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  To his astonishment, more infrared signatures exited the neighborhood that he’d just come in through. In a few minutes, Jamieson found himself surrounded by six people. Doing his best to disguise his voice, he thought he’d managed to sell them a story about being hired as a reporter who just wanted to get some imaging of Ell Donsaii’s home. Though they’d seemed suspicious of his story—after all it was 2 o’clock in the morning—they’d only checked his fake ID, taken his picture, and then let him go.

  All in all, though he was impressed by how quickly they’d responded to his presence on her property, they should never have let him go. Jamieson sure as hell would’ve done some intensive questioning if he’d been in charge of security! There wouldn’t have been any of that touchy-feely Mr. Nice Guy from him.

  ***

  Ell was due at D5R, so she’d gone down into the basement, exited the secret door, and changed her identity from Raquel to Ell. She’d taken the tunnel from the house she, as Raquel, shared with Shan and Zage over to “Ell Donsaii’s” farmhouse. Climbing out of the basement, she briefly said hello to Bridget, then headed out to her car to ride to work.

  In her old Ford Focus on the way to work, she checked her rearview and saw Randy’s old pickup following in the distance behind her. Allan, her AI, spoke in her ear, “The rocket approaching 61 Virginis has identified a planet in the habitable zone.”

  “Oh,” she said, thinking, “Virginis is the one with two huge planets that are within 0.7 AU, right?”

  “Yes. Actually within 0.6 AU.”

  “And the planet you found in the habitable zone? What’s its distance?”

  “1.1 AU.”

  “So,” Ell said, musingly, “a little farther from Virginis than Earth is from the sun. And Virginis is a little cooler than the sun too, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell anything yet about how thick the atmosphere is?”

  “No, but spectroscopy does show oxygen.”

  Another living world! Ell thought.

  Rather than stopping in her office, Ell headed right down to the research area at D5R. There she found Roger, but not Emma. “Rog’, you seen Emma?”

  He looked up at her, “This morning at breakfast,” he said giving Ell a wink, “but not since then. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got some news. I’ll give her a call.”

  “Hey! I like news too,” Roger said, trying to look hurt, but not carrying it off very well.

  Ell grinned at him as she turned to walk away, “Well then, find her, give me a call, and I’ll talk to both of you.”

  When Roger and Emma showed up in her office a little while later, Ell said, “Please close the door.”

  They looked at one another with a little surprise. Ell almost always kept her door open, but after that moment of disbelief Roger closed it.

  Ell gestured at the big screen on her side wall, saying, “Allan, please put up some video from BC4.”

  The video opened as the rocket descended beside the huge herbivore it’d filmed when it landed. Emma squeaked in excitement, “Another living world?!” Then, when the video showed one of the enormous flyers sailing overhead, she turned accusing eyes on Ell, “That rocket’s been there for quite a while if you have all this video! How come you didn’t tell me?”

  Ell shrugged a little uncomfortably, “I decided that I didn’t want people to find out about new living worlds until I was pretty sure they didn’t have inimical intelligent life.”

  Emma looked hurt, “Not even me?”

  Now Ell felt even more uncomfortable. “You know what they say, ‘A secret’s not a secret if two people know it.’”

  Emma looked a little stubborn, “You told me about the sigmas.”

  Ell said, “Not right away, besides, you kind of figured it out and forced my hand.” She tilted her head, “Besides, since then I’ve gone to prison trying to keep these kinds of secrets!”

  Emma looked abashed. She glanced back at the screen, then said, “BC4, is that the fourth planet of Beta Canum Venaticorum?”

  Ell nodded, feeling even guiltier because she was only telling Emma about Beta Canum when she’d just learned that there was an oxygen bearing planet around 61 Virginis.

  Roger said, “I assume from the fact you’re telling us about BC4 that you’re sure it doesn’t have any species with high level intelligence?”

  “Pretty sure, but I was hoping you guys would have a look around too before we brought the whole team in on it. I know you’re busy with Quantum Biomed, but you’re the only ones I really trust with something this touchy.”

  Emma grinned at Ell, “Well, I’m eager to have a look.” She glanced slyly at Roger, “Roger here, he’s probably too excited about the new blood oxygenator.”

  “Am not,” Roger said, giving Emma his best offended look, “I’ll be happy to give BC4 the once-over, and I won’t feel the need to make any disparaging comments about my wife before I do it.”

  “Now, now you two,” Ell said with a little laugh, “play nice. You’re starting to make me feel like a babysitter.”

  ***

  Zage’s AI, Osprey, spoke in his ear. “You have a call from Vanessa Jenkins.”

  “From Dr. Turner’s lab?!” Zage said excitedly, “Put her on… Hi Vanessa.”

  “Hi Zage, I’m calling you because Dr. Turner and I are writing up our first paper about using ports to sample the microbiota in the intestine. Since it was your idea, we think we should list you as a co-author. Would you like to be on it?”

  “Really?!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But I really didn’t do anything. Just made a suggestion.”

  “Sometimes the idea is the most important part of the paper.”

  “Sure I’d be proud to have my name on it. When are you going to start writing?”

  Vanessa suddenly felt guilty that they’d completely written a paper and it would be obvious that asking about putting his name on was an afterthought. “Um, we’ve… mostly written it already.”

  “Great! Send it to my AI so I can look at it. I’m sure I’d love to have my name on it.”

  Now Vanessa guiltily wondered whether Zage knew that all co-authors were supposed to read and approve of a paper before it went in. Turner had only this morning finally agreed to put the kid’s name on the paper before she sent it. She wondered how Turner would react if the kid expected them to hold up the submission for his approval. Mentally she shrugged, she could just put the kid’s name on and submit it. If the kid actually wanted to change something like the spelling of his name, she could send in a revision afterward. “Okay, our latest draft should be hitting your AI any moment.”

  “Um,” Zage said, “I was going to call you anyway.”

  “What about?”

  “Um, I was hoping to come spend a little more time in the lab. Do you think that’d be okay with Dr. Turner?”

  Since, the last time she’d seen him, the kid had implied that he’d learned as much as he’d hoped to learn by visiting the lab, Vanessa felt a little surprised. “I think that’d be fine, but I think I’ve already shown you pretty much all the things we do here in the lab. What were you interested in seeing?”

  “I… I was hoping to use your DNA sequencer.”

  Vanessa blinked, “To do what?”

  “Um,” he said reluctantly, “I’m wanting to search my DNA for some of the sequences from AD-36.”

  “AD-36?” Vanessa said, thinking that sounded familiar but not immediately recognizing it.

  “Human Adenovirus thirty-six. One of the obesity viruses. I know I’m shedding the virus, but I can’t figure out how it could be making me fat. I’m wanting to see if some bits of its genome got incorporated into the DNA of some of my cells. That way I could be expressing a peptide or something that makes me gain weight.” There was a pause because Vanessa was too stunned by what Zage had said to respond immediately. Responding to the awkward gap in the conversation Zage continued, sounding a little embarrassed. “I
know. I know… I sound like I only care about my own obesity. Really, I do care about other people…” Then he continued in a sadly quiet tone, “But I hate being fat. I’d really like to do something about it. If I solve it for me, I think I’ll have solved it for a lot of other people too.”

  “Uh, sure,” Vanessa said, her mind having caught up with what the boy was saying. “Your parents are okay with this?”

  “Well… I haven’t talked to my dad about it yet, but I’m sure he’ll be fine with it. I’ll get him to call you, okay?”

  “There’ll… be some costs associated with running the sequencer. You’d probably better make sure your dad knows what you’re wanting to do and is willing to pay for it?”

  “They’re spending a lot of money to send me to some fancy school. I’m pretty sure they’ll be willing to pay for this too.”

  “If they’re paying for an expensive school, they might not have that much left over. You’d better be sure you check with them!”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” The kid said, sounding a little concerned. “I’ll check, but, I think it’ll be okay.”

  Vanessa hung up, her head whirling—like it usually was after she talked to the Kinrais kid.

  An hour later Vanessa got a message from Zage on her AI. Attached, it had an edited version of the paper she and Dr. Turner had written. The kid had corrected a math error, suggested citing five additional papers, rewritten several sentences to make them clearer, and suggested another paragraph for the end of the discussion. That new paragraph concisely laid out additional work that could be undertaken with the new methods.

  Vanessa glanced towards Dr. Turner’s office as she wondered how she was going to bring this up.

  ***

  Jamieson sighed and stretched. He’d been watching the Donsaii farm from under some large bushes in the yard of one of the houses on the farm’s eastern border. It being the weekend, he’d thought surely he’d see Donsaii out walking around. He’d seen Bridget Spalding, the woman that lived with Donsaii, out jogging and working in a garden. Of course, the security team made its rounds regularly, so he saw them. But, if he hadn’t known that Donsaii lived here, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to tell it from his observations.

  He’d been under the damned bush since early in the morning and now it was a little after midnight.

  Three days and three evenings with no joy.

  Deciding once again that there was virtually no chance she’d leave the house at this hour of night, he packed his rucksack and got ready to leave. Tomorrow I’ll try the southern side of the farm, he thought. He’d started with the northern side where the road passed, then done the western side. The southern side would be his final scouting.

  By now, he certainly knew his way around the farm and he absolutely understood the security team’s routine. Even though they tried to vary when and how they made their rounds, they couldn’t help getting into some ruts.

  Jamieson had purchased some of that new port conditioned outerwear that was all the rage. A little testing had confirmed that if he blew cool air through the clothing, he became practically invisible to infrared night vision goggles. With Jamieson’s understanding of the layout of the farm and of the security team’s strategies, he felt almost certain he could make his way into the house, snatch Donsaii, and make it back out undetected. He’d need to drug her and put her in her own cooled bag while he carried her out, but Wang had said he could source the drugs.

  It was a huge pain in the ass being so careful when he really thought he could have carried this out weeks ago without such extensive preparation. The wide-ranging prep was because the downside of getting caught kidnapping was pretty huge and the enormous payday Wang had promised made it worthwhile.

  Jamieson just had a couple of niggling worries:

  First, he kept thinking about how gotten his ass busted when he’d first met her. Although he kept reminding himself that he’d been going easy to keep from hurting her, and telling himself that they’d just caught him by surprise, he also kept remembering that he’d been pretty angry toward the end. He’d gone after her and she’d bopped him a couple of times. Then he’d gone after the head of her security team pretty hard, but Jamieson was the one who wound up in the emergency room. Her whole team must have jumped me, he told himself once again, but somewhere deep inside he had a feeling that Donsaii was the one who put him there.

  Second, even though he’d seen her drive in and out of this place on her way to work, he just couldn’t get over the feeling that she didn’t actually live on the farm. He shook his head, I see her come back from work in the evening and she doesn’t leave till morning, she has to live here.

  Those two unsettling thoughts kept coming back and were a big part of the reason that he’d committed so much time and effort to his extensive scouting program. He did not want to be caught by surprise.

  ***

  Ell sighed, “And you’re sure this was Jamieson, the same guy we interviewed for a job on the security team back in Boston?”

  Steve shrugged, “About as sure as I can be without trying to get some kind of a DNA match. The fake ‘reporter’ ID he showed us doesn’t match his face.” Steve murmured to his AI for a second, “Here are images and sound clips of Jamieson from his interview back when we talked to him in Boston, and,” he murmured again, “here are images and clips from the first night. That’s the time he actually came on the grounds and we stopped him.”

  Ell watched both of the video images and listened to the clips. She shook her head, “He looks older of course, but I agree it’s got to be the same guy. What do you think he’s doing? Working some kind of revenge because I didn’t hire him a decade ago?”

  Steve shrugged again, “I have no idea. It’s hard to believe that if he wanted retaliation, he didn’t seek it right away. But, if he’s really the kind of guy who could hold a grudge that long, I could imagine he waited so long in hopes we might not recognize him. If Mary hadn’t said she thought it was him I might not have figured it out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as it happened?”

  “Didn’t want to come to you clueless. I’ve spent the past few days trying to get information about what he’s been doing for the past ten years, but his name’s common enough that searching the net just brought me a lot of garbage about other people with that name.”

  Ell’s eyes narrowed, “I can put Allan on it. He can find stuff that standard AIs can’t, but it would help to know what you think we’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Steve said. “If he’s been living around here, that might suggest he really has been stalking you. If he’s been working a steady job at a respectable company, that’d be different than if he’s been working a series of shifty jobs.” Steve tilted his head, “Of course, if he’s been working the kind of disreputable jobs I’m worried about, it’ll be pretty hard to find a record of them.” He lifted an eyebrow, “Unless he’s gotten caught doing stuff that’s given him a prison record.”

  “Well, I’ll see what Allan can find. Sometimes he doesn’t uncover anything another AI couldn’t have found, sometimes…” Ell shrugged, not elucidating Allan’s successes. She looked out around the farm grounds, “Since then, you say he’s been hanging around the periphery of the farm?”

  Steve nodded, “He carefully stays off your property so it’d be hard to justify going after him. I’ve considered contacting the homeowners whose land he’s actually been on. I could suggest they call the police?”

  There was a moment of silence while Ell thought about it. “If we leave it like it is, we’ll know what he’s doing. If we have the police hassle him he might start using tactics we can’t detect.”

  “If the police hassle him, maybe he’ll decide it’s not worth the trouble.”

  “I don’t know,” Ell said musingly. “You guys went out and got in his face that first night and it didn’t dissuade him. My impression of him, even if that impression’s ten years old, is that he thi
nks he’s God’s gift to guerrilla warrior stuff. He’ll probably be even less impressed with the police than he was by you guys… since he thinks he’s invincible.”

  “Are you saying we should prove to him that he’s not invincible?”

  “No, I don’t want to smack him down until he’s done something that justifies being smacked. Could be hard to explain to the police.” She turned her intense gaze on Steve, “On the other hand, I’d like you guys to be completely ready to deal with him if and when he does. Come up with contingency plans, do some drills, buy equipment if you need to…”

  “If we’re doing drills while he’s out there watching us, he’s going to know what we’re planning.”

  “Do ‘em while he’s not watching.”

  “He might have hidden cameras we don’t know about.”

  “Do your drills on paper. Any physical things that need to be practiced, go do them somewhere else.” She gave him a little bit of an impatient look, “This is your thing Steve. It’s what I hired you for. You’re supposed to figure it out, not me.”

  Steve drew himself up, though it was barely visible, “Yes ma’am.”

  Ell snorted a laugh, “Don’t you go ‘yes ma’aming’ me!”

  Steve grinned back at her, “Sorry, I do know it’s my job. Bouncing things off of you was helping me figure it out, but I’ll admit it was kind of lazy.”

  “Yeah, I shouldn’t be so grumpy. Bouncing them off of me lets me give you guidance on what I think the parameters of your response should be.” She paused for a second, then said, “When you’ve figured out what you’re going to do, tell me about it so I can be sure I’m comfortable with your plan.”

  ***

  Ell felt pretty odd as she walked into the meeting with Team Teecee. She was going to be giving them exciting news, but withholding a secret that, to her and she was sure to them, would be even more thrilling. They were only meeting about once every three to six months now, having gradually cut back from the weekly meetings they’d had back when the aliens on Tau Ceti were a brand-new finding.