Sarah slammed off the reminder. Of course, she had twenty days. She had programmed the reminder herself. Bernard had understood the demands on her time. He had sympathized with her when she explained how much she had to accomplish before the ship returned to Earth. He had helped her to work out the strategy, setting priorities, keeping her sane as Jessup’s demands grew more and more insistent…
Sarah tuned out the trio of gamers and forced herself to pay attention to the assignment in front of her. Finding the last of the news articles for the morning meeting proved simple enough. Predicting the future, though, was a little more challenging. She knew some useful resources, but none was directly on point. Nevertheless, she tracked down a handful of citations and loaded them into a compact audio file. She reviewed the results and organized them differently, knowing that her shipside companions would not have time to study her findings in detail before their conference.
She sent the file with a deft flick of her wrist. Another project completed. Another patron served.
Swallowing a yawn, Sarah started to power down her workcon. She would go back to her quarters, wait for Bernard there. They could talk about the day’s work, discuss the Marduran classification dilemma, before they moved on to other more entertaining diversions.
Catching her breath against the distracting thought, Sarah wondered if Bernard ever betrayed a flash of inappropriate emotion to his scientific colleagues. He certainly had been cool enough at dinner. Smooth. Unflustered. Even in the face of Joaquin’s impassioned arguments.
Sarah knew that—all flirtatious games aside—she could not have remained that impassive if she were still undecided about the Mardurans’ fate. She would have tested the xenoanthropologist, fought against her own instincts, struggled, battled, measured out possible conclusions.
Had Bernard already made up his mind?
Without thinking, Sarah flicked her fingers over her console. She managed databases all day long; it was child’s play to make her way through the mail system to Bernard’s files.
What was she doing? She had no right to go into his messages! What would Bernard think if he ever found out that she was spying on him?
Her fingers hovered over the icons. The more she thought, the more she realized that Bernard had seemed unusually self-possessed at dinner. He had made up his mind. He had decided how he would rate the Mardurans.
She could just skim through his files. After all, Bernard would probably tell her, if she asked him directly. She didn’t need to sneak around. He would share his conclusions with her openly. And it wasn’t like she was going to tell anyone else. She would just know for herself.
She would try to open his mail—if she could guess his password in three tries, she would read what was there. Read, but never comment.
Sarah pulled her headset closer to her mouth and whispered her first guess—the name of a childhood dog he had mentioned a week before. As a librarian who constantly railed against violations of system security, Sarah knew that a shocking seventeen percent of ’con users set their passwords to pets’ names.
The display shimmered, and the mail program adjusted to indicate a string of incoming mail messages. Bernard was in the seventeen percent. Sarah smiled grimly, almost regretting her decision. She was in the system now, though. She might as well see this through.
Six unopened files, all directed to the government regulator. The K’lassan hair implants. The nubile young girls. An electronic paystub.
Breathing quickly, Sarah turned her attention to the last three messages. Minutes from an agency meeting held Earthside that afternoon. An agenda for the current meeting—perhaps open on Bernard’s own ’con, even as Sarah eavesdropped. She felt a twinge of guilt.
A message from Morton Jessup himself. Sarah triggered the icon to listen to this last communication, curious about what her employer’s president might have to say to the scientist who could determine his company’s fate.
The file would not open.
Sarah repeated the sequence, certain that she had brushed the panel too lightly in her rush, but it remained locked. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and adjusted her headset. What secret message would Morton Jessup have sent to Bernard? What would he have secured beyond Sarah’s ability to detect?
Biting at the inside of her cheek, Sarah backed out of the mail program. After glancing at the gaming wildcatters, she hunched closer to her terminal and entered the system again. This time, though, she used her credentials as the records manager for the starship.
As records manager, no file was locked to her. She was responsible for retaining all the ship’s files, even seemingly inconsequential mail.
It took her only a few heartbeats to find her way back to Bernard’s message stream. Her palm hovered above the icon that would whisper Morton Jessup’s words to her. Did she want to know what he had said? Did she want to collect that much information? Did she want to be responsible for the knowledge?
She was a librarian. Knowledge was her stock in trade.
Sarah touched the icon.
Jessup’s oily voice whispered through her headset. “One million transferred. Two million to follow, if Class Two sticks.” No closing. No electronic signature. None was necessary.
Sarah listened to the words again. A third time.
The Mardurans had no chance. Bernard had been purchased. Joaquin’s work was meaningless; all his protests would amount to nothing. The agency would declare the Mardurans expendable Class Two aliens.
The wildcatters cheered across the room. Sarah looked up in time to see the gaming avatar pull up his trousers. A quivering spider-shape was curled about itself, all eight legs wrapped tight, as if it tried to seal itself from a wound.
The men congratulated their colleague, pounding him on the back, bellowing approval. Sarah’s belly turned as the third player took his place at the gamecon. What horror would he devise? How would he torture the virtual Mardurans?
Class Two—the status for companion animals. Preferred for continued existence, but expendable. Able to be forfeited in the face of proven need. Able to be bought with cold, electronic credits.
Sarah closed out of the communications package, making sure that she had left no trace of listening to Bernard’s files. The wildcatters hooted to each other, like excited animals in a cage. She ignored the sound.
Bernard had been bribed. Three million credits, all told. Six times the bonus that Sarah would earn—that Sarah would earn through hard work. Bernard was doing nothing for that money, nothing but stepping aside.
No, Sarah realized. That was not entirely true. He was doing something. He was creating a pretense of unbiased judgment. He was ordering up journal articles, scientific studies. He was making a show of reviewing options. He was pretending to consider all angles.
All of a sudden, Sarah thought about the times Bernard had requested materials. He had asked in front of other scientists. In front of Jessup staff. In front of wildcatters. He had made a show of coming to the library, of returning research in the mess hall. He had made it clear to anyone who was paying attention that he was studying the Mardurans in painstaking detail.
Sarah had thought that Bernard emphasized the materials so that no one would call into question their relationship. He had brandished files so that no one would accuse him of spending inappropriate time with the ship’s librarian. And all the time, he had been fending off other accusations. All the time, he had been shielding himself, hiding his three-million-credit bribe.
All the time, he had been lying.