”

Hickory thought about it. “No,” it said. “It is not what we prefer.”

“It’s not what I prefer, either,” I said. “But I don’t think I have a choice.”

Hickory and Dickory conferred again for several minutes. “This room is covered in wave-masking material,” Hickory said. “Give us some. We can use use it to cover our devices and ourselves.”

“We don’t have any more right now,” I said. “We need to make more. It might take some time.”

“As long as you agree to this solution we will accommodate the production time,” Hickory said. “During that time we will not use our implants outside this room, but you will ask Zoë to visit us here.”

“Fine,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Hickory said. “Maybe this will be for the best. Since we have been here, we have noticed she has not had as much time for us.”

“She’s being a teenager,” I said. “New friends. New planet. New boyfriend.”

“Yes. Enzo,” Hickory said. “We feel deeply ambivalent about him.”

“Join the club,” I said.

“We can remove him,” Hickory said.

“Really, no,” I said.

“Perhaps later,” Hickory said.

“Rather than killing off Zoë’s potential suitors, I’d prefer the two of you focus on helping Jane find whatever it is that’s out there pawing on our perimeter,” I said. “It’s probably less emotionally satisfying, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s going to be more useful.”

Jane plopped the thing down on the floor of the Council meeting. It looked vaguely like a large coyote, if coyotes had four eyes and paws with opposable thumbs. “Dickory found this one inside one of the excavations. There were two others with it but they ran off. Dickory killed this one as it was trying to get away.”

“He shot it?” asked Marta Piro.

“He killed it with a knife,” Jane said. This caused some uneasy muttering; most of the Council and colonists were still deeply uncomfortable with the Obin.

“Do you think this is one of the predators you were concerned about?” Manfred Trujillo asked.

“It might be,” Jane said.

“Might be,” Trujillo said.

“The paws are the right shape for the marks we’ve seen,” Jane said. “But it seems small to me.”

“But small or not, something like this could have made the marks,” Trujillo said.

“It’s possible,” Jane said.

“Have you seen any larger ones?” asked Lee Chen.

“No,” Jane said, and looked over to me. “I’ve been out on the night watch on the last three days and last night was the first time we’ve seen anything approach the barrier at all.”

“Hiram, you’ve been out past the barrier almost every day,” Trujillo said. “Have you seen anything like this?”

“I’ve seen some animals,” Hiram said. “But they’ve been plant eaters, as far as I could see. I haven’t seen anything that looks like this thing. But then I’ve not been out past the barrier at night, either, and Administrator Sagan here thinks these are active during the night.”