Back in the lobby, she found the hallway that led to the business chamber. A memory board had the prices for private alcoves listed next to the door. Al Shei barely glanced at it. It was going to be too much, whatever it was. She entered a covered courtyard that was studded with potted palms and sported a broad fountain in the middle.
Fully half of the private alcoves were empty. Al Shei picked one at random and sealed the door shut behind her. The ventilation system kicked in with a faint hum and the smell of almonds.
The alcove was barely big enough for herself and the desk. There were memory boards on two walls and a view screen on the third. Al Shei activated the desk with her signature and thumb print. She flicked quickly through the menus until the reached the banking options and accessed her private account. Then, she opened a line to Uysal.
Uysal’s image materialized on the view screen, frowning deeply at her.
“I told you we’d meet tomorrow, ‘Dama.” Despite his expression, his voice managed to remain smooth and temperate.
“I no longer have until tomorrow.” Al Shei poised her pen over the desk. “I am prepared to transfer the full amount owing for whatever answer you may have right now.”
Uysal’s face smoothed out as his eyebrows arched almost up to his hair line. He waved one neatly kept hand. “Very well, ‘Dama. I will accept transfer.”
Al Shei wrote the order across the board and signed it. The desk deducted the amount. She waited. Uysal glanced down at the board in front of him.
“Thank you, ‘Dama,” he said and Al Shei knew the transfer had gone completely through.
Uysal wrote an order across his board. His eyes flickered back and forth as he read what appeared. Then, he leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers and pursed his lips.
“I am informed, ‘Dama, that you have given me the records for an extremely destructive full-system virus. Highly infectious. Definitely a weapon of first-strike capacity.” His eyebrows arched again as he looked at her. For a moment, Al Shei thought he was going to offer up a comment or Qur’anic quote, but he didn’t.
“It is also one that had gone missing from the Toric secured sector where it was hidden in a trojan horse arrangement with some outdated diplomatic data. That data, and the virus, are thought to have been removed by Marcus Tully, according to Terran authorities, who are watching him carefully — and waiting impatiently for his partner to get back home, by the way.” A small smile formed on his wide mouth. “Impatiently but very quietly, due to her position in a prominent banking family.”
Al Shei’s heart sank. She struggled to keep the feeling from showing in her eyes. She gestured impatiently at Uysal.
“It is further known that before the virus came into his possession, Tully held two separate face-to-face meetings with a Dr. Amory Dane, who also had dealings with Tully’s partner.”
Al Shei felt her spine stiffen. “Amory Dane?” she repeated.
Uysal nodded. “That is what I have here. Dane’s movements are…conflicted, but that much is certain.”
Al Shei wanted to scream. She wanted to swear. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and cry. She did none of those things. She had no time.
“Thank you, ‘Ster Uysal,” she said instead.
“You are most welcome, ‘Dama. Is there any further way I can assist?” He spread his hands out.
“I wish there was.” Al Shei closed the line down.
She sat frozen where she was for a moment, staring at her hand holding her pen against the board.
Dane met with Tully. Dane supplied the medical data that had gone missing. Tully had stolen some outdated diplomatic files. Those were the only facts she had, and they didn’t make any sense. Questions thronged around Al Shei’s head. Did Tully know he was also stealing a virus? Had he done it for Dane? Did Dane want the files or the virus? Had Tully tried to get back on board for the junked stacks, or to see if he really had left his stolen poison inside the Pasadena…
Was that virus really just a virus? Where was it now?
Al Shei opened another line, straight to Pasadena and Schyler.
Schyler appeared on the screen with a stack of films and a plate of food in front of him. One hand held a bulb of something black that steamed. He looked up at her, saw the look in her eyes and set the bulb down.
“What’s happened?”
“Something very bad.” Her voice came out as a croak. She cleared her throat. “What’s the status of the ship’s comm system, Tom?”
“Initial report is clean as a whistle.”
Al Shei felt her blood go cold. Schyler’s face fell into deep lines of concern. “I take it that wasn’t the answer you wanted?”
“No,” she said, striving to put some volume in her voice, which now did not want to function at all. “No, it wasn’t. I’ll tell you more later, Tom.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to send you up a packet for Asil. I want you to bundle it up with one of Tully’s hush programs and send it to him, all right?” They never talked about the fact that Schyler knew where most of Tully’s special lock-picking and data scrambling programs were kept. Never until now.
Schyler nodded. “Out.” Al Shei closed that line too. She pressed the tip of her pen against the memory board and tried to think.
“Beloved,” she wrote, “Amory Dane, our bio-data contract, has been implicated in Tully’s exploits.” In as few words as she could manage, she gave him Uysal’s assessment of exactly what the “virus” was, as well as Resit and Lipinski’s suspicions of what might have come along with it. “I’m told his movements are conflicted. Check out the records from Port Oberon and see what you can sort out. If you say this has to go straight to the authorities, we’ll do it.”
She wrote in the Pasadena berth in The Gate for the destination and sent the packet up. She hadn’t told Schyler to erase the end of their little conversation from the public record, but she was confident he would take care of that on his own. The dirty feeling on her skin began to worm its way down inside her. She tried to push it away, and was only partially successful.
She sealed her account again and transferred records of the transaction back to the Pasadena, praying that the lines would hold up. Then, she left the alcove and the hostel.
New Medina was not a city that lit itself up by night. The sun was firmly down and all those who did not have important business were supposed to be at home. There were voices and laughter, and the continual melange of noise that came from cars, drones, and animals all compressed into the tiny space the winding streets offered, but only just enough light to guide herself by. The wind still smelled like dust and the city, but it was chilly now. Al Shei wished she’d taken the time to put on her biljab cloak.
The stars shone down clear white from the sky, muted only by the quarter moon that turned the domes and spires silver. It was beautiful. A sight she would not see at home. Al Shei had time to wish she could stand still and look at it. Instead, she whistled down the tram and swung herself aboard. This was another fully automated module. A city map up front listed streets and addresses in three different alphabets. Al Shei lit up Lipinski’s hotel and took a seat between a merchant robed in green with his shop box on his lap, and a woman cloaked and veiled in solid black.
The tram crawled through the streets. Al Shei found herself eyeing the road in its headlights nervously. The thing was practically an AI itself. It had to be to avoid completely unpredictable obstacles, like animals, cars and pedestrians. But how much of its operation depended on in-put from the central communications facility? It had to know about blockage, or route changes, or repair requirements from somewhere. If the central net went down, would it collapse in the middle of the street? Or would it just go out of control and run into one of those unpredictable obstacles?