Nau's gaze took in each of the petitioners: Xin, Liao, Fong. Trinli sat a little apart, as if to show that he had tried to dissuade the others. Ezr Vinh was off-Watch, else he would surely be here. They were all troublemakers by Ritser Brughel's measure. Every Watch, their tiny pod here at L1 drifted further and further from the norms of an Emergent community. Part of it was their desperate circumstances, part of it was Qeng Ho assimilation. Even in defeat, the Peddler attitudes were corrosive. Yes, by civilized standards, these people were troublemakers—but they were also the people who, along with Qiwi, made the mission possible.
For a moment no one spoke. Tears leaked silently from Rita Liao's eyes. Hammerfest's microscopic gravity wasn't enough to tug them down her cheeks. Jau Xin's head bowed in submission. "I understand, Podmaster. We withdraw the petition."
Nau gave a gracious nod. There would be no punishment, and an important point had been made.
Then Qiwi patted his hand. She was grinning! "So why not make this a test for what we will do later? True, we can't reveal ourselves, but look at what Jau has done. For the first time, we're really using the Spiders' own intelligence system. Their automation may be twenty years short of an Information Age, but they are pushing computers even harder than in Earth's Dawn Age. Eventually, Anne's translators will be inserting information back into their systems, why not start now? Each year we should do a little more meddling and a little more experimentation."
Hope shone in Xin's eyes, but his words were still in retreat. "But are they that far along? These creatures just launched their first satellite last year. They don't have pervasive localizer nets—or any localizer nets at all. Except for that pitiful link from Princeton to Lands Command, they don't even have a computer net. How can we get information back into their system?"
Yes, how?
But Qiwi was still smiling. It made her look so young, almost like the first years that he'd had her. "You said that the Accord has intercepted Kindred comm related to the kidnapping?"
"Sure. That's howwe know what's going on. But Accord Intelligence can't break the Kindred crypto."
"Are they trying to break the intercepts?"
"Yes. They have several of their largest computers—big as houses—flailing away at both ends of the Princeton/Lands Command microwave link. It would take them millions of years to come on the right decryption key...Oh." Xin's eyes got even wider. "Can we do that without them twigging?"
Nau got the point at almost the same moment. He asked the air: "Background: How are they generating test keys?"
After a second, a voice replied, "A pseudo-random walk, modified by what their mathematicians know about the Kindred's algorithms."
Qiwi was reading something in her huds. "Apparently the Accord is experimenting with distributed computation across the link. That's frivolous, since there are less than ten computers on their entire net. But we have a dozen snoopersats that pass across the lines of sight of their microwavelink. It would be easy to mung up what's going between their relays—that's how we were going to do our first inserts, anyway. In this case, we'll just make small changes when they are sending trial keys. It might be as few as a hundred bits, even counting the framing."
Reynolt: "Okay. Even if they investigate later, it would be a plausible glitch. Do it for more than one key, and I say it's too dangerous."
"One key would be enough, if it's for the right session."
Qiwi looked at Nau. "Tomas, it could work. It's low-risk, and we should be experimenting with active measures anyway. You know the Spiders are more and more interested in space activities. We may be forced to meddle a lot, fairly soon." She patted his shoulder, cajoling more publicly than ever before. No matter how cheerful she seemed, Qiwi had her own emotional stake in this.
But she's right. This could be the ideal first sending for Anne's zip-heads. Time to be grandly generous. Nau smiled back. "Very well, ladies and gentlemen. You have convinced me. Anne, arrange to reveal one key. I think Manager Xin can show you the critical session. Give this operation first transient priority for the next forty Ksec—and retroactively for the last forty." So Xin and Liao and the others were officially off the hook.
They didn't cheer, but Nau sensed enthusiasm and abject gratitude as the petitioners stood and floated out of the room.
Qiwi started to follow them, then turned quickly back and kissed Nau on the forehead. "Thanks, Tomas." And then she was gone with the others.
He turned to the only remaining visitor, Kal Omo. "Keep an eye on them, Sergeant. I'm afraid things will be more complicated from now on."
