Timothy Zahn - Cobra Bargain

"But the phone's self-destruct-"

"Worked properly, of course. But you don't suppose for a minute that that really helped, do you? Destroyed evidence is as intriguing to such people as undestroyed evidence."

Radig cursed. "We'd better get some guards to their complex right away."

"Why?"

"Why?" Radig echoed in disbelief. "Because if he gets that information to his superiors-"

"He can't." Obolo was almost glacially calm. "Mangus is sealed for the night, and I've had all outside phone contact except that from this building shut off since he betrayed his identity this morning. Quiet, now, my son, and let me think."

For a moment the painful thudding of her own heart was all Jin could hear. It had happened, her worst fear about this whole penetration: Daulo was in deadly danger. Her legs trembled with the urge to leap out of concealment, cut both

Obolo and Radig in half with her antiarmor laser, and get herself and Daulo out of here...

"Yes," Obolo said abruptly. "Yes. You will assemble a small force, my son-four men-and take them to the assembly building. The agent's next step will be to try and find some of our special components in undamaged form to take out of Mangus with him."

"How will he know-"

"He'd have seen the final assembly room door this morning when he and the villager left their own area in reaction to the subliminals. He'll remember it and go there first."

"I understand. Do you wish them killed there, caught in an act of burglary?"

Jin's hands twitched involuntarily into combat position: little finger pointed straight out, thumb resting on ring-finger nails... "Of course not," Obolo snorted scornfully. "That would merely bring others from the Shahni to investigate why one of their preconditioned agents would stoop to simple thievery. No, my son, bring them back here, alive and unharmed."

"We will eventually kill them, though, won't we?" Radig asked, almost pleading.

"A Shahni agent's training won't allow-"

"Of course we won't kill them," Obolo said evenly. "We will do nothing. It'll be the offworlder spy who'll handle that task for us."

The door to the assembly building was locked, but an unusual-looking tool from

Akim's kit took care of it in short order. "Now where?" Daulo whispered as they slipped inside.

"That room we saw when I-" Akim pursed his lips. "You remember-at the end of the hallway the instructor tried to keep us out of?"

"Right," Daulo nodded, glancing out the window beside the door. At Akim's insistence they'd taken a leisurely, roundabout route here from their housing complex, and the earlier twilight had faded now into deep dusk. "What do you want me to do?"

Akim stepped past him to relock the door. "You might as well stay here," he said, not sounding entirely happy with the decision. "This is the door any visitors would be most likely to use. If you see anyone coming, give a whistle."

"A whistle?" Daulo frowned.

"Whistles carry as well in a building as shouts do with less chance of being heard from outside," Akim explained briefly. "Watch carefully."

And he was gone. Daulo listened as his footsteps faded down the hallway, trying to ignore the gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach. So Jin had been wrong all along. It wasn't missiles... or was it? There was still that walled-off section of Mangus that none of their instructors had even referred to.

But then what was all this business with the phones?

The tap on the window barely ten centimeters from his face nearly threw him across the hall in reaction. God above! He staggered, trying to regain his balance-tried to shape unsteady lips for a whistle-

"Daulo!" The whisper was barely audible through the glass. His whole body trembling, Daulo moved back to the window.

It was Jin.

Taking a shuddering breath, Daulo stepped to the door and unlocked it. "Jin-God above, but you startled me-"

"Shut up and listen," she growled, brushing past him to peer out the window.

"Obolo Nardin's on to you and your Shahni friend. Radig Nardin's gone to assemble a guard force to come here and pick both of you up."

Daulo felt his mouth drop open. "Over here? But how did they know we were coming here?"

"Obolo deduced it. He seems to be running on one of those mind-expanders you

Qasamans are fond of." Jin turned back from the window. "No sign of them yet-

Radig must figure there's no hurry. Where's your Shahni friend?"

"Miron Akim's down the hall." He pointed. "And he's not exactly a friend."

"Go get him anyway-he's dead too if Radig catches him here. If we can hide you somewhere until you can get out of Mangus-"

"Wait a second, we've got to talk first. I think you were wrong about the missiles. They're playing some sort of game with the phone instead."

She hissed between her teeth. "It's no game, Daulo. My guess is that they're systematically planting bugged phones all over Qasama."

"Bugged?" Daulo frowned.

"Equipped with microphones. Listening devices."

"God above," Daulo murmured. Phones manufactured in Mangus are very popular among top city officials, Akim had said. And among the Shahni, as well. "But even with microphones in the phones... God above. The long-range phone system."

Jin nodded grimly. "That's it, all right. Your marvelous detection-proof underground waveguide has been turned against you. It's tailor-made for this sort of thing."

Daulo clenched his teeth hard enough to hurt. She was right. With virtually every phone in the Great Arc linked through the natural waveguide beneath the planet, it would be childishly simple for any phone conversation to be picked up, duplicated, and the copy routed via that same waveguide back here to Mangus.

With the villages west of Azras one of the few areas immune to that surveillance. One reason why they'd tried so hard to keep him out of Mangus?

"Milika's in danger," he murmured.

"All of Qasama's in danger," Jin retorted. "Don't you get it, Daulo? Once this system's completed-if it isn't already-Mangus will have access to practically every communication and data transfer on the planet. And that kind of information translates directly into power."

Daulo shook his head, forehead tight with thought. "But only if they can sift out the specific information they're looking for. And the more microphones they've got planted, the more they'll have to sort through to get it."

Even in the dim light he saw something flicker across her face. "I've got an idea how they might be handling that," she said, her voice heavy with reluctance. "For the moment, though, there's a rather more immediate threat to us: I think they're trying to build themselves an army among their temporary workers. Did Miron Akim have some kind of reaction this morning? I heard Obolo

Nardin mention it."

"Yes-said he felt treason in the assembly room. We left for a few minutes, and he was fine afterwards."

"Presumably because they turned the thing off. You ever heard of subliminals?"

Daulo gritted his teeth. Treason... "Yeah," he breathed. "If you mix a mild hypnotic gas with subaudible vocal messages, you're supposed to be able to create minor attitude changes in a person."

"We don't use anything like that on Aventine, but the theory's known well enough," Jin nodded. "Is it something common here?"

"I've only heard of it being used as a last-try method with chronic criminal types. It's not supposed to be all that effective." Abruptly, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. "Of course-the temporary workers. That's why they keep hiring new men; they're trying to run as many of Azras's people through their conditioning as they can."

"Azras and Purma both," Jin grunted. "On the way in this morning I saw some loaded busses heading back to Purma. They're rotating their work force between the two cities, maybe hoping neither city will notice what they're doing."