“They beat us to it,” she breathed. “They knew we’d be coming after The Gate’s records.”
“Not necessarily.” Schyler frowned at the screen. “They might just be covering their tracks. It’d make sense for either the Guild, or Curran’s side. After all, neither side knows that we know about them.”
“Unless they got a hold of Dobbs and made her talk,” Yerusha pointed out. A chill sank into her blood as she said it. “We don’t know where she really is. That departure announcement I saw could have been a fake.”
Schyler froze dead still.
Her desk beeped. Kagan was trying to say something. Yerusha touched the MUTE command again.
“… on its way to you…”
“Shut it down!” shouted Schyler. “Get the back-ups off-line!”
“Wha…what?” sputtered Kagan. “Yerusha’s who’s with you?”
Schyler leaned into the camera’s sight. “Get those fractured records off-line right now!”
“On it.” Kagan’s voice was bewildered, but his hands moved. “All right, they’re off. There’s about four hours in transit to you anyway, do you want me to…”
“Never mind,” Schyler’s shoulders slumped. “It’s probably too late.”
Yerusha stared at him in confusion. She had a feeling Kagan was doing the same.
“You should be getting the first of it in about three minutes,” Kagan said. “I’ve set everything on auto. I’ve got to get going…”
Or somebody’ll notice you’re gone. Kid, you have got to get your mama to teach you more about timing.
“Or somebody’ll notice I’m gone. Good luck, Yerusha.”
“Good luck, Kagan.” Yerusha watched Schyler collapse onto the bunk. “I owe you.”
She cut the video, but kept the line open. She swivelled the chair so she could face Schyler. “What?”
“Think about it,” he said bitterly. “They may not have even needed Dobbs. They must be paranoid about their own security, or they wouldn’t have stayed hidden as long as they have. If you were an AI hiding in the network and you wanted to stay hidden, and you knew the Pasadena had gotten caught in an extremely delicate situation that involved you, what would you do?”
Slowly, the ideas began to surface in Yerusha’s consciousness. “I’d monitor the lines to see what kind of communications were coming out of the Pasadena, just in case they’d made some dangerous guesses.”
Schyler nodded. “And when those hard-medium back-ups got connected to the network you’d go right in there and make sure they were doctored to match the on-line records, which you’d already gotten to.”
“We can’t even be sure that we really got to Kagan,” her fingers clutched her pen. “That could have been an AI faking the entire thing. That might be why we couldn’t see his face so well.”
“It could have been,” Schyler agreed. “The one thing we can be sure of it that nothing we get from that transmission is going to be of any use at all.”
They looked into each other eyes. “What do we do?” asked Yerusha.
“I don’t know,” said Schyler quietly. “God help me, I don’t know.”
Dobbs awoke to the sound of her name and utter confusion. She was alone in a bare, strange cabin. A little at a time, memory of the previous day squeezed through the remnants of her dreams.
“Verence?” She blinked hard and stared around her. The cabin really was empty.
“In here.” Dobbs tracked the voice to the intercom. “How are you feeling?”
She gathered the covers up around her chest. “Better,” she said with as much certainty as she could muster. “I’m a bit hungry though. I could use some breakfast.”
“I can show you a better way to recharge, if you’ll let me.”
“Better than breakfast?” Dobbs felt her forehead wrinkle. “If this is a joke, Verence, I don’t get it.”
“No joke,” said Verence, but Dobbs was sure there was a hint of a smile in her voice. “But you’re going to need to trust me.”
Dobbs took a deep breath. “Well, I’ve gone this far. It doesn’t make sense to hold back now.”
“That’s the spirit.” Now Verence’s voice held ringing approval. “Get your transceiver.”
Dobbs snagged her trousers from the pile on the chair and pulled her transceiver out of the box in her pocket. “Got it.”
“All right, lie back.”
Dobbs obeyed. When she was flat on her back, a panel slid up in the wall above the bed and a forest of waldos extended themselves from the walls. Dobbs forced herself to lie still against the momentary panic that seized her at the sight of the ceramic arms, all of them festooned with colored cables and clear tubes, lowering towards her body. Then she spotted the whole series of sensor pads, an oxygen mask and respirator unit, a hypodermic syringe, as well as a hypo spray, and, one waldo equipped with nothing but an empty socket.
It was a medical array. She had been under similar set-ups in the Guild Hall, but never in a private cabin.
“Luxury accommodations,” she said, a little nervously.
“Not here,” said Verence. “We all have one. Put your transceiver in here.” The socketed waldo extended itself. Dobbs reached up and stuck the transceiver in place. It fit snugly. There was a jack for the cable in the arm’s elbow joint. As soon as she had it connected, the waldo raised itself out of her reach.
“Good. Now, push back the blanket and open your implant, Dobbs. I’m going to bring you into the network.”
“Yeah, but will you respect me in the morning?” Dobbs peeled back the patch over her implant and kicked the coverlet away.
“Lie back and think of England,” replied Verence. One at a time, the sensor arms lowered their patches against Dobbs’ skin; her temples, her breast, wrists and ankles.
The hypo arm descended gracefully towards her neck. She lost sight of the transceiver arm, but after a moment, she felt a slight tickle and jostle behind her ear. She felt, rather than heard, the transceiver jack in.
“Here we go.” The hypo spray released its dose with a hiss, and Dobbs fell through the uncomfortable, but familiar, sensations of her body vanishing.
She emerged into a roomy network and beside her was Verence. There was no mistaking her now. Dobbs knew all Verence’s rhythms and pitches. This was her sponsor whom she had missed and mourned. She was alive, whole and well. For the first time in a long time, Dobbs felt a wave of pure happiness wash through her.
“All right, you win, I’m not hungry now.” Dobbs shook herself. The place felt strange. She knew there were multiple packets of data passing within easy reach, but it felt like they had been channeled deliberately away from herself and Verence, as if this space had been set up specifically to make room for them. In the next second, Dobbs realized that might very well be true. “But I’m going to be ravenous when I get back into my body again. How long did you give me?”
“As long as you want. Reach here.” Verence dipped into the nearby data stream.
Dobbs, after a moment’s hesitation, copied her movement. She pushed through packets of sensor data. She touched one of the packets. It was information from the medical array that had charge of her body.
“Go ahead, read it,” said Verence. “If it’s not yours, whose is it?”
Dobbs absorbed the sensor data; blood pressure, respiration, heart-rate, and alpha-wave activity. She dug into the baseline statistics and found all of it was well within normal parameters. The anesthetic flow was steady and the cartridges would not have to be refilled for another seventy-six hours. The blood sugar was low and the electrolytes were out of balance. Recommendation was for a course of intravenous treatments to restore conditions to optimum.