Chap. 359 The Spy in the Machine

Chap. 359 The Spy in the Machine

K’ndar had not been back to Landing more than half an hour-long enough for him to get a badly needed shower-when Raventh touched him.

Kelso is here.

Huh! Where is he?

Outside the bay. Siskin is with him. He’s still wary of coming into the bay.

Why is he here?

He is wearing a message pouch.

AH. Have Siskin bring him into my quarters.

How wonderful it was to have a dragon ambassador/translator, he thought.

Siskin and Kelso appeared.

“Hello, Kelso, would you like a treat?”

Thankfully, he had a supply of raw meat always in the refrigerator. It might be a day or two old, he thought, but the brown fire lizard might be so timid, it’s so soon after losing his master and then bonding with B’rost, I’m sure he won’t…

Kelso snatched it from his fingers with the typical fire lizard lack of grace and manners. It’s amazing, he thought, how quickly he seems to have accepted B’rost as his new master. And even more, trusts me.

Siskin looked at him expectantly. He handed the blue a larger portion of the meat. Siskin took it daintily, as if to show up the brown.

I’m surprised he’s over losing his first master so quickly. It’s only been a few days, right?

His first master did not have the same sort of bond we have with Siskin. He was more like a horse to the human. The brown obeyed but it was more out of sense of, duty? than bonding. B’rost and Kelso bonded immediately. Like Impression.

“Good lad!” he said, then, “May I take the message?”

The brown fire lizard chittered and held still while K’ndar took a rolled piece of paper from the pouch.

At first he found it strangely vague.

Hello. I am communicating this way because my leaders are cracking down on personal use of datalinks. That and there’s something ugly going on at a Hold and I don’t want anyone to get hurt again.

My lizard has been sending me an image of a hollow tree. I think it serves the same purpose as a wharf support.

Can you send me the drawing of the well dressed person? I have an acquaintance who made a shirt for a mutual friend. I am going to ask the person if they know who made it? I will send it back. My Hall has found that people like you and me are far more valuable as messengers than as what we originally trained as. I don’t like it but that’s life.

How is our injured friend doing?

Please respond the same way. I don’t trust datalinks.

Your troublesome friend

His thoughts scattered for several moments. Why was B’rost being so vague? His mind steadied as he began to formulate his response. As he wrote, he suddenly understood. A message sent by a fire lizard could be intercepted, as the green fire lizard had shown. Something told him that should this message, or any like message from B’rost be intercepted, it wouldn’t take much study to conclude who they were from. The raiders knew who Vixen was before she knew who they were. That sort of information smelled of spying that had proven deadly to other couriers. The people responsible for the counterfeited marks and stamps had already demonstrated they were more than willing to kill.

He wrote Hello, here is the drawing. Have yours show mine where the hollow tree is. Please return it, via my fire lizard, I don’t want to copy it at the moment.

Our friend is doing as well as can be expected. His healer did fabulous work, I am certain he’ll recover completely, especially considering he now has an apprentice. I must compliment you, your lizard is happier and content.

I agree with you as to transmission of information this way. My gut says this whole situation is much deeper than either of us can comprehend. I think that, one of these days, soon, as a wise person said to me, ‘heads will roll’ and I sure as sunrise don’t want those heads to be ours.

I think we should destroy these messages.

You’re not that troublesome-just ‘different’.

He dug around in his backpack, pulled out the drawing he’d made of the woman at Lemos and put the two papers into Kelso’s message pouch.

He read the message over, hoping it was ambiguous enough to keep people from figuring out who he was. B’rost would know without a doubt that the wise person had been B’rant, their Weyrlingmaster. But I never thought it could literally come true like this.

“Siskin,” he called, stuffing the message and the drawing into the blue’s message pouch. As he harnessed Siskin, he said, “Go to Rath. Let B’rost take the message.”

Siskin chipped, always eager to be a courier.

How will I learn where the hollow tree is?

I asked the brown to push the image to me. I know I can find it Raventh said.

Push it to me, please? I want to draw it, he said, retrieving his notebook and pencil.

Be quick, he wants to go home.

He found himself sketching frantically as the brown’s image came through Raventh’s into his own mind. A small thought hit him..would it be changed, going through two minds? Were there errors in the first trio of images he’d pushed through Raventh?

I can see it. I will find it. There are dragonstones in it Raventh assured him.

It’s a tree, he thought, getting used to the concept of his hand drawing from a mind not his own. Yes. Where it is, I don’t know, but this tree is all withered and maybe dead. It’s unmistakeable. Here’s the opening, much the same size as that on the bolster. A bird’s nest? A nest above the opening? But it doesn’t look real. It looks, by the egg, as if it were carved? And I can see a large Hall behind it. Horses in the background, and lots of young trees growing. Ah. It’s got to be Lemos, I’ve never been there, but those are Lemos’s dragonstones. So the trees are markwood, the only wood marks are legally allowed to be made from. I remember the saying about money, “If it’s not of markwood, it’s not a mark.”

Push this to Siskin, please?

“Siskin. Can you see the tree, with the bird’s nest?”

He can. He sees it through Kelso’s mind.

Once again, he felt dizzy with now three minds in his own. How in the world did Francie deal with three fire lizards in hers? How did Menolly, a Harper said to have at least ten fire lizards, how did she manage?

Kelso looked at him, his eyes tinged just a bit with uncertainty.

“You did VERY WELL, Kelso, you are so smart. You have a good master in B’rost,” he praised the brown. The lizard swelled in appreciation.

Siskin yelped in jealousy. He smoothed the blue’s head.

“You’ll always be First Lizard, Siskin. Now go with Kelso.”

The two fire lizards launched-and disappeared.

He read the message over and over. Somehow he didn’t want to destroy it. But that’s how the raider was exposed. Had he kept them as something to leverage the spymaster with?

He took the message outside. Pulling the flint from the dagger sheath, he struck the back of the dagger to send fiery sparks onto the page.

Burning it made him feel only a little bit safer.

________________________________________________________________

He dropped the tube and pouch he’d pulled from the bolster onto Jansen’s crowded desk.

She sighed.

“More of this underhanded stuff,” she said, wearily.

“Are you alright?” he asked, alarmed, at her deadened expression. She looked exhausted.

“Yes, I’m just tired,” she said, declining to explain.

He pulled the pages showing the bolster and the picture of Vixen from his backpack.

“Please, keep these drawings, I’ll have the one of the Lemos woman back in a short while,” he said. “B’rost asked to borrow it. He’s got a friend who is a tailor, hoping he can tell who made the dress.”

“Ah, that’s smart. Like Francie is trying to find out who made the arrows, although she suspects now that the bowman made them. If so, he’s a master. Which is telling all on its own.”

“Yes.”

“You’re communicating via fire lizard instead of datalink? That takes time.”

“Yes, but there’s several reasons. One, Healer Hall is limiting people from using the datalinks for personal use.”

“It’s not just Healer Hall that we’ve been forced to hobble. It’s Pern wide, now. We’ve just put into effect in the last, oh, ten minutes. We had to. It was getting crazy. Even with my apprentice, we were working hammers and tongs just to keep up with the flood. It was like a tsunami, K’ndar, I couldn’t get any work done for all the messages coming in. It’s as if the entire planet has a datalink now and everyone was using it at once, and up til now, they’ve all come through Turing to ME.

It was the most trivial of stuff. I can see a datalink being used to summon medical aid from a healer, but most of it was just nonsense. A kid wanting to know the solution to two ex minus negative four. How long does it take my baby to finish teething. Why is Benden wine considered better than Telgar. How can I sneak out with my mum not knowing. Nonsense stuff that Turing was never programmed to filter out. He doesn’t know the difference between fluff and necessary. It takes me longer to teach him that nonsense is nonsense than it does to tell him what is good data.”

“That sounds bad. Can’t you get someone to take some of the flood from you?”

She stood up, gratefully. “I need a break, K’ndar, let’s go outside, please?”

She typed on her computer, “on break, back in 15.”

Confused, still, he said, “Certainly.”

“Oh, it’s such a lovely day,” Jansen said, reveling in the soft breezes that foretold of winter’s end. “Days like this make me wish I could have a window to look through, or just be able to work under this tree. It’s growing like mad. Let’s sit down.”

He plopped down beside her.

“People can easily hear what I say, if they are paying attention,” she explained, “and sometimes, I don’t want to be overheard. What I’m about to tell you is office business, and while I’ve never been told NOT to discuss it, I’ve not been told I can. And right now, everyone is on edge, and I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“My lips are sealed, but you don’t have to tell me a thing if you don’t want to,” K’ndar said.

“I have no one to vent to, K’ndar, except you. I trust you to keep your mouth shut and your ears open.”

She sighed, taking the plunge. “I complained and bitched about the masses of nonsense messages I was getting. Their response was ‘there there, little girl, you can’t be that overloaded’ sort of thing. “You’re just data input.” That made me mad. So..”she giggled despite her fatigue, “I started shunting nine tenths of the messages to THEIR terminals. That got their attention! Hehehehe! But only then did Data Management decide a restriction was needed. “

K’ndar grinned, knowing the feeling of being overloaded with work.

“I hope I wasn’t one of those nonsense senders,” he said. “Raylan told me early on, to only use the datalink for official business. I obeyed mostly because the datalink is the electronic equivalent of a pencil and I have no one to write to,” he admitted.

She laughed again, happy that K’ndar could always brighten her day.

“Oh, come on, K’ndar, but thanks. Every little bit helps. It wasn’t everybody with a datalink. Most folks are like you, K’ndar, in fact some folks have datalinks only because they’re forced to by their position. Lord Councilman D’nis, for instance, still refuses to use his for anything more than an affirmative, message received. He says he’d rather use the computer between his ears and the mouth he was born with, thankyouverymuch.”

K’ndar laughed. “That’s my weyrleader.”

“You said more than one reason for using fire lizards.”

“B’rost’s insistence on using only our fire lizards tells me he’s scared. He’s seeing something that I don’t, at least not yet. We know, now, that fire lizards can be intercepted. So his message was obtuse, but, I’ve learned to read between his lines. It made me wonder, is it only you and me can read a datalink message? Is it possible that someone else can, um, find a way to have a message sent to them as well as to the intended receiver? Without the two people knowing it had been intercepted? Even changed? Do you know for a fact that no one else but the receiver and you can read all transmissions? Is it possible that someone here on Pern has managed to, um, break in, you know, eavesdrop via datalink?”

The idea chilled her. “No, K’ndar, I DON’T know, and that concept is turning my blood cold. No. All Data and Admin have done is try to restrict datalink use to something manageable. As for can that be done? I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is yes. But now that just adds to the big problem we’re facing right now. And please, don’t say anything about what I’m about to tell you, I trust you to keep this between us. Remember when you brought in the stamps and the ciphers? I said, don’t tell anybody, let Council handle this first.”

She hesitated, the concept of K’ndar’s question turning more ominous by the minute.

“Okay. Last night, our time, something odd happened to the database, twice. Two fairly extensive chunks of data, sent by datalink just appeared. Not as a message, I really don’t know what it entailed. We don’t know who sent them or where they’re from. They came in the middle of the night, our time, when, usually, the only one awake is the database. At midnight, our time, the database shuts down for maintenance, it’s the equivalent of sweeping the floors and taking the food scraps out to the pigs. That takes about an hour, depending on how much it has, and that’s the time the two chunks came through.

I think the only reason they were even noticed is that one of the techs is pregnant and her fetus is wearing boots, he was kicking, keeping her awake. So she sat down to write up her reports at eleven thirty or so, she said boot baby wasn’t going to let her sleep anyway, might as well catch up on her work and input it in the morning.

The database shut down right on time, at twenty four hundred. About five minutes later, she said, the database stopped the maintenance process and reconnected to the world.

“Did she tell it to?”

“No. She can’t do that, for that matter, I can’t either. She was so surprised she jotted down the time and was about to call Data when these two large chunks of data appeared-one uploaded and another downloaded all on their own. There was no name of the sender, no name of the receiver, we have no idea whatsoever where it came from and or even what’s in it. It’s just a bunch of incomprehensible data. Something made her copy the data, shift it whole into her terminal. Then, just as suddenly, they vanished from her screens. The database dropped offline again to resume its scheduled maintenance.

For a moment she thought she’d imagined it. But she dug someone from Data out of bed anyway, and at first he didn’t believe her. He could find no sign that it had ever happened., even though she’s showing him the data she’d copied. She was in tears by then, but then someone else came in, and said she’s right, something happened. There’s no electronic footprint, it’s like someone went walking on the strand and the surf wiped away their footprints.

“Has it ever happened before?”

“I don’t know. No one knows. That’s what has Data and Admin shouting and pointing fingers at each other right now. This is completely out of their realm of experience, no one knows what it means or what to do about it.”

“What did the data chunks say?”

“That’s just it, K’ndar. We can’t read the data. Not even the main database can.

All of us have a copy of it now, I even applied those keys you brought in, what, two days ago? No luck. They’re encrypted, in code, like the lightwood strips you brought in. If you don’t have the key, you can’t break the code.”

This was above him, and she knew it, but it was a way for her to unload what was rapidly becoming a headache of monumental proportions.

“Is it, um, bad? Can it destroy Pern?”

She laughed, but it was forced. “I don’t know. We Just Don’t Know. Someone even wondered if maybe the Yokohama is breaking down or worse, is someone from the galaxy messing with us? Silly, yes, but when one’s been up since midnight, even the weirdest stuff begins to make sense.”

I’m grateful, he thought, that I don’t do this sort of work. “Are there any plausible theories?”

“Right now, anything is possible. The thing that’s got them all in a twist is how did the person shut down the maintenance long enough to send and receive encrypted data that then erased itself, then restart the maintenance without it leaving time stamps or signatures. That takes sophisticated understanding and training.”

“Letting dung booted yokels like me off the hook,” he said, relieved.

“I’m not sorry to say, me too,” she said.

She sighed again, agitated and frustrated. “Right now, the Data folks are going through the shutdown sequence code line by line by line and I’m so glad it’s not me. I’m so tired I’d probably miss an error even were it in flashing red letters.” She ran her hand through her hair, as if that would dispel her anxiety. It failed.”Someone out there is doing something very illegal, right under our noses.”

“Now I know why you’re tired,” he said, “You’ve pulled two all nighters in a row. You’re trying to find these people.”

She smiled, wanly. “You know, K’ndar, of the many people I deal with, you’re probably one of the very few who understands me. And who I trust implicitly. Because yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to do. Raylan told me to stop, I’m wasting my time, but K’ndar, I HAVE to track these people down. It’s not just the possibility that I might lose my job, I can live with that. Sometimes I hope for that. I sometimes forget how nice it is to be outside.

My gut tells me the counterfeiters are behind this. Meaning, more people might die, the maker of the misspelled stamp, for instance. That will lay heavily on my heart. For all I know, that person is already dead, if the spymaster has learned the stamps were intentionally misspelled. I have to find these people. Have to. If I don’t, I may just lose my job.”

“What? Jansen, you’re GOOD at this. Raylan won’t let them fire you, I know that.”

“They might cut him, too. Maybe all of us. The thought had hit me, is this the work of Abominators? But no, they’d be the last people to try and learn the intricacies of the database.”

“But you’re not to blame. Why would they fire you? Or Raylan, or maybe everybody here?”

“People in positions of power don’t like being embarassed, K’ndar,” she said, fatalistically, “and once this counterfeiter, his or her helpers, this spymaster, is exposed, the shite is going to hit the fan,” she said, softly. “Not everyone here at Landing is dedicated to research and technology. There are some very ambitious and unprincipled people who, up until now, haven’t dared to do something like this. Maybe it took them a long time to learn how to shut down and send without evidence, they had to learn and practice, little by little, when no one was watching. Like maybe at midnight, never suspecting someone might be up due to a cranky unborn baby. I think once he’s born Boot Baby gets a reward. His mum certainly should.”

“But that doesn’t mean you’ll be fired,” he protested.

“Despite all the things Landing does, creating and disseminating books, and sunglasses and solar panels, there are Lord Holders and Crafters who might think, you know, Landing is a pain in the ass, we’re going to stop propping them up. Landing is still very much like a Weyr. We depend on tithes and money. We don’t call it that, but food and personnel, housing, dragon transportation, all that costs money. Before Thread stopped, we lived in a world that worked together. Things have changed, now, with Thread gone. Just like in the past, Intervals, when no Thread fell, and just like dragonriders, there are people who wouldn’t miss Landing.”

“Can I, um, is there something I can do to help?” he asked, knowing the answer would probably be no. But he wanted to relieve her anxiety.

She heaved a great sigh. “That’s kind of you, K’ndar, but no, there’s not much you can do to break a quantum code. Unless, of course, you have the keys.”

Somehow, he’d forgotten that he’d brought in the items from the bolster.

“Let’s go in and see what I dropped on your desk,” he said, “maybe we got lucky again.”

As they reentered the building, he wondered, what do I do with myself if I DO lose my job?

A vision of horses passed in his mind. Land, with trees and grass and wildlife, like Lizard’s new cothold.

And dragons Raventh added.

In her office, she reached for the tube. He stopped her hand.

“Can it, can Turing hear me?” he whispered in her ear.

“I can mute it,” she said, touching an icon on the screen,”Why?”

“Before you do, if the person sending the encrypted messages can slip them into the database, can’t they also read everything that goes out? Like the notes from the Council meetings, where they make decisions?”

“Ummm,” she hesitated, “I’m not sure. I don’t know enough of the transmission to be able to say yes or no. But I don’t know why not,” she said.

“And, if the maintenance is done at midnight, that means it’s twelve hundred at Tillek Sea Hold, in the West. You’d know right away if the database went down at twelve hundred here, right? So it tells me that person is HERE, here in Landing. Call me paranoid, but he might be right in there alongside your data folks, he may BE one of your data techs, he might be covering his tracks the moment they uncover them. Maybe that flood of nonsense messages you’ve been hit by isn’t a hundred people with datalinks. Maybe it’s just one person sending them out en masse, it’s a smoke screen. The criminal told the computer to create hundreds of these false messages, and while you’re distracted with the flood, he slips in a real one, it goes out, to his contact, because he HAS to have a contact, somewhere. And that one real message, he’s telling his partner in crime, I’m going to send tonight at twenty four hundred, be ready.” Is he laughing behind his eyes while your data folk are running in circles and pointing fingers?” Is he listening to you and me this very minute?” he said, softly.

The import hit her in the gut. Her face suffused with horror.

“Oh, my stars. Oh my stars.” She headed for the door. “K’ndar, give me fifteen minutes. I have to RUN to Raylan.”