Dog peered around at Lou. “Please tell whomever that is that I feel groggy, my head hurts, but I’m fine.”
Lou said for the pilot to hear, “Did you get that?”
The pilot said, and Lou could imagine her smiling, “You bet. Amazing, hearing a dog talk like that.”
Dog finished his urination. The padded floor eliminated the pool immediately; Dog looked surprised. “Where did it go?” he asked, worried, and started to dig. “Where did it go?”
Lou figured dogs would have a bad time establishing territories in a world with nano-treated floors like this. She watched him sniffing around, trying to find his mark.
Lou smiled. “How do you feel, other than groggy and headachy? You gave us a nasty shock there for a bit. You had another one of those spasmy things. Like back at the penthouse.”
He looked grave, and moved his head slowly. His eyes still weren’t all the way open. “Something very odd is happening in my head, Ms. Meagher.”
“Odd in what way?” How much stranger can things get? she thought, feeling dread settle in her belly all over again.
Dog looked up at her, his ears pressed flat, eyes wide. “I seem to be receiving thoughts from Kid again.”
Lou said to him, “You can’t record this psychic stuff, can you?”
Dog nodded. “Sorry,” he said, looking sad at the idea of letting her down. “I might be able to get bits here and there. I know my machine memory’s been … improved. We’ll see.”
“Well, pay close attention. Listen for background noises and voices, that kind of thing.”
“Okay, I’ll try … it’s quite confusing, though…” Dog nestled down next to her, eyes closed. Lou looked at the dog, and tried to get her head around the idea that he was receiving a psychic transmission.
From where? That’s what she wanted to know. If the damn kid’s alive, where is he? “Dog?” she asked, seized with an idea.
Dog peered up at her.
Lou said, “You’re psychic thingy with Kid — it goes both ways, doesn’t it?”
“Believe me, Ms. Meagher. I’ve been trying to establish some kind of contact. Right now it’s more like when I first met him. He’s broadcasting, not sending direct to me.”
“I see,” she said, frowning and chewing gently on a thumbnail; it didn’t come off. “Well, um, keep trying.” What the hell was the procedure for dealing with stuff like this? What do pro investigators do when confronted with all these kinds of things? Is psychic ability common, and nobody told me? Though she figured that two people with transceivers linked to their brains could make a kind of artificial telepathy work. Maybe that’s all this was.
Setting aside these questions, she used her Paper to set up a series of calls to private investigation outfits operating on the Orbital. None would deal with her; she lacked an official license issued by a recognized Police Authority. Lou had not expected this snag. She’d figured she could get the local investigators to cooperate, look at her evidence, and help her with enquiries. In hindsight, it was obvious, of course. The main reason given by the handful of Orbital-based agencies for this lack of cooperation was insurance liability issues: they couldn’t afford associating with her if something went wrong and she wasn’t covered. And an unlicensed investigator couldn’t get covered. “Heard that story before somewhere,” she muttered.
She called the Orbital’s Police Authority to find out how she could get accredited as an investigator. They told her she would need to show evidence of at least three years training, pass an exam set by the police and by the Interstellar Licensed Investigators Association, and satisfy various requirements involving her character and citizenship.
“In other words,” she muttered, killing the link to the last of these outfits, “I’m screwed.”
The transfer ferry would dock at the Orbital in twenty hours.
Dog lay next to her, concentrating hard. She stroked his head, enjoying his soft fur and warm body.
Kid was still alive. She kept coming back to this. Where had he been that Dog couldn’t “hear” him?
Another thing struck her: if the kid was still alive, then obviously he hadn’t yet been nanotomed. There was still a chance she could find him before the chop shops and tissue dealers got him. Now if only she could shake some meaning out of the signals Dog was getting…
The weird lady had said the kid was still alive, too, Lou recalled. How she knew this when Dog didn’t was a question Lou would have liked to ask the lady. Another thing: how had she managed to pop in and pop out like that? It wasn’t possible.
Unless she’s a ghost, Lou thought, joking, smiling at her own drollery. Ghosts! She laughed, but felt uncomfortable. A bit cold. The thought stuck in her head like a pebble in her shoe.
Lou thought about having a quick nap. She was too tired to think straight. There had been too much stress and anxiety lately. To say nothing of witnessing the flat-out impossible.
Images of the Bastard dwindling down to nothing played constantly in her head, her mind trying to reconcile the event into a known paradigm — and failing. Or maybe her brain was jammed. Was her body already starting to go again? How long was an infusion meant to last? She didn’t recall, but hoped it would last a few months, or longer. The last infusion she’d had was the very first one, after her transition to Stage One.
Sixteen years ago. Lou didn’t feel like a woman in her mid-thirties; she still felt like a teenager a lot of the time, particularly now that her body had been renewed. It was weird to think she’d spent her whole adult existence as a living corpse.
She started to fold up the page — when she had an idea. She thought about the overwhelming media coverage of the big non-collision.
Media…
Snapping open her Active Paper again, Lou powered it up. Humming to herself, excited now, grinning, she got into the new phone system, worked some searches through the directory until she found a list of suitable addresses, all on the Orbital in Akane, the sprawling capital of the main island which shared its name. She knew Akane was a thriving city of four million people crammed into a small chunk of fertile land bristling with gleaming towers.
Lou tried three media organizations on her list and got three curt dismissals. Her fourth try was to an old-fashioned print journal called The Orbital Messenger. The display flashed the journal’s logo and masthead, and dissolved to a window showing a middle-aged female disposable with the piercing air of brisk authority, despite her flat, expressionless eyes. On the side of her bald head, Lou saw the parent corporation’s logo, a second-order multistellar media group.
The disposable said, with a nasty PR smile, “Orbital Messenger. The news you need to know, now! Good morning.”
Lou got comfortable. “Good morning. Who do I talk to about a story lead I might have? I’d need a secure line.”
The disposable said, “One moment, please.” She paused a second, as if frozen. Then she smiled again, saying, “Content Screening.”
“Listen, is there anybody actually there I can talk to? Like a reporter?”
“I’m authorized to handle initial screening of story pitches, ma’am.” She smiled a big, reassuring smile that somehow failed to reassure at all. Lou had the sensation that she was wasting this thing’s valuable time.
Lou felt uncomfortable; she pursed her lips. “How secure is this line?”
The disposable rolled out a boilerplate speech. “We take the security of our content very seriously, ma’am. In fact, our engineers estimate it would take current military anti-crypto systems at least a month or more to break our security, ma’am. And we change the seed files twice daily, so there’s no chance at all anybody could break our security.“
“All right,” she said, still wishing for a live, human reporter to hear her story and tell her whether she had something or not. “I’m an unlicensed private dete
ctive…” She told her story, as well as she could piece it together. Because she wasn’t talking to a real person, she stumbled a lot and had to go back and explain things, and in the end felt she’d botched it. But she got it out. Everything up to Dog waking up earlier.
The disposable smiled at her, asked her to clarify a few things, which Lou did, still feeling stupid. The system at the other end said, “I am authorized to inform you that we wish to option your story. If you would like to discuss this with our legal department—”
Lou rolled her eyes, exasperated. At last, a nibble. “No, it’s fine. I just want to get someone to help me here. In return you can have my story.”
The disposable was still again for a moment. Then, “What sort of help are you looking for?”
She took a breath. “I want to talk to an actual human. Is that too much to ask?”
The disposable studied her for a brief moment, looking dubious. “Do you accept our option offer on your material?”
Yelling, “Yes! Yes, dammit!” Lou tried to keep the hand holding her page still.
“One moment.” Her display blanked; she was treated to a view of lush sunlit rainforest, a soft-focus haze of vivid greens, tumbling down to a blinding white beach and clear, lapping water. A man and a woman in skimpy outfits walked, giggling, kicking at the water, away from the camera; in the distance the coastline curved up and dissolved into the hazy blue sky. Over this played soft acoustic music, and subdued squawking of seabirds. A glowing touch-link appeared in the bottom corner of the display, promoting the Orbital’s island of Calibanos, where she could “rediscover the secret of pleasure”. Lou was unimpressed. It all looked very nice, but something about the light looked wrong; the shadows were off. The screen blanked again.
A man’s face appeared in the display; his skin was covered with wild polychromatic patterns that curled and bloomed and spiralled with mathematical lace. Lou stared, shocked. He smiled, a professional-level effort that signified he was taking her seriously. “Mitch Coburn, ma’am. I understand you wanted to talk to a reporter about your story?”
Lou wanted to return his smile, but was taken aback by the man’s face. As she watched, she saw the colors cycle as the patterns swirled and grew across his skin in ever more complex patterns that suddenly gave way to unexpected stark simplicity. And then it began again, but different. It was distracting, and reminded Lou a little of what she’d seen, all too briefly, from the Observation Deck of the ship that brought her to Kestrel, years ago, as they flashed through a hypertube.
“Uh, hello, Mr. Coburn? Louise Meagher. You have the details of my story there?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Coburn said.
She saw that he was in a private workbubble. Behind him, she saw huge windows with views across the semi-living towerscape of Akane. Some of the towers were in bloom, she saw great petal structures spread to catch the morning light. In the hazy background sprawled the low, hollow mountains that concealed the colossal machines that helped run the Orbital’s environment. The walls around these windows were covered in family pictures, awards, some cartoons, and fixed displays. “You say you were hired by an augmented dog named … Dog, is that right?” His expression betrayed no trace of mockery or skepticism, she was pleased to note.
She tilted the page so the capture would pick up Dog, lying next to her, eyes closed. “This is Dog. He’s quite busy at the moment.”
Coburn said, “Augmented dogs are generally the playthings of the very rich. You say in your briefing that this dog got separated from his owner some time before meeting you?”
“That’s right. But I need to know if you can help me or not. I’m in kind of a hurry, you understand.”
He flashed a reassuring smile, even as mathematical abstractions grew and iterated across his face. “Of course. We’ll help if we can.”
She was starting to feel uncomfortable with this guy smiling at her. Part of her liked the idea that she was, since her infusion, passing for alive. But she also recalled years when she had not looked so good, when strangers didn’t smile at her. It felt like she was lying, not in word, but through her appearance. Would this Coburn guy be so helpful if she looked the way she had in the days before Otaru abducted her? She thought not. It bothered her.
“So far, everything I’ve learned comes down to this guy Etienne Tourignon, a shipbuilder, and some kind of secret deal he’s putting together. Two of his nephews were involved in snatching this kid, but I think the kid was snatched from them, and that at least one of them is now dead, partly as a result.”
“One moment, Ms. Meagher.” Coburn grabbed a display table filled with a much larger sheet of Paper than Lou’s. He spoke to it in rapid-fire code, made some marks with a stylus, and peered at the results. He looked up at her. “Just checking our files on the guy. He’s got an apartment suite here in Akane, in the Starbreeze Towers complex, and our info says he’s currently in residence. Hmm. None too happy about the current braking maneuvers, either, according to this log of complaints he’s filed with OrbCommand. Let’s see. High-security residence, pricey real estate. Paid twenty-four million for his little pied-à-terre, in untraceable funds, three years ago, which, let me see, coincided with his shipbuilding operation going through huge restructuring and asset-stripping to stay afloat. Seems odd, huh? Oh, and he’s got a ‘Piss Off Factor’ from here to next week, too.” Coburn looked impressed, in a wry fashion.
Lou was bemused. “Pardon?”
Coburn smiled to let her in on the joke. “Combination of overall wealth and security expenditure as a percentage of annual post-tax income, number of bodyguards and personal militia, the whole thing. The degree to which he can keep you away from him, in other words. Kind of an informal assessment we compile on the people too good to mix with ordinary folks.”
“What I need is someone who can help me sort out some data I’m getting from the dog here.”
He blinked slowly, eyebrows lifted. “How’s he getting info from the kid?”
Lou said, frowning, “Hard to explain. Thing is, it needs a lot of enhancement and processing before I can make much use of it.”
Coburn scratched at his nose; Lou watched bristling, twisting patterns slide over his skin. He said, indicating his face, “I take it you’ve not seen this before.”
“I’ve seen some weird stuff, but…” She shook her head.
“Spray-on programmed cosmetic fractals. Quite the fad at the moment. If you’re coming aboard, you better get used to it.”
She frowned, thinking about the place she was about to visit. Extremely hardline Christian religious government, yet the place also catered to the filthy rich and secretive, had tax and data havens, no-questions-asked banking, pleasure islands, and all manner of modern conveniences. All the disgustingly poor and sick people were confined to the outlying Black Zones, vast fortress-like structures away from the resorts, where the government could say they were providing humanitarian care for the needy, while not lowering real estate values on the more desirable islands. She knew the tens of thousands of refugees from Kestrel were transhipped from the Orbital to any other place in human space that would take them, and were only detained in the Black Zones temporarily. Unless they were among the Dead, like Lou, which was a separate category. And she knew things in the Black Zones weren’t good at the moment.
“So, can you help me?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s up to me to come up with a treatment of this situation that I can sell to the paper. And it looks pretty good. We’ve got a shifty tycoon, murder, bent cops, a missing little boy everybody wants, a PI and a talking dog.” He smiled, twiddling his stylus between his fingers. Lou found herself frowning more, resisting the urge to go along with being charmed. She sent Coburn an encrypted file containing watermarked copies of most of her data. He wouldn’t be able to use any of it without the system making sure she was cited and com
pensated.
Coburn looked at his big page, then nodded, “Got it! By the time you dock, I should have some poop for you.”
She could hardly believe it. Something was going her way for once. “That sounds wonderful. See you then.” She moved to kill the link.
He asked, before she could quit, “Are you being met by anyone, at the docks?”
Lou stopped, and thought about this. “I … presumed I was meeting someone from Otaru.”
Surprised, the reporter asked, “How’d you hook up with them?”
Shrugging, she answered, “You tell me and we’ll both know.” She rolled her eyes.
He murmured a note into his page. “I’ll send someone from here to meet you, help you settle in, all that stuff.”
He killed the link; her page fell blank. Feeling awkward for a moment, she frowned, then looked back at the display.
“Who’s paying for these calls?” she asked herself.
Then she looked around the luxurious ferry cabin, taking in the rich appointments, the subdued air of money and power, and looked again at her page. Of course. Silly me.
She hoped she wouldn’t one day have to repay Otaru for his largesse.
Chapter 16
The Orbital Customs officials were all serious-looking men with full, dark beards, and somber uniforms. There were a couple of younger men who did the main handling of bags, inspections, and basic processing. The two older, middle-aged officers stood behind, talking between themselves, and offering advice and instruction to the younger men. They look like guys who never laugh, Lou thought, trying hard not to think any profane or lewd thoughts while in their presence, which proved impossible, of course. She also tried not to look in any mocking way at the prominent icons of the Redeemer on the otherwise unadorned white walls around her.
How can these guys be like this, yet also support such a pleasure- and profit-based culture? she wondered, again trying not to think too loudly. She suspected it must be a matter of raising revenue and turning a blind eye to what the sinners did.
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