said.
“I’ll reassign the AI vehicle search priority now.”
“If you find any of Moyce’s lorries that are still moving, target them with the SD platforms. We don’t have any other choice.”
“I agree,” Admiral Farquar datavised.
“Ralph, ask him which of the embassy pair was in Moyce’s, please,” Roche Skark datavised.
Ralph pulled a processor block from his belt, and ordered it to display pictures of Jacob Tremarco and Angeline Gallagher. He thrust it towards Vargas. “Did you see either of these people in the shop?”
The man took his time. “Him. I think.”
“So we’ve still got to find Angeline Gallagher,” Ralph said. “Any more city traffic with glitched processors?”
“Three possibles,” Diana datavised. “We’ve already got two of them located. Both taxis from the spaceport.”
“Okay, assign an AT Squad to each taxi. And make sure there are experienced personnel in both of them. What was the third trace?”
“A Longhound bus which left the airport ten minutes after the embassy trio landed; it was a scheduled southern route, right down to the tip of Mortonridge. We’re working on its current location.”
“Right, I’m coming back to the police headquarters. We’re finished here.”
“What about him?” Nelson Akroid asked, jerking a thumb at the captive.
Ralph glanced back. Santiago Vargas had found another cigarette from somewhere and was smoking it quietly. He smiled. “Can I go now, seсor?” he asked hopefully.
Ralph returned the smile with equal honesty. “Have the zero-tau pods from
“The first batch are due to arrive at Pasto spaceport in twelve minutes,” Vicky Keogh replied.
“Cathal,” Ralph said out loud. “See if Mr Vargas here will cooperate with us for just a little longer. I’d like to know the limits of the electronic warfare field, and that illusion effect of theirs.”
“Yes, boss.”
“After that, take him and the others on a sightseeing trip to the spaceport. No exceptions.”
“My pleasure.”
• • •
The Loyola Hall was one of San Angeles’s more prestigious live-event venues. It seated twenty-five thousand under a domed roof which could be retracted when the weather was balmy, as it so frequently was in that city. There were excellent access routes to the nearby elevated autoway; the subway station was a nexus for six of the lines which ran beneath the city; it even had seven landing pads for VIP aircraft. There were five-star restaurants and snack bars, hundreds of rest rooms. Stewards were experienced and friendly. Police and promoters handled over two hundred events a year.
The whole site was an operation which functioned with silicon efficiency. Until today.
Eager kids had been arriving since six o’clock in the morning. It was now half past seven in the evening. Around the walls they were thronging twenty deep; scrums outside the various public doors needed police mechanoids to maintain a loose kind of order, and even they were in danger of being overwhelmed. The kids had a lot of fun spraying them with soft drinks and smearing ice creams over the sensors.
Inside the hall every seat was taken, the tickets bought months ago. The aisles were filled with people, too, though how they had got in past the processor-regulated turnstiles was anyone’s guess. Touts were becoming overnight millionaires, those that weren’t being arrested or mugged by gangs of motivated fourteen-year- olds.
It was the last night of Jezzibella’s Moral Bankruptcy tour. The New California system had endured five weeks of relentless media saturation as she swept across the asteroid settlements and down to the planetary surface. Rumour, of AV projectors broadcasting illegal activent patterns during her concerts to stimulate orgasms in the audience (not true, said the official press release, Jezzibella has abundant sexuality of her own, she doesn’t need artificial aids to boost the Mood Fantasy she emotes). Hyperbole, about the President’s youngest daughter being completely infatuated after meeting her, then sneaking out of the Blue Palace to go backstage at her concert (Jezzibella was delighted and deeply honoured to meet all members of the First Family, and we are not aware of any unauthorized entry to a concert). Scandal, when two of the band, Bruno and Busch, were arrested for violating public decency laws in front of a senior citizens holiday group, their bail posted at one million New California dollars (Bruno and Busch were engaged in a very wonderful, sensitive, and private act of love; and that bunch of filthy old perverts used enhanced retinas to spy on them). Straight hype, when Jezzibella visited (as a private citizen—so no sensevises, please) a children’s ward in a poor district of town, and donated half a million fuseodollars to the hospital’s germ-line treatment fund. Editorial shock at the way she flaunted her thirteen-year- old male companion, Emmerson (Mr Emmerson is Jezzibella’s second cousin, and his passport clearly states he is sixteen). A lot of spectator fun, and official police cautions, derived from the extraordinarily violent fights between her entourage’s security team and rover reporters. The storm of libel writs issued by Leroy Octavius, her manager, every time anyone suggested she was older than twenty-eight.
And in all those five weeks she never gave an interview, never made a single public utterance outside of her stage routine. She didn’t have to. In that time, the regional office of Warner Castle Entertainment datavised out thirty-seven million copies of her new MF album
The starship crews who normally made a tidy profit from selling a copy of an MF album to a distributor in star systems where they hadn’t been officially released yet cursed their luck when they arrived on planets where Jezzibella had passed through in the last eighteen months. But then that was the point of being a touring artist. A new album every nine months, and visit ten star systems each year; it was the only way you could beat the bootleggers. If you weren’t prepared to do that, the only money you ever got was from your home star system. Few made the transition from local wonder to galactic mega-star. It took a lot of money to travel, and entertainment companies were reluctant to invest. The artist had to demonstrate a colossal degree of professionalism and determination before they were worth the multimillion-fuseodollar risk. Once they’d breached the threshold, of course, the old adage of money making more money had never been truer.
High above the costly props and powerful AV stacks onstage, an optical-band sensor was scanning the crowd. Faces merged into a monotonous procession as it swept along the tiers and balconies. Fans came in distinct categories: the eager exhilarated ones, mostly young; boisterous and expectant, late teens; impatient, already stimmed-out, nervous, fearfully worshipful, even a few who obviously wanted to be somewhere else but had come along to please their partner. Every costume Jezzibella had ever worn in an MF track was out there somewhere, from the simple to the peacock bizarre.
The sensor focused on a couple in matching leathers. The boy was nineteen or twenty, the girl at his side a bit younger. They had their arms around each other, very much in love. Both tall, healthy, vital.
Jezzibella cancelled the datavise from the sensor. “Those two,” she told Leroy Octavius. “I like them.”
The unpleasantly overweight manager glanced at the short AV pillar sticking out of his processor block, checking the two blithesome faces. “Roger dodger. I’ll get on it.”
There was no quibbling, not the faintest hint of disapproval. Jezzibella liked that; it was what made him such a good manager. He understood how it was for her, the things she required in order to function. She needed kids like those two. Needed what they’d got, the naivete, the uncertainty, the delight at life. She had none of that left, now, not the sweet side of human nature. The eternal tour had drained it all away, somewhere out among the stars; one energy which could leak out of a zero-tau field. Everything became secondary to the tour, feelings weren’t allowed to interfere. And feelings suppressed long enough simply vanished. But she couldn’t have that, because she needed an understanding of feelings in order to work. Circles. Her life was all circles.
So instead of her own emotions, she familiarised herself with this alien quality which others owned, examining it as if she were performing a doctoral thesis. Absorbed what she could, the brief taste allowing her to perform again, to fake it through yet one more show.
“I don’t like them,” Emmerson said petulantly.
