Central. And nobody’s ever looked at most of the little ’uns — they were uploaded from their original source location by automatic data scanner. Adios, amigo. I’m going a-wandering.”
And Mord vanished, disappearing into the tangled maze of the Seine.
Bat checked that Mord was nowhere inside the Keep. It would be quite like Mord to pretend to be outside, then pop up somewhere within when Bat was least expecting it. However, a complete scan of the Keep’s components indicated that Mord was nowhere to be found.
Bat grunted, reached out with one fat finger, and delicately tapped a key. That severed the final link. Now he had access on Pandora to two powerful computer systems. One was a Seine-link, coupling him to the dispersed and infinitely interconnected set of information processors that stretched through and served the whole System and in their whole comprised the Seine; the other was the Keep, existing on Pandora alone and under Bat’s absolute control. Unless Bat had erred badly, the separation of the two was complete. Nothing in the Seine had access to anything in the Keep, and the Keep in turn depended on nothing from the Seine that had not been filtered through Bat personally.
Bat examined the results of a suite of test programs, and nodded his approval. The Keep, although it was just one system in a single location, could out-perform almost every pre-Seine processor. As it should. Large amounts of Bat’s personal time and assets had gone into it. Only food, isolation, and Great War relics were as, important as computer power.
As for the Seine…
Bat swiveled his great chair to face the other console. He was impressed by the validity of Mord’s last words to him. The Seine was indeed a wondrous new resource, and he had every intention of probing it to the full; he just didn’t want it probing him by invading his private data banks.
First he examined the console for new incoming messages. He found four of them and scanned the sources rather than the messages themselves. The senders were all well-known to him. Pack Rat, Ghost Boy, The Joker and Attoboy were each at the Master level in the Puzzle Network. There was no hurry reading those messages. A good challenge could take anything from a week to forever to solve. Bat had once spent a month trying to crack a puzzle from Claudius, a woman (Bat was convinced that it was a woman, in spite of the name), until finally he realized that he was dealing with a transformed version of the most famous unproven conjecture in mathematics.
On the Puzzle Network, that was quite legitimate. The puzzle was solved when you caught on to what Claudius had done. Of course, there was also the possibility that some puzzle master would actually prove (or disprove) the Riemann conjecture — and thereby become a major name in the history of mathematics.
Instead of reading the waiting messages, Bat began his own exploration of the Seine. It was something he had been itching to do since Seine Day, but he had deferred action until he was sure that the Keep was as secure as he could possibly make it.
Within minutes, he knew that his and Mord’s instincts had been correct. Data banks were now available that had been lost or hidden since the time of the Great War. They might point to treasures of long-gone weaponry that he had never suspected existed. But he had to be careful. His lines of communication had been set in place years ago, making him the master spider at the center of his own information web. Without stirring from the Bat Cave, he could in the past be sensitive to every trend and initiative within the System.
Not anymore. The Seine was a new factor whose effects he could not begin to calculate. He suspected that it was powerful enough to destroy his web and the work of many years.
Slowly, warily, Bat allowed selected programs to reach into the depths of the Seine. As a first exercise he asked for a listing of all Great War databases available today but unknown or unavailable one month ago. He hoped for at least a handful. Within minutes he knew that he had been too conservative. The count was over seventy and showed no signs of slowing when his attention was distracted by a communications alert.
A message was coming in: a real-time message, with someone waiting at the other end.
One great side benefit, or if you were Bat one great possible side nuisance, of the Seine was instant access to the whole solar system. In the past, light-speed signals from Pandora to Ganymede or anywhere else of significance took many minutes, even with optimal orbital geometry. Now the Seine contained fully entangled quantum computers scattered all across the solar system. Messages and video could be digitized, sent computer- to-computer in no time at all, and reconstructed at their destination. Which meant, of course, that any fool in the System could try to reach you and demand real-time response.
The trick was not to let any fool in the System know of your existence or whereabouts.
So who was calling?
Bat glanced at the ID, and closed his eyes in resignation. The caller was Magrit Knudsen, one of the few people outside the Puzzle Network with permission to contact Bat. And Ma-grit’s message was simple and information-free: “Bat, are you there? If you are, please come on-line.” Magrit never called with trivia. Either she was in trouble, or she had run across a mystery sufficiently odd to intrigue him.
He glanced around the Bat Cave. The level of messiness of the floor was tolerable — Magrit would nag him if it were not. He looked down at himself. He had washed and changed clothing in the not-too-distant past.
He triggered the video link.
Magrit Knudsen appeared at once, her expression anxious.
This was a bad sign. Bat, who abhorred all human confrontations, knew that Magrit thrived on conflict. If she was anxious, then he was worried.
Magrit had put this off for as long as she could. Conversations with Rustum Battachariya were never easy, and this one promised to be a stinker.
“Bat.” She didn’t try for her usual smile of greeting. “Are you alone? Of course you are, what a stupid question. Bat, we’ve got problems. And I don’t mean any of your puzzle stuff.”
The face that stared at her from the display remained expressionless. Bat, if Magrit were any judge, had added at least fifty pounds since she had last seen him. He sat like a giant Buddha on his special chair, arms folded across his chest. As usual, his black clothes were three sizes too small.
The round head nodded, and Bat finally spoke. “I hear you. However, unless the difficulty that you face is of a purely intellectual nature, it seems unlikely that I will be able to assist you.”
“You heard me, but you didn’t hear me right. When I said that we’ve got problems, actually I meant that you do. I had a call four hours ago. Somebody found out that I have access to you. They said they want a meeting.”
“Which you, I trust, told them was out of the question.”
“I said I would get back to them. Bat, it’s not that simple.”
“I do not see how it could be simpler. I have no need to meet with anyone. I have no desire to meet with anyone. And I most certainly have no desire to travel in order to meet with anyone.”
Magrit had been Bat’s immediate superior for more than a decade. Looking back, she sometimes wondered how she had stood it for so long.
“Bat, they don’t want a meeting just for the hell of it, or to admire your sunny smile. They want a meeting to persuade you to share your lease on Pandora.”
“Then they are certifiably insane. Four years ago I made a major investment in money and effort to conform elements of this planetoid to my needs.”
“I don’t think money is an issue. They can pay anything you ask.”
“You are correct. Money is not an issue, since no matter what they offer I will refuse. I also, as I am sure you recall, paid in full and in advance for a long-term lease on Pandora, approved by the Outer Planet Authority. That lease has ninety-six years to run.”
“I know that. It makes no difference.” Magrit stared at Bat’s black and impassive face. No one she knew was as smart and as stubborn — or in some ways as innocent. “Let me put it this way. When I became your supervisor, it took me a little while to realize how valuable and talented you were. But after that, I shielded you from all the crap that was thrown at you. And there was plenty.”
“This is well known to me. Your protection was, and is, much appreciated.”
“Then you understand that I wouldn’t bother to call you at all if it was something as simple as pointing out to a caller that you have a lease on Pandora. They checked that out long before they contacted me.”
“Then they must also have learned that it is a valid lease.”
“Bat, we aren’t playing in a league where ‘valid’ means much. The call to me came from Ligon Industries.
