Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

“What about the police?”

“The AEV is thinking of speaking to them about it.”

“Will they?”

“The chief examiner’s against it, and he’s the man on the spot. Some of the headquarters bureaucrats are a little nervous about what could happen if Interpol ever learns they’ve concealed evidence. But the examiner’s point is that any physical evidence—fingerprints, shreds of coat sleeve, theatre ticket stubs, accidentally dropped business cards (I’m quoting him; he’s a sarcastic person when questioned in his decisions)—was incinerated in the crash. There’s no hope of tracing the saboteur. What they have is a loose wire. And the loose wire is an excuse for circulating an order he’s wanted put out ever since a mechanic did leave one hanging last year; if they bring in the cops, the manufacturer will just shrug and legitimately claim again that it’s not equipment failure. Furthermore, the pilot and the broadcaster were both voluntarily in dangerous professions; and besides, we can let them at least accomplish one last good thing. So it’s better all round.”

Michaelmas sucked his teeth.

“They still haven’t finally decided,” Domino said.

“Yes, they have. Every passing minute makes it less advisable to report it as sabotage. Pretty soon they’d also have to account for the reporting delay, and the thought of that will swing it.”

“Well, yes.”

“So how was it done? Did Cikoumas hang around the airport? Of course not. What sanatorium employee? What henchman? Who?”

“I’m working on it. Meanwhile, Daugerd’s plane has just landed at Hanrassy’s dock. Time there is seven thirty-five AM.”

Michaelmas glanced at his wrist. Two thirty-five pm.

Frontiere leaned across the aisle. “Ten more minutes, Laurent, and we’ll be there.” Simultaneously, his telephone sounded. He reached into his jacket, took out the instrument, and inserted the privacy plug in his ear, answering the call with his mouth close to the microphone. Then he recoiled pleasurably. “Dei grazia,” he said, put the phone away, and stared at Michaelmas incredulously. “You were exactly correct in your jest,” he said. He leaned closer. “The sender looks Russian. The assembly technique is Russian. But our analytical equipment shows that some of the material only resembles stock Russian material; the molecular structure is off. Our analytical programmes caught it and the -ones Norwood used at Limberg’s did not. A very sophisticated effort was made to take circuit material and make it seem like other circuit material of no greater or lesser practicality. Why would the Russians do that? Why should they?”

Frontiere grinned. “No, someone is trying to muddle things up. But we can be rather sure it isn’t the Chinese, and if it isn’t them or the Russians, then the situation is nowhere near as critical.” Frontiere grinned. “It’s just some accursed radical group that didn’t even kill anybody. We can handle that.” He sat up straighten “We were right to delay.” He drummed his fingers on the armrest. “All right. What now?” he said absently, his eyes still shining. “What must be done immediately?”

“Well,” Michaelmas said equably, “there is still the problem of forestalling Norwood and Limberg. Steps of some sort must be taken quickly. It would be particularly galling now if one or the other lost patience and blurted out his error in all honesty.”

Frontiere grimaced. “Just so.”

“So I suggest,” Michaelmas went on, “that the analytical tests be rerun immediately in your laboratories with Norwood in attendance. In fact, let him do the running. And when he gets the correct result, let him call Limberg with it. It’s no disgrace to have been wrong. It’s only a minor sin of eagerness not to have waited in the first place to use your lab and your engineering analysis computer programmes. It’s only natural that your equipment would be subtler and more thorough than anything Norwood and Limberg were able to graft on to Limberg’s medical software. And Limberg will understand that until the real culprits are identified, absolute silence about the existence of the sender is the best hope of unearthing them.”

Frontiere blinked. “You have a swift mind, Laurent.”

“Thank you.”

Frontiere frowned slowly at Michaelmas. “There may be difficulty. Norwood may not be entirely willing to accept results different from those he found for himself.”

Michaelmas glanced down the aisle. “I think you may find him less sure of himself than he has hitherto appeared. More ready to consider that his faculties might err from time to time.”

Frontiere’s eyes followed Michaelmas’s. Norwood was sitting with one heel hooked on the edge of the seat, his chin resting on his knee. His hands were clasped over his shin. His thumbs absently massaged his calf, while he sat silently looking out the window as if cataloguing the familiar things of his youth while the bus sped in among the outbuildings and the perimeter installations. Frontiere contracted his lower lip and raised an eyebrow. He looked over at Michaelmas. “You are a shrewd observer.” He stood up smoothly. “Excuse me. I will go speak to him.” He touched Michaelmas’s shoulder. “You are an encouraging person to know,” he said.

Michaelmas smiled. When Frontiere was down the aisle, he said : “Well, Domino, congratulations.”

“I simply took your hint. Now, the interesting news. I did in fact cause UNAC’s analytical apparatus to produce the desired result. A competent molecular physicist examining the readouts will be able to determine exactly with what plausible and fully worthy action group the sender is most likely to have originated. Nevertheless, we are not dealing one hundred percent in deception.”

“Oh?”

“Daugerd will never find it simply by looking at holograms. UNAC’s programmes would never have found it unaided. The difference isn’t gross. But it’s there; there’s something about the electrons…”

“Something about the electrons?”

“It’s… they’re all right; I mean, they’re in the correct places in the proper number as far as one can tell, and yet… Well, I ran an analogue; built another sender so to speak, using materials criteria I found stored in the physical data banks of the People’s Diligent Electronics Technicum at Dneprodzerzhinsk. And it’s different. The two things are out of… tune… with each other, and they shouldn’t be; that damned thing has molecules all through it that say loud and clear it’s blood kin to ten thousand others just like it from a bastard second cousin masquerading as the legitimate twin.”

“Can you give me more detail?”

“I—No. I don’t think so.”

“Are you saying the sender was produced by some organization on the order of a normal dissident group?”

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t think—I don’t believe there is material exactly like that.”

“Ah.” Michaelmas sat deeper in his chair. The bus entered the shadow of Control Tower, and the windows lightened. “Did you feel as you did at the sanitorium?”

“I… couldn’t say. Probably. Yes. I think so.”

The bus was pulling up to a halt among the colonnades and metallized glass of the ground level. People began rising to their feet. Mr Samir, Michaelmas noted through his window, had gotten the Oskar in through the portal and was parking nearby; the sides of the little van metamorphosed into an array of platforms, and a technician was out of the truck and up on the topmost one instantly, slipping one camera into its mount, and reaching down to take another being handed up to him. “What about Norwood?” Michaelmas asked. “When you touched him.”

“Norwood? Nor- ? No, I wasn’t getting anything through the sensors in that terminal. You wouldn’t find it with sensors: you have to be electron-to-electron with it… Norwood? What an interesting question! No — there’s no way. There’s no interface, you see. There’s only data. No, I could only feel that with something approximating my own kind.”