Shifting Sands

March 8, m0039, continued

Aunty loads up a forensics skill set program, and under her direction, Jianwei begins carefully examining the snakebot, as the various AIs present scan the Web for relevant information. It's a pretty standard design; technically, some components may be covered by patents, but fabricator blueprints for things like this are easily available on sources such as the TSA Web. (In fact, Dougal finds what may well be the blueprints for this exact design on a grey-area site, despite Florence's attempts to tell him that he shouldn't look in such places.) The head section has been pretty much completely destroyed; the brain chip was evidently a standard-over-the-counter unit, but has been fried too thoroughly for any sort of identifying code to be recovered, let alone any software. The snake had quasi-realistic fangs, and by borrowing some analysis equipment from Dr Liang, the party concludes that it was probably loaded up with some kind of synthetic drug or toxin for use in combat; it also had small tanks further back along the body, which could have held the bacteriological cultures that ended up in the module's water supply. This, it's clear, was definitely the sabotage agent here. The motors, moving parts, and body shell look to have been constructed and assembled in a minifac, and the blueprints used prevented it from including any sort of serial numbers or ID codes.


The Europeans decide that this was most likely an attempt to delay Dr Liang, rather than being aimed at them; while it's just possible that the snakebot was inserted on the road train after Quentin booked them onto it, the timescales involved were tight, and the attack method was very poorly chosen if they were the intended victims. But if Harvey and Dr Liang had been the only people on board, and had fallen ill, Sundance would have turned back to a different human community. As yet, though, they can't say with any certainty why anyone would have done this; Dr Liang has no idea - she's just an academic planetologist. Harvey comments that he picked the passenger module up at Heze, a Chinese community which is large enough to have rental minifac facilities available.


In any event, given that the plan was most likely to cause a delay, the party decide to move on as soon as they've finished checking the road train for other sabotage attempts as best they can. (They don't find any, although that's only a moderate reassurance, given that they don't have professional-grade search gear, and state-of-the-art sabotage techniques can be very easy to hide.) Harvey says that he can increase the speed of travel a bit if anyone thinks that it's a good way to get back at the people who poisoned him, but the time that's been lost or that might be regained is pretty trivial compared to the length of the journey in total, so the group decides not to take the small risk involved. Still, they retire to sleep as Sundance drives on through the night.

March 9, m0039

The next morning, after an uneventful night, the group goes over the details of the road train's schedule with Harvey some more. Given the arrangements at the rental company depot at Heze, it wouldn't have been too hard for anyone to identify this as the module he'd be using, or for the snakebot to get aboard. He's carrying some goods and supplies for Nova Iquitos - passengers aside, this is a pretty routine run for him... No one can see much more to chase up at this point. The Europeans do wonder who might benefit from falsification of good results from the oasis tests; it would make the Peruvian scientists look good, or at least lucky, of course, and by the time their work proved less useful than this implied, the benefits might have been harvested. But is all this enough to justify fraud and murder? Jianwei also looks at the bodies sponsoring Dr Liang's trip, and checks some background; while they're mostly international academic bodies and journals, he's somewhat puzzled to note that there may be more American influence involved than he might have expected.

The road train reaches Nova Iquitos around midday. The mobile station consists of a set of movable living and laboratory modules, arranged in a loose ring a few hundred yards from one of a cluster of ecological oases. The current inhabitants are the core staff only - as Tiberius can attest, the place sometimes has other temporary staff, usually visiting academics, but for now there are just four people present: Dr Maria Coronado, the station director, Saul Fedirici, the assistant director in charge of research (i.e. the one in charge of actually doing science), Dinah de Carneiro, the systems controller (responsible for running the scientific systems from day to day), and Kobo Tezuka, the chief technical officer (i.e. the hardware maintenance specialist). In addition, anyone spending time on the station will end up making the acquaintance of Burbuja, a management LAI running on its local network. Tiberius remembers Coronado and Fedirici (and Burbuja) from his previous time on the station; de Carneiro and Tezuka are new, as other staff have rotated out in the last year. He himself hasn't been replaced; admittedly, one small station has limited use for a fully trained doctor, especially given the sort of software assistance available to anyone in a medical emergency - he spent a lot of his time previously assisting with biological research and being there as a reassurance for visitors.

Coronado greets the newcomers warmly - she and Fedirici seem genuinely pleased to see Tiberius again, and any cultural prejudices notwithstanding, seem to be prepared to treat a ghost as a person, and the same person as they previously knew. Tiberius recalls her as a brisk, businesslike character, but she's apparently in an outgoing mood today, happy to invite all the visitors (including Liang and Harvey) to lunch. Still, it's Fedirici who perhaps ends up doing the most talking over the meal; Tiberius remembers him as a charismatic character who always tended to act as the research team's spokesman and guide for visitors.

On the European side, Jianwei takes the lead as usual, and is quite open about the reason for the visit, explaining that Tiberius's death wasn't an accident but apparently involved a deliberate attack. The Peruvians appear genuinely shocked at this, and profess themselves anxious to help with the investigation. Nor do they seem too hostile to Dr Liang, although the fact that she's undeniably here to check up on their work could make for social difficulties. During and after lunch, the conversation breaks up into smaller groups; for example, Vajra falls into conversation with de Carneiro, who is an asex; Vajra feels a kinship with the disavowal of human passions that this suggests. However, Jianwei for one senses that de Carneiro isn't entirely lacking in emotional issues; there's a slight sense of irritation directed towards Fedirici, who maybe gets the lion's share of credit for the research work being conducted at the station, simply because he talks about it best.

Meanwhile, Harvey heads out once more on his way after unhitching the rented accommodation module, which is soon linked up to the station's power supply, and Dr Liang begins setting up her equipment. As the others talk to the locals, Florence becomes bored and decides to take a walk and a look around the local scenery. Inevitably with her,  this involves climbing some of the local rock formations, which she manages with ease, thus gaining a good view of the whole area.

It's from this position that she notices something odd - perhaps it's just a trick of the light, but there seems to be a sense of movement on the relatively smooth surface of the nearby oasis area. She continues watching for a while, and records what she can with the integral cameras in her night vision glasses, then calls the others. Vajra analyses her recordings, and tentatively agrees with her assessment; there are subtle shifts in tone or texture, likely only visible from above and from a distance. As soon as they can, the other three Europeans get away from the station buildings and head for the oasis, while Florence climbs down and extends her "stroll" towards the next nearest such site - a few miles away, but easy enough to reach.

There's not a lot to see at the nearest oasis, but now that they know what to look for, the newcomers provisionally confirm the impression yet further - there's maybe something under the sand, operating over a wide area - probably a cyberswarm. Vajra drops a surveillance crawler swarm and sets it watching, while the teams' AIs load tracking skill sets. With these, they pick up signs of something maybe having surfaced just outside the area of the ecological test; following the trail, they decide that some specific substance is being extracted from the oasis and dumped just out of sight of it. They collect samples as best they can, and head back towards Nova Iquitos.

On their way, a figure comes in sight coming the other way; it's Dr Liang. She's interested and concerned to hear what they have to say; all this is beginning to look like a bad case of academic chicanery, which isn't something that she expects or likes to see. She's also puzzled by another matter. She's received a message through private communication channels that she thinks must have come from one of her sponsoring bodies, but which is unclear - it lacks headers or signature. What it says, though, is that she can probably trust Tiberius.

Which bemuses Tiberius and the other Europeans as much as it does her. But anyway, they hand off some of the samples they've collected; she has the best scientific kit here, after all. She runs a quick analysis, and confirms their suspicions; these look like extra nutrients for the bacterial/fungal cultures in the oasis. Again, this looks like a fraud being hastily removed from view; given that she hasn't been hurrying to set up her tests, she might well have missed this material, even if she hadn't been delayed by the poisoning on the road train.

Meanwhile, Florence reports by radio from the second oasis; she isn't sure, but she doesn't think that there are any strange soil movements here. Presumably, the clearance is being conducted first at the place where Dr Liang could be expected to look first. And Vajra continues to run some subtle surveillance at the first oasis, while the party wonders if they could somehow locate, say, the clean-up swarm's power supply - probably a buried power pack somewhere.