“—so that Heikki could collect them,” Galler went on, “but she didn’t do it.” He shrugged. “So I don’t have any proof. I have to admit, I wasn’t able to tell her they were there, but—” He broke off abruptly, staring at the circles of plastic Heikki was pulling from her belt pocket. Heikki allowed herself a single smile, one smile of triumph for all those years of rivalry, and leaned forward to pass the disks to Max.
“What’s on these, anyway?”
Galler closed his mouth, blinking. After a moment, he said, “You had them all along.”
Heikki nodded. “What are they?”
“Why—?” Galler began, then shook his head. “No. Not important.” He took a deep breath, focusing his attention on Max. “Those disks contain the information I pulled from our files on the original crystal project, including schematics. There are also records of Daulo Slade’s actions after I informed him of the overlap between the historical documents and Lo-Moth’s latest project.”
“Very nice,” Max said, tranquilly, and tucked the disks into his jacket. “But not exactly conclusive.” He held up his hand, silencing Galler’s automatic response, and looked at Heikki. “Heikki—your name’s really Gwynne?”
Reluctantly, Heikki nodded, and Max shook his head. “I was expecting something really awful, after all the fuss you made about not using it. Can you reconstruct the crystal matrix that Lo-Moth lost from the information on the tapes?”
Heikki looked at Santerese, who said, “It was pretty well fragmented, and the fragments were mixed in with a lot of other debris. It looked like they swept it down into the hold.”
“I remember,” Heikki said, softly. There had been a mass of wreckage, objects crushed almost to powder, a powder that glittered in the beams of their handlights…. She shook the thought away, said aloud, “I don’t know. It depends on how big the fragments were, and how many of them we can find on the tape. And, of course, how good the tape is.”
Santerese said, “We can try. But do you really want us to do it, Max? We’re—interested parties, to say the least.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Max said, with a smile that showed a disconcerting number of teeth. “Copies of your tapes are already in my main labs. But you are the best, Marshallin, you and Heikki. You’ll do it?”
“Of course,” Santerese said, with a quirky smile, and Heikki said, “I don’t see you’ve left us a choice, Idris.”
The tapes from the wreck site were already in the workroom. Heikki settled herself at her console, frowning, and called up the menu of tools she had available for this sort of job. At the console opposite, Santerese bent over her keyboard, reloading the raw data. “Was the composition of the matrix standard?” she asked, and Heikki shrugged.
“Galler?”
“What?” Her brother appeared in the doorway, Max looming behind him.
“Was the matrix of standard materials, do you know?”
“I think so,” Galler answered, frowning. “Why?”
Max laid a hand on his shoulder, drawing him away, “Let’s let them get on with it, shall we?”
Heikki was hardly aware of his departure. She stared at the list of programs displayed on the workscreen, tugging thoughtfully at her lower lip. She touched keys to load the restoration program—no question I’ll need that one, she thought—then added the more sensitive of the two modeling programs. After a moment’s hesitation, she added a second construction program, and leaned back to let the three spool into working memory.
“I’m sorting the debris by apparent composition now,” Santerese announced. “Or trying to, anyway. God, I hate working with tape.”
Heikki nodded her agreement. Even with the most sophisticated programs, you were still working with a computer’s best guess, and if that guess was wrong, it was usually catastrophically wrong, so that you thought you were looking at diamonds, and were actually dealing with ground glass. She put the thought aside. After all, the computers weren’t often wrong. Her eyes still on the filling screen, she said, “So what do you think of my brother, Marshallin?”
Santerese looked up from her screen in some surprise. “I’ve hardly seen enough to judge.” Heikki said nothing, waiting, and Santerese shrugged. “Got his eye on the main chance, hasn’t he?”
Heikki grinned. “That’s a polite way of putting it.”
“You don’t like him at all, do you, doll?”
“No,” Heikki said, “I don’t.” She became aware, tardily, of the disapproval in Santerese’s tone, and looked away. “I’m sorry if it bothers you, Marshallin, but that’s the way it is. It’s a little late to change.”
There was a brief silence, and then Santerese said, “I think you’re overreacting, just a little.” Her screen beeped before Heikki could think how to answer, and Santerese said, “I can flip you the raw feed now.”
This was not the time to discuss Galler, Heikki knew. She touched keys on her board, and said, “Ready to receive.” Numbers streamed across her screen, and she pushed the keyboard aside to make room for the more sensitive shadowscreen. The flow of numbers stopped at last, and a single icon pulsed in the center of the screen. Heikki took a deep breath, once again remembering the wreck site, and touched the shadowscreen.
The icon vanished, to be replaced with a strange, washed-out image. There was a scattering of brighter shapes along the bottom of the screen. Heikki frowned for a moment, then realized what she was looking at.
This was a processed image of the latac’s hold, looking down onto the field of debris that had been swept onto the distillery. The highlighted pieces would be the bits the computer had decided probably belonged to the crystal matrix. She ran her fingers along the sensitive edges of the shadowscreen, shrinking that image and opening a new window above it, then began painstakingly to transfer the highlighted pieces from the original image to the window. They hung there as though suspended in space, strange three-dimensional shapes that showed odd rifts and fracture lines.
“I don’t think that’s all of it,” Santerese said.
Heikki looked up, startled—she had not seen Santerese leave her console to come and lean over her shoulder— but looked at the screen again. She had already moved more than half of the highlighted pieces to the working window, and even allowing for the remainder, there was not enough to make up a complete matrix. “I agree,” she said quietly.
“Do you want me to run the program again on what’s left?” Santerese asked, and Heikki shrugged.
“You might as well. I don’t know if it will do any good, though.”
Santerese nodded, and returned to her machine. Frowning, Heikki finished removing the last highlighted images from the lower screen, then ran her hand along the edge of the shadowscreen to shrink the image even further. The pieces isolated in the upper window swelled until they almost filled her screen.
Those fragments weren’t enough to make up a complete matrix, that much was obvious. Heikki studied them for a moment longer, head tilted to one side, then ran her hands across the shadowscreen again, shifting the pieces. Several of the larger shards looked as though they would fit together, and she ran her hand across the shadowscreen, lifting and rotating them until the broken edges meshed and melded. It was a start, she knew, but resisted the temptation to do more. Instead, she called up the first of the reconstruction programs, and let it work while she waited for Santerese to finish the second survey. As she had expected, it displayed “inconclusive” across its tiny window, and when she touched the override, produced a vaguely dodecahedral shape. Most of the lines flashed blue, indicating serious uncertainty. Heikki shrugged, and banished the program.
“How’s it coming, Marshallin?”
“Almost done,” Santerese answered. “The probability is lower, though, by about ten percent. You’ll want to bear that in mind.”