The door shut behind them, leaving Rico and the foreman looking at each other blankly. The foreman, determined to apologize to someone, began to apologize to Rico, who wasn’t listening. He was running through what he had just seen, and thinking about it.
‘Oh my God,’ he thought.
‘He was a correspondent,’ Rico said.
‘Nonsense,’ Marje said.
‘He was a correspondent!’ Rico insisted. ‘I saw how fast he moved. I couldn’t have done it, and I’ve been trained for Specific Operations. No one could. I tell you, he was a correspondent.’
‘So.’ Marje pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘You are saying Hossein Asaldra has befriended a correspondent? You are saying Hossein has broken every code of conduct in the book? You are saying—’
‘You’re still not getting it,’ Rico said. ‘The correspondent saved my life when he thought I was just another bygoner. He got involved, Commissioner. I would say his conditioning has been quite severely compromised, presumably by Mr Asaldra.’ He saw the look of irritation sweep across Marje’s face and got to his feet. ‘What the hell. You wanted me to do a mission, I did it. Use the results as you will.’
‘I haven’t dismissed you,’ Marje said to his back, bringing him up short.
He turned round slowly, and gave an ironic bow. ‘I didn’t ask you to,’ he said.
‘You didn’t complete your mission, either,’ Marje said, and fury swept through Rico. Being treated like a servant was one thing, but attacking his professionalism…
‘You didn’t find out what Li Daiho was doing there because it turned out he didn’t appear,’ Marje continued, ‘but did you bother to find out what Hossein was doing there instead?’
‘Actually, yes,’ Rico said sweetly, ‘but you won’t believe it, just as you don’t believe my professional opinion that your friend was talking to a correspondent.’ He turned to go again and this time reached the door.
‘Tell me. Please, tell me,’ Marje said. The sudden meekness in her tone made him stop. ‘And I apologize for doubting your professional opinion.’ He grinned, then carefully wiped the grin off his face before turning round once more.
‘Well, now you’re talking.’ Rico sauntered to a chair. ‘And this is why I came to make my report in person, Commissioner, because I really didn’t want to say this over symb.’
‘Blaise Pascal,’ Marje said a bit later. ‘No, I haven’t heard of him.’
‘In 1657 he was living in a Jansenist community in a convent in Port-Royal-des-Champs, France,’ Rico said. ‘I looked it up. And a convent in Port- Royal-des-Champs was what Mr Asaldra and the correspondent were visiting.’
‘And he was some kind of philosopher?’
‘He was all sorts of things, according to the records. A mathematician, a physicist… He invented the first mechanical adding machine, he showed how a barometer worked, and starting at the age of sixteen he formulated mathematical theories — including a theory of probability — that we still use today. Some of his work even shows up in Morbern’s mathematics. Not bad for a preindustrial bygoner, eh?’
Marje was pinching the bridge of her nose again. ‘And Hossein went to see him. Why? I could understand Li using his privileges to go and visit all his heroes. It’s illegal, but I can understand it. But Hossein?’ Marje took a breath. ‘We’re going to go to the source.’
Rico looked alarmed. ‘Um, is that wise?’
‘Hossein Asaldra, please report to me at once,’ Marje said, glaring him into silence. A pause, and then she frowned.
‘Symb says he’s not available,’ she said.
Rico tried the same request and sure enough, his own symb told him: ‘
‘He remembered me,’ Rico said suddenly. ‘Remember when I was in the Commissioner’s apartment? He asked me if we’d met before. And, for him, we had. He’d just escaped having a load of bricks fall on him, so I probably wasn’t the first thing on his mind, but he remembered me…’
‘And I told him you were going to do some work for me,’ Marje said.
Rico felt the thrill of the chase run through him. ‘He must have remembered properly,’ he said.
‘He last saw you three hours ago, before you transferred… three hours! He could be anywhere.’
‘But that’s not long enough to get off-planet.’
‘He’s transferred somewhere,’ Marje said. ‘It’s the only answer.’
Another symb query: ‘He isn’t on the transference log,’ said Rico. ‘So, unless you know of any unofficial transference chambers…’
‘It was meant to be a joke,’ Rico muttered. Smoke filled the cavern and wrapped itself around the single transference chamber, this time from another freshly slagged bank of equipment. He looked around him with appreciation. ‘Quite a find,’ he added.
‘Hossein showed it to me,’ said Marje. ‘He said a power surge was detected, they followed it and found this.’ She pointed out at the original fused, blackened console. ‘That was the one that melted down that time.’
Again, they were projecting; again, Security Ops and technicians were there in the flesh, inspecting the scene.
‘When was this?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘So this stuff has been ticking over for centuries, then we suddenly get two meltdowns in two days?’ Rico moved his projection over to the remains of the consoles; first one, then the other. ‘You know, it wouldn’t be difficult to make this happen. Charges could be set that would be undetectable, but enough to make this unusable.’
‘For what reason?’
‘So no one could tell where you’d been. Look, Commissioner. The consoles are almost identical. Mr Asaldra knew the transference would be detected, so he set charges to make sure no one could know where he was going and he transferred out of the Home Time. He has a seriously guilty conscience.’
‘But… but the first one? Why did that catch fire?’
Rico pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘I imagine,’ he said quietly, ‘because someone else transferred out through this chamber a couple of days ago.’
‘He told me he didn’t think anyone had transferred.
He said setting co-ordinates without the Register was too complicated.’
Rico blew a raspberry. ‘He had field training? He knew how to do it. We all do.’
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ Marje said. ‘Cease projection.’ Rico blinked as suddenly they were back in her office. Marje dropped down into a chair. ‘We have personal contact with a correspondent.
We have unauthorized transferences. I want this answered and I want it answered now. Is there any way, any way at all, of establishing exactly where he went?’
‘Let’s see those transferences again,’ Rico said, and the list symbed into their minds. The transferences they had thought were made by Daiho had all been through a regular transference chamber. ‘Mr Asaldra,’ Rico said. ‘Fond of home comforts, is he?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Transferences from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries,’ Rico said, ‘and then this’. He jabbed at the last item on the list. ‘Twenty-first century. Almost the start of the Fallow Age. I’d guess that’s where he went, but it’s pure guesswork.’
‘So what is—’ Marje said.
‘I’m already there,’ Rico said, symbing into the database. ‘It’s…’ His jaw dropped. ‘Oh my god, it’s Matthew Carradine’s headquarters!’
‘Who?’ Marje said.
‘Matt Carradine.’ Rico stood up and paced the office. ‘The first great biotech giant. He’s on the Specifics’ list of secondaries — one of us drops in on him, incognito, every couple of years to see how he’s doing. Not a primary like Einstein, under constant surveillance, but—’
‘Getting back to the point?’ Marje said, breaking Rico’s flow.
‘Ah. Getting back to the point, in the twentieth century they discovered penicillin and other powerful antibiotics. And they overdosed on them so badly that by our boy’s time, most of the lethal bugs were immune to
