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It was a small office of some sort, not currently in use. Mavra sat the woman
on the floor, then kneeled down, facing her.
"How are you called?" she asked the drugged guard.
"I am Micce," the other replied.
Mavra sighed. "Okay, Micce, tell me, how many people are there on New
Pompeii?"
"Forty-one at the moment," the other responded "Not counting the wild folk,
the living dead, and the guests."
"Counting everyone but the new guests, how many?" Mavra prodded.
"One hundred thirty-seven."
Mavra nodded. That told what she was up against "How many armed guards?"
"Twelve."
"Why are no more precautions than this taken?" the dark agent asked. "Surely
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greater security is called) for."
"They rely on automatic sensing in the important areas," the guard explained.
"As for the rest, no one could get off New Pompeii without the proper codes."
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"Who knows the codes?" Mavra asked.
"Only Councillor Trelig," the guard responded. "And they are changed daily in
a sequence known only to him."
Mavra Chang frowned. That would make things a little harder.
"Is the girl Nikki Zinder here?" she asked.
The guard nodded. "In the guard quarters."
With more questioning, Mavra established the location of the guard quarters,
the general layout of the building, who was in there at any given time,
Nikki's exact room, and how to get in and out. She also established that
everyone on New Pompeii was on sponge except Trelig himself, and the supplies
were brought in daily by a computer-controlled ship so that no one could get
a large quantity and rebel against Trelig. That piece of information was
interesting. So the sponge was brought in on a little scout, made for four
passengers if need be. The guard's description sug-gested that it was a Model
17 Cruiser, a craft Mavra knew well. It would be perfect.
She took the guard's pistol and shoulder belt after determining that the
guards themselves checked their equipment in and out of a small guard locker.
She suggested to the guard that the pistol and belt were still in place, so
the gun would not be missed. It would be checked back in and perhaps not
discovered gone for days. Mavra smiled; she was armed again, and luck was
breaking her way due to Trelig's conceit about his security.
"Where is Dr. Zinder?" she asked the guard, after giving her another jolt of
the hypno.
"He is on Underside," the guard replied. Of the forty-one people, one was
Trelig, one was
Nikki, one was Zinder, twelve were guards, five were assistants to Zinder,
and the other twenty-
one were slaves of one kind or another. That was enough to tell Mavra Chang
that she hadn't a prayer of getting Zinder himself out, but a good chance at
Nikki. Ten million wasn't "anything,"
but it sure beat nothing.
After getting the guard routine from the hypnoed woman, Mavra told her to
forget about her totally and resume her normal routine. The guard did so
without further comment, and treated
Mavra as if she weren't there.
It took another forty minutes to return to the main building, avoid the
cameras, and get back to her room. The strips were still in place on the door,
and, after closing and relocking it, she carefully removed them. The
holographic memory projector was still hi place, so the camera was still
showing an empty, quiet room with a meditating figure on the bed.
Tidying up, removing the blackface, reassembling the boot, and reloading and
reforming the belt took more time. As soon as she finished, she edged over
next to the projector on the bed, careful not to jiggle it too much, until
she was next to it, almost touching it. Infinite patience is the best tool of
a burglar.
Assuming the correct position, she took the little device, quickly palmed it,
and slipped it out of sight when the camera was directed elsewhere. When the
camera swung back, only a few seconds later, it photographed the same nude
woman in the same meditating position. Only a fanatical observer, which no
guard was-watching sleeping people was an incredibly dull job-would have
realized that the figure was seated in a slightly different position at a
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slightly different angle.
Suddenly her breathing became more rapid, and then she stirred, flexed,
stretched out on the bed, and turned over. Her right hand dangled just over
the edge of the bed for a second, as she dropped an unseen object onto black
cloth.
And only then did Mavra Chang sleep.
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If anyone knew of her roamings, they did not betray that fact the next
morning. The major dispute was over Trelig's requirement that they all take
showers and then don light, filmy garments and sandals. He apologized and
offered to launder their own garments during their trip, but it was clear what
he was doing. He could both examine their garments and make certain that
little if anything was taken to Underside.
Mavra was confident that the shielding hi her boots and in the belt would be
sufficient to escape detection; however, if anyone did try to open them, there
would follow a hard-to-explain and quite messy violent explosion. She doubted
if Trelig's people would go that far because of the defense mechanism risk;
but her tools were to be denied her when they would do the most good.
The pistol was not particularly hard to conceal; she'd hidden it against a
hall cornice affixed with putty outside the room.
She saw the surprised expressions when she entered the hall for breakfast;
without the boots she was even tinier than usual. They all noticed, but no one
was tactless enough to mention the subject.
After eating, Trelig addressed them. "Citizens, distinguished guests all, may
I now explain why you were all invited here, and what you will see today," he
began. "First, let me refresh your memories a bit. As you all no doubt know,
we are not the first civilization to have colonized worlds far beyond the one
of our civilization's birth. The artifacts of that earlier, non-human
civilization have been found on countless dead worlds. Dr. Jared Markov
discovered them, and so we call them the Markovians."
"We know all that, Antor," snapped one councillor. "Get to the point."
Trelig gave a killing glance, then continued. "Now, the artifacts they left
us when they died out or disappeared over a million years ago consist entirely
of ruined structures-buildings. No furniture, no machinery, no utensils,
objects of art, nothing. Why? Generations of scholars have mused on this, to
no avail. It seemed as insolvable a mystery as why they died out. But one
scientist, a Tregallian physicist, had an idea."
They stirred slightly, nodding. They all knew who he meant.
"Dr. Gilgram Valdez Zinder," Trelig went on, "thought that our failure to
solve the Markovian riddle stemmed from our too orthodox view of the universe.
First, he postulated the concept that the ancient Markovians did not need
artifacts because, somehow, they could convert energy into matter merely by
willing it. We know that deep beneath the crust of each Markovian world was a
semiorganic computer. Zinder believed the Markovians were directly, mentally
linked to their computers, which were, in turn, programmed to turn any wish
into reality. So he set to work on duplicating this process."
There were murmurings now. Trelig was confirming the rumors that had brought
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