The Scarab (8 page)

Next I emptied the ballast hold and
started cataloging the salvage. Most of the stuff was too specialized or
damaged for me to use. The generic equipment I stowed and tagged, while
jettisoning everything else for recycling at eight cents on the dollar. With
the lowered efficiency, I could improve speed by reducing the weight.

I found three unusual items which
took extra time to examine. The first was a mark twenty-three sower mine
normally used in strings across a bridge or a narrow street. Mare was lucky she
hadn’t triggered it picking it up. They were tricky to handle, according to
Jane’s on-line guide. Not a great ace, but it was better than nothing.

The second salvage item of interest
was a Duratech portable vault, a cylinder the size of a medium toolbox with
enough armor plating to allow it to survive the chain reaction. I didn’t have
the combination to open it yet, but it made a nice design accessory. A safe was
essential for a courier craft, and I felt silly now for not including one. I
planned to weld it under the I-beams behind the pilot’s seat as soon as I could
learn how to open it.

The third unusual item was a simple
black-box flight-recorder from one of the wrecked vehicles. It was really just
a handle to a phone line, where every game action the player made was audited
for examination by the judges or designer at a later date. Technically, only
members of the owning team should pick it up, but Mare had no way to know about
gaming etiquette. The question was, what should I do with it? I could find out
a lot about a competitor by examining his recorder, but it wasn’t ethical.

Playing with the flight log icon, I
hit INFO, hoping I could find a familiar brand name and be able return it.

“Error: line already open for read
by 262-4375,” flashed a pop-up message. The 262 meant that the call came out of
the hotel phone switch, and the forty-three (base 1000, and 200 per floor) put
it on the seventeenth floor. I checked my formula against my own room extension
and the hospitality suite. I admit I’m weird, I figure out numbering schemes
like that. For example, my home town numbers addresses every five meters
starting at the intersection of Main and Broad. It helps to know how far I’ll
be walking when someone gives me a house number.

Since the log was open, the number
would probably be busy. I grabbed the phone and dialed the front desk. “Excuse
me, I’m supposed to provide consolation gifts for people who have been eliminated
from the race, and I believe we have everyone except the company staying in...
gosh, it’s hard to read this writing... room 1775?”

“Sir, we have no convention guests
on that floor.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, sir. It’s for our
air-conditioning and electrical units. A building this size needs units about
every eight floors. Perhaps he meant room 775, but the guests staying there
have already left.”

“Thanks, that must have been it,” I
said quickly, and hung up. Curiouser. I double-checked my own log number—4319.
Why would somebody take the trouble to route all of our computer connections
through the seventeenth floor? It might explain why my response time lost a few
fractions of a second before the Crash.

I couldn’t read the log itself
without leaving electronic evidence. However, the send buffers were backed up
at the time of the crash, and the commands and messages being sent had never
cleared. The buffer contents were signed by the owner and could be read by
anyone with the proper public key. I decided to put on some low-profile clothes
as a disguise—a red-and-orange Hawaiian shirt and my Ron-Jon surf shop jacket.
While I changed clothes, my workstation ran through a search program trying to
match the signature on the buffers to the one of the victims.

Just as I finished my coffee, the
station chimed. The sound reminded me how much my head still hurt. The key for
the Exotech Viper attack craft (one of the heavies) almost matched, but had
generated a data corruption error. Maybe the file was incomplete, or blocks had
gone bad in the crash. As I scrolled the buffers to my screen for an eye-check,
I could hear my removable drive whir.

Most of what zipped by was
appropriate crypto-babble, except one chunk in the middle which was in glaring
plain text. The header was a game-description file for something called a
Radio-Seeking missile. I’m not sure how it worked, but it sounded lethal,
probably homing in on the spark plugs or other emissions of a hostile vehicle.
I’d never be certain because the file was incomplete. For some reason they were
sending the missile to one of their other team-mates at the time of death. I
could understand them wanting to off-load a sinking ship, but if they were
sending it to one of their light or middleweight vehicles, I could nail them on
a price-range violation.

Examining the destination header,
the Viper craft appeared to be sending the missile file to team member five
with the same key. But the user count only went up to four. “Couldn’t be.”

I was burning repair cycles, but I
had to try just one more experiment. I mailed the Duratech vault to the
now-defunct key with user number five. The send succeeded, but when I listed my
inventory, the vault was still there! The transfer count hadn’t gone up. This
could be exploited as a major security hole. Exotech was cheating six ways from
Sunday! My outrage cooled, turning to ways I could use this information to get
my revenge. I’d have to contact Playfair with my evidence. Meanwhile, I’d get
rid of the black box and play dumb.

First, though, I deleted the plain
text file fragment and changed the interface so that it would send a broadcast
message “I cheat at solitaire” to all the players every time someone read the
buffer. I labeled the log with an Exotech logo and dropped it in the common
maintenance area where it was bound to get back to the snakes.

Before logging off, I remembered
Mare’s password. She had been using my login up till now, and it just occurred
to me that she might mistake the password I chose as an insult. Thinking of her
capture of the thief yesterday, I changed it to “Caught You!”

I popped out my removable drive,
and carefully labeled it with the word EVIDENCE. Stuffing it into my jacket
pocket, I headed for the lobby.

By the time I located Playfair, I
had spent twenty minutes poring over the casualty lists, and couldn’t deduce
the owner of the safe. I wrote a note to the spook to meet me in the Men’s room
in ten minutes, and dropped it next to him on the bench where he sat.

Fifteen minutes later, we were
alone in the rest room.

“What’s this list for, Hayes?”

“Call me Enrico,” I said looking
around, furtively.

“What the hell for?” asked agent
Playfair.

“There might be spies!” I hissed,
worried about bugs.

“Half the people here are spies of
one sort or another. So what?”

Three fans walked in to use the
facilities. Quickly, I covered by saying “Do you mind, we’re having a lover’s
quarrel!” All three promptly zipped up and left before Playfair’s jaw reached
the floor. “As I was saying, this morning I caught Exotech cheating.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” he
asked, still not believing what was happening. “I have a cover to keep.”

“Those guys? They just think you’re
gay, not a spy. If anything, they’ll think less about you since you have a
label,” I explained. “The Viper tried to mail a plain-text copy of the
radio-missile to one of his junior team members.”

“Jesus, those things are
classified. Do you have proof of any of this?”

I didn’t want to tell him about the
disc, or he’d know I cheated, too. “No. But I can get it. You do know that
Exotech is already facing federal fraud charges.”

“One has nothing to do with the
other.”

“Look. If I could get this file by
accident, someone else could get it intentionally. I’m not doing this to annoy
you; I’m doing it to defend my country.”

He fumed a bit before relaxing. “You
did the right thing. It could just be an NSA penetration team testing the
security here. I’ll contact my superior, and you keep this to yourself. The
last thing we need here is a bloody media leak. Sandia only agreed to this in
the first place because it needed some decent public relations.”

I thought Sandia was just a
high-tech research division of the phone company. “What do they do there that
they don’t want attention drawn to?”

He looked disgusted. “Where do you
think this nation designs and tests new nuclear devices?”

“Bombs. These guys have access to
atomic bomb plans? Great!” If possible, I was even more paranoid.

“Oh, they have more than that—particle
beams, satellites reflectors, X-ray lasers. They’re an all-purpose weapon
factory.”

This was way out of my league. I
decided to concentrate on something simpler. Trying to sound casual, I asked “By
the way, you wouldn’t happen to know which victim was carrying a Duratech
minivault last night?”

“Inventories are posted in the
judges’ lounge at time of death. Any other problems?” I shook my head.

He washed his hands, and over the
air-drier, he said “I wouldn’t worry too much, they’ve taken the disks with the
sensitive information off the machine altogether. Pretend like none of this
ever happened and continue as normal until we contact you. Every person you
leak to doubles the chance that the people we’re watching will find out that we’re
on to them.”

After he left, I waited in the toilet stall for several
minutes thinking. On my way to the judges’ lounge, I tried to get back into the
racing frame of mind. I wandered around picking up scuttle-butt about the game.
The biggest rumor was that the referees were trying to convene a tribunal to
eject some poor sod from the convention. Someone else told me that ten hours
ago, Paris had been in the middle of some major-league road construction. It
seems that someone arranged the monkey-wrench last night while we were
sleeping. Allegedly there had been several bomb threats, a protest, and a sewer
collapse to complicate the detours. Several teams and the SimCon Consortium had
one-upped each other till no-one had a good map of the maze.

The judge’s lounge was a-buzz with
the sounds of a lynching. There were a dozen players standing around a
conference table. I snuck around the perimeter of the crowd to look at the
post-mortem sheets hanging on the back wall of the room. It took several
minutes, but I found three vehicles carrying Duratech safes, one of which had been
blown into pieces—a middleweight from the Dutch Pensatronics Corporation. While
I was writing down the relevant information, I overheard one of the louder
complainers in the crowd from TSM bellow, “He doesn’t respond to mail, phone
messages, pages, or knocks on his door. I say we try this Hayes character in
absentia.”

“In spite of the irregularities in
his paperwork, and the magnitude of your charges, I cannot bar a contestant
until he or she is present,” said a female judge, around sixty years of age, who
wore her gray hair in a bun and the name tag Gertrude. Her ruling met with
strong rumbles of disapproval. Gertrude, who had obviously dealt with
classrooms of school children before, was not intimidated. She was wearing a
black dress, with tiny flowers hidden in the design that hinted at
non-conformity and creativity I rarely found in people in authority.

Since I wasn’t wearing my badge, I
decided to have a little fun with the mob. I continued writing in my notebook
and asked, “Don’t you mean that you cannot decide the case until you have heard
the defendant’s side, your Honor?”

“I suppose,” she admitted. “But his
absence does speak rather strongly of his guilt. Vandalism and entering SimCon
under false pretenses are both charges punishable by immediate eviction.”

“Then they’ve proven the vandalism
charge?”

A lawyer from Exotech spoke up. “He’s
not that stupid, but this Scarab character has a reputation for tricks like
this.”

“I see, so why wasn’t he accused at
the meeting last night when his team was present?”

“Because reputation alone is not
sufficient to convict a man,” said a black engineer from the Porsche team
waving a clip board. “The issue at hand is copyright infringement. The man had
taken engines from our vehicles and attempted to copyright them as his own
design.”

I walked over to look at the
evidence he was waving. “I admit, the form does have a picture of your engine
on it, but the legend under it reads ‘docking clamp assembly—top view’.”

“But he’s using our engines without
our permission.”

“An old model, second hand. That’s
allowed, isn’t it?”

Judge Gertrude fielded the
question. “Yes, under proof-of-concept rules for prototypes, which DeClerk has
registered this as.” She was glaring at me with suspicion, but no one else had
picked up how thoroughly I was defending myself.

“Then, what, he’s been selling it
or advertising the engine without your permission?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

I handed his clipboard back. “When
he does, I’ll testify against him myself. What has he done against the rules?
You guys are loaded for bear.”

The Exotech lawyer had a smug look
on his bald-pated face. “Ethan Hayes designed his vehicle while employed by one
of our subsidiaries. As such, his design is our intellectual property.”

He made me so angry, I saw white.
That must have been why I slipped up. “First of all, you didn’t own Sam’s
Floater garage until after they hired me. Second of all, I never signed any
intellectual property agreement with you leeches. Third, I did Ghedra after
leaving work for your sweat shop. Fourth, the scope of my job had absolutely
nothing to do with this competition. If you can produce one document proving
otherwise, I will personally kiss your ass.”

Everyone in the room stopped
talking. Cover blown, I decided to go for style points. I glanced over the
judge’s shoulder at her summary sheet and whistled. “Thirty-seven complaints.
That’s got to be some kind of record. How many do we have left? The race starts
in a few minutes.”

The roar started again, louder than
before. The judge used her best English teacher command tone and ordered “Quiet!
One at a time. Porsche, you’re first.”

“Uh, the only thing left was that
we don’t think he’s adequately accounted for engine cooling at low speeds.”

I shrugged. “We use standard air
cooling. I make sure not to operate the sleds at under fifty km/h for more than
a minute. The simulator keeps me honest. Next.”

Gertrude facilitated discussion by
adding, “We can disregard the spelling mistakes and obvious typographical
errors for now. TSM?”

“You don’t even have a driver’s
license. You shouldn’t be allowed in the game!” Several in the mob agreed.

“I wasn’t told that it was a
prerequisite. But since you ask, the mouthpiece from Exotech will confirm that
I was head mechanic at Sam’s garage, a position which required me to hold a
high-speed ground vehicle chauffeur’s license. Next.” The crowd was starting to
break up a little, anger giving way to the need to return to their teams for
today’s start.

“What does approved by the FCC
mean?” demanded one player.

“Exactly what it says on the form.
Next.”

“But it doesn’t say,” he
complained.

“The FCC wrote it, not me,” I
countered.

“What he’s trying to say is what
they were approving is classified, and if they told us, it wouldn’t be
classified anymore,” said the Exotech lawyer. “We want full disclosure
statements with all your employees, contract numbers, and design
specifications. We want to see what you’ve stolen.”

“Who told you that?”

“Then it’s true?” the lawyer
pounced.

“No, I just want to know who to sue
for slander. You can want till you’re blue in the face, but I don’t have to
give you anything the judge doesn’t order me to. It’s not like you’re a member
of Congress.” A few audience members winced at my cheap shot at the federal
fraud investigation. I looked to Gertrude for support.

Her support was reluctant at best. “We
are here to resolve written complaints under the auspices of this organization
only. Exotech, as you seem to be the team left with the biggest objection, we
will skip to you.”

“First of all, he neglected to list
any of the members of his design team on the entry form,” said the Exotech
hired gun.

“I’ll ignore this feeble attempt to
rehash the previous question, and tell you that I was the sole designer of this
vehicle, as specified on the authorship cover page.” This caused a bit of a
murmur in the audience, too. Most companies had teams of designers; a one-man
show couldn’t hope to compete. Fortunately, I never planned to go into
production, and I didn’t have to worry about issues like mass production
tooling, long-term repair costs, and profit margin.

“Do you expect me to believe that
just one person wrote the 200 plus pages of paper work necessary for this
event?” he blustered.

“Sir, you just got finished
accusing me of not giving you credit for my own ideas. Now, you claim that I
could not possibly have thought them? You know that only ten pages of the
document are filled out by the contestant, the rest are computer-generated
vehicle description and legal forms. Or did you have somebody else fill out
your part?” This got several chuckles from the crowd. I was gaining ground
slowly. The evidence disc was burning a hole in my pocket, but now was not the
time.

“Your form shows many
irregularities. For example, you are from Massachusetts, your company is
incorporated in Pennsylvania, your plant is scheduled to be built in Maryland, and the submission was from Hawaii. Which is it?”

“You’re grasping at straws. This is
all common practice. Your research came from Massachusetts, you live in Arizona, and the plant is in Brazil.” I wanted to add that he was ugly and his mother
dressed him funny, but resisted the urge.

“Who’s really behind you, Scarab?”
he asked.

“I’m sorry, what’s the rule in
question?”

The judge glanced at her watch, and
said “Point taken. Are you trying to delay Mr. Hayes unduly? If so, your team
will be penalized for poor sportsmanship. Are there any other valid complaints
against the DeClerk team? Any questions which fall within the scope of this
convention?”

When no one spoke for a moment, I
broke in. “I have one. What is it with you people? Why do you harass me when
you must know what the answer will be?”

The jackals were disbanding, and
eventually Gertrude answered my question. “Because, sir, you need to know the
answer or it doesn’t count. They want to see if you slipped on an important
detail. That’s just as valid a way of winning as any.” When the last of the
wild dogs wandered away, she added “You’ve won this round, Mr. Hayes, but you’re
on thin ice as far as the judges are concerned. Be careful.”

Before walking into the auditorium,
I took off my jacket to cool down. When I ran into Mary, she had been
side-tracked at the newly-placed NPR booth. She was being interviewed in French
by someone I’d never seen before. Several photographers were snapping shots of
her. I leaned over the host of “Car Talk” and asked “What’s up?”

“She’s the first bimbo they’ve had
here that speaks French. Our Quebec affiliates are eating her up. Marie
Antionette Anselm. What a name! I hear the only thing she can say in English is
‘our tool he is the best.’“

For some reason, having her thought
of as an air-headed sex symbol irked me more than it should have. I walked up
as close to her as I could get in the forming crowd and tapped my watch.

She excused herself, and waved
good-bye to the cameras. One of the reporters saw me at her arm and asked “What
team are you on?”

“DeClerk,” I said, blocking my face
from any nearby cameras with the print-out.

“Is Mademoiselle Anselm your team
mascot?” he asked.

I almost decked him. “No. For your
information, she’s our starting pilot today. She’s needs to get ready.” Every
male within hearing distance was momentarily stunned.

“Oui,” she said with the accent
again. “Nobody is better at the game of pursuit than ze woman. I will beat
their pants off.”

I took her arm and escorted her
from the room. When we got to the elevator, she said “Good come back.”

“I was serious.”

Quiet for a moment, she asked “Why?”

“You’re much better at city chases.
There are detours all around Paris today, and I can’t read the road signs.
Besides, I have to recover from the third degree treatment I just got in the
judge’s lounge.” I briefed her on the complaints and our new gear. But because
of the orders Playfair gave me, I neglected to mention the cheating I’d
discovered.

“What stirred up the hornet’s nest?”
she asked.

“I’d like to know, too. Maybe when
we find out what’s in the safe.”

When the doors opened, I spotted a
man in a black suit standing in front of our door. As we got closer, I noticed
the corner of a holster against his white Oxford shirt. Instinctively, I ducked
into the Coke machine alcove, dragging Mary Ann with me.

“Mr. Hayes?” the man asked, looking
at a folded fax in his hand.

“Who’s asking?” I said from around
the corner. Mare was giving me a strange look. “Playfair said to be careful,” I
whispered.

“Mark D. Waters, Private
Investigator. Your lawyer contacted me about a job here?”

I smiled, dusted us both off, and
crawled out to shake hands. Mary did the talking. “Pleased to meet you, Waters.
Hope we haven’t kept you waiting. For right now, we’d like you to get a chair,
and sit guard outside that door for the next six hours. Get your own food, and
anything else you might need on your breaks. Don’t trust the hotel workers, don’t
talk to the media, and don’t let anyone in. Any questions?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t taken it,
yet. Who am I working for, why, for how long, and how much am I getting paid?”

I fielded this one while Mare
opened the room door with her card. “We’re the DeClerk racing team. We plan on
winning this thing if the big boys don’t poison us, sabotage us, or discredit
us first. There have already been a few attempts. You work round the clock till
we finish the race.”

“Are you a fan?” asked Mary Ann,
bringing out a chair.

“Never heard of the race till
today.”

“Even better. You can listen on the
radio, but no TV. I want your eyes on the hallway,” she said, as harsh a
task-mistress as ever. “You can rest for the eight hours after today’s leg, but
we expect you back on duty by midnight. Pay is standard during the day, double
for night, but zero if we catch you sleeping.”

Convinced she had things under
control, I finished adjusting the interface station and the navigation gear for
today’s leg. I wanted the equipment to be as comfortable as possible for the
long stretch where there was bound to be some pilot ergonomic measurements.

He looked pleasantly surprised. “That’s
a lot of money for one day of sitting.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll earn it. What
do you say?” she asked.

“Best deal I’ve had all month.” He
said, shaking her hand on the contract.

“Nigel will send you the papers.
See you later,” she said, shutting the door on him.