Chapter Twelve
Who spies on the spies?
—Watchword of Hanson Security
Lutt Hanson Senior looked down on the MX cavern’s arrival area with mixed emotions, watching his sons emerge.
My sons … my enemies.
Every word Lutt Junior and Morey had exchanged as they moved through the maze of tunnels had been heard by the senior Hanson here in his office at the peak of the corporation’s hidden tower.
How do I make up for the mistakes of a lifetime?
He felt both guilty and thankful for the precaution that allowed him to eavesdrop on the pair. Precaution? Had he somehow been able to foresee what Morey would become? Or Lutt Junior?
But something had inspired him to program a robosurgeon to implant a tiny electrodot transmitter in the neck of the newborn Morey twenty-nine years ago, just as he had done earlier with Lutt Junior. The spy instruments of his own invention were robotically manufactured, as were his other security devices. No other human knew of their existence. But the spydot in Lutt Junior’s neck no longer functioned.
I expected them to last a lifetime but now … something has gone wrong. What has happened to my firstborn?
Lutt Junior’s spydot had been silent since the Vortraveler crash. And now their father could eavesdrop on both only when the sons were together.
What happened to him out there in space?
The information remained tantalizingly sparse—bizarre talk about an alien in his body. And Number-One Son’s words projected fascinating possibilities in communication … if this Spiral News Service idea proved true.
The aging L.H. hobbled on automated canes along a one-way window wall, attention directed downward to where his offspring were undergoing the security check all people underwent on arrival. Human and robot guards scanned and probed the pair before passing them to another maze that would bring them to the top of the tower.
It was difficult to move and still look down at the arrival platform. Elaborate motile amplifying lenses of his own design—contacting the corneal surfaces—projected from his failing eyes like the antennae of a mechanical insect. While he wore them, he could not blink or move his eyes. The system lubricated the eye surfaces and controlled the wearing time, blacking out and forcing him to remove the lenses at a calibrated fatigue point. The lenses forced him to turn his head to adjust the line of sight.
Leaning on his automated walking sticks, the senior Hanson hobbled back and forth, impatient for the arrival of his sons, yet dreading it.
The young Hansons passed through Security and vanished from sight into the lower levels of the mobile tower.
The senior Hanson touched a button on one of his sticks and sent the tower rumbling deeper into the maze of the ancient MX complex. He turned his head and focused on a multicolored hologram projected from the opposite wall—a three-dimensional schematic depicting Hanson Industries’ divisions and wholly owned companies.
Biggest damn conglomerate in the solar system!
More assets than those of most nations, an octopus with arms reaching into monopolistic market dominance in places where few suspected his presence.
And who will inherit when I die?
A fit of coughing shook him, dropping his emotions to a new low. He had been feeling markedly worse of late and admitted an anxiety to get better or be done with life.
But how do I pass along the power?
He felt singularly unfortunate. Both sons were thieves and undeserving. They opposed their father in devious ways.
What did I do wrong?
He felt at least partly to blame for the aberrant natures of his sons—either by genetic transmission or in the way he had raised them. Their lives now seemed indelible and this struck him as ironic. He had long been accustomed to reshaping the universe around him according to his personal desires—molding the animate and inanimate as he wished.
And now I seem unable to change my sons.
Security devices in the outer corridor alerted him to the imminent arrival of Lutt Junior and Morey.
Time to make another stab at correcting my mistakes. And this time I’m going to be even more devious than they are!