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Chapter Eight

The structural pillar narrowed near the bottom of the Shark Fin, and the fifteen tracks thinned down to only two. They transitioned through one last divide, and the train’s descent began to slow.

Isaac peered down at New Frontier. The shelf city was built into an oval space that narrowed near the bottom. Seven major levels ringed the structural walls, and bridges crisscrossed the empty space in the center. A lush park covered a full third of the upper shelf, a lake took up another third, and the rest was populated with elaborate estates and carefully manicured gardens. Farther below, the buildings became smaller and more densely packed, and the city’s artificial sun failed to reach all of them. The Negation Industries logo scrolled across the factory roof below the city’s bottom shelf.

The train eased onto a curved track that brought it into a station one shelf below the top.

“Attention passengers. Thank you for choosing the Pillar Line for your transportation needs today. We are now arriving at New Frontier, Shelf Six. Indoor weather is twenty-two degrees Celsius, pressure is one point oh five atmospheres, and local ventilation is providing a gentle breeze of six kilometers per hour. Outside, the temperature is a chilly negative three degrees Celsius, pressure is nine point eight atmospheres, and wind speeds are gusting at two hundred and seventy kilometers per hour. We hope you enjoyed your time with us, and we look forward to serving you again in the future. All passengers, please prepare to disembark.”

“End of the line,” Isaac said, rising from his seat.

* * *

The car drove off the down ramp onto Shelf One and turned down a narrow street, taking Isaac and Susan farther underneath the upper shelves. The buildings to either side were low and squat, and overhead lights provided inconsistent pools of illumination.

Oasis Apartments came into view at the far end of the street, composed of nine rather taller buildings arranged around a wide cul-de-sac. Each rectangular building extended from the shelf floor all the way up ten stories to the bottom of Shelf Two. Lighting in this part of New Frontier wasn’t great to begin with, but the walkways crisscrossing between the apartment structures imposed a foreboding gloom over the street below.

The car parked itself along the lip of the cul-de-sac, and the cabin door split open.

“Vehicle, wait here,” Isaac said, climbing out of the car.

“Standing by,” replied the car’s attendant program.

“They couldn’t find a better place to stay?” Susan asked, looking around. A few other cars ringed the cul-de-sac, and they could see half-empty parking garages inside each building’s first floor. The walls had once been a uniform ocean blue, but a greasy patina oozed out of open seams in the paneling, and a faint rubbery odor lingered. Active graffiti adorned parts of the walls and sidewalks, some of it obscene, while others displayed large blocky numbers that would change every couple of seconds.

“Maybe they picked the one closest to the factory?” he guessed.

“I thought this place was supposed to be new.” She turned to him. “You know, ‘New Frontier.’”

“Well, it’s not that new.” He looked around, then shrugged. “It was ‘new’ enough when this shelf was settled, but that was over twenty years ago, it’s clearly fallen out of favor as the city expanded upward with additional shelves.”

“I see.” She gave the apartments a dubious frown. “What’s that coming out of the walls?”

“Degraded prog-steel that should have been replaced years ago.”

“Is it dangerous?” she asked with a hint of concern.

“Hardly,” Isaac assured her. “Basic prog-steel, like the kind used in civilian construction, can corrode if it isn’t maintained. It loses its adaptive qualities, becomes inert.”

“So, it’s harmless?”

“Very harmless. Come on.”

He led the way to the second building on the right with his LENS floating behind and above his shoulder and Susan bringing up the rear. He pinged the door with his police credentials, and it opened into a modest square room with two doors on the far wall.

One split open to reveal a cramped compartment.

“An elevator?” Susan asked.

“Problem?” Isaac turned back with one foot inside.

“I was expecting artificial gravity.”

“Counter-grav is for the rich,” Isaac replied matter-of-factly. He waited for Susan and the LENS to squeeze in, and they took the elevator up to level four. They stepped out onto a balcony that ringed the building and followed it around to the back to find Andover-Chen’s apartment.

“Four-twelve,” Susan said.

“Mmhmm.” Isaac used the keycode Gordian had provided along with their agent profiles, and the apartment door split open. The entrance led to a clean, spartan interior with gray walls and a floor carpeted in a checkered pattern, all arranged into a main living space, bathroom, and bedroom.

He stepped through the threshold, the infostructure recognized his presence, and abstractions came alive around him. Soft music played in the background; Isaac didn’t recognize the composition, but it had a serene, unobtrusive melody. It was the kind of music one might listen to while working to help focus the mind. Perhaps classical Martian?

Isaac walked along one wall covered in abstract picture frames: a young Matthew Andover receiving a diploma, Chen Wang-shu doing the same; Andover giving a speech; Chen lecturing his students; a recent picture of Andover and Chen joining the Gordian Division; Andover-Chen celebrating his/their integration; Andover-Chen accepting an award from President Byakko; Andover-Chen giving an interview; Andover-Chen shaking hands with a short, compact woman in a Peacekeeper uniform, and so on.

“Doesn’t the guy have any family?” Susan asked.

“I’m beginning to think he’s married to his work.”

“And he seems to have a high opinion of himself.”

“Maybe, but look at what he accomplished during the Dynasty Crisis. I suppose he’s earned the right.”

The pictures weren’t all about Andover-Chen. A photo of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue floated large and prominent on the far wall, and Isaac guessed the few other black-and-white photos might also be famous scientists.

“What’s this one?” She pointed to a wall-height poster squeezed into a corner, almost haphazardly. The poster depicted a dark green lizardman with a grenade bandolier, a pistol-wielding white-furred mouse-alien half the lizardman’s height, a lithe golden-hued humanoid with long cranial antennae, and a hulking suit of power armor carrying the result of a wild orgy between a rocket launcher, a machinegun, and a flamethrower. The poster’s caption read “Kleio Squad.”

“Looks like a gaming group for Solar Descent,” Isaac said. “That’s a popular abstraction here in SysGov. I’m guessing the one with the antennae is the doctor.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The picture’s focused on him.”

“Ah.”

Isaac walked over to a wide desk placed against the wall with a trio of powerful infosystems towers jammed underneath. He pulled out the chair and sank into it. A blizzard of charts materialized around him, and he blinked his eyes at the deluge of data assaulting his senses. Mathematical equations, time machine schematics, and graphs that made no sense to him filled his worldview, though he did pick out a few notes the doctor had left for himself, floating above or below the mass of screens. He pulled one close.

“‘What if we find a universe where the speed of light is different?’” he read aloud, grimaced, then let it return to its original place and pulled in another one. “‘Reminder: Talk to Hinnerkopf about transverse research outpost idea.’ Know anything about that?”

“First I’ve heard of it. The transverse is the space ‘in between’ universes, in case you were wondering.”

“Thanks. I was.” He grabbed another and cleared his throat. “‘Which next? Accelerated medibot healing or drone armor upgrade?’”

“Accelerated healing?” Susan asked. “Drone armor?”

“Perks for his Solar Descent character.” Isaac rose from the seat and slid it back in. “Cephalie, how about you?”

“The infostructure’s clean.” She appeared atop the LENS. “Nothing out of the ordinary. His mail buffered from his most recent stay looks normal to me, too. Lots of back-and-forth with Negation Industries and the Trinh Syndicate about the impellers they’re working on. Progress reports back to the Gordian commissioner. Work and personal messages between him and Delacroix. All the kind of stuff you’d expect to see from Gordian’s top scientist. Plus a few messages to and from Gordian agents Raibert Kaminski and Philosophus about their next gaming session.”

“Pull copies of all his correspondence and grab any notes he left to himself. We might need them later.”

“Consider it done.”

Isaac checked the other two rooms, but besides the expected synthoid charging station and bed, a spare Gordian uniform in the closet, and some basic synthoid care products in the restroom, the two rooms appeared almost unused.

“Delacroix’s place next?” Susan asked.

“Yeah, let’s move on.”

They exited the apartment, and Isaac locked the door behind them. They took a nearby flight of stairs up one level and rounded the corner of the building to where the bridges intersected over the cul-de-sac in a denser pattern, forming an elevated communal platform with a few park benches and basketball court.

A lone teenager dribbled his ball half-heartedly as he paced up the court, a bored frown on his face. He looked over when Isaac and Susan came into view, and every muscle in his body locked up. He missed his next dribble, and the ball bounced past his frozen hand until it rolled to a halt against the platform’s guardrail.

<Isaac?> Cephalie sent him privately.

<I see him,> Isaac replied without moving his lips. <Looks like a lone Numbers gang member. Any others around?>

<He’s the first one I’ve seen.>

<Keep an eye on him.>

<Will do.>

The teenager wore a white baggy shirt and pants with bold, black numbers appearing and disappearing at random, as well as round abstraction goggles with reflective lenses and a band around the back of his head. He sidestepped over to his ball and picked it up, trying and failing to look natural while also never taking his eyes off the police.

Isaac had no doubt the gangster was up to no good, and the sudden appearance of a SysPol detective had shocked him, but that didn’t mean Isaac could do anything about it, and so he continued around the next building. He turned the corner and caught sight of the door to Delacroix’s apartment.

Someone had forced it open.

He whirled around and faced the gangster.

“You there!”

The kid bolted for the stairs.

“Stop! Police!”

The gangster ignored him and sprinted across the platform toward the stairs.

“Cephalie!” Isaac shouted, sending unlock codes for prisoner-restraint functions to the LENS.

The outer eyeball surface of the LENS morphed into an aerodynamic teardrop, and the internal graviton thruster fired at full power. The LENS darted forward, a silver arrowhead seeking its target. The gangster turned and cried out moments before the tip of the LENS pressed against his ribs.

Malleable prog-steel deformed like soft putty, splashing outward to form four pseudopods of mercury-like metal. The flexible arms looped around the gangster’s wrists and ankles, stiffened, and he stumbled and fell backward. He would have smacked his head against the guardrail if not for a fifth pseudopod that circled around behind him and, acting like a spring, lowered him slowly—almost lovingly—to the ground.

The prog-steel restraints stiffened further, and the LENS’s naked mechanical core floated up and away from it.

“Fuck you!” the gangster spat. “Why the fuck you do that?”

Isaac ignored the kid as he examined the busted door from a distance, arms clasped behind his back.

“Brute force,” he muttered. “Did they saw through the lock with a vibro-knife? Not a very sophisticated approach.” He peeked inside but couldn’t see much without stepping in and risking the destruction of evidence. Instead, he waved his hand over the door, and a virtual police cordon appeared.

“Why the hell you fuckers grab me? I was just shooting hoops, for fuck sake!”

“Then why’d you run?” Isaac walked over to the prone gangster with Susan. “You seemed to be in an awful hurry all of a sudden.”

“Let me go, you fuckers! I didn’t do anything!”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Isaac pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “You know anything about the apartment with the busted door?”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“You sure? Seemed like you might have been watching it. Though I’m curious why you’d hang around after it’s been robbed.”

“I’m not telling you anything! I have rights! You hear me? I have rights!”

“Fine. Have it your way.” Isaac opened a comm window. “Dispatch.”

“Themis Dispatch here,” a friendly male voice said. “How may I assist you, Detective?”

“I need a forensics team at my location, and I have a guest for the SSP to pick up, also at my location.”

“Understood, Detective. Let’s take care of the ‘guest’ first. There’s an SSP squad copter available and near your location. There, I’ve routed them to assist you, ETA seven minutes. Do you have an ID for the individual?”

“Kid, what’s your name?”

“Fuck you, cop!”

“I have a Mister F.U. Cop standing by for pickup,” Isaac said, his tone so dry he could have turned New Frontier into a desert.

The voice on the line snickered. “Is that really the gentleman’s name, sir?”

“Hey, I’m just repeating what he told me.” Isaac knelt next to the gangster and pulled off his abstraction goggles.

“Give that back!” He squirmed in vain against his restraints. “You can’t do that! That’s mine! I have rights!”

“These are some nice goggles you have here.” Isaac turned them over in his hands. “Cephalie, check the permit on these, would you?”

“Looks legit. Single-use printing pattern registered to a Nathan Skylark, age seventeen. And you’re right. They weren’t cheap.”

“You catch that, Dispatch?”

“I did, and it appears Skylark already has a criminal record.”

“Why am I not surprised.” Isaac shook his head at the kid.

“Mostly vandalism,” Dispatch added. “Skylark seems to be a small timer in the Numbers gang.”

“You looking to branch out, Nathan?” Isaac asked.

“Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”

“Mister Skylark seems to have a rather limited vocabulary.” Dispatch’s tone was as dry as Isaac’s had been. “I’ll attach his criminal record to your case file.”

“Much appreciated, Dispatch.”

“Now, about that forensics team you’ve requested…that one’s going to be a little harder. There aren’t any full physical teams near your location, and even the ones that are remotely close aren’t going to be free for a while.”

“The Apple Cypher case?” Isaac asked.

“Got it first try, Detective.”

“Doesn’t have to be a full team, then. Looks like an amateurish break-and-enter. This shouldn’t be a huge job, so I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

“Let me see what I can find…aha! I do have one specialist already in New Frontier. I should be able to sneak your request into her queue, since there’s hardly any travel time involved. There we go. Looks like she could be ready for you in about half an hour.”

“Perfect. I’ll take it.”

“Entered and accepted. Anything else?”

“Nothing. Thank you.”

“Our pleasure, Detective.”

Isaac closed the window and stood up.

“Cephalie, have the LENS perform a preliminary forensic pass over the room. We can help give the specialist a head start.”

* * *

A pair of state troopers arrived and took the gangster away without griping about it once, which Isaac appreciated after the unnecessary drama in the transceiver tower. He sat down on a courtside bench and waited for the forensic specialist while Susan stood nearby.

“Anything?” Isaac asked as the LENS floated out of Delacroix’s apartment.

“Infostructure’s been wiped, and anything of value’s been carted off.” Cephalie twirled her cane and sat down on top of the LENS, which came to rest beside Isaac on the bench. “I’m leaving the rest to the specialist.”

“Check with the apartment. See if they have any surveillance cameras.”

“Already did. They have nine cameras per level, but half of them are busted, and the ones that aren’t connect to a compromised infostructure. There must be seventeen or so programs floating around in there, all fighting each other to generate fake videos. We’re not getting anything useful out of that mess.”

“Oh well.” He shrugged. “It was worth a try. Did you let the apartment know about their problems?”

“All they have is an attendant program watching over things.”

“That’s it?” Isaac shook his head.

“Yeah, and it didn’t seem all that concerned about the break-in or the smashed cameras. It gave me the contact string for the apartment’s site manager, and I left a message.”

“Hmm.”

“This crime could be unrelated,” Susan said.

“Why do you say that?” Isaac asked, even though he’d wondered the same thing.

“Skylark doesn’t strike me as part of an elite criminal anything, and I wouldn’t expect some random youth gang to go toe to toe with SysPol’s newest division.”

“Fair point, but the Numbers could be acting as someone’s hired muscle.”

He checked the time, then opened Andover-Chen’s correspondence with Negation Industries and began reading. One prominent topic dealt with a failed impeller inspection and Negation Industries’ attempt to ask Andover-Chen to overrule Delacroix. To his credit, Andover-Chen stood firmly by his colleague in public, though he did voice some private concerns to Delacroix that the man was being too strict. Isaac made a note to bring up the impeller when they visited the company.

He continued reading but barely made a dent in the remaining correspondence when the disk-shaped frame of a SysPol conveyor drone floated up to their level with a fat crate slung underneath, secured by a pair of malleable arms.

A slender, dark-haired woman in SysPol blues walked up the steps and waved at him.

“Hey, Isaac!”

“Nina?” Isaac asked, rising from the bench. “What are you doing here?”

“Someone’s grandma saw an apple. You?”

“Double homicide.”

“You have all the luck,” she teased.

“Do not.”

“Says the guy who just arrived in a luxury saucer.”

“I—” He paused and frowned. He tried to think up a witty retort, but nothing came to mind.

“See? I have a point, don’t I?”

“A small one.”

“Oh, I’m just getting started!” She glanced over at Susan. “What’s this about you having a deputy already? And one from the Admin, at that!”

“Friend of yours, Isaac?” Susan asked.

“Sister, actually.” He gestured to them in turn. “Susan Cantrell, meet Nina Cho. Nina, Susan.”

“Just to be clear, I’m his older sister,” Nina corrected.

“By all of sixteen minutes,” Isaac added with a roll of his eyes.

“Still counts.” Nina extended a hand. “Nice to meet you, Susan!”

“Likewise.” She shook her hand.

“My little brother hasn’t caused you any trouble yet, has he?”

Nina.”

“Well…” Susan frowned uncomfortably at the sudden question. “No?”

“You don’t have to cover for him, you know.”

“New job, new challenges. That’s all.”

“Well, just let me know if he does anything unbearable.” Nina slapped a hand down on Isaac’s shoulder. “I’ll straighten him out!”

“A-hem.” Isaac glowered as he brushed her hand off. “I believe you have a job to do.”

“Sure, sure. Where’s the crime scene?”

“This way.” Susan led her to Delacroix’s apartment. “Here’s the dead agent’s apartment.”

“Geez. Talk about a lack of subtlety. They saw through the lock?”

“Looks like it.”

Nina turned back to the conveyor drone and whistled.

Six compartments on the crate opened, and six spherical drones that resembled Isaac’s LENS hovered over to her.

“In you go, my lovelies!” Nina gestured inside, and the forensics drones floated past her. She summoned a virtual interface, tapped a few keys, then paused to squint at one of the readouts. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What’s wrong?” Susan asked.

“They sprayed the whole place down with Grime-Away. The walls are dripping with the stuff! Can you believe that?”

“Well, you know what they say,” Isaac sighed.

“Know what who says?” Susan asked.

“Grime-Away,” he intoned. “Good for grime, great for crime.”

“It’s an aerosol cleaning mixture,” Nina added. “Microbot-based.”

“Self-replicating?” Susan asked, sounding worried for some reason.

“No, nothing fancy like that,” Nina said, “but the microbots will scour any surface they come into contact with before pooling together and traveling to the nearest reclamation chute. Dirt, grease, skin cells, hair follicles, respiratory spray, fingerprints, shoe prints, you name it. Grime-Away doesn’t care. It eats them all.”

“Some criminals use the stuff to tidy up after their messes,” Isaac added.

“So that’s it?” Susan asked. “It’s that easy for the bad guys? They spray the place down and destroy all the evidence?”

“Hardly!” Nina cracked her knuckles as four of her drones traveled back into the crate. “These fools see someone use Grime-Away in a movie, and they think it’ll work in real life. This is the tool of a criminal who doesn’t know any better.” She shook her head with a sly half smile. “They don’t realize the kinds of toys I have at my disposal. I almost feel sorry for them.”

The four drones left the crate, this time with boxy attachments dangling beneath them.

“All this does is slow me down,” Nina continued, “and not even by that much.”

“You sound confident,” Susan noted.

“Because this break-in job has ‘novice’ written all over it.” Nina turned to Isaac. “I thought you’d have a tough one for me.”

“Do you want a tougher task?” Isaac asked pointedly.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t mind. Raviv’s had me bouncing around from one tampered food printer to the next since I arrived, and every one of them is the same. Altered pattern files with no indication of how they got there.”

“Is the Apple Cypher really that big of a problem?” Isaac asked.

“Not right now,” Nina said. “Everyone’s overreacting like damn fools over food printer vandalism, but the implied threat is the real problem.”

“If the criminal can change your food patterns,” Susan began, “what might be sabotaged next?”

“Exactly,” Nina agreed. “And that’s why everyone’s freaking out.”

“Well, enjoy your non-food-printer assignment while it lasts.” Isaac glanced inside. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

“Oh, Isaac. You know better than to ask.” She smiled sweetly at him. “It’ll be done when it’s done.”

“Figured you’d say that.”

“I need to stop by the local precinct after this. Maybe catch you there before I head up the pillar?”

“Sure, if we’re around. Need anything from us before we head out?”

“No, I’ve got this one covered.”

“Then we’ll leave you to it.”

“Should we head for the SSP precinct?” Susan asked. “Question that kid?”

“Not yet. We can hold him for twenty-four hours without charging him, so he’s not going anywhere. Let him stew for a while in his cell. Cephalie?”

“Yeah?” She appeared on his shoulder.

“Tell Negation Industries we’re paying them a visit.”


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