Mark Tiedemann: Chimera

He took out a palm-sized pad and switched it on. Less than a minute later all the telltales winked green.

He sat down at one of the desks, jacked his palm monitor into the computer keyboard before him, and initiated an access sequence. The security code was not very sophisticated; his decrypter gained entry in less than thirty seconds. Coren keyed quickly. The scheduling chart came up on the screen, showing incoming and outgoing traffic for all the bays on the far side of the warehouse. He studied the times.

Most of the bays were tightly scheduled. One showed a half-hour period with nothing going out, nothing coming in. He tapped queries. A shipment had been canceled at the last minute. Three shipments, in fact, all belonging to a company called Kysler, and all cancellations routed out of the Baltimor ITE oversight offices. Baltimor…practically the other side of the globe. Odd. There was an ITE oversight office in the Laus District and another up north in Arkanleg, both of which should have had responsibility for supervising traffic in and out of Petrabor. Still, there was no reason Baltimor would be necessarily barred from such duties…

He opened the manifests. Mostly raw synthetic materials, exotic molecular structures, exported by an Auroran-owned wholesaler. One bin contained electronics manufactured by Imbitek. Coren studied the ID tags for a few moments. Kysler Diversified was the distributor. All the lots had destination codes which he could not read.

Coren closed down the station. He unjacked his monitor, checked the status on his little interference runners once more, then headed out. He knew now which bay he needed.

Coren followed the transparent wall till he came to an exit. A short staircase took him down to the walkway that bordered the labyrinth. He produced another handful of vonoomans, smaller than the first group, from a different pocket. Activated, they scurried along the walkway and disappeared. The first group gave him security, interfering with the warehouse systems; these would find people for him.

Automated tractors following invisible guide signals sped through the canyons, a constant loud humming and rush of cold air that whipped at his coat. The place smelled of oil and ozone, metal and hot plastic, and, under all that, an organic odor: yeast or mold. Rot.

The walkway took him to a broad receiving area fronting a row of large bay doors. As he neared, the sounds grew thunderous: doors opening and slamming shut, transports rumbling through in both directions, the wind now almost constant. And beyond that, in the distance, deeper, sepulchral, the heavy thunder of the port itself: shuttles lifting off and landing irregularly, disrupting any possible rhythm to all the noise.

Between the edge of the storage hive and the bays lay six meters of ancient, stained apron. Except for small piles of boxes and litter, Coren saw nowhere to hide. He set free another handful of machines and retreated to the nearest staircase leading down into a canyon.

Fog lay heavily a few stories below. Coren descended half the height of the block, until the cold bit at his face and filled his sinuses with warning hollowness. He sat down on a step and pulled his palm monitor out once more.

It unfolded four times to give him a display showing the locations of all his little spies against a map of the entire warehouse. The surveillance blocks still showed operative. Now he saw blue dots where all his other machines had secreted themselves. He pressed the half-meter-square screen against the wall beside him and waited.

Ten minutes.

One blue dot turned red. Coren looked up, surprised. The intruder had come from the nearby loading bays. The sixteenth member of the crew, he thought. Coren looked down at the fog, twenty or more meters below, and wondered if he should move-into even more bitter cold. But numbers flashed beside the dot on his flatscreen, coordinates that told him the precise location of the worker, who waited near one of the bay doors, showing no sign of coming any closer to Coren. After a few seconds Coren felt confident that he would not be seen-not by this one, at least.

Twelve more minutes passed.

Three blue dots turned red, far down the row, back near the offices. As he watched, his machines focused on the new intruders, coordinates proliferated over the screen, and he counted bodies: fifty-one.

The number surprised him. He had expected no more than a dozen, at most fifteen.

They came as a group down a walkway, heading this direction, obviously for a meeting with the waiting dockworker, who now moved a few steps from the wall.

Coren folded the screen back down to palm-size and crept up the stairs to the lip of the walkway.

The dockworker stood just inside the warehouse by an open bay door several meters away, his back to Coren. Hands in pockets, the man shifted minutely from foot to foot as if keeping time to a tune only he heard. Coren looked across the grid of walkways to the approaching group. From this distance he recognized no one. All of them wore black, all of them carried small packs.

Five or six children accompanied the adults.

Coren glanced at his palm-monitor. The communications and surveillance dampers still showed green. He estimated that he had another twenty minutes before the AI figured out why its internal security system was down.

Coren peeled off his overcoat.

As the fifty-one refugees gathered around the dockworker, Coren stepped silently from the stairwell and moved smoothly up to the perimeter, then cautiously worked his way through them. He looked at no one, aware only that a few people gave him quick, nervous looks. They were frightened, tense, too careful perhaps in some ways, careless in others. None of them would want to believe that they had been followed or infiltrated or caught, so unless it was made obvious that he did not belong here, they would explain him away to themselves. At least, for the time being.

Long enough to reach the front of the gathering. "-no changes," a woman said tersely. "Canister BJ-5156. Don't tell me about some other canister-"

"It can't be helped," the dockworker said calmly. "I'm sorry. The one segregated for you was found and impounded."

"Why wasn't I informed?"

"I'm informing you now. I'm informing you that we have back-up. We were prepared. It's the same as it was, only different. A new canister. I could point out that you were supposed to be a party of fifty-two and you're missing one. Bad security. But, hey, we understand-people get scared and back out at the last minute." He gave her a crooked smile. "We are professionals.".

The woman was tall, almost gaunt, sharply featured. Her head sat forward, angry and demanding, as she glared at the dockworker, who gazed back at her evenly. Coren admired his nerve under that displeased inspection.

After several seconds, she nodded slowly. "All right. But if this turns out to be anything but copasetic I'll peel your skin off with pliers. Tell your people we're ready."

The worker nodded and walked through the bay.

Coren started forward.

Something closed on his right bicep. He tugged at it automatically, to no effect. He turned around, left hand curled to give a palm blow, and froze, abruptly and utterly terrified.

A robot regarded him blankly through mesh-covered eye sockets.

"I apologize, sir," it said quietly, "but I must ask that you come with me. "

The robot drew him back through the crowd, which now watched him with open fear and shock. Some cringed back from the robot, but most stood fast, staring outrage at Coren Lanra.

The robot walked him down the row of bay doors, to the fourth one from the group, and waited, still holding him, firmly but harmlessly.

"Damn it, Coren. "

Coren glanced around at the voice. He looked at the woman he had come to talk to. He waited as long as he could before speaking, taking advantage of the opportunity to simply look at her. Finally, he said, "Good to see you, too, Nyom."