to blackmail.
The blackmail came from the supplier-producer himself. Out there in the fringe, it was easy enough to hide his smuggled supplies in ordinary shipments of agri-goods, but the nearer one got to civilization, the harder it became. Publicly available transport was out of the question.
But there were other shipments going straight to the heart of civilization. Shipments that were so innocent, and so fragile, they never saw a custom's inspector. Such as... Institute artifacts.
So the drug-dealer molded his product in the likeness of pottery shards. And the archeologist on-site made sure they got packed like any other artifacts and shipped, although they were never cataloged. Once the shipment arrived at the Institute, a worker inside the receiving area would set the crates with particular marks aside and leave them on the loading dock overnight. They would, of course, disappear, but since they had never been cataloged, they were never missed.
The only reason the archeologist in question had been caught was because an overzealous graduate student had cataloged the phony shards, and when they came up missing at the Institute, the police became involved.
Tia ran the news clip for Alex, who watched it attentively. 'What do you think?' she asked, when it was over.
'I think our friend in the dull blue-striped tunic had a strangely fit look about him. The look that says 'police' to yours truly.' Alex nodded. 'I think you're right. I think someone is trying the artifact-switch again, except that this time they're coming in on the black market.'
She did a quick access to the nets, and began searching for a politician named Sinor. She found one, but he did not match the man she had seen on the transmission.
'The trick is probably that if someone sees a crate full of smuggled glassware, they don't think of drugs.' Tia felt very smug over her deduction, and her identification of Sinor as a ringer. Of course, there was no way of knowing if her guess was right or wrong, but still. 'The worst that is likely to happen to an artifact-smuggler is a fine and a slap on the wrist. They aren't taken very seriously, even though there's serious money in it and the smugglers may have killed to get them.'
'That's assuming inspectors even find the artifacts. So where were we supposed to fit in to all this?' Alex ran his hand through his hair. 'Do they think we're going to find this guy?'
'I think that they think he's working with one of the small-dig people again. By the way, you were right about Sinor. Or rather, the Sinor we saw is not the one of record.' Another thought occurred to her. 'You know, their story may very well have been genuine. There's not a lot of room in jewelry to hide drugs. Whoever is doing this may have started by smuggling out the artifacts, freelance, got tangled up with some crime syndicate, and now he's been forced to deal the fake, drug-carrying artifacts along with the real ones.'
'Now that makes sense!' Alex exclaimed. 'That fits all the parameters. Do we still play along?'
'Ye-es,' she replied slowly. 'But in a severely limited sense, I'd say. We aren't trained in law enforcement, and we don't carry weapons. If we see something, we report it, and get the heck out'
'Sounds good to me, lady,' Alex replied, with patent relief. 'I'm not a coward, but I'm not stupid. And I didn't sign up with the BB program to get ventilated by some low-down punk. If I wanted to do that, all I have to do is stroll into certain neighborhoods and flash some glitter. Tia, why all that nonsense about plague?'
'Partially to hook us in, I think,' she said, after a moment. 'They know we were the team that got the Zombie Bug, we'll feel strongly about plague. And partially to keep us from touching these objects. If we don't mess with them, we won't know about the drug link.'
He made a sound of disgust. 'You'd think they'd have trusted us with the real story. I'm half tempted to blow this whole thing off, just because they didn't. I won't,' he added hastily, 'but I'm tempted.'
He began warming up the boards, preparatory to taking off. Tia opened a channel to traffic control, but while she did so, she was silently wondering if there was even more to the story than she had guessed.
There was something bothering Alex, and as they continued on their rounds, he tried to put his finger on it. It was only after he replayed the recorded transmission of Professor Barton and the bogus 'Sinor' that he realized what it was.
Tia had known that Professor Barton was genuine, without checking. And Barton had said things that indicated he knew who she was.
Alex had never really wondered about her background. He'd always assumed that she was just like every other shell-person he'd ever known; popped into her shell at birth, because of fatal birth-defects, with parents who rather would forget she had ever been born. Who were just as pleased that she was someone else's problem.
What was it that the professor had said, though? 'You both have backgrounds in archeology. Hypatia, you know how digs work, intimately.'
From everything that Jon Chernov had said, the shell-person program was so learning-intensive that there was no time for hobbies. A shell-person only acquired hobbies after he got out in the real world and had leisure time
