CHAPTER THREE
Some people who’d known Ben Roark had found it surprising that he had chosen the Colorado Rockies as a retirement locale. Somewhere in the West Indies would have seemed more in character: the Caymans, where he had spent some time before the unforgettable events of 2030, or perhaps Jamaica, whose rum he had always appreciated—appreciated to excess, as some might have said. But Andrew thought he understood what had been going through his parents’ minds when they’d chosen this place, in the spectacularly mountainous heart of their country that had then been in the process of reclaiming the soul it had seemingly lost.
Now he was surer of that than ever, as the air-car passed over the throat-hurtingly beautiful valley that held the Maroon Bells—Snowmass Wilderness Area and the town of Aspen. They continued on over the sun-gleaming upland lakes and beyond, where the trees that gave the town its name—now, alas, denuded of the soft golden autumn foliage they had worn a month ago—covered the lower slopes beneath a brutally rugged crag. At the foot of that mountain, and seeming to belong there, was the rambling stone-and-timber house he hadn’t seen in far too long.
After they landed and settled in, he got a fire going in the massive stone fireplace at one end of the cathedral-ceilinged great room, flanked by windows that gave a panoramic view of the ranges to the west, while Katy mixed drinks. Then they accessed the datachip. The fire, unheeded, burned low while they studied the readout.
“Can you make anything at all of this gibberish?” Katy finally asked. “I know you’re not a crypto specialist, but—”
“No, I’m not. But I’ve had some basic familiarization. And, as a souvenir of that course, I’ve got some elementary codebreaking software that my own computer can run.”
“Any luck with it?”
“Very little. It helps to have some idea of what you’re looking for. So I’ve tried a few of the codebreaking software, and broken a few words.”
“Surely you can build on that.”
“Not when it isn’t a straight alphabet-based code. I’m sure this could be broken—there’s no such thing as an unbreakable code, although various people throughout history have thought they had one. But all I’ve been able to do is establish that certain words do occur in this stuff. One is Admiral Arnstein’s name.”
“No surprise,” Katy put in.
“Another is ‘Black Wolf Society.’ I don’t suppose that should be a surprise either.”
“I suppose not. But I’m still having trouble adjusting to the idea that it really exists. Well, no, I guess there’s never really been any doubt as to its existence. But like everybody else, I’ve always assumed that it’s just a crime syndicate, and that the wilder stories about it are just media sensationalism. Sort of like the Sicilian Mafia in the last century. But now I have to wonder.”
“In addition to those, I ran through anything I could think of that had any connection with Admiral Arnstein. I got occurrences of quite a few of them, but most were pretty innocuous and useless: words like ‘Academy’ and ‘Earth’ and so forth. But a couple of my longer shots paid off.” Andrew paused significantly. “One was ‘Kogurche.’”
Katy looked up sharply. “Well, after all, that was the system in Lupus where our confrontation with Gev-Rogov began in 2057, leading to the war a decade later. So I suppose it’s not too surprising.”
“No, it isn’t. But I’ve saved the best for last.” Andrew gave another unconsciously dramatic pause. “‘Admiral Valdes.’”
Katy looked up sharply. “What made you include him in your search?”
“Nothing, specifically. I just threw into the pot the names of all the prominent people I could think of who’ve been associated with Admiral Arnstein. And four years ago, Valdes went through the Strategic College—older and more senior in rank than most people are when they start it, but he was a special protégé of Admiral Arnstein, who had just taken charge of the Academy. He was grooming Valdes for Chief of Space Operations. He was bitterly disappointed when Valdes abruptly retired—”
“—And went into CNE politics, where he’s had a meteoric rise,” Katy finished for him, not troubling to keep the distaste out of her voice. “So, this is all you’ve got?”
“I’m afraid so. And I don’t know who else I can trust to go to for advice—or, for that matter, who would have anything to offer.”
Silence fell, and stayed fallen for a while. Then Katy visibly reached a decision. She looked her son in the eye. “There might be one person. You see, your father knew Valdes. He met him . . . oh, it must have been more than ten years ago, because it was before the war. And he was always very reticent about what they said to each other.”
“Really? I never knew that. But . . .” Andrew trailed to an awkward halt. “Uh, but what good does that do us now? I mean . . . that is . . . well, Dad is . . .”
Katy smiled. “Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my marbles yet. There’s something else you don’t know. A few years ago, when we were having to face the fact that your father didn’t have very much longer to live, Svyatog came here on one of his visits and presented us with a gift. At first, we were reluctant to accept it—and only partly because it was extravagantly expensive, not that that’s any object to Svyatog. But we finally did, while your father was still mentally alert.” She held his eyes. “It was a full set of state-of-the-art uploading equipment, with all the accessories, including the ability to project an all-senses virtual image, not just a voice.”
It took several heartbeats before what Andrew had heard registered on him. Several more passed before he could speak. “Are you saying that Dad is . . .?”
Katy nodded gravely. “Yes, he is. So am I, incidentally, just for future reference.” Her lips quirked upward in a smile of almost invisible brevity. Then she sighed, and her eyes strayed to the mountains outside the windows. “I haven’t accessed it yet. I think it will be a while before I do—before I can. But you may want to do it now, if you feel up to it.”
Andrew sank back in his chair and tried to sort out his feelings.
What was antiseptically called “uploading”—copying a brain’s memories through a painless but lengthy combination of external scanners and probing nanomachines, and storing them digitally—was fairly new technology even to the Lokaron. At first, its inventors had thought they were on the brink of being able to transfer those memories to the brain of a clone of the brain‘s owner, thus achieving a kind of serial immortality. That dream (nightmare, as some might have said) had proven illusory. The process took finite time, during which an organic brain, unlike a passive piece of neural-net software, could not accept such an imprinting.
That digital program could, however, be installed in a computer—a very special, very powerful, very complex, and very expensive computer. The multi-terabyte software then became self-aware, able to run whatever other programs were available to the computer, including those allowing it to communicate interactively.
The technology had been completely unavailable to humans before the advent of a fully open and equal trading relationship with Gev-Harath. Even now, it found few customers on Earth. Its hideous expense was only part of the reason. Most humans were only a few generations away from belief in ghosts, and for them there was something flesh-crawlingly unnatural about it.
“So,” Andrew temporized, “is he . . . I mean, is it here?”
“Yes. We had the computer installed in the basement. Do you want to see it?”
Andrew wasn’t absolutely sure he did, but he could not refuse. He followed his mother down the dimly lit stairs.
The basement was as he remembered, and the computer wasn’t as big as he had expected. In fact it was desktop-sized, and while it had the unmistakable look of Lokaron industrial nanotech, it held nothing foreign to Andrew’s experience. As Admiral Arnstein’s chief of staff, he had dealt with hardware just as advanced as this. And the keyboard interface was positively old-fashioned.
Katy sat down in a perfectly ordinary swivel chair and booted the system. The holographically projected monitor screen appeared in midair, and as Katy began to bring up programs, Andrew saw Lokaron ideographs. He was familiar with them—of necessity, in his line of work—but his mother had spent years among the Lokaron, and she worked at a speed that made them flash by too rapidly for him to read. Finally she nodded, stood up, and took from the desk a perfectly standard-looking Lokaron virtual-reality headset manufactured for the human market: a light openwork helmet. She held it out to her son and spoke with great steadiness.
“As I’ve said, I’m not ready for this. I’m not certain I ever will be, but I imagine I will, someday. Just not yet. Besides, I hardly even need it. You see, I still have him here. I’ll look at some chair, or step around a corner, and it’s as though he’s there. We were married a long time, you know.”
“I know,” her son echoed faintly.
“So if we’re to try this approach to getting the answers we need, you’re going to have to be the one to do it. It’s not fair, but there it is. If you don’t feel you can—”
“No, I’ll do it. On some level, I even want to do it.” he reached out and took the headset.
Katy smiled, as though at the confirmation of something she’d more than half expected. “It’s all set up. All you have to do is put on the headset and speak a greeting. It’s programmed to recognize your voice pattern. I’ll be upstairs.” And she was gone.
Andrew held the headset in his hands. He was hardly unfamiliar with it. Since Lokaron technology had become common on Earth—even manufactured there, within certain limits—the use of shared VR hookups had become a common means of communication. Indeed, it had probably attained acceptance more easily than it had among the Lokaron themselves, whose upper crust still regarded it as just a bit arriviste.
Yes, he had used it often enough. But the people he’d used it with had been alive. And they hadn’t been his father.
He drew a deep breath, sat down in front of the computer’s video pickup, and put the practically weightless latticework frame over his head.
As always, there was no pain or any other physical sensation as the direct neural induction took hold. There was only the usual indescribable wavering and fading of the senses . . .
He was sitting in the familiar study upstairs, in a chair whose armrests were upholstered in authentic leather, which was showing its age—he could feel that, under his fingers. Across from him, Ben Roark sat in the chair that had always been his favorite. There was a fire going in the fireplace, and he could feel the heat on his face. The wood must have been damp, judging from the slight smoky smell. Svyatog, as Katy had indicated, had spared no expense.
“Hello, Dad,” he said, almost choking on his knowledge that what he was addressing was really software.
Ben Roark looked up. He looked essentially the same as he had the last time Andrew Roark had seen him in the flesh. The programming must have been done in the summer, for his bald scalp looked slightly sunburned. (Svyatog, trying to be helpful, had once told him that baldness in humans was, from the Lokaron perspective, rather an improvement. It hadn’t helped.) He smiled the crooked smile that was the only sort of smile the reconstruction of his face allowed. Andrew was glad that reconstruction had been left as he remembered it, not edited out to leave the unravaged youthful face that he had never seen save in old photos.
“Hello, Andy. Since we’re talking like this, I gather that I’m . . . well, you know . . .”
“Yes, Dad, you are.” Andrew had never felt more inadequate in his life.
His father seemed to sigh. “Yes, of course. Is your mother . . . ?”
“She’s fine. She just doesn’t quite feel ready yet for . . . this.”
“I understand.” Another sigh, then a businesslike look. “You’ve got me at sort of a disadvantage. I don’t know whether we saw each other after the uploading, while I was still alive.”
“No, we didn’t. I was away a lot.”
“Yes, I know.” Was there a faint hint of resentment at the infrequency of a busy son’s visits?
“And recently, I haven’t been able to get away from the Academy at all. In fact . . . well, I missed your memorial service. I hated that, but I couldn’t help it. You see, something has happened—and I need your help.” Andrew launched into his story. He was not interrupted—not even software this sophisticated would do that. It was the first false note, for his father would have had no scruples about breaking in with questions.
“And so that’s where we stand,” he concluded. “The connection with Admiral Valdes is the only thing we have to go on. And Mom said you knew him, back before the war.”
“I truly wish I could help you, Andy. But it’s barely accurate to say I knew him. I had a couple of conversations with him, that was all. He was a captain then, and a fair-haired boy of Arnstein’s. It was in 2064, two years before the war—which, incidentally, he seemed to know was going to happen.”
“Well, the rivalry between us and Gev-Rogov in Lupus and Sagittarius had been a potential problem for years, although relations seemed to be improving. And then came the destabilization of Kogurche after the assassination of the system’s ruler in 2057, which the Rogovon tried to blame on us—and, for a fact, it worked to our advantage in terms of human penetration of the system. So I suppose it was a fairly safe bet at that time that war was coming.”
“Yes. But he talked about it as though it were an accomplished fact. Odd. He also talked very matter-of-factly about what he intended to do after it was over. In fact, I got the impression that he regarded his whole CNE Navy career as preparation for the political career that was to follow. A distinguished war record would help no end, you see. In the same way, he intended to go through the Strategic College simply because it’s become almost a rite of passage for the power elite, what with all the connections you made there.”
“What, exactly, did the two of you talk about in those couple of conversations, Dad? It sounds like he was very forthright with you.”
“Well, at first he was fulsomely flattering of me—”
“Thus proving that he didn’t know you very well.”
The upload flashed an appreciative grin that was entirely in character—eerily so, in fact. “Yeah, well, after going on at length about my alleged prestige—”
(Not just alleged, Andrew thought—but didn’t say, for he knew any accurate copy of his father’s mind would react to that with a snort as derisive as the original’s.)
“—he finally got down to business. He wanted me to lend my name to his political agenda. He hinted at various advantages to me—as if I hadn’t been too old to care. And he played on my reasons for regarding Gov-Rogov as an implacable enemy. But when he set forth his program for doing something about it . . . well, it was as though he just didn’t understand why we had overthrown the old Earth First Party. They had wanted a totalitarian hermit kingdom, while he wanted a totalitarian empire—and I doubt if anybody ever got rich on the difference!” The sentient software reined itself in. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get carried away. Anyway, I told him as politely as possible that I wasn’t interested, even though he indicated that he could count on the support of Nathan Arnstein, a man who I respected more than all but a very few I’ve ever known.”
Andrew seized on that last point. “Yes, so did I. And now, as I’ve told you, he’s dead by his own hand. I’m trying to find out what drove him to that—now more than ever, since what you’ve told me makes me even more certain that it’s somehow tied into Valdes’s ambitions, in addition to being connected to the Black Wolf Society. Can’t you tell me anything else that might help me? Maybe just something else from that same period of time, with any kind of connection with Arnstein or Valdes or the Black Wolf Society?”
The virtual brow of Ben Roark furrowed as the software scanned data. “There’s just one possibility, but I doubt if it will help you. As you know, I’d kept up some informal contacts within the Intelligence community. I won’t go into the details, but around the same time—just before the war, in other words—I became aware through those contacts of a Lokaron agent named Reislon’Sygnath, working for Gev-Harath . . . and specifically for Hov-Korth.”
Andrew nodded his understanding. The largely still family owned Lokaron merchant houses had turned most military functions over to the gevah “national” governments. Indeed, it was one of those governments’ primary reasons for existence. But the hovahon kept the Intelligence function for themselves—they had too many secrets. And Hov-Korth, the preeminent hovah of them all, had the most secrets and maintained the most extensive espionage network in the known galaxy. It shared most of its findings with the Gev-Harath military, of course. The exceptions implicit in that most constituted one of the inherent weaknesses in the Lokaron militaries that Nathan Arnstein had spotted early in his career. Andrew shied away from that thought, with its freight of attendant grief.
“I’m impressed,” he said. “Just by the fact that CNE Intelligence had uncovered the identity of a Hov-Korth agent.”
“It isn’t really so surprising. You see . . . Well, this is supposed to be a graveyard secret. But I don’t guess that’s a stopper in my case . . .” The image let the thought trail off, with an ironic lift of eyebrow.
My God! thought Andrew. The software actually has a sense of humor! But of course it does—my father’s sense of humor.
“Anyway,” Ben Roark’s digital ghost went on briskly, “what I’m not supposed to be telling you is that Reislon wasn’t just working for Hov-Korth. He was also working for us.”
In the midst of his shock, Andrew found room to wonder why he was even surprised. Earth’s history held no shortage of spies who had sold themselves to more than one side. And in this case, it didn’t even involve overt disloyalty: Gev-Harath had been officially neutral in Earth’s war with Gev-Rogov, while barely troubling to conceal its sympathy for its human protégés.
But in all those examples from Earth’s history, everyone concerned had been human. It wasn’t quite the same.
“Was this Reislon’Sygnath acting with his bosses’ knowledge?” Andrew asked. “I mean, considering how his ultimate boss Svyatog’Korth felt about Gev-Rogov. . . .”
“Shrewd guess, but to my knowledge the answer is no. I doubt if Svyatog was prepared to be that un-neutral. Reislon was playing his own game—or, rather, games. We could never figure out all the dimensions of what he was up to. I doubt if anybody could have.” The expression on the virtual face of Ben Roark reflected the respect of a good spook for a great one.
“Did you ever actually talk to him?”
“Oh, no. His contacts with us were, as you might imagine, extremely discreet, indirect, multilayered, and what have you. And I wasn’t even officially in the game by then. No, everything I know is from conversations with people who were actually involved—or people who had talked to them. So you see, all I have to offer is hearsay. That’s why I was hesitant to offer it at all. But there was one common theme that emerged pretty clearly from all of it: Reislon took the Black Wolf Society seriously—and he was worried about it.”
“How do you know this?”
“The clincher came that very year, 2064. Without going into the details, our people got part of the text of a report by Reislon to Svyatog. Only a fragment, mind you. But he was passing on a warning for the future, and the context made it clear he was talking about the Black Wolf Society.”
“And two years after that, the war broke out,” Andrew said thoughtfully.
“And shortly after it broke out, Reislon vanished.”
“Vanished? You mean he stopped working for us?”
“I mean he dropped from sight altogether. As far as we were able to determine, Hov-Korth also lost sight of him.” A wry smile. “After the Battle of Upsilon Lupus, while the peace talks were going on and you were still out-system with Arnstein’s fleet, Svyatog happened to be on Earth, and he dropped in on us. It was all I could do not to ask him if he knew anything about what had happened to Reislon. But of course we couldn’t let him know that Reislon had been playing a double game—assuming he didn‘t already know it. So I kept my mouth shut. Being less than frank with Svyatog didn’t sit too well with me; as you know, he is more than a friend to me and your mother. But . . . well, nobody ever said the spook game is a nice one.”
“Svyatog is on Earth now,” Andrew mused.
The copy of his father’s mind produced a sharp look. “Remember, the same considerations still apply. Officially, we never even knew Reislon existed. You can’t spill the beans to Svyatog by asking about him.”
“Does it really matter anymore? I mean, the war ended seven years ago, and Gev-Harath—especially Hov-Korth—have always been our friends.”
“You know better than that! The security classification of this information hadn’t been lifted at the time I was uploaded, and I doubt if it’s been lifted now. I don’t know what the possible consequences of blowing it now would be, and you don’t know, either. When we start letting individuals decide for themselves when security restrictions no longer make sense or need to be obeyed, people’s lives get put in jeopardy!”
And how, exactly, are you going to stop me . . . Dad? But of course Andrew didn’t say that. For one thing, he had to admit to himself that the upload had been quoting Intelligence gospel. “Well, I can ask him in general terms if he can shed any light on the Black Wolf Society, can’t I? Maybe he’ll be willing to share information derived from Reislon without revealing its source.”
“Maybe—but just be careful.” The expression on the ravaged face abruptly softened. “I’m a pompous old hypocrite, you know. I’ve already violated security by telling you all this. Even if you were cleared for it—which you’re not, even as Admiral Arnstein’s chief of staff—you don’t have a need to know. At least not what officialdom would define as one. But—”
“But you were never one to give a damn about what officialdom thought, were you? If you had been, the history of the last four and a half decades would have been very different. And don’t accuse me of flattering you. At this stage of the game, what would be the point?”
The image actually goggled at him. “By God! You really are an SOB, aren’t you? I guess I must have done something right!” And the image grinned.
Andrew grinned back. But then he sobered as he remembered something that had been bothering him. “Uh, I suppose I ought to . . . sign off now. But what is the effect ? I mean, how will you . . . ?”
“Don’t worry about it, son. I’ll just go to sleep. Actually, not even that. You see, I don’t dream. Probably just as well.”