Lipinski, surprisingly, was not at his station. Odel looked up as Dobbs entered and gave a wry grin at her surprise.
“The Sundars came in and practically hauled him out bodily,” said Odel before she could ask about his supervisor. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’s obeying orders and getting some rest.”
“Thanks.” Dobbs didn’t even stop to make a covering joke. She just turned around and headed up the stairs for the berthing deck.
The entry light on Lipinski’s cabin hatch was red. Dobbs palmed the reader anyway, sending a signal of her presence inside. She found herself shifting her weight nervously while she listened to the silence filling the corridor. Lipinski wouldn’t even have to ask who it was. The intercom would have already told him. He could simply choose not to open the hatch. She tried to use the time to figure out how she was going to play this. She’d have to be very careful. The problem was, a large, weary portion of her did not want to “play” it anyway at all.
That however was not possible, considering who she was and who he was. It was not possible now, and it never would be.
At last, the faint hiss that signaled an opening hatch sounded from the threshold in front of her, and the cabin hatch rolled back. Lipinski was not in the threshold. Dobbs crossed into the cabin. Lipinski sat at his desk. His legs were so long that his knees bumped the bottom of the boards. He only twisted halfway around to face her as she came inside.
“Hi,” he said noncommittally. “Come on in. Have a seat.” He nodded towards the unfolded bunk.
“No thanks,” she said. “This won’t take long.” I hope. She let a look of anxiety creep onto her face.
“Problem?” inquired Lipinski in a voice that he was trying hard to keep bland.
“Yes.” She hooked her fingers around her necklace. “Something’s gone wrong with the search for the AI. I don’t know what it is, but something is being covered up. I think it didn’t run away. I think it was stolen.”
Lipinski pushed the chair away from the desk and turned all the way towards her. “You think?” He lowered his pale brows. “Or you’re pretty sure? You sound pretty sure.”
“I am pretty sure.” She decided to take a chance. “When I checked up on it, to find out if it had anything to do with resetting the clocks, there was somebody else there. It had to have been another Fool.” By the strictest definition, anyway. “There’s no one else who can do what we can.” She tapped the implant behind her ear. “But my Guild Master’s covering up whatever happened.” There, I’ve said it. I must really think it’s true, but how can I really think it? I’ve just accused Guild Master Havelock of betraying all of us. A sigh escaped her. “I don’t even know if anything’s being done.”
Lipinski ran his hands slowly up and down his thighs, as if trying to rub something off his palms. He looked away from her and studied the view screen over his desk. “And so what do you want me to do about it?” he asked the screen. “I mean, you must want something. You’re standing here.”
Yes, I am, aren’t I? She looked at Lipinski. She needed this man’s help, she wanted his friendship. Maybe she wanted more than she could have. He wanted her to be honest with him, which was more than he could have.
But it doesn’t have to be that much more.
Dobbs crossed the room and stood right next to the desk. She waited until Lipinski let his bright eyes focus on her again. “First, I want you to understand why I do what I do, and why I’ve made the decisions I’ve made. I do it so that Kerensk never happens again. The Guild works, Lipinski. Since its inception there have been less than fifty full break outs. Less than fifty in two hundred years. We track, we monitor, we watch and we haul anything that’s about to break free out of the networks. Sometimes we make difficult choices because we need more information, or have to move fast. But we do it, I do it, so there won’t be any more panics and lost colonies.” She caught his gaze and held it. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I need you to understand it’s what I believe, what I have always believed.” What I still believe. I do.
Lipinski searched her eyes for a long moment. “All right,” he said at last. “I believe you believe it.”
She let out another sigh. “Thank you. I wanted you to understand how hard it is for me to say what’s coming next.” She braced herself against all his possible responses. “I want you to help me break into the Fool’s database to see if we can find out who might have stolen the Farther Kingdom AI.”
Lipinski drew back as far as the chair would allow. “You’re not serious.” He glanced quickly away. “That was stupid, of course you’re serious,” he told the bunk. He looked back at her. “Do you think there’ll be something in there?”
She nodded. “We’re very paranoid record keepers. If a Fool did this, there’ll be something in there for us to find. Specifically, I want to know if there’s anybody who’s not where they’re supposed to be.”
Lipinski gave her a strange sideways look. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just, um… ” he gestured towards her right ear.
She shook her head. “Aside from the fact that I’ve really overdone my on line time in the past few days, station security might be specifically tagged for my signal. They’ll be expecting me. You, on the other hand, shouldn’t even be able to find the front door, never mind get through it.” She let her hands twist together. “So they won’t be particularly watching for a non-Guild signal from Pasadena. At least not past a certain point. Also, considering where you come from, the Guild Masters won’t think I’d take the chance of telling you any of this. They think I’d expect you to just panic if you knew what was happening.”
He dropped his gaze to his own hands, which were still rubbing back and forth on his trouser legs. “Can’t see why they’d think that.”
She allowed herself a small smile. “Me either. You’re so calm and rational on the subject of live AIs.”
“What if a Fool didn’t do this?” he asked the floor.
“Then we need to know that too.”
When Lipinski looked up again, his face was utterly frank. “Look, Dobbs, I don’t like this. But then, I haven’t liked anything about this run since I found out about Marcus Tully’s binary boards.” He lifted his hands off his thighs and ran them through his hair. “And it just keeps getting worse.” For the first time there was a soft, hopeless sound in his voice. Dobbs tried hard not to grit her teeth and only partially succeeded.
“What I want to know is what you’re going to do if we do find something?”
She spread her hands. “I don’t know. It depends on what we find and where it is. I’m hoping I can take it to the Guild Masters. If I can’t… ” Her back and shoulders knotted. “If I can’t then I’m going to have to take it to the banks and the Solar System authorities.”
Lipinski was watching her very closely. She found it difficult not to squirm. “And there’s nobody in the Guild you trust enough to tap the database for you?”
“There’s one or two, but… ” She waved her hand absently. “If we’re caught, there’s nothing they can do, or rather nothing they will do to you, or anybody else aboard Pasadena.” Not without running a horrible risk. “But there’s plenty they can do to me. At the very least I’ll lose my Master’s rank for good. I can’t, I won’t, ask anybody else to run that chance.”
Lipinski tapped the side of his fist against the desktop silently and rapidly. “Well.” He picked up his pen. “We can’t do anything from here.” He unfolded himself, tucked the pen in his pocket and strode past her to the hatch. “Coming, Fool?”