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13

The director of Replimaticon's security and espionage services was a former government operative by the name of Tuil Garma. With clear indication of a spy operating internally on behalf of an unknown agency for unknown reasons, the normal thing would have been for Sarvik to bring Garma in at that point as the connivance's specialist in such matters. However, Sarvik's own illicit delvings had brought to his notice the distinct proneness that people who involved Garma in their affairs seemed to have for coming to grief in their own entanglements, and his confidence in the wisdom of such a course of action fell considerably short of comfortable. Besides, he told himself, why rush to reveal to the world the nonpareil at security penetration GENIUS 5 was turning out to be? There was no doubt all kinds of juicy information hidden away in Replimaticon's most secure data levels. Owning something as formidable as GENIUS could, he reflected, prove to be the means of turning things around and slipping a big one over, himself, on Garma some day. Heh-heh-heh.

Accordingly, Sarvik decided to instigate some private espionage activity of his own. His first step consisted of recruiting GENIUS to create and launch out into the planetary net a viruslike software construction known as a boomerang. At the same time, he inserted sections of identifiable tracer code inconspicuously into the files that Leradil Driss had been snooping in.

A boomerang worked by first replicating into copies that would find their way into the systems of other connivances, governing agencies, scientific institutions, and other organizations all over Turle. Those places took pains to try to prevent such penetration, of course, but as with all evolutionary contests, the advantage was constantly shifting from offense to defense and back again, never remaining the same for long or reaching the same stage of advancement everywhere at the same time. With GENIUS 5 as his ally, it seemed that for the moment Sarvik was ahead of much of the game. Once inside a target system, the boomerang would become active and search for the tracer codes that had been planted in the doctored files at Replimaticon. Any copy that succeeded would then retransmit itself back through the net to Replimaticon, bringing with it information on where it had returned from and what it had found there.

The hostile turned out to be a consortium of interests loosely federated under the name of Farworlds Manufacturing: a conglomerate of enterprises joined by the common attribute of being involved in the Borijan remote interstellar supply business.

The Borijan civilization numbered somewhere around thirty billion individuals spread across Turle, several of Kov's other ten worlds and their moons, and various artificial orbiting and freely mobile constructions in between, but they had never established colonies beyond their home planetary system. This had more to do with the innately suspicious and adversarial Borijan nature than with any lack of the knowledge or technology to do so. Put simply, no group or faction had ever been trusting enough to venture far into the void, leaving others in charge back home.

Supplying the material needs of a still-growing, resource-hungry culture of that magnitude placed an increasing strain on a single planetary system, however, and the Borijan response had been to tap in remotely to the limitless potential available from other stars that nobody else seemed to be using. They built immense, fully automated starships to go out and look for uninhabited and otherwise suitable mineral-rich worlds. Those worlds were then seeded with basic, self-replicating factory installations that transformed the entire surface into a self-organizing general-purpose manufacturing complex for products and the vessels to ship them home in, dedicated to supporting the Borijan solar system from afar. This had been going on for more than a century. A dozen supply worlds had so far been sown, and Farworlds Manufacturing, the leading operator in the overall enterprise, was responsible for five of them.

Sarvik's first move was to contact Farworlds Manufacturing's security director, a man called Umbrik, and inform him that Leradil Driss had been uncovered. Umbrik reciprocated two days later by confiding that Driss had been let go for ineptness. She announced her resignation from Replimaticon soon afterward on terms that left her stake there forfeit. It had doubtless been put up by her principals, but the outcome was none the less profitable to Sarvik for that.

By disposing thus of Farworlds' agent, Sarvik had collected points in profusion and shown himself a formidable adversary, with access to powerful means for getting to other people's secrets. Further, in handling the matter himself instead of giving it to Tuil Garma and Replimaticon's official security service, he had signaled that he was in control and therefore the person to deal with directly—never mind the firm. After all, they obviously wanted to deal over something that involved him, he reasoned. Otherwise, why would they have mounted such an elaborate operation to spy on his work? It came as little surprise, therefore, when he received an invitation shortly afterward from a man called Indrigon, of the Farworlds directorate, to get together and talk. Indrigon suggested meeting at the Farworlds headquarters, which was located two thousand miles away on the equatorial continent of Xerse. Sarvik, for his part, was conscious that these were not people to be taken lightly, either. He would not be looking for chances to notch up a petty initial point or two on this occasion.

 

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Framed