“Close. You need a place where you can change your identity completely. And I don’t just mean some decent data registry alterations, a memory erasure, and a new face. If they’ve ripped off as much as you say they have, the Financial Regulation Directorate will chase them right across the Commonwealth for the next ten centuries. They need to be free to fritter away their new wealth in perfect safety without spending the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder. For that you need a lot more than a bit of cellular reprofiling. Their DNA will be on record, the FRD will always be able to identify them. So the thing they need above all else is a baseline DNA modification.”
“What’s that?”
“Damn, I never know if you’re taking the piss or not. That is a treatment similar to rejuvenation, when the clinic alters your DNA in every cell. Permanently. The person who comes out of the tank is literally not the same person who went in. Once you’ve had that done, along with your new birth certification, a decent back history, and all your desourced money, you’re home free. You can live where you want, even next door to your old family, and they’ll never know.”
“Where would they go for that?”
“Unless you own your own biogenetic medical facility, there’s only one place: Illuminatus. There’s a lot of very specialized, ultra-discreet clinics there which offer such a service.”
“I need to go there.”
“I just knew you’d say that. Even if you did, you haven’t got a clue where the clinics are. They don’t exactly advertise on the unisphere.”
“I’ll find them.”
Michelangelo gave an extravagant sigh. “One week ago, three people checked in to the Saffron Clinic on Allwyn Street, two men, one woman. I don’t know their names, but the time frame fits.” He gave a diffident moue. “I have contacts. I am still numero uno here, please remember.”
“Thank you,” she said sincerely.
“Mellanie, take care, Illuminatus isn’t the safest place in the Commonwealth.”
***
Ozzie woke up as slim beams of bright sunlight slid across his face. He grunted in dismay at the awakening. Yesterday’s disappointment was still churning through his mind, making him listless. It was snug inside the sleeping bag, and he could feel cool air on his face. Getting up was an effort.
“Damnit.”
Lying there moping wasn’t an option. That was too much like defeat, which he wasn’t going to admit. Not yet.
He unzipped his sleeping bag, and stretched lazily before shivering. All he was wearing were shorts and his last decent T-shirt. His hand felt around on the floor for his cord pants that he shoved his legs into. When he pulled on his check shirt there was a tearing sound as stitches popped along the sleeve.
“Not again!” When he examined the sleeve the split didn’t seem too bad.
He slipped into his old dark gray woolen fleece to keep the chill out while he put his boots on. Toes stuck out through the holes in the end of his socks. Today really was going to have to be sewing day. He gave his toes a closer look. The bruising had gone down. In fact, it had disappeared altogether. He couldn’t remember putting any salve on after giving the serial number pillar that very satisfactory kicking.
Outside the little shelter, Orion had already rekindled the fire from yesterday’s embers. Two metal mugs were balanced on a slatelike shard of polyp above the flames, heating some water.
Orion looked up and gave Ozzie a welcome smile. “Five teacubes left. Two chocolate. Which do you want?”
“Oh, what the hell, let’s live—What?”
“Tea or chocolate?”
“I thought we finished the chocolate yesterday.”
Orion rummaged through the various packets he’d spread out around him and held up the cubes in a palm. They were all foil-wrapped: five silver, two gold with green stripes. “No. Bourneville Rich, with double cream. Your favorite.”
“Right. Sorry. Yeah, man, chocolate is good.” Ozzie sat on the polyp bump. He winced as he straightened his leg.
“How’s the knee?” Orion asked.
No fucking way! “Still stiff,” he said slowly. “Where’s Tochee?”
“Gone to get some water. It was scouting around last night, seeing if it could find any sign of the machinery that works this place.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean? You said we should try and track down the gravity generator.”
“But we know there’s no electrical activity on the reef. Not that we can detect.”
“We haven’t looked that hard. Besides, you told Tochee to use its sensor gadget while it was in the jungle.”
“Yeah. Two days ago. But there’s not a whole lot of point now, is there? I mean, if there wasn’t anything at the serial number, then there certainly isn’t going to be anything in the middle of the trees.”
Orion stopped unwrapping the second chocolate cube. “Serial number?”
“Yeah,” Ozzie said sarcastically. “Big black pillar in the clearing. Me in a bad mood. Coming back to you now?”
“Ozzie, what are you talking about?”
“Yesterday. The pillar.”
“Ozzie, we walked to the spire at the end of the reef yesterday.”
“No no, man, that was the day before. We found the serial number yesterday.”
“On the spire? You didn’t say.”
“No, goddamnit. Yesterday. The pillar in the clearing. What’s the matter with you?”
Orion gave him a sulky look, pouting his lips. “I went to the spire yesterday. I don’t know where you went.”
Ozzie took a moment; the boy didn’t normally fool around like this, and he certainly sounded sincere enough.
Tochee emerged from the jungle, its manipulator flesh coiled around various containers it had filled with water. “Good morning to you, friend Ozzie,” it said through the handheld array.
“You didn’t find anything, did you?” Ozzie said. “Your equipment didn’t find any electrical activity. And you’ve traveled about five kilometers in that direction.” Ozzie pointed.
“That is correct, friend Ozzie. How did you know?”
“Good guess.” Ozzie told his e-butler to pull up yesterday’s files. The list that came up in his virtual vision were the visual and sensor recordings of their trip out to the reef’s end spire. “Show all files recorded in the last five days,” he told the e-butler. There was nothing relating to the serial number pillar. “Goddamn.” He unlaced his boot and pulled it off, then began squeezing his toes where the bruise ought to be. There wasn’t even a twinge. “Let me get this straight,” he said carefully. “Neither of you two remember walking to the middle of the reef?”
“No,” Tochee said. “I have not been there, though I believe that if we go, we might have some success in finding an access tunnel to the machinery that lies at the core of this reef. It would be the shortest distance.”
“Dead right, man. So let’s go, shall we?” He shoved his boot back on and stood up.
Orion held out his battered metal mug. “Don’t you want your chocolate?”
“Sure. Hey, have you been having any unusual dreams since we arrived here?”
“Nah. Just the usual dreams.” Orion pulled a morose expression. “Girls and such.”
Ozzie led the way at a fast pace. He followed the route that his handheld array’s navigation function produced, guiding him to the middle of the reef. As before, the trees were taller as they approached the area his virtual vision displayed. Today there were no beams of sunlight sliding horizontally past the thick ancient trunks. “It’s got to be here somewhere,” he said out loud as they began their third sweep of the central area.
“What has?” Orion asked. The boy had been watching him with some concern ever since they set out.
“There’s a clearing right in the middle.”
“How do you know?”
Because I was here yesterday, and so were you. “I saw it on the approach.” He stopped and told his e-butler to display all the visual files from the last couple of hours before the Pathfinder landed on the reef. When he checked through them, the jungle at the middle of the reef was unbroken. There was no central glade.
Ozzie stood motionless at the base of a rubbery globe tree, leaning against its elasticated branches. Not that they bent much anymore, they were so old and wizened. Okay, either I’m hallucinating or someone has done a superb hack job on the handheld array. No, Orion and Tochee don’t remember. So it was a hallucination. Or a vision. But why would I be led here?
He took a good look around the gloomy jungle floor with its cracked polyp and dusty soil. There were no tracks in the thin dirt. Nothing moved, nothing lived here. He activated every sensor he had, and turned a complete circle. Nothing registered in any spectrum.
“I don’t get this,” he said out loud. Almost, he expected some bass voice to answer from the treetops.
“Friend Ozzie, I cannot see a clearing.”
“No, me neither. The files must have been jumbled up when we landed. The array took quite a few knocks.”
“Can we go back now?” Orion asked. “I don’t like it here, it’s all dismal and dead.”
“Sure thing.” He was a lot more cheerful than he had any right to be. Something’s happening. I just wish I could figure out what.
***
It was a miserable duty, but then Lucius Lee was used to that by now. He’d been granted the rank of probationary detective three months ago in the city’s NorthHarbor precinct, and all he’d done since then was sort out a whole load of data files and reports for the two senior detectives he’d been assigned to for his probationary year. When the three of them ever did venture out of the office he was the one who had to do all the boring stuff like cataloguing crime scenes, directing forensic bots, and interviewing low-grade witnesses; he also got the night shift in stakeouts. Like this one: Sitting in a beat-up old Ford Feisha in an underground garage below the Chantex building at twenty past four in the morning, looking out across a concrete cavern illuminated by green-tined polyphoto strips that should have been replaced years ago. There were fifteen other cars parked on the same level; he knew them intimately by now.
Why the hell they couldn’t use a decent covert sensor for this he didn’t know. Marhol, the detective sergeant who was his official mentor, said it was “good
