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Twenty-Three

 

History of Education Department
Oriel College of Humanities
University of Delgado

Ella ben Suzan leaned back in her chair and rubbed her hands over her face as if the friction would order her tumbling thoughts. It did not, she told herself forcefully, bear considering by what unsubtle means Kamele had secured concessions from Admin. Far better to dwell on the happy outcome—Ella named TempChair of EdHist, Hafley forced to lend her countenance to the Research Team, and Emeritus Professor Beltaire attached to EdHist as an archival advisor.

True, these things had not come without price. There was, for instance, the annoying but easily led Jon Fu elevated to TempSubChair, not to mention the disordered nerves of the department as a whole. Bad enough to have discovered and dismissed Flandin. Ten times worse, to find that Flandin might only be the crumbling edge of a very steep cliff.

Ella leaned back in her chair and sipped staff-room coffee. For a wonder, she had no meetings scheduled until tomorrow morning, and nothing on her extensive to-do list that couldn't wait for ten hours. It might not be the worst thing she could do, to go home and get some sleep.

She put the coffee cup on top of one of the small piles of hard copy and reached for her 'book. Sleep would be—

The buzzer rang.

Ella closed her eyes. "Enter," she snapped.

The door mechanism rasped. She opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn't.

"Ella." Jen Sar Kiladi bowed gently over his cane. "I hope I find you well."

"You find me exhausted, overworked, and impatient," she told him bluntly. She was always blunt with Jen Sar, but he never returned the favor.

"Then you will enjoy a quiet moment of conversation with an old friend," he answered, and sat in the empty visitor's chair, folding his hands over the knob of the Gallowglass cane.

Ella sighed, and did not give voice to her thought that it would be a good thing indeed, were an old friend present. There was no reason to escalate plain speaking to rudeness—and it wouldn't rid her of the man one heartbeat sooner than he intended to go.

"May I request the consideration of a short conversation?" she asked, reaching for her cup.

"I will contrive to be as brief as possible," he murmured, black eyes glinting. "To come immediately to the point, then: I have inspected the suspect wire in Professor Waitley's apartment—a task for which you gave me leave. That inspection led me in time to the offices of Information Systems, where Technician Singh was gracious enough to give me a tour of the facilities, including a site map for the 'old wire.' "

Ella frowned at him. "Old wire?"

"So it is known to the Techs. It would seem—again, briefly—that in some sections of the Wall, apartments had been provided with a research protocol which pre-dates the current Concierge system. That system provided a research AI which was more free-ranging than the Concierge, and which shortly produced a wealth of inconveniences that Technician Singh was pleased to recount to me in detail. In the interests of brevity, I shall not enumerate them."

"Thank you," Ella said, with real gratitude. "If I understand what you've said, then it seems as if Theo . . . accidentally invoked the former system, and downloaded the old program to her 'book."

"I also entertained this comforting thought. Alas, Technician Singh assures me that the previous AI was not merely taken off-line, but fragmented. Each fragment was then isolated and erased."

She stared at him. "As 'inconvenient' as that?"

"According to the tale told out by Technician Singh, it did seem to interpret its duties with a broad brush," Jen Sar said. He paused, his gaze directed to the floor, perhaps contemplating the wages of mischief, then looked back to her with a ripple of his shoulders.

"This episode was finished many years ago. Any number of Wall residences have 'old wire' in them, supposedly capped, but Technician Singh did not pale noticeably at the suggestion that some wires may have escaped this fate. She allowed me to know that anyone who accidentally jacked into the 'old wire' would receive only dead air."

"Theo certainly got something more than dead air!"

"So she did. I fear that I may not have been . . . quite forthright with Technician Singh regarding my sudden interest in these matters."

"Of course you weren't." Ella sighed, finished her now-cold coffee, and threw the cup at the recycler.

She missed. Naturally.

"So, we didn't learn anything from this little excursion of yours."

"On the contrary, I think we learned a great deal," Jen Sar answered.

"We still don't know where the AI on Theo's old school book came from."

"Did I not say? It came through the wire marked 'research' in Theo's room."

"But InfoSystems says the AI was deprogrammed!"

"Indeed. We have thereby learned that the Serpent of Knowledge AI is not under the control of Delgado University Information Systems. All that remains for us is to discover who does control it."

She eyed him. "That's all, is it? Well! Since it's so simple, we'll just put that puzzle aside for Kamele's return. Something a little different for her to—"

"This must be solved," Jen Sar interrupted sternly, "before Kamele returns."

Jen Sar never interrupted, and he was much too good an actor to allow sternness to glare through the cordial mask he habitually wore. If it had been Monit Appletorn in the chair opposite her, Ella might have put this sudden display down to overreactive male sensibilities. Jen Sar Kiladi, however—

Ella blinked, as suddenly it fell into place, all of it, with a snap so loud she was certain the man across from her heard it.

"She didn't put you aside!" she exclaimed.

Jen Sar tipped his head. "May I not display even the least concern for the woman who permitted me to share so many years of her life?"

"Dissembling gains you nothing," Ella told him, leaning forward in excitement as the whole scheme rolled out before her mind's eye. "Kamele knew there was something off-key about Flandin's departure—or, I should say, Hafley's handling of the matter. We talked about it, she and I, and then . . .  She had to seem strong—she had to be unencumbered by her politically unhandy relationship with the honored Gallowglass Chair. But she never released you! Who looked for the notice in The Faq? The act of moving back to the Wall with her daughter at her side—it said everything!"

She collapsed into her chair-back, suddenly exhausted. Kamele, she thought, life with this man has changed you more than I knew.

Jen Sar raised an eyebrow. "You choose the oddest moments to be perceptive."

Surprised into a laugh, Ella struggled to sit upright. "Honesty, for once!"

The second eyebrow joined the first. "When have I lied to you, Ella?"

"When have you told anyone a straight story?" she countered, and laughed again. "Chaos! No wonder she refused poor Monit quite so sharply, poor man."

He tipped his head, lips parting; Ella raised her hand.

"No, don't say it—I agree completely! Tell me instead what you intend to do."

"I intend," he said quietly, "to find the origin of that Serpent AI. Once I have done that, I will know what needs to be done next."

That was a sensible course, Ella admitted, and nodded approvingly at him. "Kamele was right, then. This is something much larger than a few adjusted cites."

Jen Sar moved his shoulders and stood. "No one is right until we have proof," he said austerely, and bowed. "Good evening, Ella."

* * *

Alone at last in her stateroom, Kamele tapped up her 'book and opened a file, but she had no concentration for her work. 'Round and 'round the refrain echoed inside her head, "I was right! Hafley is in it! I was right!"

She had accepted the Chair's offer, of course; how else would she obtain proof of intent to harm the university, its faculty and students?

Kamele relaxed deliberately into her chair, closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. She would make notes, she decided, lay out her thoughts and her concerns, exactly as she would do when opening any other line of research. In fact, it would be best to think of this as research—field research.

She so concentrated on this task that she barely heard Theo come in, or the sound of the 'fresher being engaged.

 

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