Planning and Conferring

Scorpius 24, m0039, continued

While Florence is in the gym and Vajra is monitoring the Web and running some diagnostics on his own systems, Jianwei books a slot on the embassy diary to speak to the ambassador - and soon gets a call back on that.

"Oh, yes - you've been having an interesting time again, haven't you?"

Jianwei summarises recent events from his point of view, leading to his conclusion that there may be another TSA operation here, although it seems to have different objectives.

"Or perhaps it's two sides of the same coin," Schmidt murmurs.

In any event, some of these problems seem to have a similar source to the Nova Iquitos incident, so Jianwei requests another meeting with "Mr Grey", for a specialist assessment and guidance as to next steps. Ambassador Schmidt agrees to put in a request, although she notes that she herself doesn't know who "Mr Grey" is - she assumes that this is simply a place-holder on-line identity for whoever happens to be the ranking E.U. intelligence officer within half a light-second or so of Mars.

While that goes through, the team hear that the Nix Olympica emergency services unit has announced a press conference regarding the crash, and Jianwei and Vajra head along to observe this in person. (The team feels that Florence would attract too much attention, and anyway, she's still working up a sweat in the gym.) Many of the attendees are humaniform or "camera tripod" cybershells, but the event proves moderately interesting anyway, even given the amount of stonewalling from the clearly still uncertain authorities. The team note a lot of provocative questions that seem designed to reinforce those "uncertainty about current power structures" memetics, although it's only when reviewing recordings afterwards that they decide that a lot of the critical challenges seem to have come from a software agent representing the "Xanthe-Zhigansk News" agency. (Zhigansk is an independent Russian community in the Xanthe region, with lax enough government and regulation to make it a good location for anyone looking to set up a puppet news operation with obscure ownership.)

After the conference ends, Jianwei and Vajra leave the room - and after a few meters, Kai Ssung-So falls into step with them, and asks how the press conference went. Jianwei is guarded, but Ssung-So drops hints about people wanting to know who might have been behind a dual-cause accident. Evidently, the Triads are still investigating the incident.

As they arrive back at their hotel, Ambassador Schmidt calls and arranges a VR conference. Florence arrives from the hotel's pool in a thick robe, her fur still wet, and joins the others in Jianwei's room. Mr Grey is present when they enter the embassy's encrypted conference space, and reviews the situation again. One possibility he acknowledges, which had crossed the team's minds, is to leak more or less everything to the Triads, in hope that they will trace and deal with Quipu - they have more resources than most other people, after all, and enough incentive. However, no one is happy with the long-term implications of such a move. Ethics aside - and the conflict might get bloody - if it subsequently became publicly known that the E.U. diplomatic service was either colluding with the Triads, or using them to do their dirty work, anyone known to have been involved could be in legal and disciplinary trouble - and such things have a bad habit of coming out sooner or later, and the ambassador comments that she for one plans to have a very long career in the service.

However, Mr Grey can provide something practical and useful; a specialised firewall utility for Vajra to run on his system, developed by E.U. programmers on Earth. If the TSA have "basilisk" triggers that cause Vajra to shut down, they appear to take the form of moderate-sized binary files; this utility will watch Vajra's input channels for anomalous unexplained digital blocks addressed to him, and quarantine and document them. That aside, Mr Grey supports the team's conclusion about their best option at this point; keep their heads down and their ears open. He will handle any decisions about releasing information to the SIA, and possibly also to the Chinese - although the latter at least might result in leaks to the Triads, which might generate the sort of messes that the E.U. currently wants to avoid.

Once the conference ends, Florence heads back to her room to dry off, and the other two settle down to routine work, such as arranging anonymous travel bookings for Giovanna D'Aquila, so she can get on with her life and holiday without too much hassle from the press or their ilk. Then a call comes in from Captain Brooks-Carter, who has a favour to ask. As the investigation into the crash continues, the investigators need some specialised forensics checks run at the crash site - the first groups on the site were focussed on rescue and medical aid and conventional accident investigation, and criminal enquiries have different needs. An automated forensics package can handle this, but, the whole business is now becoming increasingly difficult and political; it would really be helpful if that package could be delivered and supervised by someone who is seen as reasonably neutral. The E.U. team may actually be as close as anyone gets to meeting that specification currently on the mountain.

In fact, it looks as though this assignment could actually usefully be combined with another trip to the outlying medical facility, to escort the other two E.U. citizens back to the resort - they're up and about now, and comfortable with the idea. So the team takes the job. But that will be for tomorrow; driving in daylight is generally considered safer, and the forensic task can wait that long. For now, Vajra continues to suck in data, Jianwei goes looking for a good Chinese restaurant, and Florence heads to the University area, reckoning that a bar full of postgraduates might come the closest to being interesting that she'll find in this place.