Those of My Blood by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Author:Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: sf_horror, sf
Published: 2011-06-20T10:52:22+00:00

Chapter fifteen

Inea was as good as her word. With a bit of help from Titus getting parts and security codes, she designed eight tiny bugs slaved to a central unit made from a gutted pocket calculator and the miniaturized power source. She even put a memory into it, programmed to debrief the bugs at intervals and save the data. The central unit interfaced with Titus’s console, and would also pirate images from security scanners.

Titus, however, had little time to plant the bugs.

When he got back to his office, he discovered his black box had captured a terse message from Connie informing him he’d have to contend with Abbot alone.

Though she had people in the Project’s groundside Communications and Supplies, Connie couldn’t get anyone up to the station through the security designed to stop assassins. But she’d arranged to have his security clearance increased.

“When you hear about the bombing of your house,” the message continued, “don’t worry. We got there first, but this channel is not secure enough to discuss further plans.”

She ended, “We can now guarantee your blood supply. They’d perfected a way of turning the crystals into maroon packing chips to be used in boxes shipped to his lab. microwave to restore solubility, and dissolve. Connie.”

Titus reported Abbot’s doings and the situation with the sleeper and the transmitter, but omitted mention of Inea.

Later that day, while Colby was struggling to convince the reporters that the bombing had been a terrorist act, not an attempt to cover up a cloning lab, Titus was informed that his security clearance had been bumped up to Abbot’s level.

Within an hour, he was given a heavier meeting schedule than ever before. While it provided a better overview of the Project and of Abbot’s activities, it cut into the time he needed to compare the two copies of his catalogue.

Lorie had called in five other programmers. The news, however, was bleak. They found files that had been erased from the directory on each catalogue, files that didn’t have appropriate security or date stamps on them, files Titus didn’t recognize. Two different methods had been used on the separate catalogues, so it was likely that Titus could sort out the mess of fragmented temporary and backup files to construct one correct set of numbers.

Titus had both versions of the data put on line, and carried his Bell 990 around, tapping into his console through the station’s system so he could work during meetings. At the edge of despair, he cherished the idea that Connie had an untampered version of the data, and the Tourists might have kept one, too, when they took his flight bag. His life’s work was not lost, just inaccessible.

In one grazing encounter, Abbot coolly informed him that a mature luren would not be having such trouble.

After that, Titus spent a night attempting to reach a depth of the luren’s mnemonic trance he’d never reached before, but the numerical data eluded him. Relationships, equations, functions, and useful constants were clear, but it seemed

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.