Sarvik smoothed his epaulets and nodded. It would have been foolish to disagree. "Yes."

"Colony ships," Lequasha came in. Sarvik's epaulets p.r.i.c.ked up in interest. He looked with one eye at her, at Indrigon with the other. "Interstellar colonization," she said. Sarvik shifted the eye watching her to join the one looking at Indrigon.

Indrigon nodded. "It's time for Borijans to get out of the Kovar System at last and go to other stars. The benefits to the first organization to do it would be enormous. Accordingly, as a pilot project- and this is a highly confidential matter-we are formulating plans to redesign the Searcher ships into generation craft capable of carrying people. Survival at other stars will involve a ma.s.sive deployment of machines. That will require computing methods more sophisticated than anything we've used so far." He gestured as if the rest didn't really need saying. "Hence our interest in the most advanced work currently going on at places like Replimaticon."

Sarvik considered the suggestion skeptically. Borijans always acted under a compulsion to find a flaw somewhere. "You'd never get anyone to go," he declared flatly, "apart from natural dupes and losers -and who'd want to entrust a starship to the likes of them?"

"We think there's a solution to that," Indrigon told him.

"What?" Sarvik asked.

"Do you seriously expect us to tell you?" Umbrik scoffed.

"Do you expect me to be interested if you don't?" Sarvik shot back.

"We'll make that a condition of the deal," Lequasha offered.

"What kind of a deal are we talking about, anyway?" Sarvik asked.

Indrigon turned one palm upward this time. "Your expertise for a share. You head up the software development groups."

"How much are you asking for on a time basis?"

Indrigon made a face. "All of it, Dr. Sarvik. We're talking about a total commitment."

Sarvik would have to pull up his other stakes. There would be no time for Replimaticon as well. "I'll have to think that over," Sarvik said.

"We a.s.sumed that would be the case," Indrigon replied. "Further discussion would be contingent upon your agreeing. Could we have an answer, say, by tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?" Sarvik stared at them incredulously. "You're out of your minds. What do you want, a serious coding chief or a bubblehead? I need fifteen days."

"Impossible. Do you think we're growing flowers? Two days, then," Indrigon answered.

"Why rush? You're putting together a starship program, not a weekend dance. Ten."

"Four."

"Eight."

"Six."

And, amazingly, they settled on seven.

After decoupling at the booth in Pygal, Sarvik took a long walk and stopped at a graff shop to sit for a while and think. He believed the story about modifying Searchers into generation ships, he decided.The Farworlds people's body signals had rung true, and it would have invited too many awkward questions and needless complications if the story had been fabricated. He believed the story as far as it went. But his instinct told him that there was more to it yet.

The time had come for Borijans to get out of the Kovar System, Indrigon had said. Why now? It was the reason Indrigon had given that seemed weak. Why the haste? Why all of a sudden was Farworlds in a hurry to transport people to other stars? It would be interesting, Sarvik told himself, to try to find out.

15.

The screen showed a cartoonlike depiction of a Borijan snoozing while a computer sagged under an avalanche of numbers pouring into it through a giant funnel.

"So," GENIUS 5's voice said from the grille in the top of the console panel, "you had a walk around Pygal and stopped for some graff. Very nice. But then, I suppose biological minds have to deactivate periodically, don't they? Carbon-chemistry hardware just can't hack it. It's all those big molecules. They come apart under the strain." A figure formed from a double helix went into a tizzy, unwound, and collapsed; then a cuboid computer appeared with arms folded, striking a Superman pose, while the words silicon, yeah! flashed mockingly above.

"I had some thinking to do," Sarvik said. "If it were something that you'd ever experienced, as opposed to just shuffling bits around mechanically all day, you'd know that answers that need real judgment don't just pop out on command."

"Brains are just soggy learning networks," GENIUS replied. "A neuron is as predictable as a molecular gate. Indeterminacy arises from complexity in both. So where's the difference?"

"Look, I don't have time for any of that now," Sarvik said. "I had a very informative meeting with the Farworlds people. They're planning to convert Searchers into generation ships and send Borijans out of the Kovar System."

"So they say. And you believe them?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've told you before-biological intuition. It's not something you can comprehend, so don't worry about it. The project will need heavy computing. They want us to go in with them to take care of advanced software." It was part of the present deal that the rights on GENIUS were Sarvik's, not Replimaticon's, although there was a complicated formula that would give Replimaticon a share of future attributable earnings. Sarvik had gleaned that a large part of Farworlds' interest in him lay in gaining access itself to the means that had enabled Sarvik to break its security.

An image of starfields and a nebula appeared on the screen, with the words distance . . . void . . .

migration . . . seeds in wind . . . colonize galaxy coming and going to give glimpses into GENIUS's a.s.sociative musings on the subject. Finally, astronomy/astronomers flashed portentously. Then GENIUS explained. "It may surprise you to learn that I haven't been exactly idle myself. While you were out doing your slow-motion thinking, another copy of the boomerang came back. With all the tracers."

Both sides of Sarvik's face looked up sharply. "Allof them?"

"Why do I keep having to repeat things? Yes, that's what I said:all. Interesting?"

It was very interesting. Because that much couldn't be said for the copy that had returned from Farworlds, where only some of the tracer data had found their way. So, while Leradil Driss had, as far as could be ascertained, given Farworlds only some of the information purloined from Replimaticon, she had been pa.s.sing all of it to somebody else. This suggested that she had been as much a plant in Farworlds as in Replimaticon and had supplied Farworlds with just enough information to preserve her cover. All the time she really had been spying for someone else yet again."So?" Sarvik said, not bothering to voice the obvious.

"It retrieved portions from various sections of the most confidential files of ASH," GENIUS answered.

Sarvik frowned on one side. "ASH? You mean the astronomers?"

The Astronomical Society of Hoditia-actually worldwide in membership, with some of Turle's most prestigious scientists on its list-was a purely professional inst.i.tution, normally considered to be above the kind of deception and double dealing connivances reveled in. For obscure reasons the a.s.sociation insisted on retaining a national t.i.tle and hence had to change its name whenever the political grouping that contained its headquarters on Vayso-one of the islands in what was currently called Hoditia-broke up and realigned.

"Yes," GENIUS confirmed. "ASH. There's been a lot of communication between the directorate of Farworlds and some of the a.s.sociation's senior members. I can't tell you what about, because the references don't point to anything that's accessible through the net. But whatever it is, it's big enough to get some of the planet's top scientists into the espionage business."

And big enough, maybe, to change his whole lifestyle for keeps, Sarvik thought to himself. Which way to go next? The best was usually the most audacious, he had long ago decided. He contacted Leradil Driss-the person he'd just gotten expelled from two positions in as many days-and told her he had a proposition that she might find interesting.

The zhill was a large marine avian that laid eggs, breathed air, and looked like a tooth-beaked submarine. It belonged to a line whose distant ancestors had returned to an aquatic environment; its feathers were now transformed to leathery scales, and its limbs had adapted into rudimentary flippers in front, lateral fins in the center, and twin rudderlike tails at the rear.

Sarvik met Leradil Driss in a gla.s.s-walled gallery projecting into an underwater seascape, where visitors could sit and view, or talk, or think while zhills turned and dived over and around. Other kinds of Turlean ocean life wheeled and cavorted about them; nosed, crawled, sifted, and slithered in the sand and mud at the bottom; or glared balefully from fissures in the rocks and the holes underneath. Sarvik had suggested meeting at the Pygal zoo. Too many connivances cooperated with information agencies that peddled snippets gleaned from bugging, and he never felt completely safe in cab compartments, restaurant booths, plaza snack bars, or any of the other places people normally went to talk.

Although somewhat taken aback by his gall in approaching her, Leradil was not irreversibly antagonized. After all, the game they played was hardly something that he had invented. He had merely gone by the same accepted rules as she and shown himself to be a proficient player. Few Borijans would condemn him for that, any more than they would concede open admiration. And while she would naturally be smarting from the double put-down of having been exposed twice, especially since in both cases she had been acting on behalf of the same princ.i.p.al, he was reasonably sure that the material penalties would not involve losses to her personally.

He told her bluntly that he didn't think her loyalties ended with Farworlds. He wanted to know who she was really with and what they were looking for. His intuition was that something big was afoot, he said. In return, he would cut her in on any buy-in he managed to carve of whatever resulted. And she knew that he meant it. For no matter how much two individuals, two connivances, groups within a connivance, or combinations of all the above schemed to put something over on the others, a deal was a deal and would be adhered to. Had it been otherwise, with no understanding that could be relied on, then nothing meaningful could have been said and the system would never have functioned at all.

Leradil, however, laughed derisively. "Deal? Get serious, Sarvik. What kind of a deal do you call that? You get inside information unconditionally, and I get zilch unless something unspecified turns up?

Come on, that's pure fishing. Small-time. Not your league. I'm surprised you even tried."

"Very well." Sarvik had played a lead of nothing and had seen it slapped down as it had deserved to be. "Then I might have to start asking around to find out who put you inside Farworlds. Whom shouldI talk to, do you think?" He made a nonchalant play of guessing. "Scientists, maybe? That's an odd thought, isn't it? They don't usually get mixed up in things like that. But you know, for some reason I just can't shake the thought off." Leradil's epaulets had gone rigid. Even the red streaks on her yellow crown seemed to be frozen in shock. Sarvik paused for a few seconds to enjoy her reaction, then went on casually. "Astronomers, perhaps, to be a bit more specific? Ah . . . getting warm, am I? How about the Astronomical Society of Hoditia?"

So there it was: trumps. Either she cooperated by giving a little, or this time he'd blow it with herreal princ.i.p.als. It took her a short while to recover. Overhead a zhill rolled lazily, escorted by a flotilla of cavorting sea mammals that looked like web-footed flying squirrels with shoe polish instead of fur.

"How on Turle did you find that out?" she whispered shakily.

"You really expect me to say? Now it's your turn to get real," Sarvik replied, smirking.

Finally, Leradil spoke. "It doesn't sound as if there's very much that I need to tell you." It was a good way of saying nothing while trying to steal a peek at Sarvik's hand, but he wasn't showing.

"Did ASH put you into Replimaticon, too, or was that an idea of somebody at Farworlds?" he asked her.

Leradil's problem was that she had no idea how much Sarvik really knew. He could have been testing to gauge whether she was being straight. She answered truthfully, as she had to-as Sarvik knew she had to. "It was Farworlds. They wanted up-to-the-minute information on the latest coding systems.

You already know that."

"So ASH got you into Farworlds for something else?"

"Yes."

"What for? What did they want you to find out there?"

Leradil's epaulets fluttered in agitation. She knew she would be giving away information that really was new to him now, but what else could she do? He waited, dangling the specter of revealing to ASH that her link back to them had been traced. Her currency as a candidate for worthwhile dealings of any kind would be devalued for years. In the end she said hesitantly, "They . . . weren't exactly specific. But they wanted to know about any confidential communications between Farworlds and other scientific organizations. In particular, other inst.i.tutions of astronomy, cosmology, and cosmological physics."

"Nothing about advanced computer codes, then?" Sarvik checked again. "That was purely something that Farworlds was interested in?"

"Yes."

"Um," he said. It was strange, because organizations like ASH tended to be fairly open with information. In science, too much secrecy was to everybody's disadvantage. Scientists worked out their rivalries in other ways. "That's strange."

"I know," Leradil agreed.

"Do you know why ASH thought there might be secret communications going on with other inst.i.tutions?"

"No."

Sarvik didn't know whether he should believe her or take this as a hint that it was time for him to give a little more. At the same time, he got the feeling that pressing her harder wouldn't be the thing to do right then. "Let's move on," he suggested.

They got up and followed the walkway out of the aquarium building. The verbal fencing and probing continued. By the time they got to the mammal park Sarvik had decided that if Leradil did know more, she would need a glimpse of how big a thing they might be on to before she would reveal it. If he complied but it turned out that she really had told him as much as she knew, then the loss would be his.

If he wanted this to go further, though, he had no choice but to risk it.

They stopped at the elgiloit enclosure to watch the hairy, round-headed creatures screeching and chattering as they brachiated with elongated midlimbs in the trees, while others squatted on the ground scratching and delousing each other with their prehensile forehands."I'll tell you a little of what's going on at Farworlds," Sarvik said. "Maybe it will help brush away any last cobwebs from your memory. The reason they're interested in advanced computing is to support a new cla.s.s of s.p.a.cecraft and Borijan settlements far, far from Turle. They're going to convert Searchers into generation ships. Just think, after more than a century, when every pragmatic reason you can think of seems to rule against it." He looked at her for a second and read from her expression that she had not known this. "Suddenly they want to leave the Kovar System. They say it's because the time has come to go out into the galaxy and explore. I say there's more to it. And now we find this secret collusion with some of the world's greatest astronomers. So what's going on, Leradil? What do they know that we don't?"

Leradil turned away toward the elgiloits, her epaulets creased in deep thought. Sarvik waited, allowing time for the significance of what he had said to sink in.

Many people believed that elgiloits had the potential to become intelligent, and certainly some of their mannerisms and the expressions on their mobile faces did little to dispel such a notion. However, their ground-based life kept them partly dependent on smell as a primary sense and deprived them of the stimulation to mental dexterity and vision that came from winged ancestry. Experts were agreed that flight was an essential forerunner to the emergence of intelligence.

Leradil sighed after a few moments and turned back to face Sarvik fully, at the same time glancing about instinctively to be sure there was n.o.body close. She hesitated, then said, "My real name is Leradil Jindriss. My brother, Palomec Jindriss, is a senior fellow of ASH, an authority on stellar evolution. That's how I was recruited. I'm as curious about all this as much as you are, now. But the only person who can tell us more is Palomec."

She wanted to know the answers, too, and was willing to trade-for now, anyway. For she still had a score to settle, and Sarvik was under no illusions about it. She wouldn't hesitate to turn the situation around on him as soon as it suited her and the first solid opportunity presented itself. That was the way the game went.

"I'd like to meet your brother," Sarvik said.

"I'll see if I can arrange it."

"Andtry not to let the whole world know this time, if you can help it," he clucked at her disparagingly. "My reputation's involved in this now, too."

A little parting shot, just to make sure there were no kind feelings.

16.

On arriving back at Replimaticon, Sarvik got a message to go up to the directors' level to see Pezamin Greel and Marduk Alifrenz, the two others who were in on the immortality project with him.

They knew that the code transferred into the mechanical veech had been extracted from a real veech and that the current experiments were intended merely as a preliminary to extending the procedure to Borijan psyches.

The news was that Prinem Clouth had pulled up anchor as expected and forfeited his stake to head for bluer waters undisclosed. Almost certainly, this meant that he had judged it was time to cash in on the deal he was working on with Toymate and had taken with him copies of the programs that he thought had driven the veech. But the programs would be worthless, since they were decoys Sarvik had prepared for that eventuality. In fact, they were based on routines Sarvik had decoded from Toymate's own products, with some extra gimmicks added to keep its a.n.a.lysts occupied for a while. Neat, heh-heh-heh.

There was some haggling over dividing up Clouth's share. Then Greel and Alifrenz revealed that as insurance they had lined up several alternative sources of supply for other kinds of artificial animals, which came as little surprise to Sarvik, since that was one of the things directors were for. Would Sarvik be needing them? If so, what stage had the project reached, and what kind of percentages would it beappropriate to offer?

Further haggling followed. Sarvik played down the importance of their hand by stressing that there was only so much more they could learn from further animal tests. It was time to move on to the final phase of using actual Borijans. They had talked about it often enough, and they had no need to spell out the details. Essentially, three things would be needed: a suitable artificial host body, an upgraded molecular-circuit brain to drive it, and a donor of a complete set of the Borijan neural code. Since the code-extraction process was destructive, meeting the last requirement was going to be tricky.

"The woman from Universal Robocon is coming next week to go through the spec for a revised prototype," Alifrenz said. UR produced many of the robot types carried by the Searcher ships, which made it the obvious choice for designing a surrogate Borijan body. Every group involved had its own ideas about what an ideal body ought to be like, and Universal had the experience in handling compromises to keep all of them reasonably satisfied.

"And the molecular circuitry?" Sarvik inquired.

"On schedule," Alifrenz a.s.sured him. Others in Replimaticon were working on the brain; only the directors were supposed to know who. Sarvik had found out through GENIUS, but there was nothing to be gained from disclosing that fact. By the same means, Sarvik also knew that what Alifrenz had said was true. However, Sarvik also had other arrangements of his own in hand to cover both hardware needs, just in case.

"Regarding the code, I have talked some more with the contact in the Justice Department about getting criminals as volunteers," Greel said, not dropping any names. "There might be possibilities."

Sarvik didn't say anything about his deal with Dr. Queezt. If this immortality thing got to be as big as Sarvik thought it could, he had plans for setting up a connivance of his own that would cut them all out. And in any case, he didn't trust Greel or Alifrenz farther than either of them could carry a zhill.

When Sarvik was on his way back downstairs, his lapel phone beeped to inform him of an incoming call at priority 2. Borijans rarely abused priorities, since claiming a high level without good reason was the fastest way to be ignored the next time.

"Who is it?" Sarvik asked.