Helia Sarina pilots the Third Eye in to a perfect landing at the University starport. As soon as they arrive, the ship is put into full ready status, needing only to be powered up to leave immediately. Right after doing that, Mich plugs in his new power units to the jump drive circuits, making them switchable with the zuchai crystal array.
One of Vonish's first moves on landing at the sector
capital is to pick up the latest updates to Imperial
bureaucratic procedures, with commentaries.
Ed and Misha will switch off acting as bodyguard
for Mich.
The Marquis' report focusses mainly on the fact that Digitis is a planet with no native psionics -- none -- either animal, human, or non-human. There is a non-human race whose age are reported in the thousands of years, and whose society stretches back almost a third of a million years, although communication is rather... strained.
The Marquis then sets up for Mich the passages in his book that describe the Zhodani devices for detecting psionics. Mich notices a couple of interesting things. First, the Marquis is actually ahead of the Zhodani in this field -- the evil mind-sucking Joes' approaches have some drawbacks that the noble has avoided altogether. There are some detail improvements he could incorporate, though. Also, it's finally spelled out for Mich what the Marquis has actually been doing, and Mich can use this information to build a better shield.
Sagan's report to the hiver homeworld also includes information on the other race on Gorram that actually managed to give hir a headache...
Marquis Marc and Misha go to deliver the report.
First of all, Misha scopes out the layout: there's a waiting room, with
a glass wall between it and the secretary's area where the pigeonholes
are. The pattern is that people come in, wait for some period between
5 minutes and half an hour; sometime between half an hour and an hour the
person waiting will either have seen the person they wanted, or given up
and left. No-one seems to be waiting longer than an hour, but there's
a steady stream of different people moving through. The secretary
does not watch the waiting room, only looking up when someone enters her
room; this means that Misha could probably watch all day without being
noticed as unusual.
So Marquis Marc drops his report off at the pigeonhole.
Misha is already in the waiting room, and intends to stay there until he
sees someone pick it up. The Marquis then goes to his office and
starts researching the original settlers of Digitis,
their society, their religion, and so on. Aside from the immediate
answers, he also sets up some pending queries that will report back to
him on the ship.
The Marquis maintains a fairly luxurious penthouse
apartment on Mora,
three blocks from the UoM Department of Parapsychology. It has three
bedrooms, large living room, formal dining room. It's funded by his
estates on his homeworld. Even so, he returns to his ship.
His research backs up the story of the people of
the cities of Digitis.
It was settled by a group that left from Vilis.
Vilis was
settled from the Sword
Worlds; this group disliked the government structure that was emerging
on Vilis,
and left there too. The ships left Vilis
as had been described by the city dwellers, and there is not much information
after that. There is, however, no record of an indigenous population
on Digitis.
A simple query on the psionic percentages of Vilis
reveals it is Imperial normal. There is no evidence that there was
any selection factor for the Digitis
colonists other than their dislike for the government. There was
not a religious factor.
|
(Referee and Shark's player only) |
Ed "Shark" Teeth returns to the Third Eye,
and immediately seeks out Robert Morris in private. "Robert," he
says, "You know approximately who I used to work for? You know what
my job in the past was?"
Robert nods.
"People who are to me what I am to the general populace
are interested in what you're researching. Languages in particular.
So if you do that, you can do two things: you can succeed, and get too
much interest drawn upon yourself; or they can come in and talk to you
and they might not be very polite. You should consider that and its
effect on the rest of the crew."
Robert contemplates this briefly. It will
slow him down a bit, but shouldn't affect his work too much. At first
his plan is to spread his requests around, coming from various scattered
sources. Then he realizes that it's more complex than that -- he's
going to have to make it look like there were no requests, and cover up
every single request immediately as it's happening. Nevertheless
his approach is working -- slowly, but it is working.
Meanwhile, after waiting about three hours, Misha
observes someone arrive to collect the Marquis' report. It's a man,
sunglasses, blond hair, dark suit. He walks past the secretary, takes
the stuff from the box, slips it inside his suit jacket, and walks out.
The secretary does not even look at him.
Misha slips his head into the secretary's office,
and asks, "Was that Professor Crestworthy?".
"No," she replies, offering no other information.
Her expression leaves no room for other questions.
Misha thanks her, then leaves. He starts tailing
the man.
Much to his surprise, Misha has no trouble following
him. Even when he takes a cab, Misha is able to hail another right
away and tell the cabbie to follow. The cab stops at an outlying
faculty building of the University of Mora. The building is the Department
of Horticultural Fertilizer. From the outside it appears that the
department is thoroughly under-funded.
Misha follows him into the building, in time to
see him step into an elevator. Noticing that there is no way to tell
from the outside where the elevator is going, Misha slips into the lift
with him. The elevator goes down from this floor to the basement,
and the door opens.
In front of the two occupants is a fairly dark receptionist
area. The man walks past the receptionist and quickly steps through
a door, closing it behind him.
Misha walks over to the receptionist and says, "I'm
here to see Professor Brown."
"There's no Professor Brown here. I think
you probably want another floor. Try the receptionist up at street
level."
Misha thanks her and leaves.
Up on the street level, there is a directory showing
what offices are on what levels; the basement is not mentioned. Misha
finds a convenient place to sit outside where he can watch the door.
The building probably has multiple exits, like a service entrance at the
back, but this is the most likely one.
It's early mid afternoon. Misha calls Robert
and asks him to look up the Department of Horticultural Fertilizer, and
find out who owns the basement, or has offices in the basement.
Robert brings up the information quickly, and tells
Misha that the entire building is owned by the DoHF, and there are no offices
in the basement. There is a basement, but no offices there.
All the mail to that building is addressed to people who have offices on
the first floor or above. Likewise all communication billing only
happens above the basement. The pattern is of an under-funded slow
faculty.
Based on this, Misha decides to wait and watch.
Robert continues looking into this on his own. He finds some references which lead into a really high security and very well monitored facility. He thinks there might be useful information in there, but can't access it without being detected. He could get the information, but someone would be on the trail immediately. The level of monitoring and security would probably even trace back through highly indirect accesses. Someone there is really serious -- this is a level Robert hasn't even seen from the Imperial Navy.
Before he leaves the building behind, Misha checks
around for alternate means of entry. The only access to the basement
he's found so far are the elevator and the stairs. There is no direct
external entrance to the basement. The first floor is open around
the clock, apparently, with a receptionist on duty at all times.
It's not unusual for University facilities on the Domain
capital world to be staffed at all times. The only other entrance
would seem to be a loading dock in the rear.
Misha calls Robert. The latter confirms that
the building plans show only an elevator and a freight elevator going to
the basement. The stairs do not go down from the street level.
The freight elevator goes into the loading dock area in the back.
Misha takes a look at the loading dock. It
looks like security is non-existent back there -- if he walked in with
confidence, he thinks, it's unlikely anyone would question him.
Misha walks into the loading dock, past the poker
game, and takes the freight elevator down. There is one button marked
for the basement, and it apparently has no security built in.
The door opens to reveal a freight receiving area.
There's dim lighting, and no-one here. The only doors are large double
doors, which are locked.
They start out locked, anyway, as Misha easily opens
them.
On the other side is a receptionist at a desk.
He's a man, apparently in his late 20's. He's dressed in a dark suit
-- probably the same tailor as the guy who picked up the package.
His hands stay below the desk. "Good evening," he says.
Misha says, "I have a delivery for Professor Brown."
"You can leave it outside."
"OK, thank you." Misha walks back out.
He decides he's had enough excitement for the evening,
and goes back to the ship. On the way back, he sees enough of the
nightlife of Mora to have a very good idea how it works.
Back at the ship, Misha leaves a message for Robert. He says that the basement seems very interesting from a communications standpoint.
In the morning, about 10 am, Robert and Misha attend
breakfast at Marquis Marc's apartment. Misha confirms for him that
there is not supposed to be anyone in the basement, and both receptionists
seem "well trained."
Marc asks Misha if there is any danger in pursuing
this course of investigation.
Misha doesn't know.
Marc's next question is whether there's any benefit
to be gained by knowing who's paying his bills. Clearly the Department
of Horticultural Fertilizer is a front. For one thing, there are
no psionic plants.
Robert explains that all communications and package
deliveries indicate that there is nothing going on in the basement.
The upstairs seems an above board department for, as the Marquis puts it,
"dirt-grubbers."
Marc says that if he hasn't seen anything through
the normal channels to the University, then the basement operation does
not exist to the University, and so wouldn't show up on University systems.
Robert confirms this, and adds that he's cross-checked
the standard communication systems and so on, and it all supports that
there is nothing in the basement. The plans of the basement that
are on record match what Misha saw. He suggests setting up some passive
recording equipment.
Marc then asks Robert about how his rosetta stone
research is going.
Robert replies that he believes that what he wants
is available, but it's in a fairly secured area. The area itself
is monitored extremely heavily. He can't even find out who is monitoring
it. Now they can probably get the information, but they'd have to
leave immediately afterwards. He's still working on the problem.
Marc asks if the two groups might be related, but
of course no-one can answer that with this limited information.
Back to discussing the building... Misha says that
when shifts changed, the basement receptionist did not leave with the others.
They could of course have left through the back door.
If the basement area were split up into offices,
there'd be room for maybe a dozen suites down there.
Marc suggests asking Ed if he knows any of those
people. He also asks them to invite the starfish to stay at his residence
in town.