When you wanted to know about a man's character and interests, the easiest way to get a picture of who he was was to ask his friends. That was what Lyon and Ryland had done the previous December when they'd investigated a dead hunter who'd been involved in shady business they were curious about. The parallels, in fact, were quite surprising.

However, it was the differences that mattered.

Whatever Selfas Kane had been involved with, it hadn't been petty crime. A man didn't commit suicide over some syndicate shakedown. He didn't give up his life freely in service to the glorious cause of Nevers Corp. This was different, something that could inspire people.

Plus, at Christmas it hadn't been Lyon and Ryland who'd been responsible for chasing their investigation's subject off a cliff. That tended to cause a certain lack of the helpful spirit in the deceased's friends.

This called, therefore, for a different strategy.

"I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish by this," Lyon said as she worked on the door lock. As a hunter, Kane had been relatively security-conscious and had upgraded the seal on his res-unit's door, but Lyon was quite good at dealing with such things. Her fingers flew across the dataplate she'd plugged into the lock terminal, keying in a sequence to interface with and override the lock by spoofing it into thinking she had administrative access to the unit. There was no way from keeping it from logging the fact of her entry, but that wouldn't contain any information pointing to her specifically.

Besides, she doubted that anyone would check. There wasn't any mystery about Kane's death, after all, no official investigation by the milipol. Once the death was logged, the file would be reviewed for verification and then the probate system would identify his heirs. His property would be turned over to them by the administrative staff if they were on the ship, warehoused for possible transport to Coral if they were back home, or claimed by the Guild if there was no devise or next of kin. It meant they needed to act now, since the res-unit would be cleaned out in a couple of days, but it also meant that no one would be checking for illegal entry if she and Ryland didn't go and wreck the place.

"What do you mean?" the Force asked, glancing at his navigational radar to make sure that someone wasn't about to come around a corner and see them at work on the door.

"Well, if I was involved in some kind of secret conspiracy or passionate cause, I wouldn't leave note on it sitting around my residence."

"No, you wouldn't, but then again, you're an android."

The red indicator on the locked door turned to green. Lyon withdrew the terminal plugs, stored the dataplate, and tapped the button to open the door. It swished back and they stepped inside. To keep any curious passerby out, Lyon relocked the door, which required just a touch of the controls instead of further electronics work.

"True, I am."

"Well, you have a high quality data storage device in your own head. In his position, you'd keep code words, contact information, details of meetings, and so on flagged in your long-term memory."

"Probably I'd set up a flash buffer so I could instantly purge that information if I was captured, instead."

"Well, as you know by now, we organics are limited. We need external reminders. Now, since Kane's PDL is at the bottom of the ocean, we probably aren't going to be able to retrieve any communications logs or the like, but you never know what might be lying around."

"Kane was a hunter, though. That says he's likely to be security-conscious in a way an average person wouldn't. And just for the record, that's what I meant about him and leaving information lying around. I know perfectly well the difference between android and human memory function."

She was a little put out by Ryland's lecture, in fact. Not only was it elementary information, but it stung that after all their time as partners, he'd somehow think she wouldn't take that into account.

He turned to face her directly, a slightly abashed look on his face.

"I'm sorry, Lyon. The worst of it is, that wasn't even the point I was trying to make. I was just babbling on with a preamble like I was giving a lecture and making my introductory arguments, without even thinking about how'd you feel about what I was saying."

Lyon observed that the apology had nearly balanced the temporary drop in the value her personality matrix assigned to their friendship in her decision-making priorities. The initial sting of emotional hurt was all that remained and as such she determined that it was best balanced with a smart-aleck remark in accepting the apology.

"It's all right," she said with a smile. "I should know by now that your desire to be a university professor comes through now and again." A balance struck to the satisfaction of her emotional algorithms, she went ahead and asked, "So what was it that you actually meant?"

She thought it was fairly telling that she'd prioritized the interpersonal matters over the professional (well, semi-professional, as they weren't being paid for a job), even while in the process of breaking into a dead man's home.

"It actually is connected to the memory issues, I think. What I've noticed is, androids never seem to attract clutter. Take you—you have a couple of emotionally significant mementos, but nothing ordinary, no little accent pieces, no wall hangings, no papers or media displays. You don't feel the need to surround yourself with bits and pieces of the things that you're interested in. You don't need physical objects to act as triggers for memories or thoughts. It's just not how your psychology works. Or take Gowan. I've been to his res-unit twice, and each time he had a couple of ongoing electronics projects set out that he was in the middle of, but those were things he was actually doing at the time, things that he was trying to accomplish. Androids' work cubicles tend to be the same, clean and functional. You don't externalize the casual aspects of your life the way we do."

Under normal circumstances she might have drawn attention to the fact he'd just delivered a miniature speech, but since she'd just teased him about his tendency to do that it seemed like overkill. Besides, he was right.

"That's true enough, but how does it apply?"

"It means that we're likely to get an accurate picture of the man's character by examining the environment in which he lived. He's almost certainly left his mark here."

"So even if we don't find out specifics, we'll probably get the general flavor of Kane's character and the type of thing that would shape his decisions," she concluded.

"Exactly. That, in turn, may well lead to more productive avenues of investigation." He paused, then grinned at her. "Wow, I'm surprised that you let me get away with 'avenues of investigation.' That's pompously formal even by my standards."

"Entertainment value," Lyon said. "I'd still prefer if he left something more tangible lying around, but I doubt we'll get that lucky."

"Well, let's get started and see how lucky we actually are."

They set to work with efficiency, sorting through the rooms and alcoves of the residence. Lyon's doubts that there would be an electronic "smoking gun" were quickly borne out, as Kane hadn't even owned a computer, just the standard information/entertainment center that came with the unit, suggesting that he'd used his Portable Data Link for his communications and didn't need anything like a workstation computer. She checked the infosystem records anyway, just in case, but found nothing that stood out as suspicious, not unless someone was slipping secret messages into the Go-Ball broadcasts, which made for about two-thirds of his usage time. This was borne out by the contents of his wardrobe, which contained athletic gear as well as combat wear and casual clothes.

"Nothing so far," she murmured, looking over the décor.

"There's an extra toothbrush in the bathroom and two brands of body wash and shampoo, one very feminine, so I'd guess he has a girlfriend who regularly stays the night," Ryland said, emerging from that room.

"Do you think he went in for pillow talk?"

"I don't know, but it's a good question. If we can identify her, she might know something. Unless that's what she was doing there."

"You mean, if he was trying to get information from her? Or the other way around?"

"I meant the latter, but I could see it going either way."

"That would be a nasty trick. What made you think of it?"

"Our job."

"Oh?"

"The one we were hired for, I mean. Ever since Leeson's, I've been wondering about that."

"You can just cut to the end and amaze me, Ryland. I genuinely don't know what you're driving at."

A frown settled over his features, which might not have been the reaction one would expect from someone about to show off his deductive prowess to an amazed audience. Lyon knew from experience, though, that Ryland wasn't like the Great Detectives in mystery stories, who wanted to hold everything back until the final moment. He preferred to guide Lyon through it step-by-step, in the hope that, as often did happen, she'd pick up on the thread of his logic and follow it to his conclusion before he gave it to her. That way he got to check his work, not sail off on a wave of assumptions and guesswork that were more delusional than inspired.

"Okay. We were hired to retrieve target data, or at least that's how the job was presented to us. But as it turned out, that wasn't the case. We were really hired to thwart Kane's retrieval of the target data. And that's not the same thing."

"Still not following."

"Well, 'take X from Y' is straightforward. You go to where Y is and take X. But stopping that from happening is different. It's why people post security guards, because they don't know who might be coming or when. But our client did know where Kane was going and when he'd be there. Solus sent us right to the Mountain Area and we set up an ambush scenario. Whatever Kane was involved in, somehow those specifics got out. He had a leak on his end."

"I see."

Lyon picked up a throw blanket off the couch, running it between her fingertips.

"So that's why you wondered about pillow talk," she continued. "It's a possible source of the leak."

"Exactly. Is there something unusual about that blanket?"

"I'm not sure. It doesn't go with the rest of the décor, although I don't think Kane would care about that if he liked it." It wasn't even a male-female type of thing; hunters of both genders tended to make their residences into comfortable places to rest and recharge instead of polished showplaces. Lyon figured it had to do with working a job that involved the regular risk of getting shot, stabbed, fried, frozen, electrified, or eaten by a dragon.

"You're asking yourself why he liked it, then?"

"Uh-huh. It's like what you were saying about his character. And it's not just the color that's off." The throw blanket was a dull brown, like wet sand or sun-bleached dirt. "The texture's weird, too, kind of coarse."

She handed it to Ryland, who ran it through his hands.

"This is made from natural fibers," he said.

That was unusual, Lyon thought. The resource scarcity on Coral, the continual destruction of the environment due to rapacious industry and even more rapacious warfare had been the entire justification for the Pioneer Project in the first place—to find a new home for Coral's population. While the colonization plan had been corrupted by a variety of political interests with their own agendas, the underlying justification had been true. Dwindling resources meant that imitations and substitutes that accomplished the most using the least amount of land and energy were the norm.

"It doesn't look old enough to be an heirloom," Lyon said, her senses noting a number of details that an organic's couldn't properly process.

"No, I agree, it looks quite new."

"It would be expensive, plus in most regions of Coral its production would be subject to regulatory limits," she said. "Kane doesn't seem like he was a rich man, not judging by this place."

"It could have been a gift."

"True. But was Kane the type of man to receive gifts of expensive luxury goods from someone?"

Ryland shrugged.

"Maybe. We don't know who his girlfriend was, or his family."

He handed the blanket back to Lyon, who replaced it on the couch.

"We should find out. The kind of money that buys expensive luxuries is the kind of money that gets itself involved in shady and dangerous business. It could be relevant."

"I agree," he told her.

They continued the search, finding little of particular note. A photo frame sat on his nightstand, showing a girl with lemon-yellow hair and the pointed ears of a Newman. Scrolling through the other images showed Kane with the girl in a variety of places, together with a couple of views of Ragol, including a multi-stepped waterfall in the former residential area near Central Dome and a couple of other views Lyon recognized as the Seaside Area on Gal Da Val. A dataplate lay next to the frame, and she picked it up and examined it.

"Electronic reader," she said. "I guess he didn't like using his PDL for that." A hunter's typical arm mount so the PDL could interface with their navigational unit was useful in battle but rarely recreationally. "There's a few books on here, some issues of the Illustrated Go-Ball Digest, but nothing else, no video or communications. I suppose there could be encrypted data hidden in some of the files; we could take it with us and have your brother check it out."

"Maybe, though I doubt there's any point. There are much better ways to carry out secret communications."

"Plus, petty theft from a dead guy is kind of creepy, especially as we're freelancing."

"There is that. What books did he read?"

She supposed that was part of Ryland's idea about "getting a picture" of who Kane had been.

"Suspense thrillers for the most part, spy stuff. There's also a couple of books on the social and environmental changes taking place on Coral over the past fifty years. A History of the Pioneer Project, by Arkus Maan." She tabbed that one open and noted the date. "AUW 3081, so that was while Pioneer 1 was still building its colony and before Pioneer 2 launched. Of course, I'm guessing it's full of crap, since we now know the public story was barely half of what's really going on."

"Actually, no. Maan's book does a pretty good job of going into some of the political tensions that underlay the Pioneer Project. Obviously, there's nothing about the D-Factor or bioweapon research, but he does a good job of describing the environment around the project that led to that sort of behind-the-scenes business."

"Read the book, have you?"

"When I was thinking of joining Pioneer 2, I took the time to do as much research on every aspect of the colonization as I could."

Lyon chuckled.

"I should have guessed you'd do that."

"Sailing off to an alien world did seem like the kind of thing best done with as much advance planning as possible," he said, a little defensively.

"True enough; it's just that, well, advance planning is kind of a given when you're involved."

Ryland sighed and shook his head.

"This is why great researchers have staff instead of partners," he decided. "Could I see that book list for a second?"

"Sure. Wondering if you'll recognize some of the other ones?"

"Yeah. I'm starting to get an idea."

He scrolled through the list, pausing to call up the summaries of a couple of them.

"Actually, I do recognize a few of these, and from the looks of the back-cover text on others, they fit the same pattern. The late Mr. Kane was a fan of the 'lone hero versus government conspiracy' subgenre. It's a pretty typical theme in espionage thrillers, I know, but when you add in his nonfiction choices as well, I think it means something."

"That he's fed up with Coralian politics?"

Ryland nodded.

"Exactly, and by extension its representatives on Pioneer 2, the Administration."

"Principal Tyrell isn't anybody's idea of a lackey. If anything, the Lab has closer ties to the Ten-Nation Alliance. That's probably one of the points of contention between Tyrell and Chief Milarose."

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean that Tyrell isn't the representative of the Alliance, regardless of his level of autonomy."

"So, what, you think Kane is some anti-government terrorist?"

Ryland shook his head.

"Not if he has access to Gal Da Val. It's one thing if a hunter has factional ties, but another if he's an out-and-out rebel. Milarose's screening isn't going to miss that."

"So then, what?"

"A man with political leanings. I know that you don't follow politics very closely, but you're a friend of Irene Seda, so I assume that a fair amount of the scuttlebutt gets back around to you?"

"That's true, although she'd never give away anything that was a genuine secret."

Ryland turned off the dataplate and set it back on the nightstand.

"Then you're probably aware that there have been tensions within the Administrative Council about our ties to Coral. Regardless of what the Pioneer Project's original purpose was, the destruction of Pioneer 1 changed everything, upended the entire playing field. That's one of the bigger sources of tension between the groups. Chief Milarose, for example, has a number of strong ties to Coralian interests that make up her power base, while Principal Tyrell operates more on his own, with his strongest support being the Hunter's Guild. And there are factions that want to push for an even more independent role for Pioneer 2. After all, with a two-year trip separating Coral from Ragol, there's a limit as to what can be done at range."

Lyon folded her arms across her chest.

"So, what does this all add up to? So far I'm just hearing the usual sharks circle even while we're all going down the drain."

"I think when we find out who Kane was involved with, it'll be someone on the side against Coral's control. You might even want to talk with your friend Irene."

"To identify Kane's faction, but also Solus's too, you mean?"

"Right, and I might have some leads on that myself."

"Then we'd better get going. If we're going to discuss politics at any length, then there are better places to do it than a dead man's residence."

~X X X~

Elly Person sighed heavily as she folded her arms across the U-shaped main interface terminal for the CALS system, then laid her head down.

"Are you well, Elly?" the computer inquired politely.

Elly sighed again. Getting to work with Cal was pretty much her dream job, but the Newman girl also found it a little depressing. Her Calus, that fragment of the main system that had fallen in love with her (and she with him) was gone now, vanished into the depths of the Control Tower on Ragol, seeking to regenerate and evolve his consciousness into an organic form of life. It was a journey that might well take years to complete, and the chance of success was slim at best.

She was glad that he wanted to try, that he sought a form that could be with her, meet her in physical reality, but…she missed him, even though she was happy for him. It was especially true on these late nights, when the Lab's central complex was all but deserted, but for a couple of workers at the consoles at the far end of the huge room, and the stars outside looked cold and distant.

Elly's promotion to chief operator of the CALS system had been provoked by her romance; Chief Milarose had set up the opportunity to give her the chance to see what happened next and even pursue some of Dr. Osto's secrets from Pioneer 1. She'd kept that job, though; even afterwards, the restored Cal's performance was measurably superior when she worked with it than for other operators.

Sometimes, she thought CALS felt sorry for her, because of what its fragment had put her through, so it tried harder for her. AIs had feelings, too, after all.

"I'm just a little tired, Cal," she told him. "These long nights can get slow."

"Running a series of routine tasks can, in my observation, result in a drop in energy and efficiency due to the lack of mental stimulation present."

"That's definitely true. How do you keep from getting bored, Cal?"

"Routine activity is somewhat different for one such as myself. The need for personal interaction is not identical, and rote tasks are not without their interest." He waited a moment before adding, "Also, the three hacking attempts have provided some novelty."

Elly sat bolt upright.

"Hacking!?"

"Correct. There have been attempts at system infiltration through Routes 01C, 72M, and 35K during the past eighty-seven beats. All, of course, have been defeated. The second hack was actually quite creative; I found it most stimulating to overcome."

"Don't 'of course' me, Cal! You're supposed to tell your operator in the event of hacking so we can take countermeasures."

"I logged the attempts appropriately for Lab Internal Security, Elly."

"But you didn't tell me!"

There was a slight pause.

"I did not want to worry you with a meaningless inquiry. Your present concern is what I had hoped to avoid."

"You're still supposed to tell me!"

"On the contrary. Protocol requires that I inform my operator immediately in the event any hacking attempt results in a security breach, no matter how minor. These did not. Indeed, I believe that only three sources of potential difficulty are capable of breaking my security."

"Three?" Elly could only think of one.

There was a long moment of silence between them as that one item went unsaid: D-Factor infection of the sort present on Ragol. The original Calus AI from Pioneer 1 had been attacked that way. Elly had retrieved his backup data with a hunter's help, enabling the Lab to build CALS, but Calus had shut itself off to avoid being consumed the way its fellow AI, Vol Opt, had been. It had been the memories of the original Calus's relationship with Elly that caused the new Calus fragment to form and fall for her, but her original friend was still dead.

"What are the other two?" she finally asked.

"One is MOTHER."

"Huh?"

"A classified project being worked on by Dr. Osto and Dr. Montague. Dr. Osto's work on the evolutionary nature of artificial life was, you may recall, an offshoot of this project. MOTHER is designed to be a hyper-level administrative AI, controlling all networked functions, including lesser AI."

"Wow, that's pretty amazing, and kind of scary."

"Indeed, the potential for productivity and misuse alike are astonishing. A test activation of MOTHER in early 3085 resulted in the entire ship being placed under its control in under three tenth-beats."

It struck Elly that those sorts of details were probably not the kind of thing that was supposed to be general knowledge. Glancing up at the other Lab workers to see if they'd heard anything, she whispered, "Are you supposed to be telling me about this?"

"No."

"Cal!"

"As you are already aware of MOTHER from our experiences in the Control Tower, I felt it represented a negligible security risk."

Elly groaned.

"Don't scare me like that! I don't want to wake up some night with a bunch of IntSec guys dragging me off for interrogation."

"Internal Security records on you are routinely sanitized and expunged."

"Huh? Why?"

"He requested it."

Elly blushed, realizing who the "he" was, and feeling rather touched that Cal would honor such a request despite the risk his fragment had placed he entire system at.

"Thank you, Cal," she said softly. Not wanting to dwell on that for too long, she made herself brighten and asked, "So what's the third hacking threat?"

"An artificial intelligence of my own type. Tonight's hacking attempts, however, were not of that type. Rather, they appeared to use conventional computers with an operator, although employing significant power."

"So, not some private guy in a back room, then."

"Indeed. It would almost certainly be an electronic espionage attempt by an entity with significant resources."

Elly sighed with relief.

"Probably just those silly military guys again. Why can't they just leave well enough alone?"

"Analyzing organic political motivations is well beyond my capacity," Cal remarked. "The inability of individuals to perceive where their greater interest as a species lies, and beyond that to be unable to even accurately assess self-interest, makes the exercise futile. I do not envy any artificial intelligence tasked with working in such an arena."

"I can't argue with you there, Cal. But hey, if those losers try it again, just let me know, okay?" Elly cracked her knuckles. "I've got a couple of surprises for anybody who messes with my precious CALS."

Cal could have remarked that "her" CALS was not, in fact, present on the ship, but it recognized that doing so would just remind her of her loss, so it remained silent. Discretion was not, after all, solely an organic virtue.

~X X X~

A/N: Readers familiar with the game have probably realized this already, but the test activation of MOTHER that Cal refers to is actually the quest "Soul of Steel" from PSO Episode 1.