"Ah should hope so," Alex said, still a little shocked.
"Funny thing is," Sten pressed on, "when the drakh really hit the fan, sometimes they used to just grab any old grunt, put a sack on him, and toss him out just like the fully trained types. And you know what? There was no difference in the casualty rate. Just as many trained troopies ate it as the grunts who were still wet behind the ears."
"Ah dinnae believe it," Alex said.
Sten surveyed the nervous beings jammed into the tunnel and thought about what terrible things surely awaited them once they crawled out of the safety of Koldyeze.
"I want to," he said. "They go out in two nights."
Virunga put the word out during the morning mess. He wanted to see Sten. Urgently. Sten moved casually across the crowded central yard, weaving his way through small garden plots and exercising prisoners. He stopped here and there to chat, to laugh at the right moments, and to scowl and shake his head in disbelief at others.
It was an elaborate and constantly changing ritual he had to perform, else a Tahn stoolie might start taking note of how often a lowly firecontrolman visited the camp CO.
All the while, his mind churned with possibilities. Some news of how the war was going? Badly for the Tahn, he hoped. With a great stretch of luck, Virunga might be calling him in to report the greatest success in Koldyeze so far. Maybe, just maybe, they had managed to plant what Alex called "the Golden Worm."
They had spent an enormous amount of time and effort figuring out a way to suborn a petty bureaucrat named Fahstr. She was the middle-aged chief clerk in charge of pay vouchers. Every Tahn feared her. Even Derzhin, the camp commandant, walked softly around her. At the slightest insult, a pay voucher could be lost forever. And it would take another three small forevers to get it back. What was worse, if she felt particularly nasty, she would misinterpret the coding, and a Tahn victim might find himself docked a whopping chunk for back taxes—whether he owed any or not.
The problem was that Fahstr was seemingly incorruptible. No matter how hard they leaned on N'chlos and their other tame guards, they could not find a single weakness. The woman was fat—but did not particularly favor any type of food. She was obviously sexless, which Alex had remarked was a good thing, because he did not want to be the man who asked for volunteers. She seemed to revel in living a Spartan life, so money was out. How to get to her? It was important, because Fahstr was the key to planting the Golden Worm.
St. Clair stumbled onto the answer. She had gotten herself assigned to a janitorial shift at the payroll office, figuring that a woman of her experience certainly ought to be able to spot another's weaknesses. If nothing else, she might be able to scrounge a few cleaning fluids that might be put to more interesting use.
St. Clair had bumped around the office for half a day before she saw it. As the other clerks kept their eyes glued to their duties, afraid even to lift their heads and be seen not working, Fahstr had spent the entire morning enjoying herself.
It was an emotion that was difficult to recognize right off. Because to Fahstr, enjoyment seemed to be slamming away at her computer board and gritting out a long string of obscenities that almost made St. Clair blush, interspersed with occasional screams of what seemed to be victory. St. Clair finally sidled over to the computer to see what was going on. A bewildering stream of figures swirled on the screen, then firmed. Shouts of disgust came from Fahstr to be followed by more hammering at the keyboard. More figures. More cursing. Then it slowly dawned on St. Clair. The figures on the screen were algorithms. There was a game going on. And the game was bridge.
St. Clair had not just found a weakness. She had found a gaping wound.
"Typical bridge freak," she had told Sten later. "Including her charming disposition. There isn't a thing in this universe the woman cares for except bridge. She hates people. But to enjoy bridge, you gotta have people."
"She's got her computer," Sten said. "It can give her any kind of game she wants. At any level."
"You sure aren't a cardplayer," St. Clair had said. "To enjoy cards you have to see your opponent squirm. Especially bridge-type cardplayers. You can't see blood when you beat the bejesus out of a computer."
"So you hinted broadly that you might know something about this—uh, what was it called?"
"Bridge. And as for hinting broadly, clot that. I told her right off that I had been watching her. Couldn't help myself, I said."
"And she didn't get ticked? I would have figured she'd have cut you off at the knees for even daring to talk to her."
"No way," St. Clair said. "Bridge players can't help themselves. She understood right off. Especially when I told her I was fleet champ."
"Fleet what? Of what? There's no such thing!"
"So? She doesn't know that. Or care. Especially since I allowed that although she might be good, I could wipe the ground with her."
Grudgingly, Sten had to admire that. From what he could gather, there was no way the type of fanatic St. Clair was describing could turn down such a challenge.
"Okay, you get tight with her. Win a few games. Lose a few to keep her interested. Then you find out what it takes to get her over on our side."
"Don't need to." St. Clair sniffed! "We're programming the computer to partner up with each of us. I got complete access to that thing any time you want."
Sten had instantly put Kraulshavn and Sorensen to work on the Golden Worm. They had completed it a week before and, with St. Clair's expertise, had coded it into a cutthroat north-south pair of hands.
All St. Clair had been waiting for was the chance to plant it. The problem was that time was running out. She was going out the next night. If she did not succeed in planting it immediately, they would have to start all over again. But after the escape, the bloody reprisals might make the whole thing pointless. Because the Golden Worm was their only hope to keep the Tahn from cutting all their throats.
Sten walked into Virunga's cell. There was only the old man to greet him. From the dark, solemn look on his face, Sten knew mere was something very wrong. He assumed it had to do with failure. And that failure involved the Golden Worm.
"They caught her," he said flatly, meaning St. Clair.
"No," Virunga said. "She... was successful. But... there is another... matter."
Sten decided to quit guessing and let Virunga tell it.
"As you know... St. Clair has complete... access. To the computer."
Sten nodded. Fahstr pretty much let St. Clair noodle at will on the Tahn computer in her spare time. To have an opponent of any worth, St. Clair needed time to toy with new bridge strategies. But that had not seemed important to Sten.
The only records in there were the mundane details of Koldyeze life: Tahn payroll and personnel and the basic files of the prisoner. Sten could see little value in snooping and pooping in that area.
"St. Clair has... noticed something," Virunga said, interrupting Sten's thoughts.
He went on to explain: As St. Clair logged in and out of the computer, using Fahstr's code name, she had become familiar with the other people who used the same system and with how frequently they used it. Then another code name had popped up recently. It not only did not seem to belong to anyone in the camp, it was searching through the records with a regular one-plus-one-plus-one pattern that was slower than clot but guaranteed not to miss a single detail.
St. Clair had become curious about who that person was and what he or she was looking for.
"And did she find out?" Sten finally asked.
"Not the... seeker," Virunga said. "Only what was... sought."
"Okay. So what was the person looking for?"