Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"That's what it's looking like. But the signals are not transmitted."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean they are strings of code going through the RI and routed back to the relevant site," Rana explained. "They're one-to-one. Something at the pathway site is injecting code directly."

Derec stared at the configurations on her screens. "There's no routing… no buffer…? It's as if something is directly attached to the physical node. ".

"Doesn't make sense, I know, but that's what it's showing."

"We have to get in there and look at these components."

Rana laughed sharply. "Before Imbitek rips them out? Good luck."

Derec drummed his fingers. "They can't. The Calvin Institute has to supervise removal of the positronic components-satellite systems and all."

Rana pursed her lips, but said nothing.

Derec rapped his knuckles impatiently on the console and headed back to the comlink. "And so should we." He punched in a code.

"Calvin Institute. How may I direct your call?"

"I want to speak to…" He hesitated, licked his lips, and sighed heavily. "I wish to speak to Ariel Burgess, please. Tell her it's Derec Avery from the Phylaxis Group."

Ariel got out of bed with the feeling that something was not right. Perhaps it was only that she had gotten five hours of sleep.

She found Mia in the living room, occupying one of the oversized sofas. Her portable datum propped on her lap, a cup of coffee on the end table, and various disks scattered on the pillow beside her, she looked more like a business traveller than a government agent. Ariel was larger than Mia, and the borrowed robe seemed to swallow the smaller woman.

The picture window was milky-white, allowing in morning light but not the view.

"Good morning, Ariel," R. Jennie said, trundling in with a tray of breakfast.

"'Morning" Jennie."

Mia looked up and smiled briefly. "Hi."

"You look better," Ariel said. "How do you feel?" She glanced around the room until she found Bogard, halfway between Mia and the door, standing against the wall. It seemed somehow shrunken now, not nearly as imposing as the previous night.

"Rested," Mia said. She winced slightly. "Sore. My treatments weren't finished."

R. Jennie set the tray on the breakfast table by the window. Ariel thought about moving it to the coffee table before Mia, but it was not too far away. And Bogard still made her a little nervous.

Ariel sat down and lifted the cover from her eggs and hamsteak. "I'll make the call to take care of that after I eat. What are you going to do afterward?"

"After what?"

"After you're healed."

"That's what I'm trying to decide. I can't very well hide out here for the rest of my life. And I doubt you could get me an open passport to Aurora."

"You might be surprised what I can get you."

Mia raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. She tapped the keypad on her datum for a few minutes while Ariel carved her ham and drank down half her cup of coffee. Ariel wondered if she should have Jennie prepare a large carafe for the day.

Mia sighed heavily, then set the datum aside. She rubbed her face, then folded her arms. "I can't run. If I do, we'll never find out who did this."

"The media are all blaming the Managins."

"That might be partly true," Mia said. "I think it was Managins that actually did the killing. I've started a search protocol on a couple of names that might be relevant and one of them came up within seconds: Lemus Milmor. He's a known affiliate of OSMA, the Order for the Supremacy of Man Again. He's in our database under a 'To Be Watched' flag because he was rejected by a Settler's group for assaulting two people."

Mia shook her head. "Still. The Managins are a large faction, true. Lot of members, broad base. But to subvert the security systems in a place like Union Station? And get all those people and all those weapons in without being detected at some point? And then to put me under surveillance and try to kill me? No. They have the motive but not the resources. Not on their own."

"There are other factions."

"I've been going through the list," Mia said, gesturing at the datum. She grabbed her cup and cradled it. "TerraFirst, Primists, the HLA, the Fraternity of Organic Supremacy-if you take bits and pieces of several of them, you might get an effective team together that could attempt something like this. But they hate each other almost as much as they hate Spacers and robots." Mia frowned. "Sorry."

"For what? Are you a member of any of these organizations?"

"No… well, maybe. The largest faction would have to be the Terran government."

"But you don't go around killing Spacers to prove your point. Forget it." Ariel shrugged. "Any other candidates on your list?"

"There's been corporate resistance to these talks all along."

"Positronics is a threat to homegrown industry. At least, they see it that way. We're not so optimistic."

"What do you mean?"

"It's Spacer belief-an article of faith-that Earth will never allow positronics again. Some of us don't believe that's an absolute-after all, we got a Resident Intelligence installed at one of your largest spaceports-but we doubt Earth will ever embrace our robots to any great degree. Positronics will always be a small presence here."

"So what was this conference supposed to be about?" Mia asked.

"Spacer technology is highly advanced, some of it very far advanced over what's available on Earth. Earth would love to have some of it-like our medical tech-but Earth is afraid that opening the gates just a little will let all of it, including positronics, in. For our part, Spacers are worried about competition from some of your technologies that we find impressive. "

"Like what?"

Ariel ticked the list off with her fingers. "Transportation systems, automated databases, imbedded technologies, quasi-organic biomechanisms. But mainly mass manufacturing systems. Earth has a long history of production engineering that even with all we've done we can't quite match. Frankly, I find the Terran aversion to positronics puzzling considering some of the things your people play with daily. Anyway, there's fear of open trade both ways. Underlying commercial concerns, there's fear of cultural contamination. But the main deal is the black market. Ever since the Tiberius incident, Earth has been treading very carefully. We almost went to war over that."

"If you hadn't backed down-" Mia began.

"If you hadn't found contraband, you mean. It's very difficult to claim injury when the other fellow is right."

"As far as Earth is concerned, that was still an illegal act, boarding the Tiberius."

"But rather than go to war, you listened to Eliton." Ariel heard the edge of impatience in her own voice. Mia did not respond, obviously waiting for her friend to calm down.

Ariel cleared her throat. "This conference was supposed to start a process of… well, of demystifcation between us. A start at debunking some of the erroneous beliefs and tearing down prejudices. Without that process, controlling the illegalities that proliferate between us will never be possible and one of these days we will go to war. Some of us don't think either Earth or the Spacer worlds can survive without each other. At best, though, positronics would always be a token presence, but a way of teaching Terrans not to fear us."

"That's all shot to hell."

"Maybe. I've been doing a lot of damage control. But the heart and soul of the conference is-might be-an agreement to allow positronic inspection of all traffic between Spacer worlds and Earth. We believe the piracies are a front for black marketeering. The Tiberius supports that belief."

"On whose part?" Mia asked.

"Both sides. You can't sell contraband without a market."