“So are we under arrest?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, no. The security people weren’t very nice when the ambulance brought you back here. They said Nigel Sheldon was really cross with you. But it’s all been okay since he and Ozzie got back.”
“Back from where?”
“They flew to Dyson Alpha and restarted the barrier generator. It’s been on all the news shows.”
“Oh.” And I missed it all.
“There are Dynasty warships going off on Firewall flights right now. And there’s been alien agents arrested in the Commonwealth, and there was some big storm on Far Away that killed the Starflyer, and lots of other stuff. Tochee and I can hardly keep up with it.”
“Nigel’s back?”
“Yeah. He said to tell you the offer’s suspended. What does that mean?”
“He promised me an interview; that’s all.”
“Okay. And a bloke called Morton stopped by. He said you’d know where to find him if you wanted to.”
“Right.” He couldn’t be bothered to wait?
“Mellanie, where do you want to go when you’re better?”
“It’s a little early to…What did you call me?”
Orion hung his head sheepishly. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. It was heavily creased, as though it had been read a lot.
Mellanie recognized her own handwriting. She’d actually written it in this room.
Darling Orion,
I’m sorry I have to leave you like this. I don’t want to, but I’m not even who you think I am. My real name is Mellanie. One day I’ll explain, if you ever want me to.
“I’ve managed to find out most of it,” he said. “Who you are and everything, that the SI sent you. Ozzie explained.”
Her throat was tightening horribly. “Then why are you here?”
“I told you, they said I could be.”
“But, if you know…?”
He reached out, boldly this time, and brushed some of her hair from the side of her face. “None of that stuff changes the way I feel about you.”
Mellanie started crying. It just wasn’t fair that he was the only one in the universe who truly cared for her. Why couldn’t I have met him before any of the others? “I can’t do this. I’m wrong for you.”
“No you’re not, don’t say that.”
“I’m not a nice girl, Orion, really I’m not.”
Orion gave her a quick devilish grin. “Yeah. I remember. I was sort of hoping you’d go on being like that with me.”
She put her hand around his head and pulled him down for a kiss.
***
The building manager was standing outside the main entrance of the ancient five-story building, supervising the maintenancebot as it removed the sign. Paula watched the electromuscle tentacles drop it into a trolleybot’s wire cage. It lifted out the old sign and placed it on the stone wall, then began to screw it into place. She smiled at the familiar lettering.
“Madame!” the building manager’s face lit up. He bowed deeply. “You are back! Welcome, welcome. The world has regained its sanity.”
“Thank you, Maurice,” she said sincerely. “Slight exaggeration, but it does feel good.”
He kissed her on both cheeks. “Everybody is waiting for you inside. May I carry that?” He indicated the small plastic bag she was gripping in her left hand.
“No thank you, I can manage.” Paula took a breath, and walked up the steps. As the doors opened, the maintenancebot began polishing the letters on the sign. She paused and watched the ancient brass lettering start to gleam again in the Paris sunlight.
INTERSOLAR COMMONWEALTH
SERIOUS CRIMES DIRECTORATE
The first person she met when she walked into the office on the fifth floor was Gwyneth Russell.
“Boss!” Gwyneth exclaimed. “Welcome back. And congratulations. Deputy Director. It’s about time.”
“Yes, well, you can’t spend your whole life in a rut.”
Gwyneth gave her a very startled look. “Absolutely not. I’m footloose and fancy free myself for the next fifteen years till Vic steps out of the Boongate wormhole. Fancy a drink tonight? I know some good clubs with lots of sweet first-life boys.”
“Not tonight, but sometime, yes.”
“Sure.”
Behind Gwyneth the rest of the investigators were standing at their desks, applauding enthusiastically. Paula actually felt her cheeks redden. She looked around at the familiar faces, and nodded her appreciation. “Thank you; it’s nice to see you all back out of uniform again,” she said. They fell quiet immediately, smiling. “It’s customary for the new chief to tell you that there’s going to be some changes around here, but I think we’ve all seen enough of that. From now on it’s strictly business as it used to be. So—I’ll want a meeting of all senior investigators in an hour to establish current case priorities. I shall also be reviewing personnel files today and tomorrow to see how you performed recently, and we need to rebuild teams after the losses we took during the navy days. To which end, I’d like to welcome Hoshe Finn to the office; I’m sure he’ll fit in just fine.”
Hoshe gave her a grin, and raised his cup of herbal tea in salute.
Alic Hogan was in the director’s office, putting his personal effects in a box. He gave Paula a half-guilty look when she walked in.
“Sorry, Chief, I wasn’t expecting you for another hour. How did it go with the Director?”
“Easy. Departmental meetings are a waste of time at best; it’s all politics and budgets. Nothing useful or relevant.”
“You’ll be all right, now you’ve got the Burnelli family backing you. Five years, you’ll be the Director.”
“Humm.” Paula cocked her head and looked out of the big window. “Adopted again.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. I never realized: you can’t see the Eiffel Tower from here. You could from my old office.”
Alic swept the last pile of papers into his box. “Uh, you know that’s the one building management assigned me to.”
“Very symbolic.” Paula sat behind the desk and pulled her rabbakas plant out of the bag. The flower had faded, but another pink shoot was worming its way up out of the black corm. The hologram of the Redhound family was placed next to it. Then she took out a fist-sized perspex cube with a memorycell embedded in the middle. “I’m really pleased you’re staying, Alic,” she said.
“I don’t see a huge future for me with Admiral Columbia. Uh, I was surprised when you agreed to accept me in the Paris office.”
“From what I heard you stood up to him for what you knew was right. That means you’re in the right place.”
“Thanks.”
“In any case, you could have taken your pick of government jobs after Far Away.”
“I quite enjoyed the work here, despite all the politics.”
“Yes, well, that should be considerably reduced from now on; Columbia has his hands full at the moment. He’s pressing the Senate for navy involvement with the CST exploratory division.”
Alic let out a low whistle. “What did Sheldon say about that?”
“Let’s just say he wasn’t very enthusiastic. The two of them are also struggling over who gets the credit for the Firewall. I expect we’ll see Columbia’s bid for the presidency before too long. Now, I’ve got a meeting scheduled with our office’s lawyers and the prosecuting attorney from the Justice Directorate at eleven o’clock, which I’d like you to sit in on.”
“No problem. What is it for?”
Paula held up the perspex cube. “Interesting case. Gene Yaohui, aka Captain Oscar Monroe. Do we re-life him and then hand him over to the Justice Directorate for trial and suspension, or should he sit out his thousand years here?”
Alic gave the cube a startled look. “That’s him?”
“Yes. I recovered him and Anna Kime from Stakeout Canyon. Anna’s being re-lifed, with a suitable memory edit to remove the Starflyer contamination under the conditions of the Doi amnesty. My contacts tell me we’re going to be facing a request from Wilson Kime’s lawyers to hand Oscar’s memorycell over to him for custody on York5. If that happens Kime will undoubtedly re-life him. There will be a lot of political pressure on the Justice Directorate to drop the Abadan station charges; heavyweight character references, emotionally loaded claims of rehabilitation claiming he’s paid his dues to society, the precedent for sentence cancellation set by the navy interdiction troops on the Lost23, that kind of thing. Should be quite an interesting court battle.” She smiled, giving the memorycell a curious gaze. “I might even lose.”
“You? I doubt it.”
***
“The sea’s right outside,” Barry squealed as he ran back through the house. He flung himself at Mark. “Right there, Dad!”
Mark ruffled his son’s hair. “I told you it would be.”
“Can I go in now? Please! Please!”
“No.” Mark gestured at the pile of boxes and crates that the trolleybots had taken off the big removal truck. He could see them through the wide open doors, bringing more boxes. How did we acquire so much stuff so quickly; we lost everything in the Ulon Valley. “You can’t, I’ve no idea where your swim trunks are. And besides, I don’t know what the currents are like.” Which was a white lie; the development company brochure file guaranteed that the beaches of the Mulako Estate had benign weather and tides.
“Where’s the sea?” Sandy demanded as she came in through the front door, holding her backpack.
“Outside, come on!” Barry grabbed her hand, and the two of them raced off through the huge living room and out onto the veranda, Panda barking loudly as she
