“This is the master key, the one that can override everything in the apartment.” Irene had reached in her pocket and laid the red card on the table. “My mother’s. I was very quiet leaving. The main door makes very little noise. I locked it when I left. But they have to call Central to open it, without the master key. And the com is out.”
Irene, in her element, had unsuspected qualities, Bren thought. Where had she kept the clothes? Behind her nightgown, deep in the closet. The stolen makeup and the scissors? Under her mattress. The boots—hardly the sort of item to conceal under a mattress? “I wore those. I liked them.”
Had she planned it? Likely she’d started thinking about escape when the doors closed, when Bjorn’s father came, when she’d found reason to worry about the others.
And when word had gotten out that the shuttle had arrived, when she hoped she’d have high-level help if she could get out, she’d disguised herself, working fast, opened the apartment door and locked it.
And if they were extremely lucky, Braddock might still be asleep, oblivious to the fact his prime hostage had escaped.
They had Irene’s address, in A-level, very near the section 24 doors. And they also had the mother’s master key.
That key, that unlikely square of plastic that locked and unlocked everything in that apartment, was an inspiration.
“Geigi-ji,” Bren said, “we do not really need this key to get in, do we?”
“No,” Geigi said. “Not while we maintain control of Central.” Geigi’s face, ordinarily genial, was very different in this deliberation. “More, nandi, what is not generally known, Central can lock or unlock all apartments in a section at once, and set the code so that this key will not work.”
“All locks?” Bren asked.
“All locks of a given category in a given section can be unlocked or locked—or have their codes changed—from our boards.”
“Could Mospheiran Central do this?”
“That is a question,” Geigi said. “Within a single section, a single category, such as section 23 residency, all lock codes could all be set to zero one, which no extant keycard can then open. Once all set to zero one, the entire category can be completely recoded. It was a setup procedure, not used since, that we can tell. Currently if a person is accidentally locked in or out, procedure is that the resident calls Central, produces the correct account number, which is read through the lock, and the command is sent to that lock. But that is the only part of the recovery procedure that is currently in operation. We found the category reset feature years ago, during setup on the station. We were never sure Mospheirans knew it, but we did not find it useful to mention when they wrote the modern manuals. So when it came recently to the issuance of keycards to the Reunioners, we let our human counterparts handle that operation, and watched with curiosity what they would do, with such a large number to process. They worked quite hard at it, card by card, with long lines and some altercation. So we believe we know something they do not.”
No, Lord Geigi, discovering such a drastic capability under his hands, would certainly not hasten to advise the Mospheirans. Trust had not run that deep.
“How long would it take?” Cenedi asked.
“The set to zero one is instant,” Geigi said with a shrug. “The reset goes at a computer’s speed. One believes we can set to zero one and then back out of the situation, restoring the old codes from the backup files just as quickly. If that fails—” Geigi shrugged. “We can equally well unlock all those doors at once. But that would be a reluctant choice.”
“Is not communication shut down,” Ruheso asked, the senior Observer, “so these people cannot call for help?”
“Tillington mandated a communications shutdown in all the Reunioner sections, excepting only official announcements. We can likewise restore that service at any time, and if the backup fails, it would seem to be a good time, indeed. Tillington’s act also shut down relays we might wish to use, and shut down worker communication inside the tunnels. If we restore one—we restore all. But I believe the Guild can actually manage without those, until we choose to restore communication with the residents.”
“We can,” Geigi’s Guild-senior said. And Hanidi, of the Observers, likewise nodded.
The Guild could indeed manage a detail like their own communications. That went with them, one of those details on which the Guild generally didn’t comment.
“A Guild operation entirely,” Bren said, “would be my choice.”
It was a political question—which security organization would go in after Braddock. Mospheiran security nominally had sole control of the Reunioner sections, but Gin was still en route, and even if she could trust officers whose most recent commander was under house arrest, they were not the ones to go into Reunioner territory to arrest Braddock, not with the political situation Tillington and Braddock had set up.
The Captains were maintaining order by holding the sections shut and guarded, and by seeing to supply through the distribution centers. They had access. Armored personnel could easily walk into that hall, as physically close to the doors as that apartment was, and retrieve Braddock with no harm to themselves.
But using armor units posed a political problem of its own. Jase was the captain on duty for now, but very soon fourth-senior Riggins would take over. “Promise me asylum,” Jase said, not entirely facetiously. “Four units, battle armor, kitting up for shift-change right now, and walking right through that section door if you want them. Short and sharp and done.”
“No,” Bren said, “we need you politically safe.” He changed to Ragi, which everybody present understood. “Fault me where I am wrong, nadiin. First step is to disable all Reunioner residence keys in 23 so we do not have a crowd running the halls in panic. We access the two apartments in question. We arrest Braddock and his lieutenants, who will be locked in, and extract Irene’s mother. Simultaneously, we search the tunnel Bjorn Andresson and the other two boys might have used and bring them out if we can find them, while the first team questions Braddock and his lieutenants about the boys. Second step, with or without success in the tunnels or with Braddock, is three teams entering the boys’ separate residences by the nearest service passages and extracting anybody we find there to a safe location. At that point, barring further information, we restore public address in the Reunioner sections, ask them to protect the boys wherever they are, advise the other commands what we’ve just done, and, we hope, reset their locks to work. One cannot believe Ogun-aiji will be that unhappy to learn Braddock is in custody. We hope not to disturb 23 and 24 too much in the operation. Section 26 need not be inconvenienced in all this, but if they must be, nandi Geigi, do as you must, whatever you think prudent to stop a crowd forming.”