This Alien Shore (34 page)

“It's a great honor to meet you,” Gaza said.

Assuming the comment to be sincere—he lacked the social acumen to tell if it were otherwise—he responded, “The honor is mine.” And just in case his tone of voice failed to communicate his own sincerity, he added, “I've admired your work for years.”

Something in the man's posture seemed to ease up a bit. Had he expected ... what? Competition? Confrontation? “And I yours, Dr. Masada. I've waited a long time to meet the man who designed the Hellsgate-909 antibody. When they approved your coming here ... well, let's just say that when this job is finished, I'd welcome a chance to sit down and talk shop with you.”

There were few people in the outworlds whose praise could affect Masada; Gaza was one of them. “That would be an honor indeed:” His face had grown slightly warm at the praise, but he had his wellseeker put a stop to that. Biological display of any kind was distasteful to him. “I have some figures I'd like to check with you, and simulations to run—” He stopped suddenly, aware that in his haste to get started he might have missed some fine point of protocol, and added, “Assuming we move right on to business, of course.”

Gaza smiled a tight smile, replete with tensions of its own. “Business is fine, Dr. Masada. We eat, drink, and sleep Lucifer here. Let me give you a tour of the place, and an update of what we've come up with while you were in transit. Not very pleasant, I'm afraid.”

He told Masada of the most recent mutations, while they walked through triple-secured portals into the heart of Guild processing. He told him of the pilots who'd been injured by the virus, and the half dozen more who'd been saved just in time. “The damned thing evolves faster than our antibody programs can adapt to it, and each new generation seems to be increasingly deadly. I believe it's only a matter of time before Lucifer attacks someone or something out of the Guild ... and God help us all when that happens.”

“Chaos in the streets,” Masada mused.

Gaza shook his head grimly. “Worse than that. Chaos in the outworlds means chaos in enclosed corridors, with no escape. Implosion, rather than explosion. On a planet you can have time to deal with such a thing, places to allow its energies to diffuse, and if worst comes to worst, places to escape to. Here we have none of that. Social dynamics shift accordingly. Panic ... is death.”

A final security program confirmed Gaza's identity, then took a brainware profile of Masada for future reference. “I think we're on borrowed time now,” the Guild programmer said as a final silver portal split open to admit them. “Rumors have gotten out about the virus, and already my people are picking up signs that civilians are searching for it. The thing is well designed enough that I doubt anyone will find it by accident, not without having some inkling of the codes it was designed to infect. We didn't find it ourselves till it broke out in a pilot's brain. But still. You never know. And all it would take is one ...”

“And you may have a leak,” Masada said quietly.

Gaza put a warning finger to his lips, gesturing for silence.

Beyond the silver portal was a room that glistened spotlessly, consoles and workstations lining the walls. Several men in black uniforms looked up as the two of them entered; all were wearing identical skullcaps of silver and black, with bands of circuitry running across them like the markings of some strange metallic animal. At a short gesture from Gaza they turned and left, pausing only long enough to flash the images that would save their work, shut down their programs, and withdraw them from the system. Not until they were gone, and all the doors in the room sealed shut, did Gaza speak again.

“This is your lab, Dr. Masada. Sealed and secure and discrete from all other systems on the station. We've got a Hauck Model 6700Z Overseer for you—the Z line is experimental at this point, yours is one of only five existing units—and enough bandwidth to run five million copies of the virus simultaneously. You can't access the outemet directly from here—for obvious reasons—but we've got a three stage relay that can dump information for you, or collect it, without anyone from the outside being able to follow your signal home.”

No direct access to the outemet. He felt a knot in his chest loosen up the tiniest bit ... and hated himself for it. What kind of a programmer was he, if he feared the very programs which held the outerworlds together?

He walked into the room and studied each panel and machine there, one by one, nodding a slow and studied approval of each. “All sterile, I assume?”

“Brand new, in most cases, and then sterilized five times over just for good measure. All the programs we loaded for you are verified clean as well, matched against the master copies which are kept offline in my office. Samples of the virus are stored separately,” he placed his hand on one of the consoles, “so you'll have to transfer what you need the old-fashioned way.” A slight smile creased the comers of his lips. “That seemed far safer than any direct transmission.”

“I agree,” he said. He remembered the warning on the first copy he'd seen:
Grade A Contagious Material.
Grade A meant a program that might infect anything it interacted with, and not necessarily in an ordered or predictable manner. Nothing which touched Lucifer could be allowed back onto the outernet without first being matched, byte by byte, with a copy of its original. Or simply destroyed. Sometimes with highly contagious material the latter was the easiest course. “How about copies of the virus itself?”

“There are over thirty thousand examples stored in here, representing two thousand seventeen different spores. The collection is updated daily, with new spores culled from all Guild stations in the outworlds. The damn thing's prolific as hell,” he said dryly, “which doesn't make our job any easier.”

Masada's brow furrowed as he considered the number. It wasn't quite what he had predicted. Had his calculations been wrong, or had Guild simply failed to gather as many spores as they should? The latter would surprise him, as it would imply that Devlin Gaza was inefficient. And he knew the man's work well enough to know that such an adjective could never be applied to him.

“We've found what seem to be generational markers,” Gaza told him. “That's simplified the sorting process greatly.”

“Good,” he approved. “I'm looking forward to seeing what you've gathered.”

The truth was that he wanted to start working. The truth was that he already was working, his mind having half-abandoned Gaza's informal briefing to explore the convoluted maze of data which that briefing had unveiled. It took all his self-control to keep from shutting Gaza out entirely, and even so the next few words were lost on him as he flashed a quick command to the nearest terminal and saw data begin to scroll upwards in response.
12.12.57:
9
spores collected from the following stations: Hellsgate, Etherea, New Hope
(2),
Anachron Nova
—

“... that we have a leak?” Gaza was saying.

Masada forced himself to look back at him, shutting the data stream out of his brain. “I'm sorry?”

“How sure are you that we have a leak?”

He said quietly, “I would bank my career on it.”

Though he was far from adept at reading human expressions, Gaza's response was anything but subtle. The dark eyes narrowed, the brows drew together, and the thin mouth tightened in an unmistakable grimace. Since he didn't speak for a few seconds, Masada took the time to scan his image into his brainware's social database; within seconds his primitive observations were elaborated upon. Gaza was tense, the program informed him, and hostile, and probably angry as well. The negative emotions were most likely not directed at Masada, the program informed him, but internally motivated.

Well, that made sense. If someone on Gaza's staff proved to be a traitor, might the Guildsman not imagine that it reflected upon him? And perhaps it would. Perhaps this man, one of the most powerful in the outworlds, could be brought down by a leak in his own department. That would certainly explain his reaction.

There is more at stake for these people than a virus,
Masada realized.
Careers will be made and destroyed over this, positions gained and lost, outworld politics altered forever.
For the first time since signing onto the project he sensed the true magnitude of the situation, and was humbled by it. No wonder they wanted an outsider. No wonder they needed someone from outside the Guild to handle this matter, to guarantee that politics and prejudices and the simple instincts of job preservation didn't interfere with the search for the truth. He alone, in all the outworlds, had nothing to gain or lose from this thing. Which was fortunate, as he lacked the type of cognition required to sort out complex human motives.

They knew all that, of course. They had chosen him carefully, with all his strengths and weaknesses in mind. For the first time now he understood just what had gone into their decision, and how correct that decision had been.

“Tell me about it,” Gaza said evenly.

As they walked down into the chamber itself, Masada found his attention wandering once more to the vast array of equipment before him, and wondering at its capacity. That was bad. He knew all too well how easy it was for him to lose track of a conversation when he was thus distracted, and how easily people took offense at it. With a quick icon he called up his master sensory program and ordered it to step down his visual acuity several points. The program was one he'd designed himself and used many times, that made everything look dark and gray and slightly unclear. It was easier to stay focused on Gaza that way, and ignore the sensory stimulation which surrounded him.

“I regressed the virus,” he explained. He saw Gaza raise an eyebrow in surprise, and he could not entirely repress a smile of pride in response. What a rare pleasure it was to discuss his work with someone who appreciated its true complexity! “Once the false leads were weeded out, that resulted in several approximations of the virus in its original form. I did an analysis of the programming elements those samples had in common, which distinguished them from all the false regressions. The resulting summary gives us a true profile of
Lucifer Prime,
the virus as it was originally designed.”

Gaza's expression was dark, unreadable. “How reliable is this profile?”

“Some parts are necessarily more precise than others. I have a complete breakdown of the entire project available for you to look at, including my error estimates for each section. It's in the briefing material I delivered to the Prima.”

Gaza nodded. “All right. I'll go over it. Now tell me about the leak.”

Masada drew in a deep breath, knowing that what he was about to say was nothing Devlin Gaza wanted to hear. “In the course of testing thousands of proto-viruses, I found that those which evolved true to form all had one thing in common. At the core of their search program was a fragment of Guild code. Very well hidden, almost indecipherable ... but Guild code all the same, without question.”

Gaza looked at him for a long moment without saying anything. Finally, softly, he said to Masada, “The thing was made to seek out our programming and copy it. Surely that's where these fragments came from. Former assaults—”

“No.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Yes. All regressions point to it. I'm sorry to say this, I know what it implies ... but I believe the conclusion is inescapable. This thing may have come from outside the Guild, but it invaded Guild files with the help of someone who had access to your most secure programs.”

Gaza turned away from him. Just that, for a moment: no words, no gestures, no hint of what was going on inside his brain. Not that Masada could have interpreted such signs anyway, but his social programs might have stood a chance. This way there was no insight possible.

“If this is true ...” The Director's voice was low, but infinitely tense. “We're talking about someone betraying the Guild.”

Masada said nothing.

“But why? Why give out that one portion of code, and nothing else? Why not just give our enemy what he wanted in the first place? Surely that would have been easier.”

“Perhaps,” Masada said quietly, “this way, he didn't think he'd get caught.”

Gaza turned back to him.

“Perhaps he thought that this way the data transfer could never be traced to him. Perhaps he felt he was safe this way, sheltered by the sheer complexity of his creation. The virus could collect its data and deliver it and he would never be blamed ... because no one would ever do the kind of regression that was necessary to prove that not
all
the Guild code Lucifer contained was stolen.”

“Regression of such a complex virus is theoretically impossible,” Gaza reminded him.

Masada smiled tightly. “Nothing is impossible to someone who's willing to wade through enough data, Director. Who knows? Perhaps if the trip to Tiananmen had been shorter I would never have gotten far enough to isolate this bit of code. Perhaps if you had sent me more fresh data to work with, I would have gotten involved in analyzing that and let the regression project slide. As it was ... this is what I found. I leave it to you to analyze its implications. I'm no expert in human motivation, I can only tell you what's visible in the code itself. The rest I must leave up to you.”

“And we will look into it,” Gaza promised him. Even Masada could hear the darkness in his tone. “My God, it could well be one of my own staff....” He shook his head sharply. “It's one thing to discuss such possibilities in a general sense ... quite another to contemplate proof of it ... I must look at your data....”