Lairdin, an amputant with a missing ear whom Uary had appointed his supervisor, was helping two students drain what smelled like fresh sterilizer out of the central holding tank. The gel oozed into the reconfiguration tank, where any stray bacteria or biological waste could be filtered out while the main holding tank was readied for the next subject.
“Can you believe it, Bio-technician?” Lairdin said happily. Uary had accepted her contract because of her precise grasp of neurotransmitter configuration. Since then he had learned to ignore her atrocious manners. “I owe the Ancestors at least four of the Graces for this.”
Uary took in the bustling activity, none of which he had ordered. “What am I being asked to believe now, Supervisor?”
Lairdin’s hands froze halfway to the tank’s keypad. “You didn’t replay my message? The system told me it was received.”
Uary shook open the recorder sheet and pressed it against the wall. Immediately, it displayed a recording of Lairdin’s face.
“Bio-technician Uary,” said the recording, “we have received a transmission from the contraband runner, Tasa Ad, who states he has recovered the female artifact Stone in the Wall. The Bridge liaison says the Captain himself has cleared the ship for access to a docking clamp for cargo transfer. I will prepare the lab immediately.”
Shock raced down Uary’s spine and rooted him to the floor. The female artifact Recovered and on the way to the Grand Errand. Where not ten minutes ago he’d received orders to destroy the only other artifact in his possession.
“Technician?” said Lairdin. “The first artifact is reported to have been unloaded seven minutes ago. It’ll be arriving any minute. Do you want to prepare the terminals?”
Atrocious, atrocious manners. Uary ripped the recorder sheet out of the wall and dropped it back into the rack. “Yes.”
He sat behind the analysis board and began shuffling its pads. There weren’t many lines to open. He needed his personal observations of the female artifact and the stones, Basq’s records, and the raw information on the male artifact. Uary eyed Lairdin and the other Beholden. The supervisor was bustling around the lab, making sure everything was in order, prying into every detail, except the Bio-technician’s private terminal. Even she was not that rude. He felt watched anyway, by the Witness he could not see, and by the fact that under the board lay a hidden line to Caril’s own terminal. He would have to remove it as soon as he was alone again.
Whenever that would be.
Uary laid his hand on the notepad and curled his fingers inward as if the pad was a sheet of polymer that he could crumple up and toss aside.
What was he supposed to do? Destroy the female? Smash the stones? Place all hopes on the possibility that Jahidh, untrained, rebellious Jahidh, might be able to find another complete component like Arla Stone? The Imperialists planned to continue trusting that child with the work of the Ancestors?
What were the Imperialists doing? What were they thinking? They were as bad as the blind ones in the Assembly! This was no longer some distant, objective possibility. This was happening as they spoke. The knowledge of the Ancestors, lost because of the Flight, was being delivered into their hands and they could still leave orders for its destruction.
It was no help that part of him knew they were right. The only race the Imperialists could still win was the race to understand the artifacts. It was the last one that mattered, and the Imperialists would lose if he did not stand in the Assembly’s way.
Individuals can still betray. Uary forced the thought away and bent over the keys again.
Concentrate, he ordered himself.
He needed to be careful how he managed this. Two dozen other Bio-technicians and their Beholden waited for him to begin siphoning the raw data and rough conclusions he gleaned from the study of the artifacts. They would filter all they received even farther down, focus on their own areas of expertise, replicate each others’ analyses, and then funnel their results back into the main datastore, where the revelations could be organized, integrated, and returned to him. The subcommittees would work in shifts around the clock to understand the artifacts, but the first analysis was his. For a few brief hours, Uary had the artifacts to himself.
He did not like to think about the fact that he had Basq’s political maneuvering to thank for that. He was quite sure Basq didn’t either. But Uary was the Bio-tech for Basq’s committee. If Basq was assigned to the recovery of the artifacts, so was Uary.
Uary opened the connections from his datastore to the secondary storage that could be tapped by the other Bio-techs. He did it carefully, introducing small flaws into the lines’ controls. He couldn’t hide completely, but he could delay. He could be a little slow in filtering the gathered data from his private store to the committee-accessible store. The lines could require extra processing time because of the volume and complexity of the data. The ship-to-ship transmitters could have difficulty finding open channels that would guarantee that the packages would arrive intact. These little things could be made to add up.