"Very well. But we'll probably have trouble getting people back to work afterward. We might not be able to meet our asset quota."
"Irrelevant; I've already written it off. Now, I want to see the prisoners."
The interviews followed a pattern. Initial superficial defiance, which swiftly faded when the interviewee realized just how serious Simon was. He began to learn what had happened.
Josep Raichura and Raymond Jang had been taken on at the start of the last season—popular guys, who never lacked for female company. Management couldn't explain why there were no files. With their cooperation Simon's personal AS swiftly tracked down the substitutions. Implantation of the ghosts was little short of miraculous: they had birth certificates, school grades, parents (who had similar digital histories), bank accounts, credit coin bills, medical records, tax records, insurance policies, apartment rent agreements. They were more real to the datapool and the AS than half of the people belonging to Memu Bay's underclass.
Verbal interrogation confirmed Josep and Ray had left the company around the time Z-B's starships had arrived. No one could remember the exact date. It had been a confused time.
They'd not been seen since. Nobody had managed to contact them.
The instructors who were friendly with them believed they were from out of town. One of the hinterland settlements. Definitely not local, though.
Someone thought they lived in a suburb close to the Nium estuary. They certainly had a female housemate; several instructors had hit on her in the marina bars. Possibly called Denise. The AS immediately began generating an image of her from their descriptions.
"Find the house," Simon ordered. "I want every estate around that estuary visited by Skins. Physically verify the occupants of each house, apartment and hole in the ground. I want a complete verbal history of occupancy for the last five years, which they're to cross-reference with the AS."
The curfew had been in place for two hours when fifteen platoons began the door-to-door search. So far the proclamation of martial law had proved remarkably successful. Memu Bay's inhabitants had realized from Zhang's announcement that he wasn't bluffing. Most people started heading home by four o'clock. The fact that the roads really did shut down at six caught a few motorists out. The traffic regulator AS disabled every vehicle other than bicycles. Drivers hurried home on foot. Several were darted by Skins. Die-hard protesters outside the Town Hall and various Skin barracks were darted without warning at one second past six.
Simon and Braddock received a call about a possible suspect location at eleven-fifteen and immediately took a helicopter out to the Nium estuary estate. It was a bungalow rented from a property agency. Nobody answered the door when the Skin had rung the bell. When he asked a neighbor he was told that a girl called Denise lived in it by herself; her two male housemates had left several weeks ago. None of that corresponded with the information that the AS trawled out from the datapool concerning the bungalow.
Five Skins were standing guard in the garden when Simon arrived along with a small team of Z-B technicians. A further three Skins were inside. Simon and Braddock gave the bungalow a quick inspection. Someone had abandoned their breakfast. A dish of cereal and a mug of coffee were left on the table in the kitchen. Two slices of toast stood in a stainless-steel rack, untouched.
Braddock sniffed at the coffee mug and pulled back fast, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "Several days old, I'd say."
"We'll go for an expert opinion." Simon told one of the technicians to analyze the food to see if he could determine how long it had been standing. "It would have been early morning here when Josep was captured at the spaceport," he mused as the technician took a sample of the semisolid cereal.
Another technician was examining the bedrooms and bathroom for skin and hair samples.
The very frightened neighbor said she thought Denise worked at a school. No, she didn't know which one, but it could be a playschool.
"I want every head teacher in the city brought in," Simon instructed Zhang. "Right now."
"I've got a DNA match," the technician reported. "A skin sample from one of the disused bedrooms belongs to Josep."
"Excellent," Simon purred. It was coming together beautifully. Of all the challenges, puzzles and pursuits he'd been involved in over the years, nothing had given him greater satisfaction than this. Some small part of his mind was childishly excited by the prospect of encountering an alien, even though that encounter would bring enormous upheaval, possibly even war, given the alien's recent actions. That made him pause. Interstellar war was impossible, surely? If commerce was impractical, then invasion and conquest must surely be out of the question. Then why was the alien so hostile?
He knew the answer was close. If the facts could just be put together in the right order...
Mrs. Potchansky was the nineteenth head teacher to be brought before Simon. It was half-past-three in the morning, and he'd resorted to far too much strong coffee. The caffeine was slowly abrading his temper, and contributing to a subtle depression. It was one thing to be the butt of smartmouth insults; but he could actually sense the naked thoughts of each teacher, know how much he was genuinely despised and hated. That could wound a man's soul.
"Does Denise work for you?" Simon asked as the old woman stood in front of him.
"I don't know any Denise." It was a perfect schoolmistress voice, instantly instilling a sense of complete inferiority in any listener. She was one of the few teachers to arrive fully dressed. Simon imagined even the Skins would be made to wait until she had chosen appropriate clothes and put them on in her own time.
"Ah," he murmured contentedly. He tented his fingers and rested his chin on the apex. A pane on his desk lit up to show the image that the AS had generated from the descriptions of the lovelorn diving instructors. "Is this her?"
"If I don't know her, then I can hardly identify her, can I?"
"But you did know her. And it's what you think that is interesting."
Mrs. Potchansky's face remained perfectly composed. Alarm shivered through her mind.
"Did you know what she was connected with, which resistance movement?" His DNI was scrolling the woman's file.
"If this farce is over I'll be going home now. I trust you'll take me back with the same alacrity with which I was brought here."
"Sit down!" Simon barked.
Mrs. Potchansky fussed around with the chair, deliberately taking her time. Her thoughts were settling into a steely determination.
"When did you last see her?" Simon asked.