Lane Harbinger

[Cord Hurn]

It seems to me that Lane Harbinger, Hashi Lebwohl's hard-working investigator, could be a good topic for sparking more Gap discussion. She is mentioned briefly in A Dark And Hungry God Arises, but we don't see her until the first chapter entitled "Hashi" in Chaos And Order.

Lane Harbinger responded to his summons promptly enough. When his intercom chimed to announce her, he adjusted his glasses by sliding them even farther down his thin nose, rumpled his hair, and verified that his lab coat hung crookedly from his shoulders. Then he told the data tech who served as his receptionist to let Lane in.

She was a small, hyperactive woman who might have appeared frail if she'd ever slowed down. Like any number of other people who worked for Data Acquisition, she was addicted to nic, hype, caffeine, and several other common stimulants; but as far as Hashi could tell these drugs had a calming effect on her organic tension. He assumed that her meticulousness was yet another kind of drug; a way of compensating for internal pressures which would have made her useless otherwise.

Presumably she was also a woman who talked incessantly. She knew better than to do that with him, however.

"You wanted to see me," she said at once as if the words were the merest snippet of a diatribe which had already been going on inside her for some time.

Hashi gazed over his glasses at her and smiled kindly. "Yes, Lane. Thank you for coming." He didn't ask her to sit down: he knew that she needed movement in order to concentrate. Even her most precise labwork was done to the accompaniment of a whole host of extraneous tics and gestures, as well as through a cloud of smoke. So he let her light a nic and pace back and forth in front of his desk while she waited for him to go on.

"I wanted to know," he said peering at her through the haze she generated, "how your investigation is going. Have you learned anything about the kaze who brought about our Godsen's untimely demise?"

"Too soon to be sure," she retorted like a rushing stream caught behind a check-dam of will.

"Don't worry about being sure," he countered amiably. "Just tell me where you are right now."

Lane's nervous dedication to thoroughness in her investigative efforts stand in contrast to Hashi's usual nonchalant demeanor. It makes for an interesting pairing of characters, to me.

[Cord Hurn]

"Fine. Right now." She didn't look at him as she paced. Her eyes roamed his walls as if they were the limits, not of this office, but of her knowledge. "It's a good thing you sent me over there. ED Security is motivated as all hell, and careful as they know how, but they don't understand what 'careful' really means. Let them stick to shooting people. They shouldn't be involved in this kind of investigation. Five minutes without me, and they would have made the job impossible.

"It could have been impossible anyway. That wasn't a big bomb, they never are, there's only so much space inside a torso, even if you only expect your kaze to be able to function for a few hours, but it was high brisance, I mean high. No particular reason why it shouldn't have reduced his id tag and credentials to particles so small even we couldn't find them, never mind the embedded chips themselves.

"But Frik's secretary knows more than she thinks she knows." In full spate the tech's tone became less hostile; or perhaps simply less brittle. "Ask her the right questions, and you find that after she did her"--Lane sneered the words as if they were beneath contempt--"'routine verification' on this kaze, he didn't put his id tag back around his neck. He didn't clip his communications credentials back onto his breast pocket, which is so normal around here we don't even notice it anmymore, hell, I'm doing it myself"--she glanced down at the DA card clipped to her labsuit--"you're the onlyl one who gets away without doing it. But he didn't do that.

"He shoved them both into his thigh pocket, the right one, according to Frik's secretary. Which is not the kind of thing you do if you're trying to plant evidence when you blow yourself up, because the bomb is still going to reduce everything to smears and scrap. But it is the kind of thing you do if you're new at this and you know you're going to die and acting normal in secure areas isn't second nature. So his id tag and credentials were just that much farther away from the center of the blast.

"I found part of one of the chips."

Hashi blinked his interest and approval without interrupting.

Just by blinking, Hashi knows he is encouraging Lane. It's a convincing picture of two people who know how to work efficiently together, and it is obvious from this first scene with Lane that Hashi has picked the most thorough of his underlings for this investigative job.

[Cord Hurn]

Something to note here: Hashi had just gotten Nick's mysterious and taunting message which contained the sentence, "Kazes are such fun, don't you think?", and he doesn't know what Nick is talking about. So he is having Lane go over the details for a reason besides wanting to know where the evidence is pointing; Hashi needs a distraction from useless worrying over what Nick was actually trying to say/threaten/warn.

"You know how we do this kind of search." As soon as she finished her first nic, she lit a second. "Vacuum-seal the room and go over it with a resonating laser. Map the resonance and generate a computer simulation, which helps narrow the search. When we chart the expansion vectors, we can tell where the kaze's residue is most likely to be. Those areas we study one micron at a time with flourochromatography. When you're operating on that scale, even a small part of a SOD-CMOS chip emits like a star."

He did indeed know all this; but he let Lane talk. She was distracting him nicely.

"As I say, I got one. Two actually, but one was driven into the floor so hard it crumbled when I tried to extract it. Even I can't work with that kind of molecular powder. So there's just one.

"I don't know much about it yet. We can assume its data is still intact, that's exactly what this kind of chip is good for, but I haven't found a way to extract it yet. SOD-CMOS chips add state when power is applied to the source and drain. This particular piece of chip doesn't include those conveniences."

Another nic.

"But I can tell you one thing about it. It's ours."

Fascinated as much by her manner as by her explanation, Hashi asked, "How do you know?"

"By its particular production quality. Legally, nobody but us is allowed to make them, that's part of the datacore law. Of course, we don't actually manufacture them ourselves, the law simply gives us the power to license their manufacture, but we've only granted one license, Anodyne Systems"--she didn't need to mention that Anodayne Systems was a wholly owned subsidiary of the UMC--"and they supply us exclusively. In fact, everybody in Anodyne Systems actually works for us. The whole company is really just a fiction, a way for the UMC to keep a hand in what we're doing, and for us to get SOD-CMOS chips without having to find room for an entire production plant in our budget.

"There's only one way to make a SOD-CMOS chip. On paper, they should all be identical no matter who produces them. But it doesn't work that way in practice. Quality varies inversely with scale. The more you make, the more impurities creep in--human error, if not plain entropy. The less you make, the fewer the impurities. Unless you're incompetent, in which case I wouldn't expect the chip to work anyway."

"So if a chip were manufactured illegally," Hashi put in, "you would expect it to be purer than ours."

While Lane's meticulous preliminary work on the scene of Godsen's death still points potential guilt in numerous directions (apparently a lot of people work at Anodyne Systems, and have authorization to its chip product), she has already eliminated the possibility of outsider groups like the disgruntled Native Earth society from being a party to Godsen's murder. Already we know that murder to be an inside job.

[Cord Hurn]

Lane nodded without breaking stride. "This chip came from Anodyne Systems. It's indistinguishable from the chips in our most recent consignment, which we picked up and brought here six days ago."

"In other words," he concluded for her, "we have a traitor on our hands."

She corrected him. "A traitor or a black market. Or simple bribery. Here or in Anodyne Systems."

"Quite right. Thank you." He beamed his appreciation. Meticulousness was a rare and treasurable quality. "A traitor, or black market, or bribery. Here or over there." After a moment, he added, "It fits, you know."

She paused in her pacing long enough to look momentarily breakable. "Fits?"

"It's consistent," he explained casually, "with the fact that our kaze arrived on the shuttle from Suka Bator. He had already been cleared by GCES Security. That detail enabled him to succeed here. If he had come from any other part, the estimable Min Donner's people would have scrutinized him more closely--and then he might not have been allowed to pass."

Lane had resumed moving. "But I still don't see--"

"It is quite simple," Hashi replied without impatience. He enjoyed his own explanations. "Min Donner's people were not negligent. They had reason to rely on GCES Security. Routine precautions around Suka Bator are as stringent as ours at the best of times. And at present, so soon after a similar attack on Captain Sixten Vertigus in his own office, those precautions were at their tightest. Surely no threat would be allowed to pass. Our kaze would have presented little danger if he had not already been verified--in a sense, legitimized--by GCES Security.

"But how was that legitimacy achieved? Was GCES Security negligent? Under these circumstances, I think not. Therefore our kaze's various credentials must have been impeccable."

For having such different-seeming personalities, I note these two reason very similarly.

[Cord Hurn]

The smoking tech couldn't keep silent. "All right, I get it. Whoever sent the kaze didn't just have access our SOD-CMOS chips. He also had access to GCES Security codes, not to mention ours. So he must be GCES personnel. Or UMCP."

"Or UMC," Hashi added. "They own Anodyne Systems."

"Or UMC," she agreed.

"But we can dismiss the GCES," he continued. "Unlike the United Mining Companies and the United Mining Companies Police, our illustrious Council has no access to Anodyne Systems. Conversely, of course, the Dragon in his den holds enough votes to obtain whatever he desires from the GCES."

Lane considered this for a moment, then nodded through a gust of smoke. When Hashi didn't go on, she asked, "So where does that leave us?"

"My dear Lane"--he spread his hands--"it leaves us precisely where we are. You have gleaned a certain fact. Each fact is a step, and enough steps make a road. We are one step farther along our road.

"I am eager to see if you will be able to provide us with another fact, or perhaps two."

She didn't hesitate. "I'm on it," she announced brusquely as she turned for the door.

"I am sure you are," Hashi said to her departing back. "Thank you."

For a useful distraction, he added while the door closed. And for some intriguing possibilities.

Lane seems impatient to see the whole picture, and I think it is a reflection of how tightly-wound she is when she's on duty. Hashi wisely reminds her that it's a multi-step process, and any step made is still progress. Somehow, the reader just KNOWS Lane's going to get to the bottom of this kaze mystery!

[Cord Hurn]

(I plan to continue this when I've had time to delve back into This Day All Gods Die, as I recall there being some interesting moments in there involving this investigation. When I get the chance, I'll return to this thread.)

[Cord Hurn]

Lane Harbinger met him at the dock as soon as the shuttle powered its systems and the space doors of the bay sealed to restore atmosphere.

On Suka Bator he'd supervised the essential chore of placing Imposs/Alt's earthly remains in a shielded, sterile bodybag and loading them into the shuttle's cargo space. Now he watched over the delivery of the bodybag into Lane's care.

A glance at the corridor in which the kaze had been detonated had assured him that too many people had trampled too much evidence--and indeed the corridor itself was too large to permit the kind of meticulous scrutiny Lane had given Godsen Frik's office. Of necessity he's surrendered his desire for some sort of microscopic data from the region around the body, and had instead concentrated on Imposs/Alt's corpse--on the smears of his blood and the mangled mess of his tissues. The body itself had been simply scooped into the bodybag with a sterile shovel. But every streak or droplet of blood Hashi could locate had been cut out of the concrete with a utility laser and added to the bodybag's contents.

He hoped devoutly that these remains would enable Lane to find the answers he needed.

No, not the answers: the proofs. He already knew the answers.

Hashi and Lane are both such odd characters, he with his moral relativity and she with her wound-up persona. But I find myself admiring them both for their meticulousness, for their willingness to be sure that "no stone is left unturned".

[Avatar]

The moral relativity isn't odd to me, but her drive is.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

A fuming nic dangled from her mouth as she joined him beside the cargo space. Her eyes glittered like shards of mica--a sign that she rode levels of stim and hype which would have poleaxed anyone whose metabolism hadn't been inured to them. While the bodybag was being loaded onto a sled for transport to her lab in Data Acquisition, she asked tensely, "You sure of his id?"

"My dear Lane," Hashi chided gently. She knew as well as anyone who worked with him that he was unlikely to mistake an id.

She shrugged like a twitch. "Just checking. If you're right, my job's that much easier."In the pockets of her labcoat her fingers twitched as if they were entering data on a purely metaphysical keypad.

Certainly she would be required to spend less time waiting for Data Storage to run its vast SAC routines.

"Any chance I'll find a detonator?" she continued.

Hashi made a conscious effort to remain calm; amiably unruffled. He didn't want to be infected by her congenital tension. "Who can say?" There were too many factors: the type of explosive, its brisance, the shape of the charge, blast reflection from the nearby walls. "But if you do," he went on more sharply, "the information will be vital. Do you understand me, Lane?"

She sucked on her nic. "What's to understand? Isn't that what it all hinges on?"

"Not all," he countered with a shake of his head. "But enough." He knew the truth: whatever Lane learned wouldn't change it. Nevertheless the proof he wished to give Warden Dios depended heavily on what Lane could discover.

"In any case," he added, "these will be of interest."

Casually, almost covertly, as if he didn't wish to be seen, he slipped Imposs/Alt's clearance badge and id tag into Lane's pocket.

She identified them with her fingers, nodded decisively. "I'm sure they will."

The sled was ready to go. Lane moved to accompany it. Despite the nature of the emergency, however, and his own desires, he called her back. Camouflaging his seriousness with his peculiar sense of humor, he told her that he wished to see her results "relatively instantaneously. Engage your gap drive, Lane. Defy time if you must."

He wanted her findings before Warden summoned him.

She replied with a snort of smoke, "Don't I always?'

He wheezed a laugh. "You do. Indeed you do."

He waited until she and her sled had left the dock before shifting himself into motion.

By then he'd already begun to wonder how much longer Warden would delay.

In the pockets of her labcoat her fingers twitched as if they were entering data on a purely metaphysical keypad. A demonstration of Lane's hyperactive nature illustrated in a way I won't soon forget.

[Cord Hurn]

Despite the plain urgency of the summons---and the necessity of obedience--Hashi took the time to call her.

Her voice over the intercom was brusque and focused; deep in concentration. "Make it quick. I'm busy."

Hashi couldn't restrain himself: his personal imp of perversity make him say, "Too busy to talk to me? Lane, I'm crushed."

She let out a sigh that sounded like smoke. "If you want me to work fast, I have to be careful. If you want me to work faster than the speed of light, I have to be more careful than God."

He relented. "I understand perfectly." Above all he valued Lane for her meticulousness. "Nevertheless I must appear before Warden Dios in a matter of moments. The time is apt for results. He will certainly desire results from me."

"Then let's not waste each other's time. Here's what I have so far.

"The id tag and clearance badge were easy." She didn't need to organize her thoughts. Hashi suspected that she permitted herself no disorganized thoughts. "They're legit. I mean Clay Imposs is--or maybe was--a real GCES security guard with a good record. He's been with then for years. The tag and badge say they're his. But the body isn't.

"You were right, it's Nathan Alt. Gene scan matches exactly.

"So how did he get through his own Security?" She asked Hashi's next question for him. "Right after that first kaze attacked Captain Vertigus, GCES Security started using retinal scans to confirm id. That should have stopped Alt cold.

"The answer is, this is a new id tag. Made for the job. It says it identifies Clay Imposs, but the retinal signature and the rest of the physical id belong to Alt."

"Is that possible?" Hashi inquired. He knew it was.

"Sure. It worked because the physical id was generated by the same code engine that drove Imposs' clearances. Everything looked legit on the surface. GCES Security didn't know they had to run a full playback from the SOD-CMOS chips and compare it to Imposs' original data to catch the switch. Hell, Hashi, we aren't doing that here. It would take hours to clear anybody."

Sadly, that was true. Indeed, the only reason GCES--or UMCPHQ--Security functioned at all was that the expertise needed to circumvent it was so specialized; and so closely guarded.

It's hard to guard against corruption at the top and against well-placed traitors no matter how technologically advanced your society gets, I suppose.

[Cord Hurn]

"Are you performing this playback? I require evidence."

"One of my techs is."

"And--" Hashi prompted her.

"We haven't found anything yet."

"Have you encountered any patches, or other signs of tampering?"

As Hashi had told Koina before the extraordinary session, the code-strings Lane had extracted from the credentials of Godsen's killer were current as well as correct. If that code engine had been patched or altered--lawfully or otherwise, by GCES Security, Anodyne Systems, or anyone else--the change would have been apparent. Such adjustments transformed source-code as much as mutagens transformed human RNA.

But only older code required patching.

Lane restrained impatience poorly. "Not yet."

"Very well." He let that question go. "And the code engine itself--?" he probed.

"It's valid," she returned at once. "Current and correct. Which means exactly what you think it means.

"But if you want confirmation," she continued without pausing, "the source-code strings we've picked up from the id of the kaze who killed Godsen are a perfect match."

Hashi nodded to himself. "Confirmation is always welcome. However, this is hardly a surprise."

"No," Lane acknowledged.

He cast a worried glance at his chronometer, then asked, "Have you gleaned any other data?"

"That's what I'm working on," she retorted. "The body."

As she spoke, he heard a subtle shift in her tone; a change of intensity. So far the results she'd given him had been relatively routine, despite their importance: any of the techs in her department could have supplied them. But now she sounded more personally engaged; perhaps excited. At once he became convinced that she was on the track of something vital.

"But I can tell you right now," she went on, "we aren't going to find a detonator.

"The bomb has to be shielded in the body. Otherwise Security would catch it. And you know what that kind of shielding is like." Hashi did know. Angus Thermopyle's body was full of it. "It has to appear organic in order to pass scan. On top of that, it has to reflect back what scan expects to see. Unfortunately--for us--any shield contains the blast when the bomb goes off. Maybe only for a millisecond or two, but that's enough to throw some of the force back onto the bomb itself. And the detonator. On a molecular level, I'll be able to find all the pieces you want. But I won't be able to reconstruct the device these pieces came from.

"So I'm concentrating on biochemistry."

Her voice conveyed an almost subliminal frisson, like a distant electrostatic discharge. Despite the numbers ticking away on his chronometer, he listened harder.

"His blood is a real witch's brew. Which is exactly what you would expect if he was in a state of drug-induced hypnosis. I haven't had time to identify even half the chemicals his body shouldn't have had in it."

"Tell me," Hashi put in as if he thought he could hurry; as if he didn't know that she was already moving as fast as she could without stumbling into disorganization.

Instead of hurrying, she began to speak a bit more slowly, articulating each word with deliberate precision.

Talking more carefully to be sure every word she utters represents the truth as determined by carefully-investigated facts. I get the impression that any statement Lane would make about her investigations is rarely anything less than unshakeable truth.

[Cord Hurn]

"There's a coenzyme spiked in his blood spectrum. I mean a major spike. Of course, it's a coenzyme. It's inert. And it isn't even remotely natural. But it combines with some natural human apoenzymes to produce an artificial holoenzyme, and that one is active. It bears some interesting resemblances to pseudo-amylase, which is one of the enzymes we use to produce shielding in cyborgs, but there are significant differences, too."

Involuntarily Hashi drummed his fingers on his desk. He needed to answer Warden's summons. "Lane, please make your point. I am not in good odor with our esteemed director. This delay while we talk will doubtless vex him."

"I'm trying, damn it," she snapped. "Nobody but you ever gets to think around here."

He swallowed a burst of ire. He had called her before she was ready to report. Her findings were partial and unclear. Naturally she wished to express them cautiously. He would gain nothing by reproaching her.

"If there were more resemblances," she explained stiffly, "I would probably assume this particular coenzyme is there because of the shields. But it wouldn't work well for that. The differences are too significant."

Again she paused. In another moment or two, Hashi thought, he would have no choice but to shout at her.

More slowly than ever, she went on, "If I were asked to come up with a use for the holoenzyme this coenzyme creates, I might say it would make a good chemical trigger. Release it into bloodstream, and one or two heartbeats later you get a big bang. Like an orgasm so intense it kills you."

Without transition his irritation vanished. Lane Harbinger, he hummed to himself, you are a marvel. Is it any wonder that I endure yur eccentricities?

Almost singing his excitement and pleasure, he said, "Check his teeth, Lane."

Where could a coenzyme be concealed so that a man in a state of drug-induced hypnosis would be able to ingest it on some preconditioned signal? Where else but in his mouth? And absorption into the bloodstream would be slower. Ten or fifteen seconds at least. Safer for the man who gave the signal.

"What's left of them," she returned. "I'm already working on it."

In a glow of perverse gallantry, he answered, "Then please do not allow me to interrupt you. Perhaps when your efforts are complete you will let me persuade you to marry me."

So that he wouldn't hear her laughing in scorn, he silenced his intercom.

I think after Lane's efforts are complete, she'll have better luck persuading Hashi for a raise. A holoenzyme that becomes explosive when absorbed into the bloodstream sounds like the hardest kind of bomb to detect. Learning this makes the plot more compelling for me, because UMCPHQ obviously is highly unprepared to block an attack of that nature, and the agency has a lot of catching up to do very quickly.

[Cord Hurn]

Ah, the shock when Lane is seen with her characteristic drive totally depleted while she remains conscious...

Hashi Lebwohl was eager to prove himself equal to Warden Dios' vast and dangerous intentions.

Lane's lab was several levels and several hundred meters away from Center. Lifts and service shafts shortened the distance, however, and Hashi knew them all. He reached her workroom scant minutes after confirming Min Donner as Acting Director.

But when he entered the lab--a large space by the constricted measure of an orbital platform--he stopped in surprise.

Lane was alone. Apart from the complex clutter of tables and terminals, instruments of all kinds, sterile chambers and autoclaves, retorts and flasks, probes and sensors and keypads, packets of stim and hype, pots of coffee, bowls overflowing with ash and butts, the room was empty. The numerous aides and techs he'd assigned to her were gone--sent away, he assumed, since he declined to believe that any of his people would have abandoned a project so vital.

And Lane herself was sitting down. In itself that was profoundly uncharacteristic: Hashi wasn't surfe he'd ever seen her in a chair of her own volition. As a rule she consumed enough stimulants of all kinds to make a block of wood hyperactive. Yet her condition was worse than uncharacteristic. She sat with her legs sprawled gracelessly in front of her as if she had not further use for them. Her head hung down, unclean hair dangling before her face: he couldn't tell whether she'd glanced at him; whether she'd noticed his arrival at all. Only her mouth moved as she sucked arrhythmic as a limping heart, on one of her foul nics. Smoke curdled up into her face, and filtered away through her hair as if she were exhaling her life.

[Cord Hurn]

For a moment Hashi was stunned. He lacked Warden's talent for responding to the emotions of his people. Indeed, he seldom cared to let them distract him. By nature he was unprepared and ill equipped to deal with any woman in a state which resembled catatonia.

He had no time for Lane's despair; no time at all. Yet he knew instantly, intuitively, that he would be unable to reach her unless he attended to it. Without warning, he discovered that he would be lost unless he could prove himself Warden's equal in completely unexpected ways.

"My dear Lane," he asked softly, "what on Earth has gone wrong?"

She didn't react. Smoke seeped out of her hair as if the mind under it had been burned to the ground.

Beforehe could decide how to approach her, the lab intercom chimed. "Director Lebwohl?" a voice asked nervously. "Director Lebwohl, are you there? This is Center. Director?"

Hashi swallowed an arcane curse. Briefly he forgot where Lane's intercom was. The voice from Center seemed to arise from a source he couldn't locate. Then he remembered that the console where she usually worked held her pickup and speaker.

Four vexed strides took him around a worktable to her terminal. With a jerk of his thumb, he toggled the pickup.

"Director Lebwohl," he announced like a wasp. "Did I mention that I'm busy?"

"Sorry, Director," the nervous voice replied quickly. "I have a flare for you. From Director Hannish. At the emergency session."

Hashi wanted to retort, I know where she is. I stepped down as Acting Director. I wasn't fired for incompetence. But he restrained himself. He didn't have time to indulge his ire. Instead he drawled, "Then perhaps you should tell me what it says."

"Yes, Director." Hashi heard the sound of keys. "To DA Director Hashi Lebwohl," Center reported. "From PR Director Koina Hannish. 'I'm running out of time here.' That's all.

"Any response, Director?"

Hashi flapped his arms. The urgency in his blood needed an outlet. At the same time he couldn't justify covering a mere communications tech--or Koina herself--with his exasperation.

"Inform Director Hannish,"he said brusquely, "that I do not wish to be disturbed."

At once he silenced the pickup and turned back to Lane.

It's when Hashi has to deal with the stress of short time and multiple demands, when he has to try to reach Lane to shake her out of her emotional catatonia, that he seems less of a "character" and more of a "real person" to me. Hope I explained that clearly enough. He comes to better resemble people I've known.

[Cord Hurn]

Past her hair he caught the glint of one eye. Her nic had been smoked out. She dropped it to the floor beside her, produced another from somewhere, lit it with a small magnesium torch hot enough to start a fire which would gut the station.

He concealed a thin sigh. Not comatose, he thought. Not unreactive. So much was encouraging.

On impulse he reached up, removed the glasses for obfuscation, folded them carefully, and dropped them into a pocket of his labcoat. A feigned absence of pretense was the easiest stratagem he could devise on short notice.

"Lane, I can't afford this." He filled his voice with a vibration of sincerity. "I need you. Director Hannish needs you. You heard her message. It would be impossible to overstate how sorely you're needed.

"I have no time to play therapist for an autistic child."

Not exactly Hashi at his most sensitive, but his impatience helps build up the tension in this scene.

[Cord Hurn]

At first he feared she wouldn't answer. And what if she didn't? What then? He could log on to her terminal, access her notes and records, attempt to reconstruct her results. But such a task might require hours. Even if he accomplished miracles of celerity, it would take too long--

Fortunately she'd heard him. She may have been overwhelmed by despair--or perhaps just utterly exhausted--but she was possessed of a mind which had always responded to the demands he'd place on it. Her voice seemed to ache with reluctance as she murmured past the screen of her hair, "I failed."

"What, 'failed'? You?" Deliberately he stifled the avuncular tone he normally issued in times of stress. Nor did he reveal his relief. Despair was in some sense unanswerable--a neurochemical wound which no words could heal. Mere failure was an altogether simpler issue. Perhaps she experienced something akin to the shame he'd felt when he realized that Warden's game was far deeper than he'd imagined: the wound to his self-esteem. "Forgive my doubt. You could only fail by trying to answer the wrong questions. If you appear to have failed, it must be because I have misnamed your assignment in some way."

After a moment she shook her head--the only movement she'd made except for those required while smoking. "I can't find any proof," she murmured listlessly. "Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't that what you need?"

If she'd been any other woman--even Min Donner--he might have believed that she was on the verge of tears.

Her vulnerability sparked a reaction in him which he hardly recognized. It may have been that his heart went out to her. Slumping on the heels of his old-fashioned shoes, he moved toward her until he was near enough to touch her. With both hands he eased her head back, then parted her hair away from her face so that the smoke of her nic was no longer trapped in her eyes.

"Do I need proof?" he answered. "Assuredly. But it's an ambiguous notion at the best of times--which these are not. Don't trouble yourself with what I may or may not need, Lane. Tell me what you've learned."

She didn't meet his gaze. Her attention was fixed on a landscape of pain he couldn't see.

"I found the hollow tooth. Where they stored that apoenzyme." Nathan Alt's chemical detonator. He bit into it and blew up. But I can't prove that I can't prove some other trigger wasn't destroyed in the blast. I can't tell you who did it to him"

Hashi unusual (for him) parent-like nurturing skills succeed in finding out the problem better than his lofty sarcasm could ever accomplish.

[Holsety]

Not only going through the external actions of trying to bolster her spirits,

Perhaps she experienced something akin to the shame he'd felt when he realized that Warden's game was far deeper than he'd imagined: the wound to his self-esteem.
...
Her vulnerability sparked a reaction in him which he hardly recognized. It may have been that his heart went out to her.

We're actually seeing genuine empathy from the rogue!

[Cord Hurn]

Not only going through the external actions of trying to bolster her spirits,

Perhaps she experienced something akin to the shame he'd felt when he realized that Warden's game was far deeper than he'd imagined: the wound to his self-esteem.
...
Her vulnerability sparked a reaction in him which he hardly recognized. It may have been that his heart went out to her.

We're actually seeing genuine empathy from the rogue!

It is indeed an unexpected side to see from Hashi, Holsety, as was Hashi's decisive move to stop Nathan Alt.

[Cord Hurn]

"We expected that," he murmured to encourage her. "Go on."

A small tightening that might have begun as a shrug seemed to pull in on herself. "I tried to locate the original research." Smoke and grief made her voice husky. "Somebody must have developed that apoenzyme. Made it. It didn't just happen in his body. But whoever came up with it has done a better job than usual of keeping it secret. Or my clearance isn't high enough. Or it came from the Amnion. I can't find it."

Hashi let his mouth twist with regret. He would have been delighted to learn that the research had been done by some subsidiary of the UMC.

"The code engine is current and correct," Lane continued dully. "I told you that. It doesn't prove anything."

"No," he assented. "But it is fascinating. And it serves to eliminate"--he fluttered a hand--"oh, any number of misleading possibilities."

Apparently his reassurance meant nothing to her. She pulled herself tighter.

"I did a complete readout of the chip." Her voice hinted at weeping. "Took a long time. My last hope." She discarded one nic, lit another. "But it doesn't tell me anything we didn't already know. Alt's retinal signature wasn't superimposed on Imposs' credentials. Nothing was superimposed. That's not Imposs' id tag. It's a new one. An authentic forgery. Designed to be exactly the same as his. Except it says Alt is him."

Between one beat and the next, Hashi's pulse accelerated. A new one. Excitement began to throb like hope in his bloodstream. An authentic forgery. She'd told him that earlier; but at the time he hadn't entirely grasped its significance. Now it rejuvenated him.

"That doesn't prove anything, either," she went on. "Whoever did this has resources the native Earthers would kill for. So we can ignore them. But you knew that already, too.

"I don't have anything for you," she finished as if she'd reached the end of her strength. "We need to trace that chip."

I like the strong contrast between Lane's gloomy mood and Hashi's enthusiastic mood, here. I find the interaction of Gap characters in general to be very entertaining, and that passage is just another example of that.

[Cord Hurn]

Hashi's moment of empathy with Lane doesn't last long, and Lane's awareness of that causes an interesting reaction.

Perhaps he should have sustained his mask of sincerity for a few more moments. To some extent, however, he'd already forgotten her distress. Excitement carried him elsewhere. Unselfconsciously he snatched his glasses from his pocket, slapped them back onto his face.

"Then we will," he announced like an affectionate uncle.

His sudden rush of confidence must have struck her as smug, condescending. She flinched as if he'd struck her; recoiled so hard that she nearly lost her seat. Then her despair ignited to fury with such brisance that it staggered him.

She flung herself at him; bunched her fists in the lapels of his labcoat; drove him backward.

"Don't you think I've tried?" she yelled into his amazed face. "My God, what do you think I've been doing here while you flit around smiling at everybody and pretending to know everything?" When she'd pushed him as far as the wall, she held him there. "What do you think I've been tearing my heart out about?"

Hashi blinked at her in confusion. "Do you mean you've been unable to identify the id code for that chip?"

"It's too damn small!" Lane shouted, tried to howl. "Haven't I told you that? If I dropped it in your mouth, you couldn't find it with your tongue. It doesn't have a source or a drain, and it doesn't have a goddamn id code! I can't pursue evidence that isn't there!"

It's a miscommunication problem between Hashi and Lane, it turns out. They're thinking about two different chips.