Free The Octagonal Raven by L. E. Modesitt

ser.” She nodded to the scanner before the inner door. “If you would step through, ser? The door will open if you are cleared. Would you like me to call Director Alwyn’s office?”
    “Only if the door doesn’t open.”
    She nodded seriously, and I stepped through the scanner. The door did open, and I took the right-hand corridor, and then the inclined ramp past the orchid gardens, up to Gerrat’s office, second in size only to Father’s.
    I’d read some of the old literature which had insisted that larger organizations would do without people gathered together, that virtual offices would be the rage, and, for a time, many had tried them, and gone back to putting people together, if in smaller numbers than before the collapse. Part of the reason had been social. People are still herd or clan animals. Part had been economic. Energy transmission costs rose with the volume of data, as did the costs of external infrastructure. And part had been security. Even in UniComm there were systems totally isolated physically from the worldnets.
    There was a complete scanning unit set before the door to Gerrat’s office. It hadn’t been there the last time I’d visited my dear sibling, but, then, that had been several years before. There was also a muscular young man standing by the scanner unit. He was probably a pre-select himself, except he’d been pre-selected for physical attributes and reactions. While Gerrat and I might have bested him on a good day, the day and week before had been far less than optimal for me.
    “Daryn Alwyn. I’m here to see Gerrat.”
    “Yes, ser. He is expecting you, ser. If you would, ser…” He gestured to the scanner.
    I stepped through, sensing from my own nanite feedback a far more than casual scanning, one that seemed to last several minutes before the guard opened the door to Gerrat’s sanctum sanctorum.
    Unlike Father, whose desk was handmade of real cherry, Gerrat affected a desk fabricated as an expanse of transparent armaglass, polarized just enough that it neither reflected nor totally absorbed light. It looked like an ephemeral object made out of mist, even though it would have taken all my strength to move it.
    “Still sitting amid the mist,” I offered. I didn’t mention that mist didn’t smell as sterile and lifeless as Gerrat’s office. The only scent was the cologne that he liked. I couldn’t remember the name, probably because it reminded me vaguely of the interior of an interstellar ship.
    “Of course.” Gerrat stood and beamed, then glanced down almost apologetically. “The effect is relaxing, and that’s useful.” He gestured to the loveseat to the left of the mist-desk.
    I eased into, or onto, the green leather, turning slightly on the firm cushion to face him directly.
    “Father said you might want to talk.” Gerrat had reseated himself and leaned back in the swivel that molded to his large but muscular figure. His blond hair picked up the light from somewhere. He might have had nanite-guided low-intensity lensors directed on him. The effect would be heightened if he were in a VR conference, and would give him an appearance that the ancient sun gods—Re, Aton, Apollo, Helios, all of them—would have been pressed to create.
    “He told you?”
    “What affects one of us affects all of UniComm.”
    “I doubt that I affect UniComm much.” I paused. “Assuming that the attack wasn’t specifically personal, who would have gained by it…in your opinion?”
    “No one.” He smiled. “Who thinks they would have gained is something else entirely. I can see the Dynae deluding themselves along that line, and certainly the NeoLudds. Even possibly some mid-level types at OneCys or AsyaNet, although they’re not that big. NEN wouldn’t stoop to that. Elora would destroy anyone who did.”
    I grinned at his reference to our older sister, who’d rejected Father in her own special way. “The mid-level types probably wouldn’t have access to the specialization