The Trilisk AI (11 page)

“Why
is your house so large?” Magnus asked, beating Telisa to the next question.

“Safety.
Productivity. Control. High number of reasons,” Shiny said.

“So
you want us to go in there and get you this seed. That’s all you want out of
this? We can take anything we want? We can steal from your house, right?”

“Affirmative,
allowed, encouraged. Industrial seed is sole Shiny stake in operation.”

“And
it just happens to be full of enemy death machines?”

“Destroyers
focused on controlling, suppressing, exterminating Shiny race.”

His
race is being killed off. At least here on their homeworld. I’d be so horrified
for Shiny, except he himself seems only ready to take advantage of it.

“Well
do you at least know where this seed is?”

“Affirmative.
Telisa, Magnus, dropped on planet surface nearby. Seed located deep underground.”

“Makes
sense. Your race is subterranean,” Telisa asked.

“Affirmative,
correct, accurate statement of fact.”

“You
don’t have to say that three times, you know,” she said.

“Each
word inaccurate, estimate, approximate. Utilization of multiple words helps to
communicate lack of exact, perfect, aligned match. Defines approximate,
estimated, local-meaning space.”

“Wow.
I thought he was using triple words to be clearer,” Magnus said. “But he’s
using three words to tell us that there is no exact match. He’s using three
words to point out that it’s vague.”

“I
never thought of it that way. What difference does it make? I’m not sure that
really makes sense to me. I mean, he’s using three words just in case one is
not quite right?” she said.

“But
he knows the words aren’t right so he spreads it out using three.”

“I’m
tired. We need to sleep before we start,” Telisa said.

“Encouragement,”
Shiny said. He didn’t move.

Telisa
and Magnus left him alone in the bay and went to her quarters. Telisa lowered
the lights and removed an outer layer of clothing to get comfortable. She
noticed she already had Magnus’s eye. She smiled. He never got tired of
watching her. They were different, yet compatible in so many ways. They
stretched out into her sleeping web and held each other close. Despite her
fatigue, Telisa’s mind still raced.

“If
he decides to just take the
Iridar
and leave...” Telisa whispered.

“He
won’t. He has his own ship. He doesn’t need the
Iridar
. It’s inferior to
his own. No, he needs the industrial seed for real. And he can’t get it. Now
therein lies the real danger. Once we’ve retrieved it, we have to hope he’s not
as bloodthirsty as we fear he may be.”

“So,
we’re going to go down to Vovok and steal our next batch of artifacts,” she
said. “Vovokans. Hmm, I may need to revisit that name. It doesn’t exactly slide
off the tongue.”

“I
don’t think the Vovokans need their stuff anymore,” Magnus said. “Shiny offered
it.”

“It
is basically looting a destroyed civilization—one being annihilated. Not
exactly as honorable as being a true archaeologist.”

“Does
that bother you?”

“Well,
the main difference here is that archaeologists have to recreate knowledge of a
culture from long-buried clues. And that’s what I studied for. In such a
profession, progress comes slowly over years. But now we’ve found live aliens
and the information comes faster, easier. I don’t feel bad about it; after all,
the reason I would sift through a ruin is to learn about the extinct culture of
the aliens. We don’t have to do it the slow way anymore. A high-tech artifact
tells you so much more about a culture than a shard of pottery. And a live
alien should be even more informative. Though in Shiny’s case, it’s a bit hard
to pump him for information.”

“Yes,
but we learn more every day.” His hand caressed her cheek.

For
some reason, Telisa’s mind slipped over the current situation and returned to
her last argument with Magnus. They hadn’t broached the subject since.
The
fact that he thinks we’re not justified in the eyes of our own kind makes me
doubt myself. I’ve always railed at the government for keeping the artifacts
from me. They don’t have our best interests in mind... do they?

“I’m
sorry about the other day. Maybe your criticism hit too close to home,” Telisa
said.

“I
never criticized you. I’m only saying, life is full of gray. I’m sorry I got so
loud and angry. It’s just the pressures of our new life. We were blowing off
steam at each other.”

“To
Shiny, the gray zone isn’t a morally gray area. It’s a mixture of him gaining
something and his competitors gaining something at the same time.”

“Good
guess. Either that, or the gray zone is a trade off of something gained for
something lost. But unless Shiny is an aberration among his own kind, these are
Vovokan morals,” he said.

“Wouldn’t
that be awful? If Shiny turned out to be a crazy Vovokan?”

Telisa
wasn’t sure who to be more scared of: her own government or the creature she
had called an ally against them. She decided to set her worries aside and turn
her full attention to the man who held her. It was her favorite life-problem
avoidance tactic.

Chapter 9

The
door to Cilreth’s quarters announced a visitor. Startled, she sat up. She had
been totally absorbed in her work.
Why drop by incarnate when they can just
call my link? Ah. Relachik just works that way. He’s old fashioned.

Cilreth
let her door open. Beyond stood Relachik, exactly as she’d surmised.

“I
know you’re good,” he said from the doorway. “But I can’t stand being in the
dark anymore. So I’m asking, as your employer, what do you have so far?”

Cilreth’s
mouth twitched. She hated it when the drug did that at times when people could
misinterpret it as annoyance or hesitation.

“Fair
enough. Arlin, too?”

“Sure.
Come to the mess and we’ll have an FTF.”

“Face
to face? I think only the Space Force says it that way anymore.”

“Oh
excuse me. I meant to say, let’s do it incarnate.”

“No,
that means we’re going to have sex for real instead of virtually.”

Relachik’s
face turned red. “Five Holies, do you understand me or not?”

Cilreth
nodded and stood. Relachik liked to play the grumpy old man, but she had
already picked up that he wasn’t really irritated. It was just how he liked to
talk. She let her head clear for a moment, as she’d been deep into it. Then she
followed Relachik to the mess.

Cilreth
saw that Arlin had already arrived. He was eating a sandwich. Cilreth sat down
and sliced herself a wedge of cheese.

“The
way to find people is to trace their money and their links to the net,” Cilreth
said. “Unless Telisa and Magnus are completely off the grid, living in a cave
on an alien planet, they have to use money. And they may need information,
news, and entertainment. So they need access. Nowadays, anyone who can stay
disconnected for long periods is a rare find. Most people, even wanted
murderers, just can’t stand to stay off.”

“But
these two are determined,” said Relachik.

“Yes.
I believe Telisa could do it. But she has a business, which means money.
Connections for sales. I think she’s online, which means we can find her.”

“So
they’re operating with false identities. They’ve set up whole new lives.”

“The
fact that I haven’t picked them up in the clean search means they’ve gone a
step further than that. They’re operating under the umbrella of a special
organization.”

“What?”

“The
frontier has companies that specialize in masking operations from the
government. They aggregate and shuffle data requests and money movements. When
you access data through one of these illegal operations, they run huge caches,
time shift your access requests, and wait for batches to accumulate. They
process queries in large groups, then break them up into a new set of tiny
requests that happen in other orders and on behalf of other entities,
disguising all the patterns we’d be looking for. But just knowing they’re doing
something like this is a step forward. There are only so many operations out
there that are really good at it. I think I know who they’re using, but I’m not
absolutely sure.”

Relachik
had been listening with his face betraying growing concern. “How dangerous are
these people they’re working with?”

“As
paying customers, your daughter and her friends are probably safe enough. But
if anything goes wonky, then the outfit is capable of murder to clean up
problems. Which makes our job harder. You see, if they find out what we’re
doing, the organization may try to eliminate us, or even eliminate your
daughter to keep their exposure at a minimum. Actually, in cases like this,
sometimes you can find the right person and simply bribe them to get what you
want.”

“Why
would they do that? All their customers would quit using them,” Arlin said.

Cilreth
nodded. “The smart, forward-looking ones wouldn’t sell out their customers. But
these criminals are only human. They’re greedy and shortsighted. If the reward
is large enough, they’ll slip a name or two now and then. Not enough to get a
lot of attention if they can help it. But sadly, almost any human can be
tempted by short-term gain over long-term prosperity.”

“What’s
this group called? Where are they located?” Relachik asked.

Cilreth
sighed. “This isn’t going to make you any happier. They were originally called
by locals just the ‘Enclave.’ Now, though, they’re widely known as the
‘F-clave.’ The story goes, the leader was putting pressure on someone who said,
‘Who are you guys?’ and the leader said, ‘We’re the fucking Enclave!’ and shot
him dead, so now, they’re the F-clave for short.”

“And
where are they are located?”

“I
think in more than one world. For sure, on Brighter Walken. And that’s probably
where Telisa and Magnus would go. I’ve checked some spaceport information and
ships like the one you described have visited there. Of course, even those logs
are subject to tampering. It’s hard to estimate just how connected her smuggler
friends are.”

“How
many smugglers are we talking about?” Arlin asked.

“We
know of at least five, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have more people out
on the frontier. They’re employees of a company that hired her back on Earth,
Parker Interstellar Travels. It’s a guide-and-scouting-company front to the
smugglers. Apparently three of them are on Earth. I obtained video of them from
several cameras that operated around their headquarters recently.”

“I
know Brighter Walken,” Relachik said, and Cilreth believed him. If anyone knew
something about almost all the inhabited worlds, it was probably a scout ship
captain. Or an ex-scout ship captain.

“So
that’s where we need to go,” Arlin said. “I’ll set course for there
immediately.”

“Okay,”
Relachik said. “If this place is like Cilreth describes, it’ll be a fortress.
There will be muscle. We could just disappear, walking into a place like that.”

“So
what now?”

“We
go there. We find someone to pressure and get them to tell us what we need,”
Relachik said. He looked at Cilreth. “What do we need, exactly, to find Telisa?”

“The
organization will have the data on their clients, locked up tight, of course.
And they’ll have tracking keys. No doubt it will be some super-secure location.
Breaking in through the net won’t be an option; I’m sorry, but they’ll have
top-notch hackers working for them. If the critical stuff is even connected to
the net, it would be very dangerous to go snooping there. Most likely a death
squad would just show up out of nowhere and kill us.”

“What
do you mean tracking keys?” Arlin asked.

“I
mentioned how they send all client’s queries and data through the blender to
mix them all together? Well, they can unblend it from the outside. In real
time. Suppose gangster A is assigned to client C, who owes the organization
money. Gangster A is supposed to keep track of C, and maybe drop in from time
to time to pressure him. So gangster A is given C’s tracking key. With the key,
he can eventually find the client through his net usage, just as I would if the
target weren’t behind this obfuscation system. It’s useless to decode
information about any of the other clients, so giving gangster A this key is
not too much of a security risk. But we need Telisa’s key. Or the key those
smugglers share.”

“Then
we should find the company member who has their key. The one assigned to them.”

Cilreth
shook her head. “I doubt there is one. If Telisa and crew are paying their
bills and not causing a problem, there is no reason to send out a person to
hassle them. Also, if someone has a tracking key and we pressure him, the first
thing he’ll do is wipe the key from his link with just a thought. He knows he
can always return to headquarters and get another copy once he’s out of danger.
We need to get access to the crime organization’s most trusted storage.”