Cold as Ice by Charles Sheffield Page A

lost forever. Bat was convinced that their secrets might yield to careful analysis and systematic search. It was the puzzle to exceed all puzzles.
    Through the branch, he had made tiny investments in old records, ones that Magrit could justify, if necessary, as evidence of former patterns of passenger movement around the Belt. He had studied the faded printouts in the seclusion of Bat Cave and finally requested that a certain orbit be close-scanned for objects of specific description. Magrit had approved the search. The wreckage of the Belt freighter located there contained design procedures and samples of an unknown class of bonding adhesives, superior to anything currently available.
    Magrit Knudsen had been praised for the discovery. She had refused credit and made sure that the true source of the accomplishment was acknowledged. Bat was a department hero—for a few days; then his arrogance and pomposity again became too much for most people to stand.
    On Battachariya's second data request, the department had been a little more generous with funds. The subsequent search had yielded no new invention, but the Ceres Museum had paid handsomely for the little antique Von Neumann. It was the original model, used in the mining of the Trojan asteroids before Fishel's Law and Epitaph—" Smart is Dumb: It is unwise to build too much intelligence into a self-replicating machine"—became accepted dogma. Everyone thought that the particular Von Neumann model had been exterminated, but this one was still functioning after forty years of drifting in space. The museum put it on display . . . in a triple-sealed, inert enclosure. Deprived of raw materials, the Von Neumann was not judged dangerous.
    By Battachariya's fourth success, no one questioned his hobby, or the anomaly of Great War-related expenditures within a transportation department. If anyone had, an economic analysis would have shown investments repaid by discoveries a hundred times over.
    But the departmental memoranda were another matter. Looking at the scanty file as she returned through the suspension tube, Magrit had the feeling that Bat's war-relic activities had been not so much approved and planned as simply grown. She was too experienced to let nervousness show, but the last steps back into Bat Cave were not easy ones. She paused on the threshold, looking around the chamber and trying to see it through the inspector-general's probing eyes. The granular paneled walls and ceiling, the recessed solar-spectrum lighting, and the soft but impenetrable grey floor did not draw her attention. What Magrit sought were items and emphases exclusively Battachariyan.
    She stared along the narrow, ugly chamber that formed both living quarters and office. The Bat Cave was only three meters high and four wide, but it was at least thirty deep. The useful width was diminished by bookcases and file cabinets that ran along both the right and left walls. They carried thousands of unbound sheaves of dusty printouts, the results of Belt Sweeper surveys, all placed apparently at random.
    At the far end there was a small, well-equipped kitchen and the great mound of Battachariya's bed. To reach that point, a visitor must pass through a central corridor wide enough to admit Bat's own bulk. That corridor was flanked by tables and benches covered with a chaos of gadgets and machinery, many of them incomplete or fused to uselessness.
    It was a unique collection, a cornucopia of Great War relics and debris. The one thing missing—Magrit could see it clearly now, as she had not seen it for years—was any evidence of passenger transport schedules. Evidence, in fact, of Bat's official duties. Yarrow Gobel's gimlet eye, no matter how sharp, could not see inside Battachariya's head, where those schedules were securely tucked away. What he could see was evidence of diverted attention, lax supervision, misuse of department funds . . .
    Magrit had left the two men sitting at the table where Gobel had