Inspection

Inspection

“You want what?” The look on Dr. Kevan Dechyn’s face was a mixture of astonishment and indignation. “Absolutely not!”

Inspector Lucienn Corai didn’t budge from her position at the foot of the steps that led up to the house’s front door. “Sir,” she repeated for what seemed to her the thousandth time that day, gazing impassively up at the stubborn professor who stood on the top step glaring down at her, “please stand aside. This team of Inspectors has reason to search this residence.”

“Will you stop saying that?” growled Dr. Dechyn. His square-cut jaw clenched in anger; his dark eyes flashed. He gestured over his shoulder at the house. “This is a private home, not a college building. You had probable cause to search the university, but this house is off-limits.”

Corai shifted the equipment pack slung over her slim shoulders and blinked a bit of dust out of one gray eye. Behind her waited the other four members of her Inspection team, gazing up at the tall, powerfully built law professor who blocked their way. “We did indeed have cause to search the university proper, ever since the publication of your Professor Nirael’s paper on the engineering potential of human retroviruses,” she explained with a patient, almost condescending air. “Our search privileges have been recently extended to encompass this house. I have the appropriate documents with me, if you need to see them. If not,” and the slightest hint of her irritation crept into her voice, “will you kindly move out of our way?”

Dr. Dechyn’s feet remained planted on the doorstep as if locked in cement. “Whatever documents you have,” he grated, gesturing fiercely, “are immaterial. The privacy of this residence is practically inviolate! It’s protected by at least six laws…” He began ticking the laws off on his fingers, glaring all the while at the head Inspector. “There’s the basic constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure, the Miranda decision back in the twentieth century, the Privacy Act of 2031, the—”

The wiry, narrowly built woman cut him off politely but firmly. “We have probable cause, sir,” she repeated, fixing him with a steady stare. “Will you please step aside?”

The law professor met her gaze with a fierce glower. “Without the express permission of the homeowner, I have it on very good authority that it’d take a Congressional search warrant to get you beyond these doors!”

“Oh really?” Corai asked with a maddeningly superior air of disinterest. “Are you aware of the fact that everything I see and hear at this moment is being broadcast directly to Congress? I’m certain that they’ll be willing to issue said warrant, if you make it necessary.”

Dr. Dechyn was about to protest when he suddenly spotted something silvery winking from under the Inspector’s short, tawny hair. She lifted a negligent finger to brush a few locks of hair away from it, letting him recognize the implanted data socket of her mind-to-computer interface. He exhaled sharply as he realized she was telling the truth; the tiny wireless computer she carried beneath the curve of her cranium could very well be sending every bit of her sensory input straight to the World Senate.

“We are hoping that won’t be necessary,” she continued, a hint of challenging threat flashing in her eye as she shook her hair back over the socket. “Of course, as you’ve said, we’d need the owner’s permission. Who, exactly, owns this house?”

Kevan Dechyn stared at her, his face a study in indignant, offended amazement. “You mean to tell me you don’t know? You’ve brought your team here to ransack her home, and you don’t even know who she is?”

“No,” said Corai, “I don’t. I was only told that my team was to search this home, as it was a highly suspect location. What is the homeowner’s name?”

“She’s the president of this university,” Kevan told her. “Dr. Zander Mistral.”



Dr. Zander Mistral was at that precise moment standing at one of the front windows of her house, next to the front door, less than ten feet from the impassioned law professor who stood arguing with the Genetic Inspectors. She gazed levelly on the scene through her clear emerald eyes, watching the drama as it unfolded on her doorstep. A hint of a smile played on her thin lips. “Ah, Kevan,” she murmured to herself, watching Dr. Dechyn as Corai’s infuriating attitude set him off again into heated debate. “Dear friend, what a job you’ve taken on. Keep talking… I still need all the time I can get.”

Behind her, someone coughed softly. She drew the curtains shut and turned from the window to face a tall rangy man with a shock of wild silver hair, a hawkish Roman nose, and gray eyes whose particular shape gave them a perpetually preoccupied expression. “Dr. Nirael,” she greeted him briskly. “How go your preparations?”

“They’ve, ah, required less, er, time than I anticipated,” Dr. Darios Nirael stammered, plucking nervously at his left shirtsleeve with his right hand. His left hand, Dr. Mistral noticed, was closed tightly around something small. “We’re actually, eh, fully prepared.” He paused, swallowing softly. “Now.”

“Excellent,” Zander told him. “You have the data module, then?”

“Er, yes.” He glanced at his hand. “All the, eh, data, is here. Other records have been, er, destroyed.” He paused, shifting his weight uneasily between his black-shod feet. “Er, Dr. Mistral… Zander… are you, um, certain you want to, eh, take this particular… risk…?”

Zander peered at him over the rims of her delicate gold-rimmed glasses, wearing a reassuring half-smile. “As certain as humanly possible,” she told him, putting confidence into her voice. “I’ll not allow your work to be destroyed.”

Darios relaxed visibly. “Thank you, er, Dr. Mistral. I’m glad we, eh, share a set of, um, ideals.”

Zander nodded. “We both value progress, of whatever kind. Anything we can discover can be used to improve the quality of human life,” she added, repeating the mantra she shared with her brilliant, reticent colleague. “Now, the information?”

Dr. Nirael nodded, opening his left hand. A tiny data module, an ellipse less than an inch long, sat in his palm. Light gleamed off its silvery surface as Dr. Mistral picked it up, brushed back the chin-length black hair above her left ear, and plugged it into a socket much like the one Dr. Dechyn had seen reflecting the sunlight through the head Inspector’s hair. Dr. Mistral’s eyes went distant for a moment as she initiated a data-dump, pouring the contents of the tiny module into the hard drive nestled against her skull. Her lips moved slightly, silently, as she reviewed the information; then she unplugged the module and pressed it back into Dr. Nirael’s hands. “Here. I have it all, and as of now you have two minutes to get all of your assistants out my back door.”

“I am, eh, alone here.” With that, he was gone.

Dr. Mistral watched him go, waiting until she heard her back door close behind him; then she went back to the window and brushed the drapes aside. Kevan Dechyn was still standing on her doorstep, refusing the Inspectors entrance.

“For the hundredth time,” he was saying defiantly, “no. Even if I were to let you in, you wouldn’t be able to get Dr. Mistral’s permission. I am certain that she is just as indignant as I am at your insistence. Besides, there’s no need to search here. Even if I was to let you in, you would find nothing at all…”

“They won’t find anything at all, will they?” Zander chuckled under her breath. “Certainly not. Ah, Kevan… what a surprise I have in store for you.”

She flicked the drapes shut and reached for the doorknob.




“Look,” Kevan Dechyn snarled, “you still need probable cause. Even with all your other assertions, you still don’t have that.”

“But we do have it,” Lucienn Corai informed him, one of her eyebrows rising slightly. “The development of genetic weapons is not something that the people of this world will allow. Almost everyone has spoken out, and done so vehemently, against this possibility. The governments, which speak for the people, have therefore appointed us to search for potentially dangerous research. Since we, as the Genetic Inspectors, have the backing of the people, I am certain that we’ll be able to get whatever governmental backing we need in order to conduct our searches.”

“I’ve heard this one,” Kevan snapped. “This is what you Inspectors,” and he spat the title like a curse, “told us before you turned the College of Law upside-down. I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again, this garbage about the backing of the people is not only untrue, but it makes you sound like Communists. You are never going to get inside this house.”

“Actually,” came a mild voice from behind him, “we may have cause to reconsider that.”

Dr. Dechyn whipped around, startled. Standing behind him in the doorway with her hand on the knob was a slight, slender woman with chin-length black hair, bright green eyes that sparkled behind their delicate gold-rimmed glasses, and a mild expression on her finely chiseled features. Her self-appointed guardian blinked at her. Corai gazed up coolly for a moment, her eyes narrowing as she called earlier information to mind; then she spoke, stumbling over the unfamiliar name’s pronunciation. “Dr… er… Miss-trell?”

“Accent on the second syllable,” snapped Dr. Dechyn. “Mee-strall. You could at least pronounce her name correctly.”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” Zander Mistral informed the Inspector with a slight tinge of amusement. She paused for a moment, a small half-smile on her face as she gazed at Dr. Dechyn; then she turned back to the five Inspectors at the foot of the steps. “May I apologize for the inconvenience and lost time? Dr. Dechyn appears to have become rather overzealous in protecting my privacy, and in doing so denied you access to the one spot in this entire college that has not borne the scathing rebuke of your searches.”

Dr. Dechyn looked simultaneously indignant and confused. In one fell swoop, the president had just insulted both him and the Inspectors he had worked so hard to keep out of her home. However, Dr. Mistral’s quiet voice, lilting with a slight hint of her British accent, had been so placating that neither affronted party responded in kind.

“If you leave now, without searching this house, there will always be doubts about this college’s integrity,” she continued. “In order for it to remain intact, I am therefore forced to permit your intrusion.” She stepped aside, gesturing into her home with a light flair just below the level of theatricality. “Ladies and gentlemen… enter.”

Corai flashed her a tight little smile and made for the door. However, before she could do anything, Kevan Dechyn stepped up to bar her way. “Dr. Mistral,” he protested, unable to stifle his outburst any longer, “this is a direct violation of numerous privacy laws! We cannot let them run roughshod—”

Dr. Mistral cut him off, quiet as ever but now with an edge to her voice and a dangerous flash in her flinty jade-colored eyes. “Kevan,” she snapped, “this is a matter of integrity. I would advise you to keep out of it. I have everything under control.”

Dechyn, startled by the response of his superior, gave in and stepped aside to let the Inspectors into the home.

They flowed past Dechyn, heading inside. Zander Mistral brought up the rear. Just as she passed Dr. Dechyn, she looked at him and spoke softly.

“I understand your concerns, but… they’ll find nothing.” Her emerald eyes twinkled with forgiveness, camaraderie, and something he might have called mischief had he not been quite so assured of the president’s dignity. “Of course. There’s nothing to find.”

She clapped the astonished Dechyn on the back and vanished into the building.




The Inspectors, she discovered, were doing their title justice. They had unpacked their equipment satchels in the front hall; already, one of the five was meticulously combing the room with a handheld bio-scanner, while another stood reading off the results as they popped up on his computer’s display. He glanced up as Dr. Mistral entered, giving her a brief glance through the semitransparent projected display, then went back to work.

Dr. Mistral moved among the Inspectors as they scrutinized the entry hall, glancing over their shoulders, investigating the readouts from their instruments with the ease of a longtime laboratory specialist. So far, it was as she expected: they had found nothing. The finest of their gene detectors found nothing but human residue—except for the ones that picked up traces of housecat or termite or moth—and even their reconstructions of DNA fragments from decades-dead organisms proved innocuous. Of course, this was only the entryway. Only the beginning…

They worked their way through the residence’s airy rooms, furnished with a tastefully modern minimum of furniture under large windows that bathed the house in golden sunlight. As they moved into her study, Dr. Mistral installed herself in a magnetically suspended executive hoverchair and leaned back to watch them work. They sifted through the datatab documents on her desk, carefully reading each one, scanning it for mentions of retroviral research. Her personal computer was powered up and two inspectors were detailed to comb its memory, sifting through layers and layers of projected hovering holo-screens in search of anything incriminating. All the while, she watched them work, eyes moving mildly over the proceedings, leaving the chair only when her clearance was necessary to pass security checks on any of her computers.

When they moved into the halls, she abandoned the hoverchair and walked among them, occasionally glancing over their shoulders to read scanner readouts. When they got to the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of iced tea and watched them from the breakfast alcove; when one of them approached her for access to a coded datatab found in a kitchen drawer, she hospitably offered him a drink. He refused, politely but firmly.

“Madam—”

“Dr. Mistral, please.” She sat back and sipped her drink, eyeing him over the tumbler’s rim. His nametag, she noted, read Mikhel Aguillen.

“Dr. Mistral, I need access to the datatab. If you’ll please decrypt it for us…”

Zander set down her glass and held out a hand. “If I may?”

He handed her the datatab. She eyed the postage-stamp-sized storage device for a moment, then plugged it into her implant socket and sent it a decryption key and a timer. “There,” she said, removing and handing it back to him. “It will recode itself after five minutes, but until then you are free to study it. I’d recommend that we start reading it.”

“We?”

“That datatab holds my copy of Saerolunia’s remaining data on retroviral engineering. I imagine you’d like me to go over it with you.”

Aguillen blinked, his eyebrows rising. “Why… definitely.”

She led him to the kitchen table, moved a DNA scanner out of the way, ignoring the fact that it was in use, and slid the tab into a reader/projector. Several screens of projected information popped up into the air. Zander strapped a locator band to the back of her hand and started maneuvering through the screens.

The first one she brought up had green-and-gold margins, with the triple-helix DNA symbol for Sylvana University of Cryosanth as a header. Dr. Mistral glanced sideways at the inspector, wearing her amused half-smile. “This is all the data we have on retroviral engineering as Sylvana professors see it.” The page was blank. “As you can see, they never delved into the subject at all.” She made a small flicking motion with her hand and the page darted out of the way, moving on to a different one with white-and-copper edging. “And here we have Outer Rim University, of Torlith. One scientist published one paper on potential retroviral-engineering targets, but it never went farther. You’ll see much the same thing on the next screen.”

She flicked Outer Rim University’s page to one side and brought to the front a page with blue-and-silver edging and a stylized lithium atom for a header. “I daresay this is what you were looking for,” she said, not removing her matter-of-fact gaze from the sub-header: Saerolunia University.

Aguillen nodded wordlessly.

Dr. Mistral continued. “As I said, our progress was much the same as that of Outer Rim University: one scientist, one paper, all research on potential only. We never intended to go farther, not even before all this uproar.”

Mikhel Aguillen, reading the data beneath the atom symbol, nodded. What the professor had said was correct. He found it odd that the university had no further data, no studies… but, of course, he thought, we removed Dr. Nirael’s work when we swept through his office. Their cross-referencing databases will have removed it elsewhere by now. He looked up to the president’s face. “Is this all?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

He thanked her and stood up. At that precise moment, the display flickered and all of the screens promptly vanished. Zander eyed it. “It recoded,” she said unnecessarily to no one in particular as she took the datatab out of the slot and pocketed it. Aguillen left the table; Dr. Mistral sat for a moment longer before another inspector brandishing a handheld scanner asked to run over the chair. She obliged him by standing up. When it seemed that he would take longer than she’d expected, she wandered from the room and spent a few moments cleaning up in her study.

Just as she finished filing a pile of datatabs, Kevan Dechyn stormed in, his obsidian eyes smoldering. “Dr. Mistral.”

The tone in his voice made Zander whip about. “Dr. Dechyn? What is it?”

“I am afraid I cannot condone this. If this was your idea… I… You are endangering university privileges—your own privacy—I cannot allow—”

“Kevan!” She stood, pressing her hands to the desk as she leaned forwards. “Calm down. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dechyn blinked at her. “You don’t?”

The worry in her voice was genuine. “I don’t. Will you tell me?”

“They want a scan of your onboard computer. A complete readout.”

“They what?” One of her hands flew to the tiny socket just behind her left ear; she paled visibly. “You’re right this time. That’s too much.”

At that precise moment, Lucienn Corai and two of her personnel, carrying computer cables and scanners, entered the study. A smile spread across the lead Inspector’s face. “Ah, Dr. Mistral. You’ll be pleased, no doubt, to know that we’ve finished going through your house. We’ve found nothing so far, and I think there’s just one place left to look.” She tapped the side of her head. “Your onboard computer. We’re ready to commence scanning—”

“Then get unready,” said Dr. Mistral, voicing the cut-off as mildly as before, but with a gaze of flint-edged ice. “Let me be the first to apologize, but that’s one scan you’ll never take.”

Corai remained unfazed. “I consider it necessary.”

“It is completely unnecessary. I would be indignant, no matter what, at your insistence to scan… Do you really realize what you’re asking?”

“I fully realize that such a scan could be tailored to read off your conscious thoughts. We won’t be doing that.”

Dr. Mistral peered at the inspector over the rims of her glasses. “You wouldn’t have a choice,” she said, her voice edged almost imperceptibly. “My grafts run on the Psyche interface, Mark Three. Have you any idea what that means? These computers are bonded closely enough to my conscious mind that they might be said to run on broadband… constant input, constant output. To scan these computers you would have to download my conscious thoughts along with all the other enciphered data.

“Then, in decoding the information, you would be getting deep inside my head, and that,” she snapped, “is the place common courtesy, common sense, ethics, and at least eighteen laws prevent you from going.”

Corai took a step back at this sudden intensity, blinking rapidly. “My apologies,” she said formally, her voice stiff with an effort to hide her dismay. “I’m afraid I don’t know quite enough about these interfaces.”

“Clearly.” Though still soft, Zander Mistral’s voice was an Arctic winter. “You say you are finished here?”

“Yes.”

“Then, if you have any sense, you will remove every member of your personnel from this campus. You have overstepped your bounds.”

The inspectors nodded smartly and disappeared.

In less than ten minutes, every inspector had vanished from Zander’s home. She stood again at her upper window, watching as their hovering vehicles zipped away. As the last one left her field of vision, she gave a quiet breathy sigh and sank backwards into the executive chair that accepted her with a soft mag-suspensor whirr. Spinning the chair on its midair bearings, she turned to face the two people who had slipped in to sit behind her, in the two guest-chairs that faced her desk. “That,” she informed them, looking relieved and more than a little strained, “was too close.”

Kevan Dechyn blinked. “Too close to what?”

Zander removed her eyes from Darios Nirael’s drawn face long enough to study Dechyn as if seeing him for the first time. “Ah, Kevan… I owe you an explanation. But first, let me finish what I’ve started.”

Wordlessly, Dr. Nirael leaned forward and handed her a small empty data module. She plugged it into her socket and reversed an earlier data-dump, pouring information back from her onboard hard-drive into the module. When the dump finished, she removed the tiny storage device and spent a moment gazing at it where it lay, small and silver and cool in her open palm.

“Dr. Dechyn,” she said, not removing her gaze from the device, “in this module now lies all of Saerolunia University’s information on retroviral engineering. We have plans for potential useful applications. Viral bio-engineers, nanoscale biomachinery, even…” She paused. “Genetic warfare.

“We have saved copies of Dr. Nirael’s lab reports, as well as information and breakthroughs entered by the seven other scientists hard at work on the project. We have saved genomic locations for every known retrovirus in human DNA, cross-referenced with how they might be engineered.

“As well you knew when you tried to keep the inspectors out of my residence, initially it was stored here, in my home, in hopes that when the inspectors came, they would have the sense to leave this residence alone. When it was discovered that they did not, I whipped up a plan to let them search but still keep the data out of their hands. Dr. Nirael and I decided that all of the retroviral research would be reduced to pure data form, and that this data would be stored in the one place they could not look: the internal hard drive of my computer implants.”

Dechyn let out a low whistle. “Ingenious,” he said admiringly. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

“I needed you to buy us time. Your speeches on my front step had to be impassioned and believable,” and she smiled, “which they were… and thus I could not afford to tell you.”

Dechyn only nodded. A long silence followed.

Zander broke it as she pressed the input/output module into Nirael’s hands. “Here. You can take this back to the Microbiology Department now. Tell them the danger has passed, and their research may continue.” Nirael nodded, grinning, and vanished; after a moment, Dechyn begged leave and left for the college’s administration complex.

Dr. Zander Mistral watched them go. “And thus it ends,” she murmured to herself, but then she paused and revised, her eyes glittering.

“Or, should I say, continues…”





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