above...
Coren took out a few of his vonoomans. The little machines clustered in the palm of his
left hand. He turned slowly, surveying the office. Satisfied, he knelt down and set them on the
floor. He lightly touched them, and each glowed briefly as it activated.
“If Rega knew I used you,” he whispered to them, “he might...” He grunted, self-
mocking, and touched each one again. The devices stirred for a few moments, then shot off in
different directions, seeking out the specific energy signatures of communications, monitoring,
and alarm systems. Once in place, Coren would be able to range wherever he wished within the
warehouse, free of detection.
He took out a palm-sized pad and switched it on. Less than a minute later all the telltales
winked green.
He sat down at one of the desks, jacked his palm monitor into the computer keyboard
before him, and initiated an access sequence. The security code was not very sophisticated; his
decrypter gained entry in less than thirty seconds. Coren keyed quickly. The scheduling chart
came up on the screen, showing incoming and outgoing traffic for all the bays on the far side of
the warehouse. He studied the times.
Most of the bays were tightly scheduled. One showed a half-hour period with nothing
going out, nothing coming in. He tapped queries. A shipment had been canceled at the last
minute. Three shipments, in fact, all belonging to a company called Kysler, and all cancellations
routed out of the Baltimor ITE oversight offices. Baltimor...practically the other side of the globe.
Odd. There was an ITE oversight office in the Laus District and another up north in Arkanleg,
both of which should have had responsibility for supervising traffic in and out of Petrabor. Still,
there was no reason Baltimor would be necessarily barred from such duties...
He opened the manifests. Mostly raw synthetic materials, exotic molecular structures,
exported by an Auroran-owned wholesaler. One bin contained electronics manufactured by
Imbitek. Coren studied the ID tags for a few moments. Kysler Diversified was the distributor. All
the lots had destination codes which he could not read.
Coren closed down the station. He unjacked his monitor, checked the status on his little
interference runners once more, then headed out. He knew now which bay he needed.
Coren followed the transparent wall till he came to an exit. A short staircase took him
down to the walkway that bordered the labyrinth. He produced another handful of vonoomans,
smaller than the first group, from a different pocket. Activated, they scurried along the walkway
and disappeared. The first group gave him security, interfering with the warehouse systems; these
would find people for him.
Automated tractors following invisible guide signals sped through the canyons, a
constant loud humming and rush of cold air that whipped at his coat. The place smelled of oil
and ozone, metal and hot plastic, and, under all that, an organic odor: yeast or mold. Rot.
The walkway took him to a broad receiving area fronting a row of large bay doors. As he
neared, the sounds grew thunderous: doors opening and slamming shut, transports rumbling
through in both directions, the wind now almost constant. And beyond that, in the distance,
deeper, sepulchral, the heavy thunder of the port itself: shuttles lifting off and landing
irregularly, disrupting any possible rhythm to all the noise.
Between the edge of the storage hive and the bays lay six meters of ancient, stained
apron. Except for small piles of boxes and litter, Coren saw nowhere to hide. He set free another
handful of machines and retreated to the nearest staircase leading down into a canyon.
Fog lay heavily a few stories below. Coren descended half the height of the block, until
the cold bit at his face and filled his sinuses with warning hollowness. He sat down on a step and
pulled his palm monitor out once more.
It unfolded four times to give him a display showing the locations of all his little spies
against a map of the entire warehouse. The surveillance blocks still showed operative. Now he
saw blue dots where all his other machines had secreted themselves. He pressed the half-meter-
square screen against the wall beside him and waited.