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Cache (part 1)
"He says `Why - Why do we do this?' An hour later, Ranfurlie was still sitting there, staring at the scope. As before, the display was blank except for the dot at the exact centre. He idly drummed his fingers along the edge of the console while Kaaren searched their Data for any information about neutronium. Camerol/Camerol - if she was Camerol at the moment - was not on the flight deck. No-one seemed willing to act, as if the problem might go away if they just sat there long enough. "Nothing." Kaaren said finally, standing up and stretching the kinks out of her neck, inhaling sharply through her nose. "There's no record of anyone finding anything like this before; nothing else except a couple of useless theories." She glared out the front viewport at the cause of their annoyance, a tiny gleaming dot alone in open space, about two hundred kilometres away. Camerol entered and crossed over to where the Cache Locator was mounted on a console. The holographic indicator still pointed directly forward, at the distant dot. Out of habit, Kaaren glanced at the rectangular badge on Camerol's lapel; it read CAMEROL, but as she watched, it faded, to be replaced with another name: ANTHER. She sighed inwardly; it was one she knew. Camerol/Anther spoke in her usual distant tones; "Unless Numerija has something to suggest, we've come to the end of this device's usefulness. We should evaluate our profits and head back to Earth." Ranfurlie waved his hand in annoyance, not taking his eyes off the scope. "No, give me some time... I'm sure I can think of something." Camerol/Anther glanced at him with something close to a doubtful expression on her severe features. He continued; "I've tried adjusting the Worth scale on the Tracer, all the way up... no go. It's locked on, and apparently, whoever put that there," gesturing at the sphere on the scope, "thought very highly of it." He paused, and then muttered, "I'll think of something..."
Kaaren had been working out of the Earth ExPort as a co-pilot for about six months since her graduation, spending most of her time waiting for assignments; one afternoon, she had been approached by a young woman with short black hair, bland, softened features and an unusually detached attitude. Her name was Camerol, and she claimed to be one of the few humans working in Earth's branch of the NoSanNoOs Bureaucracy, as an advisor and human-xenoform interface. "I have a proposition for you. My superiors in the NoSanNoOs have come into posession of a device - a variety of sensor/detector - which requires testing. They have asked me to find a pilot and an engineer. Firstly: are you available for work as a pilot?" Kaaren nodded quickly; her last job (shuttling antique canisters of waste plutonium down from solar orbit) had been over a month ago, and her finances were in dire straights. "Very well. The position of engineer requires a broad spectrum of generalised knowledge. Someone who knows something about practically anything would be appropriate..." "I think I know someone who might fill that specification, although, to be sure, I'd need to know a bit more about what we'll be doing." Camerol paused for a moment, her eyes slightly unfocussed as if communing with a voice that only she could hear; then she continued, speaking slowly. "Three weeks ago, a NoSanNoOs Interdict team were approached by a xenoform claiming to be a representative of the Sthelane." Kaaren raised her eyebrows at this; the Sthelane were presumed to be long extinct. "This xenoform was in posession of a device which makes use of a little-known principle of Sthelanic Informatics, Concealment String Linkage. It will indicate the location of objects which have been concealed by sentients for some reason." Kaaren thought about this for a moment. "Not things that have been lost, but rather deliberately hidden?" Camerol nodded once. "It locates caches. It can be adjusted to find caches of a particular size or worth -" Kaaren waved her hand to interrupt; "Hang on, `worth'? That's a pretty subjective sort of value, isn't it? I mean, a cache of rotten bananas might be worth about ten CCi as garbage, on Earth, and about five thousand as fertiliser, on one of the Waystations..." Camerol stared at Kaaren for a few seconds - making her feel slightly apprehensive - and then continued. "The value, or worth of the cache is that which its owners gave it when it was concealed. Therefore, the device is not likely to indicate the location of buried waste." Seeing Kaaren's doubtful expression on hearing this, she added, "the xenoform who was in posession of the device was, itself, unsure of the working principles involved. It has been activated, and is indicating the location of a cache at the moment, somewhere in the Bythian Resource Complex. Our mission is to locate this cache, mark it for retrieval or identification, and then to continue evaluation of the device's capabilities." After the interview, Kaaren contacted Ranfurlie, a student at what was left of the Nexus University. He was studying Engineering half-heartedly, along with about a hundred other dispirited students whose future livelyhoods had been pre-empted by the arrival of the NoSanNoOs two hundred years ago. They agreed to meet with Camerol at the Suteriik that evening to discuss the matter further. When Kaaren arrived, she was shown to a table where Camerol was sitting, typing rapidly into a flatscreen propped up before her. She looked up and, unexpectedly, grinned. "Hi, glad you could make it. Here, pull up a chair, get a drink or something." Kaaren felt uneasy; it was the same person she'd met earlier, and yet she was behaving in a completely different manner; more animated, less robotic. As she sat, she noticed the badge on Camerol's lapel. Earlier she'd dismissed it as a simple name-tag; but where it had previously read CAMEROL, it now displayed the name AVYX. As the xenoform arrived with their drinks, Kaaren cleared her throat and asked: "Were you the person I was speaking to this morning, in the Export offices?" Camerol smiled, and replied without looking up from the flatscreen, "In a way. It was me, physically, but mentally, it would have been..." she consulted an internal list, and continued, "Camerol. At the moment, I am Avyx." It took a few moments for the meaning of this to filter through. "You're a multiple." Camerol/Avyx grinned. "A NoSanNoOs Multiple. My childhood, my development was shaped completely by the NoSanNoOs. I was raised under the direct supervision of their artificial intelligence, NAPAI." Seeing the expression on Kaaren's face, she continued; "I know what you're thinking. Multiple Personality was once thought of as a psychological disorder. The same used to be thought of homosexuality, you know... but when properly developed, Multiples can be more perceptive, in that we can take different, even opposing viewpoints of the same situation. We discuss problems internally, so we have the advantage of group interaction within one person. Anyway, this is beside the point... ah, I take it that this is your engineer?" Ranfurlie had arrived, a stocky, good-natured young man with shoulder-length brown hair contained by a leather headband. He carried his ever-present grey knapsack over one shoulder; it contained, among other things, his tool-kit. He'd once told Kaaren that he felt naked without it. They discussed the device and its potential. In the course of the conversation, Kaaren tried a number of times to bring up the topic of Camerol's sponsor; each time, the multiple skillfully detoured to another subject. In the end, all Kaaren had discovered was that they would be taking a NoSanNoOs freighter from the ExPort the following week, that Ranfurlie would install the device in the ship and that they would spend the next two months testing it. Kaaren and Ranfurlie sat in the Suteriik after Camerol had left. Neither of them spoke for a few moments, until Ranfurlie admitted, "There's something awfully screwy about this." Kaaren nodded, sipping her drink. "I'm half-tempted to call the NoSanNoOs Directorate and check this story out." "So what's stopping you?" Kaaren paused, and then smiled. "If it is illicit, then they'll confiscate the device and we'll never get to see if it actually works. I'm curious. And besides, I haven't had a paying job in over a month." Ranfurlie grinned, with the expression of a fellow `Terner, or Alternative; the group which lived on the fringes of the closed society presided over by the NoSanNoOs. Like Kaaren, he chose not to be part of the system, and it was only the fact that they both had talents which the NoSanNoOs needed that prevented them from ending up in a State Security Centre. "I'm betting that this is illicit; she's lifted the device from an Interdict Warehouse and she's going to look for hidden repair depots in the hope of finding Impeller Engine parts, or something." he said. Kaaren finished her drink. "In any event, it promises to be more interesting than sitting around here on my arse."
The Earth ExPort was a collection of wide concrete circles, arranged around the administration building in no particular order. Most had one or two NoSanNoOs ships of some description sitting one them; the huge, flattened spheres would lift from the pads, silently drifting upwards like giant balloons, gradually disappearing into the sky to some not-immediately-obvious, pre-determined schedule. Some pads were vacant; moving through them, Kaaren could make no sense of the arrangement. It seemed entirely random. She went to the administration centre and asked after Camerol. The Parkry attending the data-post seemed to know who she was talking about, as it paged the multiple without having to refer to its database. A few minutes later, Camerol hurried in, dressed in grey coveralls stained with grease and nano extrusions. The badge on her lapel now read NOSHEVATHO. She extended her hand, realised that it was coated with grease, wiped it on her thigh and held it out again. Kaaren smiled and accepted the gesture, brushing her wrist against the multiple's. Camerol/Noshevatho spoke in a gruff, clipped, almost masculine voice. "Hi. Noshevatho. You're Kaaren, right? Come on, I've been out with Ranfurlie retrofitting the freighter, tossing the junk we won't be needing and adding some extras." As she followed her out, Kaaren asked, "I wasn't aware that you were an engineer." Camerol/Noshevatho laughed without smiling, a short bark of detached amusement. "I am," tapping her hand against her lapel-badge, "if you get me." Kaaren followed her across five landing pads, nervously looking up as they crossed the unoccupied ones in case a freighter should silently fall out of the sky on them. Camerol/Noshevatho hailed some of the ExPort workers as they passed, even the xenoform ones, in their own languages. They came to a freighter, resting on the pad with nothing to distinguish it from any of the others except for a hexagonal panel extruded about a metre from the underside. Ranfurlie poked his head out from behind the panel, apparently hanging upside-down, and waved. His hair drifted about him as if he were underwater; he was within a localised zero-G field. "Hey, we're just about ready to go... have you got your stuff with you?" Kaaren stood with her hands on her hips, neck craned back to face him. "I didn't think we were leaving until later this week." Camerol/ Noshevatho pushed a flatbed floater loaded with what looked like sheets of concrete up to the main hatch. "We're leaving while we still have clearance." "Is it likely that our clearance will be withdrawn?" "Up to mid-day tomorrow, no. After that, I can't guarantee anything." Kaaren's suspicions as to the dubious nature of the enterprise firmed. She went to the flight deck of the ship, examined the control wall. It was standard NoSanNoOs equipment, banks of control-spaces which were activated by inserting a finger (or tentacle, or whatever the pilot possessed in the way of effectors). She fiddled with the data retrieval service for a few minutes, plotted a couple of courses for practice, went over the ship's damage report and status functions. No problem. NoSanNoOs controls were a standard, because no-one else was allowed to build starships. Ranfurlie had mounted an additional bank of control-spaces next to the navigation system. Not daring to touch them until she found out what they were for, she went down to the power compartment, which was maintained in a zero-G environment for ease of access to the bulky NoSanNoOs TCI generator. Ranfurlie was re-routing cables from the back of the generator, but he tied them off and floated over to her when he saw her enter. "Did you see the extra bank in the flight deck?" "Yes, I did..." Ranfurlie grimaced and raised one eyebrow. "Weaponry." "What?" He pushed off from the wall, gently rebounded from the curved front of the generator and pointed to a single, wrist-thick cable that ran out of the back and down through the floor. "Was. It goes to a fixed-mount housing. Empty now, but it looks like it housed one of the largest X-ray lasers I've seen in my life. I think that this ship used to belong to the Bythians." Kaaren frowned. "Well, that's it. This is no longer just illicit, it's against the NoSanNoOs interdict. She must be stealing this ship -there's no way in hell that they'd let Humans use it..." Ranfurlie agreed. "That must be what she meant about our clearance being good up to tomorrow." Kaaren confronted Camerol/Noshevatho on the cargo deck, where she was stacking slabs of food concentrate against one wall. "I want to see some sort of official authorisation for this trip." she said, without preliminaries. Abruptly, the multiple froze, her face blank. The word NOSHEVATHO on her lapel badge faded, to be replaced by the name ANTHER. Her face twitched, but otherwise retained its blank, expressionless guise. She held out her hand, spoke in a cold, flat voice: "Notepad." Without thinking, Kaaren handed it over. Holding the notepad with one hand, Camerol/Anther typed with blinding speed for a few seconds with the other and then handed it back. The display showed an authorisation notice with the ID code of NAPAI; the highest authority in the NoSanNoOs Dominion. Kaaren examined it suspiciously for a moment, then hit the key for a hard-copy. She peeled it from the underside of the notepad and left. The Parkry at the administration centre looked at the notice, then turned it upside-down and read it that way. It took the hard-copy to a xenoform standing a few meters away, something like a sleek-furred, eyeless, six-legged Afghan hound with shiny, overlapping plates covering the upper part of its head. It took the notice in its mouth and chewed a corner, then it approached Kaaren, with the authorisation dangling from its jaws; a translator hanging around its neck spoke: "This order is status-valid, priority-superseding, but duration- limited. No explanation." Kaaren had long ago given up trying to understand the way that the NoSanNoOs Dominion was governed, but she insisted on asking: "Will equipment requisitions be valid after expiry of authorisation?" The Afghan-xeno thought about this for a moment, then replied, "Requisitions status-valid, until mission, status-complete." Which wasn't very reassuring, she thought, but it would be the best she would get. She left, but turned around in surprise when the Afghan-xeno started following her. She stood, with hands on hips, head cocked to one side. "Yes?" it trotted up to her, and waving its head, offered the document. She took it, turned to leave, and the xeno followed her again. She resolutely ignored it until she reached the ship, where the xeno followed her up the ramp. She walked slightly faster, swaying back to move parallel to the diagonal line of the ramp with its own gravity field, stepped over the lip, into the ship and down to the cargo deck. The xeno followed. Ranfurlie entered from the engine room, wiping graphite paste off his hands onto the front of his shirt. "Who's your friend?" he asked, grinning. Kaaren gave him a sour look. "Some associate of Camerol's, I gather." As she spoke, the multiple emerged from the control room. Her badge read NOSHEVATHO again. She knelt down in front of the xeno and held her arms out. It bounded forward into her embrace, nuzzling her chin with its blank-looking, eyeless snout. When she looked up again, her badge had changed to read AVYX. "This is Okud-Dymy-Ucho-Wechet-Numerija, of Tsialo. He's, well, sort of my father. Foster-father." Numerija spoke with the mechanical tones of his NoSanNoOs translator: "Decision to utilise accrued-leave, made after recognition, this project's members and my foundling-human-daughter." Kaaren was quite interested in this, but couldn't think of a polite way of finding out more. She decided to bide her time, and look for an opportunity to speak to Numerija in private.
After Kaaren had organised a courier to fetch her belongings from her apartment, they convened in the control room for the pre-flight system check. The room was quiet; Kaaren initiated the check, and as the on-board diagnostics ran, she glanced at Camerol/Avyx out of the corner of her eye. The multiple sat in a flatchair in one corner of the room, blankly staring off into space. Kaaren caught Ranfurlie's eye and he nodded to indicate that he'd noticed. The ship checked out perfectly. Kaaren transferred control of the ship to the forward deck. She sat in the pilot's couch, laid in a course for the Bythian Resource Complex, set it and inserted her finger in the Execute space. Silently and with no sense of acceleration, the ship lifted off the pad and floated skywards. Kaaren sat back in the couch and examined the Sthelanic device which Camerol had asked Ranfurlie to mount on the ship's dashboard. It was black, non-reflective, shaped like a dinner plate, the concave side facing down. The other side had a holographic display, in dark blue, purple, violet and shades of red that suggested a visual spectrum shifted towards the ultraviolet; two spherical grids, one within the other; a thick pink line extending from their common centre. It shifted about as the ship turned, maintaining its orientation on the cache. A regular series of shapes flickered around the rim of the device; presumably, Sthelanic characters or numbers. "I've got the tertiary backup navigation system working out the basis of the Sthelanic written language; once it's finished, I'll be able to reprogram the device to display its readings in English." Ranfurlie said. "The first cache is about four hours' flight-time away, somewhere near Bythe Prime." Kaaren said, "I can't help feeling a bit apprehensive about this... I'm not convinced that the Bythians aren't going to start shooting at us as soon as they spot us." Camerol/Avyx assured her, "This trip is authorised. All Bythian command units have been notified, and have been ordered to co-operate. We have complete carte-blanche, as long as we don't do anything overtly antisocial, like spraying toxins on cropland or dropping fusion devices onto cities." Kaaren said nothing. After ensuring that the ship was on course, she went below to visit the Tsialo.
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