The walls of the chamber were bedecked with pipe and cable clamps, boxes and gadgets—even the inside of the access door, with its collection of labels and warnings: EXTERNAL LATCH OVERRIDE ACTIVE; CHECK PRES EQ; TEMP ALARM . . . She leaned in and stared around. Whatever motives may have taken possession of the original Sarda sometime before the crucial day, the guy had guts, Kieran had declared—he’d given him that.
Something registered as odd about the inside of the door. And that was ridiculous, because this was the first time June had studied it in any detail. Yet the strange feeling persisted that something was missing. But how was she supposed to know how it should have been? It could only be from the replays of Leo’s exit that she and Kieran had watched earlier that afternoon. Something was different.
She looked back across the lab. Tom was still engrossed, talking to Herbert on the screen. June took out her comset and keyed in the code to access her personal net files, obtained a directory on the unit’s miniature screen, and routed the replay through. The image was too small to resolve any detail. She slid out the spectacles from their pouch at the back of the case, put them on, and brought up a high-resolution image that she was able to manipulate like the version on the mural panel in the apartment. As she stepped through the frames, she saw what had triggered something in her recollections. In a close-up of Sarda emerging from the chamber, the interior of the access door that swung open behind him showed a patch of color that was not on the inside of the door that June was looking at now. She zoomed in, and the patch expanded to become a curiously vivid design of a purple disk inside a silver outer ring containing a spiral pattern of colors. June moved the spectacles down her nose and was able to identify the place on the inside of the door that it had occupied. There was nothing like it there now. Touching it with a fingertip, she felt a faint stickiness of what could have been a remnant of adhesive. Something had been there, sure enough.
She was still staring at the spot bemusedly when Tom joined her again. “I’ve been shut up in there myself a few times when we were building and calibrating it,” he commented, looking past June’s shoulder. “Pretty daunting, if you want my opinion. Better Leo than me.”
“Well, he’s through it now,” June said. “Time for him to be celebrating and relaxing, I’d imagine. It must have been pretty tense for him.” Keeping her tone chatty, she remarked, “Too bad he doesn’t have a Mrs. Sarda or current ladyfriend to share it with . . . at least, I’ve never heard him talk of one.”
“I think he mentioned somebody once or twice several weeks back, but I guess that must have passed. He’s been too busy most of the time.” Tom looked curious. “Why?”
“Oh . . . just feminine nosiness, I guess.” June stared at the inside of the door as if there were something mildly puzzling, and then pointed to the space she had been looking at. “Am I imagining something, Tom? Leo showed me and Kieran the chamber when he was here a couple of days ago. The place was full of people and it was all a bit hectic, so I could be mistaken. But was that space empty before? I seem to remember something being there—a kind of colored graphic design.”
Tom looked at the spot and shrugged. “I can’t say I remember anything.” Evidently he considered it a matter of no consequence. He turned his head and nodded back in the direction of his desk. “Anyway, where were we? I’m afraid I’m going to have to wrap this up pretty soon for now, June. Something urgent has come up. But we can continue again another time.”
“No problem. Let me know when you’re free again. It’s been interesting. Thanks.”
Tom was okay, June decided as she went back to her own part of the building. Selective erasure by manipulating the neural codes wasn’t feasible. Mentally, she crossed it off the list of things to be pursued further.