Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"Cost who?"

"Answer the first, you answer that."

"There were a lot of elements"

"Let me give you a hint. Tiberius."

"The boarding incident?"

Lanra nodded. "That almost triggered a war, yes."

"I'm not sure I follow, Mr. Lanra."

Lanra leaned toward her, folding his hands on the table. "A year-and-a-half ago, Mr. Looms was approached by a group of industrialists to join an investment portfolio being funded by certain shipping lines. Mr. Looms declined, since he disapproves of interstellar settlement and, although the money looked very good, he could not afford to appear hypocritical on this issue. Most of his own investors are members of his church and they invest in DyNan as much from ideological conviction as out of the hope for potential profit. The fact is, DyNan doesn't perform nearly as well as its closest competitors, so that loyalty is significant. We make a lot of money, but our profit margins are narrower than average. This group assured him that his participation would be entirely anonymous. In fact, all of their participation in it was anonymous and completely off-record. The profits were funneled directly into the mutual fund, loaned out, and returned as interest free payments, at which time the funds could go into any account without the hint of taint. When Mr. Looms inquired into this shipping line through other channels, he found no such line existed. Officially."

"Black market," Ariel said.

"Exactly."

"The pirates."

"Who are not, strictly speaking, pirates," Lanra pointed out. "The thefts are all prearranged. The part of the treaty that would put a damper on it was the clause concerning robotic inspection of all ships, coming or going, to any recognized colony or Spacer world."

"I'd considered that, of course. How does this let Looms off?"

"He has no investment in this enterprise and, in fact, would not mind seeing such inspection. He feels that Terrans would resent it so much that it would significantly reduce trade. In time, it could curtail colonization. Hurt both enough, and you might see the day when Earth can extricate itself from involvement with Spacers and Settlers."

"That seems a bit optimistic, don't you think?" Ariel asked.

"Maybe. All I'm concerned with here is that it reduces Rega Looms' culpability."

"Disrupting the conference could accomplish the same thing, though. Give me something more concrete."

Lanra shook his head. "I can't. I'm looking into it, but right now I can't. I needed to see you to find out what you intend to do."

Ariel raised her eyebrows. "Me?"

"Spacers."

"We're hardly a monolith, Mr. Lanra. My own people are taking a wait-and-see approach. When and if the Terran authorities make arrests, then we can see."

"They're likely to arrest Rega Looms. What then?"

"It's a question of evidence."

"Look," Lanra said. "Mr. Looms is not especially liked here, either."

"What do you mean, 'either'?"

"Like Spacers. See, people want stability, they want comfort, they want reassurance. They don't want disruption. Change scares them. The way things are right now, it's fairly comfortable. Both you and my employer advocate changes. Whoever is setting this up will give the people something they want-two avenues of unwelcome change closed down. Who's going to be on Rega Looms' side in this when he's been telling people for years what lazy bastards they've been because they won't peel their own potatoes or make their own clothes? He sees the average technological environment today as no better than one with positronics. People resent it -enough to not care that he might not be guilty."

"He's the perfect scapegoat, in other words," Ariel said.

"As you say."

"You still haven't given me an alternative."

"Alda Mikels."

"Imbitek? Why would he?"

"You should look at his finances. And you should look at your own people. This didn't happen entirely here on Earth. The black market exists to serve Spacers and Settlers as well as Terrans."

"You're very good at making broad claims that you can't back up," Ariel said dryly.

"There's a very, very old saying on Earth, Ms. Burgess: 'Follow the money. ' "

Lanra stood then. "Thanks for meeting with me. I hope it wasn't fruitless."

Mia watched him cross the dining room. Halfway toward the entrance, he did a casual turn, sweeping the room. A very professional move, one she should have seen coming, but did not. She froze in place as his gaze swept past her, then returned, briefly. She thought she saw a faint frown of puzzlement, followed by a quick smile.

Then he was gone.

The embassy limo pulled into the Phylaxis garage. Derec told it to wait and ascended to the main level to see who was present. He found Rana in the cafeteria, making coffee.

"Anyone here?" Derec asked.

"No. Stu came by today, filed his reports, then went home. No one else. Listen, this has been quite a day so far. You received a call you will not believe and the work-ups on that stuff you found-"

"Later. Prep Bogard's niche."

She blinked at him, momentarily uncomprehending. Then her eyes widened. "Right."

Derec returned to the limo.

"Bogard, come with me."

The robot unfolded out of the rear seat, its body flowing liquidly and resuming its standard form alongside Derec. Derec told the limo to return to the embassy. He watched it back out of the garage and drive away. The door closed and Derec led Bogard up to the lab.

"Do you remember this place, Bogard?"

"Yes, Derec. I was constructed and programmed here. "

"That's correct. Do you know why I've brought you back?"

"Debriefing and recalibration."

"Correct. Are you aware of a gap in your primary memory?"

"Y-yes-yes," the robot stammered.

"Fine, Bogard, don't focus on it," Derec said calmly. "That gap represents a potential conflict. That's what we're going to fix."

"Y -esss, Derec."

The abrupt distortion in Bogard's speech execution worried Derec. He had expected a slight hesitancy, not such a clear sign of imminent collapse. It had been over four days since the Incident, so perhaps it was not unreasonable to expect problems like this.

"Oh, my." Rana stood at the door to a separate chamber, staring at Bogard. "I thought-"

"I know," Derec said quickly. "Is everything prepped?"

"Uh, yes."

Derec led the robot through the doorway into the small room. The space contained two workstations, cousins to those in the main lab. Against one wall stood a robotic niche, modified to link to a third console off to the left. A wide table hung from the right-hand wall; tools and half-constructed components covered it.

Rana went to one of the workstations, Derec the other.

"Bogard, please enter the standby module," Derec said.

Bogard obediently backed into the niche. Derec activated the module. The niche extruded hundreds of wire-fine I/O probes and linked Bogard into the system.

Derec relaxed then, surprised at the amount of tension he had carried all the way from the embassy. He realized at that moment that he had been uncertain of Bogard's cooperation. Perhaps Ariel was right and tinkering with absolute Three Law restrictions was a mistake.

Too late…

"All right," he said to Rana, "start the alignment. Bogard's buffer is holding a major conflict at bay. I think the internal barriers are about to yield to the diagnostics."

"It's been what? Four, five days?" Rana asked, working her console.

"Close enough. I thought we might have a little more time, but it's already showing symptoms of collapse."

Derec watched the screens at his station. The buffer transfer was the most complicated part of the debriefing. A duplicate positronic brain received the contents of Bogard's buffer, allowing for a full assessment of its impact. Simultaneously, a simple memory cache received a verbatim record of those same contents.