Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"-is pretty much the same. Which means that-what? Three Law violations in a standard positronic brain are being shunted-where? Outside the system?"

Derec paced briefly. "Possibly, but I doubt it. If that were the case, then the RI shouldn't have collapsed. My guess is this is a sensory diversion."

"Sensory…"

"The RI was playing a game."

"Which implies a malfunction," Rana said.

"Yes, but where? What if it thought the game was real?"

"How? That would mean that its entire sensory net"

"Was subverted. Its ability to perceive reality had been altered, so that something else became the operative reality. When it came back online it must have realized what had happened."

"But not while it was playing the game?"

Derec shrugged. "Evidently not."

Rana frowned. "Look, we built Bogard to shunt memory like this. The only way for a standard positronic brain to exhibit this is for an external system to be grafted onto it. That would show up as interference in major operational areas."

"That should be easy enough to find," Derec said.

"But I haven't found any."

"Did you look?"

Rana paused. "No, not specifically. But it would be obvious, even as badly jumbled as this is."

"Maybe. Maybe only if we look at it the right way. You've been trying to figure out what's been happening to the RI brain given the assumption that it's an unmodified unit and therefore self-contained. Not to mention something this radical-I mean, think about it. At a crucial moment, the entire RI absented itself from what was happening in the terminal to playa game. That much of a modification-that much interference-it would have to be enormous and it would have to be something…"

"What?"

"It would have to be something laid in over time, otherwise it would trigger alarms, cause shutdowns. Minor crises would be the rule…"

"So it might not be so obvious."

"No, but it would still be big just to get around the normal self-correcting routines," Derec explained. "Did we get its operational records for the past-oh, how long has it been online? A year?"

"Almost two. We did, but I'm not inclined to trust them."

"Why not?"

Rana gestured at the screen. "Nothing we've seen here is as it should be."

"Good point. But that's only if you rely on the RI's own report."

"I don't think I'd trust a report made by Terrans."

"You're Terran," Derec pointed out.

"An accident of birth." Rana waved a hand dismissively. "I claim special circumstances."

Derec laughed. "Bring it up anyway," he said.

He went to the com and tapped in the code for Union Station. After going through a short maze of addresses, he finally connected with Tathis Kedder.

"Mr. Avery," Kedder said, bemused. "I didn't expect to hear from you again after-well, after."

"I take a personal pride in my work," Derec said." Just because I'm told it's no longer my business, that doesn't mean I stop worrying about it."

Kedder smiled, nodding. "I know what you mean. How can I help you?"

"Just your recollections. Do you remember any instances of inexplicable interruptions in service from the RI? Or periods when it seemed sluggish or… uncooperative?"

Kedder shook his head. "Never uncooperative. Apologetic a couple of times."

"Apologetic?"

"Yes, it glitched -the one I remember best was a luggage mix-up-and it apologized profusely, as if the world might end." Kedder paused. "Let me think… one other time the whole kitchen component seized up. That lasted about ten minutes, then seemed to correct itself."

"And the RI apologized again?" Derec asked.

"Most sincerely."

"And you didn't report it?"

Kedder frowned. "Of course we did. To the shift supervisor, who took it to the Calvin Institute."

"The Calvin Institute. Why not here?"

Kedder shrugged. "I don't know. I thought we were supposed to go through you, but the supervisor said no."

"And what did the Calvin Institute say?"

"Adjustment errors. Nothing important enough to bring you in."

"I see. Did the Calvin Institute give that recommendation?"

"That was my understanding."

"Which supervisor was this? I'd like to talk to him."

Kedder shook his head. "He's gone, oh, about ten months ago."

"Where, if I may ask?"

"New job. He went to work for… let me think… oh, yes, Imbitek."

"Do you remember his name?"

"Hob Larkin."

Derec scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Any other 'adjustment errors' that you can think on"

"A couple of times requested data got routed to the wrong place. It lost one of my reports once-I had to redraft the whole thing. Little stuff like that. But that was all early on. In the last, oh, year it's been behaving perfectly."

"Until the other day."

"Yes."

Derec sighed. "Thank you, Mr. Kedder. If you think of anything else, let me know, would you?"

"Sure."

"How are things going?"

"Well, we've had Imbitek people in here all morning."

Derec raised an eyebrow. "Imbitek."

"Yes. The decision was made to convert over to nonpositronic systems. We already had some of Imbitek's imbedded systems in place, so… sorry."

"Hm. That was fast."

"Not fast enough for management." Kedder smiled wryly. "A lot of pilots won't use us till the changeover is made-they just don't trust positronics anymore. Not the Spacers, of course-they're complaining for just the opposite reason, threatening not to come through here if we do switch to a nonpositronic system. It's turned into as big a problem as it would be if we didn't have a system at all. Do you have any idea how much traffic goes through here in a day?"

"Of course," Derec replied. "I just meant the selection of a new vendor. Bureaucracy doesn't usually move that quickly."

"Fortunately, this time was an exception."

"Well, I'm glad something's going right for you."

"How about you? How's your investigation coming?"

"Did you forget? Phylaxis was taken off that."

Kedder looked confused for a moment. "Oh. Yes, I-"

"This was purely personal. Thanks, Mr. Kedder. Oh, by the way, could I speak with your associate, Mr. Hammis?"

"He hasn't come in yet. Normally we aren't on shift together, just yesterday was…"

"Ah. I see."

"I can tell him you called."

"Would you? Just some routine stuff."

"Sure."

"Thank you." Derec closed the connection.

"Don't feel too bad," Rana said. "Imbitek has something like sixty percent of Earth's robotics market."

"Only don't ever call it that to their face. It's 'imbedded service technologies'." Derec steepled his fingers below his chin, staring unseeing at the blank com screen. "Who at the Calvin Institute would issue instructions for them to bypass the contract service…?"

The company that had installed the RI had been Solarian, not Auroran, but there had had to be a Calvin representative to oversee it. Who had that been? Derec tapped the request in the datum.

Bys Randic. He remembered her, but she had rotated back to Aurora several months ago. The company itself had been a midsized firm, not a bad choice, but certainly not the first that would have recommended itself to Derec. The byzantine complications of the Terran bidding process still baffled him-certainly there had been better firms, but the traditions of Earther government procurement could not be circumvented by straightforward Spacer logic. But he had been there during the entire operation as well and audited the process. Eliton had seen to that, since it came under his committee's oversight. Other companies-mostly Terran-had installed the satellite systems, but the Calvin Institute rep had vetted the interfaces and pronounced them acceptable. Who, along that striated line of involved parties, could have overridden such a vital part of the process?