“Thanks for joining us on the show this evening, Mr. Abington.”
“It’s my pleasure, Ji-eun,” Tyson said to the hostess of Methuselah After the Bell. After his rushed lunch meeting with Sokolov, he’d had half a mind to cancel the appearance, or at least move it to a call-in from his penthouse. He still felt off-balance from not only the conversation, but the discovery of the spy posing as their server, whom Paris had yet to ID or reacquire on the city’s security net.
Tyson was the unchallenged master of his domain. He wasn’t used to playing catch-up, or feeling like some nebulous, unseen force had gotten something over on him. It left him feeling anxious, a little paranoid, and more than a little vulnerable. None of which were the sorts of things he should be feeling under the hot lights of the local INN studio, especially when sitting across from an interviewer like Ji-eun Park.
But neither could he afford the questions a last-minute cancellation would raise. So, here he was, caked in stage makeup and trying to game out where the conversation was going to go so he could avoid the more devious booby traps. All while practically willing himself not to sweat in the heat.
The sensation was oddly invigorating.
“I know we’re cutting into your busy schedule, Mr. Abington, so—”
“Please.” Tyson waved a hand as it rested on his knee. “Tyson will do.”
“Of course. I know you’re busy, Tyson, so let’s dive right into today’s action, shall we?”
“By all means.”
Ji-eun shifted ever-so-slightly in her chair, angling her shoulders toward the main camera to give her viewers a better look at her without breaking eye contact with him. “Ageless has had a rough couple of weeks in the markets, down over a hundred nudollars a share, another fifteen just today. What do you think is driving this sudden crisis in investor confidence, Tyson?”
So, it was going to be one of those interviews, Tyson thought as he mounted a smile. Don’t forget the eyes, he reminded himself.
“Well, for starters, I think calling it a ‘crisis’ is a bit hyperbolic. The fact is, Ageless has been on quite a tear over the last three quarters, returning nearly seventeen percent over that period.”
“Excluding your stock’s stumble over the last two weeks, you mean,” Ji-eun jumped in. “You’re talking about your market high point, which came on the seventh.”
Tyson opened his palms, conceding the point. “Yes, of course. But since then, we’ve only given back five percent of our high. There had been talk on this very program three days earlier of a two-to-three split if we’d gone much higher. Although I will admit speculation about that possibility has cooled slightly.” He gave her a sly smile, as if he was letting her in on a private joke.
“So you’re saying the recent contraction is the result of overvaluation?”
“Not at all, and again I think you’re being a trifle contrarian. With the Grendel partnership between our friends at NeoSun and Praxis spooling up, there was quite a bit of investor enthusiasm for all three companies. Some market adjustment when excitement runs high is perfectly normal, even healthy.”
“But NeoSun, and even Praxis, haven’t experienced the drop Ageless has. NeoSun has actually gained a couple of points.”
Tyson waved away the objection. “We share a partnership on one project. We’re hardly conjoined triplets. Each company must be judged on its own merits and business concerns.”
The word tumbled out before Tyson could catch it. The slight uptick of Ji-eun’s left eyebrow confirmed that it hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Let’s talk about one of those concerns, if I may. Two weeks ago, a bulk cargo carrier inbound from Ageless’s mining operation in Teegarden arrived in orbit with word of an outbreak. We tried to get a statement from you personally at the time, but…”
She held a hand up to a nearby holoscreen. A perfect 3D-UHD of Tyson standing at the window of his penthouse office looking out into the city at sunset appeared, hands held behind his back. It hovered there for a moment as he mouthed some words blurred out in the window itself by automated security features designed to prevent eavesdropping. An instant later, the image shook violently as if struck by an earthquake, then tumbled toward the ground before cutting out entirely.
“… our camera-drone was shot down by some sort of missile. That seems a bit extreme, doesn’t it?”
Tyson’s teeth clenched so hard that he had to take a moment to force his jaw muscles to relax. He distracted from his fury at the ambush by switching the cross of his legs, but the moment of silence dragged on awkwardly.
“That was an unfortunate incident, to be sure. But you must understand, Ji-eun, information security is critically important to any transtellar. We have automated systems in place to preserve the integrity of our airspace, especially around the Immortal Tower where even a brief glance could compromise the private information of any of our tens of thousands of employees.” Tyson smiled warmly. The defense even had the benefit of being true, theoretically. “I didn’t realize at the time it was an INN drone, but even if I had, I doubt I could have intervened quickly enough to stop the peregrine array on the roof from reacting to the perceived breach.”
“You mean to tell me you have AI operating on shoot-to-kill orders on your own office building?” she said with mock indignation.
“Now, Ji-eun, you’re being hyperbolic again,” he said, trying to thread the needle between confronting her incendiary accusation without coming off as condescending or sexist. “Their automated protocols only apply to unmanned drones. Any action against manned aircraft requires a human command in the decision loop, as is required by intercorporate law, and even our treaty with the Xre. And I think you’ll find that Ageless filed a formal apology for the incident and paid INN full restitution for your losses. Is that not true?”
“It is,” she allowed, only because she had to. “But we’re veering off topic.”
“Only because you dragged us there,” Tyson shot back, irritating her. He probably should’ve let it go, but it felt good to land a hit, even if it was only a jab. “Please, what was the topic?”
“Your Teegarden facility,” she said icily. “How many fatalities are you up to now? A dozen?”
“Fourteen.” Tyson nodded along for a moment after correcting her. She’d expected him to try and minimize the human toll with clever wordplay. She hadn’t been ready for him to hit her with an even more stark assessment. It threw her off-balance for a moment and afforded him a rare opportunity to continue without a probing follow-up question. “We received a report from our medical team on station via skip courier not even an hour ago. I can’t release the names of the deceased at this time, not until their families have been notified. But know that their names are on my lips even now. I feel these losses as if they were my own. Because in a very real sense, they are. Which is why we’ve poured whatever resources are necessary into finding a cure for our miners on Teegarden and our spacers in orbit. We’re already making progress on that front. The bacteria responsible has been isolated and sequenced. I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll have appropriate antibodies synthesized in the coming days before any additional lives are lost.”
“That was a carefully calculated answer free of guarantees, Tyson.”
“I’m not an immunologist by trade. I can only trust what my people tell me. And I do. They are just as motivated to solve this as anyone.”
“But in the meantime you have a million-ton shipment of rare-earth ores doing lazy circles in orbit, just chewing up cash flow. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“The rocks they hauled here from Teegarden waited billions of years to be excavated. I think they’ll keep over the next few days or weeks it takes to sort this out. Honestly, Ji-eun, I’m more bothered by the situation faced by the Preakness’s crew than I am about the paltry sum we’re spending on their upkeep. Cargo haulers aren’t known for luxury accommodations, and every man and woman aboard has already missed two weeks’ worth of recitals and birthdays with their families.”
“Forgive me, Tyson, but you seem mighty nonchalant about losing billions in revenue from the quarter’s balance sheet. Do you really expect stakeholders to share your calm?”
“I trust that our stakeholders are intelligent enough to recognize revenue hasn’t been lost at all, merely delayed until the next quarterly report. Further, it’s important to remember that while our mining operations on Teegarden carry some of our healthiest margins, they still represent only a fraction of Ageless’s diverse revenue stream. Indeed, just this month we’re breaking ground on five new projects that are expected to start turning profit by the end of the fiscal year.”
“I’m sure there are a lot of nervous investors in our audience who will be relieved to hear that. You’ve been very generous with your time this evening, I don’t want to keep you. I have just one final question, if I may.”
Tyson held out his hands invitingly. “By all means.”
“You mentioned your partnership on the planet Grendel, of which Ageless holds a controlling stake. Is that so?”
A knot tightened in Tyson’s stomach. This was not a direction he wanted to go. “Yes. We partnered with Praxis for logistical support and NeoSun for their orbital manufacturing expertise to help set up the initial spaceborne infrastructure, but the operations dirtside are almost entirely run by Ageless. We’re nearing completion of the first phase of construction, in fact.”
“Yes, I’ve read all the press releases,” Ji-eun said dismissively. “What I didn’t find in them, however, was any mention of a Xre incursion two weeks ago.”
Tyson stared at her. He’d only heard the news himself a few hours earlier, in a very confidential conversation with Sokolov, who had every incentive to keep the news as quiet as he did. The spy, Cassidy. She must have bugged their table and leaked their conversation. It was the only explanation.
“Tyson?”
Ji-eun’s voice shook him back to the here-and-now. “Hmm? Yes, sorry. Did you say an incursion?”
Ji-eun leaned in. “Yes. A Xre warship operating at the edge of treaty space sent drones into the system and ended up in an engagement with the system’s picket cruiser, the CCDF Ansari. Are you telling me this is the first you’ve heard of it, Tyson?”
Tyson’s mind raced. He had to choose his next words very carefully. If he flatly denied it and Ji-eun had acquired a recording of his lunch conversation from the spy, he’d be caught in a lie, live. It was a trap.
“I have no knowledge of such an incident,” he started. “If the incident you describe occurred, it would fall under fleet jurisdiction. And would almost certainly be considered classified until a determination was made that a public announcement was appropriate.”
“That’s hardly a denial, Tyson,” she pressed, leaning forward in her chair. “Surely you know what’s going on in the skies above your own projects?”
Oh, she was a clever one. Confirm and he was caught with intel he had no legal right to possess, deny and be caught in a lie, feign ignorance and appear weak and disconnected.
“I have no special privileges where it comes to military intelligence compared to any other private citizen, Ji-eun. If something happened on Grendel, I’ll learn about it with everyone else when the fleet makes any such information public. In the meantime, I think it would be irresponsible of me to speculate on unconfirmed rumors of such an … outlandish nature.”
“I have my sources,” Ji-eun said confidently.
“I’m sure they’re impeccable, and also willing to come on stage with us right now to face espionage charges.”
Ji-eun clapped her hands. “And that’s all the time we have for tonight. I want to thank CEO of Ageless Corp., Tyson Abington, for joining us for a … memorable … visit. Next up is Gill and Li-ho with an exciting recap of today’s baseball highlights, so stay tuned.”
As soon as the green light on the holocapture equipment switched to red, Tyson shot up from his chair and turned for the door. “Have a lovely evening, Ji-eun,” he said over his shoulder, without so much as offering his hand to shake.
“Tyson, wait!”
He turned. “What? You have another pit-trap ready we didn’t have time for and you don’t want it to go to waste?”
“I’m just doing my job. This is a big story and you know it, maybe the biggest in seventy years. It’s not my fault it fell right on the heels of your other misfortunes.”
“Who told you? Who’s the source?”
“So it’s true, then. Off the record?”
“I can neither confirm, nor deny the—”
Ji-eun sighed with disgust. “Yes, yes. I know the drill. And you know I can’t reveal sources.”
The two of them stared at each other for a heartbeat. “Well, here we are, then. Stalemated,” Tyson said finally.
“I guess so.”
“Good night, Ms. Park.”
“Good night, Mr. Abington. Can I call a grip to—”
“I know my way out.” Tyson spun around on a heel and stalked out of the studio. Savvy investors and AI trade platforms had watched the stream live. Within an hour, the interview will have been seen by half the people on Lazarus. Within a week, it will have been carried by drone skip couriers to six dozen colonies, moons, and planets across human-controlled space and seen by uncountable millions.
Tyson connected with Paris as soon as his feet hit the sidewalk. “How bad is it?”
“The overnights just lost another twenty-three points,” she replied without emotion. Not that she lacked them. She just knew when best to deploy them.
“Increase INN’s rent on their studio by twenty-three percent.”
“That won’t quite cover the shortfall,” she said, adding a slight stress of sarcasm.
“No, but it will send a message. And more importantly, it will make me feel better. Also, their utilities.”
“For how long?”
“Until I’m not mad anymore.”
“So in perpetuity. Understood. I should tell you, there’s several people waiting in v-space to connect with you at the office, sir.”
“At this hour? Who?”
“The board.”
Tyson sighed. “Understood. Be there shortly.” He pressed a chime in the nearest streetlamp to call for a transit pod, but before one came a woman stepped out from the flow of the crowd on the sidewalk and walked toward him with purpose. He didn’t recognize her, and considering the rest of the day’s events, he wasn’t taking anything at face value. Tyson’s legs and shoulders tensed, ready to take flight or stand his ground, depending on what happened in the next second or two.
“Mr. Abington!” she called with a wave to gain his attention. Well, at least she wasn’t trying to sneak up on him. She came to a stop a step away and held out her hand.
Tyson took it, hesitantly. “I’m … sorry, but are we acquainted?”
“We are now. Dr. Elsa Spaulding. I’m—”
“Supposed to be in space,” Tyson said as recognition dawned. She’d been on the short list for the team of immunologists and geneticists he’d picked to fight his bacterial adversary. “Yes, Doctor. I know who you are now. Sorry we haven’t met before. But, didn’t I send you to Teegarden two weeks ago?”
“You did, sir. But I’d punctured a lung in a rock-climbing accident the day before and the flight surgeon wouldn’t clear me for departure.”
“Goodness! Are you all right?”
Elsa rubbed absently at her side for a moment. “Perfectly. My ego is more bruised than my body at this point. Kwiknit is some amazing stuff.”
“Indeed.” A pod pulled up along the sidewalk. “Well, good evening, Dr. Spaulding.”
“No, sir.” She reached out and grabbed his arm before he could turn away. His eyes shot down and looked in surprise and affront at her fingers gripping his jacket sleeve, but she didn’t relent. “I’ve been coordinating with my colleagues from the ground. And I really need to talk to you.” She really needed to talk to him badly enough that she didn’t even register the pair of Wasp bodyguard drones hovering overhead that went from passive to target-acquisition the instant she reached for his arm. Not sensing any immediate threat, Tyson waved them off with his free hand.
“I’m on my way to a board meeting.”
“This can’t wait.”
Tyson’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I saw you on that INN interview. My flat is only a few blocks away. I ran down here as quickly as I could to catch you.”
Tyson was still reticent, but he knew that when a woman wouldn’t take no for an answer, it was usually best to just let things happen. “All right, Doctor. You have my attention for the span of the podride back to the Immortal Tower. That will have to suffice.”
“That’s all I need.”
“In that case, get in.”
The ride back to the tower was significantly less entertaining, yet considerably more illuminating than he’d anticipated.
“And you can prove all of this?” Tyson asked as he took Elsa’s hand to help her out of the pod.
“‘Prove’ is a loaded term in science, but, I have substantial support for the hypothesis, yes.”
“Can you access your data remotely?”
“Of course.”
“Good, because you’re giving a presentation to the board about everything you’ve just told me.”
“Me.” She stopped in midstride. “When? Where?”
“As soon as we reach my office. And in my office.”
“But, I’m not prepared,” she stammered. “I don’t have any visuals ready.”
“You convinced me in three and a half minutes. You’re prepared. This isn’t a symposium, Doctor. You’re not presenting at a scientific conference where you have to defend yourself from other vultures in your field. This is a board meeting. They’re an entirely different kind of vulture.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Just be confident. You’re the expert. They aren’t going to have the background or wherewithal to challenge your contentions. Ninety percent of any C-level exec’s success comes from listening to people smarter than they are and then taking credit for doing whatever they were told in the first place.”
“Trade secret, huh?” she asked.
“Is it? I thought it was common knowledge. This way.” An expertly cut pane of glass at the base of the Immortal Tower pivoted on its center as they approached to grant them entry to the soaring seven-story atrium that greeted visitors to Ageless’s headquarters. A pair of security androids flanked the entrance, ready to deal with any unwelcome guests—politely, but firmly. A refurbished marine anti-vehicular mecha was hidden inside a false structural pylon on the far side of the lobby should polite-but-firm fail to be a sufficient deterrent, but this was not widely acknowledged.
The lobby was dim and nearly empty as they made their way to the lifts. It was already past sundown, and most of the building’s workers had gone home for the day. Tyson nodded to the nightshift front desk attendant as they passed.
“Reggie.”
“Good evening, Mr. Abington. Working late?”
“Story of our lives, hey Reg?”
He laughed. “I heard that, sir.”
Tyson came to rest in front of his private high-speed lift with Dr. Spaulding close behind. Three different biometric systems confirmed his identity before the doors opened to grant them entrance.
“Plus one,” he said as they passed through the doors.
“Plus one, what?” Elsa asked.
“Plus you. That’s how the guns in the elevator know I’m not being coerced and they don’t need to shoot you when we reach the tenth floor.”
“I thought you said in the interview that a human is involved in the decision loop by law!”
“And one is. In this case, I decided not to kill you. The imprecision of language can be such fun.”
The press of acceleration pushed down on the soles of their feet. Tyson’s private lift only had one destination, and it got there quickly.
“How did you remember the guard?” Elsa asked.
“Hmm? Reggie?”
“Yeah, do you have an alert in your augmented reality whenever an employee is in your field of vision. Their file, maybe?”
Tyson snorted. “Reginald Sojourner Birmingham took a knife for me twenty-seven years ago when I was just a dumb kid and he was my bodyguard. Some tweaker outside a nightclub got lucky and stuck it between the base of Reggie’s helmet and the top of his backplate while I was in the alley trying to jack into the tweaker’s girl. I promised Reg that night in the hospital his family would never want for anything again. He spent three months on a ventilator while the docs regrew his spinal cord below the C-7 vertebrae. Took him a year to learn how to walk again. He has two daughters and a lovely wife who bakes me an entirely inedible fruitcake every Christmas, every one of which I’ve saved as building material for a winter home on the southern continent when I finally retire. So no, I don’t need any tricks to remember his name. Anything else?”
Elsa shrunk back into herself. “I’m … sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Tyson assured her. “I know what people think of me. It’s even useful, sometimes. But in private like this it can be a bit … jarring.”
The lift reached it apex with a gentle Ding. The doors opened onto Tyson’s familiar territory. His first home, really.
“Holy shit,” Elsa said behind him, just above a whisper. She physically backed into the elevator car.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s—” She swallowed. “What’s holding up the ceiling?”
“Ah. I see.” Tyson strode over to the window and wrapped a knuckle against it with a tunk tunk tunk. “Several tons of space-grade transparent aluminum. It’s quite solid, I assure you. It’s just tricking your eyes. Don’t worry. I work in here every day.” He held out a reassuring hand.
Gingerly, Elsa took it and inched her way out of the lift. As soon as she’d exited, the doors closed and the capsule retreated back into the floor, the contours of its top disappearing into the swirling patterns of the carpet.
“That’s a hell of a trick,” Elsa said once she’d collected herself.
“You know, I haven’t had anyone new up here in a couple of years who could appreciate it that much. Thanks for reminding me what that looks like. Paris?”
“I’m here,” his assistant’s voice called from everywhere and nowhere.
“Ghost protocol, please.”
“Of course.”
All around them, the once transparent window that separated the floor from the ceiling frosted over as if an impenetrable fog had suddenly fallen over the city.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Tyson said. “This just keeps prying eyes from lipreading while we hold our meeting.”
Elsa nodded. “I understand.”
“Paris, can you join us, please?”
Paris’s familiar shape appeared in the opaque window. “Hello, Dr. Spaulding. It’s good to meet you in, well, person.”
“You two know each other?” Tyson asked.
“She, ah, recruited me for the Teegarden expedition,” Elsa said. “I didn’t know you were an AI.”
“Ah.” Paris fluttered her shoulders and smiled. “Passed another Turing test.”
“Sorry, I meant no offense. We use AI in the lab every day. They’re invaluable. Just not quite so … sophisticated.”
“None taken, Doctor. I’m a special case.”
“That she is,” Tyson said. “Dr. Spaulding, if you would be so good as to give Paris permission to access your files, she’ll be more than capable of throwing together the visuals and cites for your presentation on the fly. Isn’t that right, Paris?”
“I’ll be happy to,” the AI said reassuringly.
“The data sets are pretty dense,” Elsa said uncertainly.
“I’m a quick study.”
“What the hell.” Elsa shrugged. “You’re the ones paying for all of it anyway.” She pulled a small tablet from her purse, thumbed it, then typed an incomprehensibly complex string of characters into the passcode field. Tyson couldn’t have remembered it even if he’d wanted to steal access later.
“That’s your password?” Tyson said. “How can you remember it?”
“It’s just five sets of seven characters. Anyone can do that.” She opened a couple of different fields and keyed a few command prompts. “Okay, Paris. You should have full access now.”
The projections of Paris’s eyes closed. For a moment, she concentrated. “Yes, I can see your data. Thank you. I’ll try not to leave a mess.”
“You can’t be any worse than my first graduate student.”
The two of them shared a laugh, as if Paris had ever been a graduate student.
“Okay, are we ready then?” Tyson asked, but continued before getting an answer, “Good, let’s get this dog and pony show over with. Paris, put the board members onscreen, please.”
The overhead lights dimmed. One at a time, six ghostly figures materialized from the fog of the window until they resolved into something with the appearance of substance spaced equidistantly around the circular office window, theater-in-the-round style.
Tyson didn’t like the idea of addressing people he couldn’t see, so he held his arms out wide, toggled his forefingers, then scrunched everyone together in a neat row where he could engage with all of them at once.
The Chief Operations Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Logistical Officer, Chief Humanities Officer, and Chief Benefits Officer, sitting in lavishly appointed home offices, dens, and living rooms in penthouses atop the most exclusive residential towers in downtown Methuselah, collectively and expectantly stared back at him. Everyone except CHO Meadows, who preferred to live in a five-room hovel on the outskirts of the burber ring inherited from her parents some fifteen years ago. Foz always had been a bit of an odd one.
A spotlight cast a glow over Tyson’s head and shoulders for theatrical effect. He held his arms up in welcome. “Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining me tonight.”
“Cut the crap, Tyson,” COO Nakamura said without preamble. “We all saw that interview. What the hell were you—” He stopped midsentence as soon as he noticed Elsa standing behind Tyson’s right shoulder. “Who is that?”
“This…” Tyson moved aside and motioned for Elsa to step forward. “… is Doctor Elsa Spaulding. She’s one of the immunologists leading the effort to find a cure for our Teegarden plague, and she’s the reason I called this meeting.”
“But you didn’t call this meeting!” Nakamura complained.
“I have now, Takeshi. I cede the floor to Dr. Spaulding. And trust me, you’re all going to want to listen very carefully to what she has to say.” He turned around and leaned in to whisper in Elsa’s ear. “Remember, you’re the expert here. Try not to overwhelm them with detail. And don’t take any of their shit. Think teaching class at a primary school.”
“I haven’t been in a primary school in twenty years.”
“You’ll be great.” He hooked an arm around her waist and gently maneuvered her under the light, then stepped away.
Momentarily startled, Elsa straightened her blouse and cleared her throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I apologize in advance for the somewhat disjointed nature of this presentation. I didn’t know I was giving it until five minutes ago.” She shot Tyson a sour look, but continued. “As Mr. Abington said, for the last two weeks I’ve been working diligently with my colleagues both in orbit on the Preakness and in situ on Teegarden to develop a cure for the mystery bacteria infecting our people.”
“And how goes that fight, Doctor?” Foz asked. Her gentle tones stood in such stark contrast to nearly everyone else Tyson came in regular contact with.
“To be frank, slowly. We’ve managed to contain the outbreak and identify its vectors. We’ve even managed to start sterilizing the outer structures on Teegarden and set up labs and a treatment center on-site. But as far as working toward a cure, that’s been slower going. So far, the strain has proven resilient to all known phases of antibiotics, retro-viral therapies, even the bacterial phages we’ve thrown at it. Its mutation rate is higher than anything I’ve seen in more than a decade of work in the field. It’s almost like the strain knows our playbook and is anticipating our next move against it.”
“Are you saying this bug is intelligent, Doctor?” Nakamura said. “Because you have to know how crazy that sounds.”
“No. I’m saying it gives the illusion of intelligent action because, and here’s the big one, it’s been programmed to.”
“Walk us through that.”
Elsa ran a hand through her hair. “After sequencing its genome at several stages of its development, I retroactively isolated a series of snippets laying dormant, waiting to be triggered by environmental conditions or other outside stimulus. Further, these alleles were hidden among junk DNA after being lifted from wildly divergent orders of prokaryotes that—”
“Doc. English, please,” Nakamura pleaded.
“She was speaking English, Takeshi,” Foz said.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Regardless. Dr. Spaulding, biology wasn’t a primary focus of study for most of us in the corporate world. Could you shave it down for my associates, please?”
“Yes, of course. Alleles are just a science-y word for traits. We can track these traits backward through time by following their development and comparing it to known mutation rates and see points of divergence and speciation. But these alleles don’t fit into any single catalogued lineage. It would be like seeing a person walking down the street with an elephant trunk and dragonfly wings. Evolutionarily, those traits didn’t evolve together, so you’d instantly know they’d acquired them through gene-splicing, not any natural process. And even that metaphor doesn’t really do the job, because the genetic diversity of prokaryotes spans many hundreds of millions of years longer than the history of the vertebrate lineage.”
Foz held up a hand. “I think your point is made, Doctor. Thank you. You said the bacteria’s program is anticipating your steps to attack it. Have you tried something so unscientific as going out of order?”
“We have, but it’s less about the order and more just that the specimen has counters waiting for everything already in our toolkit. We need to develop a new tool from scratch, which we will, but it’s going to take some time.”
“We’ve already lost fourteen people, Dr. Spaulding,” Nakamura jumped in. “We can’t afford much more time.”
“We’ve just received a shipment of cryogenic capsules for the most advance-stage cases in Teegarden. They’re being set up in situ now. As we all know, cryo-sleep has its own risks and only buys us a few months, but I’m confident that anyone we have to put on ice now will keep long enough for us to crack this thing.”
“That’s encouraging to hear.” Durant, the Chief Benefits Officer, finally broke his silence. “One final question, Doctor. Is this a weapon?”
Elsa coughed into her fist. “I’m afraid I’m not able to speak to that hypothesis, sir.”
“I can.” Tyson stepped back into the spotlight, gently crowding Elsa back to the side. “Ageless is the victim of a coordinated, sophisticated attack, Teegarden being only one prong of it. I assume you’ve all read my memo about our efforts to identify the source of the leak about the Teegarden outbreak even before I was notified. But what I haven’t had time to tell you yet is I had lunch today with Ms. Sokolov. She confirmed with me in confidentiality that the rumor about a Xre incursion on Grendel is true. We really did have a Xre warship cross the Red Line in our backyard two weeks ago.”
A pall fell over the board. Foz was the first to relocate her voice. “What were our losses?”
“Negligible. Our cruiser lost a pair of drones and a few decoys driving the enemy off. They didn’t get anywhere near our investment.”
“That’s not very comforting,” Durant said.
“You haven’t heard everything.” Tyson realigned one of his cufflinks. “I discovered later that our server during lunch wasn’t a server at all, but an operative eavesdropping on our conversation. For whom, I have no idea, but I’m almost certain she was the one to share the intel with INN. Methuselah, indeed probably Lazarus itself, is compromised until we find the source of these leaks and plug it.”
“In the plumbing sense, or the bullet sense?” Nakamura asked.
“I’m flexible.”
“I have a question,” Foz said. “If this is such a high-level conspiracy, why did they allow the genetic modification of the bacteria to be so easily uncovered?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Elsa jumped in defensively. “It was a bitch of a process that took me a week of sequencing and sample runs. I just happen to be really good at my job. Better than my salary, if we’re being honest.”
“How much better?” Tyson asked.
The question threw Elsa off-balance. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Thirty percent?”
“Done.” Tyson typed a note into his wrist display. “Now, do you mind? I’m in the middle of a thing.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Should’ve said fifty.”
“What?”
Tyson held a finger up to his lips. “Anyway, now that we know these leaks and saboteurs exist, the only question is what to do about them.”
“Lock down the spaceports,” Nakamura said. “Tell air traffic control to freeze travel into or out of the system until we can do a complete sweep of the population and isolate the operatives.”
“And start rumors that containment has broken on the Preakness, start a public health panic?” Lassalle, the CFO, said, finally joining the conversation. “If you want to see our overnights drop a hundred points by morning, that’s how to do it.”
“Rene is right.” Tyson took back the initiative. “Besides, such a drastic action would tip off our foes that we’ve discovered their scheme and give them time to erase evidence and bury bodies. Time we can’t afford to give them if we’re going to make these charges stick at a full corporate tribunal.”
“What about the Xre incursion?” Foz asked.
“An instance of terribly unfortunate timing.”
“For us. Awfully convenient timing for whoever’s behind this.”
“I recognize that,” Tyson conceded. “But the Xre see humans as a monolithic block; they don’t differentiate between corporate entities. That’s why we had to create the fleet in the first place. Besides, how would you bribe a Xre? With a crate of live bugs? They don’t even have a concept of money.”
“Point taken.”
“I know it looks suspicious, but I just don’t see how it comes to pass. It took almost three years of incessant negotiation after the Intersection War just to figure out what the hell they wanted to negotiate over. Besides, if the Xre Grand Symphony really did decide to conspire against Ageless individually, there isn’t a good goddamn we could do about it. So I’d prefer to stick to the wildfires we have a hope of putting out.”
“That’s fair.”
“To that end, we have to proceed quietly to avoid the panic Rene mentioned, and to keep our quarry from realizing they’re being hunted in turn. We have three different lines of inquiry to follow: the communications leak between the Preakness and the Immortal Tower, the server-turned-spy, and now whoever engineered the bacteria. I’m already pursuing all of them as aggressively as discretion allows. We need to be patient until something turns up in our nets.”
The room fell silent while each board member considered what they’d just heard. Finally, Nakamura spoke. “Motion to approve Tyson’s approach. Is there a second?”
“Seconded,” Foz said.
“It’s to a vote, then.”
Everyone thumbed at their consoles to register their secret ballot. Three in favor, two opposed, one abstention. Good, Tyson thought. He wouldn’t have to be the official tiebreaker for his own proposal. Still, the twin “nay” votes irked him. For a moment, he considered letting Paris loose into the system to see who’d cast them, but decided against it. For the time being.
“Thank you, friends. We will continue on the course, and I will make sure to keep you all abreast of any developments. But I must reiterate the importance of confidentiality. Until we catch the perpetrators here on Lazarus, we have no idea who’s listening. That said, I won’t keep you from the evening’s pleasures any longer. Good night.”
With a goodbye wave of Tyson’s hand, the ghosts returned to the fog. Then, the room’s lights returned to normal levels to reveal Elsa leaning on Tyson’s desk.
“Are board meetings always like that?”
“No, no. Not at all. There’s usually more cursing. Are you all right? You look a little flush.”
“I just gave a presentation to the seven most powerful people on the entire planet without any notice. It took me most of grad school to get over a crippling fear of public speaking. You could say I’m a little distressed.”
Tyson looked over to the image of his assistant floating in the air just outside the window. “Paris, could you leave us for a moment, please?”
“Of course, sir.” She faded away. Naturally, she hadn’t actually gone anywhere, and would continue to see and hear everything that happened in the penthouse office, but it would make Elsa more comfortable.
Tyson gently grabbed Elsa by the elbow and locked with her eyes. “You did marvelously. They heard exactly what they needed to hear, and took your competence and integrity as a given. That’s never assured at this level of play.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. I also have one other question before you go. What can you tell me about the people who engineered the bacteria?”
“Well, nothing. I have no idea who they are. I’m not even ready to say it was engineered as a bioweapon without more evidence. That’s not how science works.”
“Extrapolate. Give me an educated guess. Let’s try this another way. How many people in your field could have uncovered the tampering? Not realize something was weird, but actually find fingerprints of the programming?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t be modest. The woman who demanded the attention of a transtellar CEO on the sidewalk isn’t modest.”
“Fine, a few dozen, probably.”
“And how many people could have done the programming?”
“The same few dozen.”
“At how many labs?”
Elsa started to nod along. “Maybe ten universities on Earth have the necessary equipment and experience. A few military black labs I know nothing about. Maybe another half dozen out in the colonies.”
“And the heads of these programs. How many of them did you study under, or go to school with? Work with once you graduated?”
“A lot of them. Maybe even most.”
It was Tyson’s turn to lean on the desk. “I’ve heard enough. You’re working directly for me, now. You’ll continue with your other duties, but you’re going to start making discreet inquiries among your colleagues about these bacteria and try to narrow down the point of origin. Can you do that?”
“I don’t have any idea. I’m a scientist, I’m not trained for espionage.”
“That’s no problem at all, because this is counter-espionage. Totally different thing. You’ll start tomorrow, first thing. But tonight, I want you to go home and rest. Or go home and get drunk. Whatever your coping mechanism of choice happens to be.”
“Am I really getting a raise?”
“Yes.”
“A fifty-percent raise?” Elsa asked hopefully.
“Thirty. You had your chance. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
“Thanks, but I think I can find the way.”
“There’s still guns in the elevator.”
“Right.”