program. It monitors all ansible-initiated accesses to any files in Lusitania Colony."
Dom Cristao chuckled. "You're not supposed to do that."
"I know. As I said, I have many secret vices. But my program never found any major intrusion - oh, a few files each time the piggies killed one of our xenologers, that was to be expected - but nothing major. Until four days ago."
"When the Speaker for the Dead arrived," said Bishop Peregrino.
Bosquinha was amused that the Bishop obviously regarded the Speaker's arrival as such a landmark date that he instantly made such a connection. "Three days ago," said Bosquinha, "a nondestructive scan was initiated by ansible. It followed an interesting pattern. " She turned to the terminal and changed the display. Now it showed accesses primarily in high-level areas, and limited to only one region of the display. "It accessed everything to do with the xenologers and xenobiologists of Milagre. It ignored all security routines as if they didn't exist. Everything they discovered, and everything to do with their personal lives. And yes, Bishop Peregrino, I believed at the time and I believe today that this had to do with the Speaker."
"Surely he has no authority with Starways Congress," said the Bishop.
Dom Cristao nodded wisely. "San Angelo once wrote - in his private journals, which no one but the Children of the Mind ever read - "
The Bishop turned on him with glee. "So the Children of the Mind do have secret writings of San Angelo!"
"Not secret," said Dona Crist . "Merely boring. Anyone can read the journals, but we're the only ones who bother."
"What he wrote," said Dom Crist o, "was that Speaker Andrew is older than we know. Older than Starways Congress, and in his own way perhaps more powerful."
Bishop Peregrino snorted. "He's a boy. Can't be forty years old yet."
"Your stupid rivalries are wasting time," said Bosquinha sharply. "I called this meeting because of an emergency. As a courtesy to you, because I have already acted for the benefit of the government of Lusitania."
The others fell silent.
Bosquinha returned the terminal to the original display. "This morning my program alerted me for a second time. Another systematic ansible access, only this time it was not the selective nondestructive access of three days ago. This time it is reading everything at data-transfer speed, which implies that all our files are being copied into offworld computers. Then the directories are rewritten so that a single ansible-initiated command will completely destroy every single file in our computer memories."
Bosquinha could see that Bishop Peregrino was surprised - and the Children of the Mind were not.
"Why?" said Bishop Peregrino. "To destroy all our files - this is what you do to a nation or a world that is - in rebellion, that you wish to destroy, that you - "
"I see," said Bosquinha to the Children of the Mind, "that you also were chauvinistic and suspicious."
"Much more narrowly than you, I'm afraid," said Dom Crist o. "But we also detected the intrusions. We of course copied all our records - at great expense - to the monasteries of the Children of the Mind on other worlds, and they will try to restore our files after they are stripped. However, if we are being treated as a rebellious colony, I doubt that such a restoration will be permitted. So we are also making paper copies of the most vital information. There is no hope of printing everything, but we think we may be able to print out enough to get by. So that our work isn't utterly destroyed."
"You knew this?" said the Bishop. "And you didn't tell me?"
"Forgive me, Bishop Peregrino, but it did not occur to us that you would not have detected this yourselves."
"And you also don't believe we do any work that is important enough to be worth printing out to save!"
"Enough!" said Mayor Bosquinha. "Printouts can't save more than a tiny percentage - there aren't enough printers in Lusitania to make a dent in the problem. We couldn't even maintain basic services. I don't think we have more than an hour left before the copying is complete and they are able to wipe out our memory. But even if we began this morning, when the intrusion started, we could not have printed out more than a hundredth of one percent of the files that we access every day. Our fragility, our vulnerability is complete."