Pandora's Star cs-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “What’s listed on her credit account in the two weeks before paying her lawyers?”

  “Not a damn thing. The second to last payment is for her lunch with Caroline Turner. There is nothing in the period between that and the divorce lawyers.”

  “Do we know where she was when the payment to the lawyers was made?”

  “No. Just somewhere within the unisphere.”

  “No live sighting or confirmation then,” Paula mused. The banks would swear in court that anyone with an account had to be alive for the pattern code to work. It was a complete lie, of course; banks across the Commonwealth lost billions to credit hackers every year. The only really secure credit account was with the SI bank; and she’d seen classified reports on the ultra-grade hackers who had even managed to forge those transfers, though it involved cellular reprofiling and assuming the victim’s life. A pattern code, however detailed and complex, could always be copied and duplicated given enough time and resources.

  “What about Wyobie Cotal, did he spend any money on Tampico?”

  “No. I checked his account. Same story as Tara. No purchases after the day they disappeared together. His bank changed the account from current to sleeper two years later.”

  “Who paid for the tickets to Tampico?”

  “Cash transaction the morning they went missing. But they were registered in Tara’s name.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way of knowing if they were actually used?”

  “No. CST doesn’t keep that kind of information.”

  “They have sensors and cameras in every planetary station.”

  “But the data isn’t archived for four decades, it would cost a fortune. They keep it for a couple of years at most, and that varies between stations.”

  “What about cash? Did either of them make any large withdrawals before they supposedly left Oaktier?”

  “No, neither of them ever made any large cash withdrawals from their Oaktier accounts, period. So unless one of them had a secret numbered account somewhere it’s hard to believe they were alive, even for that first fortnight.”

  “Humm.” Paula reached out and used her cuff fuseto on the wall, steadying herself as the lift capsule changed direction. She knew they were traveling along the inside of the giant starship’s hull now, heading for the Raiel habitation dome. “I suppose it’s possible she could have sold some jewelry and lived off that money. But why would she? The whole case that they went to Tampico is getting worse the closer we look at it.”

  “I haven’t believed it for some time.”

  “Me neither. But we must always be sure, Hoshe.”

  “Of course.”

  “My Directorate has been unable to find any secure memory store facility opened by Tara. I think that just about makes it official. She was killed, and presumably Cotal as well. We now need to find a motive, which is the really puzzling part of all this. It certainly isn’t financial. I’m still inclined to think Shaheef and Cotal walked in on some criminal activity; the payment to the lawyers two weeks later would tend to support that because someone was clearly busy building up the alibi that they were still alive. If so, there will be very little evidence for us to find.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Process of elimination. I want to lock down Shaheef’s personal life. All of it.” Her hands gripped the small bag she was carrying. She could tell Hoshe was deeply uncertain about the whole concept, but like a good policeman he wasn’t criticizing his boss. Not yet.

  The lift rose up the stalk to the Raiel dome, and the gravity field asserted itself, reaching eighty percent Earth standard. Hoshe took a moment to steady himself; he’d never seen an alien in the flesh before—though his wife was always talking about visiting the Silfen. But then this break in everyday life was all part of working with Paula Myo. He’d pulled in every favor, real or imagined, with the division’s captain to stay assigned to the case when it became known she was taking it on. Success by association was always welcome, but he genuinely wanted to see her working her magic. There was also the remote possibility she might endorse an application to the Serious Crimes Directorate. Hoshe hadn’t mentioned that piece of career planning to anyone, but the idea was firmly lodged at the back of his mind now.

  When the door opened it was a slight anticlimax; rather than some exotic alien metropolis he was looking out on a gloomy alleyway with smooth matte-black metal walls thirty meters high. Above him, the dome’s crystal was transparent, permitting Icalanise’s wan amber light to shine through. Small red lights were embedded along the foot of the alley walls, glimmering like candlelit jewels. He found the silence imposing, a complete absence of even the faintest sound.

  “It probably looks better in the daytime,” he decided.

  “This is the daytime,” Paula told him primly. She started walking.

  Twice, Hoshe was convinced something big flew overhead, just above the walls. A subliminal rustle of air, maybe the light flickering ever so slightly. Of course, whenever he looked up, all he could see was the rigid strip of dome crystal above the walls.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked.

  “More or less. The city geometry changes slightly the whole time, its buildings and streets tend to move around, but they do it slowly. Don’t worry, the High Angel won’t let us go anywhere we shouldn’t.” She paused at an intersection. This alley was a little wider, and had green lights glinting along its length. A Raiel was moving along it, heading toward them. In the dim light it was hard to see anything but a large dark bulk sliding closer, which made the huge alien even more intimidating. An adult Raiel was larger than a bull elephant, though that was where all comparison ended. From the angle Hoshe was seeing it, the alien’s forward body looked more like an octopus tipped on its side. A bulbous head was surrounded by a collar of tentacle-limbs ranging from a pair at the bottom that had evolved for heavy work, four meters long with paddlelike tips and a base thicker than a human torso, down to clumps of small slender manipulators that resembled energetic nests of boa constrictors.

  A bunch of five small hemispherical eyes on the side of its head swiveled in unison to focus on Hoshe as it reached the intersection. When he glanced down, he saw eight short stumpy legs on each side of its underbelly; they didn’t have any knees or ankles, they were just blunt cylinders of flesh that tilted up and forward in pairs to propel it along in what amounted to a continuous smooth waddle. As the main bulk of its body went past, Hoshe could just make out brown rings mottling the grizzled hide of short bristly fur. Behind the collar of tentacles a number of small protuberances were dangling down as if the flesh had been pulled into dreadlocks; by the way the bulbs at the end swung about ponderously they could have been solid lead, they were definitely technological rather than any natural growth.

  “How about that,” he mumbled once the giant alien was past. Its rear end tapered to a drooping point.

  “They are somewhat overwhelming,” Paula said as she started off down the alley with green lights. “A lot of human residents here think they actually built the High Angel. Given their intelligence level it’s a strong possibility.”

  “What do you believe?”

  For the first time since they’d been on the case, Paula produced a small smile. “I don’t believe it really matters. But for the record: it’s unlikely.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re almost as indifferent to us as the Silfen are. Mind you, it’s different in this instance; the Raiel really do look down on us from a great intellectual height. I don’t think any entity that aloof would build something with the High Angel’s mission. Qatux told me once that they study the physical dynamics of the universe, not the cultures it contains. To them, life really is an accident of chemistry; all life, including themselves. I think they only agreed to contact with the Commonwealth so that they could have access to our unisphere’s astrophysics database. They’ve made some substantial contributions to our sensor technology over the years.�
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  They walked for another five minutes. Other than the color of the low lights that was different at each intersection, there was no change to the nature of the alleys or walls. He knew there were tall structures somewhere in the dome, but none of them were visible from the bottom of the alleys. It didn’t take much imagination for him to picture himself as some lab animal scuttling through a maze.

  Paula eventually stopped beside a section of wall no different from any other; the string of lights along the base were purple shading toward ultra-violet. After a moment, a section of the wall in front of her split open and parted. The gap was wide enough to admit a Raiel. Inside was a broad circular space, its floor glowing a pale emerald. The roof was invisible somewhere in the darkness above.

  A Raiel was waiting for them a few meters beyond the door. Paula stood before it, and gave a small bow. “Hello, Qatux, thank you for seeing me.”

  Qatux’s head lifted, revealing the crinkled, damp folds of pale skin that was its mouth zone. Several of them creased up, briefly exposing deep gullets and nasal passages. There was even a glimpse of sharp brown fangs. “Paula.” The voice was a mellow whisper, accompanied by the soft sighing of air escaping through the big alien’s loose muscles. “Have you brought it?”

  “Yes.” She opened her bag and brought out a fist-sized cylinder of memory crystal.

  The big Raiel quivered at the sight of it. Now that his eyes were acclimatizing to the murky light, Hoshe could see Qatux didn’t appear to be in very good physical shape. The hide around its main torso was tight, outlining the platelets of its skeletal structure. One of its large tentacle-limbs was trembling, which it kept coiled up, though the splayed tip kept falling out. All its eyes were rheumy, blinking out of sequence.

  “How long is it?” Qatux asked.

  “Tara Jennifer Shaheef is over a hundred years old. Can you handle that much memory?”

  One of the medium-sized tentacles slithered out toward Paula, its tip poised above the memory crystal. “Yes. Most certainly. I can do that.”

  “I’m serious.” Paula slapped at the tentacle tip that hurriedly withdrew. “I need to know if it’s actually possible. You’ve never taken more than twenty years before.”

  “Yes. Yes. It will take longer for me to absorb that much information, that’s all.”

  “All right then. I’m looking for anyone who could carry a grudge. Anyone who features prominently and then vanishes from her life. They might have been edited out, so check for missing segments, you know, sequences that don’t connect to anything else. I want you to consider professional clashes as well as personal ones. It might even be a quick meeting, a particularly savage argument. I don’t know, but some trigger, okay?”

  The tentacle crept out again, a sheepish motion. “These events and people I will find for you.”

  “I hope so.” Her hand moved up and down, as if physically weighing the cylinder, demonstrating her reluctance. Then she brought it up and slapped it into the hooked end of the tentacle. Qatux hurriedly pulled it back. “Don’t take too long,” she admonished.

  “A week. No more. I will call you. I promise.”

  The wall parted again to let them out.

  “That’s it?” Hoshe asked. “We just leave her memory with Qatux?”

  “You heard. Qatux will call when he’s finished.”

  “Hell, I thought…” Hoshe lowered his voice. “I thought we were taking it to some Raiel authority, a forensics lab. Something official!”

  “What do you want? A mayor or a president with a signature certificate on a court warrant? The High Angel lets us in, the Raiel city gives us access; it doesn’t get any more official than this.”

  Hoshe took a long breath, he really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Chief Investigator. But he was police, too; maybe not like her, but he had a sense of right and wrong, of justice. “All I’m saying is, it took the Oaktier Supreme National Court three days to grant us copy authority to Shaheef’s secure store memory. And if it had been anybody else but you applying, we probably wouldn’t have got that. Isn’t that an indicator of how highly we value a secure store? This is a person’s life we’re dealing with here, her whole life. And now you just hand it over to some sick alien.”

  “Yes it’s her life. But that life was entrusted to us when she was murdered.”

  “Alleged murder.”

  “It is time you learned that passing your own judgment and acting upon it is essential to our profession. Have some confidence in yourself and your ability, Detective.”

  Hoshe scowled, though he knew his cheeks were reddening. He walked through the bizarrely lit alleys next to the Chief Investigator, both of them keeping silent.

  The lift door was still open when they arrived back at it.

  “They pity him, you know,” Paula said as they started their descent back down the stalk.

  “Who?”

  “The other Raiel. They pity Qatux. You understand what he is, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “They’re an old race. They have dignity and grace in abundance, their minds are far superior to ours. We’re only a few generations away from our hunter-gatherer ancestors; while the Raiel are so far past that rung on their evolutionary ladder they’re almost a different species to the creatures they left behind. It leaves them vulnerable to certain things. I’m not making excuses for what Qatux is, but I understand his fall. We can cope with raw emotion because we’re still close to the animal origin. I can’t imagine what it’s like for an entity who has never experienced love or hate or anger or joy to be exposed to such feelings. Shock, I guess. For the majority of them, anyway. Most Raiel are mentally strong enough to dismiss it. But the weaker ones, they can become addicted. That’s what happened to Qatux; he’s a human junkie. He loves us. And I think it’s the saddest thing in the universe.”

  “So he’s reliving Shaheef’s memories?”

  “Not reliving, he’s becoming her. Every experience, every sight, every sound, he knows them. You heard him, it’ll take a week to absorb a hundred years of her life. When it’s done, we’ll be able to ask him anything about any day, hour, or minute of her life, and get a coherent answer.”

  “All right, but I don’t see the need. We can do that, we don’t need a Raiel.”

  “Have you ever reviewed someone’s memory, Hoshe?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “It’s not like a TSI recording; similar I grant you, but not the same. TSI is the polished version, directed and focused. They’re made for a reason, to push your attention onto something. Ninety percent of the market has a sexual content, but there are the pure dramas, and action adventures, and tourist trips as well. It actually takes a very skilled performer, backed up by an equally skillful nerve impulse editor, to receive and filter out the impressions that the director wants and the script calls for. You access a TSI and the story is laid out for you, easy and simple, you sit back and zip through it. True memory is different, it’s whatever has caught your attention at the moment. There can be a dozen important—critical—things going on around you, and because of your prejudices, the way your personality is put together, you’re only looking at one, most likely the least important. It doesn’t even have to be visual; a sound, a smell, that could be the only recollection you have of a room, not who was in it or what they said. And try finding that room amid all the years you can recall… We can date the sections of memories which were recorded by an insert memorycell. But indexing, that’s completely different. Unless you know the exact time, you’re forced to review the whole day, or if you’re unlucky, week. And that’s where Qatux comes in. Humans have to review memory in real-time, we can’t accept it running faster than it happened. So if I wanted to look through the century which is Shaheef’s life, I would have to spend a century doing it. But Qatux with his larger brain and excellent mind, he can take the whole load in almost at once.”

  “You were worried about him.”

  “Yes. A
hundred years is a long time. Even his brain will have a limit. And I know he’s soaked up dozens of human lives already.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you, being his pusher?”

  “Human ethics,” she murmured. “You can’t judge the Raiel by our standards. They don’t police their own kind the way we do. Raiel are supposed to police themselves. Qatux has made his choice, which in his society he has a perfect right to do. He’s going to get those memories anyway. If I didn’t supply them, other people will; it’s not just commercial TSI recordings you can buy within the unisphere, there are real memories to be had as well. A small specialist market. This way Qatux helps us solve the crime, everybody benefits. If we stopped him from getting them, it would be us committing the transgression as far as the Raiel are concerned.”

  “Maybe,” Hoshe said. The lift was slowing again, delivering them into freefall. “I still believe this is wrong.”

  “Do you want to leave the case? I won’t stop you, and it won’t read against you on your record.”

  “No thank you, Chief Investigator. We’ve come this far; I’m going to see it through.”

  …

  From the moment it began, Rob Tannie regretted taking this job. It was all down to money of course, and his perennial shortage of it. In his current chosen profession of “field security operative” ordinary jobs were hard to find, and well-paid jobs were merely the stuff of legend. So when his agent called to offer him the contract with its fantastic payment, he should have known better. And if that wasn’t enough, the contract also had a re-life clause: he was to load his memories into a private clinic’s secure store and his anonymous employer would provide a five-year bond. If Rob didn’t reappear within five years in person to cancel it, then the clinic would go ahead with the procedure.