its primary information utilities: all its records of personnel
and materiel, and all transactions among them. A month earlier,
SenTrax Myanmar's reports had triggered "look-see" alarms in the
home company's passive auditing programs, and Gonzales and his
memex had been sent to look more closely at the raw data.
So for twenty straight days Gonzales and the memex had
explored data structures and their contents, testing nominal
functional relationships against reality. Wherever there were
movements of information, money, equipment or personnel, there
were records, and the two followed. They searched cash trails,
matched purchase orders to services and materiel, verified voucher
signatures with personnel records, cross-checked the personnel
records themselves against government databases, and traced the
backgrounds and movements of the people they represented; they
read contracts and back-chased to their bid and acquisition; they
verified daily transaction logs.
Hard, slogging work, all patience and detail, and so far it
had shown nothing but the usual inefficienciesGrossback didn't
run a particularly taut operation, but, as of the moment, he
didn't seem to have a corrupt one. However, neither he nor
SenTrax Myanmar was cleared yet; Gonzales's final report would
come later, after he and the memex had analyzed the records at
their leisure.
Gonzales stretched and rubbed his eyes. As usual at the end
of short-term, intensive gigs like this, he felt tired, washed-
out, eager to go. He said to Grossback, "I've got a company plane
out of here late this afternoon to Bangkok. I'll connect with
whatever commercial flight's available there."
Grossback smiled, obviously glad Gonzales was leaving.
Grossback was a slight man, of mixed German and Thai descent; he
had a light brown complexion, black hair, and delicate features.
He wore politically correct clothing in the old-fashioned Burmese
style: a dark skirt called a longyi, a white cotton shirt.
During Gonzales's time there, Grossback had dealt with him
coldly and correctly from behind a mask of corporate protocol and
clenched teeth. Fair enough, Gonzales had thought: the man's
operation was suspect, and him along with it. Anyway, people
resented these outside intrusions almost every time; representing
Internal Affairs, Gonzales answered only to his division head,
F.L. Traynor, and SenTrax Board, and that made almost everyone
nervous.
"You leaving out of Myaung U Airport?" Grossback asked.
"No, I've asked for a pick-up south of town." Like anyone
else who could arrange it, he was not going to fly out of Pagan's
official airport, where partisan groups had several times brought
down aircraft. Surely Grossback knew that.
Grossback asked, "What will your report say?"
Surprised, Gonzales said, "You know I can't tell you anything
about that." Even mentioning the matter constituted an
embarrassment, not to mention a reportable violation of corporate
protocol. The man was either stupid or desperate.
"You haven't found anything," Grossback said.
What was his problem? Gonzales said, "I have a year's data
to examine before I can make an assessment."
"You won't tell me what the preliminary report will look
like," Grossback said. His face had gone cold.
"No," said Gonzales. He stood and said, "I have to finish
packing." For the moment, he just wanted to get out before
Grossback did something irretrievable, like threatening him or
offering a bribe. "Goodbye," Gonzales said. The other man said
nothing as Gonzales left the room.
#
Gonzales returned to the Thiripyitsaya Hotel, a collection of
low bungalows fabricated from bamboo and ferro-concrete that stood
above the Irrawady River. The rooms were afflicted by Myanmar's
tattered version of Asian tourist decor: lacquered bamboo on the
walls, along with leaping dragon holos, black teak dresser,
tables, chairs, and bed frame, ceiling fans that had wandered in
from the twentieth century just to give your average citizen that
rush of the Exotic East, Gonzales figured. However, the hotel had
been rebuilt less than a decade before, so, by local standards,
Gonzales had luxury: working climatizer, microwave, and
refrigerator.
Of course, many nights the air conditioner didn't work, and
Gonzales lay sweaty and semi-conscious through hot, humid nights
then was greeted just after dawn by lizards fanning their ruby
neck flaps and doing push ups.
He had gotten up several of those mornings and walked the
cart paths that threaded the plains around Pagan, passing among
the temples and pagodas as the sun rose and turned the morning
mist into a huge veil of luminous pink, with the towers sticking
up like fairy castles. Everywhere around Pagan were the temples,
thousands of them, young and flourishing when William the
Conqueror was king. Now, quick-fab structures housing government
agencies nested among thousand year old pagodas, some in near
perfect condition, like Thatbyinnu Temple, myriad others no more
than ruins and forgotten names. You gained merit by building
pagodas, not by keeping up those built by someone long dead.
Like some other Southeast Asian countries, Myanmar still was
trying to recover from late-twentieth century politics; in
Myanmar's case, its decades-long bout with round-robin military
dictatorships and the chaos that came in their wake. And as was
so often the case in politically wobbly countries, it still
restricted access to the worldnet; through various kinds of
governments, its leaders had found the prospect of free
information flow unacceptable. Ka-band antennas were expensive,
their use licensed by permits almost impossible to get. As a
result, Gonzales and the memex had been like meat eaters stranded
among vegetarians, unable to get their nourishment.
He'd taken down the memex that morning. Its functions
dormant, it lay nestled inside one of his two fiber and aluminum
shock-cases, ready for transport. The other case held memory boxes
containing SenTrax Myanmar group's records.
When they got home, Gonzales would tell the memex the latest
news about Grossback, how the man had cracked at the last moment.
Gonzales was sure the m-i would think what he didGrossback was
dog dirty and scared they would find it.
#
At the edge of a sandy field south of Pagan, Gonzales waited
for his plane. Gonzales wore his usual international traveller's
mufti, a tan gabardine two-piece suit over an open-collared white
linen shirt, dark brown slipover shoes. His hair was gathered
back into a ponytail held together by a silver ring made from
lizard figures joined head-to-tail. Next to him sat a soft brown
leather bag and the two shock-cases.
In front of him a pagoda climbed in a series of steeples to a
gilded and jeweled umbrella top, pointing to heaven. On its
steps, beside the huge paw of a stone lion, a monk sat in full
lotus, his face shadowed by the animal rising massive and lumpy
and mock fierce above him. The lion's flanks were dyed orange by
sunset, its lips stained the color of dried blood. The minutes