Kyle Kirkland - Connections

No success pinging Barbara’s comm. Maybe I’d gotten too soft lately. Discipline had become lax.

Ionic columns grandly adorned the entrance to Stats. A thin mid-morning crowd trickled in and out. Rows of potted flowers emitted a rich aroma. I walked by some roses, flowering courtesy of the dearly departed.

“Citizen,” I said, nodding to a local pol as I ascended the steps. He saw my E.R.C.B. and returned the greeting.

When I entered the building, a bot unplugged itself from the battery recharger and rolled its three-foot frame into the nearest booth. “Good morning, Ellam K. Troy,” it purred. “How may I serve you?”

“I believe,” I said, ensuring no one was close enough to listen, “it’s my turn to serve.”

After a pause, the bot said, “No, I think it’s definitely my turn.”

“No, it’s mine.” I pulled out my comm and examined the bot’s input receptacles until I found a promising target. “Don’t you remember? You double-faulted.”

More electrons coursed through its circuits. “Citizen, are you searching for tennis information?”

I found an adequate interface plug for my comm and inserted a cable. The protected data I wanted could only be downloaded from a hard link. “Nyet,” I said. That kept the machine preoccupied for another few seconds while it tried to figure out if I was Russian or if I had mispronounced “net.” I attached the plug.

“Citizen,” said the bot, “I have detected—”

“Have you located the swertzer?”

“Please repeat, citizen. I do not understand.”

I watched the blinking light on my comm as my search program churned through the databases. Meanwhile, I had to keep the Yoobie bot in chaos, but not so confused that it would call for a human supervisor, and not so threatened that it would call for a security guard. Fortunately, Yoobie had to wire their AIs to handle the lowest common denominator. If you made the bot think you’re an average citizen—slow on the uptake—then their algorithms churned through mountains of data trying to make sense of what you said, which consumed too many resources for them to do much else. It was the only time I ever gave thanks for an ineffective educational system.

“Swertzer, switzer, swalzer! Don’t you know what that is? What kind of bot don’t know that?”

I waited for it to decide which version of the word I really meant to say. The light still flickered and I started to sweat. My heart seemed to beat in synchrony with the light. Any minute a supervisor could stick his head in the booth.

The bot said, “Are you referring to Emerald Salker, the professional tennis player?”

It always amazed me that everything had some kind of connection, however tenuous, with almost everything else. I’d never heard of that guy.

The light stopped blinking. I detached the cable at once.

“Yes, thank you. His last win?”

“Emerald Salker is female. Her last major tournament victory occurred at the United Bureaus Open, two years ago.”

I pocketed my comm. “Thanks, little buddy. That’s it.”

“Are you satisfied with this visit to the Bureau of Statistics?”

“I think I got what I wanted.”

When I returned to the garage, a Yoobie patrol was just leaving. They’d gotten tired and had given up the search for my car, and were in all likelihood heading back to a speakeasy for a doughnut. I ordered the car to pick me up and attach to the nearest guide rail under legal power. The cowcatcher retracted into the nose cone. No sense alarming Yoobie when you don’t have to.

“Where to?” asked the pilot module.

“Just drive.”

Barbara’s comm still didn’t respond. Without knowing where she was, I couldn’t help. If something hadn’t happened to her she’d get the message I had left, and there was nothing more I could do.

My comm had finished digesting the downloaded data. I’d retrieved all the recent requests for information concerning Arden Kirst, along with oblique references and indexing activity. I configured the comm to project the screen onto a flat surface—the roof of the car was the best one available. I had to hunch uncomfortably in my seat, but the large area let me scan a lot of data at once.

Nothing important leaped out. But in the three days prior to Kirst’s death, there was a significant spike of activity at the Crogan Biomedical Institute concerning Professor Arden Kirst. Although I didn’t have time to sift through the data, the activity was likely the result of a multitude of queries. Shortly before Kirst died, he’d become a popular man.

Then I configured my data-mining algorithm to search in Kirst’s data file and my file for cross-references. It pulled out anything the two files had in common. If the threat on me was in some way related to Kirst, there must be some sort of link between us.

The algorithm found plenty of links. I’d been his student. Later I’d worked for him. He’d mentored me for my R.C.B. Helping Ops or future Ops obtain genuine Responsible Citizen of the Bureaus merit badges was a specialty of Kirst, and he’d been proud of it (“the only time I was glad to have students fall asleep in class,” he’d often said). He’d given me a leg up on my Extremely R.C.B. later. Kirst had also written recommendations in support for my license application to the biodet czar.

I got smart and limited the results to the most recent three months. And that’s when everything became both clearer and more mysterious at the same time.

A line scrolled on the screen displaying Kirst’s stepdaughter and her ID number. I knew nothing about her. Kirst had married his second wife, Nadia Yates, about three years ago, and she apparently had a daughter by the name of Jennifer Yates, though I had never heard of her until now.

At first I thought there had been a mistake. What did Jennifer Yates have to do with me? A crosscheck confirmed the link and provided the details. The ID number was the same as a young assistant I’d hired two months ago—Barbara J. Marion.

Parked on the fifth floor of a garage about three blocks from home, where I could keep an eye on the entrance to the building and the window of my eleventh-floor room, I watched for any unusual activity. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I’d almost decided to go in when I spotted a Yoobie officer walking out of the exit and looking around. Short, blond, and good-looking.

She might have been doing any one of a number of things, not necessarily looking for someone. And if she were looking for someone, it might not have been me—more than a thousand people lived in that building.

But I had a hunch that she was after somebody. And that somebody was Ellam K. Troy.

Maybe she was one of us and maybe she wasn’t. The secrecy we maintained and the rules about members knowing only other members within their cell started to seem catastrophically inadequate. It helped to prevent wholesale snitching and disastrous Yoobie round-ups, but it also meant that distinguishing your friends from your enemies was almost impossible.

She crossed the street and entered a veg-to-go diner.

At $200 an hour, I couldn’t afford to stay parked here for long. Besides, there was someone I needed to see. I decided it wasn’t safe to go home, so I ordered the car to slip out of the mooring and ease onto the ramp. A minute later the car hooked up with one of the main arteries, and, under legal power, I headed for Arden Kirst’s old house in the suburbs. The house now belonged to Nadia Yates.

On the way I kept looking behind me. Sure enough, someone seemed to be on my tail. But they kept their distance.

It probably wouldn’t have hurt to let them follow me—nobody would have been surprised that I should want to visit Arden’s widow, and I didn’t think I would be putting her into any danger by doing so. But I decided not to take the chance. I fired up the turbojet and lowered the cowcatcher. After that, the only thing behind me was seasickness.