On the two slates, a little Bruno and Tamra walked backward out of the fax, led by one stocky little silver robot and followed by another. They continued backward at a brisk walk until arriving at the instrument room, at which point a conversation ensued between them and the figures of Marlon and Deliah, both alive. And this time, the walls were randomizing as Bruno had remembered.
How did the police know to include that in their simulation? What storage devices or subtle electrical traces told them that? These reconstructions, corroborated now by his own observations, seemed all but perfect. He resolved to learn more about police procedures, and particularly the physics underlying them.
The conversation was brief, and finally Marlon’s hand sucked a grease stain off Bruno’s jacket, and Marlon himself settled down onto his back on the floor and scooted headfirst into the recess where Bruno had first found him. Then Bruno and Tamra and the guards walked backward to the fax gate again, this time with Deliah van Skeltering trailing behind. When they had gone, Deliah backed alone to the instrument room again.
“A brief visit,” Shiao said, “preceded by another period of relative inactivity. We jump behind. Two hours, five minutes and thirty-six seconds earlier, the van Skeltering woman arrives, and eleven minutes before that, Sykes does. Again, for some reason the fax does not maintain any record or receipl of this singular transaction, but shed skin cells and residual ghosting tell us almost precisely when it must have occurred. Prior to this arrival, the station appears to have sat unattended for a period of twenty-nine days, and shows no prior visits by either Sykes or van Skettering at any time. This completes the first draft of our reconstruction. A final, admissible draft will be completed within twenty-four hours.”
Shiao clicked his heels together and waited.
“Excellent work,” Vivian said, nodding. “I’ll note this in my report. Regarding a motive, we—
Along the avenue, another Shiao came sprinting toward them, shouting, “Commandant-Inspector! Commandant-Inspector! I’m reporting trouble at six other grapple stations!” He pulled up and stopped, puffing. “Murders, Commandant-Inspector, all almost exactly like this one. Two bodies, one robot, some of them fresher than those found here. And Commandant? One of me has failed to report back. It isn’t like me, if I may say so. If I may say so, I fear the worst.”
Frowning, Vivian nodded. “Rightly so. Send a full armed detail and report back immediately. Try to capture the robot alive, if at all possible.”
“Yes’m!” The new Shiao turned and sprinted back toward the fax again. He was passed on the way by still another Shiao, who, while less agitated, was if anything in an even grimmer mood.
“Commandant-Inspector!”
“Yes, Shiao?”
“Commandant-Inspector, there’s been an accident of some sort. Cislunar traffic control just came through with a debris anomaly; the home of Declarant-Philander Marlon Sykes has apparently been damaged. My attempts to raise him there have been unsuccessful. House software does not appear to be responding. I fear the worst.”
“Darn it!” Vivian squawked, suddenly eleven years old again. “That’s no accident. Darn, darn, darnit! This just isn’t how we do things in the Queendom. Somebody’s being systematically mean, and that just isn’t how we do things.”
“No’m.”
She relaxed a little, perhaps by force, then nodded to Her Majesty. “This situation is obviously volatile, Tarn. With your permission, I’d like to remove you all to a safer location.”
Tamra bowed her head. “I defer to your judgment, Commandant-Inspector.”
“Good. Shiao, escort all these people to headquarters under maximum protection. Are you still guarding the fax gate?”
“Yes’m. I’m there now.”
“Good. On your way out, tell yourself to seal it behind us. Official access only. And while you’re at it, find out more about these unlogged fax transactions. There’s something very uncanny about that.”
Chapter Eleven
in which the rubble is sifted
“So this unidentified ‘saboteur’ of yours—” Vivian sighed, looking out the headquarters window at a distant line of palm trees. “—either a person or an organization, is not only trying to push the Ring Collapsiter into the sun, but also to eradicate any persons able to stop it. I don’t get it. I don’t get a motive for this. I mean, we haven’t received any kind of threats or demands.”
“Indeed,” Bruno said. “It’s difficult to imagine an outcome useful to anyone. And yet, the tricks being played here are extraordinarily clever. This is not the work of a madman.”
“Madmen aren’t necessarily stupid,” Marlon pointed out sullenly. He had good cause to be sullen: as the investigation spread, it had quickly become apparent that no fax machine anywhere in the Queendom had record of him. He’d been erased, in the ninety minutes leading up to the destruction of his house. There was only one copy of him currently in existence, and if not for the discovery of the bodies on Station 117 and the timing of his visit there, no copy would exist. Even the Royal Registry, when asked to produce him, begged “a slight delay, owing to technical difficulties.”
It seemed to horrify Tamra and Deliah at least as much as it horrified Marlon himself. Bruno, who’d been single-copy for most of his life, couldn’t easily grasp their mood. Marlon was still alive, right? But for those accustomed to multiplicity, that seemed little comfort. This much was apparent to alclass="underline" that the greatest of rarities, a murder in the first degree, had been attempted, and had very nearly succeeded.
No one seemed to notice that Bruno himself had nearly been obliterated in the same stroke. Had hunter-killer apps gone looking for his fax image in the collapsiter grid? Were the police investigating that? Perhaps they assumed he’d left a live copy at home, as many people did while traveling.
“Nor are stupid men invariably hapless,” Deliah added, with a sort of low anger. “The gravity projector was invented by a moron. Half the senate are fools, but see how they come alive when crossed!” She was standing at the window, looking out at coconut palms and bamboo and beach sand, and the distant breaking of ocean waves. She’d been quietly outraged, Bruno thought, to find that her murder was an afterthought, that she wasn’t the target, that she was merely standing next to Marlon Sykes at the wrong time. She, the Lead Componeer for the Ministry of Grapples, had not been seen as a threat to the Ring Collapsiter’s fall. The idyllic island of Tongatapu had done little to assuage her indignation; she stood guywire taut, hands clasped firmly behind her buttocks.
“Boyle Schmenton was hardly a moron,” Bruno felt compelled to point out.
“Oh, dry up.”
“That’s enough, Laureate-Director,” Tamra said coolly.
A collective sigh or yawn went through them all—all except the robot guards, who stood like anchored chrome statues, gleaming in the sunlight. Royal Constabulary Headquarters, on the northeast edge of the city of Nuku’alofa, was a pyramid of yellow-white glass, nearly as large as Bruno’s whole planet and really far too bright inside for an office building. But the temperature and humidity were just right, and the air smelled brilliantly of ocean and wood smoke and vanilla. Wild vanilla, probably—nobody really farmed anymore, or fished, or roasted pigs and turtles in pits on the beach.
In some ways, Bruno had always felt he was more Tongan than the Tongans themselves. His father, Enzo de Towaji, had won a lot of money flying kites, and sunk it all—against every bit of advice—into a restaurant that served only “natural” foods and beverages. A stupid idea, yes, but it had not only caught on, but spawned a whole range of subindustries to support and complement it. Bruno had grown up in the retro-Girona of gentlemen farmers and butchers and vintners, and eventually even weaver women and chandlers to complete the ambience. Back-to-basics was always an easy sell in Catalonia—Enzo was no fool. Of course, the Sabadell-Andorra earthquake had ended that era rather decisively, but Bruno had never really shaken off its influence.