ISAAC ASIMOV’S

 

THREE LAWS OF

ROBOTICS

 

1.

A robot may not inure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

 

2.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

 

3.

A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

 

 

ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT MYSTERY

 

CHIMERA

MARK W. TIEDEMANN

 

Mark W. Tiedemann’s love for science fiction and writing started at an early age, although it was momentarily sidetracked--for over twenty years--by his career as a professional photographer. After attending a Clarion Science Fiction Et Fantasy Writers Workshop held at Michigan State University in 1988, he rediscovered his lost love and focused his talents once more on attaining his dream of becoming a professional writer. With the publication of “Targets” in the December 1990 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, he began selling short stories to various markets; his work has since appeared in Magazine of Fantasy a Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Tomorrow SF, and a number of anthologies. His bestselling novel Mirage, the first entry in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot Mysteries series, was released in April 2000. Currently, Tiedemann is working on the third book in the series, to be published in 2002; his next completed novel (working title: Felony of Conscience) is scheduled for release by ibooks in October 2001. Tiedemann lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with his companion, Donna, and their resident alien life form--a dog named Kory.

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Isaac Asimov was the author of over 400 books--including three Hugo Award-winners--and numerous bestsellers, as well as countless stories and scientific essays. He was awarded the Grand Master of Science Fiction by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1985, and he was the man who coined the words robotics, positronic, and psychohistory. He died in 1992.

           

           

 

ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT MYSTERY

 

CHIMERA

 

MARK W. TIEDEMANN

           

 

For Donna and Henry Tiedemann

Mom and Dad

with love, respect, and thanks

 

PROLOGUE

 

...brief touch, contact with the data port, numbers names dates prognoses, all flow from the brief touch, a tiny surge that feels the way nerves should feel, the stimulation of a hair drawn lightly along a fingertip, but inside, along a conduit less than a hundredth a hair’s width, to a smaller place where it grows and explicates and becomes meaningful in translation, revealing location disposition architecture security, an excess of data that gives access, all from a brief touch...

 

D

irector Ortalf stopped complaining about the lateness of the hour the instant he saw the hole cut in the wall of the cafeteria at the Seth Canobil Hospice Center, where he worked. His irritation turned quickly to confusion, then embarrassment, and finally fear. He walked up to the opening and reached out to touch the edge, but withdrew his fingers centimeters from brushing the too-smooth cut. In the flat light it shone mirror bright.

            “Ah...” he said, looking around. The police officers who had brought him here stood impassively, their faces professionally expressionless. Director Ortalf looked around at the people milling about the area. They moved in groups of threes and fours, some in uniform, most in civilian clothes. Ortalf started at the sight of a drone moving slowly across the floor, its sensors inspecting every centimeter of the tiles.

            “Forensic,” explained a deep, male voice nearby.

            Ortalf looked around. A tall man in somber gray was watching him, his face as ambivalent as everyone else’s--except for his eyes, which glistened expectantly.

            “Ah,” Ortalf said again. “Are you...?”

            “Mr. Ortalf, “ the man said, ignoring the question. “Director Ortalf.”

            “Yes?”

            “You run this facility?”

            Ortalf nodded sharply. “What is going on? Who--?”

            “A routine maintenance monitor detected a power outage here,” the man explained. “According to its logs, this was listed as a class-B primary site. It attempted to restore the lines, but found irregularities. It then alerted the local authorities. “

            “Power outage...but we have a back-up.”

            “Had.”

            “Redundant system...had?”

            “How many people work here, Director Ortalf?” The man--who must be some sort of inspector, Ortalf surmised--walked away, forcing Ortalf to catch up and walk with him.

            “Um...six permanent staff,” he said.

            The man paused briefly, then continued walking. “I understand you have nearly three thousand wards here. “

            Ortalf tried to think. “Your people got me out of bed not even half an hour ago, Inspector. I haven’t had time to shower, to get breakfast, to--three thousand? Yes, that sounds about right.”

            “And only six staff.”

            “Six permanent staff, I said. We have several interns and part-time volunteers, but even so, almost everything is automated.”

            They left the cafeteria and started down a long corridor. Emergency lights glowed dimly along the floor and ceiling, even though the regular lights were on.

            “Who was on call tonight?” the inspector asked.

            “I don’t--please, Inspector, what is going on?”

            At the end of the corridor a short set of stairs led down into a nurse’s station. Banks of screens showed a bright orange STAND BY flashing on them. Ortalf’s gnawing apprehension worsened. He moved toward the main console, but the inspector gripped his upper arm tightly.

            “Please don’t touch anything. Who was on call tonight?”

            “I don’t remember. Joquil, I think. Yes, Kilif Joquil.”

            The inspector gestured toward a door that opened at the rear of the station. Ortalf pushed it wide open. Sprawled over the cot that hugged one wall of the cubicle lay a large body, face down.

            Ortalf thought for a moment that the man was dead. But a sudden, labored breath heaved through the torso. Dread gave way to impatience.

            “What is going on?” the director demanded.

            The inspector nodded toward the sleeping male nurse. “Did you know Kilif Joquil used Brethe?”

            “What? Now look--”

            The inspector aimed a long finger at the nightstand at the head of the cot. Ortalf stared at its contents for a long time before he recognized the inhaler and an unlabeled vial.

            “We screen our people carefully,” he said weakly.

            “I’m sure you do. “

            Ortalf looked at the inspector. “Habits can start any time. We scan every six months. “

            The nurse shifted in the cot again, then lay still. Ortalf turned and left. The inspector said nothing, just followed, as the director headed for the door to the first ward.

            Ortalf stopped at the entrance. The room stretched, nearly a hundred meters on a side, dwarfing the half-dozen or so strangers now wandering the aisles of matreches. Ortalf searched the field of metal and plastic, looking for the telltale difference: a flaw, damage, a sign of disruption. His pulse raced.

            “Not this one,” the inspector said quietly, just behind him. “Number Five.”

 

Ward Five was two levels down. Ortalf’s breathing came hard when he reached it. Twice the size of the first-level wards, it contained the same number of matreches. These, however, were larger, more complex. More was demanded of them; the lives within required special care.

            Ortalf spotted the damaged units at once. He staggered toward them, dodging down a jagged path between the intact incubators, till he reached the first one.

            Sticky fluid covered the floor around it. The shell had been removed and the sac within punctured. Ortalf expected to see an asphyxiated, dehydrated corpse in the bed, but the cradle was empty. The tubes of the support system lay severed and useless on the cushions, a couple of them still oozing liquids. Ortalf made to reach in, but hesitated--touch would tell him the same as sight, that the child was gone. He looked around, confused and close to panic. Nearby he saw two more violated matreches.

            “But...but...” He stopped when he found the inspector watching him. “I don’t understand,” Ortalf said finally.

            The inspector came to a conclusion. Concerning what, Ortalf could not be sure, but he recognized the change in the inspector’s face, from glassy hardness to near pity. The inspector nodded and gestured for them to return to the administration level.

            Ortalf let himself be escorted back, dazed. He barely noticed the people and machines that roamed through his facility. Police, forensic units, specialists--insurance adjustors, too, for all he knew, and within hours the lawyers would be calling.

            The inspector brought him to his own office and closed the door.

            “What’s happened?” Ortalf asked. He had wanted to make it a demand, but it came out as a pale, exhausted gasp.

            “I’d frankly hoped you might be able to tell me, Director Ortalf. But...” He sat on the edge of Ortalf’s desk and gazed down at him. Some of the hardness had returned, but mixed now with sympathy.

            “From what we’ve been able to reconstruct so far, the entire clinic was severed from outside communications. There was one independent oversight program with a direct line to your maintenance chief, but after ten minutes even that was cut. Most of it went down with the power. You may well have a number of fatalities to deal with. I’m not sure how critical these systems are to each unit--”

            “Each matreche has its own power unit to protect from a complete outage. “

            “So I gathered from the manufacturer’s specs. Are they all up to par?”

            “So far as I know. You’d have to ask our maintenance supervisor, Kromis--”

            “We’d love to, but we can’t find her.”

            “She...have you been to her apartment?”

            “Police are there now. I’d like to have her employment file when you get a moment. In fact, we’ll want the employment files on all your people, even the consultants, interns, and part-timers.”

            “Do you really think it could have been one of my people?”

            “Not alone, no. But it’s clear that whoever it was had a thorough knowledge of your systems.”

            “Of course. Um...do you know how they broke in?”

            “Once the power was down and the security net with it,” the inspector explained, “a hole was cut through the point where there would least likely be a back-up alarm they could know nothing about--nobody alarms cafeterias--and from there they went through the clinic, cutting the rest of the power and finally deactivating even your passive monitoring systems.”

            Ortalf blinked. “It could take days to get everything back up.” He stared off toward a wall, his thoughts an anxious jumble. “How many are missing?” he asked.

            “Twenty-four, I think. All from Ward Five.”

            “All?”

            The inspector nodded. “Who were they?”

            “I don’t...you mean, who do we maintain in Ward Five? A special group, I’m afraid. Very special.”

            “Isn’t everyone in your facility special?”

            Ortalf studied the inspector, unsure if he heard sarcasm in the man’s voice. The face, though, remained impassive.

            “Some more than others,” Ortalf said. “Those--Ward Five--have the most severe situations.”

            “UPDs, aren’t they?”

            “Yes. Untreatable Physiological Dysfunctions.”

            “Lepers.”

            Ortalf started. “I’m sorry?”

            “Nothing.” Impatience flashed across the inspector’s face. “Ancient reference. It’s not important. Tell me, can you think of any reason someone would want to kidnap them?”

            “No.”

            “Blackmail? Ransom?”

            “I doubt any of them will live long enough outside their matreches to be of any use in that regard. “

            “Why is that?”

            “The matreches--each one is specifically modified to its occupant. They’re unique, like the individuals they support. They change over time, with the condition of their charge. It would be nearly impossible to duplicate those specifications in another unit quickly enough to save a removed occupant. I have no doubt that a number of them are dead already.”

            “I see. That leaves revenge. Who were they?”

            “Revenge?” Ortalf stood. “You’re joking! What could any of these children have done--”

            “Not them,” the inspector said calmly. “Their parents.”

            “Their histories are completely confidential. Inaccessible. “

            “Really? You do that as efficiently as your employee background checks?”

            “I’m the only one who can access those records.”

            “And will you inform the parents when you’ve done so, to let them know that their children have been lost?”

            Ortalf, uncomfortable, sat down and shook his head. “That’s not the arrangement we have.”

            “They don’t want to know, do they? That’s why you have them in the first place. “

            “You have to understand, a lot of them have no family to begin with. “

            “Discards. Abandoned.”

            “Yes.”

            “I’d be willing to wager that many of those whose records are so carefully sealed are children with families.”

            The inspector stood, and for a moment Ortalf expected to be struck. He closed his eyes and waited, but the blow never came. When he looked up, the inspector stood in the doorway, his back to the director.

            “The records will be required,” the inspector said. “Please make yourself available for further questioning.”

            Ortalf watched the man walk away. Nearly a minute passed before he realized that he still did not know the inspector’s name. At that moment, he was just as glad not to.

_        

            TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER…

           

_        

ONE

 

C

oren Lanra watched from behind a grime-encrusted refuse bin in the recess of an old, unused loading dock. A sneeze threatened, teased by sharp odors and the chill air. Across the wide alley, members of a third-shift crew emerged from an unmarked door. Even if they saw him they would pass him off as one of the ubiquitous warren ghosts, homeless and destitute, that haunted the districts surrounding Petrabor Spaceport. Coren wore a shabby, ankle-length gray-black coat over worn coveralls; four days’ beard darkened his pale face beneath oily, unwashed hair. He itched.

            Three hours still remained in the third shift. Coren counted fifteen people through the door--all but one of the full crew compliment of the largely automated warehouse. They were unlikely to get into trouble--Coren recognized their supervisor among them, marked by the thick silver rings around his upper arms. They strode noisily up the alley, boots crunching on scattered debris, laughter echoing off the walls, heading for a home kitchen or a bar. They rounded a corner. Coren listened till their voices came as whispers in the distance.

            He dropped from the lip of the bay and hurried to their exit door, propped open by a thin sheet of plastic he’d stuck there earlier to jam the lock and disable the tracking sensor that kept a log of when the door was ‘used. Just inside, he found an ID reader set in a heavy inner door. He slipped his forged card into the slot and waited to see if he had gotten what he had paid for.

            The light on the reader winked green and he slipped through into a locker room. Forty-eight lockers, sixteen per shift. Coren wondered where the last worker was inside the mammoth complex.

            From one of the oversized pockets in his coat he took out a small button and pressed it on the frame of the exit door. Should anyone follow him through, the button would warn him with a strong signal pulse tuned to a receiver on his wrist.

            He went to the shower room.

            Water dripped from some of the shower heads; the floor was damp. He turned on a jet of hot water and removed several blocky objects from various pockets. He placed them beneath the steaming spray and stepped back. Quickly, the scan-occluding resins melted off a number of devices. Coren shut off the water and gathered them up, shaking away the excess water.

            He hurried down a short hallway that let into a large office area, then threaded a path through the maze of irregularly-spaced desks and chairs to the transparent wall that overlooked the main warehouse space.

            Immense square blocks formed a grid below the enormous ceiling. Within each block, stacks or cubicles, nacelles, skids, crates--all manner of packaging--filled the volume. Turnover was constant. The space between each block extended down several levels and buzzed with transports, bringing loads up from below or, coming from the bays along the far wall, descending with newly arrived cargo to the proper location. The contents were monitored by a very sophisticated AI system--not alive, no, but as close to machine awareness as Terran prejudice and law allowed.

            Walkways followed the grid pattern; staircases led down into the hive-like labyrinth. Coren wondered just how far he would fall if he lost his balance while walking along one of those narrow paths. He pressed close to the wall and looked straight down and could not make out the bottom.

            He turned away, head swimming in a brief wash of vertigo. At least there was a roof above...

            Coren took out a few of his vonoomans. The little machines clustered in the palm of his left hand. He turned slowly, surveying the office. Satisfied, he knelt down and set them on the floor. He lightly touched them, and each glowed briefly as it activated.

            “If Rega knew I used you,” he whispered to them, “he might...” He grunted, self-mocking, and touched each one again. The devices stirred for a few moments, then shot off in different directions, seeking out the specific energy signatures of communications, monitoring, and alarm systems. Once in place, Coren would be able to range wherever he wished within the warehouse, free of detection.

            He took out a palm-sized pad and switched it on. Less than a minute later all the telltales winked green.

            He sat down at one of the desks, jacked his palm monitor into the computer keyboard before him, and initiated an access sequence. The security code was not very sophisticated; his decrypter gained entry in less than thirty seconds. Coren keyed quickly. The scheduling chart came up on the screen, showing incoming and outgoing traffic for all the bays on the far side of the warehouse. He studied the times.

            Most of the bays were tightly scheduled. One showed a half-hour period with nothing going out, nothing coming in. He tapped queries. A shipment had been canceled at the last minute. Three shipments, in fact, all belonging to a company called Kysler, and all cancellations routed out of the Baltimor ITE oversight offices. Baltimor...practically the other side of the globe. Odd. There was an ITE oversight office in the Laus District and another up north in Arkanleg, both of which should have had responsibility for supervising traffic in and out of Petrabor. Still, there was no reason Baltimor would be necessarily barred from such duties...

            He opened the manifests. Mostly raw synthetic materials, exotic molecular structures, exported by an Auroran-owned wholesaler. One bin contained electronics manufactured by Imbitek. Coren studied the ID tags for a few moments. Kysler Diversified was the distributor. All the lots had destination codes which he could not read.

            Coren closed down the station. He unjacked his monitor, checked the status on his little interference runners once more, then headed out. He knew now which bay he needed.

            Coren followed the transparent wall till he came to an exit. A short staircase took him down to the walkway that bordered the labyrinth. He produced another handful of vonoomans, smaller than the first group, from a different pocket. Activated, they scurried along the walkway and disappeared. The first group gave him security, interfering with the warehouse systems; these would find people for him.

            Automated tractors following invisible guide signals sped through the canyons, a constant loud humming and rush of cold air that whipped at his coat. The place smelled of oil and ozone, metal and hot plastic, and, under all that, an organic odor: yeast or mold. Rot.

            The walkway took him to a broad receiving area fronting a row of large bay doors. As he neared, the sounds grew thunderous: doors opening and slamming shut, transports rumbling through in both directions, the wind now almost constant. And beyond that, in the distance, deeper, sepulchral, the heavy thunder of the port itself: shuttles lifting off and landing irregularly, disrupting any possible rhythm to all the noise.

            Between the edge of the storage hive and the bays lay six meters of ancient, stained apron. Except for small piles of boxes and litter, Coren saw nowhere to hide. He set free another handful of machines and retreated to the nearest staircase leading down into a canyon.

            Fog lay heavily a few stories below. Coren descended half the height of the block, until the cold bit at his face and filled his sinuses with warning hollowness. He sat down on a step and pulled his palm monitor out once more.

            It unfolded four times to give him a display showing the locations of all his little spies against a map of the entire warehouse. The surveillance blocks still showed operative. Now he saw blue dots where all his other machines had secreted themselves. He pressed the half-meter-square screen against the wall beside him and waited.

            Ten minutes.

            One blue dot turned red. Coren looked up, surprised. The intruder had come from the nearby loading bays. The sixteenth member of the crew, he thought. Coren looked down at the fog, twenty or more meters below, and wondered if he should move--into even more bitter cold. But numbers flashed beside the dot on his flatscreen, coordinates that told him the precise location of the worker, who waited near one of the bay doors, showing no sign of coming any closer to Coren. After a few seconds Coren felt confident that he would not be seen--not by this one, at least.

            Twelve more minutes passed.

            Three blue dots turned red, far down the row, back near the offices. As he watched, his machines focused on the new intruders, coordinates proliferated over the screen, and he counted bodies: fifty-one.

            The number surprised him. He had expected no more than a dozen, at most fifteen.

            They came as a group down a walkway, heading this direction, obviously for a meeting with the waiting dockworker, who now moved a few steps from the wall.

            Coren folded the screen back down to palm-size and crept up the stairs to the lip of the walkway.

            The dockworker stood just inside the warehouse by an open bay door several meters away, his back to Coren. Hands in pockets, the man shifted minutely from foot to foot as if keeping time to a tune only he heard. Coren looked across the grid of walkways to the approaching group. From this distance he recognized no one. All of them wore black, all of them carried small packs.

            Five or six children accompanied the adults.

            Coren glanced at his palm-monitor. The communications and surveillance dampers still showed green. He estimated that he had another twenty minutes before the AI figured out why its internal security system was down.

            Coren peeled off his overcoat.

            As the fifty-one refugees gathered around the dockworker, Coren stepped silently from the stairwell and moved smoothly up to the perimeter, then cautiously worked his way through them. He looked at no one, aware only that a few people gave him quick, nervous looks. They were frightened, tense, too careful perhaps in some ways, careless in others. None of them would want to believe that they had been followed or infiltrated or caught, so unless it was made obvious that he did not belong here, they would explain him away to themselves. At least, for the time being.

            Long enough to reach the front of the gathering. “--no changes,” a woman said tersely. “Canister BJ-5156. Don’t tell me about some other canister--”

            “It can’t be helped,” the dockworker said calmly. “I’m sorry. The one segregated for you was found and impounded.”

            “Why wasn’t I informed?”

            “I’m informing you now. I’m informing you that we have back-up. We were prepared. It’s the same as it was, only different. A new canister. I could point out that you were supposed to be a party of fifty-two and you’re missing one. Bad security. But, hey, we understand--people get scared and back out at the last minute.” He gave her a crooked smile. “We are professionals.”.

            The woman was tall, almost gaunt, sharply featured. Her head sat forward, angry and demanding, as she glared at the dockworker, who gazed back at her evenly. Coren admired his nerve under that displeased inspection.

            After several seconds, she nodded slowly. “All right. But if this turns out to be anything but copasetic I’ll peel your skin off with pliers. Tell your people we’re ready.”

            The worker nodded and walked through the bay.

            Coren started forward.

            Something closed on his right bicep. He tugged at it automatically, to no effect. He turned around, left hand curled to give a palm blow, and froze, abruptly and utterly terrified.

            A robot regarded him blankly through mesh-covered eye sockets.

            “I apologize, sir,” it said quietly, “but I must ask that you come with me. “

            The robot drew him back through the crowd, which now watched him with open fear and shock. Some cringed back from the robot, but most stood fast, staring outrage at Coren Lanra.

            The robot walked him down the row of bay doors, to the fourth one from the group, and waited, still holding him, firmly but harmlessly.

            “Damn it, Coren. “

            Coren glanced around at the voice. He looked at the woman he had come to talk to. He waited as long as he could before speaking, taking advantage of the opportunity to simply look at her. Finally, he said, “Good to see you, too, Nyom.”

            She let her breath out through her teeth, slowly, and Coren felt himself smile.

            “Don’t tell me you’re surprised to see me,” he said.

            “I’m not. That’s what bothers me.”

            Coren gestured toward the robot. “Umm..,”

            “Coffee, go see to our arrangements.”

            “Yes, Nyom.”

            The robot released Coren ‘s arm. He congratulated himself that he did not immediately step away from it. Instead, he watched it walk back toward the group of refugees.

            “What are you doing?” he asked the young woman. “Running baleys?”

            “You know I am. I have been. “

            “I’d hoped I’d been misinformed. Are you insane?”

            She shook her head impatiently. “That’s good, Coren, appeal to my vanity. You always had a way of making me feel special. “

            “I’m serious. Do you know what you ‘re doing?”

            “Usually.”

            Coren waited, but she said nothing more. Abruptly, he felt awkward and slightly foolish. He glanced toward the baleys.

            “Where’d you get the tinhead?” he asked. “Your father would love that.”

            “To hell with my father and to hell with you. What, did he send you to find me? What are you going to do, throw me over your shoulder and drag me back home?”

            “The thought had occurred to me.”

            She snorted, but took a step back. Then she gave him a narrow look. “What are you going to do?”

            He met her gaze evenly, trying to think of a suitable answer. Finding none, he shook his head. “I didn’t know you had a robot.”

            She laughed. “You don’t have a plan? Rega didn’t send you. You came on your own.”

            “Not exactly. He did tell me to find out what you’re doing and--”

            “And what? Sit on me till the election is over? That’s what this is about, then. Rega is afraid his little girl’s activities might botch his election. Tell him not to worry. I think he can ruin his chances all on his own; he doesn’t need my help. In fact, you can give him some good news: He won’t have to worry about me anymore at all. I won’t give him any further cause for concern.”

            Coren waited. He recognized the tone of voice, the half smile, and a small point of fear burned at the back of his throat. He slipped his hands into his pockets, the right one finding a small plastic bag. He squeezed it till it burst in his palm.

            “Nyom,” the robot interrupted. Coren started and Nyom laughed.

            “Coffee won’t hurt you,” she said. “What is it, Coffee?”

            “Time,” the robot said.

            “I’ll be right there.”

            Coffee retreated.

            “What do you mean, Nyom?” Coren asked.

            She sighed and stepped closer. “Tell me the truth now, Coren: did you tell the authorities? Am I going to be arrested by Immigration and Trade Enforcement?”

            “No.”

            She studied him. “You really just came all on your own.”

            “Too many people are hard to control.”

            “That’s not it.” She frowned. “It’s still personal, isn’t it?” When he did not answer, she smiled. “I’m really flattered. And I’m sorry. “ She touched his face lightly and turned away.

            He grabbed her arm. “What did you mean, Nyom?”

            “I’m going with this bunch, that’s all. My turn to exit. Nothing personal, Coren, but if you found me, then it’s only a matter of time before the authorities find me. I’m taking this ride.”

            Coren felt his fear grow, becoming panic. “Go where?”

            “Nova Levis.”

            Coren released her. He wanted to argue. More, he now really did want to drag her out of here. But it was clear from her expression, from the waiting baleys, and the robot watching everything that he would not be able to.

            “Well,” he said, shrugging. “I can die happy now. I know you really are insane. “ He cleared his throat. “You do know that Nova Levis is under blockade, I suppose?”

            “We’ll make it.” For a moment, Nyom looked sad. “Sorry. I wish...”

            “Nyom. Please don’t.”

            She shook her head. “Gotta go. You shouldn’t be seen. My contacts aren’t as understanding as I am.”

            Nyom sprinted back to her flock of baleys. Seconds later they filed through the bay door. Coren backed quickly up against a wall, standing motionless until they had all passed out of the warehouse proper.

            Behind him, one of the bay doors began to open.

            Coren broke for it and slipped around the edge just as a huge hauler rumbled through, carrying a four-meter-high stack of cubes. Its slipstream almost knocked him down.

            Just on the other side of the opening, Coren found a massive support rib rising to the ceiling high overhead. He pressed into the corner and waited till the bay door sealed, then pulled another device from his pocket.

            He raised the optam to his eyes as he peered around the column of composite metal.

            Seven or eight meters from the wall, the pavement ended and a tangled maze of thin tracks spread out, delta-like, busy with huge transports carrying large containers, bins, and packages from the tunnel system that led directly to the shuttle pads dotting the landing area of Petrabor field. The surge and rumble of shuttle traffic drove through him, vibrating his bones.

            He was annoyed that Nyom had read him so easily. He had hoped she would assume that he had brought back-up--the police, immigration authorities, other company security. He thought he could talk her out of it; that, after loading her latest troop of misguided would-be Settlers aboard whatever means of transport she had arranged, he could convince her to come home and suspend operations for a time. Until the end of the election. He had hoped she might finally want to stay with him.

            He had hoped...

            The view through the optam showed the party of baleys, a few dozen meters down, on an empty patch. While Coren watched, a huge pod drifted out of the writhing traffic and came to a stop before them. The end developed a seam and opened smoothly to one side. Four people stepped from its dark interior to meet with Nyom.

            Coren stiffened. Two of the four were robots. One looked a bit more sophisticated than the other, almost human, but the dull sheen that outlined its sleek head and body gave it away. It moved with an unusual grace, a fluid, almost organic motion, uncharacteristic of any robot with which Coren was familiar. It circled the baleys, slowly, as if taking inventory. It stopped before Nyom’s robot, Coffee, then seemed to come to a decision and rejoined its companions.

            Coren touched a contact on the side of the optam and sound came through the bead in his ear, but he only heard the muffled, unintelligible sounds of a discussion. He lowered the optam and tried to adjust the aural filters to compensate for the noise, then raised it again.

            The strange robot was gone.

            Coren dropped the optam; he saw the robot clearly. When he raised the magnifier again, the robot did not appear. He could see the other robot easily, a machine slightly smaller than Coffee, a bit sleeker. But the first robot remained invisible.

            Masked...?

            Coren tensed, preparing to act. The baleys began filing into the big container, and he realized that he would do nothing. Nyom knows what she’s doing, he thought. At least as far as procedure goes. She did not act alarmed, so he had to assume she knew these people, these machines. It unsettled him, though, to watch her, the last one, walk up the ramp, accompanied by Coffee.

            The masked robot followed a minute later, causing Coren’s pulse to accelerate again. The other contacts, human and robot, closed up the container, then walked away.

            Five minutes later an automated hauler hooked onto the container and pulled it into the maze of tracks and out of Coren ‘s reach.

            Abruptly, Coren felt a wave of bitterness. Failure did that. It would have been so simple, so much easier if she had just come with him. Now...

            He opened his palm monitor and keyed for a new signal. A bright yellow dot glowed on the small screen. The smear he had placed on Nyom had transferred from fabric to metal to plastic, a clever seeker code built into the tiny molecules that imparted a kind of machine instinct to find a suitable place to use as a conductor and enable them to transmit.

            He pocketed the optam and the palm monitor and slipped back through the bay door on the next cycle, just ahead of another huge pallet. All he had to do now was get out of the warehouse--and all the communications damping he had put in place--and signal his contact on Kopernik Station.

            He imagined how angry Nyom was about to be.

            “So what?” he mused as he recovered his overcoat. “Better she’s righteously pissed off at me than dead from some trigger-happy blockade station.” Ht; glanced back at the bay door. “Nova Levis! What are you thinking, Nyom? Or are you thinking.” He trotted along the walkway toward the offices, muttering. “You’ve never been particularly impulsive, but when you are, you are absolutely unpredictable. Nova Levis. Damn.”

            When he reached the locker room, he punched a code into the palm monitor. All the little machines he’d released throughout the warehouse began to eat themselves into dust. Nothing would be left to analyze, if anyone ever found them. Just minuscule piles of refuse.

            He checked the time, estimated that he had about six hours before that bin reached dockside on Kopernik. He could even clean up before he made his call...

            He recovered the small button he had placed in the exit and stepped into the alley. He saw no one and quickly bounded across to where he had been hiding when the nightshift crew had left. He fished one more device from an inside pocket and opened it. He tapped in a code and waited for the comm to upload for him.

            The screen remained blank. He ran a diagnostic. LOCALITY ERROR scrolled across the small screen. Coren hissed, annoyed. Something around here was interfering with the link. He should have tested it first. Probably being this close to the port was causing problems. He closed up the comm unit and headed down the alley.

            He splashed through the accrued seepage and hunched his shoulders against the random drops of condensation from the unseen ceiling high overhead. He rounded the next corner and headed up a broad alleyway littered with abandoned shipping crates, refuse dumpsters, old and broken transports, and the scraps of traffic.

            “Hey, gato.”

            Coren glanced to his right, at the source of the throaty voice. A tall man came out of the shadow of a receiving bay and loped toward him, hands in the pockets of a long overcoat. Coren’s hand moved for the stunner he carried in his jacket. The stranger coughed heavily, a phlegmy hack Coren recognized as one of the recent strains of sublevel tuberculosis. Not contagious usually, but Coren liked to keep his distance.

            “Not tonight,” he said.

            “Hey, that’s not sapien,” the man said. “ Just wanting a share, you know.”

            Coren reflexively pulled out a few credits from his pocket and tossed them.

            The man scooped them up with more alacrity than Coren would have guessed.

            “Thanks, gato,” he said and touched a finger to his hat.

            Coren turned away.

            A hand clenched around his throat between one breath and the next. Coren grabbed the wrist and pushed forward to relieve the pressure, but the hand held. The wrist, wrapped in a thick sleeve, seemed like steel. Coren tried to turn away from the encircling arm and drive an elbow back. He missed, tried again, and then dropped to his knees under a sharp blow to the left shoulder.

            He choked. Sparks danced around the edge of his vision. He tried to sweep a hand around to catch the knees of his attacker, but he was too off-balance.

            He closed his eyes, and the pain went away.

 

Coren came awake lying on damp pavement, his throat burning as he choked on the sourness in his mouth. His shoulder throbbed and would not support his attempt to push himself up. He rolled over and stared up at dark walls, too close. He had been moved. He lay still for a minute or more until the acid subsided and his breathing calmed. He managed finally to sit up.

            He was about three meters from the end of a narrow hallway, but still in the same general area of Petrabor, from what he could see beyond. His head spun and his legs trembled as he got to his feet. He needed to get to a medical unit, he knew, but not down here; no telling what kind of treatment he might get from the quacks practicing in the sublevels. He needed to get to a comm sooner.

            He patted his pockets. His stunner was gone, as were his optam, palm monitor, and comm unit. But they had missed his ID, and he still had a few credits in a calf-pouch.

            Coren tried to figure out what had happened. He was not a small man, and he had been trained well during his years with Special Service, but whoever had attacked him had handled him as if he were a child. Possible, but not the panhandler. Surely not.

            He sighed heavily and coughed.

            Later, he thought, stumbling from the hallway. Figure it out later....

           

           

TWO

 

W

hen he returned to the hostel, all Coren wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep. He leaned against the door of his room, eyes shut, feeling his bruises and weariness. He had been beaten up once before, years ago, but the brain did not remember the pain.

            He forced his eyes open. The clock above the bed said NINETEEN-TEN LOCAL.

            “Damn. Five hours. “

            He lurched to the small desk and pulled a briefcase from beneath it. He threw off his overcoat and tapped in the release code on the case, then took out his personal datum. He jacked it into the room comm and entered a string of numbers. He sat down then, anxiously watching while the link assembled itself through a secure channel.

            “Come on...come on...”

            “Palen here,” a voice crackled sharply from the comm.

            “It’s Coren, Sipha. The package is on its way up.”

            “Already tracking it. We’ll have it in the bay in...two hours and a bit. Where have you been? I expected your call--”

            “I’ll tell you later. I was delayed unavoidably.”

            “You still coming up?”

            “As soon as I get clean. I’ll be on a shuttle in an hour.”

            “If we get the package in station before you get here?”

            “Can you delay opening till I’m there?”

            “Within limits.”

            “I’m moving as fast as I can, Sipha. Thanks. “

            Coren entered a new number and read over the shuttle schedules that scrolled onto the screen. Hand trembling slightly, he booked one, and closed down the link. He considered trying to contact the data troll who had told him about tonight’s clandestine emigration, but that could scare her. She had been nervous anyway; their meeting had not gone smoothly. Coren had been in too big a hurry to question her anxiety, but now he wondered about it. He unjacked his datum and put it away.

            He assembled his luggage quickly, then stripped off the grimy clothes. He showered, depilated his face, and dressed in tailored black and dark blue. The overcoat and coveralls went into the recycle chute.

            Coren snatched his briefcase and single duffle, gave the cubicle a last look, gaze lingering on the bed. I really need sleep, he thought. On the shuttle, he decided, and left for the port.

 

Coren gripped the armrests, unable to make himself relax. He knew the shuttle was in motion and, though he felt nothing, the knowledge made him sick. He forced himself not to slouch, grateful that the nausea was not worse.

            “Big brave policeman,” he muttered sourly, “scared of a little spaceflight. “

            He glanced at his fellow passengers. One man slept soundly by induced coma--an option Coren found more repellant than the flight itself --and the only others he could see clearly seemed to be Spacers, tall and elegant and gathered together in one section in the front of the cabin, talking animatedly, unfazed by the fact that they were hurtling through space with less than thirty centimeters of hull between them and vacuum.

            Coren closed his eyes and tried to think about what had happened to him.

            It was possible that Nyom had hired someone to cover her back and that the panhandler had been her muscle. Possible, but inconsistent with Nyom Looms--at least, not the Nyom Looms Coren thought he knew.

            Perhaps he no longer really knew her. He had made an assumption, relied on old data, and gotten hurt.

            But assuming for the moment that the panhandler had not been her man, then who was he? Coren’s shoulder and neck throbbed; the bruise would be spectacular.

            Definitely have to have a talk with that data troll, he thought. The idea that he had been set up troubled him, but it was not unlikely. Baley running attracted an undependable variety of conscience, people committed to various causes but with a weakness for money that worked against their revolutionary principles. The few True Believers were unapproachable in any ordinary sense--those from whom Coren could extract information were, by definition, untrustworthy.

            The troll who had supplied him with the data for last night’s shipment--a woman named Jeta Fromm--should have been more reliable. Coren used a clearing house for people like her: Data Recovery Systems, Ltd. An innocuous name, considering how much borderline illicit trade they dealt in. But they guaranteed the work of their operatives--sometimes in heavy-handed and unpleasant ways--and would not take it well to learn that one of their people had betrayed a client. Still, he had not gotten that impression from Jeta Fromm. She did not seem like the sort who would indulge in doublecrosses. She had been anxious, but the data she supplied had been accurate. If anything, she had seemed preoccupied. Coren relied a great deal on his intuition about people--he had occasionally been wrong, no system is perfect--and he thought he had judged her correctly. Perhaps he had and something else was involved. It would not do to act before he knew, which meant he had to find her on his own and not go through the clearing house. They might misunderstand. At best, he could cost her employment. At worst...

            The other possibility was that Number Sixteen third shift dockworker who had met with Nyom. But Coren had not seen him clearly and with his optam stolen he had no images to work with. Perhaps he could find out who he was through the ITE office in Baltimor. He knew someone there. It would be interesting in any case to find out what connection existed between that branch and a Petrabor baley-smuggling operation.

            At least he knew he could rely on Sipha Palen and accomplish his mission.

            Nyom would be furious with him.

            No matter, so long as she was safely back on Earth and out of circulation for a while. Rega owned a villa in Kenya Sector where he often went to be alone--Coren himself had overseen its security. It was the safest place he knew to tuck Nyom away while the election ran.

            “Your attention please, “ an automated voice said. “We will be docking at Kopernik Station in fifteen minutes. Please be sure your safety field is on and secured and any personal objects are stowed in the appropriate compartments. Remain in your seats until the green debarkation light is on. Thank you.”

            Coren sighed gratefully. Fifteen minutes. Good. He looked up at the group of Spacers and briefly caught one’s eye. For a moment he thought he recognized an expression of sympathy. But it passed and she laughed at a joke from one of her companions.

            He shifted uncomfortably. His safety field had stayed on the entire trip. His skin prickled slightly from the faint pressure. His shirt stuck to him from the sweat; he would need another shower as soon as he debarked.

            He felt a brief lurch and clutched desperately at the armrests.

            “We have completed docking at Kopernik Station, Bay two-one-seven. Please remain seated until we are ready for debarkation. We hope you have enjoyed your flight and we thank you for traveling Intrapoint.”

            Coren bit back a snide comment and concerned himself with shutting down the safety field. His legs hurt from the constant tension.

            A row of green lights winked on overhead the length of the cabin. An attendant came through to help anyone who might need assistance. Coren stood, thankful his legs did not shake. He pulled his briefcase from the cubby beneath his seat and made his way to the exit. As he walked down the white-walled tunnel away from the shuttle, he began feeling more confident. He emerged into the brightly-lit, cheerily-colored, close-ceilinged reception lounge feeling a bit foolish about his fear. He slipped on his jacket while he scanned the waiting crowd.

            Sipha Palen stood off to the left and gave him a nod, then strolled off. Coren checked in at the security desk and retrieved his duffle. He caught up with Sipha halfway down the concourse and fell into step beside her.

            Sipha stood at least twelve centimeters taller than him, with broad shoulders tapering into what she called a “swimmer’s build”--slim-hipped and sinewy. Pale amber eyes stood out sharply against her brassy-brown skin; she wore her copper hair in a thick queue than hung to just between her shoulder blades. Her ivory suit hinted at “uniform “ without being obvious. She smelled of hot metal and flowers.

            “How was the flight?” she asked nonchalantly.

            “Don’t, “ he said.

            She gave him a wry smile. “You should fly more often. You might learn to like it.”

            “It’s good to see you, Sipha,” he said, ignoring the jab.

            “Likewise. The package arrived four hours, twenty minutes ago. We have the bay secured--just my people. Do you want to go right there or tidy up first?”

            “Let’s get it over with. Maybe I can enjoy the rest of my stay afterward. “

            Sipha made a dubious noise, but increased the pace slightly. She led him to an in-station shuttle car.

            “By the way,” he said as he strapped in, “there are two robots in there. One looks pretty ordinary, but the other one was invisible to my optam.”

            “Masked?”

            “I can’t think of another explanation. So let your people know to be careful.”

            They made the transit in silence, Coren staring at a spot just above Sipha’s right shoulder. The car slowed to a halt and Sipha stepped lithely out. Coren followed her down a service corridor into an immense bay.

            The security people standing around straightened when they saw Sipha. She strode across the pale gray floor toward the cargo bin sitting near its center. Coren’s heartbeat quickened upon seeing it--relief, he realized. It was here, safe, and soon Nyom would be on her way to even more safety.

            It is still personal...he thought.

            A pair of uniformed techs, expressions tight, approached Sipha. They spoke in low, terse tones.

            “Open the damn thing now!” Sipha shouted.

            She sprinted the rest of the distance to the bin. Coren dropped his luggage and ran after her. Techs, galvanized, lurched into motion.

            People converged on the bin. Coren stopped outside the huddle of technicians working to open it and waited, impatient and anxious.

            The seal parted and the door folded down.

            Coren shouldered his way through the uniforms.

            Sipha entered the bin first.

            “Get me some light in here!” she called, her voice hollow.

            Coren bumped her, stopped at the edge of darkness. The spillover from the bay lights picked out disconnected details of a squat bulk just before them and lines that might be the edges of shelves or cots. Coren heard a faint, rhythmic buzzing.

            “What--?” he began.

            Techs came up behind them with hand-held floodlamps. They switched them on and raised them.

            Coren blinked at the sudden glare.

            The air smelled faintly burnt...

            “Shit,” Sipha breathed.

            Racks of couches crowded the walls all around, three deep, with barely a meter between levels. Each pallet contained a body. None of them moved; Coren detected no breath pushing at clothing, no hint of life. Dead bodies, an umbilical running from each facemask to the large apparatus in the center of the cramped open space directly before Sipha and Coren.

            On the opposite side of the big machine, Coffee knelt, motionless.

            Coren’s ears sang with blood. Sparks teased at the periphery of his vision and he felt cocooned, separated from his surroundings. He made himself step forward. He looked in at the nearest corpse. She had been strapped into the couch. Her hands had clutched spasmodically at the fabric beneath her.

            The couch above her held a child, its eyes staring blindly.

            He made his way around the apparatus, stepping carefully over the tubes running from its base, up the railings, and into the couches.

            Coffee’s hands were frozen on a control panel. Coren bent over to see what the robot was touching. DISENGAGE. Coren glared at the robot. He felt his hands curl instantly into fists.

            “You piece of--”

            “Coren.”

            He looked up at Sipha. She still stood at the entrance. She pointed up.

            Coren looked.

            Dangling from the ceiling of the bin was another body. Hanging, suspended, it shifted ever-so-slightly right to left and back in the movement of air coming from the bay. It was a woman, her head angled sharply to the left. Her eyes were wide, tongue extruded between her lips.

            Nyom.

 

The tea in his cup had gone cold as Coren watched Sipha’s people remove the bodies. The air in the office cubicle was a few degrees too cool. He stared fixedly through the window at the forensic dance around the crime scene.

            Nyom would be brought out last, he knew, because her condition was so different.

            Sipha entered the office and sat down heavily behind the small desk.

            “Fifty-two bodies,” she said. “We don’t have the facilities to store them in our morgue. I’m having stasis units moved into an equipment locker nearby. Best we can do till we know how to handle this.”

            Coren looked up. “Fifty-two? There were fifty-one baleys.”

            “We’ve got fifty-two now.”

            “All human?”

            Sipha nodded. “Maybe one was already in the bin. Who knows?”

            “What about the other robot?” Coren asked.

            “No second robot. Just the one. Sorry.”

            “I saw it enter the bin with them. You ‘re telling me it got out?”

            “You saw it get in at the warehouse dock. After that, who knows? Once on board its shuttle, it could have left. Or it might not have even gotten on the shuttle.” She grunted. “We could ask the one we do have, but it’s collapsed.”

            “How convenient,” he said. “What ship was this bin scheduled for?”

            “It’s not even in dock yet, won’t be for another three days. A Settler cargo hauler, slated for a direct run to an orbital facility owned by a company called the Hunter Group. “

            “Three days...” Coren shook his head.

            “So,” Sipha said after a time, “what do you think happened?”

            Coren shuddered briefly and set the cup aside. He folded his hands in his lap. “The other robot. It must’ve glitched or malfunctioned or...something. It killed Nyom, then suffocated the others by switching off the rebreather unit.”

            “What about Nyom’s robot? Why would it have allowed that to happen?”

            “They must’ve been in it together. “

            Sipha said nothing. Coren turned his chair to face her. She wore a skeptical expression.

            “That’s what you want to believe,” she said.

            Coren nodded. “Trouble is, I don’t have a viable alternative. Do you?”

            “No. But I’m not sure I can accept that one robot could kill. You want me to accept that two of them were cooperating in a mass murder. “

            Coren grunted. “Since when have you gone Spacer?”

            She frowned. “Since when have you lost the ability to think?”

            Coren glared at her.

            “We partnered for two years in Special Service,” she said. “I thought you were more reasonable than that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe working for Rega Looms has loosened your grip on objective reality. What do you think?”

            Coren worked himself back from anger and tried to think it through. Sipha had come into the Service directly from the military, a different path than his more direct route of applying to the Academy for Civic Defense, Forensics, and Criminal Interdiction. Despite their divergent backgrounds, Coren had come to trust her. He still did. It had surprised him when, after he had left the Service, she had taken this position as head of security for Kopernik Station.

            But it put her in almost daily contact with Spacers and Settlers, both factions of whom had embassy branches on the station.

            Nevertheless, he trusted her. That, he recognized, had not changed.

            “All right,” he said slowly. “Tell me your reasoning.”

            “That robot is collapsed. Positronic nervous breakdown. Something happened to cause it, and if it could break down like that then it could not have harmed any of those people. If it were still walking around, calmly trying to do its business, then I might agree with you.” She sat back. “I’ve been up here five years, Coren. I’ve learned a little bit about robots. Have to, when you deal with Spacers who won’t leave home without them. I had to learn to discount my own prejudices a long time ago if I wanted any chance of running my department efficiently and doing my job honestly. It wasn’t easy--I still don’t like them--but I know their limitations. It wasn’t the robot. Not that one, anyway. And I doubt it was this other one--there’s no in-built compunction that prevents a robot from harming another robot, especially in the defense of humans. As far as we’ve been able to tell, that second robot wasn’t even on board when this happened.” She gestured toward the bay. “Besides, what motive? Suicide? Bringing along a robot would have been the best way to fail to commit suicide. They’re programmed to save our lives for us, whether we want them to or not.”

            Coren nodded. “All right, that’s all logical. As far as it goes. Sorry about the remark. “

            “Forget it. So--how do you want to proceed?”

            “Why do I get a say? Isn’t this official now?”

            Sipha pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe.” She seemed to consider carefully. “See, this bay is Settler. When you contacted me about this little favor you wanted, I called in a few favors of my own. Right now, this whole business exists in an official vacuum. No one knows but you, me, and my immediate staff. “ She stabbed a finger in the direction of the cargo bin. “And whoever killed all those people.”

            “You’ll have to make it official sooner or later.”

            “True. But maybe by then we can figure this out.”

            Coren studied her for a moment. Something in her expression teased at him.

            “There’s something else,” he stated.

            Sipha still pondered, then nodded. “I agreed to do this for you because I need you. “

            “I’m flattered. But I’m also private now.”

            “Oh, I think we can change that if we need to. But...I have a problem I can’t take to my superiors. I’m not even sure who among my own people I can trust with it. I need outside help. I didn’t know how I was going to get it till you called.”

            “Is it related?”

            “I wouldn’t be surprised. Probably. It has to do with baleys, at least. Dead ones, too, though this is the first load of corpses to show up on my station. “

            Coren raised an eyebrow in amusement. “‘Your’ station?”

            Sipha smiled wolfishly. “Oh, yes, old partner mine. Never doubt it. My station. It has trouble and I want it fixed.” She gazed past him, into the bay. “As I say, this is the first load of corpses. The occasional body has been turning up from time to time. The sorts of people who easily get crushed when they learn the wrong thing, or know too much, or who just show up where they shouldn’t. Most of them have been thoroughly professional kills...till about three months ago.”

            Coren waited. She seemed to come to a decision and activated the datum on the desk. The paper-thin screen extruded and winked on. She worked intently for a couple of minutes, then crooked a finger at him to have a look.

            “We found this in one of our detention cells,” she said.

            On the screen Coren saw a body, laid out on a morgue table. It had been a woman--the basic shape was still intact--but he had never seen a body so thoroughly bruised: blue, green, and sickly yellow marks ran from the scalp to the toes. Faint red laceration marks interrupted the mottling here and there.

            “What was it? Explosive decompression? Something fall on her?”

            “In a detention cell?” Sipha asked wryly. “She was alive when we put her in there. Small-quantity Brethe peddler, nothing major, ever-public nuisance, more than anything else. She was supposed to be, you see, because she worked for me.”

            “Regular cop?”

            “No, she really did used to deal in black market. I made her a better deal. It worked out. She worked the Settler section for me.”

            Coren felt himself smile. “And when there was something really important to report...?”

            “She got herself arrested. This hadn’t been the first time she’d visited one of my cells. The next shift, we found her like this. Very simply, every bone in her body had been broken. A lot of them were crushed.”

            “What was she reporting?”

            “I don’t know. She came in ‘under the influence.’ I was tied up with arranging all this for you and didn’t get a chance to talk to her.”

            “No one heard or saw anything?”

            “Evidently not. That’s why I’m not really sure about my people. Can you think of a way that could happen and no one on watch would know about it?”

            Coren shook his head. “What about surveillance?”

            “Blank for that section. I suspended two of my officers for negligence, but I honestly don’t think they were the ones who did it. Someone with a bit more expertise fiddled the recorders. The problem with that is, I have at least five people on my staff who could have done it, but none of them has a motive.” Sipha gestured toward the image on the screen. “Besides, look at that and tell me how it was done. A couple of adjusters with clubs? I don’t think so.”

            “But since you don’t really suspect your two discipline cases, you have an idea. “

            Sipha nodded. “During autopsy we came up with this. “ She tapped the keypad. “The bruising is uninterrupted over the entire body and none of the fractures are consistent with blows. “

            The screen changed, showing an image of a shoulder, blackened like rotting fruit. Sipha adjusted the scan and one shape emerged, slightly darker than the surrounding bruise. Coren stared at the vague outline of a hand. An odd hand, to be sure, the fingers too thick and short, the spread too wide.

            “Was it clear enough for any kind of prints?” he asked.

            “No prints. Perfectly smooth except for a couple of joints. And the bone beneath this impression had been ground nearly to powder. No, partner mine, this isn’t a human hand.”

            “A robot?” He shook his head. “But you said--”

            “I said that robot--” she pointed out at the bay “--didn’t do it. But that’s still my best guess. And if a robot did this--” she gestured at the screen “--if a robot--maybe your second mystery robot --got into my cells and did this, then I have a serious problem.” She looked up at him. “Will you help me?”

            “I--” Coren began.

            The door opened. One of Sipha’s men leaned in. “Chief, you need to see this. “

 

“Couple things,” the older man--Baxin, Sipha’s staff pathologist --said when Sipha and Coren entered the bin. He pointed at the rebreather unit. The umbilicals had all been disconnected and had retracted into the unit. “That’s a standard Fain-Bischer rebreather. About six years old, out of date, but still in good working order. No reason it won’t last another hundred years once it’s been cleaned out.”

            “Cleaned out of what?” Sipha asked.

            “We don’t know yet, but it’s evident from the postures of the deceased that they’ve been poisoned. Something in the rebreather, we assume. Something clever, too. The filtration system should have blocked it, but it didn’t.” He nodded sharply. “That’s one thing. The other...” He pointed up.

            Nyom’s body had been taken down and now they could see how she had been suspended. The roof had a crack in it, about half a meter long and perhaps five to eight centimeters at the widest. The metal around it was discolored, heat-scored.

            “The bin was pressurized,” the tech explained. “The air leaked out through that crack. My guess is that the body was drawn to it during freefall. The fabric of her pants got caught in it. “

            “Did decompression kill her?” Coren asked.

            “No. A broken neck did that. She was dead before she got stuck in the ceiling.”

            Coren looked down at the rebreather. “Why? If everyone else was poisoned...” He looked around. “Where’s the robot?”

            “I’ve got it in an impound locker,” Baxin said. “I didn’t know where else to put it.”

            Sipha extended her hand. “Give me the tag. I’ll take care of the robot. How long on autopsies?”

            “Fifteen, twenty hours,” Baxin said. “A few preliminaries sooner than that maybe. “

            “What made the crack?” Coren asked. “It looks intentional. “

            “It is,” Baxin said. “Heat induction, industrial grade drill or welder, crystallized the metal, made it brittle.”

            “What kind?”

            “We don’t have it. There’s nothing in here that would do that.”

            “Not even the robot?”

            “No, I don’t think so. Specialized tool, in my opinion.”

            Coren gave the hole in the roof a last glance, then left the bin.

            When Sipha joined him, he said, “Doesn’t make sense. Who broke her neck if Coffee didn’t?”

            She glanced at him. “ ‘Coffee’?”

            “That’s what she called the robot.” He saw Sipha’s expression. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know why. But who else could have broken her neck?”

            “We’ll check the bodies to see if time of death matches in all cases. But I still think you’re wrong about the robot. Maybe it knew they were being poisoned--that’s what it was trying to stop.”

            “How did it know? And who--”

            “I know, who broke Nyom’s neck. Maybe the same one who crushed that Brethe dealer?”

            “And which one would that be? Which dead one in that bin who had never been to Kopernik before would that be?” Coren asked sarcastically. “Oh, wait, I know. The same one who cracked a hole in the bin with an inducer that no one can find. “

            Sipha snarled at him. “I don’t damn well know, Coren. So I repeat: will you help me?”

            He nodded. “Oh, yes. I’ll help you. No question.” He mulled his options for a few seconds. “I’m going back down. You can handle the autopsies without me. Also, I’ll need ID on all of them.”

            “What’s down there?” Sipha frowned. Clearly, she had thought they would be working together for a few days.

            “I have a couple of people to talk to. For one, the data troll who put me onto Nyom in the first place. I want to find those people Nyom was dealing with, and she’s my best chance right now.” He drew a deep breath. “And we’re going to need a roboticist.”

            “There’s a lab full of them here--”

            “Do you trust them?”

            Sipha scowled, then shook her head. “Not till I find out who killed my Brethe dealer. “

            “I’ll see if I can take care of that, then.”

            “I suppose you know a roboticist?”

            “Of one, yes. I think it’s best to stay away from anyone involved directly with the Spacer sector on Kopernik.”

            Sipha nodded. “I’ll get you on the next shuttle back to D.C.”

            “No, not D.C. Lyzig District--that’s where my informant lives. I’ll take the suborbital back to D.C. after I talk to her. Send me the autopsy data when you have it.”

            “What are you going to say to Looms?”

            Coren shook his head. “I’ll worry about that when I see him.”

           

           

THREE

 

T

he flight down frightened him more than the trip up to Kopernik. Perhaps it was the idea of falling, but Coren felt at the edge of panic from the moment the shuttle left dock till he walked, legs trembling, into the concourse at Lyzig Station. It did not make sense--he never reacted this way on a semiballistic--and he resented the idea that it was all psychosomatic. He went directly to a public restroom and rinsed his face in cold water, then sat in a stall till the sweating and nausea passed.

            “Never again,” he muttered as he finally gathered himself up. He checked his watch--twenty minutes wasted getting over his reaction--and left the restroom.

            He rented a locker and shoved his one bag inside, then headed for the station lobby.

            Lyzig buzzed with first-shift traffic. The warrens swarmed with people going to jobs or shops or meetings. Coren liked Lyzig: Clean, robust, a polished politesse substituted for the unmannered friendliness of other Eurosector districts, as if the residents were conscious of a long history--an important past they were obliged to honor.

            At the station gate he flagged a taxi and gave his destination. The driver’s eyebrows raised speculatively, but all he said was “Very good, sir,” and moved into the vehicular lanes. The short ride ended at an ancient hotel. Coren tipped the driver and stepped out.

            The taxi pulled away and Coren began walking in the opposite direction. His shakes were gone by now and he walked purposefully, in imitation of resident Lyzigers.

            He had three options to find Jeta Fromm. He had already decided against contacting Data Recovery Systems, through which he had originally found her. He had to assume that whoever had killed Nyom had gotten the same information about the baley run, and that meant a competitor. He had no way of knowing yet where they would have gotten the data--it might have been Jeta Fromm herself, or her handlers, or some as yet undetermined third source. He could too easily reveal his interest by going through the usual channels.

            The second option was not worth considering at this point. Local police could find her and pick her up, but he would be effectively destroying her career and perhaps hurting several other people associated with her. A significant part of the work he did depended on clandestine resources. Damaging them by “going local” could cost him his reputation and impair his ability to do his job. Using the local police, then, was a course of last resort.

            His best option, then, was to find her himself. He had met with her twice, at different locations of her choosing. Her nervousness had bothered him, so he had traced her back to her hab--just in case he needed to find her quickly and confidentially. Like now.

            The area he now entered was very old, and the signs of wear and neglect became more evident the further he walked. The fast pace and energy representative of Lyzig faded; people here were in no hurry to go anywhere--a few were even sitting in doorways, or gathered in small groups near shops or in the cramped public spaces that passed for parks in this part of the urbanplex.

            Coren automatically imitated the lethargy around him, moving slower, keeping his head down. He tucked his hands in his pockets and searched the corridor signs till he found one marked BETRAGSTRAS. He walked down the narrower corridor to a steep metal staircase that ran up the windowless wall to his left. The ghosts of old graffiti discolored the surfaces, scrubbed endlessly by automated cleaners that, over time, failed to remove all the paint.

            At the top of the stairs, Coren found a broad rooftop upon which stacks of single-unit cubicles formed a small, cramped village. Light glowed from open doorways, and the thick smell of cooking almost covered the odors of plastic and sweat and unprocessed waste.

            Faces appeared at doorways, lingered for a few seconds, then retreated.

            Coren estimated about a thousand people lived in this precariously overbuilt shantytown, lived quite illegally and with little fear of eviction, but with the constant possibility of having the entire makeshift construct tumble down on them. Many of the residents worked legitimate jobs that paid too little to afford them a decent domicile and do whatever else they found more important --sending children to better schools, subscriptions to expensive entertainments, paying off a debt, or saving for the chance to emigrate--but just as many worked on the edge of legality: dealers in stolen data or controlled substances, informants, runners, small credit fences, rented muscle. Others simply had nowhere else to go and had fallen here, fortunate to at least have a place to sleep and a source for food.

            Coren took out his palm monitor and made his way through the maze of passageways, up a ladder, and down a short gangway to an unlit doorway. The signal from the smear he had deposited on Jeta the second time they met was weaker, but still traceable. The self-replicating vonoomans exhausted themselves after a few days and decayed unrecoverably. He ran the sensor up and down a scale to test it. Satisfied that Jeta Fromm had at least stayed here for more than an hour, giving his tiny tracers a chance to proliferate in the environment, he pocketed the monitor. He palmed a flash and switched it on as he kicked in the flimsy plastic door and stepped through.

            In the harsh blue-white illumination, the cubicle leapt into sharp relief. A cot stretched against the wall to his left, a sleeping bag and extra blankets wadded up at the head. A makeshift desk stood along the back wall, cluttered with objects that formed an indecipherable tangle. Along the wall to the right was a trunk, the lid open, the contents spilling over the edge--clothing, from the look of it.

            Immediately to the right Coren found a lamp propped on a three-legged table. He switched it on and turned off his own light.

            Vacant. He closed the door behind him.

            He studied the room carefully. Jeta Fromm had struck him as a fastidious person, neat and methodical. This place did not. He sat down on the edge of the cot.

            Disks, small pieces of paper, items of clothing, scraps of unidentifiable detritus littered the floor. A chair lay on its side to the left of the desk. The cot itself was angled away from the wall.

            It appeared to Coren that she--or someone--had left in a hurry, possibly in a panic. Jeta peddled data--rumor, software, illicit downloads, even documented fact when she sold material to the newsnets as a stringer--so any of a number of deals could cause her to run.

            She had been very professional when he met her, but it seemed to him now that there had been an undercurrent of desperation. She managed it well and he had been in a hurry, so he had neglected to pay it enough attention.

            Coren stepped up to the desk. The clutter consisted mainly of components from old, salvaged readers, scanners, and bits of datum units. He saw a control panel from a commline. Tools lay mixed with the debris. Two bare spaces suggested removed equipment. He guessed, given her range of services, that she owned a pathburner, a very expensive microcircuitry cutter. Probably a very good decryption datum. The cost of those two pieces would be more than his own yearly salary.

            What he saw here convinced Coren that Jeta was on the run. Someone--maybe the same someone who had rolled him in Petrabor--had come looking for her. She had duly disappeared.

            He knelt down and shuffled through the papers and disks on the floor. The disks were labeled by numbers. He could go through them, but he doubted she would have left anything behind worth the trouble.

            The papers mostly contained scribbled comm codes, cryptic notes--” Jam on B-stras, 3s” or “Cram Seef for Rudo, level 12”--and a couple of doodles. One caught his eye that said “B meet at seven’s place, 2shift” followed by a comm code. He slipped it into his pocket and stood.

            He turned off the light and stepped outside.

            To his left he glimpsed someone watching him from a doorway. The door slammed shut. Coren reached the cubicle in three long strides and shouldered his way in.

            In the pale light he saw a small man shoving himself in the comer behind a large chest of drawers. Coren shut the door and stepped closer.

            “I didn’t! Stop! I didn’t!” the man cried.

            “You know Jeta?” Coren demanded. “She ask you to watch her place?”

            “I don’t--nothing to say, gato--please--”

            “Don’t ‘gato’ me, shit. Dump it now. You’re a friend of Jeta’s?”

            He nodded once. He was not quite as small as he at first seemed, but the clothes he wore were too big and his head was long and shaved bald. His sleeves half-covered his hands.

            “You ‘re watching for her, right? Who came to visit before me? Who’s looking for her?”

            The man shook his head a little too quickly. “Don’t know.”

            “Don’t know what? Who, if, when?”

            “Never saw them before.”

            “Them? Two? More?”

            “Two. Man and a woman.”

            “The man,” Coren said. “Short, stout, yellow skin?”

            A scowl flashed across his face. “No, it was--I don’t know. Leave me alone.”

            Coren resisted the urge to grab the smaller man. Strong-arming would do no good, but he wondered just how far subtlety would get him.

            “Listen, gato,” he said gently, “Jeta’s in trouble. If I don’t find her first she’ll be dead. Savvy? Now, who came?”

            “Never--I--” The man swallowed loudly and closed his eyes. “Dead?” he whispered.

            “Very dead. “

            The man nodded weakly. “She--two days ago, third shift, she says time to go, she’s sorry. Be back in a few days for her jumble--”

            “Her what?”

            “Jumble--her stuff--”

            “All right, go on.”

            “Asks me just to spot who comes looking. Like you guessed. “

            “And?”

            “Three hours later this tall gato, long coat, tosses her cube. Didn’t see me. Stayed in her place maybe twenty minutes.”

            “Tall. Anything else?”

            “Dark skin, like he’s seen sun or something. Didn’t blink.”

            “Didn’t blink...his eyes?”

            “What else you got that blinks?”

            “Did he talk to you?”

            “No,” the man said indignantly. “I said he didn’t see me.”

            “You said a woman?”

            “Came yesterday. Looked around Jeta’s cube, stayed maybe an hour, then left. “

            “What did she look like?”

            “Wore a mask. Not too big, though, but--”

            “Nobody stopped her?”

            “The other one was with her, stayed outside. “

            “You don’t know where Jeta might have gone?”

            “No,” the man insisted.

            Coren grunted. He took a gamble. “Who’s Seven?”

            The man frowned. “ ‘Seven’? I don’t know...” He seemed honestly ignorant, so Coren dropped it.

            “Did these gatos talk to anybody else?”

            “Might have.” The man paused, thought it over for a moment. “Yes, did. Cobbel and Renz. They got the first cubes at the edge.”

            Coren suppressed a smile. “What did this tall gato sound like?”

            “Kind of raspy-voiced, like he had trouble breathing. But it came out of his chest, real deep. Cobbel and Renz didn’t like him too much. “

            “Did the woman talk to anyone?”

            “No.”

            Coren considered. Then he stood. “All right, thanks. I’m not here to hurt Jeta. You tell her the gato that paid her twice market for that last data she sold needs to talk to her again. Tell her to find me if she wants to stay alive. Savvy?”

            “How’ll she find you?”

            “Same way she found what I wanted. She’ll know. You see her, you tell her to stay on the move, though. “

            “Serious shit?” the man asked.

            Coren nodded. “Very. “

            He backed out of the cubicle and reentered Jeta’s cube. He took out his palm monitor and adjusted it, then turned a slow circle till a light flashed red.

            From up in the corner, tucked in a crack between the wall and the ceiling, he removed a small button. He repeated the scan and found another one, on her desk amid a jumble of electronics, pretending to be a relay switch.

            If there were more, his monitor missed them. He opened a slot in the side of the monitor and dropped them in. They barely fit.

            At the edge of the hab collection, he paused. Then he knocked on the nearest door.

            A woman looked out at him. She said nothing, only waited expectantly.

            “Cobbel or Renz?” Coren said.

            “Renz. What?”

            “The tall gato talked to you about Jeta Fromm.”

            She frowned. “What about him?”

            “Did he give you a code to tap if you found Jeta?”

            “You police?”

            “Private. “

            “Ah.” She stepped out. She was quite a bit shorter than he, surprisingly so. “He tapped us. Ears allover the place. Cobbel’s still looking for all of them. We figured that, when he didn’t give us a code. “

            “He knew you’d lie.”

            Rena shook her head. “Wouldn’t lie.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t tell him anything. “

            “What was he like?”

            She frowned again, thoughtfully. “Scary shit. Never blinked. Skin looked wrong. “

            “Wrong how?”

            “Don’t know. Just wrong. Diseased, maybe. Too smooth. No veins.” She studied him narrowly. “ Jeta’s in trouble.”

            “Looks that way. Bad trouble.”

            “You trying to help?”

            “My fault. Trying to cover accounts.”

            Renz nodded. “You won’t find her. Best she finds you. “

            “If you see her, tell her. I need to talk to her.”

            “Ain’t seen her in a few days. She knows how to find you?”

            Coren nodded. “I don’t think there’s much Jeta can’t find. Do you?”

            That elicited a sly smile.

            “Just out of curiosity,” Coren asked, “how long has she lived here? People in her profession move a lot, I know.”

            “Long enough,” Renz said. “longer than most--three months or so. “

            Coren nodded. That was a long time--for a data troll.

            “I’m going, “ Coren said. “You see her, tell her. I need to talk to her soonest.”

            He went to the steps. He glanced back and saw people watching him now, openly. Something had passed through here that had scared them.

            Coren hurried down the steps.

            On the way back to the tube station, Coren stopped at a public comm and punched in the code he had found. The screen flashed DISCONNECTED SOURCE. He studied the note for a time, trying to decide if it would be worth his while to try to find this Seven. In the end, he fed the paper into a recycler. No time to be as thorough as he wanted. He tapped in the code for the Auroran embassy and began making his way through the maze of connections to find the person he needed to speak to.

 

Third shift was just beginning in Petrabor Sector. Coren’s timing was close, arriving at the warehouse just ahead of the crew.

            He stood across from their entrance and this time they noticed him as they filed in by groups of twos and threes. He no longer wore the tattered leftovers of a warren ghost but the fine suit of someone in authority--an inspector or manager or perhaps a cop. As they saw him their friendly chatter died away, replaced by suspicion and silence.

            Coren had about half an hour before he needed to catch a semiballistic to D.C. He studied the faces that passed before him, matching them to his memory, but the sixteenth crewman failed to appear. No surprise.

            The foreman emerged from the employee access and came toward him. He was a short man, middle-aged and just beginning to lose the firm lines of a body made powerful during time working the bays instead of just supervising others.

            “Can I help you?” he asked, stopping a meter away.

            Coren held up his ID, which contained the emblem identifying him as a licensed independent security investigator. The foreman almost took a step closer to examine it, but Coren shoved it back into his pocket.

            “Last night,” Coren said, “you took your crew out during on-duty time. A place called Dimilio’s?”

            The foreman’s eyes became wary. “What about it?”

            Coren shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s not contract.”

            “The Guild send you? Management?”

            “What do you think would’ve happened if the routers had glitched with no one there to shut it down?”

            “Routers never glitch!”

            “They do if they’re hacked.”

            Now the wariness turned to fear. “Hacked...” He swallowed. “You’re talking about--”

            “I’m not talking about anything yet. I’m asking. Why did you think it would all right to walk out midshift, en masse like that, for a few drinks?”

            The foreman scowled at him. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

            Coren nodded agreeably. “That’s right, you don’t. But if that’s what you decide to do, the next people you talk to will be ITE inspectors. They don’t give a damn about contract protections. “

            The foreman took a tentative step closer. “Look--it was Oril’s birthday. Not yesterday, but the day before, but there wasn’t time then to do anything. Busy shift. Things slowed down yesterday, there were a couple of windows, we figured, what’s an hour or two? We’ve never had a problem--”

            Coren sighed dramatically. “Contract says someone has to be on duty--”

            “There was! We left the sub here. He didn’t know Oril anyway, no loss.”

            “The sub. I didn’t see any sub listed--”

            The foreman looked pained for a second. “Farom was out, he’s been having trouble with his kid. He’s already past his allotment for personal time and sick days--any more and he gets written up. We paid the sub out of our own pocket to come in for him so Farom wouldn’t get the reprimand.”

            “I need the sub’s name.”

            “I’m telling you, Farom’s a good worker--”

            “The sub’s name.” Coren leaned closer and softened his voice. “If I can keep this off the record I will--it’ll save me a lot of trouble. I don’t need the extra datawork. I just have to verify that you didn’t leave your shift unattended. Word is that management has some losses to explain to shareholders. You know how that is. Now there was a glitch in the logs for the time you were all toasting Oril’s good health. If it was operator error, then we can correct it on our end and leave you alone.” Coren reached out then and grabbed hold of the foreman’s coverall. “But you pull that kind of shit again, I’ll have your ass in front of management and the Guild conciliators. Understand?”

            “Yuri Pocivil,” the foreman said quickly. “He’s normally Second Shift at the Number Four yard. He had personal time.”

            “How did you come to call him?”

            “We used him before.”

            “Covering for Farom?”

            The foreman swallowed. “As a matter of fact, yeah.”

            Coren released him. “Yuri Pocivil. I’m going to have a talk with him. He explains the glitch to my satisfaction, you won’t see me again. “

            “We’ve never had any problems with him before.”

            “Happens when you step out of contract. Go back to work.”

            Shaken, the foreman almost bowed as he backed away. He’d recovered his composure by the time he reached the entrance. He gave Coren a last look--to which Coren returned a reassuring nod--then disappeared inside the warehouse.

 

Yuri Pocivil had failed to report to work that day and his apartment was vacant. Coren was not surprised, but he was disappointed. It would have been simpler had he found him. Pocivil was a more direct line to whoever was running the operation.

            He made his way to the station, mulling over his next move. The routing had been modified in Baltimor. That, at least, was convenient to his next stop.

           

           

FOUR

 

D

erec Avery watched the screens with mild interest. The central view was a complex collection of concentric, overlapping rings. Where some of the lines crossed, pockets formed containing patternless amalgams of small shapes, like froth or dried, cracked mud, or a cloud of midges. The right-hand screen showed a similar view but without the pockets. The left showed only chaos.

            As he watched, the rings on the central screen expanded and shrank minutely, as if jockeying for position in a crowded container, occasionally sending waves through one or more of the broken pockets. One pocket suddenly dissolved, quickly forming its own node and growing a set of rings. On the opposite side another pocket, this one filled with what appeared to be different-sized pebbles, wavered on the brink of dissolution. The pocket changed shape, narrowing, nearly splitting in two, then reinflating. Abruptly, it solidified, the pebbles merging to form a smooth surface. Then the wall burst and pebbles spilled across the orderly waves of circles, rupturing them, forming new pockets of disorder, and within seconds the screen lost all sign of pattern.

            “Disappointing,” said a calm, genderless alto voice.

            “What happened, Thales?” Derec asked, though he already knew.

            “I lost a primary anchor in the matrix,” replied his office’s Resident Intelligence. “When it went, it caused a cascade.”

            “Did you know it was a primary anchor?”

            “No. That is, of course, the problem. I have to assign anchor points without knowing how they relate to the entire matrix. Some are unimportant and stable, others are primary and stable, but a few are primary and corrupted. When they go, they corrupt the entire system.”

            “Maybe you’ll get lucky next time, Thales.”

            The positronic intelligence did not reply. Thales had long since catalogued most of what it called Derec’s “sympathy concessions”: meaningless phrases used to soothe hurt feelings or disappointments that, according to Thales, seemed important to people not for what they contained--because they contained nothing useful--but for the fact that they were said. For the moment, it appeared Thales did not consider a response necessary.

            The chaos filling the screen in front of Derec, so far resist ant to Thales’ attempts at restoring pattern and function, showed all that remained of Derec’s ambition: the flexibility of a human mind expressed in a positronic matrix. He had always wanted to build a robotic intelligence that could cope with trauma--with failure--and recover from the brink of collapse. He had hoped to build a robot that would work through Three Law violations and retain a coherent structure, preserving memory and identity in the face of the unacceptable.

            He had failed.

            The physical fragments of what had been the robot Bogard filled a crate, awaiting shipment...somewhere. The positronic remnants of Bogard’s mind filled a buffer in Thales’ generously large, though currently abbreviated, memory. Bogard’s collapse had resulted from the death of Bok Golner--a death for which Bogard had felt responsible, indeed had inadvertently caused. Golner had been a killer, an anti-robot fanatic, and had been about to kill Derec when Bogard came to his creator’s rescue. But none of that mattered in the absolutist structure of a positronic brain which prohibited the taking of a human life, intentions notwithstanding. Thales believed the key to Bogard’s failure could be pulled from those shards. But after nearly a year, they had proved indecipherable. Thales continued to express optimism; Derec was not as sanguine.

            “Perhaps,” the RI said, “I should make a copy of each stage so that I can reset one step back rather than do the entire construct over. Of course, that would require a larger memory buffer than the one to which I now have access.”

            “Oh, well,” Derec said, standing. “Sorry.”

            “I understand, Derec. No need to apologize.”

            Perversely, Derec felt a pang of guilt. That lack of memory had been a problem throughout Thales’ attempts to reorder Bogard’s matrix. Thales simply did not have enough in its present configuration. Derec counted them both lucky to have as much as they did. Of course, any less might begin impairing Thales’ normal functions.

            “I can try to make another request...” he said.

            “If you think it will help.”

            No, he thought, but it might make me feel better to try...

            Derec reached to the screen of chaos and touched an icon. The screen went blank.

            “Do you wish me to continue, Derec?” Thales asked.

            “Sure. I’m...I have some other things to tend to.”

            “Of course.”

            Derec drifted into his living room. Against one long wall a subetheric showed two political candidates soundlessly debating. He frowned, recognizing one of them: Rega Looms. For a moment, Derec felt confused, then remembered that Looms was running for a senate seat in the upcoming election. He had declared in opposition to Jonis Taprin, who had replaced Clar Eliton the previous year in a recall election. Taprin ran now on a revised, anti-robot platform, a complete about-face from his position not fourteen months earlier when, as Eliton’s vice senator, he had supported what had become known as “Concessionism” and a gradual reintroduction of positronics on Earth.

            In retrospect, Derec did not know how much he had ever believed it could be done. In Earth’s long history of social change, fickle politics, and policy-by-trend, the ban on positronics had lasted the longest and tenaciously resisted reform. Hard to believe, on a world where once the newest and brightest and best technologies had been created and dispensed and embraced with almost childlike passion for novelty.

            Curious, Derec turned on the volume.

            “--travel to other worlds has diluted Earth’s reservoir of genius,” Looms said, jabbing the armrest of his chair with a stiff finger. “I’ll concede that you now hold a position with which I have long been in agreement, that positronics should not be allowed a return to Earth, but I feel that you don’t go far enough. Positronics is not the only threat.”

            “Mr. Looms, with all due respect,” Taprin said smoothly, clearly the more practiced public figure, “you can’t expect us to shut down commerce. What you suggest would break the back of our economy.”

            “No, sir, I think that’s alarmist and misleading. Economies are artificial constructs, just like any other machine. We make them what we want them to be. I am simply saying that we should change the way in which we operate our economy so that we can eventually sever all ties to other worlds.”

            “But, sir, you must take into account that there are citizens--Terrans--who simply don’t want those ties severed.”

            “There are also Terrans who want positronic robots,” Looms countered. “We don’t let them dictate policy.”

            “The numbers, sir, the numbers--”

            Derec switched off the subetheric. Looms’ campaign strategy seemed to be to try to become more reactionary than his reactionary opponent. A year ago Derec would not have given that tactic a chance of success, but Earth always surprised him.

            “You have a call, Derec,” Thales said. “Ambassador Ariel Burgess. “

            Derec considered telling Thales to say he was out. Instead, he went to the comm and pressed his thumb on the ACCEPT. “Hello.”

            “I hope I’m not interrupting anything, Derec, but are you busy right now?” Ariel asked crisply.

            The visual was off, so Derec allowed himself a wry smile. “Nothing pressing.”

            “Would you come up to my office? I need--I’d appreciate your opinion on something.”

            “‘Something.’ For instance?”

            There was a pause. “Please.”

            Derec blinked. Please...? “I’ll be right there.”

            “Thank you. “

            The connection broke and Derec stared at the comm, baffled.

            “Thales, I’ll be in Ambassador Burgess’s offices for a while,” he said, moving to the door. “In case anything comes up.”

            “Very well, Derec.”

 

Ariel’s offices consisted of four large chambers in the main diplomatic quarter of the Auroran Embassy. The lone robot at the reception desk magnified the impression of emptiness: Only one robot, out of a staff of four robots and eleven people a year before.

            “Ambassador Burgess is expecting you, sir,” the robot said as he entered. “Go right through.”

            “Thank you. “

            Derec pushed open the door to Ariel’s personal office.

            He hesitated. Hofton stood behind and to the left of Ariel’s chair, hands folded appropriately before him, posture straight and attentive, looking as if he had not been absent for most of the last year, transferred to another office. He inclined his nearly hairless head in greeting but otherwise said nothing, face professionally expressionless.

            A man sat in one of Ariel’s highback visitor’s chairs. He stood as the door closed behind Derec. Tall, wide-shouldered, with short, gray-flecked hair, dark eyes set deep below pale eyebrows, and a too-straight nose that hinted at cosmetic retouch, he looked familiar to Derec.

            “Mr. Lanra,” Ariel said, “this is Derec Avery, special attaché to my department. “

            Derec gave her a sharp look.

            “Derec, “ she continued smoothly, “this is Coren Lanra, head of security for DyNan Manual Industries.”

            Derec gripped Lanra’s hand. “I’ve heard of you, of course. Mia Daventri said you helped her out during the Managin...situation last year.”

            “Indeed, “ Lanra said. “And you ‘re the head of Phylaxis Group. “

            “Once upon a time.”

            Lanra frowned.

            “I’ve asked Mr. Avery,” Ariel said, “to sit in as an impartial witness. He’s attached to my office but he doesn’t work for me, unlike Hofton.”

            Lanra sat down. “I’d hoped to confine this meeting to just you and I, Ambassador Burgess. “

            “Humor me, Mr. Lanra. The past year has made me wary of private meetings.”

            Lanra almost smiled at that. “Very well. I have a problem which may interest you. I’d like to enlist your expertise.”

            “In what capacity?”

            Derec moved to the other visitor’s chair and sat down. Lanra seemed to be deliberating, lips pursed, hands pressed together meditatively.

            “You must understand,” he said slowly, “that this has nothing to do with DyNan. This is a private matter concerning Rega Looms and myself.”

            “If you say so,” Ariel said dryly.

            Lanra sighed wearily. “Rega Looms’ daughter was found dead less than twenty-four hours ago on Kopernik Station. She was involved in running baleys and was apparently accompanying a group of them. All fifty-two are dead.”

            Ariel winced. “I’m terribly sorry. But how--”

            “She had a robot in her possession.”

            Derec sat forward, startled. Hofton moved his hands behind his back, which made him seem even more attentive. Ariel stared at Lanra, openly amazed.

            After a long silence, Ariel cleared her throat. “This hasn’t been on the newsnets.”

            “Not yet,” Lanra said. “I hope to keep it that way for a few days. Longer if possible, but sooner or later someone is going to make some connections, find a source--something.”

            “That’s …unique, Mr. Lanra...”

            Lanra said nothing.