Glasshouse

I grab her. "Shut up !" I hiss in her ear. "It's not going to happen!" She sobs, a great racking howl welling up inside her, and if she lets it out. I'm completely screwed because Fiore will hear us. "I've got a plan."

"You've—what? "

The kettle is boiling. I gently push away her groping hands and reach over to turn it off. "Listen. Go home. Right now, right this instant. Leave Fiore to me. Stop panicking. The more isolated we think we are, the more isolated we become. I won't let them mess with your head." I smile at her reassuringly. "Trust me."

"You." Janis sniffles loudly, then lets go of me and grabs a tissue off the box on the table. "You've got—no, don't tell me." She blows her nose and takes a deep breath, then looks at me again, a long, hard, appraising look. "Should have guessed. You don't take shit, do you?"

"Not if I can help it." I pick up the kettle and carefully pour boiling water into the fu

"Right. You've got a plan." She blows her nose again. "You want me to go home." It's a question.

"Yes. Right now, without letting Fiore see you here—I told him you were at home, sick."

"Okay." She manages a wan smile.

I pour milk into the coffee mug, then pick it up. "I'm just going to give the Reverend his coffee," I tell her.

"To give—" Her eyes widen. "I see." She takes her jacket from the hook on the back of the door. "I'd better get out of your way, then." She grins at me briefly. "Good luck!"

And she's gone, leaving me room to pick up the mug of coffee and the other item from the sink side and to carry them out to Fiore.

THE simplest plans are often the best.

Anything I try to do on the library computer system will be monitored, and the instant I try to find anything interesting they'll know I know about it. It's probably there as a honeypot, to snare the overly curious and insufficiently paranoid. Even if it isn't, I probably won't get anywhere useful—those old conversational interfaces are not only arcane, they're feeble-minded.

To put one over on these professional paranoids is going to take skill, cu

The ultrasecure repository in the library is merely a room full of shelves of paper files, with no windows and a simple mortise lock securing the door. What more do they need? They've got us locked down in the glasshouse, a network of sectors of anonymous orbital habs subjected to pervasive surveillance, floating in the unmapped depths of interstellar space, coordinates and orbital elements unknown, interco

After I knock on the door and pass Fiore his coffee, I go back to the reference section and while away a few minutes, leafing through an encyclopedia to pass the time. (The ancients held deeply bizarre ideas about neuroanatomy, I discover, and especially about developmental plasticity. I guess it explains some of their ideas about gender segregation.)

As it happens, I don't have to wait long. Fiore comes barging into the office and looks about. "You—is there a staff toilet here?" he demands, glancing around apprehensively. His forehead glistens beneath the lighting tubes.

"Certainly. It's through the staff common room—this way." I head toward the staff room at a leisurely pace. Fiore takes short steps, breathing heavily.

"Faster," he grumbles. I step aside and gesture at the door. "Thank you," he adds as he darts inside. A moment later I hear him fumbling with the bolt, then the rattle of a toilet seat.

Excellent. With any luck, he'll be about his business before he looks for the toilet paper. Which is missing because I've hidden it.

I walk back to the door to the restricted document repository. Fiore has left his key in the lock and the door ajar. Oh dear. I pull out the bar of soap, the sharp knife, and the wad of toilet paper I've left in my bag on the bottom shelf of the trolley. What an unfortunate oversight!

I wedge my toe in the door to keep it from shutting as I pull the key out and press it into the bar of soap, both sides, taking care to get a clean impression. It only takes a few seconds, then I use some of the paper to wipe the key clean and wrap up the bar, which I stash back in the bag. The key is a plain metal instrument. While there's an outside chance that there's some kind of tracking device built into it in case it's lost, it isn't lost—it moved barely ten centimeters while Fiore was taking his ease. And I'm fairly certain there are no silly cryptographic authentication tricks built into it—if so, why disguise it as an old-fashioned mortise lock key? Mechanical mortise locks are surprisingly secure when you're defending against intruders who're more used to dealing with software locks. Finally, if there's one place that won't be under visual surveillance, it's Fiore's high-security document vault while the Priest is busy inside it. This is the chain of assumptions on which I am gambling my life.

I make sure my bag is well hidden at the bottom of the trolley before I slowly make my way back to the staff room. And I wait a full minute before I allow myself to hear Fiore calling querulously for toilet paper.

The rest of the day passes slowly without Janis to joke with. Fiore leaves after another hour, muttering and grumbling about his digestion. I transfer the soap bar to the wheezing little refrigerator in the staff room where we keep the milk. I don't want to risk its melting or deforming.

That evening, I lock up and go home with my heart in my mouth, sweat gluing my blouse to the small of my back. It's silly of me, I know. By doing this, I risk rapid exposure. But if I don't do it, what will happen in the longer term is worse than anything that can happen to me if they catch me with a library book from the reference-only collection and a distorted bar of soap. It won't be just me who goes down screaming. Janis knew about Curious Yellow and was afraid of surveillance. I don't know why, or where from, but it's an ominous sign. Who is she?

Back home, I head for the garage before I go indoors. It's time to power up the bug zapper in anger for the first time. The bug zapper is the cheap microwave oven I bought a few weeks ago. I've had the lid off, and I've done some creative things with its wiring. A microwave oven is basically a Faraday cage with a powerful microwave emitter. It's tuned to emit electromagnetic energy at a wavelength that is strongly absorbed by the water in whatever food you put inside. Well, that's no good for me, but with some creative jiggery-pokery, I've succeeded in buggering up the magnetron very effectively. It now emits a noisy range of wavelengths, and while it won't cook your di