Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

"Competent. Secretive. I don't know a lot about him-he never talks about himself."

"Anyone else I should be concerned with?" Derec asked.

"No one comes immediately to mind, but this is Kopernik. I doubt your presence is even known on the rest of the station, but I don't like taking chances." She glanced at her encryption, then sat down. "So. What is this all about?"

"We're doing a favor for Rega Looms."

He waited while Rana digested this. A smile worked at her face. "You are joking."

"No. Not in the least. Of course, that's not all of it. I don't know what it's about on Ariel's end, but Looms' problem apparently dovetails with a project Setaris gave to Ariel. Hofton will be returning with what looks like a standard DW-12 that witnessed a murder. It's collapsed, we need to see if we can recover anything. "

"I haven't heard about any murders. Not recently, anyway."

"Baleys. Fifty of them, looks like. You haven't heard anything because Palen is working on the same favor and keeping it silent as long as she can."

"How long has it been so far?"

"Two, two and a half days. I'm guessing."

"And how exactly does Rega Looms fit into this?"

"His daughter was one of the victims. "

Rana stared at him blankly. Then: "I see."

Derec coughed softly. "So, tell me about this Auroran citizenship."

Rana shrugged. "A gamble. When the dust settled last year, I applied for emigration. ITE refused, based on essential skills, but I couldn't get an employment stamp, either. So I went to Ariel and asked if she could help. A few referrals later, it looked possible that I could get Auroran citizenship due to the fact that I'm an undesirable. "

Derec started. "What?"

"I'm a positronic specialist." She grinned wryly. "Absurd, isn't it? But just the fact that I worked in a field that was for all intents and purposes outlawed on Earth put me in a special category of almost-but-not-quite foreign spy. I have the entire law in my apartment and I occasionally read through it for a laugh. Anyway, we started the data flowing. I've gotten this far, a transfer to Kopernik. The longer I work here, in this lab, the less desirable I become to Terran authorities." She smiled. "When the Aurorans here found out I was a positronics tech, they didn't know whether to believe me or throw me out. When they learned how I'd become one, they wanted to hand me off to someone else. Anyone else. Ariel got dragged back in. Her suggestion was to hire me as a contract worker and go from there. I've had to start the application process over three times now. I can't blame them for being cautious. But it's in the works now. My application has been forwarded to Aurora. All I have to do now is to continue proving that I know what I'm doing." She bobbed her eyebrows. "So that's where I stand. Waiting. Like I said, six months ago we upgraded the whole lab. I did most of the conceptual work with Rotij-who's very good, by the way. Rotij has added his name to my list of sponsors. "

"I'm glad. It would be interesting to watch you at the Calvin. "

"I might shake them up a little?"

"Just might. "

Rana smiled. "What about you?"

Derec shrugged elaborately. "Like you-waiting. Only difference is, I don't have any clear path. Ariel got my Auroran citizenship renewed, but there's some…complication… with the Terran authorities. I'm stuck in the embassy unless I want to be barred from Earth forever."

"I thought you were cleared of any charges?"

"Not quite that simple. This is Earth, after all. I suppose it would make everything easier if I just packed up and left."

"Would that be so bad?"

"I don't know. Yes…no…maybe. It's…I like Earth. For all its maddening irrationality, there's so much here. They have history. Thousands of years of history. There's something intoxicating about it." Derec felt clumsy, as if groping to make sense. "It's the first place I really came to know after I recovered from amnemonic plague. I might as well have been born here."

"I forgot about that. Sorry."

"Don't be." Derec disliked talking about his past-lack of past, really. The one thing he shared with Ariel that would never change: both of them were recovered amnesiacs, victims of Burundi's Fever. The damage the disease caused left them permanently incapable of recovering memories from before its onset.

But they had rebuilt their lives. Derec had used Earth as a focus, a home base, a place from which to find…what he needed to find.

"Ariel doesn't share your appreciation," Rana said. "She told you that?"

"We had a couple of long talks. She needed a sympathetic ear, I think, that would go away later."

"Well. I don't know, though. She's here. She requested an Earth posting. "

"Hm. By the way, not to change the subject but…what about Bogard?"

Derec sighed. "Bogard. Most of Bogard is in a crate stashed in a lockup in the embassy. Thales keeps teasing at his matrix. Of course, without sufficient memory, there's only so much Thales can do."

"We've got the memory here."

"Believe me, the thought did cross my mind. And Thales'. If possible…"

Rana smiled conspiratorially. "I don't see a problem. We'll do what we can."

He gestured at the encryption sequence. "How big is this?"

"I'm using a five-digit key."

"Five. Isn't that a little excessive?"

"All these years on Earth and you're still not paranoid enough. Actually, I'm encrypting against positronic intrusion. I'm letting Thales choose the key. That way you or I can't give it away."

"And Thales won't. Impressive."

"Thank you." She regarded him thoughtfully. "And thanks for wanting to work with me again. I hope I can help."

"Believe me, it helped just seeing you."

Rana looked startled, then laughed nervously. "I missed you."

Derec felt a warm rush of blood flow through his scalp and face. Surprised, he looked away.

A tone sounded, and Rana looked over at the comm console. "Ah. We have security." She tapped in a command. "Thales?"

"I am online, Rana. How are you?" Half an hour later, the robot arrived, encased in a dull gray canister, rolled on a gurney between Palen and Hofton. Its entry attracted attention from the huddle of technicians, who watched it all the way across the lab until it disappeared behind the blind Rana had erected.

Derec waited for Palen to open the case. The lid peeled back with a soft snik. It was much as he had seen in the storage closet: An older model DW-12-or perhaps even, now that the light was better, a DW-10 with modifications-stretched out like a corpse in a coffin. Derec pressed two fingers against the place where its ear would be. A small panel on the chest slid away to reveal a screen. Derec touched the screen, setting it aglow. A string of alphanumerics scrolled rapidly over it, stopped, then disappeared, leaving behind a flashing red dot.

"It didn't hurt to try, " he said. "Thales, the self-diagnostic is junk. We'll have to do this from first principles."

"I am prepared, Derec," Thales replied.

Palen frowned at the link perched on the console.

"Resident Intelligence, " Derec explained as he began connecting cables to various jacks in the robot's head and torso. He had to wipe accrued grime off a couple of them. "A disembodied positronic brain configured to act as a primary systems processor."

"Uh-huh," Palen said. "Like the one that went crazy in Union Station last year?"

Derec hesitated. "Basically. Only this one is mine and no one has tampered with it but me. So you needn't worry about it hallucinating. " He finished the connections. "Run synchronous pattern test, Thales. Test link. "

"Working, Derec." A moment later: "The link is fine. We can proceed."

"Is there anything left in there?"

It took nearly two minutes for Thales to answer.