C137PUDV-Allson, Joel K., ARM Captain. 33 standard years old. Born: Constantinople, Earth. Current assignment: Chief of Investigation-Tiamat Station, Alpha Centauri. Fingerprints, retina prints, gene scan. A holo of a man with a Flatlander face, Arab, African, Slav, Balt and Mongol-boringly nondescript on Earth, noticeably different on Wunderland. Date of birth, date of marriage, date of divorce. Medical history, educational records, details of promotion. Case reports from Bangkok, New Delhi and Berlin. Commendations for service and commendations for bravery. Date of transfer outsystem.
A good record, I was proud of it. What's the measure of a man? Nowadays it's his data file. Dossiers are the tools of my trade. They give me a skeleton-my job is putting flesh on the bones.
The best cops are just one step this side of the law-that's how you get into a criminal's mind. I was one of the best. In deep-cover work, the line gets blurry. You make so many sacrifices you start to feel entitled to fringe benefits your cover requires you to take anyway. The Brandywine case cost me my marriage. When it blew up, my position was-confused.
The Conduct Review Board said, 'Captain Allson's actions were directly related to his assignment and he did not act with criminal intent.' They must have known more than I did. Prakit believed them because he believed in me but when the slot on Wunderland came up, he offered it, firmly. After Brandywine I'd never be safe undercover again, not on the Organization cases I'd made into my life. He never mentioned Holly, but it wasn't my cover that worried him. I took the assignment. What else was I going to do?
Wunderland-the name says it all. The colonists found a virgin paradise of mountains and forests, clear air and low gravity. They turned it into the jewel of Known Space, but the world they'd built was gone now. First the kzinti had invaded taking the land and turning the citizens into slaves-or dinner. Some fought, some fled, some tried to save what they could. Most just survived and carried on in a grimmer world.
Forty years later, Earth attacked with lightspeed missiles, twelve thousand gigatonne impacts that punched to the planet's core and blotted the suns from the sky. The UN wrecked the kzinti industrial base and much of Wunderland in the process. The survivors cheered anyway, and dreamed of liberation. And it came, faster than anyone could imagine, in an Earth armada with We Made It hyperdrives. The Provisional Government was formed and the Wunderlanders began to heal the scars of conquest. The rebels came out of the mountains and the pirates came in from the Swarm. The few kzinti left insystem adapted, disappeared into the forest, or died.
But liberation didn't end the war. Alpha Centauri became the UN advance base. The Provo Government was controlled by UN advisors and the Serpent Swarm made a UN territory outright. The economy went to full war production. The liberators quartered thousands of troops in Munchen in case the kzinti came back-and in case the Wunderlanders objected to the UN plan. Maybe the breakdown was inevitable. The kzinti were no harsher than the Provos and a lot less corrupt. A political party called the Isolationists emerged with a simple solution-Wunderland for Wunderlanders. The kzinti were gone, the Flatlanders could go too. By the time I arrived in Munchen, they were no longer a political party, they were a terrorist group. The Provisional Government's anti-collaborator campaign had become a random witch hunt. The whole infrastructure was falling apart-transportation, medical support, civil services, even basic maintenance stripped to feed the UN war machine. The black market thrived on everything from pleasure drugs to biochips and a dozen crime webs warred over the spoils. Whole outland regions rejected the Provos and UN troops were used to impose control.
I should have thrived in that environment-it was my kind of work, but the rot had spread to the ARM. Certain individuals, certain groups had immunity. Investigations that got too close were closed down. Critical evidence simply disappeared. I fought a losing battle to clean up the agency and made a lot of high-powered enemies. When they discovered they couldn't shut me up, they kicked me upstairs, big time. I wound up with the top job on Tiamat, half a billion kilometers skyward.
It was better on station. There was smuggling, theft, even murder-but no bombings, no assassinations, no gang wars. More importantly, the taint of corruption was gone. I needed that change most of all. It didn't tempt me, but it disturbed too many sleeping ghosts for comfort.
The tube stopped and I climbed out and hurried back to my office. I wanted to catch up to Hunter-of-Outlaws. One of the few wise decisions the UN made was to let the kzinti left in-system run their internal affairs as long as they toed the UN line when dealing with humans. Tiamat has a lot of kzinti, most in the Tigertown high-G section. They were surprisingly good citizens, considering, but keeping relations smooth was a balancing act. Hunter was my high-wire partner.
He was on his way out when I got back. I grabbed him before he could leave and outlined my findings.
'What do you think?' I asked when I was done.
'Hrrr… If Koffman and Vorden are to be believed the prime suspect must be the human she left with, on evidence of contacts. Since she left no transit log, it is probable she traveled on her companion's ident to the transport tunnel where she was killed. However…”he trailed off.
'Go on,' I prompted.
He continued reluctantly. 'The body was found near the kzinti sector. The corpse looks like a butchered prey animal. On the basis of these facts I would suspect a kzin.'
I nearly laughed but he was dead serious. 'You don't think a human would do that?'
'I have seen humans kill each other but I have never seen them strip a carcass so. It is the act of a carnivore.'
'Never underestimate humanity, my friend.' I grinned, but didn't let my teeth show.
He ignored the barb. 'If it is possible, then we must consider it. It is conceivable the culprit was cutting the body up into manageable pieces and was disturbed before the task could be completed. Perhaps Miranda Holtzman held dangerous information and was killed to preserve its secrecy.'
'I hadn't considered that, but you're right.' I didn't go on.
Hunter considered, pupils narrowing. 'Your manner tells me you have another thought.' He knew humans well.
'Perhaps she was killed by a schitz.' It was a wild idea, but it fit.
The kzin looked baffled. Maybe he didn't know humans so well after all. 'What is a schitz?'
'It's a blanket term for someone who isn't wired properly. They respond to hallucinations, become paranoid or megalomaniacal. Specifics vary but they can be homicidal.'
He knew what hallucinations were but-'What is paranoid and megalomaniacal?' He pronounced the words awkwardly.
'Paranoia is when you feel that the entire world is plotting against you. Megalomania is when you have delusions of grandeur.' His expression continued quizzical. 'As if a telepath was convinced he was destined to be Patriarch.'
'A kzin so defective would not survive. I have never heard of these conditions.'
'It's rare, the genes are being weeded out. There are drugs to control it too-but-med support is hard to get nowadays. On Wunderland people are dying for lack of it. It isn't so bad up here…”I trailed off, thinking. Getting treatment was easy in the Swarm, but what if someone didn't want treatment?
'Why do you suspect a schitz if they are rare? Probability would suggest another scenario.'
'Yah, it would. But Miranda was a pretty young woman last seen with an unknown male. Schitz crimes sometimes involve violent sexual motives.'
He gave me another quizzical look. 'Violent sex is a contradiction in terms. How can genes for this behavior propagate?'
'Schitzies aren't rational, I don't know how they think. Dammit, I've only even heard of one schitz; this is just what I learned in training.' I thought about the case I knew. An autodoc misread a med card and a quiet sculptor murdered his roommates in a blind rage. The error wasn't his fault but…
Hunter interrupted my reverie. 'We have a wealth of possibilities-a kzin with a lost temper, a human with a definite motive and a connection to the victim, a schitz engaged in random murder. We lack information. I suggest we gain some.'
I smiled. 'Let's do that.' Hunter could be relied on to cut to the heart of the matter. He gave me the kzin gesture that meant concurrence-between-equals and left. I watched him go and pondered. There was another possibility.
Hunter's dossier told me he'd once been Kurz-Commander, in control of the kzin base on Tiamat. During the occupation he'd gained a reputation as a hard but fair governor and a ruthless, efficient rebel hunter. He'd earned
