"Jewelry? Silver?"

"They"re here. Ditto an envelope with about fifty dollars in a kitchen drawer."

Alicia and her junk-food habit. She was always prepared for an emergency pizza delivery. Too wordy: she was always prepared, period ... witness her postmortem e-mail. "It seems like someone broke in to steal the computer, then took a few other obvious things to make it look like an ordinary burglary. The net notice of Alicia"s memorial service would have told whomever when the apartment was likely to be empty."

Barbara leaned against the dining room table. "But why, Justin?"

He thought again about Alicia"s final e-mail. "I don"t know yet... but I will."

The Boston police were quite disinterested in Justin"s call. Nonviolent break-ins were far down their priority list. He was given a case number and the advice to change the lock and call Alicia"s insurance company. They promised to dust for fingerprints, but would not commit to a date. If that visit was ever to happen, about which he had serious doubts, they would see the building superintendent for access to Alicia"s unit.

He encountered business records in a filing cabinet before he found any insurance papers. The drawer held invoices and bill-collection histories, one hanging folder per company. The invoices were for unnamed "professional services rendered."

To his surprise, there was no ISI file. He knew for a fact that she"d consulted for his employer. Justin"s PDA sat open from his inquiry to the unhelpful police. "Display twenty largest global megacorporations.

List alphabetically." His eyes swiveled between the screen and the open file drawer. Within the top twenty, two were missing: ISI and Trans-Solar Corporation.

TSC, like ISI, was a wildly successful megaconglomerate with interplanetary scope. To call TSC an archenemy of ISI would be simplistic, since the two corporations partnered as often as they competed.

The solar system was certainly big enough for the both of them.

The absence of an ISI file gave the false impression that she"d never consulted for ISI; he was equally skeptical that she"d never had dealings with TSC.

Alicia"s computer and PDA were both gone. Given her last e-mail, he had hopes that her softcopy files were not.

Justin"s Boston hotel catered to business travelers, providing fast wireless broadband capability to each suite. Around bites of room-service pepperoni pizza ordered in Alicia"s honor, he directed his PDA to open a secure connection with her archival service. Unsurprisingly, even the names of the backed-up folders and files were encrypted.

"Number and size of files?"

"Thirty-seven folders, containing seven hundred forty-three files. Approximately eighty-four gigabytes."

"Decrypt folder names. Display the names of all folders in the archive, sorted by last modification date."

The most recently updated folders were named ISI and TSC. Both folders had last been changed a week earlier, three days before Alicia"s death. The next day, she"d seen her lawyer to execute a codicil to her will, replacing her sister"s name with Justin"s.

The PDA wasn"t up to the task of decrypting gigabyte files, and he wasn"t up to reviewing them.

"Bridge in my home workstation, also on a secure link. Download Alicia"s archive there. Leave everything encrypted for now."

3.

It was almost midnight when Justin got home from the Richmond train station, but he was too keyed up to sleep. The number of questions about Alicia kept growing. Leaving his suitcase in the hall, he went directly to his den. Setting his PDA on the desk beside his workstation, he asked, "Have all files from Alicia"s archive been downloaded?"

The two computers compared notes. "Yes," answered the PDA.

"Display archive configuration." A detailed structure of many files and folders spilled down the screen.

"Show the content of the ISI folder in plaintext, newest files first." He got himself a c.o.ke and some peanuts while the workstation cranked away. When this decryption was done he saw nothing unusual.

Her last consulting a.s.signment from ISI, work done two years earlier, was something he had himself arranged. The one recent entry was a current org chart, apparently hacked from ISI"s intranet. Why had she wanted that information?

"Now show the content of the TSC folder in plaintext, newest files first."

Three months ago, TSC had received an unusual rush order from a small-fry wholesale trading company. The requisition included several expensive, and apparently very specialized, electronics a.s.semblies that were identified only by part numbers. Alicia had been retained to do some basic commercial intelligence gathering: trace the goods to the ultimate end user, and understand how he was using these items. TSC was in part interested in basic market research, but reading between the lines they were more motivated by curiosity about the urgency implied by the contract"s huge penalty for late delivery.

Crunching on peanuts, Justin continued to read. Alicia had hacked into the ordering company"s mainframe, and identified another trading company that had earlier requested the TSC parts. She"d penetrated Company B, and they, too, were a front. He stopped chewing when he got to a third company: ISI secretly controlled Interplanetary Amalgamated Trading. He had himself, on occasion, bought a compet.i.tor"s product through Amalgamated"s auspices for a.n.a.lysis in ISI"s labs. There was no indication that Alicia had gotten into Amalgamated"s computers.

Did the soon-after change to her will mean that she"d known about the ISI/Amalgamated link?

An old photo of him and Alicia on a beach getaway sat on a bookshelf. He set it beside the workstation. "Background radio, WZAP." Sometimes soft music helped him think. Sometimes it put him to sleep. He guessed that tonight it would have the latter effect.

"Query: what are the electronics components identified by part number in the TSC folder? Order standard product literature via my personal e-mail account. Standard encryption."

Justin caught himself yawning, and realized that he"d been doing so for a while. The clock in the corner of the PDA screen read 2:07 a.m. Time, and past time, for sleep. He deleted the decrypted files and went to bed.

4.

Aquarians: the popular name for the intelligent species of the Luyten 789-6 solar system, approximately 10.5 light-years from Earth. The name comes from the constellation Aquarius, in which Luyten 789-6 is observed. Aquarians, like earlier-discovered ET species, engage in e-commerce with their interstellar neighbors. Although Aquarians are well regarded for their advanced computational algorithms, it is interesting to note that they compute mentally rather than by computer. Their chief import from humanity is industrial technology.

-Internetopedia

When his PDA chimed to announce an ISI-internal call, Justin was working through the acc.u.mulated backlog from his Boston trip. Over the four-day weekend, his obedient filters had filed for his later attention twenty voice-mails and over three hundred business e-mails.

The top window on the PDA screen at that moment was the abstract of a report from ISI"s atmospheric physics department. They were responding to his forwarding of a recently received Aquarian parallel-processing technique. He"d speculated that it might be adaptable to weather forecasting. From their initial results, the computational efficiencies made practical by the Aquarian algorithm would let ISI extend their predictions by up to a day. That would be a huge advantage in marketing forecasts to agribusinesses, fishing fleets, power companies, and commodities speculators.

The PDA chimed again. This time, he glanced at the caller ID: the incoming call was from Arlen Crawford, ISI"s VP of Contracts and Justin"s boss. ISI, like most large companies, had a single technomist on staff, and Justin had to report to someone. The two men often went weeks without speaking. They went far longer without face-to-face meetings, since Arlen"s office was at ISI headquarters in Scotland. "Call accepted."

"Justin? Are you by yourself?" On the display screen, Arlen was wearing a suit jacket and tie. Why the formality?

"h.e.l.lo, Arlen. Yes, I"m in my office and alone."

"Would you mind closing the door?"

How unusual, Justin thought to himself as he complied. "What can I do for you?"

"I have to ask about something that"s rather irregular."

The xenotechnomist said nothing.

"Well, there"s no graceful way to bring this up, so I"ll just get right to it. Justin, the security department has informed me that you have been in contact with our TSC rivals."

"Oh?"

"I"m told that it was on your short leave of absence. Late last night, actually."

Justin considered. "It sounds like I have been under surveillance. Why is that, Arlen?"

His boss squirmed in his seat. "Nothing of the sort. I"m told that the security people use artificial intelligences to monitor all traffic on the corporate networks. They are curious about a message that you sent last night."

Justin"s only recent message to TSC had been the request for product information, and that was via his private e-mail.

"I"d like to know why you contacted TSC."

"It was a personal matter, Arlen. There"s no cause for security to be concerned."

"But they are concerned."

Anger mounting, Justin wondered if his face was flushed. "How does it happen that the company sees my private e-mail, composed at home using my personal digital a.s.sistant, and sent over the public network?"

At a loss for words, Arlen glanced off-camera. An unhappy, dark-haired man whom Justin didn"t recognize stepped into view behind Arlen"s chair. "As I"m sure you know, to transmit even personal messages requires accessing a net directory. Your PDA is apparently set to query an ISI directory server for address lookups."

So Arlen had asked whether Justin was alone while someone observed from an unviewable corner of his own office. What gall! "And you are?"

"Michael Zhang. Corporate security."

"So you would have me believe that security monitors every name lookup to see if any employee is in contact with another company?" "Yes."

Justin shook his head. "I don"t accept that. Ignoring innocent net surfing, I know of a dozen joint ventures that ISI has with TSC. Each such project is a reason for ISI employees to have regular contacts with TSC."

Zhang smiled, but it was not a pleasant expression. "Dr. Matthews, your beliefs are of very little interest to me. The fact that we did notice your message should, however, be important to you. Think about that.

"I will expect your prompt explanation as to why that message was sent."

Zhang"s finger stabbed down to the top of Arlen"s desk. The call window on Justin"s PDA froze. "End of transmission."

"Save that call," said Justin. "Every last bit of it."

His PDA made no comment.

"And change your default setting for directory lookup to a public server."

What was going on?

Justin sat tipped back in a kitchen chair, his back against a wall of his dinette. The call from his boss and security made less sense each time he replayed it.

Technomics was a difficult subject; xenotechnomics was even tougher. Mastering his discipline, however, had ingrained in him a useful skill. When he couldn"t make sense of what he was looking at, he knew to mentally step back and look at the bigger picture.

So what was the bigger picture here? TSC had retained Alicia to identify the mysterious purchaser of what Justin now knew were ultra-sensitive radio receivers, items a well-funded radio astronomer might buy. She"d traced the sale to ISI, whether or not she recognized the fact, although his appointment as executor and the current ISI org chart in her archive suggested that she had. She was dead in what might truly be an accident-joyriding with a car"s automatics turned off was not unheard of-but the timing was suspicious. The subsequent disappearances of her PDA and workstation were certainly suspicious. Then came the apparent theft of her billing records for TSC and ISI, as if to remove any suggestion that she"d ever had an involvement with either megacorp. Finally, Zhang"s comments notwithstanding, Justin didn"t accept that ISI could be monitoring every employee for possible access to the TSC net site. Which meant that he personally was under ISI surveillance.

Through metaphorical mists a picture was emerging, but he wasn"t sure he believed it. Could he seriously contend that ISI, in which he"d been a happy employee since university, was involved in something so nefarious that it would kill to cover its tracks?

He"d brought the beach snapshot of himself and Alicia into the kitchen. Picking up the picture, he studied her face. "I will get to the bottom of this."

She wasn"t impressed. Maybe one of the reasons they"d been such good friends was that she didn"t impress easily." Most of his college acquaintances had not known how to deal with the near-celebrity of his modestly famous parents or his excess of competence, but Alicia had understood. "Bad luck," she"d once told him. "Two parents who played key roles in first contact with the Leos. What are you supposed to do for an encore?"

There was never any question that she"d be successful, if only in the tight-knit community of hackers-the only group whose opinion seriously mattered to her. She"d never approved of his decision to switch majors from computer science to technomics. "You"re on the slippery slope to xenotechnomics, and back into the family"s alien business."

She"d been right about his direction, wrong about his motivation ... or at least so he still thought.

"So where did hacking get you?" he finally asked the photo.

An enigmatic smile was his only answer.

"Lock."

Recognizing Justin"s voice, his car chirped in acknowledgment. The chirp and the louder sounds of door locks engaging echoed in the cavernous garage beneath his building. "Dr. Matthews." The stranger stepped from behind a pillar. He was dressed in gangster chic: trenchcoat and fedora. One hand was in his coat pocket, the visible hand was gloved. "May I have a word with you?"

Justin nodded. If the aim of the visit was intimidation, he was duly concerned. He was not, however, too spooked to think. He sidled toward his car, and was rewarded when the stranger, turning to follow, presented a more face-on view to one of the security cameras.

"Dr. Matthews, it would be in your best interest to be expedient in wrapping up your executor duties."

Matthews leaned against his car. "I don"t understand."

A humorless smile briefly manifested itself in the shadow of the hat. "Let"s not waste time. The names of executors are matters of public record. So are burglary reports."

"I see."

"A certain corporation would prefer that one of its consulting a.s.signments remain confidential. They feel very strongly about this point." The thug took his hand from his pocket. It held a thick envelope rather than the weapon Justin had been expecting. "Naturally the corporation wishes to reimburse the estate for past services rendered. We leave to your discretion the proper disposition of the funds."

Justin took the envelope, wondering as he did so about the etiquette of bribery. Was a verbal response expected? After a long silence, he decided that it wasn"t.