He blanked the screen. “What’s the message?” he snapped.
“Lilisaire of Zamok Vysoki asks for contact with you, specifically, by the name Venator and rank Pragmatic,” the speaker replied.
The assessment raced through him: The Lunarian didn’t know where he was. Hardly a human in the universe did. But she expected the system would relay to him. Therefore she had discovered his standing within it and his leadership against her—with high probability, at least. That was no surprise to him, after his recent experiences. But should he take this call, and thus confirm her deduction for her? Yes. It was a nearly trivial payout of information, for a chance to gain more, perhaps much more. What else did she know, and what did she mean to do with the knowledge? “Accept,” he said, the headiness of the chase upon him.
Her image appeared, standing in a room as black as polished obsidian, clad in a form-fitting floor-length gown of sulfur-colored fiir texture. The auburn mane fell unbound past features that might have been carved in bone, a mask, but the eyes were like great luminous emeralds. Draped around her bare shoulders lay a metamorphic snake, its scales shattering light into sparks of rainbow. Suddenly and violently, he wanted her.
Stop that. “Hail, my lady,” he said in her language, before remembering that with him she preferred for some reason to use Anglo. He changed to it: “How may I serve you?”
The image was not static while photons went to and fro. She breathed. She moved, shifting the balance of her body well-nigh too subtly to see, but not to sense in his own.
The voice sang cold: “Agents of your corps have invaded a home on Earth, to disrupt its peaceful doings and seize valuable property therein. I would know by what license they acted. Else shall I complain to the Justiciar of the High Council, and to the Solar System at large.”
So she was taking the offensive. Counterstrike. “I do not think you will, my lady.”
She meant the stationary sophotect that bore the name Mary Carfax, Venator knew. Either it had phoned an alarm to somebody in her service when the men entered, or an automatic signal had gone out. Investigation had not yet shown which, and it doubtless made no difference. What mattered was the speed with which Lilisaire had learned, and reacted.
Regardless, beneath the hard surface she must be shaken. Keep her that way.“If the action had a warrant, the issuance and the cause should be in the public database,” she said. “Naught have I found.”
“The matter concerns official secrets, my lady,” Venator riposted. “Under the Covenant, information may be withheld during a major emergency, until it has been resolved. In frankness, may I say that, under the circumstances, this is to your benefit?”
Transmission lag. He did not look away from her— bad psychological tactics—but he tried not to remember her naked.
“You speak as though opposition were crime.” Was she temporizing while she planned the next move?
“Not at all, my lady,” he said. “You have every right to your politics and free expression.” He forged sternness. “But you have no right to confidential data, or to attempt ferreting them out. You absolutely may not restrict the free expression and self-development of a sentience. That amounts to enslavement, my lady, the ultimate violation of rights.”
A pair of seconds passed.
Litisaire smiled. It was almost a friendly smile, and her tone almost conversational. “We need not padfoot about the subject, you and I, need we? It is the machine in San Francisco. Indeed it has been of help to me from time to time, a consultant, as belike it has aided others. Broken in upon, it loyally informed an agent of mine on Earth. I naturally waxed indignant, and demand you exonerate your corps, if you are able.”
“You spoke of property seized, my lady. A sopho-tect is no more property than you or I. There is no record of the manufacture of this one. It was kept from any direct contact with the cybercosm. All points to the creation and maintenance of a slave.”
The snake stirred, a rippling above her bosom, and raised its crested head. Was that a response to an invisible signal? Still smiling, she reached to stroke it under the jaw. “If data are absent, whom can you charge with the making?” she responded in the same half-amicable manner. “If it held itself apart, was that by its free choice, to preserve secrets entrusted to it? I cannot say. The machine mind is foreign to me. Ask it.”