Polity Agent

In the cell she designated as her laboratory, the eight beetlebots she had taken out of storage and adjusted to this task moved slowly across the floor spraying on it a layer of crash foam. She dumped a large drum containing more of the polymer-forming liquid on a layer of foam already five inches thick, and transmitted further instructions to the robots. Now they would come automatically to the drum and plug in to its lower sockets to recharge their reservoirs. In the low pressure the polymer foamed and set to a hard insulating layer, which would prevent the laboratory cell from losing any heat that might be detected from outside. Later, for further concealment, she intended to add a layer of the laminated radiation shielding she had ordered loaded on to the Heliotrope before departing the station. A small autofactory inside the ship was meanwhile working flat out to manufacture large quantities of the polymer. A yard of thickness was what she required, thereafter she could open the locks to her ship and use its internal atmospheric systems to bring up the temperature and air pressure to within the specification required for the equipment she intended to use in here. Then she would bring in that equipment, also portable heaters and an atmosphere plant, isolate the cavern from the ship, then finally bring in the Jain node for further study.

The Jain node.

Orlandine paused and remembered that meeting on one of the Sol stations that had changed the course of her life.

‘Hi, I’m Jonas Trent,’ he had said. ‘You would be Orlandine?’

She had glanced across at him as he took the seat opposite. He was pale, quite then, dressed in black slacks, a canary yellow shirt, a jacket made of black diamond-shaped plates of composite bonded to something like leather, and wide braces that had a shifting pattern of snakes. Seeing he was auged, through her gridlink — the minimum internal hardware required to take the carapace she was not wearing at that time—she sent him a personal contact query. The personal details that his aug settings allowed her were skeletal: he was a hundred and four years old, unattached, a sensocord rep, born on Earth… all the usual details but little more. Nothing there to tell her how he knew of her, or why he approached her now.

She sipped her espresso. ‘What can I do for you?’

He grinned. ‘As we always like to say, it’s not what you can do for me—’

She interrupted, ‘I’m haiman, so do you honestly think I need to buy any sensocordings? I’m now logging this encounter as an infringement—’

He interrupted, ‘Don’t—I’m not here to sell you anything.’

She did not log the personal-space infringement anyway. A person like this would know exactly who to approach and when, so he must be here for some other reason. He took out a rounded brushed-metal box, reached across the table and placed it before her.

‘I’ve been paid very well to act as an intermediary. All I can tell you is that there’s a certain object inside, and a memtab explaining exactly what that object is. I am only instructed to tell you that it is a “gift from an admirer”.’

She peered at the box. ‘My kind are often the target of Separatists, or, rather, would be targets. I’m cautious.’ She slid the box back across the table to him. ‘You open it.’

With a grimace, he picked it up and popped it open, then put it down and slid it back across. ‘See, no problem.’

In the foam packing rested a dull egg. Next to it lay a memtab—a piece of crystal the size of her fingernail. She pulled her palmtop from her belt and inserted the tab into the relevant port. The screen displayed the ovoid itself and, while she watched, it opened like a flower to expose a smaller ovoid inside covered with slightly shifting cubic patterns. A frame appeared over this with the figure x1000 beside it—indicating magnification. The frame expanded, filled the screen, then another appeared and did the same. Then again and again, until displaying the most densely packed nano-technology she had ever seen. Finally the image blinked out. Trying to recall it, she found the original recording had been wiped by a subprogram.

‘What is this?’ she asked, merely for form’s sake, since she already knew.

He stood, saying, ‘Ciao.’ He walked away.

A gift from an admirer.

Upon her return to the Cassius project she ran a search through the nets for this Jonas Trent. It seemed he had stepped out of the airlock of another of the Sol-system stations without the benefit of a spacesuit. It took all her expertise to avoid the semi-AI program that subsequently came after her, for the enquiry into his death remained open, and the program now wanted to know all about her and her interest in him.

‘They will learn about the gift’—a secret admirer.