AI - Alpha Part 46

"It's up to you," Hughes said.

Thomas thought of Charon's relentless, vindictive ambition. If the Alley had helped Alpha, they could be

involved with Charon.

"I can't send my guards away," Thomas said.

"Then I cannot speak."

Thomas wanted to hear out this enigma who might or might not be human. In the past, he had a.s.sumed

the stories were tall tales. It would be fitting if the legend were actually an EI in Sunrise Alley. But Hughes had a point. An EI couldn't have existed when those legends took root. Maybe the myths had come first, and the Alley created Hughes based on them. Maybe Hughes had once been human. Or

maybe he had been a rogue EI that redefined itself from the legends.

Hernandez still had his gun trained on Hughes. Thomas spoke to the sec-tech, "Stay with me, but move out of earshot."

"Sir-" Hernandez clearly wasn't happy. "We can't risk your safety. General Chang would skin us alive."

"I won't let Chang skin you. And I'll be fine."

Spaulding cleared his throat. "Sir."

Sir again. It didn't bode well. "Yes?"

"You say this a lot, that you'll be fine. Then you get kidnapped and nearly die."

Thomas smiled wryly. "I'm not asking you to leave. Just step away."

"We can't go more than ten yards," Hernandez said.

Thomas doubted they would give more than that. So he said, "All right." If Hughes wouldn't talk under

those conditions, he would be pus.h.i.+ng Thomas's trust too far anyway.

His bodyguards withdrew until they were dark figures, far enough away to hear only if he shouted or used his visor.

Hughes glanced at the mesh glove Thomas wore on his left hand. After considering him, Thomas

brushed his finger over the mesh. It took only seconds to deactivate. His glove would make no further record of this meeting.

Hughes lifted his hand toward the field. "Shall we walk?"

Thomas kept his hand on the magnum in his jacket. "All right."

So they went. Hughes took it slow so Thomas could manage with his cane and cast, and Hernandez and Spaulding kept pace. The moon gave enough light so Thomas could see without his visor, but the park was full of darkness.

"We expected Alpha to come to us," Hughes said.

Cold fingers walked up Thomas's spine. Us. Not they. Hughes considered himself part of the Alley. He almost said, You helped her escape, but he held back. Better to see what he could learn first."To the Alley?" Thomas asked."Yes. We shelter formas.""How would she know about you?""We told her."Thomas clenched the gun. "You did help her." They were the ones who had set him up. "How did you get into the safe house?"

Hughes spoke carefully. "Some of our EIs are former military codes."

Thomas had considered the possibility. "Too old, too limited. I don't believe they could crack our

security."

"They didn't."

"Then how did Bart know what I posted at the NIA?"

"Your granddaughter."

Thomas stiffened. If the Alley had interfered with Jamie, they were declaring war against him. "Leave

her out of this."

"She contacted us," Hughes said. "With an NIA mailing label."

That got Thomas's attention. "Go on.""Apparently she was playing with a mesh-controlled label. She didn't realize she had opened a backdoor that could be used to access the NIA post office. Bart told her how to close it." Hughes regarded him with a sphinxlike gaze. "We were not aware children her age were capable of such."

"Neither were we," Thomas said dryly. Inside, he felt a rush of pride. Smart kid, his granddaughter. He

had to be careful, though. "I take it Bart helped her close the door with himself inside the NIA."

"Only a small portion."

Thomas didn't care how small, it was still unacceptable. "How far has he spread into our internal

systems?"

"Just through the post office mesh," Steve said.

Thomas didn't believe him, but at least he knew where to start. "How does that piece of Bart talk with

the Alley?"

"He sends bits of himself out on the labels of unsecured mail."

It made sense. Sooner or later, after the package left the base, someone outside would link to one of

those labels. Bart could jump through their system to the world mesh. Even if he really had accessed only the post office, security had been compromised. The mesh gurus would have to check every NIA system. It would be one h.e.l.l of a job. At least it helped get Matheson off the hook. If anything, it pointed suspicion at Thomas; he was the one who had given Jamie the crate. Who would have thought a three-year-old could open a backdoor with a post office label? The officer who gave Jamie her badge had explained how to behave on the base, but it hadn't occurred to anyone that Jamie could manage something so sophisticated or arcane. Thomas wasn't certain he could have done it, at least not that quickly.

"If I hadn't checked out what happened with Jamie," he asked, "would the Alley have come clean?"

"I don't know," Steve said, his voice shadowed.

Thomas didn't like his answer. "Even if this is all true, the NIA post office has no links to the safe

house." They had isolated the house from other meshes, even more so since Alpha's break out.

"We accessed the safe house through Alpha."

"You got into Alpha's internal mesh?"

"Yes."

Despite the cool air, sweat gathered on Thomas's palms. If the Alley could do so much, and had links to

Charon, they could probably kill him even with his sec-techs here. He had taken a risk coming to this meeting, but he needed to know what Hughes had to say.

"How did you get in her mesh?" Thomas asked.

"It happened after she took you and Sam Bryton hostage the first time," Hughes said. "When the Air Force moved to rescue you, they weakened Charon's security. It gave Bart a chance to punch a hole and jump into Alpha's internal mesh."

"Why Alpha instead of Charon?"Hughes's voice went flat. "We find Charon vile."So do I. If Bart had stashed part of himself inside Alpha, the a.n.a.lysts working on her might have found him, but his chances of hiding while piggybacked on her mesh were better than those of his breaking into the safe house on his own. And it meant he hadn't cracked the place from outside, which Thomas

had believed impossible. Given the trouble Bart had caused, it didn't surprise Thomas that the Alley had sent a different EI to talk with him. He would have been tempted to give any physical manifestation of Bart a hard right hook to the jaw.

"Why would the Alley set me up?" Thomas asked, his hand gripped on his magnum.

Hughes stopped in the middle of the field. "We didn't."

"Alpha came straight to my house."

"We expected her to come to us. Our agreement was this: in exchange for our protection, she would tell

us everything she knew about Charon."

It was rea.s.suring to know the Alley hadn't so pervaded human civilization that they knew everything and went anywhere.

"She reneged," Thomas said.

"Yes. After she deleted Bart from her mesh."

Thomas's voice cooled. "His decision to help her escape could be considered a hostile act against this

country."

Hughes's eyes were dark. "His first loyalty is the Alley."

"So why should I trust him? Or you?"

"We could just as easily ask the reverse."

Thomas remembered his last conversation with Bart, when the EI called for a moratorium on attempts to