"Minimal. Building the tanks, pumping, and adding the nutrients to the water. Then add the algae, stir, and wait. We calculate the overall cost to be less than five percent of conventional vacuum distillation or osmotic filter treatments. Cheap enough to replace any but the most abundant natural sources for coastal cities; cheap enough to use for irrigation anywhere under 100 meters above sea level."
Gwen was wearing a fairly conservative outfit, blazer and pleated skirt; she leaned one hand against the rough concrete of a lab building. The vice-president was still having trouble tearing his eyes away. Jennifer frowned in puzzlement. Yes, he's a letch, but he doesn't let it get in the way of business, she thought. Coleman evidently thought so too; or perhaps the implications had just begun to sink in, because he straightened and put a hand to his tie.
"Good God!" he blurted, staring at the water.
My God, Jennifer thought. My Greed!
They all nodded. There were billions in that market, even if the costing estimate was overoptimistic by a factor of ten. If it was anywhere near accurate . . . Los Angeles alone would make the patent holder richer than J. P. Getty had ever been. Anywhere with bright sunlight and a shortage of fresh water. No energy costs, and no expensive tech necessary.
Damn, anyone could use this. Places too primitive for elevators could use this. She felt her face flush. If it really was cheap enough for irrigation, it could upset economies all over the world. Every low-lying coastal desert in the tropics could become a garden. Israel was importing drinking water by tanker from Europe—now the Negev would become wall-to-wall orange groves and wheatfields. Californians could water their lawns until they turned into rice paddies. Libya would become the Kansas of the Mediterranean.
"You have the patents?" she said, in a tone that held the hush of reverence.
"Pending, and I mean pending everywhere. Full proprietary rights, of course; this was done in-house."
"This looks . . . ah . . . too good to be true."
No overheads at all! Just send them packets of algae like baker's yeast! On the other hand, how would you prevent piracy? Forget that, this would be big even with piracy. Sit back and collect the royalties. Set them low, really low, so people would be less tempted to cheat, then get your revenue on high volume.
Jennifer looked at the vat of water with a feeling of awe. I think, she mused, that this may just be the Perfect Investment. It was a little like finding the Holy Grail.
Gwen nodded. "And things which look too good to be true generally are; however, you can study this to your hearts' content and you'll find nothing but hard, profitable fact."
***
Not bad, Lafarge thought. Martinique had places much more upscale than the one where he'd first met Captain Lavasseur. This one looked out over the hills of Fort-de-France with white buildings shining below, the foam-capped purple waves of the Caribbean beyond, mountains behind . . . and nobody was wearing a weapon as far as the AI could tell. He attacked the food with gusto. The New America had taken the genetic records of most of Earth's life-forms to Samothrace, but some just hadn't established themselves well. Lobster were among them. The lagoustines were delicious.
"You lookin' better," Captain Lavasseur said.
The schooner captain looked a little surprised. I suppose I looked like death, a few days ago, Lafarge thought. The local witch-doctors couldn't do anything at all to speed cellular repair.
"Well, I've had an attitude adjustment," Lafarge said. When I finished kicking myself, he added silently.
The problem was that he had no training for this at all. Insertion on the Domination's earth was a last-ditch emergency measure, with the agent's lifespan measured in hours or at most days—if he made it to the planetary surface, of course. You couldn't subvert a Draka, or a servus, and even the best-trained and prepared agent could only hope to imitate either for one or two brief encounters. Kenneth Lafarge could have survived in the vast wilderness reserves for months, or made a brief heroic attack on a selected target . . . but at infiltrating, suborning, coopting, he was a rank amateur.
"I've decided on a new approach to my business problems," he went on.
Like, I should have had a dozen mercenaries with me. Enough to neutralize the Draka's local servants, at least. That would have allowed him a clearer shot; and there would be no signature of noncongruent energies. Or not nearly so much, at least.
Better late than never. He pushed across a brown paper envelope filled with something pebbly. Lavasseur took off his hat reverently as he accepted it; it wasn't every day that he handled twenty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds.
Odd that a particular arrangement of crystalline carbon was so highly valued. It was so hard for these people to make Nature yield what they wanted.
"Anytin' you want done, Antoine Lavasseur will do for you."
"I may take you up on that," Lafarge said. He handed over a business card. "I'll be in touch."
He had two great advantages here. If he could convince locals of the truth, it would be easier to get them to cooperate with him. He wasn't out to destroy them all.
The other was that the Draka was attempting to build something. All he had to do was destroy.
Chapter Twelve
"Detective Carmaggio," he said, spitting the stick of gum into the wastebasket. It was his direct outside line; you couldn't have your snitches going through a switchboard, it made them nervous.
Sugar-free, he thought with disgust, looking at the crumpled wad of gum. It was like chewing rubber bands. What he really wanted was a smoke. About time to admit that gum didn't help the craving. Jenny didn't like the habit, either.
"It's about the warehouse killings, Detective," the voice on the other end of the line said. "You know what I mean."
Carmaggio brought his feet down from the desk and tapped one shoe onto the record pedal.
"Yes, I remember that. What's your name, sir?" The same motion activated the tracer. He kept his tone polite and calm, inviting the man on the other end to keep talking.
"That doesn't matter right now," the voice said.
Hell it doesn't. The usual influx of nutballs—confessing, or offering to reveal various conspiracies, or both—had died down long ago, it was better than three years since the murders. The voice was a man's, not old, Standard American accent, perhaps a hint of Midwestern rasp.
"The murderer's name is Gwendolyn Ingolfsson," it went on. "It—she—is responsible for several other killings. She's currently resident in the Bahamas."
Excitement punched him in the gut. Closed file, my ass. This one really knew something. Maybe she did have help. Maybe they're turning on each other. He suppressed the speculation; facts first.
"How do you know this, sir?" Rodriguez came in, and Carmaggio made frantic send a car to the trace address motions at him.
"That doesn't matter either. What does matter is that she's coming back."
"Yes?"
"Back to New York. If you check, you'll find she's bought up the property where the murders took place, through front companies. She'll be coming to New York shortly, and dealing with an investment firm named Primary Belway Securities."
The Fischer killing. He'd been with PBS. Hell, so's Jenny. Hell, she's in the Bahamas. He suppressed a stab of worry. Nobody's going to mess with a bunch of investment bankers.
"It's extremely important that this . . . person not be allowed access to New York," the voice went on.
I am beginning to get seriously pissed off with this turkey, Carmaggio thought. The tone was desperately patient, the way you talked to a slightly retarded child. Plenty of people talked that way to cops; he was used to it. He got the feeling that this bird talked to everyone that way, however.
"We're always concerned with the safety of New York and its citizens," he said soothingly. "Why don't you come in and tell us all about it?"
The answer was a chuckle; the first hint there was an actual human being on the other end of the line. "Not until we have an understanding, Li
eutenant. I think you've figured out that this is . . . not a usual case, at all. I think you may be ready to understand what's really going on here. But it has to be in a way that doesn't endanger either of us. No contacts that leave any recordings, no involvement of higher authorities, and no meetings in places where we might be under observation."
Yeah, and I have to wear a rubber nose and give the secret handshake, Carmaggio thought. If he's so paranoid, what does he think this line is?
"That might be possible, sir. Where should we get in touch?"
"I'll contact you, in a day or two."
"Sir—"
"And Lieutenant . . . anyone in contact with Ingolfsson is in extreme danger."
"All right, you dickhead, I want some answers! Now! Stop bullshitting me or—"
The line went back to the dial tone, with no click of a broken connection. Henry Carmaggio sat looking at the receiver in his hand for a moment, then replaced it with exaggerated care. The alternative was beating it on his desk until the pieces were too small to hold.
"That was just the thing I fucking needed to hear," he said. "Jesus, you get the blue-and-white dispatched?"
Jesus Rodriguez's thin brown face came around the doorjamb. "No trace, patron."
"Fuck," Carmaggio said in a weary sigh. The new process was supposed to be automatic, with the number and location of the phone showing up on a map. "Nothing?"
"A glitch. It gives us our own number."
He tapped the pedal again, rewinding the tape. "Let's listen and see if there was anything I missed."
The tape hissed. Carmaggio waited, calmly at first, then with a heavy sinking feeling. There was nothing on it, nothing at all. The weird shit was starting again.
***
Kenneth Lafarge bought a soft pretzel with mustard and sat on the edge of the fountain in Washington Square Park. The wounds didn't hurt anymore.
It was a cold raw day, slush and lowering skies. A homeless man shuffled by, fingerless gloves holding two bulging plastic bags. Behind him loomed an off-white mock-French triumphal arch, and behind that a wedding-cake minor skyscraper. Pigeons hunched their wings against the cold. A man in chain-studded leather did too, his pinched gray face stubble-covered and shuttered. Two girls passed, talking and laughing; one wore a nose-stud. Ken smiled at them, at all the pulsing streams of people.
There were nearly as many people in this State of New York as in the whole of Samothrace. I like it. I couldn't live here permanently, but I like it. He'd been country-raised, and even the capital city of Jefferson was a manicured garden next to this. He remembered green-black tuftbush and Terran sage, riding down a canyon and the skin-winged majesty of a gruk arrowing by overhead, eyeing the herd of sheep but wary of his rifle.
"I'd go nuts here in twenty years. But . . ."
His scanner caught traces of conversations, checking for keywords: in Spanish, Chinese, Italian, in African tongues extinct centuries before the Last War in his history. Nobody on Samothrace had spoken anything else but English since the first generation of settlement. For that matter, every other language had been dying out on Earth by the end of the twentieth century—by compulsion in the Domination, through market forces and policy in the Alliance for Freedom.
I do like it here. These people were sloppy, restless, childish, self-indulgent. They had no moral seriousness. But they're alive in a way we never were. Not even before the Last War. His ancestors' America had been an anxious giant, mobilized for generations against a menace that made the Cold War they'd had here look like a love-feast. Compared to this America his had been grim, puritan, uniform.
He imagined the Square broken and desolate, buildings shattered hulks. A weapons platform hovering in the Manhattan sky with the bat-winged dragon of the Domination blazoned on its side; a wolf-faced ghouloon trooper crouched where he sat, cradling a particle-beam rifle and gnawing on a human arm.
"Never," he said softly, getting to his feet and strolling with his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets. He attracted a few glances. By local standards six-foot, crop-haired blonds with his build in neat business suits were exotic.
The problem was the asymmetry of the positions. Ken looked at the glossy of the Draka's face again; his equipment had extrapolated it to a 3-D image and matched it against the files. This had to be one of the old ones; subtle clues in the bone structure marked it as the first or second generation of drakensis. Centuries old, then. Unbelievably experienced. And not limited by fear of detection. It wanted to be detected, to call the ghoul-horde through to feast.
"I can't let that paralyze me," he murmured.
An anchoring beacon wasn't all that difficult to make. The first expedition through a planetary surface-level molehole on Samothrace had managed to cobble one together from the equipment they'd brought. Then they'd broadcast until a new molehole was latched on—giving the USS a whole new Samothrace, in a solar system humans had never visited. As far as they could tell, in that continuum Earth had been scoured free of life sometime in the twenty-first century. Spaceborne instruments could scan a planet fairly closely, even across 4.2 light-years. The oxygen content of that Earth's atmosphere had dropped far enough to make it plain even the algae in the oceans were gone.
So the Draka here could mess up the landscape as much as it needed to. The more the better, in fact—it increased the possibility of a unidirectional lock-on by the drakensis scientists working from the other side.
I'm only constrained in what I do, he thought meditatively.
"How much does this policeman have figured out?" he asked himself.
Once he'd let the locals know, there was no going back. And they'd be exposed; he'd have to push them to the front, give the minimum of backup. The less he interacted directly with the snake, the better. At all costs.
"Well, Lieutenant Carmaggio," he said to himself, "you wanted some answers. I hope you enjoy them."
Kenneth Lafarge smiled. The panhandler who'd been about to approach the slumming businessman turned on his heel and lurched away.
The snake is acting through locals. I can too.
***
There were three other people in Carmaggio's apartment: Jesus Rodriguez, Mary Chen, and the FBI agent, Finch. It was cramped in the living room. Unlike a lot of the Department, he believed in living where he worked, which meant paying New York rents for zero space. It was an old four-story walkup, mostly new immigrants from Russia and a few old ladies in black who passed the time of day with him on the stairs in Neapolitan dialect.
"We don't have enough for an arrest," Carmaggio said.
"That's an understatement," Finch said. "Not with the evidence gone into a black hole."
The FBI agent fiddled with the buttons of her jacket and looked out the apartment window; it had a beautiful view of the fire escape on the building next door. "When will she arrive?"
Carmaggio shrugged. "Sometime in the spring, that's the earliest the paperwork will be ready. We don't know if she plans to come here personally at all. I've got a friend in Belway, but I can't badger her for the information. That's the impression I got, though."
He opened a folder. "But this company of Ingolfsson's has bought up or leased a lot of property. Close on twenty million dollars' worth, including the warehouse where Marley Man got wasted."
Silence fell for a long moment. The medical examiner broke it.
"We've got to face up to something," she said. "Henry, Ms. Finch . . . we've got to realize what we're facing."
"Which is?" Henry said. You're the one with the fancy education. You tell me.
Chen looked down at her hands, twisting the fingers together. "The genetics . . . nobody can alter mammalian heredity like that. Nobody. I did some discreet research. And nobody will be able to do it for a long time; fifty years, conservative estimate."
Henry grunted and looked away. "Hell," he said. "I never even watched Star Trek much."
Finch gave a violent shake of her head. "We can't afford to get ourselves caught up on l
abels," she said. "I think that's what the people at the Other Place—Langley," she amplified, "Bureau slang for Langley—I think that's what they've done. It isn't ours, so it must be the Japanese or whatever. The more layers of committees they have to filter their data through, the more officially acceptable it'll get."
Henry nodded. That was how bureaucracies functioned; they were set up to hammer information into a few acceptable categories, and they did just that—no matter how much violence got done to the data in the process. He'd seen enough men die in Vietnam because the raw intelligence conflicted with the approved version of reality.
"Okay," he said quietly, "we've got National Enquirer stuff here, only for real. Does that mean the spooks are right? We should back off and let official channels handle it? Concealing the information we've got is almost certainly an indictable offense."
Jesus Rodriguez spoke. "Like the lady said, I think they'll be looking for the wrong thing. And patron—the stakes are high."
Chen looked up. "The . . . whatever it was . . . came armed. They killed and killed again. That doesn't argue for 'we come in peace,' Henry."
Her face went extremely blank. "And I don't care to be blackmailed. That sort of thing was what my parents took a very risky boat trip to avoid. So I'm not altogether convinced of the unarguable wisdom of the duly constituted authorities, right now."
Finch winced slightly. "Since Andrews and Debrowski came back from the Bahamas," she said, looking down at her hands, "there's been a fair amount of traffic that way. At a much higher level. Not those two. Whole delegations."
You didn't send wet-work specialists to negotiate, really. Even the sort of fairly sophisticated wet-workers involved, Amcits and on the official payroll. The accountants must have taken over, and the Government's tame scientists.
"They've clamped down harder than ever, and Dowding's been warned from higher in the Bureau not to even think about complaining again. They did some sort of deal, and they're excited about it. Very excited. And scared."
Carmaggio sipped his coffee. "Oh, lovely. Ms. Ingolfsson has become the goose that lays the golden eggs. She's teachers pet."
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