“Untraceable?”
“I can do some further correlation, see if there’s a particular combination of minerals here that only occurs in one tiny part of the multiverse. But we don’t know every tiny part of the multiverse, so the odds may not be on our side.”
Aristide frowned, and touched with a foreknuckle the corner of his mouth where until recently he had worn a mustache. He walked to one of the machines, opened a door, and withdrew one of the clay balls he had brought through the Womb of the World. A shriveled bit of sinew was still attached to it, the remains of the cord that had tied it to the priest.
“The organic component?” he asked.
“Has unfortunately deteriorated. You can’t expect much after three months’ ride across a pretechnological landscape. There’s no clear indication from what remains how the object was controlled.” She raised her arms over her head and stretched, then rose from her chair. “I know a good organic chemist,” she added, “who might spot something I’ve missed.”
Aristide rolled the terra-cotta ball in the palm of his hand. “Won’t be necessary. The wormhole collapsed as soon as the connection with the operator was removed—some kind of fail-safe mechanism.” He dropped the clay ball into a clear plastic specimen bag and put it in the pocket of his jacket.
“I think the skulls and hands will give us more information,” Daljit said. “Bone tells many more tales than withered flesh.” She sighed, walked to him, touched his arm. “And I may yet find something in the other two objects.”
He drew two more bags from his pockets and looked at them.
“I agree we should examine them,” he said. “But you can automate the whole process, yes? There’s no reason why we should wait here while your machines go through their motions. May I give you dinner?”
“You may.” Daljit seemed pleased by the offer.
She put each of the samples into different machines, then gave them their instructions, along with the small desktop robot that would shift the samples from one machine to the next. Aristide walked to Daljit’s desk and picked up Tecmessa, swinging its case over his shoulder on its strap. He picked up Daljit’s soft spider-silk jacket from the rack behind her desk and offered it to her as she approached. She turned, backed herself into the jacket, and smoothed the lapels as he placed it over her shoulders.
“Has there been some advance in wormhole science since I was last paying attention?” he asked as she led him to the door.
“Not that I know of.”
“So it still requires a vast amount of energy and a prodigious amount of calculation to produce a successful Einstein-Rosen bridge.”
The door sprang open at her approach. She paused in the doorway and turned to him. “Yes. As I understand it.”
Aristide was grim. “That reduces the number of suspects to a manageable number. The problem is that they are all enormously powerful.” Again he stroked the ghost of his mustache with a knuckle. “Use of that much energy and that much computer time should be traceable, in theory. But to detect it might require someone of Bitsy’s intelligence.”
She was amused. “Do you still have that horrible cat?”
“Yes,” said Bitsy. “He does.”
Daljit gave a start and raised a hand to her throat. Bitsy jumped onto Daljit’s desk and settled on her haunches before the display.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Daljit said weakly.
“I lurk,” said the cat.
There was a moment of silence in which Aristide did his best not to laugh. Daljit cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” she said.
Bitsy’s green eyes were fixed on the display. MAs the avatar,” she said, “of a vast array of quantum parallel processors orbiting the sun as part of an as-yet-incomplete Matrioshka array, I’m rather above taking offense at that sort of thing.”
There was another pause. “Thank you,” said Daljit finally. “But if Aristide wants to have sex with you,” the cat added, “I’m not helping.”
Daljit looked in silent surprise at the cat, and then at Aristide. “Look among your colleagues,” Aristide said, “for traces of the energy necessary to create those wormhole gates, and for the calculation, too.”
The cat was nonchalant. “Already on it, Pops.”
“And be careful. They might be on the lookout for anyone looking for them.”
“I’ll be slick as butter,” Bitsy promised.
Daljit and Aristide stepped through the doorway, and the door closed silently behind them. The corridor outside the laboratory was carpeted in soft green mosses that absorbed the sound of their footsteps.
“That animal of yours is scary,” Daljit said.
“I find she settles a lot of arguments before they get started.”
“‘Speak softly and carry an omniscient feline?’”
“Quite,” he said, and took her arm.
They sat before a plate of oysters. After months of dried fruit and chunks of mutton skewered over a dung fire, Aristide had developed a vast appetite for fresh seafood.
“So how,” Daljit asked, “does the cat help you to have sex?” Daljit had deliberately waited until an oyster was already sliding down his tongue, and Aristide managed only barely to keep from snorting shellfish out his nose.
“Bitsy confines herself to introductions,” he said, after clearing his throat. “An animal twining itself around another’s legs provides an opening for conversation.”
“And how does the avatar of an awesomely intelligent AI feel about being used for the tawdry purposes of seduction?”
Aristide was offended. “Madame,” he said, “I am never tawdry. As you should know.”
She considered him. “True,” she said. “You’re not.”
They sat on a cream-colored boat that grazed on the waters near the city and gave diners a view of its miraculous profile. Above their heads, visible through a transparent canopy, the sun was on the verge of its daily miracle.
They looked up as the sun—a more advanced model than that of Midgarth—began to flicker and fade. Shadows flew rapidly across its disk. And then the photosphere settled into a stable state, and photons were no longer able to escape. The sun went black— but surrounding the black disk was the corona, still glowing with heat, its swirls and columns a cosmic echo of the city’s skyline.
The corona would fade over the next seven point nine one hours, after which the sun’s photosphere would grow chaotic again, and the sun blaze out to light a new day.
“How long has it been,” Daljit asked, “since you were last in Myriad City?”
Aristide’s gaze continued upward.
“I pass through from time to time,” he said. “When I’m not traveling, I keep a little cabin on Tremaine Island.”
“Where’s that?”
“Past Mehmet’s Lagoon. I hire a boatman to take me in and out.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And you’re alone out there? In that remote area?”
He shrugged, then looked down to dabble horseradish on a bluepoint. “It’s enough for Aristide. And besides, it’s an implied space. No one intended to put an island there. If I ever get bored, I can go out and contemplate the pollywogs and butterflies.” “When you and I lived together,” she said, “you cultivated a certain seigneurial grandeur. Fresh flowers every morning, genuine paintings on the walls rather than videos of paintings. Green lawns, and deference from the neighbors.”
Aristide contemplated the thick viridian essence of his cocktail as it brewed in its crystal glass.
“I grew tired,” he said. “Not of my surroundings, but of all that was necessary to maintain them. Now if I want something, I’ll rent, and let someone else do the work.” He looked up. “But you’d be surprised how well I’ve adapted to simplicity. My cabin has a stone floor that I laid myself, out of rock that I carried to the site in a barrow. And when I took my stroll through Midgarth, I carried a rug rolled up in my pack, and that was my bed.”
She smiled. �
�I’ll wager it was a nice rug.”
“It was. Two hundred thousand double knots per square meter, or something like that. But it was still a rug, not a down mattress.” He looked at her. “But I’m not the only one who’s changed. When I saw you last, you were an Amazon.”
She laughed. “I’ve been a lot of people since then!”
“Such as?”
“I was a solli-glider in Momrath. I had wings, feathers, and eyes as big as my fists.”
“That sounds delightful.” Delicately, he breathed in an oyster off its shell.
“I had a hard time leaving that incarnation. But the opportunity came for the job at the Institute, so I came here.” She looked out at the audacious horizon, the pinnacles and domes and the swirling motes between them. “It’s a place of such high energies. I accomplish things here. And if I want to fly again, all I have to do is strap on a pair of wings.”
“What sorts of things do you accomplish?”
“Designing plants and animals for all the pockets. And for the settlements in other star systems.”
He sipped his cocktail. “Do you also design people?”
She shook her head. “For that, I need more seniority.”
The waitron arrived, a hairy-legged faun with horns, livery, and a powdered wig. Aristide looked at Daljit.
“Shall we order dinner? Or would you like another drink?” “Let’s eat.”
They ordered. Aristide continued his exploration of the seafood menu; Daljit chose the wine. The faun trotted away on cloven hoofs, and Daljit looked after him.
“I spent a few years as a boy,” she said. “After I left you, and before Momrath.”
Aristide regarded her. “How was it?”
“Overrated.”
He nodded. “So I’ve always thought.”
“And the penis is less accurate than I’d imagined.”
“You could have got one that’s better engineered. Most men do, I believe.”
She looked at him with honest curiosity. “Have you?”
“I am improved all-round,” Aristide said. “Faster reflexes, glial cells Einstein would envy, a pulmonary system like unto a god. High arches, strong teeth, eyes that can see in dim light, an epidermis of uncommon durability ...”
“That would be a yes, I take it?”
He finished his drink. “When all’s said and done, who would take an organ—any organ—that’s substandard, provided you had a choice?”
“I chose one that was supposed to be dead average. I wanted to give the standard model craft a test-drive before taking out the souped-up version.”
“That was probably wise.” He viewed her. “And yet, here you are. No wings, no penis, no red hair, and a rather charming mole.” She smiled and drew her index finger down her jaw, as if to reassure herself of her current shape.
“I miss the wings,” she said. “But perhaps I, like you, am choosing simplicity.”
He nodded. “Perhaps so.”
“And you? Have you ever been anything but male?”
He made an equivocal gesture. “The options weren’t so readily available when I was young,” he said, “at least not without surgery and other inconveniences. By the time reincarnation became common, I had grown set in my personality—and my identity seemed to work for everyone, so I never had reason to change.” He offered her a lean smile. “Though I recently received a download from one of the Pablos—the one who went to Tau Ceti. He claimed to have invented a new gender, and was very enthusiastic.”
“Have you loaded the experience?”
“No.” There was silence, and then he said, “Tau Ceti is a more extreme environment than Sol. More extreme adaptations are required.”
“That sounds like an excuse,” she said. “If the other Pablo liked it that much, maybe you should have immersed yourself.”
“Perhaps.” His tone was skeptical, and then he threw out his hands. “But I like women, Daljit! I always have!”
“So do I!” said the faun as he trotted up with a pair of glasses and a bottle of wine. “I like all of them! All the time!” He looked at Daljit with bright eyes. “Want my number, sugar?”
Daljit declined with laughter. The waitron feigned disappointment and opened the bottle. The wine was a mellow honey color, with the scent of sunshine and citrus. The faun waited for approval, then left them to their pleasure. They savored the wine and the last of the oysters in silence, as the sun’s corona slowly faded and Myriad City became a blaze of light along the port side of the craft. Other than the cooling corona, the sky overhead was black—the handful of lights visible now that the sun was gone were the few settlements on the far side of the universe.
The world of Topaz held only six billion people, and had room for a hundred times that. Most of the landmasses, and almost all the oceans, were unexplored. It was a fairly new pocket, having been created only four hundred years earlier, and though the inhabitants were reproducing quickly, and not dying at all, it would take centuries to occupy all the niches available for modified humanity.
Humanity had over a hundred billion descendants on various pockets, far more than could have ever existed on Earth. Earth itself was in the process of a millennium-long reset after many millennia of abuse, and at present had only a few hundred thousand inhabitants, just enough to restart the species should something go terribly wrong with the wormhole worlds.
Daljit lowered her glass. “Why, Aristide?” she asked. “That’s what I can’t work out.”
He looked at her over the rim of his glass. The brilliant shoreline glittered in his eyes like the missing stars.
“For some reason, the implied spaces intrigue me.”
She seemed amused. “And you explore them with your cat and your sword.”
He echoed her smile. “Yes.”
“I can’t help but think that’s romantic.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said, “but catalogs of ants and spiders don’t seem very romantic when I’m working on them.” “The romance lies in the sword, I think.”
He glanced at Tecmessa, leaning against the boat’s smooth-paneled walls, then turned back to her.
“Even after all these years,” he said, “I encounter the occasional person who wants to kill me. It’s irrational, because all they can do is kill the time since my last backup, but then assassins were never known for the lucid quality of their thought.”
“You could have got a gun,” she pointed out. “Or a taser. Or a magic wand, or a Ring of Power. But instead you got a broadsword.”
“Guns and tasers are good for only one thing. A sword is more flexible. When I was off in Midgarth, I managed to take a couple of prisoners with Tecmessa. If I’d had a gun I would have had to shoot them—and in any case, guns won’t work in Midgarth. The rules of the universe won’t permit it.” He paused, as Daljit’s face had brightened with delight.
“Your sword has a name!” Daljit exclaimed. “That’s wonderful!”
Aristide blinked. “If you say so.”
“That’s the mark of a romantic. Next thing, you’ll be wearing a mask and a cape.”
“Maintaining the secret identity as a millionaire playboy would be a problem,” Aristide said. “I’m afraid it would be too exhausting.”
She just looked at him. “Millionaire playboy?” she asked.
“Bruce Wayne,” he said.
“Who?”
He was thunderstruck.
“You don’t know Batman?” he said.
She looked at him blankly. “I guess not,” she said.
“I lived with you for six years!” He felt an obscure sense of betrayal.
“Seven. But what’s this Batman got to do with it?”
“Nothing,” he sighed. “Apparently.”
They returned to the laboratory to find Bitsy still sitting before Daljit’s display.
“Terra-cotta, through and through,” Bitsy reported. “Trace elements show that all three balls were made from the same type of clay.” Her tail gave an
irritated little switch. “And I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that the origin of the clay is unknown. It could have come from any pocket with unexplored clay deposits, which could be any of them.”
“Thank you for your efforts,” Aristide said. He set Tecmessa’s case against the long table, then picked up the remaining samples, wrapped them, and returned them to his pocket.
Daljit returned to her seat and peered at the display over the silhouette of the cat that squatted before it.
“I should check your work,” she said. “But I suppose it would be futile.”
Bitsy rose to her feet and stretched.
“Reproducing the results of another researcher is the hallmark of the scientific method,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.” She jumped onto the floor and rubbed herself against Aristide’s legs.
There was a chime from Daljit’s pocket. She took a small card out of the pocket and looked at its display.
“Put it on the wall,” she said.
One of the neutral-colored walls brightened to show a tall, imposing woman standing behind her desk. The image was lifesized. Her skull had grown a kind of exoskeletal helmet that overshadowed her eyes—her many eyes, of different sizes, which waved on stalks, alongside other sensory organs of less obvious purpose. Her hands had an extra digit on which cilia waved, for fine manipulation under the supervision of her magnifying eyes. It looked as if she had a large, pale crab perched on her head. From the shoulders down she was a standard woman, if powerfully built. As she talked she walked back and forth behind her desk while her hands made chopping gestures.
“Fedora,” Daljit said, “thank you for working late.”
“Daljit,” she said. “I’ve had a chance to examine one of the three heads you passed on to me, and I’m going to have to inform the police. I’ve found evidence of a crime.”
Daljit smiled, still a little under the influence of the wine. “Beyond the decapitation, you mean?”
Fedora wasn’t amused. “The brain structures were badly decomposed, but they were clearly unusual. I got the DNA from the skull and sequenced it, and it’s plain the deceased was created as a pod person. I checked the register and saw that it wasn’t one of the few remaining types of legal pod people, so I’ll be calling the police as soon as I finish talking to you.”
Alien Crimes Page 43
