Chapter 151: I would never
"Third ring complete, master," the service unit said. "Twenty-three cities scanned. No matches found. Nine of those cities returned too little data to be read."
Batnac stopped tapping his finger against the armrest. "Nine?"
"Yes, master. Their public machines are cheap models that either keep no logs at all or overwrite them every few hours."
"Of course they do." Batnac let out a long sigh and sank deeper into his chair. "That is the trouble with relying on logs. A log is only as good as the machine that keeps it, and half the cities in this country were built by people who believed a hygiene scanner was an expensive decoration."
"Should I mark those nine cities as unresolved, master?"
"Mark them grey. I will deal with them in a moment."
Nine of the glowing points on the wall turned a dull grey. Batnac looked at them with obvious disapproval, as if the cities had let him down personally, and then he turned his head toward the service unit and waited.
"Master," the service unit said, "if the logs are so unreliable, why did we begin with them at all?"
A wide smile spread across Batnac’s pale face. He had written that question into the machine himself years ago, but he still looked pleased to hear it, as if nobody had ever thought to ask it before.
"Now that is a question worth asking," he said. "Come closer."
The service unit rolled forward until its wheels touched the leg of his chair.
"The logs are the polite way of searching for a man," Batnac said. "They are what I show the Association when they ask how I work, because the Association likes to hear about forms and databases and official systems. It makes them feel safe."
"And what is the impolite way, master?"
"The impolite way is much more fun."
He snapped his fingers, and the grey map vanished from the wall. In its place appeared a picture of a busy street in a city that none of the robots recognized, seen from high above.
Traffic crawled along the road, and people crossed at a pair of traffic lights with their heads bent toward their wristbands.
"Look at the lower left corner of the screen," Batnac said.
The service unit tilted its lens. "I see a bakery, a lamp post, and a man eating a pastry, master."
"Look again."
"I still see only a man with a pastry, master."
"Exactly." Batnac’s grin grew wider. "That is where the camera is."
He tapped his wrist, and a second window opened in the corner of the screen, showing the same street from a different angle.
In the new picture, a small silver disc no larger than a coin hovered above the lamp post, and its edges shimmered faintly in the sunlight.
As the service unit watched, the disc faded out of sight, and the window showed nothing but empty air.
"It vanished, master," the service unit said.
"It did not vanish. It is still there, and I can still see it, because every drone I own tells the others where it is." He waved a hand at the screen.
"The shell of each one is coated with a skin that bends light around it. A person looking straight at one would see only the sky behind it, and every camera in the world would see the same thing. Only my machines can tell the difference."
"Drones, master?"
"Drones." He said the word the way another man might say the name of his children.
"Each one has a lens, a microphone, and a small fan that makes less noise than a sleeping cat."
"The shell is covered in panels that feed on sunlight, so they never need to land. And in the middle of each one, there is an air sampler about the size of a grain of rice."
"What does the sampler collect, master?"
"Dust, pollen, and the tiny flakes of skin that every human being sheds as he walks through the world." He lifted one metal finger.
"That means every drone I own is also a very small laboratory, and every laboratory is reading the air for the signature we took from that shirt."
"How many drones are there over the Western Continent, master?"
"You know the answer to that."
"Two hundred and eleven thousand, four hundred and six, master."
"Thank you." Batnac sounded entirely sincere. "I like hearing it said out loud."
"Master, how has nobody noticed two hundred and eleven thousand drones in nine years?"
"Because nobody ever looks up." He gestured at the screen, where the people at the crossing were still staring at their wristbands.
"They look at their shoes, their screens, and the person walking in front of them. And on the rare occasion that someone does look up, the drone has already moved to a place where they are not looking."
"I built the first few hundred nine years ago, and I let them spread across the continent like dust on a window sill. In all that time, not one person has asked where the dust came from."
"Master," the service unit said, "what stops the Association’s own scanners from detecting them?"
"Their scanners are tuned to look for weapons, monsters, and mana, and a drone has none of those things. It is a small piece of metal with a fan, so to their machines it is exactly the same as a leaf blowing down the street."
"And if a player notices one, master?"
"Then he sees a flicker, blinks, and decides that he is tired." Batnac chuckled. "Last month, an A-rank swordsman swatted one out of the air in the middle of a market because he thought it was a wasp."
"Afterward he apologized to it, and I counted the whole thing as one lost drone and one very polite swordsman."
"Do the drones also look through the windows of private homes, master?"
"Of course not. I have standards."
"Logged as ethical, master."
"Log it as good taste."
"Both entries have been saved."
He sat back in his chair, plainly enjoying himself. "Would you like to see my favorite one?"
"I would, master."
"Good. The western branch of the Association, fourth floor."
The street disappeared, and the screen filled with a long white corridor lit by cold ceiling lamps. A man in a grey suit was kneeling beside a copy machine near the end of the hallway, tugging at a sheet of paper that had jammed inside it.
When he finally pulled it free, he held it up to the light, and his shoulders dropped as though somebody had let the air out of him. The page said PATIENCE in letters as tall as his hand.
The man looked slowly around the empty corridor and muttered something that the drone’s microphone picked up very clearly. Then he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at the wall.
Batnac covered his mouth with one metal hand and laughed until his shoulders shook.
"That is the deputy director of the western branch, master," the service unit said. "He has been standing at that machine for eleven minutes."
"I know. I am very proud of him." Batnac wiped the corner of his eye. "He is also using a word that I did not teach him."
"Master, is it permitted to observe the Association’s offices?"
"Nobody has forbidden it."
"Nobody has been told that it is possible, master."
"Then it is hardly my fault that no one thought to forbid it." Batnac leaned toward the screen as the deputy director picked the crumpled ball back up, smoothed it out on his knee, and began to read the rest of the page.
"Look at that. He is checking whether the word is spelled correctly."
"It is spelled correctly, master."
"Naturally. I am a professional."
The corridor dissolved, and the great map of the continent returned to the wall.
This time a pale red haze covered almost the entire Western Continent, thick and even, like a stain spreading across a cloth.
Beyond the coastline, across the other continents, there were only a few scattered red points, each one small and lonely.
The service unit’s lens swung from one side of the map to the other. "Master, I have another question."
"Of course you do."
"Your coverage ends very sharply at the coastline. Why have you not spread the drones to the other continents?"
Batnac’s grin faltered, only slightly. He stood up from his chair and walked toward the map with his hands clasped behind his back, and he studied the thin scattering of points beyond the coast like a man looking at an unpaid bill.
"Ah. That is the part I do not enjoy talking about," he said.
"My talent works on machines that are within my reach, and my reach is wherever my drones are. In the west, I have a drone over every street, so I can feel every machine in every city and speak to all of them at once."
"In the other continents, I have only a handful, and each one gives me a small circle of influence around itself. Outside of those circles, I am blind and deaf."
"Why not send more drones, master?"
"Because the other continents are not built like ours." He ground his teeth for a moment.
"Their cities run on separate networks, and my drones need a relay tower on every coast before they can carry my voice back across the sea."
"Without those towers, each drone is a lonely little thing talking to nobody. The Southern Continent is the worst of them. Its biggest guild has spent decades building private systems of its own, and I would not touch those systems if you paid me."
"Why not, master?"
"Because that guild is the Roaring Lions, and the Lions were Teon Allistar’s," Batnac said quietly. "I would never spy on his guild."