Zero Data Read online

images pinned to the blazing whitenesshurled by radionic tubes against the back wall of snowy marble fromMars' arctic quarries. Besides, that glass, proof though it was againstanything but an atomic explosion, still made every true art lover feeldisquietingly insecure.

  No, on the whole, the papers and reporters and true art lovers who feltthe Public's treasures should be more secure than visible, neverquestioned Lonnie's doing good to so much Art.

  Thus, nowadays, nobody did anything but accept Lonnie. Except Jason. Andhe, perforce, took out his disgust not on hounding the sacrosanctLonnie, but on that crackpot, mumchance, captive genius of Physlab Nine.With the result that, late in 2007, Pol-Anx had an electronicservo-tracer.

  Pending construction of sufficient hundreds of thousands more for fullAnx use, Jason swore Lab Nine to secrecy and installed the pilot modelin his own office. He had enough authority for that.

  It was a hellishly unbuildable and deceptively simple gadget, thattracer. Simply tune it in on the encephalo-aura, the brain wave patternof any individual ... and monitor. It never let go until deliberatelyswitched off by the operator. It tracked; pinpointed the subjectaccurately up to twenty thousand miles. It stopped humming and startedpanting in proportionately ascending decibels when the subject becametense, nervous, afraid. It also directed pocket-sized trackers of itsown Damoclean beam. It made it a cinch to gather in known criminals inthe very midst of their first subsequent flagrante delicto.

  Jason latched the servo-tracer on Lonnie and settled down to wait.

  At 10 p.m., local mean time, January 25, 2008, the tracer hiccupped and,all by itself, _went to sleep_!

  Jason blinked. Jiggled the gadget. Swore. Either the gadget was haywireor Lonnie was up to something, and, as usual, was making a--

  Jason bawled for four reliable squad men he'd mentally selected before.If he could find Lonnie--catch Lonnie in actual performance of anact--then Commissioner or no Commissioner, Executive Level or noExecutive Level...!

  He roared from Pol-Anx with the men, past the flank of Government Fane,across the Park and around the bulk of Raichi Museum to Lonnie's mansionin its shadow. Leaped from the gyro-van, sweeping his men out into a fanfor the neighborhood.

  Nothing. Placid. Tree-shadowed, lawn-swept streets, ebony and silver inthe light the moon reflected from solar space.

  He'd missed. Too late. Lonnie was gone ... or was he?

  Jason didn't give himself time to think; his men time to get even amomentary hesitation started. He shoved his thumb hard against the doorchimes and his shield under the butler's nose.

  Yes, Mr. Raichi was at home. Then, after an interval nicely calculatedto allow Jason to feel how acutely precarious his position stood, "Mr.Raichi is accessible."

  Lonnie was bland. Blandly accepting Jason's urgent story of a known ...er ... jewel thief traced to the neighborhood. Blandly amenable toJason's suggestion that his men be permitted to go over the mansion(once he'd started this damfool caper, he had to go through with it).Lonnie so bland that Jason felt a skitter of perspiration down hisbackbone while his men hustled up the soaring circle of the stair.

  II

  "Since I've been disturbed anyway," Lonnie offered, "I'll show youaround."

  "Thanks," Jason shook his head stiffly. "I'll just wait."

  "I think you should come."

  Shrugging, Jason followed, eyes stubbornly downcast.

  "... my library ... my den ... bar. Care for a drink? Well, suityourself." As the lights of the den dimmed and one wall swooshedsmoothly into the ceiling. "My theatre ... The usual tri-di stereo, ofcourse, but I've had a couple of the new tight beams installed tochannel Moon and Mars on the cube. Much better than the usual stagedbilge. Say, that reminds me, a couple hours ago Mars projector had ascanner on one of the exploration parties caught out in a psychosonicstorm. Jove, did they wriggle! Even in atomsuits they were better thanMessalina Magdalen working on her last G-string. Here, I'll switch iton. Maybe the rescue team's--"

  Building up inside the hundreds of thousands of layers of crystallizedplastic came a reddish, three-dimensional landscape, as if viewed from aheight. Orange dust swirled across a gaunt, clawed plain under atransparent pink haze. A feeling as of sub-visual vibration, emanatingfrom the cube, tugged at Jason's eyelids.

  No life.

  "--Nope; they've cleaned up the carcasses already. Too bad. Tell youwhat, though. Next time I catch it happening, I'll phone you and--"

  "Don't bother."

  "Suit yourself." Lonnie shifted and went on, lightly. "I'm not at allsatisfied with the color, are you? It's off a little, don't youthink?... Well?... Well!"

  Unwillingly, Jason moved his attention to the cube. Eyes widening, hestudied it. "No. You're wrong. That's good! The tech who poured thatstereo did a damned good job. It's--"

  "Not good enough for me! That's not exactly what I saw up at VulcanCity. If those lazy--"

  "Look, you can't expect exactly the same reflectivity from crystallizedplastic that you get from molecules of atmosphere, no matter howscientifically the pouring and layering is controlled. It's--they're twodifferent materials. Leaving aside the ion-index differential andquality of incident light, you still can't--"

  "_I_ can ..." As the pause lengthened, Jason's gaze was finally drawn toLonnie's face. "You still haven't changed a bit, have you, Jasey? Stillall wrapped up in _how_ any collection of doodads work instead of justfor what it'll do. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if that hasn'talways been the difference between us. Where's it got you?"

  Jason strode for the door.

  "Wait a minute." Lonnie's voice came louder. "Better wait, copper. I'mnot through ... That's better."

  From behind Jason came the sound of rubbing palms. "We've come a longway from Gimlet Street, haven't we, Jasey? You particularly. Captain.Promotions. Pay raises ..." Then Lonnie was in front of him, staring up."You're quite a substantial citizen now. Yes? Well, look at that. Go on,look at it."

  Against the side wall stood a gigantic triptych. More than life size,the central panel canopied the statue of a Mongol potentate; the twoside wings, a pair of guards in bas-relief. All three wrought inchryselephantine gold and ivory; the gold with flowing pallidhighlights. Damascened armor, encrusted with jewels, girdled the chestof the Asiatic Prince; helmeted the sullen head carved from a singleimmensity of ivory.

  Ruby eyes glared arrogantly under ebon brows. Against the statue'sfolded shins, its pommel negligently gripped by one immovable, ivoryhand, leaned a short Turkish scimitar of watered steel. Beneath thecarved hassock upon which the statue sat, a dais of three steps fellaway to the floor.

  "That's Genghis Khan," Lonnie said. "I had him made. That isn't goldhe's made of; that's aureum--and it cost plenty to have the silver mixedin. It makes it better. And I get the best! A hundred thousand, it costme. And thirty-six thousand more to brace the wall and floor. It's good.It's the best that's made!"

  He came up on tiptoe, thrusting his chin as close as possible to Jason'saverted face. "Why don't you buy one for your place, Captain?"

  * * * * *

  Jason stared into the malevolent eyes of the statue.

  "Huh ... hu-hu ... hu-ha-ha-ha ..." At the dais, Lonnie put his foot onthe second step and patted Genghis Khan familiarly on one ivory knee. "Ilike this old boy. He had the right idea. I have it. You haven't. Younever had. If you had, you'd'a listened to the proposition I made youway back then. Remember when Aggie told you about it? Say, I wonderwhat's become of her, anyway. Do you know? What? What'd you say?"

  Jason cleared his throat. Hard.

  "Well?"

  Jason swallowed. Blood pounded in his temples.

  "Jasey, you're stupid."

  Jason made his eyes close. Let them re-open slowly.

  "You were born stupid and you've stayed stupid."

  Still Jason held back an answer.

  "You're nothing but a stupid, go-where-you're-sent, do-what-you're-toldcop! What do you say to that! If you want to keep on being one, answ
erme! Answer me!"

  Deliberately, Jason jerked his chin at the statue. "That's anotherexample of what I mean."

  "_What?!!_" screamed Lonnie.

  "Reflectivity. The silver in the gold. Two different metals and wherethey're not well fused. That sword blade, too. Just the misalignment ofmolecules in the surface of the steel makes it look wavy, and ripplewhen the light changes or you move. Different even in two parts of thesame material. That's why you can't get the stereo cube to reproducecolor-feel exactly." Breathing heavily, Jason had to let his voice fadeout.

  "Gaaa ..." Lonnie convulsed. "Who cares!" Laugh sounds rolled out of histhroat. "You'll never change."

  He flicked his hand at Jason, brushing him away.

  But, as Jason, white-faced, herded his men out through the costlygrandeurs of the vestibule, Lonnie called from the inner hall:"Copper ..."

  Jason turned, waited.

  "You amused me, so it's all right this time. You can keep yourpenny-ante job. But don't try for me again. You cross my path again,I'll smear you. And what's more, I'll use whatever you're trying, tosmear you with. Get that! Get it good! Now get out!"

  Back in Jason's office, the desk sergeant reported as Jason came in."Funny thing. That there tracer started to hum again soon after you wasout for a while. Quit again 'bout five minutes ago, though."

  Jason gritted his teeth, banished the sergeant, and spent five minutesalone gripping the edge of his desk. Then he yanked Lab Nine's silentgenius down to his office. That didn't help for the tracer stayedasleep. Not even a hiccup rewarded Moglaut's most active efforts onLonnie's wave length. On others, fine. Through the night and on into thenext day, Jason kept Moglaut at work.

  Late in the morning, Authority at Peiping televised publicly that theMace of Alexander was gone from its satin pillow in the proof-glass casein the alarm-wired room off the machine-weapon-guarded main corridor ofthe security-policed Temple of Mankind.

  The Mace, symbol of Alexander's power, was a pretty little baton barelytwo feet long. Its staff was mastodon ivory, the paleontologists haddetermined. One end sported a solid ball of gold hardly as big as afist; studded with rubies, but none set quite so close as to actuallytouch.

  The other end, balancing the ball of gold, mounted the largest singlepolished emerald crystal in the discovered universe. Neither the Moon orMars had produced anything in the emerald line equivalent to what hadcome out of the mists of Earthly history.

  * * * * *

  Disregarding the bulletin, Jason kept Moglaut at the servo-tracer. Inthe night's smallest hours it began placidly to hum on Lonnie's auraagain.

  "What happened?" Jason said. "What did you do?"

  Moglaut shrugged.

  "You must have done something. What was it?"

  Moglaut, not looking up from the purring machine, shook his head.

  "All right. You can go now." Jason watched the genius disappearhurriedly through the door. From the door he watched the man scutterdown the long, long corridor out of sight. The first thing in themorning, Jason promised himself, he'd have a session about Moglaut withLab Nine's chief.

  The first thing in the morning brought word that Lab Nine's erraticgenius had stumbled himself out of the seventeenth-floor window of hissuburban apartment to his death. Lab Nine's chief clucked sorrowfully.

  Jason shook his head and wondered. After exhaustive investigation (zerodata) he still wondered. That's all he was able to do, wonder.

  The second time Jason's servo-tracer on Lonnie hiccupped and dozed offwas at 12:01 a.m., August 7th, 2008, just one day after the DiamondThrone arrived on Earth. The single, glittering diamond crystal,misshapen like an armchair and larger than one, had been mined out ofthe core of Tycho's crater. And it was also just two days before theMoon Throne would have been installed in the unbreakable safety ofRaichi Museum!

  "Jason, you're insane," his superior told him when Jason, reinforced byan astounding public furore, brought the matter up. "He owned it. He hadno reason to steal it from himself. Besides, one man alone couldn'tbudge that enormous--"

  "It won't do any harm to look-see."

  "It can do a lot of harm!" The Commissioner glanced quickly at theceiling. "I'll have nothing to do with it. That's all."

  Officially, Jason's hands were tied. But secretly he maneuvered thetransfer of a five-layers-down undercover man from Madras to GovernmentCity. And, coincidentally, in the ordinary routine of operation, RaichiMuseum took on a new janitor; a little brown man who grinned constantlyand was fanatical about dust. He was a good, reliable man and when hereported that neither the Diamond Throne nor any of the other missingglories were anywhere in the Museum, Jason had to believe him.

  As a matter of fact, it wouldn't have done Jason any good to haveinstalled the little brown man in Lonnie's mansion, either. Thelock--not the apparent one openly in the den door, but the real one--wasas unobtrusive and foolproof as twenty-first-century engineering couldmake it. And Lonnie always made sure he was alone and unobserved in theden before he locked it and sauntered across to bestow a peculiar,multiple tweak to the nose of Genghis Khan.

  He enjoyed the gesture. On Christmas Eve he grinned broadly while thetriptych pivoted in the wall, let him off in the Kruppmartite-walled,pulsing radiance of his very secret, very, very personal throne room,and swung back into place.

  His grin changed to an expression of imperial dignity as he encasedhimself in Catherine the Great's ermine Robe of State and grasped theMace of Alexander in his good left hand. But then the royal mien gaveway to a sullen scowl as he hesitated between Charlemagne's Crown andAmenhotep's Uraeus.

  Actually, neither one was worthy of him. Both purely regional coronetsbelonged over in the farthest dusty corner behind the curtain, alongwith Schicklehitler's shabby baton and that crummy Peacock Throne. Whathe really needed was a crown worthily symbolic of the position he'd makeit possible to publicly assume in the not-too-distant future.

  It was a damned imposition that he had to put up with. Well, he'd makethem do since they were the best to be had. Adjusting the Crown ofCharlemagne upon his brow, he stood on tiptoe to wriggle his way backinto the embrace of the titanic crystal that was the Diamond Throne.There, he relaxed and gave himself over to the contemplation of theglories of Lonnie.

  Who but he had developed such an efficient philosophy to such anunfailingly incisive point? Certainly not Old Boswell who, back in theearly days had thought to be teaching him.

  "Rule One, my boy," he remembered the old patrician twittering, "there'salways someone to pull your chestnuts out of the fire for you--for aprice. Pay it. Then add a plus to the payment and the man's yours to useagain and again."

  But even in those days as a callow, trusting youth, he'd been smarterthan Boswell. Observing, from the safety of the sidelines, the way theold fool had finally tripped up, he'd added a codicil of his own toRule One: "Make sure the payment's _final_!"

  (... witness the Berlin chestnut pullers. And the unobtrusive andundiscovered spate of their predecessors whose usefulness had becomeoutweighed ...)

  Then Boswell had said, "Rule Two: You don't have to know the how ofanything. All you have to know is _the man who does_. He always has aprice. The currency is usually odd, but find it, pay it, then proceedper Rule One."

  Even tonight, in his own Throne Room, Lonnie flushed heavily at the wayhe'd accepted at face value what came next. "By the way," Old Boswellhad added smoothly, "no connection of course, my boy, but the topicreminded me. Here are the keys to that daffodil-hued tri-phibian youogled at Sporter's exhibit. I must admit you have an eye for dashingmachinery even though I can't agree with your esthetics. No--no ... It'syours. I feel that you've earned it and more by--"

  He'd rushed to the garage to gloat over the mono-cyclic,gyro-stabilized, U-powered model with the seat that flattened into aconvenient bed at the touch of a button. The tri-phib, he recalled, inwhich he'd coaxed Agnes into taking her first ride.

  III

  The details of that recol
lection brought up his spirits again and, hereminded himself, the lesson had sunk in; had developed into his mostuseful ethic. After his narrow scrape with Jason's quantum analyzer inthe Berlin incident, it hadn't taken long for a good, one-man detectiveagency to locate Physlab Nine's frenetic genius, Moglaut. It had takenlonger to discover Moglaut's currency but, after much shadowing, the'tec had come through handsomely. Lonnie, automatically applying hisfully-developed Ethic One, always considered it a nice sentimental touchthat the one-man agency's final case was successful.

  Moglaut's price was a prim, brunette soprano who wore her eyes disguisedbehind heavy tortoiseshell. The ill-cut garb she could afford addedgreatly to her staid appearance, obscuring a certain full-bodiedlitheness. She earned a throttled existence soloing at funerals and inthe worship halls of obscure, rigidly fanatic offshoot sects.

  Her consuming passion was to be an opera prima donna.

  Lonnie never tried to understand why Moglaut sat fascinated throughendless sin-busting sermons and lachrymose requiems. To hurryafterwards, with the jerky motions, the glazed eyes of a zombie, tosubsequent rendezvous with the soprano at his suburban apartment. It wasentirely sufficient in Lonnie's philosophy that Moglaut did.

  The soprano's continuing suburban cooperation was insured by Lonnie'sjudicious doling out of exactly the cash to keep a tenth-rate operacompany barely functioning in a lesser quarter of Government City.Oddly, he found it pleased him and from that grew his wide patronizingof the Arts.

  The immediate result of the situation he created and controlled sodeftly was Moglaut's production of a closed-plenum grid suit.

  None of Gov-Pol, Gov-Mil or Gov-Econ labs found out about it; much lessPol-Anx or Government itself. Moglaut did all the work in the tinycomplete lab Lonnie set up in the suburbs.

  Lonnie didn't care what electronic witchery took place in the minutespatial interstices between the finely-woven mesh of flexible tantalum.Sufficient for him, the silvery white suit once donned and triple-zippedthrough hood and glove-endings, he was immune to ordinary Earthlyphenomena; free to move about, do what he wished, untraceably. In it,his words were not vulnerable to the sono-beam's eavesdropping.Photo-electric and magneto-photonic watchdogs ignored him. Even the mostdelicately sensitive thermo-couples continued their dreams of freezingflame undisturbed. Jason's quantum analyzer couldn't pick up theleavings of a glance--all that the suit permitted out into the physicalworld.

  The suit had its limitations, of course. Lonnie could see out, but thesuit could also be seen. That required sometimes intricate advanceplanning to offset. Also, occasionally, manipulating the field of thegrid to permit mechanical contact with the physical world was a triflecumbersome but never annoyingly so. All it took was a modicum ofstep-by-step thought and some care not to leave a personal trace for thequantum analyzer to pick up. No actual trouble. And, finally, Moglauthad warned that the compact power unit pocketed on the left breast had ahalf-life of only thirteen years.

  That left Lonnie placid. He took the suit for granted and used it forwhat it let him do.

  When something more was needed, he was convinced his philosophy wouldprovide it.

  He didn't waste time trying to determine whether possession of the suitor previous experiences leading to his insistence on its developmentbrought into focus the third ethic of his philosophy: "Rules One and Twoare valuable and have their use. But when the chips are really down, _doit yourself_!" Instead, he toddled about personally acquiring thetrappings of omnipotent royalty with little thought for the means.

  * * * * *

  But while he was about that business, the very limitations of the gridsuit furnished an unending challenge to Moglaut's genius. And out of asideline experiment incited by that challenge came the disarmer whichJason greeted with such fruitless glee.

  Fruitless because, of course, before turning the disarmer over to LabNine and Pol-Anx, Moglaut devised a new, infinitely stronger, moreversatile power pack for Lonnie's suit. A power pack controlled by asimple rheostat in the palm of the left-hand glove, but whose energyderived from the electron-kinetic properties of pent and shieldedtritium. Not simple. In fact, solving the problem of penning andshielding tritium in a portable package delayed the appearance ofJason's disarmer two whole years.

  That power pack and the reciprocating properties of the fields of thegrid suit itself made a dilly of a combination. Before, theclosed-plenum mesh kept Lonnie from leaving traces. Now, anything onceembraced within the palpitating fields of the grid moved with and howthe suit moved; not in accord with the natural laws of the surroundingcontinuum. That neat new attribute took care of the cubic yard or so ofDiamond Throne.

  And the ravenous tritium was malignant. Let any external power beapplied against the plenum and it would be smashed, hurled back fullforce upon its source.

  Jason had an undiagnosed example of that when he got only part of hisman back from the Valley of Kings.

  It was the power-pack-grid-suit combo that made a sleeping Buddha of theservo-tracer on the night of Jason's call at Lonnie's mansion; bollixedup the elaborate guards of the Peiping Temple of Mankind; and, whenJason so openly displayed suspicion of the genius, made child's play ofwhat the newspapers headlined as "Scientist's Amazing Suicide LovePact."

  Lonnie grinned, remembering the incident. Then other memories--thingshe'd witnessed through a tight-beam scanner secreted in the suburbanapartment--crowded his mind; stirring him restlessly on the DiamondThrone. Divesting himself of imperial appurtenances, he started for acertain locked file in the den to check the specifications of availableper-diem empresses.

  Making sure the triptych was snugly in place behind him, he paused toflip the switch on the stereo cube. Maybe Messalina Magdalen or one ofthe lesser ecdysiasts was presenting the perfection of her techniquesover the private channel at the moment, an event he would appreciate.

  Instead, the private channel presented, as the cube glowed and cleared,the same red, clawed landscape he'd shown to Jason months before. Thedisembodied voice of the commentator on Mars--not the lyrical publicannouncer, but the industrial economist who served the privatechannel--picked up in mid-word: "... early to have much data on thescience and material resources this dead civilization possessed, but Irecommend that every Corporation in Induscomm Cabal should place atechnical party at Mars Equatorial as soon as possible. We shall now keyin with the public spacecast. Note the texture and color range of theadornments and artifacts. I venture that these items will prove popularamong you who can well afford such rare treasures. However, subtlety inacquiring them is suggested. While common clamor for Public ownership isunder control, overt provocation is not recommended. Here is thecut-over ..."

  The scene in the cube flashed and coalesced, dazzling Lonnie's eyes fora moment. He was conscious of the landscape rushing "up"; of giganticwalls and spires rising out of the obscurity of a quarried chasm totower briefly against the pink haze of the Martian sky, then expand togive the impression of engulfing him before the scanner lens settledunder the center of a leaping, vaulted dome.

  To Lonnie, the many-acred enclosure meant nothing with its shimmering,stone-lace pillars, its tapestries that flamed with color or tracedghostlike, barely discernible outlines on the walls. Nor did any thoughtenter his mind of the exactness of the reflected color in the stereocube. Hands clenched into aching fists, he stood leaning forward;striving by sheer will-power to span the void of space and force thescanner lens closer to the truncated pyramid of steps atop which, on ablock of plain black stone, a dessicated mummy sat erect, hands foldedin its reedy lap and on its head a blazing, coruscating radiance.

  A _Crown_!

  IV

  Dazedly, Lonnie was conscious of the public announcer's rhapsodizing:"... Gov-Anth's ethnologists and linguistics experts are making someprogress toward deciphering the inscription carved on the plaque. Wait!Here's a note from Gawley Worin. You remember Gawley Worin, our famousleg-man, folks, don't you? Well, here's a note. It ... Listen to this,folks
! Listen! This is the beginning of the first rough translation ofthe inscription. Listen ...

  "'We, Wold, last of the Imperial Family of Wold who exercise our Powerfrom Wold, the Imperial City, throughout Wold, the Planet. We, last ofthe line of Wold, who alone may wear the Tiara which is Our Power, andour Symbol of Power, and the Symbol of Our Power throughout all the edosof Raii's life-taking light, without fear, facing the fate--'"

  Hissing, Lonnie cut the stereo switch. He'd seen enough. Darting acrossthe den, he opened his communico. "Get me Sykes in our Mars unit," heordered the operator. "Make sure what I say is scrambled. While you'rewaiting, get through to Denisen at Gov-Forn, then Raikes at Gov-Planet,then Butchwaeu in Gov-Int. And keep this line closed--that means you,too--while I'm talking."

  Lonnie--THE Launcelot Raichi--was going after what he wanted.

  Just under a mile away, Jason turned from the public stereo in therotunda of Pol-Anx. Tapping the cold bit of his pipe against his teethas he walked, he sought the ease of his chair. In the privacy of hisoffice he began to ponder.

  The months' developments gave him no surprise. Because it was the firstcontact Humanity had had with a non-human race, the Mars discoveriesmade an overwhelming impression on the man in the street. The result wasthat for the first time in Post-Synthesis history all artifacts werereserved for Earth Public!!!

  Everyone Who Mattered screamed, except Lonnie. He evinced a bidingcalmness while attending the ceremonies marking the installation of theTiara of Wold in the exact center of Government's own Fane of Artifacts;even smiling benignly on certain Gov-Ficials who seemed to perspire morethan the coolness of the evening warranted.

  Jason, loitering on the grass of Gov-Park, noted the smile and theperspiration. The perspirers reminded him of small boys expecting awhipping.

  Once the dedication ceremonies were over, Lonnie never returned to theFane to examine the Tiara.

  It was Jason the Tiara seemed to fascinate. He spent more and more time,particularly evenings, crouching on the bench in Gov-Park across fromthe Tiara, ignoring the constant stream