The packet opened to display the face of an aging man with dark hair, pale skin, a suggestion of a beard, and mud-brown eyes under heavy brows. His name was Paul Mabrey. He had assorted degrees from assorted universities. He worked as a risk assessor for various small companies, spending his time traveling from colony to colony, mostly on Mars, looking at new market niches and good suppliers. He took med-trips and vacations back on Mother Earth regularly but not excessively. He had been in Bradbury during the rebellion, and while it was felt that he had some sympathies toward Fuller’s faction, surveillance on him had been turned off over fifteen years ago because he never did anything remotely suspicious.
He was, in fact, the man Ben used to be.
Once upon a time, Ben, then called Paul Mabrey, had been dismissed by the yewners who had taken over Bradbury as being of little consequence. They did, however, post automatic surveillance over him, as they did every rebel, just in case. For three years, Paul behaved himself meekly, like a good defeated puppy. He watched his friends jailed, watched Fuller hauled back to Earth for trial and incarceration. He watched the yewners take up posts on every street corner and randomly search the passersby. He watched the taxes go up and the licenses go down and travel get restricted. He sat in his apartment at night and hated himself because there was nothing he could do, not now, not ever again, because the yewners would never really take their eyes off him. The free flow of information that Fuller had touted as the route to the future would make it impossible for him to hide.
He had one thing left to him. The yewners had not quite uncovered the extent of what Paul had done for Fuller. He’d specialized in helping make clip-outs—in-stream ghosts of people who wound up on various payrolls and mailing lists and who, eventually, wound up with various levels of access and permission to various segments of the communications networks. When the uprising came, those clip-outs gave the software corruption teams that Paul was a part of a handle on the U.N. networks, which he used to shut them down.
Minor stuff, really, a low-level hacker trick.
But what he labored over at night, almost every night, was not. It was researched and tested, a little bit here, a little bit there. It was years of learning under Fuller’s best, a few minor bribes, a couple of slow, painful system break-ins, and a whole lot of patience.
Then, Paul received notice that his surveillance period was up and he was declared rehabilitated. Good luck to you, Mr. Mabrey.
Paul, grimly satisfied, had closed the letter and gone in-stream to request permission politely to travel to Giant Leap on business. The yewner bureaucrat on the other end was in a benevolent mood that day and let him go.
Two weeks later, Paul Mabrey left for Luna. He arrived at Giant Leap and stayed for three months, working on various consulting jobs and contracts. Then—according to all available records, anyway—Paul Mabrey went home.
That same day, a man named Bennet Godwin, who had—according to all available records—arrived in Giant Leap on Luna from the Republic of Manhattan space port, got a job as a geologist for Dorson Mines, Inc.
No one knew how many clip-outs floated around the stream. Usually they were used by people wishing to perpetrate some kind of fraud. They were vague constructs, tied to a few vital records and easily torn apart or scared away by semidetermined scrutiny.
A very few were like Paul, who sat in-stream and stared at Ben out of eyes that could have been his own. Paul had been nurtured and cared for. He had aged as Ben had aged. He had subscriptions to the major news services and joined in-stream discussions on various items of interest. He had credit accounts, and he used them. He drew pay from companies he consulted for. He vacationed, theatered, and kept apartments in Giant Leap and Burroughs. He even had personal contact codes, which a simulation would answer and alert Ben when they were used.
Now, it was time for Paul to come back to life. Paul was going to get hold of some very interesting information and pass it along to a few old associates. Paul still had a few tricks up his sleeve to keep the yewners from noticing he’d revived some acquaintances that were still, after all those years, under surveillance and travel restrictions.
Paul still had a chance to prove he was not useless.
Ben, heedless of the time, hunched over his briefcase and started typing.
“…with mutual cooperation and free exchange of ideas we will together unravel this, the greatest of human mysteries.”
Vee applauded politely, along with the rest of the gathering. Dr. Failia smiled and stepped out from behind the podium, shifting immediately from solemn speech-giver to smiling greeter-of-friends-and-strangers. Vee found herself grinning. The speeches had been well delivered and short, the food was good, and the view…the view was stunning.