Their big blowup was rigged right along where we came in. Of course, cutting the
mains here also cut the master systems throughout the complex, so no real heat,
and we have to supply our own lights. We don’t dare restore that reactor. It’s
an odd design, and we might still blow it out of ignorance.
She was led into a large chamber that was clearly a high-tech laboratory. There
were a number of small independent computers there, as well as test areas and
hardware assembly divisions. It was impressive; she had never seen or heard of
anything like it before.
There was a vast supply of data storage modules that would have to be examined
and a fair number of actual books, which was something of a surprise. They
appeared to be mostly facsimiles of ancient texts in a number of languages, and
those she examined were totally unfamiliar to her, although she saw a few
patterns in the choice of subjects.
The assemblage was all the more amazing because almost all of it was modified
from stock items and therefore had to be stolen from somewhere—yet that was
supposed to be impossible. Every single computer and even every single module
was coded and tracked at all times by the Master System. Even disconnecting or
moving such things without permission would be flagged and investigated
immediately. Flowers of Heaven! There were even three mindprint devices here!
Those could not even be operated except by the Master System!
She examined everything thoroughly. A brown-clad Special Team was there now,
working swiftly and efficiently, taking her direction. The Special Team was
expert at doing just one thing—diverting parts of illicit technology from such
finds without their activities showing on the visual or scan records. These were
the same experts who could make certain that a chief administrator, or his
daughter, had no trace of this on their mindprints to flag the Master System.
The colonel placed far too much faith in mindprint evidence for his own good,
Song Ching thought smugly.
The brown-clad workers were wizards at what they did, but the risk was very
high, even more to them than to their employers. They were, however, richly
rewarded for their skills.
Just as the administrators and regents had discovered holes in the supposedly
static system over the centuries, so, too, did the technologists here find holes
no one else had ever dreamed of. To divert this much, all undetected, and build
a complex this grand, remaining undetected for who knew how long—years,
certainly—was an incredible achievement. It was her primary job to evaluate what
the brown troopers should deal with before the mass was turned in to Master
System, but after that the real challenge would be to discover what they
discovered and whether or not it would be of any use to her family. She would
also love to know how they’d managed all this, but to trace it all back without
tripping any flags would be far more risky than this.
She used a small hand-held device to check out storage modules at random. She
couldn’t read them, but she could read their directories if they weren’t
severely encoded and choose which ones she’d need herself. As for the books, she
wanted them all and insisted on it. These sort of books were so unusual that
Master System would not even suspect they had ever been there, but she would bet
that they held the key to a lot of work done here. Certainly the texts had been
copied onto modules for insurance, but that would only give consistency to the
mass of data Master System would get.
Her hand-held checker indicated that all data on the modules was in complex
code, but the directories, although a bit obscure in title, were in the clear. A
machine would translate the data; however, they wanted to make certain that
anyone could read the directories if need be.
It was simple to find a pattern; she hardly needed to look at more than one in a
hundred to see that. Their primary project was something to do with spacecraft
computer logic control and navigation. She wanted those and some of the ancient
archival material copied by the brown team before removal. Much of the rest
involved how they had been able to fool Master System for so long. She would
have loved to have it all, but there wasn’t time, and Master System would take
particular care in seeing that they had not been opened or copied on to foreign
devices. They had to remain.
Major Chi, head of the brown team, was efficient and methodical and completed
the work with a speed she would have thought impossible, even as the regular
troops were carting out the contraband to be hauled away and turned over to
Master System.
Chi shook his head in wonder. What were they doing that they would risk so much
and die rather than surrender? What kind of people were these?
Dissident fanatics, she told him. Apparently they were working on a way to
hijack and seize control of a large spacecraft and steer it to some world so far
out that they would be beyond the reach of the Community.
He seemed startled. Is that possible?
I don’t know. They thought so, and they certainly did a lot even here.
The family generally spent the worst of the winter months at their estate in
Hainan. The island province was always warm, if a bit too wet, and technically
her father was a leading warlord there, with an estate and peasants and vast
agricultural lands as befitted a chief general. The people of Hainan, and even
the bulk of those on his own lands and in his own service, did not even know
that he was anything more than their warlord and leader. When there, the family
lived in the ancient style and observed the age-old ways, as the rules required.
That, of course, was the primary hole through which almost all the
administrators and regents slipped eventually. When spending time outside the
administrative district, one was required to take on a template properly suited
to blending in with the natives. It was a simple, routine procedure, in which
trusted technicians marked forbidden secrets in the subject’s mind, to be
suppressed in the conscious band, which was the only one recorded. There were no
flags in this procedure because the local computers controlling the mindprint
machinery had never really been able to distinguish between what had to be
suppressed to keep the rules straight and what was requested suppressed because
otherwise it would be flagged as high treason.
Computers were in fact smarter than humans, but they were not human and never
had been able to grasp totally the intricacies of the human mind, particularly
its devious-ness. They thought they did, but they actually found only the
clear-cut and the obvious. The amateur would always get caught; the
professionals slipped through as if the barriers and checks were not even there.
Since the computers understood very well how to control people in groups, and
manage them, and understand when things didn’t go their way and why, it
apparently never occurred to any of the machines that they were being had. The
price of true superiority was in underestimating the capabilities of the
inferior.
Song Ching, after filing her reports, had gone almost immediately to the
estates, allegedly to prepare them for the coming of the full family a bit
later. That would be quite a crowd, too—not merely the immediate family but
grandparents, aunts, uncles, their families and their children’s families, and
all the rest. Since this was routine family business, no recording would be
made, and so no suppression was necessary. Going back, however, she would be
forced to surrender many memories and much knowledge until they could be
restored by her family physicians later. And in this case she was more under the
clock’s gun than usual. Even chief administrators were forced to take Leave, and
that time for her parents and for their children was fast approaching. At that
time a recording would be made, and much would have to be suppressed. So much,
in fact, that long sessions with hypnotic drugs would be necessary before Leave
to ensure their safety and even longer ones after it to restore what had been
lost.
While on Leave, even they wouldn’t know about the special underground rooms
built beneath and in back of the main house on Hainan, containing the private
and illegal technology garnered by ambitious administrators past and present.
A number of other teenage boys and girls from the greater family were also sent
down ahead to prepare things. Most would do exactly that, but because of their
family position all knew far more than they should about the forbidden things
Song Ching and her family were doing.
She always hated the time they stayed there, although it was a beautiful house
in a beautiful land and she certainly felt the strong cultural ties to her
ancestors and their customs and ways very strongly. The problem was the pecking
order, which was so complicated that it was nearly impossible to sort out in a
situation like this. Culturally, girls were supposed to be at one and the same
time the strength of the family and deferential to the boys and drip humility,
something she had never been much good at doing. On the other hand, she was for