When they’d gone he went back out onto the roof garden. Mellanie smiled at him with the simple happiness of the totally devoted.
“So was she murdered?” the girl asked.
“They don’t know.”
She twined her arms around his neck, pressing her still damp body against him. “Why do you care? It was centuries and centuries ago.”
“Forty years. And I’d care very much if it happened to you.”
Her lips came together in a hurt pout. “Don’t say that.”
“The point is, time doesn’t lessen a crime, especially not today.”
“Okay.” She shrugged, and smiled at him again. “I won’t run away from you like she did, not ever.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He bent forward slightly, and started kissing her, an action that she responded to with her usual eagerness. Her youthful insecurity had been so easy to exploit, especially for someone with his years of life experience. She’d never known anyone as urbane and self-confident, nor as rich; the only people she’d ever dated were nice first-life boys. By herself, she wasn’t brave enough to break out from her middle-class conformity; but with his coaxing and support she soon began to nibble at the forbidden fruits. The publicity of their affair, the arguments with her parents, it all played in his favor. Like all first-lifers she was desperate to be shown everything life could offer. And as if by a miracle, he’d appeared in her life to fill the role of both guide and paymaster. Suddenly, after all the years of discipline and restrictions she’d endured to reach national level in her sport, nothing was outlawed to her. Her response to the liberation was a very predictable overindulgence.
Mellanie wasn’t quite the most beautiful girl he’d ever bedded, her chin was slightly too long, her nose too blunt, to be awarded that title. But with that lanky, broad-shouldered body of hers trained to the peak of gymnastic fitness, she was certainly one of the most physically satisfying. Although, truly, it was her age that excited him in a way he’d never reached with any of his Silent World encounters. Even in this liberally-inclined society, a rejuve seducing a first-lifer was regarded as being over the edge of civilized behavior—which simply added intensity to the experience. He could afford to ignore the disapproval of others.
This was what he was now, one of the rich and powerful, rising above the norm, the mundane. He lived his personal and professional lives in the same way, if there was something he wanted in either of them, he got it. Empire building became him, allowing him to thrive. Compared to his first mediocre century he was truly alive now.
“Go in and get changed,” he told her eventually. His e-butler summoned the dresser and the beautician to help get the girl ready. “Resal is expecting us on the boat in an hour. I don’t want to be too late, there are people coming that I need to meet tonight.”
“It’s not all business, is it?” Mellanie asked.
“Of course not, there’ll be fun people there as well. People your own age, and people older than me. Now please, we need to get moving.”
“Yes, Morty.” Mellanie caught sight of the two women waiting for her, and turned back to him. “What would you like me to wear?”
“Always: something that shows you off.” His virtual vision was displaying recent clothing purchases the dresser had made. “That gold and white thing you were fitted for on Wednesday. That’s small enough.”
She nodded eagerly. “Okay.” Then she hugged him again, the kind of tight reassurance-seeking embrace a child would give a parent. “I love you, Morty, really I do. You know that, don’t you?” Her eyes searched his face, hunting for any sign of confirmation.
“I know.” His older, earlier self would probably have experienced a twinge of guilt at that adulation. It was never going to last. He knew that, even though she would never be able to see it. In another year or so some other stray beauty would catch his eye, and the sweet heat of the chase would begin again. Mellanie would be gone in a flood of tears. But until then…
He gave her bum a quick gentle slap, hurrying her back into the penthouse. She squealed in mock-outrage before scampering in through the wide doors. The two women followed her in.
His e-butler brought up a list of items that he hadn’t finished working on during the day. He surveyed them all, taking his time to add comments, demand more information, or approve them for action. It was always the way; no matter how complex the management smartware a company employed, executive decisions were inevitably made by a human. An RI could eliminate a whole strata of middle management, but it lacked the kind of creative ability that a true leader possessed.
When he’d tidied up the office work, the butler brought him another sparkling gin. Morton leaned on the steel balcony rail to sip the drink, gazing out at the city below as the sun fell below the horizon. He could outline sections of it in his mind, entire districts that Gansu had built, where their government-licensed subsidiaries now provided utility and civic services—his innovation, that. There were other areas, as well, that drew his eye. Old plantations and orchards that now formed the outskirts, green parquetry flocking around the base of the mountains. Gansu’s architects had drawn up plans for beautiful buildings that would fit snugly into those crumpled mini-valleys, expensive exclusive communities providing for Oaktier’s increasingly affluent population. Already, the farmers were being tempted with financial offers and incentives.
When he looked up to the darkening sky the stars were starting to twinkle. If everything went to plan, his influence would soon stretch out to them, far exceeding the small subcontracts their offplanet offices currently achieved. He controlled Gansu’s board now. The increased business and rising stock price he’d achieved for them over the last decade had given him near-regal status. There would be no timidity in his expansion plans. The opportunities that lay out there were truly staggering. Entire civil infrastructures to be built. The new phase three junction worlds that would one day rival the Big15. Now was the best time to live.
He lowered his gaze again to scan the city rooftops. One old medium-sized tower caught his attention. It was the apartment block he and Tara had lived in for most of their marriage; he’d never realized he could see it from his roof garden. There were no details from this distance, twilight transformed it into a gray slab with parallel lines of light shining out through the windows. He took another sip of the cocktail as he stared at it. His memory couldn’t even provide an image of the apartment’s interior. When he’d gone in for rejuvenation six years after the divorce he’d edited away everything but the basic information from his secure store. Now, that life was almost like a series of notes in a file—not real, not something he’d lived through. And yet… Twenty years ago, when he’d heard of Tara’s re-life procedure, something about it had nagged at him. It was out of character to go and see her, yet he had. The semineurotic woman in her new clone body wasn’t anyone he recognized, certainly not the kind of woman he could form an attachment to. He put that down to shock and psychological trauma from the re-life.
Then the news about Cotal had been filtered out of the unisphere media streams by his e-butler, which had caught the connection to Tara. He’d stopped work in his office—an unheard of event—and worried about how strange the coincidence was. His staff had made a few discreet inquiries, the results of that had been enough for him to call the police. Their subsequent report on the case had annoyed him with its vagueness and lack of conclusion. Rather than kick up a fuss himself, which would draw comment, he’d spoken to some of the senior members of the Shaheef family.
He hadn’t quite expected someone as renown as Chief Investigator Myo herself to be assigned the case. But it was a pleasing development; if anyone could sort out what had actually happened, it would be her. His thoughts slipped to her compact body again, and the high possibility of her needing to visit Silent World.
“Morty.”
He turned around. The dresser and beautician had worked their usual magic. Mellanie was standing silhouetted in the light from the living room, her auburn hair dried and straightened so it fell down her back, the tiny dress exposing vast amounts of toned young flesh. His disquiet over Tara and Cotal vanished at once as he contemplated what new indecencies he would tutor her in later tonight.
“Do I look all right?” she asked cautiously.
“Perfect.”
TEN
Oscar Monroe and McClain Gilbert took the early-morning express from Anshun, passing through StLincoln, then Earth-London before arriving at Kerensk. The CST planetary station there operated the gateway to the High Angel, but there was no train. Instead they disembarked from the express and walked back up the platform to the main concourse. Next was a series of security checks to get into the High Angel transfer section; CST operated the first, a standard deep body scan and luggage examination, before passing them over to the Commonwealth Diplomatic Police Directorate who reviewed all visitor details. The High Angel was the one place where free entry was not a guaranteed right for Commonwealth citizens. As well as all personal details being reviewed by the Diplomatic Police for any criminal record, the file was also forwarded to the High Angel who possessed the ultimate veto on who could enter.
Oscar waited with a fluttering stomach as the policeman accepted the citizenship ID file from his e-butler and ran a DNA scan to confirm he matched the certified data. He’d never been to the High Angel before, there was always a chance it would refuse him entry or, worse, say why. “You ever been before?” he asked Mac. It was an attempt to appear casual in front of the policeman.
“Five times now,” McClain said. “Forward teams train in the zero-gee sections so we’re ready for any type of space encounter.”
“Damn, all these years on the job, and I never knew that.”
McClain grinned at his friend. They’d known each other for ten years, working together in Merredin’s CST exploratory division; after that much time in a high- pressure profession if you didn’t develop a mutual respect then somebody had to leave. Chain of command was always a nominal concept in the division, you trusted people to do their job right. “Oh, great, I’ve been risking my life under an Operations Director that doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“I saw that tar-pit monster coming, didn’t I?”
“Gentlemen,” the policeman said, “you’re clear to proceed.”
They walked through into the transfer section lounge. A steward gave them each a one-piece overall made of light breathable fabric, with fuseto footpads and cuffs. “It’s just for the shuttle,” he told them. “Wear it over your clothes, it stops anything flying loose. And please don’t forget your helmets before you go through, safety regulations will not allow us to fly unless all passengers are wearing them.”
Several other people were in the lounge, all of them shrugging their way into the white overalls. Anyone with long hair was fastening it back with bands that the stewards were handing out. Mac nudged Oscar. “Isn’t that Paula Myo over there?”
Oscar followed his gaze. A young-looking woman was fixing her straight black hair with the bands. Her companion was an overweight man in a smart suit who could barely fit into his overall. “Could be. She must have come out of rejuve recently. I remember accessing the Shayoni case about six or seven years back, the one where she tracked down the arms seller who’d supplied kinetics to the Dakra Free State rebels. Four days she waited in that house for them to show up. That is what I call dedication.”
“My wife studied her cases when she was in the academy, that’s how I know her. I’m sure it’s her.”
“Wonder who she’s after this time?”
“You know, we should have her in the crew.”
Oscar gave Mac a startled look. “As what? Do you think we’re going to start killing each other on the voyage?”
“Living in close proximity with your farts for a year, more than likely. But she solves problems, right, that’s what her whole brain’s wired for. She’s exactly the kind
