Century Rain Part 93

"I'm afraid so."

No one said anything, until Floyd raised his hand and spoke. "Anyone mind if I make a small

contribution?"

THIRTY-EIGHT.

The bleed-drive was still not ready for maximum thrust. While they toiled at a leisurely one gee towards the suspect portal, Floyd led Auger and Tunguska back to his quarters.

"This had better be worth it," Auger said.

"You got any viable alternatives?"

"I just mean...don't raise false expectations here, Floyd. I know you're trying to help, but really."

He looked back at her, wounded pride on his face. "'But really' what?"

"This is a very technical matter," she said.

"What she's saying," Tunguska interjected, adopting a conciliatory tone, "is that there are some things you might be reasonably expected to have a useful opinion on...and some things you might be reasonably expected not to have a useful opinion on."

"I see," Floyd said tersely.

"And I'm afraid the matter of hyperweb navigation falls resoundingly into the latter category," he went on.

"At least hear me out, Jack."

"Floyd, I know you mean well," Auger said, "but we really should be preparing for when the bleed-drive

is back on-line."

"Wouldn't you like to know that you're headed in the right direction, before you light that torch?"

He opened the door into the vast enclosure that served as his temporary quarters. The three of them

walked towards the bed and its little entourage of attendant furniture.

"Floyd-give me a clue, will you?"

"It was something you said yourself, Auger: how the h.e.l.l did they make sense of the numbers coming

out of that antenna thing, if they had to do it in nineteen fifty-nine?"

"Enlighten me," Auger said.

"And me, while you're at it," Tunguska said.

"We were looking for a microdot, or something like it," Floyd said, "because we thought we were only

looking for ten or twelve digits-the map reference of the ALS."

"Go on," Auger said, feeling a little s.h.i.+ver of excitement despite her misgivings.

"Well, we were dead wrong. I think."

"Floyd-don't drag this out."

Floyd sat down on the bed and offered Tunguska and Auger the two remaining chairs. "Face it: it was

always hopeless looking for something like that. You said it, Auger-the message could have been buried anywhere, in the tiniest smudge or the tiniest change in the position or weight of some printed characters. You'd have to know exactly what you were looking for in order to find it."

"Floyd..." she said warningly.

"But that still leaves a big question unanswered: how did they come up with those numbers? It was one

thing building that antenna, but making sense of what it was telling them-well, even you speculated that it would have been difficult, given the way things are in my nineteen fifty-nine."

"Computers don't exist in Floyd's world," Auger explained to Tunguska. "They are even further behind

than our fifty-nine, since they never had the Second World War as a spur to drive computing progress."

"I see," Tunguska said, stroking his chin. "In which case, it's difficult to see how the data from the gravitational wave device could ever have been processed. It would be a tricky little exercise even now."

"Not too tricky, I hope," Floyd said, "because I think you're going to have to do it."

"What have you found?" Tunguska asked.

Floyd reached into the box at the foot of the bed and pulled out one of the records inside it. Auger saw

the label: Louis Armstrong.

"This," he said simply.

"I had the distinct impression that you were a little under-whelmed with those discs," Tunguska said.

"You were d.a.m.ned right."

"And now?"

"I'm wondering if that wasn't the clue we were looking for all along." Floyd tipped the sleeve so that the

grooved disc slid into his hand. "I think the information you're looking for is here," he said.

"In a microdot on the label?" Auger asked, still puzzled.

"No. Something more complex than that. I think it could be in the music itself. Not just ten or twelve

digits, but the actual numbers from the antenna. You were right, Auger: there was no way to interpret the

data in nineteen fifty-nine. So they didn't even try."

That s.h.i.+ver of excitement had now become a full-blown tingle, lifting up every hair on the back of Auger's neck. "So what did they do?" she asked impatiently.

"They s.h.i.+pped the information back through the portal. Niagara's boys got their hands on it and did all the clever stuff on the other side."

"So there's something encoded in the music?" Auger asked.

"Someone's been flooding Paris with cheap bootlegs," Floyd said. "It's been going on for months. Now we know why."

"You can't be sure there's a connection," she said.

"Yes, I can. My old friend Maillol even pointed me to a link between the Blanchard case and his own anti-bootlegging operation. I just couldn't see how they could possibly be connected at the time."

"And now you can," Auger asked.

"Custine spoke to one of Blanchard's tenants-guy by the name of Rivaud-who'd seen one of your

nasty little children hanging around the building. When I tried to talk to Rivaud myself, he'd put on a disappearing act. A few days later, Maillol tells me they found his body floating in the flooded cellar of a warehouse in Montrouge."

"Nice," Auger said, wrinkling her nose with distaste.

"It gets nicer. Guy had abrasions on his neck, as if one of those children had been encouraging him to keep his head below water."

"And the significance of this warehouse?"

"It was the same place Maillol turned up that counterfeit pressing plant."

"Do you think Rivaud was in on the bootlegging scheme?"

"He might have been," Floyd said, "but then we'd have to explain the coincidence of him living in the

same building where Susan White ended up as a tenant."

"Big coincidence."

"Too big. More likely, Rivaud caught sight of one of those children again and decided to do some

gumshoe work of his own. Tailed the child all the way back to the warehouse. Maybe he was even lured there, if the children thought he'd seen too much already."

"Floyd may be on to something," Tunguska said. "Here. Let me examine that disc."