to recover it. I’d have to send it back to the factory just to get it restarted.“
“Ouch!” Rembrandt made a face. “Well, you’ve definitely got to email Beeker and set up a time when you can both enter your passwords. I wonder why he didn’t take care of this before he left? It’s not at all like him to leave you with this kind of problem.”
“Well, I have sent an email, of course. But I wish it was that easy,” said Phule. He drummed his fingers on the desk and said, “If the ‘puters aren’t within about sixty light-minutes of each other, it’s physically impossible to punch in both passwords within fifteen minutes. Hyper-space asynchronicity, they call it. So now I’ve got to go chasing after Beeks, in hopes I can stay close enough to keep the security from shutting me down. Luckily, the timing circuits go into stasis during starship travel, to avoid FTL paradoxes. That ought to give me enough time to catch him before the memory wipes. Then I can just ask him to give me his Port-a-Brain until he’s ready to return. And then I can come home and let him have his vacation.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d start backing up my data,” said Rembrandt. “That way, even if you don’t catch him quickly enough, you’ll lose as little as possible.”
“Oh, my data’s backed up, all right,” said Phule. He stood up and began to pace. “I know enough to do
“What?” Rembrandt’s eyes opened wide. “You mean…”
“Yeah, I do,” said Phule. “The chip’s implanted in me, and if the computer goes down, it triggers this stasis chip which taps into my central nervous system and throws me into induced super-hibernation. Think of it as like a deep coma, except it’s externally controlled. I tried to argue Dad out of it…“
“I can see why,” said Rembrandt, clearly appalled. “But isn’t there an override? What’s the point of something that drastic, anyway?”
Phule paced nervously. “If there was an override, kidnappers could make me punch it in, and then what good’s the security? There was a case a few years back-the Sojac kidnapping on Arbutus-they bullied a kid into giving up a whole batch of his family’s access codes and passwords, then buried him alive in the desert. But you can’t threaten someone in stasis. In fact, the super-hibernation field protects the, uh, subject from almost everything. You can apparently even survive hard vacuum for a couple of years. Of course, you can’t
“That’s triff, if somebody finds you in time,” said Rembrandt. “If they don’t?”
“The chip sends out a locator signal,” said Phule. He looked around nervously. “I’m not supposed to tell anybody this… If kidnappers knew about it, they’d try to dig out the chip before the field kicked in. That’s why Dad didn’t let me tell Beeker…”
Rembrandt shook her head. “Well, Captain, I’m certainly not going to put out the word. But you’ve convinced me. Now, let’s just hope Beeker isn’t one of those guys who takes a computer on vacation and never looks at his email.”
“Let’s hope, indeed,” said Phule. “How soon can you get me on that shuttle?”
Normally, anyone traveling to or from Omega Company headquarters on Zenobia stopped over at space station Lorelei. For one thing, Lorelei was a major space liner stop, so travelers could make direct connections to the final destination, at a considerable savings in time. But equally important, Omega Company was majority owner of the Fat Chance Hotel and Casino, so the traveling legionnaires could spend a night or two in a first-class hotel while awaiting their connections. Not only was that an additional savings, it almost guaranteed that the passengers were in a good mood for the rest of their trip.
For Phule, a visit to the Fat Chance was an additional responsibility. After giving up his share in the ownership to the legionnaires of his company, he felt he owed them a careful look at how the business was going. Sure, he’d put good people in charge; sure, the casino had managed to survive a potential disaster when an outsider won a huge jackpot when all the odds were rigged against it. But it didn’t hurt to cast his eye over the books on behalf of his people. And if it meant he was a day late catching up with Beeker-who surely hadn’t lingered on the station any longer than absolutely necessary-so be it.
As it turned out, he couldn’t have picked a worse time to arrive at the Fat Chance. A drug-resistant flu virus had hit the station, and a quarter of the casino staff-including Tully Bascomb, the casino manager, were suffering through it. Tully had ordered the dealers, waiters, bartenders, and others in public contact positions to take sick leave the minute they showed any symptoms, and that decision had managed to slow the spread of the bug among the Fat Chance employees and customers.
Of course, a shipload of high rollers-lawyers attending the Galactic Bar Convention-arrived at the Fat Chance just as the epidemic was at its peak. None of the estimable barristers (let alone the spouses and other vacation partners accompanying them) seemed to appreciate the pains the casino had taken to keep them from exposure to the virus. All they knew was that they had to wait in line at the hotel desk, and that the service in the restaurants and bars was slower than they liked, and that some of the gaming tables were closed for lack of trained staff to run them. Tully had rushed back from his own convalescence and brought on a fleet of temp workers to deal with the problem. That reduced the lawyers’ bitching and moaning to an acceptable level, but it sent Tully into a full- blown relapse.
Phule ended up spending two whole days at the casino, making everything run smoothly so Tully wouldn’t have to rush back yet again. A fair amount of his time was spent mingling with the crowd, playing the celebrity for the sake of the guests. By the time he was done, he was almost as exhausted as if he’d had the flu himself-but the casino was running smoothly, and Tully had regained his full strength. And Phule had gotten a look at the books, and could tell Omega Company that its investment was in good shape.
In the meantime, he’d studied up on the planet where Beeker and Nightingale had been reported. They hadn’t stayed at the Fat Chance on their way through Lorelei. There would’ve been too many people who might recognize them, and too many questions, especially since Nightingale’s former employers, the Lorelei branch of the Syndicate, had bones to pick with her. But thanks to Sushi’s computer work, Phule already knew their immediate destination. An afternoon looking through travel brochures in the casino offices turned up a fair amount of material for Cut ‘N’ Shoot.
Cut ‘N’ Shoot had a smaller land area than most inhabited worlds, having a single moderate-sized continent with a few mineral resources, but no industrial prospects worth mentioning. After failing to find off-world customers for its decidedly inferior agricultural products, the governors of Cut ‘N’ Shoot had brought in outside consultants who (after absorbing a hefty fee) advised them to reposition it as a vacation spot for the galaxy. If Beeker and Nightingale were staying there, they wouldn’t have very many places to hide, Phule decided.
The next day, he was on a space liner for Cut ‘N’ Shoot, determined to bring the chase to an early end.
