Issue 23, December 2016

© Wyrm Publishing, 2016
wyrmpublishing.com
forever-magazine.com

Introduction

Neil Clarke

Welcome to the December 2016 issue of Forever Magazine!

It’s a mad month here at my house. The holidays can make things so hectic and someone had the bright idea of dropping an anthology deadline on top of things. In the interest of using my time more wisely, I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I hope that you are all doing well and should you celebrate any of the holidays this month, I hope you and yours enjoy them. All the best to each and every one of you!

Until next month . . .

-Neil

Inhuman Garbage

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Detective Noelle DeRicci opened the top of the waste crate. The smell of rott id the faint smell of urine and feces. A woman’s body curled on top of the compost pile as if she had fallen asleep.

She hadn’t, though. Her eyes were open.

DeRicci couldn’t see any obvious cause of death. The woman’s skin might have been copper colored when she was alive, but death had turned it sallow. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, undisturbed by whatever killed her. She wore a grey and tan pantsuit that seemed more practical than flattering.

DeRicci put the lid down, and resisted the urge to remove her thin gloves. They itched. They always itched. Because she used department gloves rather than buying her own, and they never fit properly.

She rubbed her fingers together, as if something from the crate could have gotten through the gloves, and turned around. Nearly one hundred identical containers lined up behind it. More arrived hourly from all over Armstrong, the largest city on Earth’s Moon.

The entire interior of the warehouse smelled faintly of organic material gone bad. She was only in one section of the warehouse. There were dozens of others, and at the end of each, was a conveyer belt that took the waste crate, mulched it, and then sent the material for use in the Growing Pits outside Armstrong’s dome.

The crates were cleaned in a completely different section of the warehouse, and then sent back into the city for reuse.

Not every business recycled its organic produce for the Growing Pits, but almost all of the restaurants and half of the grocery stores did. DeRicci’s apartment building sent organic food waste into bins that came here as well.

The owner of the warehouse, Najib Ansel, stood next to the nearest row of crates. He wore a blue smock over matching blue trousers, and blue booties on his feet. Blue gloves stuck out of his pocket, and a blue mask hung around his neck.

“How did you find her?” DeRicci asked.

Ansel nodded at the ray of blue light that hovered above the crate, then toed the floor.

“The weight was off,” he said. “The crate was too heavy.”

DeRicci looked down.

“I take it you have sensors in the floor?” she asked.

“Along the orange line.”

She didn’t see an orange line. She moved slightly, then saw it. It really wasn’t a line, more a series of orange rectangles, long enough to hold the crates, and too short to measure anything beside them.

“So you lifted the lid . . . ” DeRicci started.

“No, sir,” Ansel said, using the traditional honorific for someone with more authority.

DeRicci wasn’t sure why she had more authority than he did. She had looked him up on her way here. He owned a multimillion-dollar industry, which made its fortune charging for waste removal from the city itself, and then reselling that waste at a low price to the Growing Pits.

She had known this business existed, but she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it until an hour ago. She had felt a shock of recognition when she saw the name of the business in the download that sent her here: Ansel Management was scrawled on the side of every waste container in every recycling room in the city.

Najib Ansel had a near monopoly in Armstrong, and had warehouses in six other domed communities. According to her admittedly cursory research, he had filed for permits to work in two new communities just this week. So the fact he was in standard worker gear, just like his employees, amazed her. She would have thought a mogul like Ansel would be in a gigantic office somewhere making deals, rather than standing on the floor of the main warehouse just outside Armstrong’s dome.

Even though he used the honorific, he didn’t say anything more. Clearly, Ansel was going to make her work for information.

“Okay,” DeRicci said. “The crate was too heavy. Then what?”

“Then we activated the sensors, to see what was inside the crate.” He looked up at the blue light again. Obviously that was the sensor.

“Show me how that works,” she said.

He rubbed his fingers together—probably activating some kind of chip. The light came down and broadened, enveloping the crate. Information flowed above it, mostly in chemical compounds and other numbers. She was amazed she recognized that the symbols were compounds. She wondered where she had picked that up.

“No visuals?” she asked.

“Not right away.” He reached up to the holographic display. The numbers kept scrolling. “You see, there’s really nothing out of the ordinary here. Even her clothes must be made of some kind of organic material. So my people couldn’t figure out what was causing the extra weight.”

“You didn’t find this, then?” she asked.

“No, sir,” he said.

“I’d like to talk with the person who did,” she said.

“She’s over there.” He nodded toward a small room off to the side of the crates.

DeRicci suppressed a sigh. Of course he cleared the employee off the floor. Anything to make a cop’s job harder.

“All right,” DeRicci said, not trying to hide her annoyance. “How did your ‘people’ discover the extra weight?”

“When the numbers didn’t show anything,” he said, “they had the system scan for a large piece. Sometimes, when crates come in from the dome, someone dumps something directly into the crate without paying attention to weight and size restrictions.”

Those were hard to ignore. DeRicci vividly remembered the first time she tried to dump something of the wrong size into a recycling crate. She dumped a rotted roast she had never managed to cook (back in the days when she actually believed she could cook). She’d put it into the crate behind her then-apartment building. The damn crate beeped at her, and when she didn’t remove the roast fast enough for the stupid thing, it actually started to yell at her, telling her that she wasn’t following the rules. There was a way to turn off the alarms, but she and her building superintendent didn’t know it. Clearly, someone else did.

“So,” DeRicci said, “the system scanned, and . . . ?”

“Registered something larger,” he said somewhat primly. “That’s when my people switched the information feed to visual, and got the surprise of their lives.”

She would wager. She wondered if they thought the woman was sleeping. She wasn’t going to ask him that question; she’d save it for the person who actually found the body. “When did they call you?” she asked.

“After they visually confirmed the body,” he said.

“Meaning what?” she asked. “They saw it on the feed or they actually lifted the lid?”

“On the feed,” he said.

“Where was this?” she asked.

He pointed to a small booth that hovered over the floor. The booth clearly operated on the same tech that the flying cars in Armstrong used. The booth was smaller than the average car, however, and was clear on all four sides. Only the bottom appeared to have some kind of structure, probably to hide all the mechanics.

“Is someone in the booth?” she asked.

“We always have someone monitoring the floor,” he said, “but I put someone new up there, so that the team which discovered the body can talk to you.”

DeRicci supposed he had put the entire team in one room, together, so that they could align their stories. But she didn’t say anything like that. No sense antagonizing Ansel. He was helping her.

“We’re going to need to shut down this part of your line,” she said. “Everything in this part of the warehouse will need to be examined.”

To her surprise, he didn’t protest. Of course, if he had protested, she would have had him shut down the entire warehouse.

Maybe he had dealt with the police before.

“So,” she said, “who actually opened the lid on this container?”

“I did,” he said quietly.

She hadn’t expected that. “Tell me about it.”

“The staff contacted me after they saw the body.”

“On your links?” she asked. Everyone had internal links for communication, and the links could be set up with varying degrees of privacy. She would wager that the entire communication system inside Ansel Management was on its own dedicated link.

“Yes,” he said. “The staff contacted me on my company link.”

“I’d like to have copies of that contact,” she said.

“Sure.” He wasn’t acting like someone who had anything to hide. In fact, he was acting like someone who had been through this before.

“What did your staff tell you?” she asked.

His lips turned upward. Someone might have called that expression a smile, but it wasn’t. It was rueful.

“They told me that there was a woman in crate A1865.”

DeRicci made a mental note about the number. Before this investigation was over, she’d learn everything about this operation, from the crate numbering system to the way that the conveyer to the actual mulching process.

“That’s what they said?” she asked. “A woman in the crate?”

“Crate A1865,” he repeated, as if he wanted that detail to be exactly right.

“What did you think when you heard that?” DeRicci asked.

He shook his head, then sighed. “I—we’ve had this happen before, Detective. Not for more than a year, but we’ve found bodies. Usually homeless people in the crates near the Port, people who came into Armstrong and can’t get out. Sometimes we get an alien or two sleeping in the crates. The Oranjanie view rotting produce as a luxury, and they look human from some angles.”

The Port of Armstrong was the main spaceport onto the Moon, and also functioned as the gateway to Earth. Member species of the Earth Alliance had to stop in Armstrong first, before traveling to Earth. Some travelers never made it into Earth’s protected zone, and got stuck on the Moon itself.

Right now, however, she had no reason to suspect alien involvement in this crime. She preferred working human-on-human crime. It made the investigation so much easier.

“You’ve found human bodies in your crates before,” she clarified.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And the police have investigated?”

“All of the bodies, alien and human,” he said. “Different precincts, usually, and different time periods. My grandmother started this business over a hundred years ago. She found bodies even way back then.”

DeRicci guessed it would make sense to hide a body in one of the crates. Or someone would think it made sense.

“Do you think that bodies have gotten through the mulching process?” It took her a lot of strength not to look at the conveyer belt as she asked that question.

“I don’t think a lot got through,” he said. “I know some did. Back in my grandmother’s day. She’s the one who set up the safeguards. We might have had a few glitches after the safeguards were in place, before we knew how well they worked, but I can guarantee nothing has gone through since I started managing this company twenty-five years ago.”

DeRicci tried not to shudder as she thought about human flesh serving as compost at the Growing Pits. She hated Moon-grown food, and she had a hunch she was going to hate it more after this case.

But she had to keep asking questions.

“You said you can guarantee it,” she repeated.

He nodded.

“What if someone cut up the body?” she asked.

He grimaced. “The pieces would have to be small to get past our weight and size restrictions. Forgive me for being graphic, but no full arms or legs or torsos or heads. Maybe fingers and toes. We have nanoprobes on these things, looking for human DNA. But the probes are coating the lining of the crates. If someone buried a finger in the middle of some rotting lettuce, we might miss it.”

She turned so that he wouldn’t see her reaction. She forced herself to swallow some bile back, and wished she had some savings. She wanted to go home and purge her refrigerator anything grown on the Moon, and buy expensive Earth-grown produce.

But she couldn’t afford that, not on a detective’s salary.

“Fair enough,” she said, surprised she could sound so calm when she was so thoroughly grossed out. “No full bodies have gone through in at least twenty-five years. But you’ve seen quite a few. How many?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d have to check the records.”

That surprised her. It meant there were enough that he couldn’t keep track. “Any place where they show up the most often?”

“The Port,” he said. “There’s a lot of homeless in that neighborhood.”

Technically, they weren’t homeless. They were people who lived on the city’s charity. A lot of small cubicle sized rooms existed on the Port blocks, and anyone who couldn’t afford their own home or ended up stranded and unemployable in the city could stay in one of the cubicles for six months, no questions asked.

After six months, they needed to move to long-term city services, which were housed elsewhere. She wanted to ask if anyone had turned up in those neighborhoods, but she’d do that after she looked at his records.

“I’m confused,” she said. “Do these people crawl into the crates and die?”

The crate didn’t look like it was sealed so tightly that the person couldn’t get oxygen.

“Some of them,” he said. “They’re usually high or drunk.”

“And the rest?” she asked.

“Obviously someone has put them there,” he said.

“A different someone each time, I assume,” she said.

He shrugged. “I let the police investigate. I don’t ask questions.”

“You don’t ask questions about dead people in your crates?”

His face flushed. She had finally gotten to him.

“Believe it or not, Detective,” he snapped, “I don’t like to think about it. I’m very proud of this business. We provide a service that enables the cities on the Moon to not only have food, but to have great food. Sometimes our system gets fouled up by crazy people, and I hate that. We’ve gone to great lengths to prevent it. That’s why you’re here. Because our systems work.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she lied. “This is all new to me, so I’m going to ask some very ignorant questions at times.”

He looked annoyed, but he nodded.

“What part of town did this crate come from?” she asked.

“The Port,” he said tiredly.

She should have expected that, after he had mentioned the Port a few times.

“Was the body in the crate when it was picked up at the Port?” she asked.

“The weight was the same from Port to here,” he said. “Weight gets recorded at pick-up but flagged near the conveyer. The entire system is automated until the crates get to the warehouse. Besides, we don’t have the ability to investigate anything inside Armstrong. There are a lot of regulations on things that are considered garbage inside the dome. If we violate those, we’ll get black marks against our license, and if we get too many black marks in a year, we could lose that license.”

More stuff she didn’t know. City stuff, regulatory stuff. The kinds of things she always ignored.

And things she would probably have to investigate now.

“Do you know her?” DeRicci asked, hoping to catch him off balance.

“Her?” He looked confused for a moment. Then he looked at the crate, and his flush grew deeper. “You mean, her?”

“Yes,” DeRicci said. Just from his reaction she knew his response. He didn’t know the woman. And the idea that she was inside one of his crates upset him more than he wanted to say.

Which was probably why he was the person talking to DeRicci now.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know her, and I don’t recognize her. We didn’t run any recognition programs on her either. We figured you all would do that.”

“No one touched her? No one checked her for identification chips?”

“I’m the one who opened the crate,” he said. “I saw her, I saw that her eyes were open, and then I closed the lid. I leave the identifying to you all.”

“Do you know all your employees, Mr. Ansel?”

“By name,” he said.

“By look,” she said.

He shook his head. “I have nearly three hundred employees in Armstrong alone.”

“But you just said you know their names. You know all three hundred employees by name?”

He smiled absently, which seemed like a rote response. He’d responded to this kind of thing before.

“I have an eidetic memory,” he said. “If I’ve seen a name, then I remember it.”

“An eidetic memory for names, but not faces? I’ve never heard of that,” DeRicci said.

“I haven’t met all of my employees,” he said. “But I go over the pay amounts every week before they get sent to the employees’ accounts. I see the names. I rarely see the faces.”

“So you wouldn’t know if she worked here,” DeRicci said.

“Here?” he asked. “Here I would know. I come here every day. If she worked in one of the other warehouses or in transport or in sales, I wouldn’t know that.”

“Did this crate go somewhere else before coming to this warehouse?” DeRicci asked.

“No,” Ansel said. “Each crate is assigned a number. That number puts it in a location, and then when the crate fills, it gets swapped out with another. The crate comes to the same warehouse each time, without deviation. And since that system is automated, as I mentioned, I know that it doesn’t go awry.”

“Can someone stop the crate in transit and add a body?”

“No,” he said. “I can show you if you want.”

She shook her head. That would be a good job for her partner, Rayvon Lake. Rayvon still hadn’t arrived, the bastard. DeRicci would have to report him pretty soon. He had gotten very lax about crime scenes, leaving them to her. He left most everything to her, and she hated it.

He was a lazy detective—twenty years in the position—and he saw her as an upstart who needed to be put in her place.

She wouldn’t have minded if he did his job. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She would have minded. She hated people who disliked her. But she wouldn’t be considering filing a report on him if he actually did the work he was supposed to do.

She would get Lake to handle the transport information by telling him she wasn’t smart enough to understand it. It would mean that she’d have to suffer through an explanation later in the case, but maybe by then, she’d either have this thing solved or she’d have a new partner.

A woman could hope, after all.

“One of the other detectives will look into the transport process,” DeRicci said. “I’m just trying to cover the basics here, so we start looking in the right place. Can outsiders come into this warehouse?”

“And get into one of our crates?” Ansel asked. “No. Look.”

He touched the edge of the lid, and she heard a loud snap.

“It’s sealed shut now,” he said.

She didn’t like the sound of that snap.

“If I were in there,” she asked, “could I breathe through that seal?”

“Yes,” he said. “For about two days, if need be. But it doesn’t seal shut like that until it leaves the transport and crosses the threshold here at the warehouse. So there’s no way anyone could crawl in here at the warehouse.”

“All right,” DeRicci said. “So, let me be sure I understand you. The only place that someone could either place a body into a crate or crawl into it on their own is on site.”

“Yes,” Ansel said. “We try to encourage composting, so we allow bypassers to stuff something into a crate. We search for non-organic material at the site, and flag the crates with non-organic material so they can be cleaned.”

“Clothing is organic?” DeRicci asked.

“Much of it, yes,” Ansel said. “Synthetics aren’t good hosts for nanoproducts, so most people wear clothing made from recycled organic material.”

DeRicci’s skin literally crawled. She hadn’t known that. She wasn’t an organic kind of woman. She preferred fake stuff, much to the dismay of her friends.

“All right,” she said. “I’m going to talk with your people in a minute. I’ll want to know what they know. And I’ll need to see your records on previous incidents.”

She didn’t check to see if he had sent her anything on her links. She didn’t want downloads to confuse her sense of the crime scene. She liked to make her own opinions, and she did that by being thorough.

Detectives like Rayvon Lake gathered as much information as possible, multitasking as they walked through a crime scene. She believed they missed most of the important details while doing that, and that led to a lot of side roads and wasted time. And, if she could prove it (if she had time to prove it), a lot of false convictions. She had caught Lake twice trying to close a case by accusing an innocent person who was convenient, rather than doing the hard legwork required of a good investigator.

Ansel fluttered near her for a moment. She inclined her head toward the room where the staff had gathered, knowing she was inviting him to contaminate her witnesses even more, but she had a hunch none of them were going to be useful to the investigation anyway.

“Before you go,” she said, just in case he didn’t take the hint, “could you unseal this crate for me?”

“Oh, yes, sorry,” he said, and ran his fingers along the side again. It snapped one more time, then popped up slightly.

DeRicci thanked him, and pulled back the lid. The crate was deep—up to DeRicci’s ribs—and filled with unidentifiable bits of rotting food. The woman lay on top of them, hands cradled under her cheek, feet tucked together.

DeRicci couldn’t imagine anyone just curling up here, even at the bidding of someone else. But people did strange things for strange reasons, and she wasn’t going to rule it out.

She put the lid down and then looked at the warehouse again. She would need the numbers, but she suspected thousands of crates went through Ansel’s facilities around the Moon daily. Done properly, it would be a perfect way to dispose of bodies and all kinds of other things that no one wanted to see. She wondered how many others knew about this facility and how it worked.

She suspected she would have to find out.

Getting the crime scene unit to a warehouse outside of the dome took more work than Ethan Broduer liked to do. Fortunately, he was a deputy coroner, which meant he couldn’t control the crime scene unit. Someone with more seniority had to handle requisitioning the right vehicle from the Police Department yards outside the dome, and making certain the team had the right equipment.

Broduer came to the warehouse via train. The ride was only five minutes long, but it made him nervous. He was born inside the dome, and he hated leaving it for any reason at all, especially for a reason involving work. So much of his work had to do with temperature and conditions, and if the body had been in an airless environment at all, it had an impact on every aspect of his job.

He was relieved when he arrived at the warehouse and learned that the body had never gone outside of an Earth Normal environment. However, he was annoyed to see that he would be working with Noelle DeRicci. She was notoriously difficult and demanding, and often asked coroners to redo something or double-check their findings. She’d caught him in several mistakes, which he found embarrassing. Then she had had the gall to tell him that he should probably double-check all of his work, considering its shoddy quality.

She stood next to a crate, the only one of thousands that was open. She was rumpled—she was always rumpled—and her curly black hair looked messier than usual.

When she saw him approach, she glared at him.

“Oh, lucky me,” she said.

Broduer bit back a response. He’d been recording everything since he got off the train inside the warehouse’s private platform, and he didn’t want to show any animosity toward DeRicci on anything that might go to court.

“Just show me the body and I’ll get to work,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows at the word “work,” and she didn’t have to add anything to convey her meaning. She didn’t think Broduer worked at all.

“My biggest priority at the moment is an identification,” DeRicci said.

And his biggest priority was to do this investigation right. But he didn’t say that. Instead he looked at the dozens of crates spread out before him. “Which one am I dealing with?” he asked, pleased that he could sound so calm in the face of her rudeness.

She placed a hand on the crate behind her. He was pleased to see that she wore gloves. He had worked with her partner Rayvon Lake before, and Lake had to be reminded to follow any kind of procedure.

But Broduer didn’t see Lake anywhere.

“Have you had cases involving the waste crates before?” DeRicci asked Broduer.

“No,” he said, not adding that he tried to pass anything outside the dome onto anyone else, “but I’ve heard about cases involving them. I guess it’s not that uncommon.”

“Hmm,” she said looking toward a room at the far end of the large warehouse. “And here I thought they were.”

Broduer was going to argue his point when he realized that DeRicci wasn’t talking to him now. She was arguing with someone she had already spoken to.

“Can you get me information on that?” DeRicci asked Broduer.

He hated it when detectives wanted him to do their work for them. “It’s in the records.”

DeRicci made a low, growly sound, like he had irritated her beyond measure.

So he decided to tweak her a bit more. “Just search for warehouses and recycling and crates—”

“I know,” she said. “I was hoping your office already had statistics.”

“I’m sure we do, Detective,” he said, moving past her, “but you want me to figure out what killed this poor creature, right? Not dig into old cases.”

“I think the old cases might be relevant,” she said.

He shrugged. He didn’t care what was or wasn’t relevant to her investigation. His priority was dealing with this body. “Excuse me,” he said, and slipped on his favorite pair of gloves. Then he raised the lid on the crate.

The woman inside was maybe thirty. She had been pretty, too, before her eyes had filmed over and her cheeks sunk in. She had clearly died in an Earth Normal environment, and she hadn’t left that environment, as advertised. He would have to do some research to figure out if the presence of rotting food had an impact on the body’s decomposition, but that was something to worry about later.

Then Broduer glanced up. “I’ll have information for you in a while,” he said to DeRicci.

“Just give me a name,” she said. “We haven’t traced anything.”

He didn’t want to move the body yet. He didn’t even want to touch it, because he was afraid of disturbing some important evidence.

The corpse’s hands were tucked under her head, so he couldn’t just run the identification chips everyone had buried in their palms. So he used the coroner’s office facial recognition program. It had a record of every single human who lived in Armstrong, and was constantly updated with information from the arrivals and departures sections of the city every single day.

“Initial results show that her name is Sonja Mycenae. She was born here, and moved off-Moon with her family ten years ago. She returned one month ago to work as a nanny for . . . . ”

He paused, stunned at the name that turned up.

“For?” DeRicci pushed.

Broduer looked up. He could feel the color draining from his face.

“Luc Deshin,” he said quietly. “She works for Luc Deshin.”

Luc Deshin.

DeRicci hadn’t expected that name.

Luc Deshin ran a corporation called Deshin Enterprises that the police department flagged and monitored continually. Everyone in Armstrong knew Deshin controlled a huge crime syndicate that trafficked in all sorts of illegal and banned substances. The bulk of Deshin’s business had moved off-Moon, but he had gotten his start as an average street thug, rising, as those kids often do, through murder and targeted assassination into a position of power, using the deaths of others to advance his own career.

“Luc Deshin needed a nanny?” DeRicci sounded confused.

“He married a few years ago,” Broduer said, as he bent over the body again. “I guess they had kids.”

“And didn’t like the nanny.” DeRicci whistled. “Talk about a high stress job.”

She glanced at the room filled with employees who found the body. There was a lot of work to be done here, but none of it was as important as catching Deshin by surprise with this investigation. If he killed this Sonja Mycenae, then he would be expecting the police’s appearance. But he might not expect them so soon.

Or maybe he had always used the waste crates to dump his bodies. No one had ever been able to pin a murder on him.

Perhaps this was why.

She needed to leave. But before she did, she sent a message to Lake. Only she sent it using the standard police links, not the encoded link any other officer would use with her partner. She wanted it on record that Lake hadn’t shown up yet.

Rayvon, you need to get here ASAP. There are employees to interview. I’m following a lead, but someone has to supervise the crime scene unit. Someone sent Deputy Coroner Broduer and he doesn’t have supervisory authority.

She didn’t want for Lake’s response. Before he said anything, she sent another message to her immediate supervisor, Chief of Detectives Andrea Gumiela, this time through an encoded private link.

This case has ties to Deshin Enterprises, DeRicci sent. I’m going there now, but we need a good team on this. It’s not some random death. It needs to be done perfectly. Between Broduer and Lake, we’re off to a bad start.

She didn’t wait for Gumiela to respond either. In fact, after sending that message, DeRicci shut off all but her emergency links.

She didn’t want Gumiela to tell her to stay on site, and she didn’t want to hear Lake’s invective when he realized she had essentially chastised him in front of the entire department.

“Make sure no one leaves,” DeRicci said to Broduer.

He looked up, panicked. “I don’t have the authority.”

“Pretend,” she snapped, and walked away from him.

She needed to get to Luc Deshin, and she needed to get to him now.

Luc Deshin grabbed his long-waisted overcoat and headed down the stairs. So a police detective wanted to meet with him. He wished he found such things unusual. But they weren’t. The police liked to harass him. Less now than in the past. They’d had a frustrating time pinning anything on him.

He always found it ironic that the crimes they accused him of were crimes he’d never think of committing, and the crimes he had committed—long ago and far away—were crimes they had never heard of. Now, all of his activities were legal. Just-inside-the-law legal, but legal nonetheless. Or so his cadre of lawyers kept telling the local courts, and the local judges—at least the ones he would find himself in front of—always believed his lawyers.

So, a meeting like this, coming in the middle of the day, was an annoyance, and nothing more.

He used his trip down the stairs to stay in shape. His office was a penthouse on the top floor of the building he’d built to house Deshin Enterprises years ago. He used to love that office, but he liked it less since he and his wife Gerda brought a baby into their lives.

He smiled at the thought of Paavo. They had adopted him—sort of. They had drawn up some legal papers and wills that the lawyers assured him would stand any challenge should he and Gerda die suddenly.

But Deshin and Gerda had decided against an actual adoption given Deshin’s business practices and his reputation in Armstrong. They were worried some judge would deem them unfit, based on Deshin’s reputation.

Plus, Paavo was the child of two Disappeareds, making the adoption situation even more difficult. The Earth Alliance’s insistence that local laws prevailed when crimes were committed meant that humans were often subjected to alien laws, laws that made no sense at all. Many humans didn’t like being forced to lose a limb as punishment for chopping down an exotic tree, or giving up a child because they’d broken food laws on a different planet. Those who could afford to get new names and new identities did so rather than accept their punishment under Earth Alliance law. Those people Disappeared.

Paavo’s parents had Disappeared within weeks of his birth, leaving him to face whatever legal threat those aliens could dream up.

Paavo, alone, at four months.

Fortunately, Deshin and Gerda had sources inside Armstrong’s family services, which they had cultivated for just this sort of reason. Both Deshin and Gerda had had difficult childhoods—to say the least. They knew what it was like to be unwanted.

Their initial plan had been to bring several unwanted children into their home, but after they met Paavo, a brilliant baby with his own special needs, they decided to put that plan on hold. If they could only save Paavo, that would be enough.

Just a month into life with the baby, and they knew that any more children would take a focus that, at the moment at least, Paavo’s needs wouldn’t allow.

Deshin reached the bottom of the stairwell, ran a hand through his hair, and then walked through the double doors. His staff kept the detective in the lobby.

She was immediately obvious, even though she wasn’t in uniform. A slightly disheveled woman with curly black hair and a sharp, intelligent face, she wasn’t looking around like she was supposed to. Most new visitors to Deshin Enterprises either pretended to be unimpressed with the real marble floors, the imported wood paneling, and the artwork that constantly shifted on the walls and ceiling. Or the visitors gaped openly at all of it.

This detective did neither. Instead, she scanned the people in the lobby—all staff, all there to guard him and keep an eye on her.

She would be difficult. He could tell that just from her body language. He wasn’t used to dealing with someone from the Armstrong Police Department who was intelligent and difficult to impress.

He walked toward her, and as he reached her, he extended his hand.

“Detective,” he said warmly. “I’m Luc Deshin.”

She wiped her hands on her stained shirt, and just as he thought she was going to take his hand in greeting, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her ill-fitting black pants.

“I know who you are,” she said.

She deliberately failed to introduce herself, probably as a power play. He could play back, ask to see the badge chip embedded in the palm of her hand, but he didn’t feel like playing. She had already wasted enough of his time.

So he took her name, Noelle DeRicci, from the building’s security records, and declined to look at her service record. He had it if he needed it.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” He was going to charm her, even if It took a bit of strength to ignore the games.

“I’d like to speak somewhere private,” she said.

He smiled. “No one is near us, and we have no recording devices in this part of the lobby. If you like, we can go outside. There’s a lovely coffee shop across the street.”

Her eyes narrowed. He watched her think: did she ask to go to his office and get denied, or did she just play along?

“The privacy is for you,” she said, “but okay. . . . ”

She sounded dubious, a nice little trick. A less secure man would then invite her into the office. Deshin waited. He learned that middle managers—and that was what detectives truly were—always felt the press of time. He never had enough time for anything and yet, as the head of his own corporation, he also had all the time in the universe.

“I’m here about Sonja Mycenae,” she said.

Sonja. The nanny he had fired just that morning. Well, fired wasn’t an accurate term. He had deliberately avoided firing her. He had eliminated her position.

He and Gerda had decided Sonja wasn’t affectionate enough toward their son. In fact, she had seemed a bit cold toward him. And once Deshin and Gerda started that conversation about Sonja’s attitudes, they realized they didn’t like having someone visit their home every day, and they didn’t like giving up any time with Paavo. Both Gerda and Deshin had worried, given their backgrounds, that they wouldn’t know how to nurture a baby, but Sonja had taught them training mattered a lot less than actual love.

“I understand she works for you,” the detective said.

“She worked for me,” he said.

Something changed in the detective’s face. Something small. He felt uneasy for the first time.

“Tell me what this is about, Detective,” he said.

“It’s about Sonja Mycenae,” she repeated.

“Yes, you said that. What exactly has she done?” he asked.

“Why don’t you tell me why she no longer works for you,” the detective said.

“My wife and I decided that we didn’t need a nanny for our son. I called Sonja to the office this morning, and let her know that, effective immediately, her employment was terminated through no fault of her own.”

“Do you have footage of that conversation?” the detective asked.

“I do, and it’s protected. You’ll need permission from both of us or a warrant before I can give it to you.”

The detective raised her eyebrows. “I’m sure you can forgo the formalities, Mr. Deshin.”

“I’m sure that many people do, Detective,” he said, “however, it’s my understanding that an employee’s records are confidential. You may get a warrant if you like. Otherwise, I’m going to protect Sonja’s privacy.”

“Why would you do that, Mr. Deshin?”

“Believe it or not, I follow the rules.” He managed to say that without sarcasm.

The detective grunted as if she didn’t believe him. “What made you decide to terminate her position today?”

“I told you,” Deshin said, keeping his voice bland even though he was getting annoyed. “My wife and I decided we didn’t need a nanny to help us raise our son.”

“You might want to share that footage with me without wasting time on a warrant, Mr. Deshin,” the detective said.

“Why would I do that, Detective? I’m not even sure why you’re asking about Sonja. What has she done?”

“She has died, Mr. Deshin.”

The words hung between them. He frowned. The detective had finally caught him off guard. For the first time, he did not know how to respond. He probably needed one of his lawyers here. Any time his name came up in an investigation, he was automatically the first suspect.

But in this case, he had nothing to do with Sonja’s death. So he would act accordingly, and let the lawyers handle the mess.

“What happened?” he asked softly.

He had known Sonja since she was a child. She was the daughter of a friend. That was one of the many reasons he had hired her, because he had known her. Even then, she hadn’t turned out as expected. He remembered an affectionate happy girl. The nanny who had come to his house didn’t seem to know how to smile at all. There had been no affection in her.

And when he last saw her, she’d been crying and pleading with him to keep her job. He actually had to have security drag her out of his office.

“We don’t know what happened,” the detective said.

That sentence could mean a lot. It could mean they didn’t know what happened at all or that they didn’t know if her death was by natural causes or by murder. It could also mean that they didn’t know exactly what or who caused the death, but that they suspected murder. Since he was facing a detective and not a beat officer, he knew they suspected murder.

“Where did it happen?” Deshin asked.

“We don’t know that either,” the detective said.

He snapped, “Then how do you know she’s dead?”

Again, that slight change in the detective’s face. Apparently he had finally hit on the correct question.

“Because workers found her in a waste crate in a warehouse outside the dome.”

“Outside the dome . . . ?” That didn’t make sense to him. Sonja hadn’t even owned an environmental suit. She had hated them with a passion. “She died outside the dome?”

“I didn’t say that, Mr. Deshin,” the detective said.

He let out a breath. “Look, Detective, I’m cooperating here, but you need to work with me. I saw Sonja this morning, eliminated her position, and watched her leave my office. Then I went to work. I haven’t gone out of the building all day.”

“But your people have,” the detective said.

He felt a thin thread of fury, and he suppressed it. Everyone assumed that his people murdered other people according to some whim. That simply was not true.

“Detective,” he said calmly. “If I wanted Sonja dead, why would I terminate her employment this morning?”

“I have only your word for that,” the detective said. “Unless you give me the footage.”

“And I have only your word that she’s dead,” he said.

The detective pressed her hands together, then separated them. A hologram appeared between them—a young woman, looking as if she had fallen asleep in a meadow. Until he looked closely, and saw that the “meadow” was bits of food, and the young woman’s eyes were open and filmy.

It was Sonja.

“My God,” he said.

“If you give me the footage,” the detective said, “and it confirms what you say, then you’ll be in the clear. If you wait, then we’re going to assume it was doctored.”

Deshin glared at her. She was good—and she was right. The longer he waited, the less credibility he would have.

“I’m going to consult with my attorneys,” he said. “If they believe this information has use to you and it doesn’t cause me any legal liabilities, then you will receive it from them within the hour.”

The detective crossed her arms. “I suggest you send it to me now. I promise you I will not look at anything until you or your attorneys say I can.”

It was an odd compromise, but one that would protect him. If she believed he would doctor the footage, then having the footage in her possession wouldn’t harm him.

But he didn’t know the laws on something this arcane.

“How’s this, detective,” he said. “My staff will give you a chip with the information on it. You may not put the chip into any device or watch it until I’ve consulted with my attorneys. You will wait here while I do so.”

“Seems fine to me,” the detective said. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

She didn’t, of course. DeRicci was probably getting all kinds of messages on her links from Lake and Gumiela and Broduer and everyone else, telling her she was stupid or needed or something.

She didn’t care. She certainly wasn’t going to turn her links back on. She was close to something. She had actually surprised the Great Luc Deshin, Criminal Mastermind.

He pivoted, and moved three steps away from her. He was clearly contacting someone on his links, but using private encoded links.

A staff member approached, a woman DeRicci hadn’t seen before. The woman, dressed in a black suit, extended a hand covered with gold rings.

“If you’ll come this way, Detective DeRicci . . . ”

DeRicci shook her head. “Mr. Deshin promised me a chip. I’m staying here until I get it.”

The woman opened her other hand. In it was a chip case the size of a thumbnail. The case was clear, and inside, DeRicci saw another case—blue, with a filament thinner than an eyelash.

“Here is your chip, Detective,” the woman said. “I’ve been instructed to take you—”

“I don’t care,” DeRicci said. “I’ll take the chip, and I’ll wait right here. You have my word that I won’t open either case, and I won’t watch anything until I get the okay.”

The woman’s eyes glazed slightly. Clearly, she was seeing if that was all right.

Then she focused on DeRicci, and bowed her head slightly.

“As you wish, Detective.”

She handed DeRicci the case. It was heavier than it looked. It probably had a lot of protections built in, so that she couldn’t activate anything through the case. Not that she had the technical ability to do any of that, even if she wanted to.

She sighed. She had a fluttery feeling that she had just been outmaneuvered.

Then she made herself watch Deshin. He seemed truly distressed at the news of Sonja Mycenae’s death. If DeRicci had to put money on it, she would say that he hadn’t known she was dead and he hadn’t ordered the death. But he was also well known for his business acumen, his criminal savvy, and his ability to beat a clear case against him. A man didn’t get a reputation like that by being easy to read.

She closed her fist around the chip case, clasped her hands behind her back, and waited, watching Luc Deshin the entire time.

Deshin hadn’t gone far. He wanted to keep an eye on the detective. He’d learned in the past that police officers had a tendency to wander, and observe things they shouldn’t. He had staff in various parts of the lobby to prevent the detective from doing just that.

Through private, encoded links, he had contacted his favorite attorney, Martin Oberholtz. For eight years, Oberholtz had managed the most delicate cases for Deshin—always knowing how far the law could bend before it broke.

Before I tell you what to do, Oberholtz was saying on their link, I want to see the footage.

It’ll take time, Deshin sent.

Ach, Oberholtz sent. I’ll just bill you for it. Send it to me.

I already have, Deshin sent.

I’ll be in contact shortly, Oberholtz sent, and signed off.

Deshin walked to the other side of the lobby. He didn’t want to vanish because he didn’t want the detective to think he was doing something nefarious.

But he was unsettled. That meeting with Sonja had not gone as he expected.

Over the years, Deshin had probably fired two hundred people personally, and his staff had fired even more. And that didn’t count the business relationships he had terminated. Doing unpleasant things didn’t bother him. They usually followed a pattern. But the meeting that morning hadn’t followed a pattern that he recognized.

He had spoken quite calmly to Sonja, telling her that he and Gerda had decided to raise Paavo without help. He hadn’t criticized Sonja at all. In fact, he had promised her a reference if she wanted it, and he had complimented her on the record, saying that her presence had given him and Gerda the confidence to handle Paavo alone.

He hadn’t said that the confidence had come from the fact that Sonja had years of training and she missed the essential ingredient—affection. He had kept everything as neutral and positive as possible, given that he was effectively firing her without firing her.

Midway through his little speech, her eyes widened. He had thought she was going to burst into tears. Instead, she put a shaking hand to her mouth, looking like she had just received news that everything she loved in the world was going to be taken away from her.

He had a moment of confusion—had she actually cared that much about Paavo?—and then he decided it didn’t matter; he and Gerda really did want to raise the boy on their own, without any outside help.

“Mr. Deshin,” Sonja had said when he finished. “Please, I beg you, do not fire me.”

“I’m not firing you, Sonja,” he had said. “I just don’t have a job for you any longer.”

“Please,” she said. “I will work here. I will do anything, the lowest of the low. I will do jobs that are disgusting or frightening, anything, Mr. Deshin. Please. Just don’t make me leave.”

He had never had an employee beg so strenuously to keep her job. It unnerved him. “I don’t have any work for you.”

“Please, Mr. Deshin.” She reached for him and he leaned back. “Please. Don’t make me leave.”

That was when he sent a message along his links to security. This woman was crazy, and no one on his staff had picked up on it. He felt both relieved and appalled. Relieved that she was going nowhere near Paavo again, and appalled that he had left his beloved little son in her care.

The door opened, and then Sonja screamed “No!” at the top of her lungs. She grabbed at Deshin, and one of his security people pulled her away.

She kicked and fought and screamed and cried all the way through the door. It closed behind her, leaving him alone, but he could still hear her yelling all the way to the elevator.

The incident had unsettled him.

It still unsettled him.

And now, just a few hours later, Sonja was dead.

That couldn’t be a coincidence.

It couldn’t be a coincidence at all.

It took nearly fifteen minutes before Luc Deshin returned. DeRicci had watched him pace on the other side of the lobby, his expression grim.

It was still grim when he reached her.

He nodded at the chip in her hand. “My staff tells me that you have a lot of information on that chip. In addition to the meeting in my office, you’ll see Sonja’s arrival and her departure. You’ll also see that she left through that front door. After she disappeared off our external security cameras, no one on my staff saw her again.”

He was being very precise. DeRicci figured his lawyer had told him to do that.

“Thank you,” she said, closing her fingers around the case. “I appreciate the cooperation.”

“You’re welcome,” Deshin said, then walked away.

She watched him go. Something about his mood had darkened since she originally spoke to him. Because of the lawyer? Or something else?

It didn’t matter. She had the information she needed, at least for the moment.

She would deal with Deshin later if she needed to.

Deshin took the stairs back to his office. He needed to think, and he didn’t want to run into any of his staff on the elevator. Besides, exercise kept his head clear.

He had thought Sonja crazy after her reaction in his office. But what if she knew her life was in danger if she left his employ? Then her behavior made sense. He wasn’t going to say that to the detective, nor had he mentioned it to his lawyer. Deshin was going to investigate this himself.

As he reached the top floor, he sent a message to his head of security, Otto Koos: My office. Now.

Deshin went through the doors and stopped, as he always did, looking at the view. He had a three hundred sixty -degree view of the City of Armstrong. Right now, the dome was set at Dome Daylight, mimicking midday sunlight on Earth. He loved the look of Dome Daylight because it put buildings all over the city in such clear light that it made them look like a beautiful painting or a holographic wall image.

He crossed to his desk, and called up the file on Sonja Mycenae, looking for anything untoward, anything his staff might have missed.

He saw nothing.

She had worked for a family on Earth who had filed monthly reports with the nanny service that had vetted her. The reports were excellent. Sonja had then left the family to come to the Moon, because, apparently, she had been homesick.

He couldn’t find anything in a cursory search of that file which showed any contradictory information.

The door to his office opened, and Koos entered. He was a short man with broad shoulders and a way of walking that made him look like he was itching for a fight.

Deshin had known him since they were boys, and trusted Koos with his life. Koos had saved that life more than once.

“Sonja was murdered after she left us this morning,” Deshin said.

Koos glanced at the door. “So that was why Armstrong PD was here.”

“Yeah,” Deshin said, “and it clarifies her reaction. She knew something bad would happen to her.”

“She was a plant,” Koos said.

“Or something,” Deshin said. “We need to know why. Did anyone follow her after she left?”

“You didn’t order us to,” Koos said, “and I saw no reason to keep track of her. She was crying pretty hard when she walked out, but she never looked back and as far as I could tell, no one was after her.”

“The police are going to trace her movements,” Deshin said. “We need to as well. But what I want to know is this: What did we miss about this woman? I’ve already checked her file. I see nothing unusual.”

“I’ll go over it again,” Koos said.

“Don’t go over it,” Deshin said, feeling a little annoyed. After all, he had just done that, and he didn’t need to be double-checked. “Vet her again, as if we were just about to hire her. See what you come up with.”

“Yes, sir,” Koos said. Normally, he would have left after that, but he didn’t. Instead, he held his position.

Deshin suppressed a sigh. Something else was coming his way. “What?”

“When you dismissed her and she reacted badly,” Koos said, “I increased security around your wife and child. I’m going to increase it again, and I’m going to make sure you’ve got extra protection as well.”

Deshin opened his mouth, but Koos put up one finger, stopping him.

“Don’t argue with me,” Koos said. “Something’s going on here, and I don’t like it.”

Deshin smiled. “I wasn’t going to argue with you, Otto. I was going to thank you. I hadn’t thought to increase security around my family, and it makes sense.”

Koos nodded, as if Deshin’s praise embarrassed him. Then he left the office.

Deshin watched him go. As soon as he was gone, Deshin contacted Gerda on their private links.

Koos might have increased security, but Deshin wanted to make sure everything was all right.

He used to say that families were a weakness, and he never wanted one. Then he met Gerda, and they brought Paavo into their lives.

He realized that families were a weakness, but they were strength as well.

And he was going to make sure his was safe, no matter what it took.

It had taken more work than Broduer expected to get the body back to the coroner’s office. Just to get the stupid crate out of the warehouse, he’d had to sign documentation swearing he wouldn’t use it to make money at the expense of Ansel Management.

“Company policy,” Najib Ansel had said with an insincere smile.

If Broduer hadn’t known better, he would have thought that Ansel was just trying to make things difficult for him.

But things had become difficult for Broduer when DeRicci’s partner, Rayvon Lake, arrived. Lake had been as angry as Broduer had ever seen him, claiming that DeRicci—who was apparently a junior officer to Lake—had been giving him orders.

Lake had shouted at everyone, except Broduer. Broduer had fended a shouting match off by holding up his hands and saying, “I’m not sure what killed this girl, but I don’t like it. It might contaminate everything. We have to get her out of here, now.”

Lake, who was a notorious germophobe (which Broduer found strange in a detective), had gulped and stepped back. Broduer had gotten the crate to the warehouse door before Ansel had come after him with all the documentation crap.

Maybe Ansel had done it just so that he wouldn’t have to talk with Lake. Broduer would have done anything to avoid Lake—and apparently just had.

Broduer smiled to himself, relieved to be back at the coroner’s office. The office was a misnomer—the coroners had their own building, divided into sections to deal with the various kinds of death that happened in Armstrong.

Broduer had tested out of the alien section after two years of trying. He hated working in an environmental suit, like he so often had to. Weirdly (he always thought) humans started in the alien section and had to get a promotion to work on human cadavers. Probably because no one really wanted to see the interior of a Sequev more than once. No human did, anyway.

There were more than a dozen alien coroners, most of whom worked with human supervisors since many alien cultures did not investigate cause of death. Armstrong was a human-run society on a human-run Moon, so human laws applied here, and human laws always needed a cause of death.

Broduer had placed Sonja Mycenae on the autopsy table, carefully positioning her before beginning work, and he’d been startled at how well proportioned she was. Most people had obvious flaws, at least when a coroner was looking at them. One arm a little too long, a roll of fat under the chin, a misshapen ankle.

He hadn’t removed her clothing yet, but as far as he could tell from the work he’d done with her already, nothing was unusual.

Which made her unusual all by herself.

He also couldn’t see any obvious cause of death. He had noted, however, that full rigor mortis had already set in. Which was odd, since the decomposition, according to the exam his nanobots had already started, seemed to have progressed at a rate that put her death at least five hours earlier. By now, under the conditions she’d been stored in, she should have still been pliable—at least her limbs. Rigor began in the eyes, jaw, and neck then spread to the face and through the chest before getting to the limbs. The fingers and toes were always the last to stiffen up.

That made him suspicious, particularly since liver mortis also seemed off.

He would have thought, given how long she had been curled inside that crate, that the blood would have pooled in the side of her body resting on top of the compost heap. But no blood had pooled at all.

He had bots move the autopsy table into one of the more advanced autopsy theaters. He wanted every single device he could find to do the work.

He suspected she’d been killed with some kind of hardening poison. They had become truly popular with assassins in the last two decades, and had just recently been banned from the Moon. Hardening poisons killed quickly by absorbing all the liquid in the body and/or by baking it into place. It was a quick death, but a painful one, and usually the victim’s muscles frozen in place, so she couldn’t even express that pain as it occurred.

He put on a high-grade environmental suit in an excess of caution. Some of the hardening poisons leaked out of the pores and then infected anyone who touched them.

What he had to determine was if Sonja Mycenae had died of one of those, and if her body had been placed in a waste crate not just to hide the corpse, but to infect the food supply in Armstrong. Because the Growing Pits inspections looked at the growing materials—the soil, the water, the light, the atmosphere, and the seeds. The inspectors would also look at the fertilizer, but if it came from a certified organization like Ansel Management, then there would only be a cursory search of materials.

Hardening poisons could thread their way into the DNA of a plant—just a little bit, so that, say, an apple wouldn’t be quite as juicy. A little hardening poison wouldn’t really hurt the fruit of a tree (although that tree might eventually die of what a botanist would consider a wasting disease), but a trace of hardening poison in the human system would have an impact over time. And if the human continued to eat things with hardening poisons in them, the poisons would build up, until the body couldn’t take it any more.

A person poisoned in that way wouldn’t die like Sonja Mycenae had; instead, the poison would overwhelm the standard nanohealers that everyone had installed, that person would get sick, and organs would slowly fail. Armstrong would have a plague but not necessarily know what caused it.

He double-checked his gloves, then let out a breath. Yes, he knew he was being paranoid. But he thought about these things a lot—the kinds of death that could happen with just a bit of carelessness, like sickness in a dome, poison through the food supply, the wrong mix in the air supply.

He had moved from working with living humans to working with the dead primarily because his imagination was so vivid. Usually working with the dead calmed him. The regular march of unremarkable deaths reminded him that most people would die of natural causes after a hundred and fifty or more years, maybe longer if they took good care of themselves.

Working with the dead usually gave him hope.

But Sonja Mycenae was making him nervous.

And he didn’t like that at all.

Deshin had just finished talking with Gerda when Koos sent him an encoded message:

Need to talk as soon as you can.

Now’s fine, Deshin sent.

He moved away from the windows, where he’d been standing as he made sure Gerda was okay. She actually sounded happy, which she hadn’t since Sonja moved in.

She said she no longer felt like her every move was being judged.

Paavo seemed happier too. He wasn’t crying as much, and he didn’t cling as hard to Gerda. Instead, he played with a mobile from his bouncy chair and watched her cook, cooing most of the time.

Just that one report made Deshin feel like he had made the right choice with Sonja.

Not that he had had a doubt—at least about her—after her reaction that morning. But apparently a tiny doubt had lingered about whether or not he and Gerda needed the help of a nanny. Gerda’s report on Paavo’s calmness eased that. Deshin knew they would have hard times ahead—he wasn’t deluding himself—but he also knew that they had made the right choice to go nanny-free.

He hadn’t told Gerda what happened to Sonja, and he wouldn’t, until he knew more. He didn’t want to spoil Gerda’s day.

The door to Deshin’s office opened, and Koos entered, looking upset. “Upset” was actually the wrong word. Something about Koos made Deshin think the man was afraid. Then Deshin shook that thought off: he’d seen Koos in extremely dangerous circumstances and the man had never seemed afraid.

“I did what you asked,” Koos said without preamble. “I started vetting her all over again.”

Deshin leaned against the desk, just like he had done when he spoke to Sonja. “And?”

“Her employers on Earth are still filing updates about her exemplary work for them.”

Deshin felt a chill. “Tell me that they were just behind in their reports.”

Koos shook his head. “She’s still working for them.”

“How is that possible?” Deshin asked. “We vetted her. We even used a DNA sample to make sure her DNA was the same as the DNA on file with the service. And we collected it ourselves.”

Koos swallowed. “We used the service’s matching program.”

“Of course we did,” Deshin said. “They were the ones with the DNA on file.”

“We could have requested that sample, and then run it ourselves.”

That chill Deshin had felt became a full-fledged shiver. “What’s the difference?”

“Depth,” Koos said. “They don’t go into the same kind of depth we would go into in our search. They just look at standard markers, which is really all most people would need to confirm identity.”

His phrasing made Deshin uncomfortable. “She’s not who she said she was?”

Koos let out a small sigh. “It’s more complicated than that.”

More complicated. Deshin shifted. He could only think of one thing that would be more complicated.

Sonja was a clone.

And that created all kinds of other issues.

But first, he had to confirm his suspicion.

“You checked for clone marks, right?” Deshin asked. “I know you did. We always do.”

The Earth Alliance required human clones to have a mark on the back of their neck or behind their ear that gave their number. If they were the second clone from an original, the number would be “2.”

Clones also did not have birth certificates. They had day of creation documents. Deshin had a strict policy for Deshin Enterprises: every person he hired had to have a birth certificate or a document showing that they, as a clone, had been legally adopted by an original human and therefore could be considered human under the law.

When it came to human clones, Earth Alliance and Armstrong laws were the same: clones were property. They were created and owned by their creator. They could be bought or sold, and they had no rights of their own. The law did not distinguish between slow-grow clones, which were raised like any naturally born human child, and fast-grow clones, which reached full adult size in days, but never had a full-grown human intelligence. The laws were an injustice, but only clones seemed to protest it, and they, as property, had no real standing.

Koos’s lips thinned. He didn’t answer right away.

Deshin cursed. He hated having clones in his business, and didn’t own any, even though he could take advantage of the loopholes in the law.

Clones made identity theft too easy, and made an organization vulnerable.

He always made certain his organization remained protected.

Or he had, until now.

“We did check like we do with all new hires.” Koos’s voice was strangled. “And we also checked her birth certificate. It was all in order.”

“But now you’re telling me it’s not,” Deshin said.

Koos’s eyes narrowed a little, not with anger, but with tension.

“The first snag we hit,” he said, “was that we were not able to get Sonja Mycenae’s DNA from the service. According to them, she’s currently employed, and not available for hire, so the standard service-subsidized searches are inactive. She likes her job. I looked: the job is the old one, not the one with you.”

Deshin crossed his arms. “If that’s the case, then how did we get the service comparison in the first place?”

“At first, I worried that someone had spoofed our system,” Koos said. “It hadn’t. There was a redundancy in the service’s files that got repaired. I checked with a tech at the service. The tech said they’d been hit with an attack that replicated everything inside their system. It lasted for about two days.”

“Let me guess,” Deshin said. “Two days around the point we’d hired Sonja.”

Koos nodded.

“I’m amazed the tech admitted it,” Deshin said.

“It wasn’t their glitch,” Koos said. “It happened because of some government program.”

“Government?” Deshin asked.

“The Earth Alliance required some changes in their software,” Koos said. “They made the changes and the glitch appeared. The service caught it, removed the Earth Alliance changes, and petitioned to return to their old way of doing things. Their petition was granted.”

Deshin couldn’t sit still with this. “Did Sonja know this glitch was going to happen?”

Koos shrugged. “I don’t know what she knew.”

Deshin let out a small breath. He felt a little off-balance. “I assume the birth certificate was stolen.”

“It was real. We checked it. I double-checked it today,” Koos said.

Deshin rubbed his forehead. “So, was the Sonja Mycenae I hired a clone or is the clone at the other job? Or does Sonja Mycenae have a biological twin?”

Koos looked down, which was all the answer Deshin needed. She was a clone.

“She left a lot of DNA this morning,” Koos said. “Tears, you name it. We checked it all.”

Deshin waited, even though he knew. He knew, and he was getting furious.

“She had no clone mark,” Koos said, “except in her DNA. The telomeres were marked.”

“Designer Criminal Clone,” Deshin said. A number of criminal organizations, most operating outside the Alliance, made and trained Designer Criminal Clones for just the kind of thing that had happened to Deshin.

The clone, who replicated someone the family or the target knew casually, would slide into a business or a household for months, maybe years, and steal information. Then the clone would leave with that information on a chip, bringing it to whoever had either hired that DCC or who had grown and trained the clone.

“I don’t think she was a DCC,” Koos said. “The markers don’t fit anyone we know.”

“A new player?” Deshin asked.

Koos shrugged. Then he took one step forward. “I’m going to check everything she touched, everything she did, sir. But this is my error, and it’s a serious one. It put your business and more importantly your family in danger. I know you’re going to fire me, but before you do, let me track down her creator. Let me redeem myself.”

Deshin didn’t move for a long moment. He had double-checked everything Koos had done. Everything. Because Sonja Mycenae—or whatever that clone was named—was going to work in his home, with his family.

“Do you think she stole my son’s DNA?” Deshin asked quietly.

“I don’t know. Clearly she didn’t have any with her today, but if she had handlers—”

“She wouldn’t have had trouble meeting them, because Gerda and I didn’t want a live-in nanny.” Deshin cursed silently. There was more than enough blame to go around, and if he were honest with himself, most of it belonged to him. He had been so concerned with raising his son, that he hadn’t taken the usual precautions in protecting his family.

“I would like to retrace all of her steps,” Koos said. “We might be able to find her handler.”

“Or not,” Deshin said. The handler had killed her the moment she had ceased to be useful. The handler felt he could waste a slow-grow clone, expensive and well trained, placed in the household of a man everyone believed to be a criminal mastermind.

Some mastermind. He had screwed up something this important.

He bit back anger, not sure how he would tell Gerda. If he would tell Gerda.

Something had been planned here, something he hadn’t figured out yet, and that planning was not complete. Sonja (or whatever her name was) had confirmed that with her reaction to her dismissal. She was terrified, and she probably knew she was going to die.

He sighed.

“I will quit now if you’d like me to,” Koos said.

Deshin wasn’t ready to fire Koos.

“Find out who she answered to. Better yet, find out who made her,” Deshin said. “Find her handler. We’ll figure out what happens to you after you complete that assignment.”

Koos nodded, but didn’t thank Deshin. Koos knew his employer well, knew that the thanks would only irritate him.

Deshin hated to lose Koos, but Koos was no longer one hundred percent trustworthy. He should have caught this. He should have tested Sonja’s DNA himself.

And that was why Deshin would put new security measures into place for his business and his family. Measures he designed.

He’d also begin the search for the new head of security.

It would take time.

And, he was afraid, it would take time to find out what exactly Sonja (or whatever her name was) had been trying to do inside his home.

That had just become his first priority.

Because no one was going to hurt his family.

No matter what he had to do to protect them.

Broduer had six different nanoprobes digging into various places on the dead woman’s skin, when a holographic computer screen appeared in front of him, a red warning light flashing.

He moaned slightly. He hated the lights. They got sent to his boss automatically, and often the damn lights reported something he had done wrong.

Well, not wrong, exactly, but not according to protocol.

The irony was, everything he had done in this autopsy so far had been exactly according to protocol. The body was on an isolated gurney, which was doing its own investigation; they were in one of the most protected autopsy chambers in the coroner’s office; and Broduer was using all the right equipment.

He even had on the right environmental suit for the type of poison he suspected killed the woman.

He cursed, silently and creatively, wishing he could express his frustration aloud, but knowing he couldn’t, because it would become part of the permanent record.

Instead, he glared at the light and wished it would go away. Not that he could make it go away with a look.

The light had a code he had never seen before. He put his gloved finger on the code, and it created a whole new screen.

This body is cloned. Please file the permissions code to autopsy this clone or cease work immediately.

“The hell . . . ?” he asked, then realized he had spoken aloud, and he silently cursed himself. Some stupid supervisor, reviewing the footage, would think he was too dumb to know a cloned body from a real body.

But he had made a mistake. He hadn’t taken DNA in the field. He had used facial recognition to identify this woman, and he had told DeRicci who the woman was based not on the DNA testing, but on the facial recognition.

Of course, if DeRicci hadn’t pressed him to give her an identification right away, he would have followed procedure.

Broduer let out a small sigh, then remembered what he had been doing.

There was still a way to cover his ass. He had been investigating whether or not this woman died of a hardening poison, and if that poison had gotten into the composting system. He would use that as his excuse, and then mention that he needed to continue to find cause of death for public health reasons.

Besides, someone should want to know who was killing clones and putting them into the composting. Not that it was illegal, exactly. After all, a dead clone was organic waste, just like rotted vegetables were.

He shuddered, not wanting to think about it. Maybe someone should tell the Armstrong City Council to ban the composting of any human flesh be it original or cloned.

He sighed. He didn’t want to be the one to do it. He’d slip the suggestion into his supervisor’s ear and hope that she would take him up on it.

He pinged his supervisor, telling her that it was important she contact him right away.

Then he bent over the body, determined to get as much work done as possible before someone shut this investigation down entirely.

DeRicci sat in her car in the part of Armstrong Police Department parking lot set aside for detectives. She hadn’t used the car all day, but it was the most private place she could think of to watch the footage Deshin had given her.

She didn’t want to take the footage inside the station until she’d had a chance to absorb it. She wasn’t sure how relevant it was, and she wasn’t sure what her colleagues would think of it.

Or, if she were being truthful with herself, she didn’t want Lake anywhere near this thing. He had some dubious connections, and he might just confiscate the footage—not for the case, but for reasons she didn’t really want to think about.

So she stayed in her car, quietly watching the footage for the second time, taking mental notes. Because something was off here. People rarely got that upset getting fired from a job, at least not in front of a man known to be as dangerous as Luc Deshin.

Besides, he had handled the whole thing well, made it sound like not a firing, more like something inevitable, something that Sonja Mycenae’s excellent job performance helped facilitate. The man was impressive, although DeRicci would never admit that to anyone else.

When DeRicci watched the footage the first time, she had been amazed at how calmly Deshin handled Mycenae’s meltdown. He managed to stay out of her way, and he managed to get his security into the office without making her get even worse.

Not that it would be easy for her to be worse. If DeRicci hadn’t known that Sonja Mycenae was murdered shortly after this footage was taken, DeRicci would have thought the woman unhinged. Instead, DeRicci knew that Mycenae was terrified.

She had known that losing her position would result in something awful, mostly likely her death.

But why? And what did someone have on a simple nanny with no record, something bad enough to get her to work in the home of a master criminal and his wife, bad enough to make her beg said criminal to keep the job?

DeRicci didn’t like this. She particularly did not like the way that Mycenae disappeared off the security footage as she stepped outside of the building. She stood beside the building and sobbed for a few minutes, then staggered away. No nearby buildings had exterior security cameras, and what DeRicci could get from the street cameras told her little.

She would have to get the information from inside police headquarters.

Um, Detective?

DeRicci sighed. The contact came from Broduer, on her links. He was asking for a visual, which she was not inclined to give him. But he probably had something to show her from the autopsy.

She activated the visual, in two dimensions, making his head float above the car’s control panel. Broduer wore an environmental suit, but he had removed the hood that had covered his face. It hung behind his skull like a half-visible alien appendage.

News for me, Ethan? she asked, hoping to move him along quickly. He could get much too chatty for her tastes.

Well, you’re not going to like any of it. He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up. It looked a little damp, as if he’d been sweating inside the suit.

DeRicci waited. She didn’t know how she could like or dislike any news about the woman’s death. It was a case. A sad and strange case, but a case nonetheless.

She died from a hardening poison, Broduer sent. I’ve narrowed it down to one of five related types. I’m running the test now to see which poison it actually is.

Poison. That took effort. Not in the actual application—many poisons were impossible to see, taste, or feel—but in the planning.

Someone wanted this woman dead, and then they wanted to keep her death secret.

That’s a weird way to kill someone, DeRicci sent.

Broduer looked concerned. Over the woman? He usually saw corpses as a curiosity, not as someone to empathize with. That was one of the few things DeRicci liked about Broduer. He could handle a job as a job.

It is a weird way to kill someone, Broduer sent. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if he expected someone to enter his office and yell at him. The thing is, one of these types of poisons could contaminate the food supply.

What? she sent. Or maybe she said that out loud. Or both. She felt cold. Contaminate the food supply? With a body?

She wasn’t quite sure of the connection, but she didn’t like it.

She hadn’t like the corpse in the compost part of this case from the very first.

Broduer took an obvious deep breath and his gaze met hers. She stabilized the floating image, so she wasn’t tracking him as he moved up, down, and across the control panel.

If, he sent, the poison leaked from the skin and got into the compost, then it would be layered onto the growing plants, which would take in the poison along with the nutrients. It wouldn’t be enough to kill anyone, unless someone’d been doing this for a long time.

DeRicci shook her head. Then I don’t get it. How is this anything other than a normal contamination?

If a wannabe killer wants to destroy the food supply, he’d do stuff like this for months, Broduer sent. People would start dying mysteriously. Generally, the old and the sick would go first, or people who are vulnerable in the parts of their bodies this stuff targets.

Wouldn’t the basic nanohealers take care of this problem? DeRicci was glad they weren’t doing this verbally. She didn’t want him to know how shaken she was.

If it were small or irregular, sure, he sent. But over time? No. They’re not made to handle huge contaminations. They’re not even designed to recognize these kinds of poisons. That’s why these poisons can kill so quickly.

DeRicci suppressed a shudder.

Great, she sent. How do we investigate food contamination like that?

That’s your problem, Detective, Broduer sent back, somewhat primly. I’d suggest starting with a search of records, seeing if there has been a rise in deaths in vulnerable populations.

Can’t you do that easier than I can? She sent, even though she knew he would back out. It couldn’t hurt to try to get him to help.

Not at the moment, he sent, I have a job to do.

She nearly cursed at him. But she managed to control herself. A job to do. The bastard. She had a job to do too, and it was just as important as his job.

This was why she hated working with Broduer. He was a jerk.

Well, she sent, let me know the type of poison first, before I get into that part of the investigation. You said there were five, and only one could contaminate the food supply. You think that’s the one we’re dealing with?

I don’t know yet, Detective, he sent. I’ll know when the testing is done.

Which will take how long?

He shrugged. Not long, I hope.

Great, she sent again. She wanted to push him, but pushing him sometimes made him even more passive/aggressive about getting work done.

Well, you were right, she sent. I didn’t like it. Now I’m off to investigate even more crap.

Um, not yet, Broduer sent.

Not yet? Who was this guy and why did he think he could control everything she did. She clenched her fists. Pretty soon, she would tell this idiot exactly what she thought of him, and that wouldn’t make for a good working relationship.

Um, yeah, he sent. There’s one other problem.

She waited, her fists so tight her fingernails were digging into the skin of her palm.

He looked down. I, um, misidentified your woman.

You what? He had been an idiot about helping her, and then he told her that he had done crappy work? This man was the absolutely worst coroner she’d ever worked with (which was saying something) and she was going to report him to the Chief of Detectives, maybe even to the Chief of Police, and get him removed from his position.

Yeah, Broduer sent. She’s, um, not Sonja Mycenae.

You said that, DeRicci sent. Already, her mind was racing. Misidentifying the corpse would cause all kinds of problems, not the least of which would be problems with Luc Deshin. Who the hell is she, then?

Broduer’s skin had turned grey. He clearly knew he had screwed up big time. She’s a clone of Sonja Mycenae.

A what? DeRicci rolled her eyes. That would have been good to know right from the start. Because it meant the investigation had gone in the wrong direction from the moment she had a name.

A clone. I’m sorry, Detective.

You should be, DeRicci sent. I shouldn’t even be on this investigation This isn’t a homicide.

Well, technically, it’s the same thing, Broduer sent.

Technically, it isn’t, DeRicci sent. She’d had dozens of clone cases before, and no matter how much she argued with the Chief of Detectives, Andrea Gumiela, it didn’t matter. The clones weren’t human under the law; their deaths fell into property crimes, generally vandalism or destruction of valuable property, depending on how much the clone was worth or how much it cost to create.

But, Detective, she’s a human being . . .

DeRicci sighed. She believed that, but what she believed didn’t matter. What mattered was what the law said and how her boss handled it. And she’d been through this with Gumiela. Gumiela would send DeRicci elsewhere.

Gumiela hadn’t seen the poor girl crying and begging for her life in front of Deshin. Gumiela hadn’t seen the near-perfect corpse, posed as if she were sleeping on a pile of compost.

Wait a minute, DeRicci sent. You told me about the poisoning first because . . . ?

Because, Detective, she might not be human, but she might have been a weapon or weaponized material. And that would fall into your jurisdiction, wouldn’t it?

Just when she thought that Broduer was the worst person she had ever worked with, he manipulated a clone case to keep it inside DeRicci’s Detective Division.

I don’t determine jurisdiction, she sent, mostly because this was on the record, and she didn’t want to show her personal feelings on something that might hit court and derail any potential prosecution.

But check, would you? Broduer sent. Because someone competent should handle this.

She wasn’t sure what “this” was: the dead clone or the contamination.

Just send me all the information, DeRicci sent, and let me know the minute you confirm which hardening poison killed this clone.

I’ll have it soon, Broduer sent and signed off.

DeRicci leaned back in the car seat, her cheeks warm. She had gone to Luc Deshin for nothing.

Or had she?

Which Sonja Mycenae had Deshin fired that morning? The real one? Or the clone?

DeRicci let herself out of the car. She had to talk to Gumiela. But before she did, she needed to find out where the real Mycenae was—and fast.

Deshin wasn’t certain how to tell Gerda that Sonja had been a plant, placed in their home for a reason he didn’t know yet.

He wandered his office, screens moving with him as he examined the tracker he had placed in Sonja. Then he winced. Every time he thought of the clone as Sonja, he felt like a fool. From now on, he would just call her the clone, because she clearly wasn’t Sonja.

So he examined the information from the tracker he had placed in the clone’s palm the moment she was hired. She hadn’t known he had inserted it. He had done it when he shook her hand, using technology that didn’t show up on any of the regular scans.

He wished he had been paranoid enough to install a video tracker, but he had thought—or rather, Gerda had thought—that their nanny needed her privacy in her off time.

Of course, that had been too kind. Deshin should have tracked the clone the way he tracked anyone he didn’t entirely trust.

Whenever the clone had been with Paavo, Deshin had always kept a screen open. He’d even set an alert in case the clone took Paavo out of the house without Gerda accompanying them. That alert had never activated, because Gerda had always been nearby when the clone was with Paavo. Deshin was grateful for that caution now. He had no idea what serious crisis they had dodged.

He was now searching through all the other information in the tracker—where the clone had gone during her days off, where she had spent her free time. He knew that Koos had been, in theory, making sure she had no unsavory contacts—or at least, Deshin had tasked Koos with doing that. Now, Deshin was double-checking his head of security, making certain that he had actually done his job.

The first thing Deshin had done was make certain that the clone hadn’t gone to the bad parts of town. According to the tracker, she hadn’t. Her apartment was exactly where she had claimed it was, and as far as he could tell, all she had done in her off hours was shop for her own groceries, eaten at a local restaurant, and gone home.

He had already sent a message to one of the investigative services he used. He wanted them to search the clone’s apartment. He wanted video and DNA and all kinds of trace. He wanted an investigation of her finances and a look at the things she kept.

He also didn’t want anyone from Deshin Enterprises associated with that search. He knew that his investigative service would keep him out of it. They had done so before.

He had hired them to search before he had known she was a clone. He had hired them while he was waiting for his attorney to look at the footage he had given that detective. With luck, they’d be done with the search by now.

But he had decided to check the tracker himself, looking for anomalies.

The only anomaly he had found was a weekly visit to a building in downtown Armstrong. On her day off, she went to that building at noon. She had also been at that building the evening Deshin had hired her. He scanned the address, looking for the businesses that rented or owned the place. The building had dozens of small offices, and none of the businesses were registered with the city.

He found that odd: usually the city insisted that every business register for tax purposes. So he traced the building’s ownership. He went through several layers of corporate dodges to find something odd: the building’s owner wasn’t a corporation at all.

It was the Earth Alliance.

He let out a breath, and then sank into a nearby chair.

Suddenly everything made sense.

The Earth Alliance had been after him for years, convinced he was breaking a million different Alliance laws and not only getting away with it, but making billions from the practice. Ironically, he had broken a lot of Alliance laws when he started out, and he still had a lot of sketchy associates, but he hadn’t broken a law in years and years.

Still, it would have been a coup for someone in Alliance government to bring down Luc Deshin and his criminal enterprises.

The Alliance had found it impossible to plant listening devices and trackers in Deshin’s empire. The Alliance was always behind Deshin Enterprises when it came to technology. And Deshin himself was innately cautious—

Or he had thought he was, until this incident with the clone.

They had slipped her into his home. They might have had a hundred purposes in doing so—as a spy on his family, to steal familial DNA, to set up tracking equipment in a completely different way than it had been done before.

And for an entire month, they had been successful.

He was furious at himself, but he knew he couldn’t let that emotion dominate his thoughts. He had to take action, and he had to do so now.

He used his links to summon Ishiyo Cumija to his office. He’d been watching her for some time. She hadn’t been Koos’s second in command in the security department. She had set up her own fiefdom, and once she had mentioned to Deshin that she worried no one was taking security seriously enough.

At the time, he had thought she was making a play for Koos’s job. Deshin still thought she was making a play for Koos’s job on that day, but she might have been doing so with good reason.

Now, she would get a chance to prove herself.

While Deshin waited for her, he checked the clone’s DNA and found that strange clone mark embedded into her system. He had never seen anything like it. The Designer Criminal Clones he’d run into had always had a product stamp embedded into their DNA. This wasn’t a standard DCC product stamp. It looked like something else.

He copied it, then opened Cumija’s file, accessed the DNA samples she had to give every week, and searched to see if there was any kind of mark. His system always searched for the DCC product stamps, but rarely searched for other examples of cloning, including shortened telomeres.

Shortened telomeres could happen naturally. In the past, he’d found that searching for them gave him so many false positives—staff members who were older than they appeared, employees who had had serious injuries—that he decided to stop searching for anything but the product marks.

He wondered now if that had been a mistake.

His search of Cumija’s DNA found no DCC product mark, and nothing matching the mark his system had found in the clone’s DNA.

As the search ended, Cumija entered the office.

She was stunningly beautiful, with a cap of straight hair so black it almost looked blue, and dancing black eyes. Until he met Cumija, he would never have thought that someone so very attractive would function well in a security position, but she had turned out to be one of his best bodyguards.

She dressed like a woman sexually involved with a very rich man. Her clothing always revealed her taut nut-brown skin and her fantastic legs. Sometimes she looked nearly naked in the clothing she had chosen. Men and women watched her wherever she went, and dismissed her as someone decorative, someone being used.

On this day, she wore a white dress that crossed her breasts with an X, revealing her sides, and expanding to cover her hips and buttocks. Her matching white shoes looked as deadly as the shoes that she had used to kill a man trying to get to Deshin one afternoon.

“That nanny we hired turns out to have been a clone,” Deshin said without greeting.

“Yes, I heard.” Cumija’s voice was low and sexy in keeping with her appearance.

“Has Koos made an announcement?” Deshin asked. Because he would have recommended against it.

“No,” she said curtly, and Deshin almost smiled. She monitored everything Koos did. It was a great trait in a security officer, a terrible trait in a subordinate—at least from the perspective of someone in Koos’s position.

Deshin said, “I need you to check the other employees—you, and you only. I don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing. I have the marker that was in the cloned Sonja Mycenae’s DNA. I want you to see if there’s a match. I also want a secondary check for Designer Criminal Clone marks, and then I want you to do a slow search of anyone with abnormal telomeres.”

Cumija didn’t complain, even though he was giving her a lot of work. “You want me to check everyone,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Start with people who have access to me, and then move outward. Do it quickly and quietly.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Report the results directly to me,” he said.

She nodded, thanked him, and left the office.

He stood there for a moment, feeling a little shaken. If the Alliance was trying to infiltrate his organization, then he wouldn’t be surprised if there were other clones stationed in various areas, clones he had missed.

After Cumija checked, he would have Koos do the same check, and see if he came up with the same result.

Deshin went back to his investigation of the building the clone had visited regularly. He had no firm evidence of Earth Alliance involvement. Just suspicions, at least at the moment. And regular citizens of the Alliance would be stunned to think their precious Alliance would infiltrate businesses using slow-grow clones, and then disposing of them when they lost their usefulness. But Deshin knew the Alliance had done all kinds of extra-legal things to protect itself over the centuries. And somewhere, Deshin had been flagged as a threat to the Alliance.

He had known that for some time. He had always expected some kind of infiltration of his business. But the infiltration of his home was personal.

And it needed to stop.

Ethan Broduer looked at the information pouring across his screen, and let out a sigh of relief. The hardening poison wasn’t one of the kinds that could leach through the skin. He still had to test the compost to see if the poison had contaminated it, but he doubted that.

The liver mortis told him she had died elsewhere, and then been placed in the crate. And given how fast this hardening poison acted, the blood wouldn’t have been able to pool for more than a few minutes anyway.

He stood and walked back into the autopsy room. Now that he knew the woman had died of something that wouldn’t hurt him if he came in contact with her skin or breathed the air around her, he didn’t need the environmental suit.

Hers was the only body in this autopsy room. He had placed her on her back before sending the nanobots into her system. They were still working, finding out even more about her.

He knew now she was a slow-grow clone, which meant she had lived some twenty years, had hopes, dreams, and desires. As a forensic pathologist who had examined hundreds of human corpses—cloned and non-cloned—the only difference he had ever seen were the telomeres and the clone marks.

Slow-grow clones were human beings in everything but the law.

He could make the claim that fast-grow clones were too, that they had the mind of a child inside an adult body, but he tried not to think about that one. Because it meant all those horrors visited on fast-grow clones meant those horrors were visited on a human being that hadn’t seen more than a few years of life, an innocent in all possible ways.

He blinked hard, trying not to think about any of it. Then he stopped beside her table. Lights moved along the back of it, different beams examining her, trying to glean her medical history and every single story her biology could tell. Now that it was clear the poison which killed her wouldn’t contaminate the dome, no one would investigate this case. No one would care.

No one legally had to care.

He sighed, then shook his head, wondering if he could make one final push to solve her murder. Detective DeRicci had asked for a list of bodies found in the crates. Broduer would make her that list after all, but before he did, he would see if those bodies were “human” or clones.

If they were clones, then there was a sabotage problem, some kind of property crime—hell, it wasn’t his job to come up with the charge, not when he gave her the thing to investigate.

But maybe he could find something to investigate, something that would have the side benefit of giving some justice to this poor woman, lying alone and unwanted on his autopsy table.

“I’m doing what I can,” he whispered, and then wished he hadn’t spoken aloud.

His desire to help her would be in the official record. Then he corrected himself: There would be no official record, since she wasn’t officially a murder victim.

He was so sorry about that. He’d still document everything he could. Maybe in the future, the laws would change. Maybe in the future, her death would matter as more than a statistic.

Maybe, in the future, she’d be recognized as a person, instead of something to be thrown away, like leftover food.

The Chief of Detectives, Andrea Gumiela, had an office one floor above DeRicci’s, but it was light years from DeRicci’s. DeRicci’s office was in the center of a large room, sectioned off with dark movable walls. She could protect her area by putting a bubble around it for a short period of time, particularly if she were conducting an interview that she felt wouldn’t work in one of the interview rooms, but there was no real privacy and no sense of belonging.

DeRicci hated working out in the center, and hoped one day she would eventually get an office of her own. The tiny aspirations of the upwardly mobile, her ex-husband would have said. She couldn’t entirely disagree. He had the unfortunate habit of being right.

And as she looked at Gumiela’s office, which took up much of the upper floor, DeRicci knew she would never achieve privacy like this. She wasn’t political enough. Some days she felt like she was one infraction away from being terminated.

Most days, she didn’t entirely care.

Andrea Gumiela, on the other hand, was the most political person DeRicci had ever met. Her office was designed so that it wouldn’t offend anyone. It didn’t have artwork on the walls, nor did it have floating imagery. The décor shifted colors when someone from outside the department entered.

When someone was as unimportant as DeRicci, the walls were a neutral beige, and the desk a dark woodlike color. The couch and chairs at the far end of the room matched the desk.

But DeRicci had been here when the Governor-General arrived shortly after her election, and the entire room shifted to vibrant colors—the purples and whites associated with the Governor-General herself.

The shift, which happened as the Governor-General was announced, had disturbed DeRicci, but Gumiela managed it as a matter of course. She was going to get promoted some day, and she clearly hoped the Governor-General would do it.

“Make it fast,” Gumiela said as DeRicci entered. “I have meetings all afternoon.”

Gumiela was tall and heavyset, but her black suit made her look thinner than she was—probably with some kind of tech that DeRicci didn’t want to think about. Gumiela’s red hair was piled on top of her head, making her long face seem even longer.

“I wanted to talk with you in person about that woman we found in the Ansel Management crate,” DeRicci said.

Gumiela, for all her annoying traits, did keep up on the investigations.

“I thought Rayvon Lake was in charge of that case,” Gumiela said.

DeRicci shrugged. “He’s not in charge of anything, sir. Honestly, when it comes to cases like this, I don’t even like to consult him.”

Gumiela studied her. “He’s your partner, Detective.”

“Maybe,” DeRicci said, “but he doesn’t investigate crimes. He takes advantage of them.”

“That’s quite a charge,” Gumiela said.

“I can back it with evidence,” DeRicci said.

“Do so,” Gumiela said, to DeRicci’s surprise. DeRicci frowned. Had Gumiela paired them so that DeRicci would bring actual evidence against Lake to the Chief’s office? It made an odd kind of sense. No one could control Lake, and no one could control DeRicci, but for different reasons. Lake had his own tiny fiefdom, and DeRicci was just plain contrary.

“All right,” DeRicci said, feeling a little off balance. She hadn’t expected anything positive from Gumiela.

And then Gumiela reverted to type. “I’m in a hurry, remember?”

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” DeRicci said. This woman always set her teeth on edge. “The woman in the crate, she was killed with a hardening poison. For a while, Broduer thought she might have been put there to contaminate the food supply, but it was the wrong kind of poison. We’re okay on that.”

Gumiela raised her eyebrows slightly. Apparently she hadn’t heard about the possible contamination. DeRicci had been worried that she had.

“Good . . . ” Gumiela said in a tone that implied . . . and . . . ?

“But, I got a list from him, and sir, someone is dumping bodies in those crates all over the city, and has been for at least a year, maybe more.”

“No one saw this pattern?” Gumiela asked.

“The coroner’s office noticed it,” DeRicci said, making sure she kept her voice calm. “Ansel Management noticed it, but the owner, Najib Ansel, tells me that over the decades his family has owned the business, they’ve seen all kinds of things dumped in the crates.”

“Bodies, though, bodies should have caught our attention,” Gumiela said. Clearly, DeRicci had Gumiela’s attention now.

“No,” DeRicci said. “The coroner got called in, but no one called us.”

“Well, I’ll have to change this,” Gumiela said. “I’ll—”

“Wait, sir,” DeRicci said. “They didn’t call us for the correct legal reasons.”

Gumiela turned her head slightly, as if she couldn’t believe she had heard DeRicci right. “What reasons could those possibly be?”

“The dead are all clones, sir.” DeRicci made sure none of her anger showed up in the tone of her voice.

“Clones? Including this one?”

“Yes, sir,” DeRicci said. “And they were all apparently slow-grow. If they had been considered human under the law, we would have said they were murdered.”

Gumiela let out an exasperated breath. “This woman, this poisoned woman, she’s a clone?”

“Yes, sir.” DeRicci knew she only had a moment here to convince Gumiela to let her continue on this case. “But I’d like to continue my investigation, sir, because—”

“We’ll send it down to property crimes,” Gumiela said.

“Sir,” DeRicci said. “This pattern suggests a practicing serial killer. At some point, he’ll find legal humans, and then he’ll be experienced—”

“What is Ansel Management doing to protect its crates?” Gumiela said.

DeRicci felt a small surge of hope. Was Gumiela actually considering this? “They have sensors that locate things by weight and size. They believe they’ve reported all the bodies that have come through their system in the last several years.”

“They believe?” Gumiela asked.

“There’s no way to know without checking every crate,” DeRicci said.

“Well, this is a health and safety matter. I’ll contact the Armstrong City Inspectors and have them investigate all of the recycling/compost plants.”

DeRicci tried not to sigh. This wasn’t going her way after all. “I think that’s a good idea, sir, but—”

“Tell me, Detective,” Gumiela said. “Did you have any leads at all on this potential serial before you found out that the bodies belonged to clones?”

DeRicci felt her emotions shift again. She wasn’t sure why she was so emotionally involved here. Maybe because she knew no one would investigate, which meant no one would stop this killer, if she couldn’t convince Gumiela to keep the investigation in the department.

“She worked as a nanny for Luc Deshin,” DeRicci said. “He fired her this morning.”

“I thought this was that case,” Gumiela said. “His people probably killed her.”

“I considered that,” DeRicci said. “But he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of firing her if he was just going to kill her.”

Gumiela harrumphed. Then she walked around the furniture, trailing her hand over the back of the couch. She was actually considering DeRicci’s proposal—and she knew DeRicci had a point.

“Do you know who the original was?” Gumiela asked.

DeRicci’s heart sank. She hadn’t wanted Gumiela to ask this question. DeRicci hadn’t recognized the name, but Lake had. He had left a message on DeRicci’s desk—a message that rose up when she touched the desk’s surface (the bastard)—which said, Why do we care that the daughter of an off-Moon crime lord got murdered?

DeRicci then looked up the Mycenae family. They were a crime family and had been for generations, but Sonja herself didn’t seem to be part of the criminal side. She had attended the best schools on Earth, and actually had a nanny certificate. She had renounced her family both visibly and legally, and was trying to live her own life.

“The original’s name is Sonja Mycenae,” DeRicci said.

“The Mycenae crime family.” Gumiela let out a sigh. “There’s a pattern here, and one we don’t need to be involved in. Obviously there’s some kind of winnowing going on in the Earth-Moon crime families. I’ll notify the Alliance to watch for something bigger, but I don’t think you need to investigate this.”

“Sir, I know Luc Deshin thought she was Sonja Mycenae,” DeRicci said. “He didn’t know she was a clone. That means this isn’t a crime family war—”

“We don’t know what it is, Detective,” Gumiela said. “And despite your obvious interest in the case, I’m moving you off it. I have better things for you to do. I’ll send this and the other cases down to Property, and let them handle the investigation.”

“Sir, please—”

“Detective, you have plenty to do. I want that report on Rayvon Lake by morning.” Gumiela nodded at her.

DeRicci’s breath caught. Gumiela was letting her know that if she dropped this case, she might get a new partner. And maybe, she would guarantee that Lake stopped polluting the department.

There was nothing DeRicci could do. This battle was lost.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, not quite able to keep the disappointment from her voice.

Gumiela had already returned to her desk.

DeRicci headed for the door. As it opened, Gumiela said, “Detective, one last thing.”

DeRicci closed the door and faced Gumiela, expecting some kind of reprimand or so type of admonition.

“Have you done the clone notification?” Gumiela asked.

Earth Alliance law required any official organization that learned of a clone to notify the original, if at all possible.

“Not yet, sir,” DeRicci said. She had held off, hoping that she would keep the case. If she had, she could have gone to the Mycenae family, and maybe learned something that had relevance to the case.

“Don’t,” Gumiela said. “I’ll take care of that too.”

“I don’t mind, sir,” DeRicci said.

“The Mycenae require a delicate touch,” Gumiela said. “It’s better if the notification goes through the most official of channels.”

DeRicci nodded. She couldn’t quite bring herself to thank Gumiela. Or even to say anything else. So she let herself out of the office.

And stopped in the hallway.

For a moment, she considered going back in and arguing with Gumiela. Because Gumiela wasn’t going to notify anyone about the clone. Gumiela probably believed crime families should fight amongst themselves, so the police didn’t have to deal with them.

DeRicci paused for a half second.

If she went back in, she would probably lose her job. Because she would tell Gumiela exactly what she thought of the clone laws, and the way that Property would screw up the investigation, and the fact that people were actually dying and being placed in crates.

But, if DeRicci lost her job, she wouldn’t be able to investigate anything.

The next time, she got a clone case, she’d sit on that information for as long as she could, finish the investigation, and maybe make an arrest. Sure, it might not hold up, but she could get one of the other divisions to search the perpetrator’s home and business, maybe catch him with something else.

This time, she had screwed up. She’d followed the rules too closely. She shouldn’t have gone to Gumiela so soon.

DeRicci would know better next time.

And she’d play dumb when Gumiela challenged her over it.

Better to lose a job after solving a case, instead of in the middle of a failed one.

DeRicci sighed. She didn’t feel better, but at least she had a plan.

Even if it was a plan she didn’t like at all.

The place that the clone frequented near the Port was a one-person office, run by a man named Cade Faulke. Ostensibly, Faulke ran an employment consulting office, one that helped people find jobs or training for jobs. But it didn’t take a lot of digging to discover that was a cover for a position with Earth Alliance Security.

From what little Deshin could find, it seemed that Faulke worked alone, with an android guard—the kind that usually monitored prisons. Clearly, no one expected Faulke to be investigated: the android alone would have been a tip-off to anyone who looked deeper than the thin cover that Faulke had over his name.

Deshin wondered how many other Earth Alliance operatives worked like that inside of Armstrong. He supposed there were quite a few, monitoring various Earth Alliance projects. Projects like, apparently, his family.

Deshin let out a sigh. He wandered around his office, feeling like it had become a cage. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Sometimes he hated the way he had restrained himself to build his business and his family. Sometimes he just wanted to go after someone on his own, squeeze the life out of that person, and then leave the corpse, the way someone had left that clone.

Spying on Deshin’s family. Gerda and five-month-old Paavo had done nothing except get involved with him.

And, he would wager, that Sonja Mycenae’s family would say the same thing about her.

He stopped. He hadn’t spoken to the Mycenae family in a long time, but he owed them for an ancient debt.

He sent an encoded message through his links to Aurla Mycenae, the head of the Mycenae and Sonja’s mother, asking for a quick audience.

Then Deshin got a contact from Cumija: Five low-level employees have the marker. None of them have access to your family or to anything important inside Deshin Enterprises. How do you want me to proceed?

Send me a list, he sent back.

At that moment, his links chirruped, announcing a massive holomessage so encoded that it nearly overloaded his system. He accepted the message, only to find out it was live.

Aurla Mycenae appeared, full-sized, in the center of his floor. She wore a flowing black gown that accented her dark eyebrows and thick black hair. She had faint lines around her black eyes. Otherwise she looked no older than she had the last time he saw her, at least a decade ago.

“Luc,” she said in a throaty voice that hadn’t suited her as a young woman, but suited her now. “I get this sense this isn’t pleasure.”

“No,” he said. “I thought I should warn you. I encountered a slow-grow clone of your daughter Sonja.”

He decided not to mention that he had hired that clone or that she had been murdered.

Mycenae exhaled audibly. “Damn Earth Alliance. Did they try to embed her in your organization?”

“They succeeded for a time,” he said.

“And then?”

So much for keeping the information back. “She turned up dead this morning.”

“Typical,” Mycenae said. “They’ve got some kind of operation going, and they’ve been using clones of my family. You’re not the first to tell me this.”

“All slow-grow?” Deshin asked.

“Yes,” Mycenae said. “We’ve been letting everyone know that anyone applying for work from our family isn’t really from our family. I never thought of contacting you because I thought you went legit.”

“I have,” Deshin lied. He had gone legit on most things. He definitely no longer had his fingers in the kinds of deals that the Mycenae family was famous for.

“Amazing they tried to embed with you, then,” Mycenae said.

“She was nanny to my infant son,” he said, and he couldn’t quite keep the fury from his voice.

“Oh.” Mycenae sighed. “They want to use your family like they’re using mine. We’re setting something up, Luc. We’ve got the Alliance division doing this crap tracked, and we’re going to shut it down. You want to join us?”

Take on an actual Earth Alliance Division? As a young man, he would have considered it. As a man with a family and a half-legitimate business, he didn’t dare take the risk.

“I trust you to handle it, Aurla,” he said.

“They have your family’s DNA now,” she said, clearly as a way of enticement.

“It’s of no use to them in the short term,” he said, “and by the time we reach the long term, you’ll have taken care of everything.”

“It’s not like you to trust anyone, Luc.”

And, back when she had known him well, that had been true. But now, he had to balance security for himself and his business associates with security for his family.

“I’m not trusting you per se, Aurla,” he said. “I just know how you operate.”

She grinned at him. “I’ll let you know when we’re done.”

“No need,” he said. “Good luck.”

And then he signed off. The last thing he wanted was to be associated in any way with whatever operation Aurla ran. She was right: it wasn’t like him to trust anyone. And while he trusted her to destroy the division that was hurting her family, he didn’t trust her to keep him out of it. Too much contact with Aurla Mycenae, and Deshin might find himself arrested as the perpetrator of whatever she was planning. Mycenae was notorious for betraying colleagues when her back was against the wall.

The list came through his links from Cumija. She was right: the employees were low-level. He didn’t recognize any of the names and had to look them up. None of them had even met Deshin.

Getting the clone of Sonja embedded into his family was some kind of coup.

He wouldn’t fire anyone yet. He wanted to see if Koos came up with the same list. If he did, then Deshin would move forward.

But these employees were tagged, just like Sonja’s clone had been. He decided to see if they had been visiting Faulke as well.

And if they had, Faulke would regret ever crossing paths with Deshin Enterprises.

Detective DeRicci left Andrea Gumiela’s office. Gumiela felt herself relax. DeRicci was trouble. She hated rules and she had a sense of righteousness that often made it difficult for her to do her job well. There wasn’t a lot of righteousness in the law, particularly when Earth Alliance law trumped Armstrong law.

Gumiela had to balance both.

She resisted the urge to run a hand through her hair. It had taken a lot of work to pile it just so on top of her head, and she didn’t like wasting time on her appearance, as important as it was to her job. Of course, the days when it was important were either days when a major disaster hit Armstrong or when someone in her department screwed up.

She certainly hoped this clone case wouldn’t become a screw-up.

She put a hand over her stomach, feeling slightly ill. She had felt ill from the moment DeRicci mentioned Mycenae and Deshin. At that moment, Gumiela knew who had made the clone and who was handling it.

She also knew who was killing the clones—or at least, authorizing the deaths.

DeRicci was right. Those deaths presaged a serial killer (or, in Gumiela’s unofficial opinion, already proved one existed). Or worse, the deaths suggested a policy of targeted killings that Gumiela couldn’t countenance in her city.

Technically, Gumiela should contact Cade Faulke directly. He had contacted her directly more than once to report a possible upcoming crime. She had used him as an informant, which meant she had used his clones as informants as well.

And those clones were ending up dead.

She choked back bile. Some people, like DeRicci, would say that Gumiela had hands as dirty as Faulke’s. But she hadn’t known he was killing the clones when they ceased being useful or when they crossed some line. She also hadn’t known that he had been poisoning them using such a painful method. And he hadn’t even thought about the possible contamination of the food supply.

Gumiela swallowed hard again, hoping her stomach would settle.

Technically, she should contact him and tell him to cease that behavior.

But Gumiela had been in her job a long time. She knew that telling someone like Faulke to quit was like telling an addict to stop drinking. It wouldn’t happen, and it couldn’t be done.

She couldn’t arrest him either. Even if she caught him in the act, all he was doing was damaging property. And that might get him a fine or two or maybe a year or so in jail, if the clone’s owners complained. But if DeRicci was right, the clone’s owners were the Earth Alliance itself. And Faulke worked for the Alliance, so technically, he was probably the owner, and property owners could do whatever they wanted with their belongings.

Except toss them away in a manner that threatened the public health.

Gumiela sat in one of the chairs and leaned her head back, closing her eyes, forcing herself to think. She had to do something, and despite what she had said to DeRicci, following procedure was out of the question. She needed to get Faulke out of Armstrong, only she didn’t have the authority to do so.

But she knew who did.

She sat up. Long ago, she’d met Faulke’s handler, Ike Jarvis. She could contact him.

Maybe he would work with her.

It was worth a try.

Otto Koos led his team to the building housing Cade Faulke’s fake business. The building was made of some kind of polymer that changed appearance daily. This day’s appearance made it seem like old-fashioned red brick Koos hadn’t seen since his childhood on Earth.

Five Ansel Management crates stood in their protected unit in the alley behind the building. They had a cursory lock with a security code that anyone in the building probably had.

It was as much of a confession as he needed.

But the boss would need more. Luc Deshin had given strict orders for this mission—no killing.

Koos knew he was on probation now—maybe forever. He had missed the Mycenae clone, and, after he had done a quick scan of the employees, discovered he had missed at least five others. At least they hadn’t been anywhere near the Deshin family.

The Mycenae clone had. Who knew what kind of material the Alliance had gathered?

Faulke knew. Eventually, Koos would know too. It just might take some time.

He had brought ten people with him to capture Faulke. The office had an android guard, though, the durable kind used in prisons. Koos either had to disable it or get it out of the building.

He’d failed the one time he’d tried to disable those things in the past. He was opting for getting it out of the building.

Ready? he sent to two of his team members.

Yes, they sent back at the same time.

Go! he sent.

They were nowhere near him, but he knew what they were going to do. They were going to start a fight in front of the building that would get progressively more violent. And then they’d start shooting up the area with laser pistols.

Other members of his team would prevent any locals from stopping the fight, and the fight would continue until the guard came down. Then Koos would sneak in the back way, along with three other members of his team.

They were waiting now. They had already checked the back door—unlocked during daylight hours. They were talking as if they had some kind of business with each other.

At least they weren’t shifting from foot to foot like he wanted to do.

Instead, all he could do was stare at that stamp for Ansel Management.

It hadn’t been much work to pick up the Mycenae clone and stuff her into one of the crates.

If Deshin hadn’t given the no-kill order, then Koos would have stuffed Faulke into one of the crates, dying, but alive, so that he knew what he had done.

Koos would have preferred that to Deshin’s plan.

But Koos wasn’t in charge. And he had to work his way back into Deshin’s good graces.

And he would do that.

Starting now.

Gumiela had forgotten that Ike Jarvis was an officious prick. He ran intelligence operatives who worked inside the Alliance. Generally, those operatives didn’t operate in human-run areas. In fact, they shouldn’t operate in human-run areas at all.

Earth Alliance Intelligence was supposed to do the bulk of its work outside the Alliance.

Gumiela had contacted him on a special link the Earth Alliance had set up for the Armstrong Police Department, to be used only in cases of Earth Alliance troubles or serious Alliance issues.

She figured this counted.

Jarvis appeared in the center of the room, his three-dimensional image fritzing in and out either because of a bad connection or because of the levels of encoding this conversation was going through.

He looked better when he appeared and disappeared. She preferred it when he was slightly out of focus.

“This had better be good, Andy,” Jarvis said, and Gumiela felt her shoulders stiffen. No one called her Andy, not even her best friends. Only Jarvis had come up with that nickname, and somehow he seemed to believe it made them closer.

“I need you to pull Cade Faulke,” she said.

“I don’t pull anyone on your say so.” Jarvis fritzed again. His image came back just a little smaller, just a little tighter. So the problem was on his end.

If she were in a better mood, she would smile. Jarvis was short enough without doctoring the image. He had once tried to compensate for his height by buying enhancements that deepened his voice. All they had done was ruin it, leaving him sounding like he had poured salt down his throat.

“You pull him or I arrest him for attempted mass murder,” she said, a little surprised at herself.

Jarvis moved and fritzed again. Apparently he had taken a step backwards or something, startled by her vehemence.

“What the hell did he do?” Jarvis asked, not playing games any longer.

“You have Faulke running slow-grow clones in criminal organizations, right?” she asked.

“Andy,” he said, returning to that condescending tone he had used earlier, “I can’t tell you what I’m doing.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “I thought we had a courteous relationship, based on mutual interest. I was wrong. Sorry to bother you, Ike—”

“Wait,” he said. “What did he do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You get to send Earth Alliance lawyers here to talk about the top-secret crap to judges who might’ve died because of your guy’s carelessness.”

And then she signed off.

She couldn’t do anything she had just threatened Jarvis with. The food thing hadn’t risen to the level where she could charge Faulke, and that was if she could prove that he had put the bodies into the crates himself. He had an android guard, which the Chief of Police had had to approve—those things weren’t supposed to operate inside the city—and that guard had probably done all the dirty work. They would just claim malfunction, and Faulke would be off the hook.

Jarvis fritzed back in, fainter now. The image had one meter sideways, which meant he was superimposed over one of her office chairs. The chair cut through him at his knees and waist. Obviously, he had no idea where his image had appeared, and she wasn’t about to tell him or move the image.

“Okay, okay,” Jarvis said. “I’ve managed to make this link as secure as I possibly can, given my location. Guarantee that your side is secure.”

Gumiela shrugged. “I’m alone in my office, in the Armstrong Police Department. Good enough for you?”

She didn’t tell him that she was recording this whole thing. She was tired of being used by this asshole.

“I guess it’ll have to be. Yes, Faulke is running the clones that we have embedded with major criminal organizations on the Moon.”

“If the clones malfunction—” She chose that word carefully “—what’s he supposed to do?”

“Depends on how specific the clone is to the job, and how important it is to the operation,” he said. “Generally, Faulke’s supposed to ship the clone back. That’s why Armstrong PD approved android guards for his office.”

“There aren’t guards,” she said. “There’s only one.”

Jarvis’s image came in a bit stronger. “What?”

“Just one,” she said, “and that’s not all. I don’t think your friend Faulke has sent any clones back.”

“I can check,” Jarvis said.

“I don’t care what you do for your records. According to ours—” and there she was lying again “—he’s been killing the clones that don’t work out and putting them in composting crates. Those crates go to the Growing Pits, which grow fresh food for the city.”

“He what?” Jarvis asked.

“And to make matters worse, he’s using a hardening poison to kill them, a poison our coroner fears might leach into our food supply. We’re checking on that now. Although it doesn’t matter. The intent is what matters, and clearly your man Faulke has lost his mind.”

Jarvis cursed. “You’re not making this up.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I’m not making this up,” she said. “I want him and his little android friend out of here within the hour, or I’m arresting him, and I’m putting him on trial. Public trial.”

“Do you realize how many operations you’ll ruin?”

“No,” she said, “and I don’t care. Get him out of my city. It’s only a matter of time before your crazy little operative starts killing legal humans, not just cloned ones. And I don’t want him doing it here.”

Jarvis cursed again. “Can I get your help—”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want anyone at the police department involved with your little operation. And if you go to the chief, I’ll tell her that you have thwarted my attempts to arrest a man who threatens the entire dome. Because, honestly, Ike baby, this is a courtesy contact. I don’t have to do you any favors at all, especially considering what kind of person, if I can use that word, you installed in my city. Have you got that?”

“Yes, Andrea, I do,” he said, looking serious.

Andrea. So he had heard her all those times. And he had ignored her, the bastard. She made note of that too.

“One hour,” she said, and signed off.

Then she wiped her hands on her skirt. They were shaking just a little. Screw him, the weaselly little bastard. She’d send someone to that office now, to escort Jarvis’s horrid operative out of Armstrong.

She wanted to make sure that asshole left quickly, and didn’t double back.

She wanted this problem out of her city, off her Moon, and as far from her notice as possible. And that, she knew, was the best she could do without upsetting the department’s special relationship with the Alliance.

She hoped her best would be good enough.

Up the back stairs, into the narrow hallway that smelled faintly of dry plastic, Koos led the raid, his best team members behind him. They fanned out in the narrow hallway, the two women first, signaling that the hallway was clear. Koos and Hala, the only other man on this part of the team skirted past them, and through the open door of Faulke’s office.

It was much smaller than Koos expected. Faulke was only three meters from him. Faulke was scrawny, narrow-shouldered, the kind of man easily ignored on the street.

He reached behind his back—probably for a weapon—as Koos and Hala held their laser rifles on him.

“Don’t even try,” Koos said. “I have no compunction shooting you.”

Faulke’s eyes glazed for a half second—probably letting his android guard know he was in trouble—then an expression of panic flitted across his face before he managed to control it.

The other members of Koos’s team had already disabled the guard.

“Who are you?” Faulke asked.

Koos ignored him, and spoke to his team. “I want him bound. And make sure you disable his links.”

One of the women slipped in around Koos, and put light cuffs around Faulke’s wrists and pasted a small rectangle of Silent-Seal over his mouth.

You can’t get away with this, Faulke sent on public links. You have no idea who I am—

And then his links shut off.

Koos grinned. “You’re Cade Faulke. You work for Earth Alliance Intelligence. You’ve been running clones that you embed into businesses. Am I missing anything?”

Faulke’s eyes didn’t change, but he swallowed hard.

“Let’s get him out of here,” Koos said.

They encircled him, in case the other tenants on the floor decided to see what all the fuss was about. But no one opened any doors. The neighborhood was too dicey for that. If anyone had an ounce of civic feeling, they would have gone out front to stop the fight that Koos had staged below.

And no one had.

He took Faulke’s arm, surprised at how flabby it was. Hardly any muscles at all.

No wonder the asshole had used poison. He wasn’t strong enough to subdue any living creature on his own.

“You’re going to love what we have planned for you,” Koos said as he dragged Faulke down the stairs. “By the end of it all, you and I will be old friends.”

This time Faulke gave him a startled look.

Koos grinned at him, and led him to the waiting car that would take them to the Port. It would be a long time before anyone heard from Cade Faulke again.

If they ever did.

DeRicci hated days like today. She had lost a case because of stupid laws that had no bearing on what really happened. A woman had been murdered, and DeRicci couldn’t solve the case. It would go to Property, where it would get stuck in a pile of cases that no one cared about, because no one would be able to put a value on this particular clone. No owner would come forward. No one would care.

And if DeRicci hadn’t seen this sort of thing a dozen times, she would have tried to solve it herself in her off time. She might still hound Property, just to make sure the case didn’t get buried. Maybe she’d even use Broduer’s lies. She might tell Property that whoever planted the clone had tried to poison the city. That might get some dumb Property detective off his butt.

She, on the other hand, was already working on the one good thing to come out of this long day. She was compiling all the documents on every single thing that Rayvon Lake had screwed up in their short tenure as partners.

Even she hadn’t realized how much it was.

She would have a long list for Gumiela by the end of the day, and this time, Gumiela would pay attention.

Or DeRicci would threaten to take the clone case to the media. DeRicci had been appalled that human waste could get into the recycling system; she would wager that the population of Armstrong would too.

One threat like that, and Gumiela would have to fire Lake.

It wasn’t justice. It wasn’t anything resembling justice.

But after a few years in this job, DeRicci had learned only one thing:

Justice didn’t exist in the Earth Alliance.

Not for humans, not for clones, not for anyone.

And somehow, she had to live with it.

She just hadn’t quite figured out how.

Deshin arrived home, exhausted and more than a little unsettled. The house smelled of baby powder and coffee. He hadn’t really checked to see how the rest of Gerda’s day alone with Paavo had gone. He felt guilty about that.

He went through the modest living room to the baby’s room. He and Gerda didn’t flash their wealth around Armstrong, preferring to live quietly. But he had so much security in the home that he was still startled the clone had broken through it.

Gerda was sitting in a rocking chair near the window, Paavo in her arms. She put a finger to her lips, but it did no good.

His five-month-old son twisted, and looked at Deshin with such aware eyes that it humbled him. Deshin knew that this baby was twenty times smarter than he would ever be. It worried him, and it pleased him as well.

Paavo smiled and extended his pudgy arms. Deshin picked him up. The boy was heavier than he had been just a week before. He also needed a diaper change.

Deshin took him to the changing table, and started, knowing just from the look on her face that Gerda was exhausted too.

“Long day?” he asked.

“Good day,” she said. “We made the right decision.”

“Yes,” he said. “We did.”

He had decided on the way home not to tell her everything. He would wait until the interrogation of Cade Faulke and the five clones was over. Koos had taken all six of them out of Armstrong in the same ship.

And the interrogations would even start until Koos got them out of Earth Alliance territory, days from now.

Deshin had no idea what would happen to Faulke or the clones after that. Deshin was leaving that up to Koos. Koos no longer headed security for Deshin Enterprises in Armstrong, but he had served Deshin well today. He would handle some of the company’s work outside the Alliance.

Not a perfect day’s work, not even the day’s work Deshin had expected, but a good one nonetheless. He probably had other leaks to plug in his organization, but at least he knew what they were now.

His baby raised a chubby fist at Deshin as if agreeing that action needed to be taken. Deshin bent over and blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy, something that always made Paavo giggle.

He giggled now, a sound so infectious that Deshin wondered how he had lived without it all his life.

He would do everything he could to protect this baby, everything he could to take care of his family.

“He trusts you,” Gerda said with a tiny bit of amazement in her voice.

Most people never trusted Deshin. Gerda did, but Gerda was special.

Deshin blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy again, and Paavo laughed.

His boy did trust him.

He picked up his newly diapered son, and cradled him in his arms. Then he kissed Gerda.

The three of them, forever.

That was what he needed, and that was what he ensured today.

The detective could poke around his business all she wanted, but she would never know the one thing that calmed Deshin down.

Justice had been done.

His family was safe.

And that was all that mattered.

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Mar 2015.

Casting at Pegasus

Mary Rosenblum

It was a good night for flying. Windy enough to make her car buck. Stars and no moon, the riverbed a gouge of deeper darkness on her right. Therese braked, the highway empty behind her, nosed the little city-car into a tangle of fall-yellowed blackberries. Thorns scraped paint as she killed her headlights, and she didn’t care.

It struck her suddenly how much she didn’t care. Because Selva had originally paid for half of the car? She had never changed the registration. It was still in both their names. Therese squinted at darkness and rutted mud, angry at herself. For not thinking about the registration.

The car had been as easily cast off as Therese herself. How could she have forgotten to change the registration? Lips tight, Therese pulled clear up to the rusty chain-link fence, and turned off the engine. Opening the door let in the cold, and she shivered as she dragged her carryall from the cargo space. The wind combed invisible fingers, rich with fall scents of rotting leaves and cold moist earth, through her short hair. Yeah. Good night for flying.

She had told Selva about the airport, about sneaking out of her room at night when she was a kid, dressed in her “airport clothes.” She used to cross the highway, cut through a field to the parking lot. Inside, she hung around in the waiting areas, drinking too-sweet hot chocolate from the snack bar, talking to other passengers, telling them how she was on her way to live with her father in Paris, or Amsterdam, or New York. “You did your single-parent angst more creatively than most,” Selva had said. And she had laughed and rumpled Therese’s hair. “That’s why you’re such a wonderful artist.”

She didn’t think so anymore. Therese hooked her fingers through the scabby fabric of the decrepit chain-link fence. The mesh shivered with a soft metallic clash as she climbed. Like a sigh, Therese thought. She threw one leg over the top, where she’d cut the barbed wire. A sigh of rust and aging and abandonment. Could a fence feel abandoned?

She swung her other leg over, leaped down to land with a splat in hummocky dew-wet grass. Another world, in here. She looked skyward, remembering airplanes taking off like constellations of colored stars rising from the tangled strings of blue lights that edged the runways. Hi. Where are you going? I’m on my way to Paris. My dad’s there and he wants me to come live with him. He’s a correspondent for the New York Times. . . . Therese hefted her carryall higher on her shoulder, began to jog toward the asphalt runway. The broken stems of old landing-lights stuck up like mileposts along the runway. Who had broken them off, and why? Now, people came and went at the big shuttle terminal, arcing up to the Platforms and down again. Or they did the Net. God bless the Net. Which brought her back to Selva, and Selva didn’t belong here.

Therese slowed to a walk, forcing herself to listen. The empty airport had its own population—the boarders who skimmed the runways, the taggers, and the night watchman, who took his break now, between midnight and one. No sound of board wheels. The taggers kept to the blank canvases of the buildings. On a whim, she decided to set up out beyond the old hangar, out past the gate area. It might take the watchman half the night to notice her lights if she were lucky.

That was part of it—how long the flight lasted before the night watchman cut it down.

With a roar of sound, a pod of boarders zoomed up out of the darkness; three of them, dressed in black, slaloming back and forth across the cracked asphalt. Their boards’ jet engines screamed, unmuffled and mocking. Therese dodged into the tall grass along the runway and dropped flat. Frost-killed stems brushed her cheeks, wet her face with dew like cold tears as they zoomed past. The night watchman would chase them. He always did. Thanks, guys, she mouthed silently, bounced to her feet, and broke into a run across the gate area. Big halides mounted on the terminal buildings splashed light across the asphalt, glinting on faded traffic markings. She avoided the light, cut across the grass again, shoes and socks soaked through now. Her feet slapped the concrete apron of the old hangar.

Quick. She unzipped her carryall, grabbed the tether-stakes she’d made from plastic pipe. Pounded the first one into the soggy ground beyond the apron. Wind from the east. She tested it with a hand, guessed twenty-five with gusts to thirty-five. Exactly the conditions she’d plugged into her virtual simulation, so the lights should go up slick and fast. She pounded in the second and third stakes and fumbled in her bag. Working in the dark because light brought the night watchman that much sooner, she snagged the first string. High-tensile line, black. The fiberlight beading felt like thin plastic twine beneath her fingers, flexible, cool, invisible in the darkness. She wound the end of the string around the first stake, laid it out. Laid out the second string and straightened the crossties by touch. So far, so good. If she tangled it now, she could kiss this night’s flight good-bye.

Sound in the darkness, over by the unlighted hangar. Therese straightened, adrenaline spiking through her. The night watchman carried a taser, and the boarders carried blades. She slipped a hand into her pocket, closed her fingers around her small cannister of mace, listening until her ears buzzed, turning the rush of wind into sneaking footsteps, the snap of an opening blade.

Nothing. Hands wanting to shake, she unfolded the kite, bent the slender wands into the pockets she’d bonded into the corners. The wind caught at the transparent plastic so that it billowed out and came alive in her hands, straining like a dog tugging at a leash, full of promise, full of potential.

Potential. She hated the word. Selva had used it a lot at the end—“Your stuff has so much potential.” Then came the “buts . . . ” But the art market is such a closed place. But it’s so tough to make your living doing art. But, but, but . . .

But get real and get a job, honey.

With an angry shake of her head and a leap, Therese tossed the kite into the air. The wind caught it, snatched it skyward, burning the line through her fingers. She paid it out carefully, steadily, squinting as her light-lines rose, intertangled like an invisible net spread to catch the stars. It looked okay, just like her sim. She anchored the kite-line to the third stake, and pulled the remote from her other pocket, heart beating fast now, because she didn’t know, couldn’t know how it would really look, until . . . now. Her forefinger touched the button.

And her light-net came to life, spilling meshes of liquid fire across the night. The hair-fine fiberlight threads, bought from a tattoo artist wholesale, glowed in jewel-bright color against the sky. Ruby. Neon blue. Sun-gold. Tonight, she had captured the great square of Pegasus, twined him in shimmering helices of light as the invisible kite danced with the wind, and the tangled threads glowed. Winged steed, lifting to a world behind those stars. Tonight she had harnessed him. She felt him tugging, the energy of those huge shoulders thrumming down the lines. Therese closed her eyes, let the energy hum through her flesh. In a moment, he would lift her from the ground, that harnessed creature, and carry her . . .

“Hey.”

Soft voice, a breath almost, surely too low to be heard over the wind. Therese spun around, poised to run. Light by the hangar, a flash’s glow that illuminated a tawny, androgynous kid’s face. Spiky brown hair. Tilted, dark eyes.

“Beat it.” Same soft, urgent carrying tone. “The cop’s comin’.” The light winked out.

She heard him now—heavy footsteps thudding on the grass. She snatched up her carryall and ran. Behind her, a shout. Light. She glanced over her shoulder, caught a glimpse of a tall man-shape, bulky in a uniform coverall, flash beam swinging like a sword to chop her. The night watchman; Frankenstein of this dark abandoned place, the Boogeyman. What was the range of his taser-dart? The light stabbed at her and she ran faster. The fence loomed out of the night.

Therese leaped, fingers hooking in the mesh, climbing, hiking her crotch over the rusty barbs of the top strands, deft, graceful, made so by fight-flight chemistry. She splashed down in cold, puddled water. She ran a few steps. Stopped and turned. He stood on the far side of the fence, a shadow, saying nothing.

He never chased her beyond the fence. He never called the cops. Therese watched him turn and vanish back into the darkness. In the distance, her jewel-fire net danced against the sky, tethering Pegasus. Therese watched it, counting the minutes in her head, a clench of yearning in her chest. Because when those strings were cut, Pegasus would fly free. Without her. The distant strands of color sagged suddenly. Crumpled, twisted and crashed in glittering ruin to the ground. Therese touched the remote, warm in her pocket.

The lights vanished.

Behind her, a sigh.

The kid? “Thank you.” Therese peered into the darkness, couldn’t see a thing. “He might have caught me, tonight.” No answer, but she could feel a presence, like an eddy in the perfect, windy darkness, a spiral knot of energy. “Good night,” Therese said, and trudged up the embankment to the main road.

Her feet were cold now, the chill penetrating to the bone. The elation was gone, leaving her with a hangover of emptiness, and she wondered who the kid was as she trudged along the pavement. A boarder? She hadn’t seen a board. A tagger, scrawling his rude splash of identity across the hangar wall? And what are you doing, if not just that?

She’d felt Pegasus tugging at the strands of the lights. Like those planes had tugged at her as they lifted from the blue-lighted lanes of the runways. One day she would let go and . . . fly with him.

To where? A tiny voice whispered in her head. To somewhere, Therese told herself. She’d know when she got there. Her shoes squished the predawn quiet. Overhead, a shooting star streaked across the spangled sky, east to west, vanishing into the city glow. A message from the gods? She wished she could read it.

The apartment lights didn’t come on when she opened the door. Cheap hardware. She slapped the manual switch, blinked in the harsh fluorescent glare, and stumbled over the package that had been set just inside the door. With a stifled yelp, she caught herself on the back of the futon sofa, anger flushing through her, making her cheeks burn.

The landlord again, with his damned pass key. Being nice? She didn’t want him to be nice if it meant opening her door. He was probably snooping for drugs or illegal hardware. Therese scooped the package up and prowled the single big room, neck prickling like a dog with its hackles raised, looking for any signs he’d poked around. Inside the box, something shifted; mass packed not-quite-solidly. Therese turned it over and looked at the label. Vancouver, BC, return address.

Selva.

Why now, after all these months of silence?

She set it on the kitchen counter, stared at it. Presents were never really gifts. They were messages or obligations or both. Send it back, she told herself, but she was already reaching for a knife to saw through the packing tape. Inside, color peeked from foam packaging—a flash of rich crimson and gold that caught the ugly light, flung it back with gem-sparkle warmth. She dug into the white beads, a part of her mind noticing that it had been professionally packed, money thrown away to convenience—she’d never been that rich.

Her fingertips touched slick cool . . . glass.

She lifted it out. A fountain of crystal ice, turned static in a skyward splash, it glittered with streaks of ruby and embedded flakes of gold. The artist had filled that crystallized silicon with life, so that you saw more than this frozen instant, you saw the molten glass leap skyward, scattering into gem-bright droplets, falling back to earth all in an instant.

Beautiful, with no apology offered to function. Like her light-nets. Therese looked around her room. Futon sofa, low table in front of it, both Salvation Army crummy. The silent pile of electronic hardware that was the only thing that really mattered. She set the glass down on the table. It gave the room a feel of . . . failure. Loser turf. And she wondered suddenly if Selva had meant that piece of glass to have exactly this effect, if she was that subtle and vengeful.

You’re hungry, Therese told herself, and that was certainly so. She turned her back on the sculpture, grabbed a stale bagel from the bag on top of the microwave.

You have a call, her House system intoned. From Selva Portofino-Harris.

Selva? Therese laid the untouched bagel down, mouth open to refuse the call. The glass caught her eye, made her momentarily breathless with its beauty. “I . . . okay.” She fumbled for her gloves and goggles, clumsy suddenly, always clumsy around Selva’s deft competence. “House, take the call.”

Gloves on, she pulled the virtual goggles down over her forehead, plastic edges scraping softly across her skin. And found herself on a polished wood floor. Huge windows offered green lawns and distant white columns like Greek ruins. Sun, lovely sleek furniture. Selva Portofino-Harris leaned one bony hip against a polished slab of teak desktop that matched the color of her perfect shoulders.

She lifted weights in the flesh, wore her muscles proudly in virtual, her dark, Brazilian skin accented by a simple white tank-top and shorts.

Therese turned her face away, struggling suddenly with a hard lump in her throat. “Well.” Inane word. Say something, or say nothing and get the hell out. “I got your . . . present. Just now.”

“I . . . don’t know why I sent it to you. I guess . . . it made me think of you.”

The tone was wrong for vengeance, or even anger. Therese looked, in spite of herself. Yearning on that strong, almost harsh face? You could wear any mask you wanted in virtual. It didn’t have to be real. . . . “It makes my apartment look like shit.” She wasn’t wearing her skinthins, only gloves and goggles, so all Selva was seeing was a rather boring simulation. A two-dee icon with no emotional cues. She took a deep breath, feeling slightly more in control. “So thanks.” Which would cue a nice smile. “That was sweet of you to send it.”

“Which translates to ‘fuck off.’” Selva’s smile bared her teeth. “Not yet, girl. How’s your stuff doing?” She planted both palms on the desktop, swung her butt between them, like she did when she was upset. “Any new sales?”

“No.” To hell with cool. Therese crossed her arms, wishing she had put on skins, go ahead and see how pissed I am. . . . “Barrain tossed me out of the gallery. I wasn’t selling enough. Hey, like you said—” she flung the words like stones, “stationary holoture isn’t hot. Virtual interactives are all the thing, now.”

“I never said . . . ” Selva closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry about the gallery slot. So what are you doing?”

“You mean to pay the rent? I’m doing virtual recordings.” She had to look away again, even though it didn’t matter because Selva wasn’t really seeing her expression. “Cityscapes, countryside—buy a park permit, splash around in a couple of waterfalls, and someone will buy it.” She’d recorded for herself, once. For her holoture work. “Hey, the VR artists can at least pay good money.” Laugh. “A midnight walk under the full moon is good for a week’s worth of rent.” Another wasted shrug. “I already had most of the hardware.”

“You could work for Xavier,” Selva said quietly. “He’s always got room for another talented designer.”

“Designing advertising riffs? Or fancy offices for bored Net execs?”

“Sorry.” Selva flushed. “I forgot, you’re an artist.”

“No, I’m a camera.” It came out too soft for effect. “Listen, it’s late and I’ve got to go to bed.”

“Where were you?” Selva stopped swinging, stood straight and still in front of her skin-toned wooden desk. “Out at the airport again? Flying your kites?”

Flying your kites? “Go to hell. House . . . ”

“Don’t you exit on me!” Selva’s voice cracked like a whip. “You never would share that with me—your airport stuff. I think that’s part of why I could move up here without you. Because you wouldn’t let me in on it at all. I guess it sent me a message.”

And what message had she sent back in that piece of beautiful glass? “I asked you to come along. You were too busy.”

“I was.”

Therese’s anger lost its razor edge because Selva had looked away, and she never did that. It made her look vulnerable.

Selva was never vulnerable.

“Hey.” She filled in the silence with words, not wanting to see that unexpected curve of neck with its exposed groove of jugular vein and carotid. “Any time you want to see, just hop a shuttle. I’ll be glad to show you.” Would she? Therese wondered suddenly. Take Selva out to the airport? It would mean . . . what it might or might not mean didn’t matter, because Selva was shaking her head anyway.

“I can’t. Not right now, anyway. We’re using stationary equipment to do some high-end decorating for Boise-Quebec’s new offices. And we’ve got this deadline. So I can’t work remote through a set of skins.”

“I didn’t think so. Look, it’s late. I’m yawning, even if you can’t see it. Time for bed.”

“Yeah.” Selva wasn’t looking vulnerable any more. “I’ll see you,” she said. Coolly. Virtually. And was gone.

Banished from this electronic room, this reality, because she wasn’t real any more. The room squeezed her—stranger’s room, stranger’s futon and shitty little table. Stranger’s life. The glass sculpture announced it in shards of crystalline light. She grabbed it, raised it over her head, muscles hard with anticipation of the coming smash.

It was its own frozen instant of beauty, never mind Selva, never mind the message it carried. She set it down very gently, snagged her jacket from the sofa, and slammed the door on the way out.

The riverside highway looked different in the gray dawn light. Mist rose from the water, pooling white and thick in the sloughs. Tree branches thrust up through it, their twigs stiff and cold, trailing the last yellowed rags of summer leaves. She missed her hidden turnoff entirely, tricked by the daylight topography of the berry thickets. Didn’t matter. She hadn’t planned to park there anyway, it wasn’t safe during the day. Some satellite traffic-eye might spot her, bust her for trespass. The terminal buildings looked so drab, off in the distance. The main entrance was on the far side of the complex, barricaded and lighted. Protected. From here, the gate aprons looked stained and forlorn, drifted with rotting leaves and soggy trash.

Last night, she had trapped Pegasus in a net of jewels. In the bright light of sunrise, the place looked drab—a dead end, without magic or future. Beyond the fence, the old hangar slumped in the cold morning mist. No sign of her light-net, of course. Probably trashcanned by the boogeyman night watchman. She braked hard and suddenly, pulled off onto the shoulder.

She’d looked at it a hundred times: tagger art. Ego, hormones, desperation, and anger, sprayed bright and immediate across any vertical surface. But the tag on the hangar doors was . . . different. Faces stared upward, surreal and huge. Their neon eyes were terrible—bright with hope and yearning that seared her, made her hands tremble on the wheel. Their enormous mouths opened, whispering, not shouting, calling softly, like you’d call your lover to bed.

Calling who? Therese climbed out of the car, shivering in the dank morning chill. She wanted to know who . . .

A tiny sound made her turn her head—nothing more than a rustle in the dew-spangled thistles that edged that asphalt. He was sitting there, screened by the weeds; the kid from last night. Asian skin, African lips, hazel eyes. Face too broad, chin too long. He was ugly, as if his genes warred, like the races that had donated them. He was watching her, head tilted, shadow pooling beneath those stark cheekbones.

“Hey.” He grinned.

“Hey.” Fourteen, Therese guessed. “Your tag?” She nodded at the distant hangar.

“Uh huh. The geek hasn’t painted it out yet. He’s weird—waits till I finish ’em, at least. This one’s gonna be the last.” Triumph in those words, not defeat.

“Why the last?” She looked again, her eyes drawn to the sky by those yearning, calling faces.

“They’re gonna come for me.” He stood, lazy and laidback. “They hang around here, up high, where you can’t see ’em. Only once in a while, you know? Maybe they’re everywhere, or maybe there’s some kind of hole here, like the hole in the ozone that everybody figured was gonna wipe us out? I’m one of them.” His grin mocked her, challenging her, so that Therese wasn’t sure if he was shitting her or not. “I figured that out when I finally realized that everybody else on this fucking planet is an alien. I don’t belong here. I got left behind or lost or something.” He tilted his head, still grinning, still challenging. “I’m Jazz. You gonna do some more lights tonight?”

“Therese.” No, he wasn’t shitting her. Above that grin, his eyes were the eyes of the faces on the wall, full of that same terrible, loving, yearning cry. “I might fly tonight,” she said. “If the wind’s right.”

“It’ll be better with the two of us. Your lights say the same thing, so I figure you’re one, too. See you around.” And then he took off running through the weeds, leaping tangled clumps of thistle like a deer. A scraggly clump of hawthorn swallowed him, and the verge was empty again, silent except for the dead weed stems rattling in the breeze. Therese shaded her eyes to stare at the mural one more time.

Those faces drew her eyes skyward again, clenched her chest with that yearning. Like last night, when Pegasus had tugged at her light-net. I don’t belong here. Jazz’s voice came back to her. Yeah, she thought bitterly. Me neither. You’re right.

A tall figure, wide-shouldered and dressed in a dull green coverall, strolled across the concrete apron. The night watchman? A watchman, Therese told herself. This would be a different shift, surely. For an awful moment, she thought he was on his way to Jazz’s mural, to paint it out or deface it somehow, to choke that rending cry.

As a kid, this place had been a magic doorway to a bright future, a future as colorful and full of promise as the bustle and light of the airport concourse. It had been more real than the faded silent mother who lived in her own universe of work and fatigue and TV, and the dark warehouse of the public school system. In the grip of the grim days, she’d thought about the airport and had been . . . homesick.

That’s it, Jazz, she thought and laughed out loud. We’re homesick for a world that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it would take aliens to bring you there!

Therese turned away, climbed back up onto the asphalt, tired now, her feet wet again. She tapped her code into the door, opened it, and slid onto the cold plastic seat.

Therese Marie Oberti? Her cheap dashboard speaker squawked at her. Will you please insert your ID card in the ignition slot?

Uh-oh. Cold sweat prickled beneath her armpits as she fumbled her card into the ignition.

Your vehicle was reported as parked in a state no-trespass zone at one-fourteen-AM this morning. Your ID card was last used to access the ignition, and since you did not report the card stolen within six hours, the violation has been charged to you. Your file came up before state circuit court at eight-twenty-three this morning, and you were found guilty by the operating judicial program. Your fine, three thousand one hundred and thirty dollars, has been charged directly to your account. If you wish to contest the verdict, you must file an appeal and meet the accompanying fee by eight-twenty-three tomorrow morning. If you have any questions, please access legal assistance through your Net account.

The tinny voice ended.

A ticket. Therese stared numbly at the blue plastic dash. It was cracking in places, dried-out and damaged by sun and heat. She traced a long split, the curled-back edges of the cheap plastic sharp beneath her fingertip. A three thousand dollar state trespass ticket. . . . It was intended to discourage looters. Who had reported her car while it was parked here? The night watchman, of course. Therese closed her hand into a fist, nails biting into her palm. No wonder he didn’t waste his precious breath chasing her beyond the nice safe fence. It was so much easier to sneak around until he found her car and could turn her in.

Well, she had been trespassing.

He had violated something, though, sullied that perfect flight last night. “Bastard,” she said, very softly. Three thousand would clean out her savings. She wasn’t going to be able to make rent this month. Not after she paid for the Net time she used to create holoture nobody wanted. Numbly, she tapped the engine to life, pulled a tight U on the empty asphalt. Go home, she told herself. Take a hot shower. Eat some breakfast. And then get your recording gear out and go find some neat imagery to sell to the Xaviers of the world. Auction off a few bits of your reality for someone else to use.

The sun was up, spearing her with dazzling light, striking the last glints of gold and yellow from the fall leaves. Eyes watering from the sun—not from tears, definitely not tears—she drove home, obeying every damn traffic law in the books.

You have two messages, her House system murmured as she let herself in. It turned on the lights, too, never mind that it was broad daylight.

Therese sighed and hit the manual switch, clicking them off. “House, messages.” She pulled on her goggles and gloves.

“Ms. Oberti.” The landlord’s voice emerged from a shifting matrix of color, because he only paid for voice access. “Just a little reminder that yesterday was the first of the month. I need to have the rent by Wednesday.”

“Endit.” She glowered as the color winked out. Bilious yellow. How appropriate. Last time she’d been short, she’d been able to stall him for more than a week. It wasn’t like people were standing in line to rent this dump, but maybe . . . somebody was.

She smoothed a wrinkle from her glove, running down her list of clients. Most of them wanted fancy landscape takes; the beach in a storm, snow on the desert, that kind of thing. She didn’t even have the money for a park entry permit, never mind the time to wait for interesting weather. She could sell her skins. They were a custom job with all the high-end recording hardware you needed. Without them, she’d have to buy somebody else’s reality. Like Xavier did. And she’d never be able to afford another set this good.

That wasn’t it. She’d never be optimistic enough about her career to risk that kind of money again. “House, next message,” she snapped.

“’Rese?” Selva materialized, shimmering like airport fog. “Call me please? Realtime?”

She sounded worried, and Selva never worried because she had it all under control. “Message Selva Portofino-Harris.” The words popped out on their own, spurred by fear.

Fear for Selva—and she had no right to be afraid for her. Not any more. Therese opened her mouth to cancel, but Selva’s face was already shimmering into being, as if she’d been waiting for the call.

“’Rese?” That hint of worry still showed. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Big lie. “I’m just returning your call.”

“Look, I was talking to Xavier just a little bit ago. And I mentioned your light-net stuff. He got pretty excited. He thinks we can use it. He was interested enough to offer a pretty good option.”

She’d told Xavier about her flights. . . . “What’s he going to use it for?” Therese didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “An ad for booze? Virtual sex hardware? The latest genened oranges?”

“What does it matter?” Selva refused to get pissed. “Xavier’s just optioning the raw imagery anyway. You won’t even recognize the final cut. And he pays well. Once you’re on his string, you’re in. And we use a lot of material. Are you interested?”

She wasn’t angry, simply felt . . . numb. “You want to buy one of my flights.” The flights you wouldn’t share.

“Yeah.” Selva’s smile was wary. “If you don’t want me to look at it, I won’t. I’ll just turn it over to Xavier.”

“And what if he tells you to work with it?” Flat voice, still so calm.

“Well . . . ” Wrinkled nose, grimace. “I’ll have to, yeah. But there’s no reason it’d show up in one of my projects.” She reached, laid a virtual hand on Therese’s arm. “Does it really bother you so much? I’d really like to come watch if you’d let me. I just can’t do it when you snap your fingers.”

“I didn’t snap my fingers. I asked.” Therese looked down at her arm. Her eyes gave her Selva’s long, slender fingers curving across her forearm. She felt nothing. Without skins, this was a ghost-touch, maybe would have been a ghost-touch if Selva was standing here in the flesh.

Which she wasn’t.

“Money.” She laughed softly, bitterly. “I sure need it.” So she got to choose, sell her soul or her skins. . . . “Hey, why not?” The words tasted bitter on her tongue. “I’ll sell Xavier his flight. You can watch it if you want. I don’t care.”

“I won’t look at it.” Selva’s face was dark and still, like a pool at twilight when you couldn’t see the bottom. “What do they mean to you?” she asked. “Your light-nets?”

For a moment words pressed at the back of her throat. I rode Pegasus home. Almost.

Almost wasn’t good enough. She’d learned that as an artist. She swallowed, and the words were gone. “You gotta be there,” she said softly.

“I would be. If you’d let me.” Selva’s eyes flashed, but she kept her temper under control. “Sometimes I think you do your lights because they aren’t real. You can hang out at that nice safe airport and you don’t have to care. Oh they’re flesh and not virtual, that’s not what I mean. Coming up to Vancouver is real. Working for Xavier and doing your art anyway is real. I think you’re afraid of real, Therese. Do you know how much it hurt me when you stayed behind? Do you know how much I love you? Or do you care?”

No! Therese struggled for the words she had swallowed, but they wouldn’t come back. I didn’t know. You never told me. “Yeah, I care.” She turned away, pulled her goggles off. “I care a lot.”

But her goggles were off and that signaled her system to shut off the connect. So probably Selva hadn’t heard that last.

Which was a good thing, maybe. Because it didn’t matter at all.

“You want to buy my next flight?” she whispered. “Fine.” She reached for the tumbled pile of her skinthins. “I’ll give it to you, and you can give it to Xavier, and he can pay me for it.” She laughed, a single note that hurt her throat like a sob.

Hey, why not?

Her skins itched. She scratched, one hand on the wheel because there wasn’t any traffic on the airport road this time of night. Full recording gear meant skins, gloves, hood, the works. Patch on the left eyelid to the synch micro-cameras on her headband to her eye-track. She’d get it all—every twitch of body language that put you into the scene, register the physical tensions of fight-flight surprise, ambivalence, joy. All for you, baby. All for your boss.

Selva would be there at the airport.

Whose reality? You’re afraid. . . . Selva’s voice whispered in her ear. Afraid . . .

Therese braked hard, almost missed the turn. The car lurched and bucked, going too fast for the rutted track, and she clung to the wheel as thorns put new scratches in the paint. Nobody here except her. The engine stalled and died, and she pushed the door open. Frosty night air. The east wind was blowing, flowing down the Gorge like an invisible river of ice-cold water. It tugged at the black stocking cap she wore, flicked tendrils of hair into her eyes, and pried chilly fingers down her neck.

Good night for flying, Selva. She touched her eyelid to make sure the tracking patch was in place, tapped the control at her waist. Recording. The tiny telltale winked green. Therese leaped, fingers hooking into the softly clashing chain link, scrambled over, and dropped. The grass wasn’t wet tonight. An east wind had dried out the ground with its cold breath. Rags of thin cloud briefly obscured the sliver of moon. Do you see it, Selva? You can’t feel the wind, but you’ll feel me shiver, feel the subtle shifts as I push against it.

This is reality. Not the Net. Not pleasant virtual conversations in an unreal living room made up of electrons and fantasy.

This.

So who was she trying to convince? Scanning the landscape, the broken stumps of lights, she walked slowly along the abandoned runway. Planes used to land in sweeps of light, touching down between chains of blue jewels. Coming to get her, coming to take her home, only she’d never gone. The wind teased her, kissing her neck with cold lips. She could fly from this spot, but she kept on going, blaming the boarders that might show any time.

A lie. She was going to fly from the hangar, in front of Jazz’s yearning faces. No other place would work, and she didn’t stop to examine the reason for that. The gate apron glimmered like a gray wasteland in the faint moonlight. She skirted it, an eye out for the night watchman’s flash. No sign of him. She never saw him between midnight and one. She’d long ago figured that for his break. For a while, she had wondered why he hadn’t realized that she always set up during that hour. If he really wanted to catch her, he could do it just by changing his routines. She’d thought he was dumb at first. Then she’d decided that maybe he didn’t really want to catch her.

Only he’d reported her car. So, maybe she’d been wrong. The hangar loomed ahead, concrete apron veined with grass-grown cracks. Too rough for the boarders. Therese dropped her carryall in the long grass beyond the apron, got out her stakes. One. Two. Hammerstrokes jarred the plastic spikes into the soil, every blow recorded in muscle action and reaction. Therese finished pounding the third stake in, and flung the hammer aside, not needing it anymore. She realized then—that this was the last time. The last flight.

Never again, because once something broke, you couldn’t put it back together again. When she downloaded this night’s recording into Selva’s filespace, the airport, whatever it meant, whatever it was, would be broken. Lips pressed against tears that didn’t come, she began to lay out the precise tangles of her light-net. Her skins recorded what she saw, stored it in hard-memory in her belt-pack, then beamed it home to her system, bouncing the digitized kaleidoscope of light and shadow and movement off the face of some battered satellite. From Earth to space to Earth again. The wind caught her kite as she unfurled it. Feel it, Selva? How it pulls at my arms? You can’t smell the scent of fall and eastern desert in the wind, you can’t feel the echoes of this place, of Pegasus spreading his invisible wings overhead.

She had never walked through the airport gates, gotten onto a plane, and gone into those beautiful futures. Last night, she had let Pegasus go. On the wall, Jazz’s faces yearned silently for a home that wasn’t here. The east wind snatched at the kite, rough and importunate, full of rude force. She tossed it into the sky, and a gust snatched meters of line through her fingers, lofting it high, higher. She reached the end of the line, let go. It snapped tight, thrumming with strain as the wind gusted again. Perhaps life was nothing but departures—from the darkness of the womb, from the dark and light of life—only departing, never arriving. Hand in her pocket, finger just caressing the remote button, she walked over to the hangar.

“So, turn it on.” Jazz’s voice from the darkness didn’t startle her tonight. “C’mon, tonight’s the night.” Excitement hummed in his words. “Turn it on.”

Tonight’s the night. His belief infected her. Sometimes—as a kid in the airport late at night, when exhaustion blurred the line between fantasy and reality—for a few brief minutes her plane was landing, and she waited for the stewardess to open her little desk beside the ramp, to announce the row numbers that were boarding first. Sometimes she had stood in line to board, her blood thrumming with the anticipation of takeoff, the lights below, the black starry sky a ceiling to forever. . . .

If she had walked up to that desk, would the stewardess have smiled, welcomed her? “Okay,” she whispered, and thumbed the control. Above them, light; twisting, shimmering beneath the stars, jewel-bright in strands and twists, tangled like DNA, or love, or the trailing hair of God, charged with the invisible pulse of the wind.

He was right—it was the same cry as the people on the hangar door, written in glyphs of light and wind and the perfect night. We are homesick. Please take us home. . . . Shoulder touching shoulder, Therese and Jazz searched the sky. They would come. How could they not come?

Boots scraped on concrete.

“Fuck,” Jazz breathed. “Not now. Not yet!”

Therese looked over her shoulder. The night watchman stood on the edge of the concrete apron, a shadowy form in a dark uniform coverall, bulky and ominous.

Jazz hesitated, agony in the twist of his shoulders. “It’s the camps for me, if I get busted again,” he hissed. “Oh, fuck!” And ran.

It had shattered into ruin, they wouldn’t hear, they wouldn’t come. Reality crashed in like a wave—fines, money. And Therese leapt after Jazz, her own heart hammering with boogeyman dread and real fear. Wrong way, a sane corner of her brain shrieked at her. Double back, cut past him, and you can get over the fence.

But Jazz raced on ahead of her, a moving shadow in the dark, drawing her after him. If he was caught, he’d go to an adult detention camp. His fear infected her, lashed her with adrenaline. Fear for him, for her. His aliens wouldn’t find him in a camp. They wouldn’t know to look for him there, and he’d know it. That he’d never go home. And he’d die. Concrete jarred her as she reached the gate-apron.

She risked a glance over her shoulder, saw the night watchman emerge from darkness onto the gray glimmer of the concrete, running slowly, heavily. What was the range of his stunner? An ancient set of wheeled stairs leaned against the face of the terminal, the kind that had been pushed up against small commuter planes for passengers to climb. Jazz was up it in a flash, balancing on the top, reaching for the sill of the huge dark windows just above him.

Therese followed him, afraid to look back and see if the night watchman was behind her, afraid she’d tear her skins on the rusty metal. Above, the glass had been broken out of the huge windows. Moonlight glinted on triangular fragments sticking up like razor teeth. Therese grabbed a bare stretch of sill, levered herself over. Tom skins would be worse than a sliced hide. She could heal. The skins wouldn’t. “Jazz?” No answer. “Where are you?”

Moonlight turned shadow into memory, picked out a patch of blue and red carpet, a flash of chrome from a chair. Therese halted, the watchman forgotten, fumbled for the flash in her pocket. Light speared out, touching naked girders and trailing cables like ripped-out guts or vines, fallen squares of tattered and smoke-stained acoustic tile. She shivered.

The blue and red carpet, the plastic and chrome furniture, had looked so new and beautiful, a promise made of a future connected by those landing planes to that long-ago today. People had looked at her and had smiled, knowing that she was one of them, with somewhere to go, someone to welcome her.

Such a silly game to play. The flash beam trembled in her hand, making the shadowy space stutter in light and shadow.

Glass tinkled behind her. The sound scattered memory, galvanized her into a run. Glass crunched beneath her feet, and she smelled the sour stink of old dead fire. She swung her flash, motes of dust twinkling in the beam, turning it into a hazy sword of light. Her light-sword kissed denim blue, black shirt. Jazz. She kept it on him as she ran, tethered to him by light. Random heaps took shape and vanished at the edges of vision; chairs, wrecked furniture, piles of fallen ceiling tile. Electric-cable guts. Cobwebs. Jazz ducked right, and she followed him down a wide corridor. A rumpled abandoned sleeping bag looked like a body, brought her heart briefly into her throat. Jazz veered again, through a huge archway this time, out into the cavernous center of the terminal. The vast space stretched away into darkness. Here and there, trash, dead leaves, and debris shoaled against ticket counters or in the corners of empty waiting areas.

The floor quivered beneath Therese’s feet. She froze, adrenaline washing through her like ice water. Cautiously, she bounced up and down.

The floor bounced with her.

Which meant what? That they could fall through? “Jazz?” She hissed his name, but he was already halfway across the space, heading for the old front doors.

Therese started after him, afraid to yell and bring the night watchman after them. On her left, carpeting hung in frayed tatters into a hole in the floor. The flashlight’s weakening beam reflected off glossy char, showed her fallen burned timbers. So. A fire had gutted the lower level. How much of the floor was ready to crumble? “Jazz!” This time she did yell. “Jazz, stop! The floor!”

As if her words had cued it, the floor sagged beneath his feet, rotted carpet stretching, tearing with a dry, ripping sound. Dust rose in a cloud, and, arms flung wide, Jazz sank into it, disappearing downward in terrible slow motion. Therese lunged, hands reaching, grabbed for him, and felt the floor sag beneath her. Carpet tore with a dry ripping sound, and she screamed, falling. Carpeting disintegrated between her clutching fingers, and she screamed again, vision full of darkness, lungs full of pungent, dank char-reek, imagining concrete below, nails and fallen beams, spears to pierce her. Hardness slammed her ribs, and a terrible weight crashed down across her back, slammed the breath from her lungs in a red blaze of hurt. She struggled to breathe, the flash tumbling downward, beam slashing the darkness.

A little air seeped into her aching lungs, easing the panic. Slowly, she began to sort out the hurting; beam beneath her, pressing hard into chest, thighs, shoulder, Jazz lying half across her, crushing her ribcage, his muscles iron hard as he panted in her ear. The flashlight was still on—small miracle. Dust hazed the slender beam. It was a long way down.

“Fuck,” Jazz whispered. And moved.

“Stop!” Therese clutched the beam as they tilted sideways, struggling for balance. “Stay still.”

“Okay.” Explosion of breath in her ear. “All right!”

How do you get out of this little situation, Therese Oberti? Easy enough. Let go. She giggled.

“What so funny?” Jazz snarled. Scared.

“Gravity.” She peered cautiously sideways. “You could maybe climb onto those beams.”

“Uh-uh. Too far. Down I can maybe handle.” Jazz sucked in a deep breath. “Hang on, okay?”

Light splashed them from above, searingly bright. “Nice going.” A male voice, disgusted. “You guys really blew it. Hang on, and I’ll see if I can find something you can grab.” The light beam shifted, and Therese glimpsed a fold of dull green coverall, a dark webbing belt. The night watchman.

Caught. She felt Jazz’s muscles clamp tighter.

“Here.” The light shifted back, drowning their flash’s petty beam, illuminating fallen timbers, ashes, and twisted metal below. “You on top, grab this.” A long piece of wood, maybe a piece of doorframe, appeared. “Hang on real tight, and I’ll try to haul you up.”

It was at least ten feet to the floor. Therese stared at the ashes and burned junk, holding on as hard as she could. She could feel Jazz hesitating, his indecision humming though her. And in a few more minutes, she was going to lose her grip. . . . “Do it,” she hissed. “Quick!”

With a grunt, he grabbed for the wood. His body twisted, his weight dragging Therese sideways, trying to torque her off her perch. Silent, focused on flesh, muscle-clench, finger-grip against greasy metal, she processed kaleidoscopic images of Jazz swinging from the bending strip of wood, legs flailing for a toehold, dust showering. Then the floor gave way. They fell together, Jazz and the night watchman, in a tangle of green and denim, dark skin and darker hair. For an eerie instant, the flash shone full on the night watchman’s face: wide cheekbones, brown Hispanic skin, black hair, eyes full of shocked surprise. A moment later, they hit with the ugly flesh sound of impact. The big flash went out.

“Fuck!” Jazz’s whisper seemed to carry throughout the entire airport.

“Is that all you can say?” Panic clawed at her and she needed to get down. Groping, her fingers touched wood, closed incredibly tight. She swung by her hands, feet scrabbling, finding solid footing. Fallen beams wove a web of shadow across the glow from her dim flash, guided her lower. Her feet crunched into ash, and a shadow moved. Resolved into Jazz, sooty faced.

“You okay?” Therese touched a shoulder, reassured by the warm flesh beneath T-shirt fabric.

“I guess.” The shoulder lifted and dropped; a shrug, rather than rejection. “Nothing’s broken, I don’t think.” He shifted from beneath her fingers, and a moment later the flashbeam wobbled as he picked it up. “I think our cop landed hard.” The light touched a green-clad shoulder, slid upward to spotlight a stubbled jaw.

He was younger than she’d thought; not much older than her, with curly dark hair and thick brows. Not exactly handsome. A trickle of blood down the side of his face glowed wet and crimson in the light. Jazz slid ashy gray fingers beneath his jaw.

“He’s alive. I hate cops.”

“I’m not . . . a cop.” His eyes opened wide, and he tried to grin. It turned into a grimace of pain. “I’m private.”

“Cop, private gun.” Jazz shrugged. “Same deal.”

“No, it isn’t.” He sat up slowly, leaned his bloody, ash-smeared forehead against a raised knee. “God, my head hurts. . . . I yelled when I saw you come this way. The fire two years back gutted the bottom level. They ought to tear the whole place down, but there’d go my job, so what the hell?”

“How do we get out of here?” Jazz sabered the light-sword through the darkness, revealing fallen beams and ashes, twisted wads of heat-warped metal and melted plastics. “I got this schedule. . . . ”

“Beats me.” The night watchman shrugged, grimaced again. “I guess we climb out.”

Therese eyed the fire-eaten beams and sagging ceiling doubtfully, squeezed by the cavernous darkness. If they couldn’t get out . . . surely somebody would check on the night watchman eventually. But what about Jazz? And her?

The night watchman grabbed one of the fallen beams, leaned his weight on it cautiously. It held. He clambered onto it, reaching for a broken segment of pipe.

With a crackle of breaking wood, the tangle shifted. He fell, landing on his feet, raising a cloud of fine ash. “So much for that.” He coughed, holding his head, his shoulders hunched in pain.

“You’re too heavy, guy. I gotta get out of here.” Jazz’s voice rose. “They’re coming for me tonight. I know it.”

“They.” The night watchman’s voice was slow and oddly shy. “They’re always calling someone. In your pictures. Looking up and just . . . calling. It makes me look, too. I thought it was God at first, but it isn’t, is it?” His voice got brisker. “They’re coming, huh?”

“Yeah, they’re coming.” Jazz tilted his head back, staring up at the gap in the ceiling. “I never thought about God much. He didn’t do anything for me. If you boost me, I can make it.” His eyes flicked from one to the other of them. “I’ll find something to let down to you guys. I promise.”

He had no reason to come back here, or help them at all. He had a lot of reason not to. Like the camps, if he got busted, and maybe the night watchman would bust him, once they were back outside in the usual world. And he thought his aliens might come, and why shouldn’t they come while he was helping them? He’d just take off, and there they would be. Stuck.

And he had been right about her lights painting the poetry of loneliness across the night sky. And if there were any aliens up there, how could they not hear it—his call and hers. How could they not come? And . . . the night watchman believed. You could hear it in his voice. Why should he believe?

“We’ll boost you.” She held out her hands to the night watchman, like they’d already agreed. And he clasped them halfway, because they had.

“Try for that pipe.” He jerked his chin upward as he laced his fingers with hers. “One, two . . . ”

Eyes glinting, Jazz rested a foot lightly on their hands.

“Three!”

Therese and the watchman heaved together, straightening their knees, flinging Jazz at the ceiling. He rose in a perfect leap, caught the pipe. Swung once, twice for momentum, then reached one-handed, grabbed a solid joist. Feet kicking, showering them with dust and ash, he scrambled over the lip of the fallen ceiling and vanished.

Silence.

The flashlight yellowed and shadows drew in around them. Therese looked at the watchman.

“A couple of more minutes.” The cut on his forehead was still oozing blood. “We can try the old escalator. The ceiling came down there, but we can probably get through. You know, your flying lights are . . . neat.” The flash’s glow reflected in his dark eyes, like distant campfires, or lost stars. “They’re never the same twice, you know? It makes them special. I can’t go back and call them up again, like with a video on the Net. I came here when I was a kid—I was flying down to live with my uncle in LA. All these people coming and going, happy and sad, excited. Everybody wanting to be somewhere, or wanting somebody to be here.” He looked past her, frowned. “Your lights are like that—kind of a tangle, you know? All bright, and never the same again.”

Therese swallowed a sudden thickness in her throat, because maybe he understood something better than she did. “But you cut them down. You paint out Jazz’s tags.”

“Well, yeah.” He looked at her sadly. “I’d lose my job if I didn’t. It matters, my job.” And his voice had that same shyness as when he talked about Jazz’s pictures.

“Yo.” Scuffle from above, and a patter of new debris raining down.

“You came back.” Therese looked up, grinning because she hadn’t really expected him to, had already forgiven him.

“Yeah, but hurry, okay? They’re here.” Urgency roughened his voice. “I’m not kidding. They’re looking for me, but they might not know where to look.”

The light was nothing more than a glimmer, barely illuminating the fall of tangled, snaky coils. Therese reached up, flinched as they tumbled down around her head and onto her shoulders. Some sort of electrical cable, black and pliable.

“It’s tied. Come on.” Jazz’s voice echoed through the darkness.

“Go ahead.” As the night watchman nodded, the flash beam died. Darkness rushed in to fill the space where the light had been, expanding the terminal into infinity. She fumbled blindly for footing, trying to hurry, afraid they’d leave without him. Pulled herself upward, banging knees and elbows on invisible obstacles, found a good foothold, slipped, gasped with terror, then relief as Jazz grabbed her arms.

“You okay?” From below. Worried.

“Yes.” And scrambled up onto the solid floor, face down on the crappy carpeting.

Behind her, in the dark, the timbers creaked as the night watchman climbed after her. She sat up, as he scrambled over the edge, so close that she felt the heat radiating from his body. Caught a whiff of sweat and musky man-smell. It came to her suddenly that she was still recording. She was so used to the rig she’d forgotten, and neither of the others had noticed her headband. She touched her eyelid, fingertips searching for, finding the tiny track-patch miraculously still in place. Laughed softly. Once.

“Now what’s funny?” Jazz asked.

“Smile,” she said, and stopped laughing, because in a second it would fall over into hysteria. “I wonder what dear Xavier will do with this bit?”

“Huh?” Jazz was dancing with urgency, footsteps shaking the fragile floor. “Let’s go. Which way out of here, huh?”

“Left.” The night watchman’s fingers closed around her hand. “Watch out. There’s stuff all over the floor.”

She reached, found Jazz’s hand in the dark, as if it had been waiting for her. They followed the watchman’s lead, playing a weird blindman’s-bluff through the blackness. Do you feel Jazz trembling, Selva? He’s afraid they won’t wait. And if they don’t, if they’re not there, will he have the courage to wait any longer? And the night watchman is pulling because . . . he believes.

And she didn’t know why, but in here, in the sooty dark, they all believed. Light ahead. It scattered her thoughts on a wave of relief. Main entrance—chipboard and sometimes panes of glass, amazingly unbroken. The night watchman tapped an urgent code into a dusty security box beside an intact door. A lock clicked and he shoved it open. Night air rushed in—no colder than the air in here, but fresh and full of earth-scent, diminishing the smoke-reek. With a cry, Jazz darted through the doorway.

“There.” He pointed, every fiber in his body taut and alive. Glow across the hummocky abandoned fields, opalescent in the thin fog that was rising. It could be a truck, Therese thought. Coming slow in the fog along the riverbed highway.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a flying saucer landing, touching down to collect a lost child, take him home. Overhead, Pegasus soared, his wings spread above the rising fog, offering a ride to anyone who dared.

Jazz leaped onto the curb, paused, head lifted like a spike buck, looked back. His face was like the moon, brilliant with reflected light. The light of home. “Take it easy.” He lifted his hand in a wave or a salute. Then he was gone, vaulting over the low concrete wall of the huge parking structure beyond the grass, running like a deer through the tall grass.

Across the wet, cold grass, the glow brightened. A truck, Therese thought. And when it took the curve where the riverbed bent, where she parked her car, she’d see the headlights. And would know it was a truck.

She closed her eyes.

Alien trapped among aliens—and aren’t we all? Homesick for a home we can’t remember, but we know it has to be there. Because if it isn’t there somewhere, lying back behind memory, like the darkness lies behind the stars . . . then what’s all this for? Her tears surprised her, scalding hot beneath her closed eyelids. You won’t feel them, Selva. Because my face isn’t covered by a skinthin mask, she thought bitterly. You won’t know that I’m crying. You can dub that in later, if you want. If it seems right.

Beside her, the night watchman shared her silence. The wind blew through the overgrown grass of the field, whispering in its own language as it probed the cracks and corners of the abandoned terminal. Therese sighed, and opened her eyes. The highway was dark. Truck or flying saucer, the light was gone. And so was Jazz.

Back to the city? Back to doorways and shelters, back to the ten-dollar blow jobs and the threat of the camps?

Or was he on his way home? Therese wiped her face on the back of her arm.

“Are you all right?” The night watchman’s voice was gentle.

“I guess.” Therese climbed over the low wall that Jazz had leaped so easily, shivering because she was freezing in her light skins.

“I’ll lend you a jacket.” He stopped beside a small gray door in the wall of the parking structure. “If you want.”

He had believed, too, down there. “Thanks,” she said, because he wanted her to take it. “I’d appreciate it.” And for the first time, she really looked at him, saw, not a boogeyman, not a shadowy presence, but a man, a person, in the flesh. The halogen security lamps cast shadow beneath his cheekbones, turned his face stark and craggy. His dark eyes were on hers, and light glowed in their depths.

“You can drop it off any time.” He unlocked the door, touched on the lights.

Therese blinked in the sudden glare. His office. Terminal screen on a desk, basic kitchen-wall with microwave and freezer above a cheap new counter top and tiny sink. A bookshelf full of old hardcopy books. A small futon lay on the floor by the wall, scattered with a few toys, a bright green blanket tucked around the curled and sleeping shape of a small child.

“My son.” His face softened for a minute. “He lives here with me. Sorry about the mess.” He sounded apologetic as he picked up a plastic trashbag from the floor.

This was home, she thought. For him and his son. She’d heard the echo in his voice when he’d said “the job matters.” Home. He’d still been able to understand what Jazz had painted on the hangar wall, what she had woven across the night sky.

“Here.” He held out a plastic trash bag.

She opened it, looked in. Tangled strands of light fiber. Neat rolls of transparent plastic. String. “My stuff.” She looked up, met his dark eyes, brilliant in his soot-streaked face. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ll walk you to the gate.” He ushered her out, closed the door gently and protectively on the sleeping child.

They didn’t speak as they followed the empty driveway out to the main gate. It was chainlink, but new, topped with shiny thorns of razor-wire. He touched a keypad set into a concrete pillar, and the gate groaned, began to rumble open. “I got to go chase the boarders.” He smiled crookedly. “They’ll be disappointed if I don’t.”

“This is your performance art.” She returned his smile.

“Hey, whatever.” He spread his hands, then hesitated. “I . . . didn’t look. When Jazz ran. You didn’t either, did you?”

“No,” she murmured. If she had, if he had, they would have turned that flying saucer back into a truck, have turned Home back into a Front Street meat rack, or a detention camp.

“I’m glad,” he said, and home hummed beneath his words.

Maybe that’s what let him understand. Because he’d made his home here, for himself and his son. But the gate was open now, no longer a barrier between Therese and the real world of money and deadlines. She sighed, resenting that open gate, feeling subtly betrayed. “Why did you call in my car for trespass?” She had to ask. “I can’t afford the fine.”

“I didn’t.” Genuine confusion—his turn to look betrayed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

And he wouldn’t. “You’re right,” she said, and sudden grief clutched her. She stretched up, and kissed him on the mouth. After a moment of surprise, he responded, lips pressing against hers, warm and firm with life.

Then she walked away, and he didn’t try to stop her, as she marched down the asphalt driveway and then out to her car, feet dry on the asphalt, heart heavy. And went . . . not home, but back to where she lived.

It only occured to her when she was halfway there that she didn’t know the night watchman’s name, and that he had never asked for hers.

Urgent messages from Selva greeted her. Call me. Call me right away. And the grief weighed on her shoulders, heavy as lead. When she put on her goggles, Selva’s image coalesced instantly, as if she’d been waiting for Therese to call. “My God, ’Rese, are you okay?”

Her face looked haggard, head and shoulders only against a pastel wall—which meant that this was realtime, a straight video transmission from her apartment, not translated through a virtual self. No tricks of programmed emotion, then. Except the ultimate, the one she’d already pulled. “You were looking over my shoulder tonight.” The first time she’d called, she’d known that Therese had been at the airport. Were you flying your kites? she had asked, but she had known. I missed it, Therese thought numbly. I wanted to miss it. “How long have you been in my filespace?”

Selva looked away, convicted by her own worry.

“Did you watch it all? My flight, our fall, everything? You turned in my car for trespass.” Therese’s voice cracked. “My God, Selva, why?”

“I didn’t watch. Not much.” Selva faced her, eyes bleak. “I was monitoring the transmission, watching the parameters in digital, and when the activity went to the end of the scale, I checked the visuals.” She paused for a heartbeat. “I saw you fall. For a minute, I thought . . . ” Her shoulders jerked. “I stopped watching when you climbed out.”

“Nice.” Therese’s lips felt numb. She was beyond anger now, as stunned as if the sky had cracked and rained down on her head. “So, not only do you get my car busted, you can sell my recording direct to Xavier. Hey, always cut out the middleman whenever possible!”

“Stop it, ’Rese.” Selva didn’t look away this time, didn’t try to hide the pain in her face. “Yeah, I turned your car in. Xavier’s looking for new blood, and I figured if he saw your stuff—if you maybe found out that it isn’t so bad, working for somebody . . . If you’d turned it down, I would have paid the fine myself, but I wanted. . . . ” She clenched her fists, her face pale and stark. “I wanted to make you hear me, okay? I love you. Don’t you get it? Do you have to tie our love to your definition of success? Can’t you just let us happen? Do you think I care if I’m paying the rent?”

The anguish in her voice gutted Therese’s anger. Do you care that much? she wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come. It was her turn to look away. She’d seen it after all—whether that light was a truck or not. She had it on file, and so did Selva—the conclusion of Jazz’s wild dash across the airport field. Stored in patterns of excited electrons.

“I dumped the file from tonight.” Selva had turned away again, her shoulders drooping, where they never drooped, always lifted proudly, strong and muscular. “If you had gotten hurt . . . if you had died . . . ” She swallowed, her throat leaping. “I also downloaded money for the fine into your account. You’re the one who has to decide, and I guess you have. I’m sorry. I love you, and I’ll leave you alone. Will you please . . . be careful out there?”

And the screen went blank.

Therese stared at it for a long moment; angry at Selva for the fine, for the betrayal of that hack into her filespace. She snapped her fingers, called up her workspace. The file was there, bounced from Earth to sky to Earth again, an airplane icon glowing in the air. She could know. She stared at it. Your lights say the same thing, he’d told her.

“You’re wrong. I’m not like you,” she whispered. She had looked at the night watchman and seen a man, not a cop, or an alien, or a boogeyman. She had peeked at his cramped apartment and his sleeping son, and had felt its tug.

And Jazz knew. Poised on the curb, he hadn’t asked her to come along. Therese let her breath out slowly, touched the airplane. “System, delete,” she said.

Are you sure you want to delete this file? her system asked. You have no backup.

Maybe you had to define home for yourself, and then believe in it enough to make it real. “System, yes,” she said and let her breath out in a rush. “Delete the file.”

File deleted. The airplane winked out of existence.

“I hope you’re already home,” Therese murmured. And went into her bank account to find the three thousand dollars Selva had left there. And used it to pay her fine. On the table, the fountain of glass showered the room with fractured light. Maybe it wasn’t a message of failure. Maybe Selva had known her well enough to send her something that existed only for its own sake, for beauty. Maybe Selva was trying to define home for herself.

Outside, Pegasus spread his wings to fly beyond the stars. Therese hung the night watchman’s jacket on a chair. Neatly. She would return it in the daylight, ask his name, and his son’s name, visit with them for a few minutes. And then . . . she’d buy a ticket for the mag-lev. Going to Vancouver, B.C. For a visit, or for a long time, she didn’t know yet. They were going to be angry at each other for awhile. Maybe there were depths beyond the anger. Therese picked up the glass, turning it to scatter the rays from the cheap light overhead. “You were right, Selva,” she murmured. “I was afraid.” Of the real world, of Pegasus’s broad back. Still was. But she would bring along the light-net that the night watchman had returned with her. Selva would know a good place to fly it. They could cast it one more time at Pegasus.

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 1995.

Butterfly, Falling at Dawn

Aliette de Bodard

Even seen from afar, the Mexica District in Fenliu was distinctive: tall, whitewashed buildings clashing with the glass-and-metal architecture of the other skyscrapers. A banner featuring Huitzilpochtli, protector god of Greater Mexica, flapped in the wind as my aircar passed under the security gates. The god’s face was painted as dark as blood.

A familiar sight, even though I’d turned my back on the religion of my forefathers a lifetime ago. I sighed, and tried to focus on the case ahead. Zhu Bao, the magistrate in charge of the district, had talked me into taking on this murder investigation because he thought I would handle the situation better than him, being Mexica-born.

I wasn’t quite so sure.

The crime scene was a wide, well-lit dome room on the last floor of 3454 Hummingbird Avenue, with the highest ceiling I had ever seen. The floor was strewn with hologram pedestals, though the holograms were all turned off.

A helical stair led up to a mezzanine dazzlingly high, somewhere near the top of the dome. At the bottom of those stairs, an area had been cordoned off. Within lay the naked body of a woman. She was Mexica, and about thirty years old—she could have been my older sister. Morbidly fascinated, I let my eyes take in everything: the fine dust that covered the body, the yellow makeup she’d spread all over herself, the soft swell of her breasts, the unseeing eyes still staring upwards.

I looked up at the railing high above. I guessed she’d fallen down. Broken neck probably, though I’d have to wait for the lab people to be sure.

A militiaman in silk robes was standing guard near one of the hologram pedestals. “I’m Private Li Fai, ma’am. I was the first man on the scene,” he said, saluting as I approached. I couldn’t help scrutinising him for signs of contempt. As the only Mexica-born magistrate in the Xuyan administration, I’d had my fair share of racism to deal with. But Li Fai appeared sincere, utterly unconcerned by the colour of my skin.

“I’m Magistrate Hue Ma of Yellow Dragon Falls District,” I said, giving him my Xuyan name and title with scarcely a pause. “Magistrate Zhu Bao has transferred the case over to me. When did you get here?”

He shrugged. “We got a call near the Fourth Bi-Hour. A man named Tecolli, who said his lover had fallen to her death.”

I almost told him he was pronouncing “Tecolli” wrong, that a Mexica wouldn’t have put the accent that way, and then I realised this was pointless. I was there as a Xuyan magistrate, not a Mexica refugee—those days were over, long past. “They told me it was a crime, but this looks like an accident.”

Li Fai shook his head. “There are markings on the railing above, ma’am, and her nails are all ragged and bloody. Looks like she struggled, and hard.”

“I see.” It looked I wasn’t going to get out of this so easily.

I wasn’t trying to shirk my job. But any contacts with Mexica made me uneasy—reminded me of my childhood in Greater Mexica, cut short by the Civil War. Had Zhu Bao not insisted . . .

No. I was a magistrate. I had a job to do, a murderer to catch.

“Where is this . . . Tecolli?” I asked, finally.

“We’re holding him,” Li Fai said. “You want to talk to him?”

I shook my head. “Not right now.” I pointed to the landing high above. “Have you been there?”

He nodded. “There’s a bedroom, and a workshop. She was a hologram designer.”

Holograms were the latest craze in Xuya. Like all works of art, they were expensive: one of them, with the artist’s electronic signature, would be worth more than my annual stipend. “What was her name?”

“Papalotl,” Li Fai said.

Papalotl. Butterfly, in Nahuatl. A graceful name given to beautiful Mexica girls. There had been one of them in my school, back in Tenochtitlán, before the Civil War.

The Civil War . . .

Abruptly, I was twelve again, jammed in the aircar against my brother Cuauhtemoc, hearing the sound of gunfire splitting the window—

No. No. I wasn’t a child any more. I’d made my life in Xuya, passed the administrative exams and risen to magistrate, the only Mexica-born to do so in Fenliu.

“Ma’am?” Li Fai asked, staring at me.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll just have a look around, and then we’ll see about Tecolli.”

I moved towards the nearest hologram pedestal. A plaque showed its title: the journey. It was engraved in Nahuatl, in English and in Xuyan, the three languages of our continent. I turned it on, and watched a cone of white light widen from the pedestal to the ceiling; a young Xuyan coalesced at its centre, wearing the grey silk robes of a eunuch.

“We did not think it would go that far,” he said, even as his image faded, replaced by thirteen junks sailing over great waves. “To the East, Si-Jian Ma said as we departed China; to the East, until we struck land—”

I turned the hologram off. Every child on the continent knew what was coming next: the first Chinese explorers landing on the West Coast of the Lands of Dawn, the first tentative contacts with the Mexica Empire, culminating in Hernán Cortés’ aborted siege of Tenochtitlán, a siege cut short by Chinese gunpowder and cannon.

I moved to the next hologram, spring among the emerald flowers: a Mexica woman recounting a doomed love story between her and a Xuyan businessman.

The other holograms were much the same: people telling their life’s story—or, rather, I suspected, the script Papalotl had written for them.

I headed for the hologram nearest the body. Its plaque read homewards. When turned on, it displayed the image of a swan, the flag-emblem Xuya had chosen after winning its independence from the Chinese motherland two centuries ago. The bird glided, serene, on a lake bordered by weeping willows. After a while, a hummingbird, Greater Mexica’s national bird, came and hovered by the swan, its beak opening and closing as if it were speaking.

But there was no sound at all.

I turned it off, and on again, to no avail. I felt around in the pedestal, and confirmed my suspicions: the sound chip was missing. Which was not normal. All holograms came with one—an empty one if necessary, but there was always a sound chip.

I’d have to ask the lab people. Perhaps the missing chip was simply upstairs, in Papalotl’s workshop.

I moved around the remaining holograms. Four of the pedestals, those furthest away from the centre, had no chips at all, neither visu nor sound. And yet the plaques all bore titles.

The most probable explanation was that Papalotl had changed the works on display; but given the missing sound chip, there could have been another explanation. Had the murderer touched those holograms—and if so, why?

I sighed, cast a quick glance at the room for anything else. Nothing leapt to my eyes, so I had Li Fai bring me Tecolli, Papalotl’s lover.

Tecolli stood watching me without fear—or indeed, without respect. He was a young, handsome Mexica man, but didn’t quite have the arrogance or assurance I expected.

“You know why I’m here,” I said.

Tecolli smiled. “Because the magistrate thinks I will confide in you.”

I shook my head. “I’m the magistrate,” I said. “The case has been transferred over to me.” I took out a small pad and a pen, ready to take notes during the interview.

Tecolli watched me, no doubt seeing for the first time the unobtrusive jade-coloured belt I wore over my robes. “You are not—” he started, and then changed his posture radically, moving in one fluid gesture from a slouch to a salute. “Apologies, Your Excellency. I was not paying attention.”

Something in his stance reminded me, sharply, of my lost childhood in Tenochtitlán, Greater Mexica’s capital. “You are a Jaguar Knight?”

He smiled like a delighted boy. “Close,” he said, switching from Xuyan to Nahuatl. “I’m an Eagle Knight in the Fifth Black Tezcatlipoca Regiment.”

The Fifth Regiment—nicknamed “Black Tez” by the Xuyans—was the one guarding the Mexica embassy. I had not put Tecolli down as a soldier, but I could see now the slight callus under his mouth, where the turquoise lip-plug would usually chafe.

“You weren’t born here,” Tecolli said. His stance had relaxed. “Xuyan-born can’t tell us apart from commoners.”

I shook my head, trying to dislodge old, unwelcome memories—my parents’ frozen faces after I told them I’d become a magistrate in Fenliu, and that I’d changed my name to a Xuyan one. “I wasn’t born in Xuya,” I said, in Xuyan. “But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.”

“No,” Tecolli said, coming back to Xuyan. There was fear in his face now. “You want to know about her.” His eyes flicked to the body, and back to me. For all his rigid stance, he looked as though he might be sick.

“Yes,” I said. “What can you tell me about this?”

“I came early this morning. Papalotl said we would have a sitting.”

“A sitting? I saw no hologram pieces with you.”

“It was not done yet,” Tecolli snapped, far too quickly for it to be the truth. “Anyway, I came and saw the security system was disengaged. I thought she was waiting for me—”

“Had she ever done this before? Disengaged the security system?”

Tecolli shrugged. “Sometimes. She was not very good at protecting herself.” His voice shook a little, but it didn’t sound like grief. Guilt?

Tecolli went on: “I came into the room, and I saw her. As she is now.” He paused, choking on his words. “I—I could not think. I checked to see if there was anything I could do . . . but she was dead. So I called the militia.”

“Yes, I know. Near the Fourth Bi-Hour. A bit early to be about, isn’t it?” In this season, on the West Coast, the sun wouldn’t even have risen.

“She wanted me to be early,” Tecolli said, but did not elaborate.

“I see,” I said. “What can you tell me about the swan?”

Tecolli started. “The swan?”

I pointed to the hologram. “It has no sound chip. And several other pieces have no chips at all.”

“Oh, the swan,” Tecolli said. He was not looking at me—in fact, he was positively sweating guilt. “It is a commission. By the Fenliu Prefect’s Office. They wanted something to symbolise the ties between Greater Mexica and Xuya. I suppose she never had time to complete the audio.”

“Don’t lie to me.” I was annoyed he would play me for a fool. “What’s the matter with that swan?”

“I do not see what you are talking about,” Tecolli said.

“I think you do,” I said, but did not press my point. At least, not yet. Tecolli’s mere presence at the scene of the crime gave me the right to bring him back to the tribunal’s cells to secure his testimony—and, should I judge it necessary, to ply him with drugs or pain to make him confess. Many Xuyan magistrates would have done that. I found the practice not only abhorrent, but needless. I knew I would not get the truth out of Tecolli that way. “Do you have any idea why she’s naked?” I asked.

Tecolli said, slowly, “She liked to work that way. At least with me,” he amended. “She said it was liberating. I . . .” He paused, and waited for a reaction. I kept my face perfectly blank.

Tecolli went on, “It turned her on. And we both knew it.”

I was surprised at his frankness. “So it isn’t surprising.” Well, that was one mystery solved—or perhaps not. Tecolli could still be lying to me. “How did you get along with her?”

Tecolli smiled—a smile that came too easily. “As well as lovers do.”

“Lovers can kill each other,” I said.

Tecolli stared at me, horrified. “Surely you do not think—”

“I’m just trying to determine what your relationship was.”

“I loved her,” Tecolli snapped. “I would never have harmed her. Are you satisfied?”

I wasn’t. He seemed to waver between providing glib answers and avoiding my questions altogether.

“Do you know if she had any enemies?” I asked.

“Papalotl?” Tecolli’s voice faltered. He would not look at me. “Some among our people felt she had turned away from the proper customs. She did not have an altar to the gods in her workshop, she seldom prayed or offered blood sacrifices—”

“And they hated her enough to kill?”

“No,” Tecolli said. He sounded horrified. “I do not see how anyone could have wanted to—”

“Someone did. Unless you believe it’s an accident?” I dangled the question innocently enough, but there was only one possible answer, and he knew it.

“Do not toy with me,” Tecolli said. “No one could have fallen over that railing by accident.”

“No. Indeed not.” I smiled, briefly, watching the fear creep across his face. What could he be hiding from me? If he’d committed the murder, he was a singularly fearful killer—but I had seen those too, those who would weep and profess regrets, but who still had blood on their hands. “Does she have any family?”

“Her parents died in the Civil War,” Tecolli said. “I know she came from Greater Mexica twelve years ago with her elder sister, Coaxoch, but I never met her. Papalotl did not talk much about herself.”

No. She would not have—not to another Mexica. I knew what one did, when one turned away from Mexica customs, as Papalotl had done, as I had done. One remained silent; one did not speak for fear one would be castigated—or worse, pitied.

“I’ll bring her the news,” I said. “You’ll have to accompany the militiamen to the tribunal, to have your story checked, and some blood samples taken.”

“And then?” He was too eager, far too much for an innocent, even an aggrieved one. “I’m free?”

“For the moment—and don’t think you can leave Fenliu. I need you at hand, in case I have more questions,” I said, darkly. I would catch him soon enough, and tear the truth from him if I had to.

As he turned to leave, he straightened his turtleneck, and I saw a glint of green around his neck. Jade. A necklace of jade, made of small beads—but I knew each of those beads would be worth a month’s salary for an ordinary Xuyan worker. “They pay you well, in the army,” I said, knowing that they did not.

Startled, Tecolli reached for his neck. “That? It is not what you think. It was an inheritance from a relative.”

He said the words quickly, and his eyes flicked back and forth between me and the door.

“I see,” I said, sweetly, knowing that he was lying. And that he knew I’d caught him. Good. Let him stew a bit. Perhaps it would make him more co-operative.

After Tecolli had left, I gave orders to Li Fai to trail him, and to report to me through the militia radio channel. Our young lover had looked in a hurry, and I was curious to know why.

Back at the tribunal, I had a brief discussion with Doctor Li: the lab people had examined the body, and they had come up with nothing significant. They confirmed that Papalotl had been thrown over the railing, plummeting from the high-perched mezzanine to her death.

“It’s a crime of passion,” Doctor Li said, darkly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Whoever did this pushed her over the railing, and she clung to it as she fell—we analysed the marks on the wood. And then the murderer kept on tearing at her until she let go. From the disorderly pattern of wounds on her hands, it’s obvious that the perpetrator was not thinking clearly, nor being very efficient.”

Passion. A lover’s passion, perhaps? A lover who seemed to have rather too much money for his pay—I wondered where Tecolli had earned it, and how.

The lab people had not found the missing audio chip either, which confirmed to me that the swan was important—but I did not know in what way.

“What about fingerprints?” I asked.

“We didn’t find any,” Doctor Li said. “Not even hers. The railing was obviously wiped clean by the perpetrator.”

Damn. The murderer had been thorough.

After that conversation, I made a brief stop by my office. There I lit a stick of incense over my small altar, pausing for a brief, perfunctory prayer to Guan Yin, Goddess of Compassion. Then I turned on my computer. Like almost every computer in the city of Fenliu, it had been manufactured in Greater Mexica, and the screen lit up with a stylised butterfly, symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the Mexica god of knowledge and computers.

This never failed to send a twinge of guilt through me, usually because it reminded me I should call my parents, something I hadn’t had the courage to do since becoming a magistrate. This time, though, the image that I could not banish from my mind was of Papalotl, stark naked, falling in slow motion over the railing.

I shook my head. It was not a time for morbid imaginings. I had work to do.

In my mail-box I found the preliminary reports of the militia, who had questioned the neighbours.

I scanned the reports, briefly. Most of the neighbours had not approved of Papalotl’s promiscuous attitude. Apparently Tecolli had only been the last in a series of men she’d brought home.

One thing Tecolli had not seen fit to mention to me was that he had quarrelled violently with Papalotl on the previous evening—shouts loud enough to be heard from the other flats. One neighbour had seen Tecolli leave, and Papalotl slam the door behind him.

So she had still been alive at that time.

I’d ask Tecolli about the quarrel. Later, though. I needed more evidence if I wanted to spring a trap, and so far I had little to go on.

In the meantime, I asked one of the clerks at the tribunal to look up the address of Papalotl’s sister. I busied myself with administrative matters while he searched in the directory, and soon had my answer.

Papalotl had had only one sister, and no other living relative. Coaxoch lived on 23 Izcopan Square, just a few streets away from her younger sibling, on the edge of the Mexica District—my next destination.

The address turned out to be a Mexica restaurant: The Quetzal’s Rest. I parked my aircar a few streets away and walked the rest of the way, mingling with the crowd on the sidewalks—elbowing Mexica businessmen in embroidered cotton suits, and women with yellow makeup and black-painted teeth, who wore knee-length skirts and swayed alluringly as they walked.

The restaurant’s facade was painted with a life-sized Mexica woman in a skirt and matching blouse, standing before an electric stove. Over the woman crouched Chantico, Goddess of the Hearth, wearing her crown of maguey cactus thorns and her heavy bracelets of carnelian and amber.

The restaurant itself had two parts: a small shack which churned out food to the aircars of busy men, and a larger room for those who had more time.

I headed for the last of those, wondering where I would find Coaxoch. The room was not unlike a Xuyan restaurant: sitting mats around low circular tables, and on the tables an electric brazier which kept the food warm—in this case maize flatbreads, the staple of Mexica food. The air had that familiar smell of fried oil and spices which always hung in my mother’s kitchen.

There were many customers, even though it was barely the Sixth Bi-Hour. Most of them were Mexica, but I caught a glimpse of Xuyans—and even of a paler face under red hair, which could only belong to an Irish-American.

I stopped the first waitress I could find, and asked, in Nahuatl, about Coaxoch.

“Our owner? She’s upstairs, doing the accounts.” The waitress was carrying bowls with various sauces, and it was clear that she had little time to chat with strangers.

“I need to see her,” I said.

The waitress looked me up and down, frowning—trying, no doubt, to piece the Mexica face with the Xuyan robes of state. “Not for good news, I’d wager. It’s the door on the left.”

I found Coaxoch in a small office, entering numbers onto a computer. Next to her, a tall, lugubrious Mexica man with spectacles was checking printed sheets. “Looks like the accounts don’t tally, Coaxoch.”

“Curses.” Coaxoch raised her head. She looked so much like her younger sister that I thought at first they might be twins; but then I saw the small differences: the slightly larger eyes, the fuller lips, and the rounder cheeks.

Coaxoch saw me standing in the doorway, and froze. “What do you want?” she asked.

“I—” Staring at her eyes, I found myself taken aback. “My name is Hue Ma. I’m the magistrate for the Yellow Dragon Falls District. Your sister is dead. I came to inform you, and to ask some questions.” I looked at her companion. “Would you mind leaving us alone?”

The man looked at Coaxoch, who had slumped on her desk, her face haggard. “Coaxoch?”

“I’ll be all right, Mahuizoh. Can you please go out?”

Mahuizoh threw me a worried glance, and went out, gently closing the door after him.

“So she is dead,” Coaxoch said, after a while, staring at her hands. “How?”

“She fell over a railing.”

Coaxoch looked up at me, a disturbing shrewdness in her eyes. “Fell? Or was pushed?”

“Was pushed,” I admitted, pulling a chair to me, and sitting face-to-face with her.

“And so you have come to find out who pushed her,” Coaxoch said.

“Yes. It happened this morning, near the Fourth Bi-Hour. Where were you then?”

Coaxoch shrugged, as if it did not matter that I asked her for an alibi. “Here, sleeping. I have a room on this floor, and the restaurant does not open until the Fifth Bi-Hour. I am afraid there were no witnesses though.”

I would check with the staff, but suspected Coaxoch was right and no one could speak for her. I said, carefully, “Do you know of any enemies she might have had?”

Coaxoch looked at her hands again. “I cannot help you.”

“She was your sister,” I said. “Don’t you want to know who killed her?”

“Want to know? Of course,” Coaxoch said. “I am not heartless. But I did not know her well enough to know her enemies. Funny, isn’t it, how far apart you can move? We came together from Tenochtitlán, each thinking the other’s thoughts, and now, twelve years later, I hardly ever saw her.”

I thought, uncomfortably, of the last time I’d talked to my parents—of the last time I’d spoken Nahuatl to anyone outside of my job. One, two years ago?

I couldn’t. Whenever I visited my parents, I’d see the same thing: the small, dingy flat with the remnants of their lives in Greater Mexica, with photographs of executed friends like so many funeral shrines. I’d smell again the odour of charred flesh in the streets of Tenochtitlán, see my friend Yaotl fall with a bullet in his chest, crying out my name, and I unable to do anything but scream for help that would never come.

Coaxoch was staring at me. I tore myself from my memories and said, “You knew about Papalotl’s lovers.” I couldn’t pin Coaxoch down. One moment she seemed remote, heartless, and the next her voice would crack, and her words come as if with great difficulty.

“She was notorious for them,” Coaxoch said. “It was my fault, all of this. I should have seen her more often. I should have asked . . .”

I said nothing. I had not known either of the two sisters, and my advice would have sounded false even to myself. I let Coaxoch’s voice trail off, and asked, “When did you last see her?”

“Six days ago,” Coaxoch said. “She had lunch with Mahuizoh and me.”

Mahuizoh had looked to be about Coaxoch’s age, or a little older. “Mahuizoh being . . . ?”

“A friend of the family,” Coaxoch said, her face closed.

Something told me I could ask about Mahuizoh, but would receive no true answer. I let the matter slide for the moment, and asked, “And she did not seem upset then?”

Coaxoch shook her head. She opened the drawer of her desk and withdrew a beautiful slender pipe of tortoiseshell, which she filled with shaking hands. As she closed the drawer, I caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned photograph: a young Mexica wearing the cloak of noblemen. It was half-buried beneath papers.

Coaxoch lit her pipe. She inhaled, deeply; the smell of flowers and tobacco filled the small office. “No, she did not seem upset at the time. She was working on a new piece, a commission by the Prefect’s Office. She was very proud of it.”

“Did you see the commission?”

“No,” Coaxoch said. “I knew it was going to be a swan and a hummingbird, the symbols of Xuya and Greater Mexica. But I did not know what text or what music she would choose.”

“Does Mahuizoh know?”

“Mahuizoh?” Coaxoch started. “I do not think he would know that, but you can ask him. He was closer to Papalotl than me.”

I’d already intended to interview Mahuizoh; I added that to the list of questions I’d have to ask him. “And so she just seemed excited?”

“Yes. But I could be wrong. I had not seen her in a year, almost.” Her voice had gone emotionless again.

“Why?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

Coaxoch shrugged. “We . . . drifted apart after settling in Fenliu, each of us going our own way, I suppose. Papalotl found her refuge in her holograms and in her lovers; I found mine in my restaurant.”

“Refuge from what?” I asked.

Coaxoch looked at me. “You know,” she said. “You fled the Civil War as well, did you not?”

I said, startled, “You can’t know that.”

“It is written on your face. And why else would a Mexica become a Xuyan magistrate?”

“There are other reasons,” I said, keeping my face stern.

Coaxoch shrugged. “Perhaps. I will tell you what I remember: brother turning on brother, and the streets black with blood; the warriors of the Eagle Regiments fighting one another; snipers on the roof, felling people in the marketplace; priests of Tezcatlipoca entering every house to search for loyalists—”

Every word she spoke conjured confused, dreadful images in my mind, as if the twelve-year-old who had fled over the border was still within me. “Stop,” I whispered. “Stop.”

Coaxoch smiled, bitterly. “You remember as well.”

“I’ve put it behind me,” I said, behind clenched teeth.

Coaxoch’s gaze moved up and down, taking in my Xuyan robes and jade-coloured belt. “So I see.” Her voice was deeply ironic. But her eyes, brimming with tears, belied her. She was transferring her grief into aggressiveness. “Was there anything else you wanted to know?”

I could have told her that Papalotl had died naked, waiting for her lover. But I saw no point. Either she knew about her sister’s eccentric habits and it would come as no surprise, or she did not know everything and I would wound her needlessly.

“No,” I said, at last. “There wasn’t anything else.”

Coaxoch said, carefully, “When will you release the body? I have to make . . . funeral arrangements.” And her voice broke then. She buried her face in her hands.

I waited until she looked up again. “We’ll let it into your keeping as soon as we can.”

“I see. As soon as it is presentable,” Coaxoch said with a bitter smile.

There was no answer I could give to that. “Thank you for your time,” I said instead.

Coaxoch shrugged, but did not speak again. She turned back to the screen, staring at it with eyes that clearly did not see it. I wondered what memories she could be thinking of, but decided not to intrude any further.

As I exited the room my radio beeped, signalling a private message had been transmitted to my handset. Mahuizoh was waiting outside. “I’d like to have a word with you in a minute,” I said, lifting the handset out of my belt.

He nodded. “I’ll be with Coaxoch.”

In the corridor, I moved to a quiet corner to listen to the message. The frescoes on the walls were of gods: the Protector Huitzilpochtli with his face painted blue and his belt of obsidian knives; Tezcatlipoca, God of War and Fate, standing against a background of burning skyscrapers and stroking the jaguar by his side.

They made me feel uncomfortable, reminding me of what I’d left behind. Clearly Coaxoch had held to the old ways—perhaps clinging too much to them, as she herself had admitted.

The message came from Unit 6 of the militia: after leaving the tribunal, Tecolli had gone to the Black Tez Barracks. The militia, of course, had had to stop there, for the Barracks were Mexica territory. But they had posted a watch on a nearby rooftop, and had seen Tecolli make a long, frantic phone call from the courtyard. He had then gone back to his rooms, and had not emerged.

I called Unit 6, and told them to notify me the moment Tecolli made a move.

Then I went back to Coaxoch’s office, to interview Mahuizoh.

When I came in, Mahuizoh was sitting close to Coaxoch, talking in a low voice to her. Behind the spectacles, his eyes shone with an odd kind of fervour. I wondered what he was to Coaxoch, what he had been to Papalotl.

Mahuizoh looked up and saw me. “Your Excellency,” he said. His Xuyan was much less accented than Coaxoch’s.

“Is there a room where we could have a quiet word?” I asked.

“My office. Next door,” Mahuizoh said. Coaxoch was still staring straight ahead, her eyes glassy, her face a blank mask. “Coaxoch—”

She did not answer. One of her hands was playing with the tortoiseshell pipe, twisting and turning it until I feared she would break it.

Mahuizoh’s office was much smaller than Coaxoch’s, and papered over with huge posters of ballgame players, proudly wearing their knee-and elbow-pads, soaring over the court to put the ball through the vertical steel-hoop.

Mahuizoh did not sit; he leaned against the desk, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want to know?” he said.

“You work here?”

“From time to time,” Mahuizoh said. “I’m a computer programmer at Paoli Tech.”

“You’ve known Coaxoch long?”

Mahuizoh shrugged. “I met her and Papalotl when they came here, twelve years ago. My capulli clan helped them settle into the district. They were so young, back then,” he said, blithely unaware that he wasn’t much older than Coaxoch. “So . . . different.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Like frightened birds flushed out of the forest,” Mahuizoh said.

“The War does that to you,” I said, falling back on platitudes. But part of me, the terrified child that had fled Tenochtitlán, knew that those weren’t platitudes at all, but the only way to transcribe the unspeakable past into words.

“I suppose,” Mahuizoh said. “I was born in Fenliu, so I wouldn’t know that.”

“They lost both their parents in the War?”

“Their parents were loyal to the old administration—the one that lost the Civil War,” Mahuizoh said. “The priests of Tezcatlipoca found them one night, and killed them before Papalotl’s eyes. She never recovered from that.” His voice shook. “And now—”

I did not say the words he would have me say, all too aware of his grief. “You knew Papalotl well.”

Mahuizoh shrugged again. “No more or no less than Coaxoch.” I saw the faint flicker of his eyes. Liar.

“She had lovers,” I said, carefully probing at a sore space.

“She was always . . . more promiscuous than Coaxoch,” Mahuizoh said.

“Who has no fiancé?”

“Coaxoch had a fiancé. Izel was a nobleman in the old administration of Tenochtitlán. He was the one who bargained for Papalotl’s and Coaxoch’s release from jail, after the priests killed their parents. But he’s dead now,” Mahuizoh said.

“He’s the man whose picture is in her drawer?”

Mahuizoh started. “You’ve seen that? Yes, that’s him. She’s never got over him. She still makes funeral offerings even though he’s beyond all that nonsense. I hoped that with time she would forget, but she never did.”

“How did Izel die?”

“A party of rebel warriors started chasing their aircar a few measures away from the border. Izel told Coaxoch to drive on, and then he leapt out with his gun out. He managed to stop the warriors’ aircar, but they caught him. And executed him.”

“A hero’s death,” I said.

Mahuizoh smiled without joy. “And a hero’s life. Yes. I can certainly see why Coaxoch wouldn’t forget him in a hurry.” His voice was bitter, and I thought I knew why: he had hoped to gain a place in Coaxoch’s heart, but had always found a dead man standing before him.

“Tell me about Papalotl,” I said.

“Papalotl . . . could be difficult,” Mahuizoh said. “She was willful, and independent, and she left the clan to focus on her art, abandoning our customs.”

“And you disapproved?”

His face twisted. “I didn’t see what she saw. I didn’t live through a war. I didn’t have the right to judge—and neither had the clan.”

“So you loved her, in your own way.”

Mahuizoh started. “Yes,” he said. “You could say that.” But there was a deeper meaning to his words, one I could not fathom.

“Do know Tecolli?”

Mahuizoh’s face darkened, and for a moment I saw murder in his eyes. “Yes. He was Papalotl’s lover.”

“You did not like him?”

“I met him once. I know his kind.”

“Know?”

He spat the words. “Tecolli is a parasite. He’ll take everything you have to give, and return nothing.”

“Not even love?” I asked, seemingly innocently.

“Mark my words,” Mahuizoh said, looking up at me, and all of a sudden I was not staring at the face of a frail computer programmer, but into the black-streaked one of a warrior. “He’ll suck everything out of you, drink your blood and feast on your pain, and when he leaves there’ll be nothing left but a dry husk. He didn’t love Papalotl; and I never understood what she saw in him.”

And in that last sentence I heard more than hatred for Tecolli.

“You were jealous,” I said. “Of both of them.”

He recoiled at my words. “No. Never.”

“Jealous enough to kill, even.”

His face had grown blank, and he said nothing. At last he looked up again, and he had grown smaller, almost penitent. “She didn’t understand,” he said. “Didn’t understand that she was wasting her time. I couldn’t make her see.”

“Where were you this morning?”

Mahuizoh smiled. “Checking alibis? I have very little to offer you. It was my day off, so I went for a walk near the Blue Crane Pagoda. And then I came here.”

“I suppose no one saw you?”

“No one that would recognise me. There were a few passers-by, but I wasn’t paying attention to them, and I doubt they were paying attention to me.”

“I see,” I said, but I could not forget his black rage, could not forget that he might have lost his calm once and for all, finding Papalotl naked in her workshop, waiting for her lover. “Thank you.”

“If you don’t need me, I’ll go back,” Mahuizoh said.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t need you. I might have further questions.”

He looked uncomfortable at that. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”

I left him, made my way through the crowded restaurant, listening to the hymns blaring out of the loudspeakers, inhaling the smell of maize and octli drink. I could not banish Coaxoch’s words from my mind: I will tell you what I remember: brother turning on brother, and the streets black with blood . . .

It was a nightmare I had left behind, a long time ago. It could neither touch me nor harm me. I was Xuyan, not Mexica. I was safe, ensconced in Xuya’s bosom, worshipping the Taoist Immortals and the Buddha, and trusting the protection of the Imperial Family in Dongjing.

Safe.

But the War, it seemed, never truly went away.

I came back to the tribunal in a thoughtful mood, having found no one to confirm either Mahuizoh’s or Coaxoch’s alibi. Since we were well into the Eighth Bi-Hour, I had a quick, belated lunch at my desk—noodle soup with coriander, and a coconut jelly as a dessert.

I checked my mails. A few reports from the militia were waiting for me. The timestamp dated them earlier than my departure for The Quetzal’s Rest, but they had been caught in the network of the bureaucracy and slowed down on their way to the tribunal.

Cursing against weighty administrations, I read them, not expecting much.

How wrong I was.

Unit 7 of the Mexica District Militia had interviewed the left-door neighbour of Papalotl: an old merchant who had insomnia, and who had been awake at the Third Bi-Hour. He had seen Tecolli enter Papalotl’s flat a full half-hour before Tecolli actually called the militia.

Damn. There was still a possibility that Tecolli could have found the body earlier, but if so, why hadn’t he called the militia at once? Why had he waited so much?

Disposing of evidence, I thought, my heart beating faster and faster.

I should have arrested Tecolli. But instead I had clung to my old ideals, that torture was abhorrent and that a magistrate should find the truth, not wring it out of suspects. I had been weak.

Now . . .

I had him watched. He had been making phone calls. It was only a matter of time before he had to make some kind of move.

I sighed. Once a mistake had been made, you might as well drain the cup to the dregs. I’d wait.

It was a frustrating process. The afternoon passed and deepened into night. I attempted some Buddhist meditations, but I could not focus on my breath properly, and after a while I gave this up as a lost cause.

When the announcement came, I was so coiled up I knocked down the handset trying to pick it up.

“Your Excellency? This is Unit 6 of the militia. Target is on the move. Repeat: target is on the move.”

I grabbed my coat and rushed out, shouting for my aircar.

I met up with the aircar of Unit 6 in a fairly seedy neighbourhood of Fenliu: the Gardens of Felicity, once a middle-class area, had sunk back to crowded tenements and derelict buildings, sometimes abandoned halfway through their construction.

I had a brief chat with Li Fai, who was heading the militia: Tecolli had left the Black Tez Barracks and taken the mag-lev train which crisscrossed Fenliu. One of the militiamen had followed Tecolli on the mag-lev, until he alighted at the Gardens of Felicity station, making his way on foot into a small, almost unremarkable shop on Lao Zi Avenue.

Both our aircars were parked at the corner of Lao Zi Avenue, about fifty paces from the shop—and Tecolli had not emerged from there.

I looked at the three militiamen, checking that they had their service weapons, and drew my own Yi Sen semi-automatic. “We’re going in,” I said, arming the weapon in one swift movement, and hearing the click as the bullet was released into the chamber.

I stood near the closed door of the shop, feeling the reassuring weight of my gun. At this late hour the street was almost deserted, and any stray passers-by gave us a wide berth, not keen on interfering with Xuyan justice.

Li Fai was standing on tiptoe, trying to look through the window. After a while he came down, and raised three fingers. Three people, then. Or more. Li Fai had not seemed very certain.

Armed? I signed, and he shrugged.

Oh well. There came a time when you had to act.

I raised my hand, and gave the signal.

The first of the militiamen kicked open the door, yelling, “Militia!” and rushed inside. I followed, caught between two militiamen, fighting to raise my gun amidst memories of the War, of pressing myself in a doorway as loyalists and rebels shot at each other on Tenochtitlán’s marketplace—

No.

Not now.

Inside, everything was dark, save for a dimly-lit door; I caught a glimpse of several figures running through the frame.

I was about to run through the door in pursuit, but someone—Li Fai—laid a hand on my shoulder to restrain me.

I remembered then that I was a District Magistrate, and that they could not take risks with my life. It was frustrating, but I knew I had not been trained for this. I nodded to tell Li Fai I’d understood, and watched the militiamen rush through the door.

Gunshots echoed through the room. The first man who had entered fell, clutching his shoulder. A few more gunshots—I could not see the militiamen; they’d gone beyond the door.

A deathly silence settled over the place. I moved cautiously around the counter, and stepped through the door.

The light I had seen came from several hologram pedestals, which had their visuals on, but not their audios. On the floor were scattered chips—I almost stepped on one.

In the corner of the wood-panelled room was the body of a small, wizened Xuyan woman I did not know. Beside her was the gun she’d used. The militia’s bullet had caught her in the chest and thrown her backwards, against the wall.

Tecolli was crouching next to her, in a position of surrender. Two militiamen stood guard over him.

I smiled, grimly. “You’re under arrest.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Tecolli said, attempting to pull himself upright.

“Sedition will suffice,” I said. “Resisting the militia is a serious crime.” As I said this, my gaze, roaming the room, caught one of the images on a hologram pedestal, an image that was all too familiar: a Chinese man dressed in the grey silk robes of a eunuch, gradually fading and being replaced by thirteen junks on the ocean.

Papalotl’s holograms.

Things that should not have been copied, or sold elsewhere than in Papalotl’s workshop.

I remembered the missing chips in Papalotl’s pedestals, and suddenly understood where Tecolli’s wealth had come from. He had been stealing her chips, copying them and selling the copies on the black market And Papalotl had found out—no doubt the reason for the quarrel.

But for him it was different: he was an Eagle Knight, and subject to harsher laws than commoners. For a crime such as this he would be executed, his family disgraced. He’d had to silence Papalotl, once and for all.

He’ll suck everything out of you.

Mahuizoh could not have known the truth behind his words, back when he had spoken them to me. There was no way he could have known.

Tecolli’s eyes met mine, and must have seen the loathing I felt for him. All pretence fled from his face. “I did not kill her,” he said. “I swear to you I did not kill her.” He looked as though he might weep.

I spat, from between clenched teeth, “Take him away. We’ll deal with him at the tribunal.”

Yi Mei-Lin, one of the clerks, entered my office as I was typing the last of my preliminary report.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Still protesting his innocence. He says he found her already dead, and only used the extra half-hour to wipe off any proof that he might have tampered with the holograms—removing his fingerprints and wiping the pedestals clean.” Yi Mei-Lin had a full cardboard box in her hands, with a piece of paper covering it. “These are his things. I thought you might want a look.”

I sighed. My eyes ached from looking at the computer. “Yes. I probably should.” I already knew that although we’d found the missing chips in the black-market shop, the swan hologram’s audio chip had been nowhere to be found. Tecolli denied taking it. Not that I was inclined to trust him currently.

“I’ll bring you some jasmine tea,” Yi Mei-Lin said, and slipped out the door.

I rifled through Tecolli’s things, absentmindedly. The usual: wallet, keys, copper yuans—not even enough to buy tobacco. A metal lip-plug, tarnished from long contact with the skin. A packet of honey-toasted gourd seeds, still wrapped in plastic.

A wad of papers, folded over and over. I reached for it, unwound it, and stared at the letters. It was part of a script—the swan’s script, I realised, my heart beating faster. Tecolli had been the voice of the hummingbird, and Papalotl’s script was forcefully underlined and annotated in the margins, in preparation for his role.

The swan—Papalotl’s voice—merely recited a series of dates: the doomed charge of the Second Red Tezcatlipoca Regiment during Xuya’s Independence War with China; the Tripartite War and the triumph of the Mexica-Xuyan alliance over the United States.

And, finally, the Mexica Civil War, twelve years ago: the Xuyan soldiers dispatched to help restore order; the thousands of Mexica fleeing their home cities and settling across the border.

The swan then fell silent, and the hummingbird appeared. It was there that Tecolli’s role started.

Tonatiuh, the Fifth Sun, has just risen, and outside my cell I hear the priests of Huitzilpochtli chanting their hymns as they prepare the altar for my sacrifice.

I know that you are beyond the border now. The Xuyans will welcome you as they have welcomed so many of our people, and you will make a new life there. I regret only that I will not be there to walk with you—

Puzzled, I turned the pages. It was a long, poignant monologue, but it did not feel like the other audio chips I’d heard in Papalotl’s workshop. It felt . . .

More real, I thought, chilled without knowing why. I scanned the bottom of the second-to-last page.

They will send this letter on to you, for although they are my enemies they are honourable men.

Weep not for me. I die a warrior’s death on the altar, and my blood will make Tonatiuh strong. But my love is and always has been yours forever, whether in this world of fading flowers or in the god’s heaven.

Izel.

Izel.

Coaxoch’s fiancé.

It was the Third Bi-Hour when I arrived at The Quetzal’s Rest, and the restaurant was deserted, all the patrons since long gone back to their houses.

A light was still on upstairs, in the office. Gently, I pushed the door open, and saw her standing by the window, her back to me. She wore a robe with embroidered deer, and a shawl of maguey fibres—the traditional garb of women in Greater Mexica.

“I was waiting for you,” she said, not turning around.

“Where’s Mahuizoh?”

“I sent him away.” Coaxoch’s voice was utterly emotionless. On the desk stood the faded picture of Izel, and in front of the picture was a small bowl holding some grass—a funeral offering. “He would not have understood.”

She turned, slowly, to face me. Two streaks of black makeup ran on either side of her cheeks: the markings put on the dead’s faces before they were cremated.

Surprised, I recoiled, but she made no move towards me. Cautiously, I extended Tecolli’s crumpled paper to her. “Papalotl stole the original letter from you, didn’t she?”

Coaxoch shook her head. “I should have seen her more often, after we moved here,” she said. “I should have seen what she was turning into.” She laid both hands on the desk, as stately as an Empress. “When it went missing, I didn’t think of Papalotl. Mahuizoh thought that maybe Tecolli—”

“Mahuizoh hates Tecolli,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Coaxoch said. “I went to Papalotl, to ask her whether she’d seen it. I didn’t think.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. Her skin had gone red under the makeup. “When I came in, she opened the door to me—naked, and she didn’t even offer to dress herself. She left me downstairs and headed for her workshop, to finish something, she said. I followed her.”

Her voice quavered, but she steadied it. “I saw the letter on her table—she’d taken it. And when I asked her about it, she told me about the hologram, told me we were going to be famous when she sold this, and the Prefect’s Office would put it where everyone could see it . . .”

I said nothing. I remained where I was, listening to her voice grow more and more intense, until every word tore at me.

“She was going to . . . sell my pain. To sell my memories just for a piece of fame. She was going—” Coaxoch drew a deep breath. “I told her to stop. I told her it was not right, but she stood on the landing, shaking her head and smiling at me—as if she just had to ask for everything to be made right.

“She didn’t understand. She just didn’t understand. She’d changed too much.” Coaxoch stared at her hands, and then back at the picture of Izel. “I couldn’t make her shut up, you understand? I pushed and beat at her, and she wouldn’t stop smiling at me, selling my pain—”

She raised her gaze towards me, and I recognised the look in her eyes: it was the look of someone already dead, and who knows it. “I had to make her stop,” she said, her voice lower now, almost spent. “But she never did. Even after she fell she was still smiling.” There were tears in her eyes now. “Still laughing at me.”

I said at last, finding my words with difficulty, “You know how it goes.”

Coaxoch shrugged. “Do you think I care, Hue Ma? It ceased to matter a long time ago.” She cast a last, longing glance towards Izel’s picture, and straightened her shoulders. “It’s not right either, what I’ve done. Do what you have to.”

She did not bend, then, as the militia came into the room—did not bend as they closed the handcuffs over her wrists and led her away. I knew she would not bend on the day of her execution either, whatever the manner of it.

As we exited the restaurant, I caught a glimpse of Mahuizoh among the few passers-by who had gathered to watch the militia aircar. His gaze met mine, and held it for a second—and there were such depths of grief behind the spectacles that my breath caught and could not be released.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Justice has to be done.” But I did not think he could hear me.

Back at the tribunal, I sat at my desk, staring at my computer’s screensaver—one of Quetzalcoatl’s butterflies, multiplying until it filled the screen. There was something mindlessly reassuring about it.

I had to deal with Tecolli, had to type a report, had to call Zhu Bao to let him know his trust had not been misplaced and that I had found the culprit. I had to—

I felt hollow, drained of everything. At last I moved, and knelt before my small altar. Slowly, with shaking hands, I lit a stick of incense and placed it upright before the lacquered tablets. Then I sat on my knees, trying to banish the memory of Coaxoch’s voice.

I thought of her words to me: It ceased to matter a long time ago.

And my own, an eternity ago: The War does that to you.

I thought of Papalotl, turning away from Mexica customs to forget her exile and the death of her parents, of what she had made of her life. I saw her letting go of the railing, slowly falling towards the floor; and saw Coaxoch’s eyes, those of someone already dead. I thought of my turning away from my inheritance, and thought of Xuya, which had taken me in but not healed me.

Which could never heal me, no matter how far away I ran from my fears.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment, and, before I could change my mind, got up and reached for the phone. My fingers dialled a number I hadn’t called for years but still had not forgotten.

The phone rang in the emptiness. I waited, my throat dry.

“Hello? Who is this?”

My stomach felt hollow—but it wasn’t fear, it was shame. I said in Nahuatl, every word coming with great difficulty, “Mother? It’s me.”

I waited for anger, for endless reproaches. But there was nothing of that. Only her voice, on the verge of breaking, speaking the name I’d been given in Tenochtitlán, “Oh, Nenetl, my child. I’m so glad.”

And though I hadn’t heard that name in years, still it felt right, in a way that nothing else could.

Originally published in Interzone, December 2008.

About the Artist and Authors

Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)

Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.

Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.

His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters

Kristine Kathryn Rusch (kristinekathrynrusch.com)

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy (including the Fey series, the Retrieval Artist series and the Diving series), award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance.

Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Mary Rosenblum

One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the '90s, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale in 1990, and soon became one of that decade’s most prolific contributors at short story lengths, making dozens of sales to many different magazines and anthologies. Her linked series of “Drylands” stories, about an American Southwest rendered uninhabitable by prolonged droughts, now seems, alas, more germane than ever, and was recently collected in an expanded version as Water Rites. The original version, The Drylands, won the prestigious Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel of the year in 1993. Her other books include the SF novels Chimera, The Stone Garden, and Horizons, and a short story collection, Synthesis and Other Stories. She has also written a trilogy of mystery novels written under the name Mary Freeman. Rosenblum won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2009 for her story “Sacrifice.” A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives in Canby, Oregon, and runs the website New Writers Interface. Her most recent book is Self Publishing Success: A Handbook for New Writers.

Aliette de Bodard (aliettedebodard.com)

Aliette de Bodard has won two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Award, in addition to being a finalist for the Hugo and Sturgeon Award, and on the Tiptree Award Honour List.

Her novel House of Shattered Wings, set in a post-Apocalyptic Paris and featuring Fallen angels, a washed-out alchemist and a former Vietnamese immortal with a grudge, is out now from Gollancz (UK/Commonwealth) and Roc (US).

Aliette lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than she really needs, and a bunch of Lovecraftian plants that are steadily taking over the living room.

About Forever

Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a four-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). The inaugural edition of his Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series was published by Night Shade Books earlier this year. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Thank you for reading Forever Magazine.