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begin now.
 Are you searching for someone in particular?
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She didn t want to mistrust Shika, but she had yet to spend enough time with the
young woman to determine her true loyalties.  I m just interested in who we rescued
from the explosion and who was left behind.
Shika thought for a moment then shrugged.  I don t see any harm in you looking
over a bunch of names. All the details are in Fedoros, so it should be cool.
 Anything would be helpful.
Shika walked into Aiden s office and slipped in behind his desk. She swept her
hand from top to bottom across the desk and an intricate image manifested in front of
her. Aiden had explained that this was the interface graphic,  A way of navigating the
computer s processes . Felicia s skin still chilled and her stomach tightened every time
she saw someone manipulating something that wasn t really there.
It took more faith to believe that machines could create these wonders than to
accept the existence of the gods.
 Here you go. The list is on screen. As you reach the bottom of each page just go
like this. She ran her fingers upward from the bottom edge and the image followed her
fingers.
 Many thanks.
Shika nodded and pushed back from the desk.  If you need anything else, just let
me know.
Felicia took the seat Shika had vacated and gaped when she saw the roster. Not
only had each name been recorded but they had captured an image of each person. This
would make it so much easier to spot Perion! She scrolled through the list, skimming
the names when she didn t recognize the features. She quickly realized she knew more
people by face than by name. How had they done this without the refugees
knowledge? The camera must have been concealed.
As Shika had said, much of the information had been entered in Fedoros, but Felicia
recognized certain words and phrases. Too curious to concentrate entirely on the
pictures, Felicia called out to Aiden s assistant.  Shika, can you help me for a short
time?
The young woman returned to the office and pulled up a chair.  Shoot.
It was a word Shika commonly used to indicate she was ready to continue. Felicia
didn t understand the context, but it didn t matter. She centered a file in front of her
face.  This is a street name and this lists his occupation. But what does this entry
indicate?
 I thought you just wanted to look at names. Shika s expression turned dubious.
 I hadn t realized so much information had been collected about each person. If the
evacuation was spontaneous, how did the ambassador learn this much about us in such
a short period of time?
 The original location of each person was documented by the evacuation teams.
They gave each refugee a number and entered their physical description into the master
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log. We have been adding details to the log as we process each person. We ve added
their names, occupations and family members.
 This is being done on all the ships?
 Of course. The process is identical and all the info is uploaded to the same
database.
Felicia was unable to shake the feeling that something nefarious was at work here.
 What will be done with this information?
 As we update the master log, the Fedorans match each refugee with a location in
the new city. Those who owned villas will be taken to a villa, shop owners will be given
new shops and so on. Each refugee will gently awaken in their new home.
She had wondered how offloading would be accomplished without the refugees
seeing too much.  What if the refugee was a visitor to Pompeii? People travel to our city
on holiday all the time.
 Those who were not a permanent resident of the old city will be taken to the
magistrate. He will determine how to assimilate them into the new population. He is
also responsible for locating lost family members and so forth.
 The magistrate is Fedoran? Shika nodded, so Felicia sat back in her chair and
stared at the image floating above the desktop.  I had not realized the process was so
involved.
 Yep. Every person had to be chipped and examined. That s why we ve been
busting our butts since we left Earth. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]