he had to say something in return.
“Quite well.” Brief, cool.
“I watched your last lecture,” said Stef, who was inclined to chat, knowing that as usual he had time to kill before Dzhun could receive him.
“Really,” said Yang, thawing slightly. He was paid.10 khan for every box that tuned in to his lectures. It wasn’t much, but he needed every tenth he could get.
“Yeah. I’m not a student, but I am ill-educated and I occasionally try to improve my mind, such as it is.”
Stef pulled over a wheeled censer, dumped a little kif into it from a pouch he carried, and turned on the heating element.
“Inhale?” he asked, unwinding two hoses and handing one to Yang.
“The waiting is tiresome,” Yang allowed, and took an experimental puff. Finding the quality acceptable (local kif, not Martian, but pretty good) he took another.
“May I ask your profession?”
“Investigative agent. I’m also a licensed member of the Middlemen and Fixers’ Guild.”
“Ah.” Yang looked at Stef sharply. “Are you good at what you do?”
“Well, I live by it and have for years. Why? Need something looked into?”
“Actually,” said Yang slowly, “I received an anonymous letter a few days ago and I’ve been wondering how to handle it. It claims to place in my hands certain information that I, ah, feel somebody in authority ought to know. Yet I have no way of checking it or naming the sender, who claims to be a student of mine. It may be worthless; on the other hand, if it’s useful, well-”
“You’d like to be paid for it,” said Stef promptly. “I can handle that. Insulate you from the polizi. There are ways to handle it confidentially and at the same time claim a reasonable reward if the information’s good. What’s it all about?”
Yang thought for a moment and then said, “It concerns something called Crux.”
All of Stef’s long training was just barely sufficient to enable him to keep amarmolitz -a marble face.
“Ah,” he said, clearing his throat, “the thing that was on the box a few nights ago?”
“Yes.”
Briefly he told Stef about the letter, witholding, however, the name Ananda and his description.
“What do you think it might be worth?”
“How happy I am,” interrupted the box in the corner, “to inform you, honored guest, that Dzhun is now ready to receive you.”
“Tell her to wait,” said Stef.
To Yang he said, “Let me try to find out if the matter’s really important. If so, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask ten thousand khans in return for such information.”
“Tenthousand? ”
The kif pipe fell out of his mouth.
“It must be something major,” Stef pointed out, “or it wouldn’t have been put on the air. At the same time, I would recommend caution. This is clearly a security matter, and you certainly wouldn’t want to expose yourself to the suspicion of knowing more than you actually do. That’s a short path to the White Chamber. Luckily, I have a friend on the inside who’s not polizi and can make inquiries.”
“And your, ah, fee?” asked Yang.
“A flat ten percent of the award. I’m an ethical investigator.”
“Good heavens,” said Yang, who was perfectly indifferent to Stef’s professional ethics but whose mind was engaged in dividing K9,000 by 120 to reached the astounding figure of seventy-five hour-long sessions with the White Tiger in the electronic room.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Your chop on my standard contract, one sheet of hardcopy with the message, and about two days.”
“You shall, my friend,” said Professor Yang rather grandly, “have all three.”
Yama and Stef sat at the duroplast deskin the Lion House staring at the hardcopy.
“One name. And what a crappy description. Maybe I should turn Yang over to Kathmann just to see if he knows anything more.”
“An honored professor? Come on, Yama. Stop thinking like a security gorilla for once. Yang doesn’t know a damn thing except that he needs money to rent his albino. What we need is to find this Ananda.”
“How? Call in the polizi?”
“Hell, no. Get the credit yourself. First of all, access the university records. Tell your mashina to search for Ananda as both a family name and a given name. Let’s say for the last two years. Do you have access to the polizi and city records?”
“That’s Earth Central stuff,” said Yama with a cunning look. “It’s off limits to us. Ofcourse I’ve got access.”
“When you get some names from the university, have the box start calling their numbers and checking the faces of these Anandas. That’ll eliminate some-they can’t all be skinny, ugly guys-and meanwhile you can be having the names checked against the polizi records for arrests and against the city records for everything else-property ownership, energy payments, tax payments, everything. Then there’s the Old Believer angle-”
Yama was already talking to his box. “I want confidential access to university records. Now.”
He turned back to Stef. “By the way, how much is this costing me, assuming it leads to anything?”
“If it leads to Crux, I promised Yang fifteen thousand.”
“Petty cash,” said Yama. “Ifit leads to Crux.”
The box chimed. “Sir, I have accessed the university central administrative files.”
“Search admission, registration and expulsion records for the name Ananda,” said Yama promptly, “especially expulsion.” He added to Stef, “Terrorists are often students, but very few of them are good students.”
Dreaming of the money, Stef paced the room impatiently. The university records were voluminous and ill-kept. There was no Ananda as a family name. Searching given names was just getting underway-“This baby does it in nanoseconds,” promised Yama-when the whole university system went down. And stayed down.
After more than an hour of waiting and pacing and dreaming of kif, Stef lounged out, holding his nose until he was past the Darksider, and took a hovercab home. There he called Earth Central and reported to one of Kathmann’s aides that he and Yama were following down an anonymous tip that a student was a member of Crux.
Then he called Yang and told him that the money was practically in hand. Yang was ecstatic.
“You don’t know what this means to me, honored investigative agent,” he bubbled. “I’ve had so many calls on my purse lately.”
“I know what you mean.”
“What do you think this Crux organization might be?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Stef lied. “In English the word means, uh, the essential thing. Like the crux of an argument.”
“Of course there’s also the Latin meaning.”
“What’s Latin?”
“It’s a dead language. The original source of the word. In Latin it means cross. Hence the crossroads, the critical point.”
“Ananda wears a funny kind of cross,” said Stef slowly.
“Yes. My informant thought he was an Old Believer.”
“I wonder-”
Stef’s box chimed. He quickly made arrangements to bring Yang his payoff and cut the circuit.
“Say,” he told the box.
“Stef, I got the names,” said Yama, abrupt as usual. “Got your recorder on? Here they are. Last year, Govind Ananda, withdrawn. This year, Patal Ananda, Nish Ananda, Sivastheni Ananda. That’s all.”
“Boxcodes?”
“Got ’em all except Govind. Like so many of those damn students, he may have a pirated mashina. I’m having the box call the ones we’ve got, and at the same time start running through the city records. Got anymore bright ideas?”
