CHAPTER 19
“When can I see you?” he asked Madani.
“Oh, you just want to see me, do you?” she responded through her wearable. Konami imagined her eyelashes batting. “What do you want to see me for?”
“I want—” Damn, but the way she flirted turned him on, even while it made him blush and lower his voice. “I want you to show me around the Repro lab.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
He coughed as some saliva went down his air passageway. A text alert came up. Konami caught his breath. “I gotta go, Ilsa. I want to see — I want you.” Weak.
“You’ll have me, Cy. Soon.” She ended the call and Konami stepped into the passageway.
Mattoso stood at the junction of the passageway, leaning against the bulkhead. “So he’s in?” Konami asked her, his voice low.
“Oh I’m in,” answered Wren, stepping out from around the corner. “Nothing better to do. And besides, someone killed Theo. I wanna help you find that hijo de puta.”
Mattoso chuckled. Wren’s exuberance reminded Konami of the youth of Lagos, and gave him a distinct feeling of nostalgia — which didn’t make much sense at all, since the data technician was born and raised Aotean. He was probably one of the oldest ‘natives,’ as those youngsters born on Aotea called themselves, onboard. It was possible he had never stood in natural gravity — Konami recalled someone telling him that, before departure, Aoteans were strongly encouraged not to leave the ship. Like most that were born onboard the colony ship, this meant his parents probably went through the genebank lottery — they would have been selected randomly from the Aotean couples who were interested in a child, and his genes would similarly have been selected randomly from the hundreds of thousands gene samples provided by applicants who just barely missed the final cut of crew selection for Aotea.
“So how do I help?”
Konami started to explain his problem with the roving watches.
Wren snorted. “You kidding?”
“It’s not an easy problem, I think you’ll find. With the number of temporary constable deputies assigned, about 50 rovers at a time should work. But the lower levels of the Cans are like a maze — every passageway needs to have coverage about once every hour or two, and that includes lockout spaces, trunks, and—” Konami went on for a full minute about the logistical difficulties.
“Done,” said Wren, grinning.
“What?”
“It’s done. Well, it will be in a few minutes. DustBots already do this — it’s built into their programming.” He projected onto the bulkhead. “They work together to cover the whole ship, for cleaning. I just modified a DustBot roving plan — changed the roving speed to 5 kph, the coverage parameter to ‘entire ship’, the sweep-size to line-of-sight, and the number of rovers to fifty.”
“But we don’t know how fast—”
“Oh don’t worry. I’m already running simulations — a tough cleaning spot for a bot might be like something interesting a rover sees and wants to look more closely at — we’ll see what areas don’t get enough coverage. I’ll have a few million sims done in a half-hour or so.”
“Huh,” grunted Konami. Just like in Lagos, the youths onboard Aotea could apparently still leave him confused and speechless. He’d have to praise Mattoso for her instincts later. “Thanks, Third.”
“So how do we find the killer?” asked the young data technician.
Konami led them from the passageway into his office. “Bea?”
She told them that they wanted to know more about the NetBut Tracer run by Muahe.
“I’d guess he was just trying to get ahead,” said Wren. “I mean, it wasn’t due for more than a quarter-cycle, I think. That’s early, but maybe he was bored. He was weird that way.”
“We don’t want to guess,” added Mattoso. “We want to know the real reason.”
Wren snorted. “Well how should I know? Maybe he made a note in his personal logs or something, but private logs are restricted—” The young Third’s eyes went wide for a moment. “Wait. The logs… you guys want me to…”
Konami waited, but he didn’t finish his sentence. “Yes, we want to see those logs.”
The data technician furrowed his brow, somehow looking even younger. “We’re going to need to schedule that with the master tech, then. Maybe the director, too. It’ll take a lot of bandwidth to get in.”
Konami was confused. “Bandwidth? Can’t you just guess the password?”
Wren’s laughter was high pitched and girlish. “Are you kidding? Theo’s a DT. Not just a DT, but the best DT onboard. You think he has a password that a person could just guess?”
Mattoso stroked her chin and nodded. “So the bandwidth is for a brute-force hack,” she added.
“Right. Guess the password, with a gigawhale of guesses per second,” he said, recognizing Konami’s confusion. “Uses up a ton of bandwidth. That’s the only way. Private logs are supposed to stay private. No back door and no data-net trawling. Hell, you can’t even delete private logs without logging in — they go straight to the solid-state drives!” He began tutting his fingers in the air. “So do you want me to send in a request—”
“No!” Konami almost shouted, worried at the speed at which Wren operated his wearables. “No request. This needs to be…”
“…discreet,” finished Mattoso. Konami nodded his thanks.
“Right, discreet,” said Konami. “If we’re not discreet, and the wrong person knows, then those logs could disappear forever — wiped from the drives before we take a look. That’s why we came to you personally, Third, and not to Master Tech Lopez, or anyone else.”
Wren scratched his head and played with his hands for a half-minute. When he spoke, his voice was softer, and pitched higher. “So that means, you think — well, you’re worried that the Master Tech might be... the killer.”
“We have no idea who the killer is,” Konami replied. “We’re pretty sure it’s not me, and it’s not Lieutenant Mattoso, and it’s not you. We need you to think, Third. How can we look at Muahe’s logs? Discreetly?”
“It’s the bandwidth that’s the problem,” responded the Third, his voice a little stronger than before. “If we can get thirty percent spared, we could get into the logs in less than a day, I bet. Maybe hours. But there’s no way we could get a spike that big, or even close to that big, without someone noticing. The data tech on watch will probably notice anything bigger than zero point one percent or so, especially if it’s ongoing. At point one percent, it could take weeks to get in. Maybe more.”
Shit. Konami only half-way followed as Wren expounded on the details.
“Could there be some way to mask it?” asked Mattoso. “Some way to make it look like it was just maintenance?”
The data technician shook his head vigorously, then stopped. “We can’t mask it, but maybe we could time it right.” His fingers danced again. “DT2 Kunayak. He’s lazy as shit. And he’s a big gamer. We could boost it up for his watch — it’ll be about once, for six hours, every day or two. I bet we could get away with one percent or so. Maybe a couple decimals more. If he notices, I think he’ll call me first — it’ll come from my account, and I’ll just tell him to shut up about it ’cause I’m gaming. I don’t think he’ll rat me out… he’ll want me to do him the same favor. Man, with a whole percent of bandwidth, we could game smooth…”
Konami looked at Mattoso, but she just shrugged her shoulders. “How long will it take?” asked Mattoso.
“With a percent? I’ll do the calc later, but I’d guess a few days of computational time. Maybe more, or less if we’re lucky.”
Damn. Konami did some quick math on his wearable — that could still be ten watches at least — it could take weeks for DT2 Kunayak to stand ten watches. But they’d run it at the lower rate for the rest of the time, so hopefully a lot sooner.
“Alright Third. When can you set it up?”
The young man fiddled in the air again. “It’ll be ready by tomorrow when Kunayak takes the watch.”
Konami wished him luck and Wren left.
“So we have an ally…” he said to Mattoso.
“Three against a killer,” she responded. “We have the odds.”
He shook his head, pursing his lips. “I don’t think we’re facing just one.”