Duplicate Effort Part 2

"Weapons besides the one that was left so obviously," Nyquist said. "Spatter. Footprints. Any evidence of surveillance. h.e.l.l, any evidence of anyone else being nearby. And we will need to search every centimeter of this place just to see what else we can find."

"You know how big these woods are, right?" Owens asked. "Actually, no," Nyquist said. "They can't be that big. This is the center of Armstrong."

"Ten square kilometers," Owens said. "And they've got enhanced areas, so it looks even bigger. It's going to take a while to separate the real from the not-real."

"How the heck did they get so much land?" Nyquist asked. Leidmann smiled. "I know, I know," he said. "Money buys everything." "Included added dome s.p.a.ce," Leidmann said.

"It wasn't the dome s.p.a.ce that was the problem," Owens said. "It was the historic homes that used to be here. Don't you remember all the fighting when the Hunting Club was built?"

Nyquist shook his head. He never used to pay attention to that sort of thing. Now, if it had happened in the past six months, he would know about it. Down to which celebrity was having whose baby and what celebrity hangout had the most security breaches in the last few weeks.

"They fight everything with lawsuits," Owens was saying. "So go carefully in there."

Nyquist sighed. If he had known that, he wouldn't have sent street cops in first.

"I'll be back soon," he said. "See what you can do."

Leidmann nodded. Owens was already directing the other two members of the team, gesturing toward the open forest on either side of the path, his long hair swaying in the breeze.

Nyquist shook his head a final time at the futility of it all, then started down the path toward the club itself. Bowles hadn't been more than two dozen meters from the club. If she had stayed on the path, she would have arrived in just a few minutes.

Nyquist wondered what she'd been thinking as she came here-excited to see someone she knew? Worried that she couldn't afford it? Embarra.s.sed at the state of her career?

Although he wasn't certain what her career was now. After the firing story faded, he hadn't seen her on-screen for months. Now that he was back to work, he wasn't watching holos or vids as much, and he certainly wasn't downloading stories. So he felt out of touch, even though by his old standards, he wasn't out of touch at all.

Certainly the woman he'd met six months ago couldn't have afforded this place. Her apartment was upscale but un-lived in-the perfect apartment for one of Armstrong's up-and-coming celebrities-but she'd just lost her job and didn't seem to know where or if she'd work again.

Nyquist adjusted his suit coat, knowing it was rumpled and cheap. DeRicci had tried to get him to upgrade his clothing-she had even offered to pay (which embarra.s.sed the h.e.l.l out of him), reminding him that he'd lost nearly a quarter of his original weight because of his injuries. He was thinner now, and would probably stay that way. Even though the doctors had put his stomach back together and it worked just fine, he no longer liked the feeling of being overly full. It was almost painful.

The doctors said it was all in his head, but he wasn't sure. He had been rebuilt. Whether things worked properly or not, the fact that the parts were new had to change a man.

The path widened as the trees thinned. As he approached the front of the building, the path split into two, arching around a flat plane of gra.s.s that was covered with flowers and shrubs and statues of dogs, foxes, horses, and people in hunting clothes, like those old-fashioned prints he'd seen in history texts when he was a kid.

He thought the statues the creepiest part of this place-they were often rearranged into different tableaus depending on the time of day and the season. In the fall-or what pa.s.sed for Armstrong's fall (even though the Moon really didn't have seasons, not as Earth knew them), the human statues were posed on top of the horses, chasing a pack of dogs that was after a single fox.

He hated that tableau the most. Even though he knew such things used to happen on parts of Earth, he saw no reason to glorify them. He wasn't the only one: Protestors had complained about the tableaus over the years, often citing the cruelty they represented as barbaric and belonging to a bygone era.

This afternoon, however, the statues were in a calmer pose. The horses were standing outside the building, as if they were waiting patiently for someone to emerge. The human figures were separated, each with its own dog. The dogs were sniffing the foliage near them. Some kind of bird burst out of a nearby shrub. If the bird hadn't been motionless, Nyquist would have thought it was real.

The breeze had died down, leaving him feeling unusually hot. He wiped his forehead, still shocked to find it smooth. Just a month ago, he still had scars. He pulled his coat around him, straightened his shoulders, and walked up the real marble stairs to the oversized wooden doors.

They didn't swing open for him as they had done for DeRicci that day during lunch. Instead, a cultured voice with an accent he almost recognized told him to state his name and his business.

Instead of doing that, he pressed his fist against the door-jamb, informing the club's system of his name, his identification, and his official purpose without saying a word.

The doors swung open, revealing darkness beyond. He stepped inside, blinking quickly so that his eyes would adjust. As he did, a woman approached. She wore a knee-length skirt, a silk blouse, and had a cardigan tied around her neck.

It was almost as if she had been sculpted to resemble the oddly athletic but st.u.r.dy women from the paintings.

"Detective Nyquist," she began in that same weird accent. "I'm-" "I'm here to see whoever is in charge," he said. "It's urgent." "I'm sure we'll get to everything in due time," the woman said. "Nothing-"

"You have two dead bodies in your forest. The forest's programming is disrupting our investigation. Unless you people want the club's management to be indicted for conspiracy to conceal evidence in a felony investigation, you will take me to whoever is in charge immediately."

The woman's mouth was still open, as if she couldn't close it until she completed her thought. Finally she did shut her mouth, and she nodded.

"You'll want to see Director Jaeger. He's in his study." She spun on her flat shoes as if they were designed for that, then marched down the carpeted hallway.

Nyquist followed, feeling more and more uncomfortable. The dark wood walls were covered with two-dimensional reproductions of those hunting scenes he remembered from school. The carpet was green and everything from the real potted plants to the upholstery was accented with a deep red.

The hall opened into a sitting area, complete with fire-place. A fire burned in it, and Nyquist hoped that the d.a.m.n thing was fake. He had no idea what kind of permits it would take to waste real wood and pollute the air in the dome the way that smoke from a real chimney would.

The woman swept her arm toward the couch in front of the fire. "Director Jaeger will be with you in a moment."

"It better be fast," Nyquist said.

She nodded and disappeared through some more wooden doors.

Two large white dogs lay in front of the fire, and it took Nyquist a moment to realize that they weren't sculptures. The dogs watched him, their chins resting on their front paws, but their bodies were alert, as if they could attack at any moment.

He had encountered dogs only a few times in his life-the permits to keep domestic animals in Armstrong were prohibitively expensive-and he had never liked them. He always felt as if they were only seconds away from real violence.

"Detective Nyquist."

Nyquist turned. A short man with a bald head was walking toward him, hand extended. "I'm Edvard Jaeger. How may I help you?" "By taking me somewhere private," Nyquist said. "This will be private enough. My a.s.sistant will put up screens."

Nyquist hoped that would be enough. "Two street cops came in here almost half an hour ago to request that you shut down every bit of equipment in the forest outside the club. Nothing has been shut off."

Jaeger folded his small hands in front of the brown vest he wore over matching brown pants. Beneath the vest he wore a white shirt. The outfit, which was supposed to make him resemble the athletic men in the paintings, only served to show how small he was. "That system as you call it is our security. We cannot shut it off without express permission of the board of directors."

"Get it," Nyquist said. "Now." "Now."

"I have put in a request," Jaeger said. "It may take as many as two days to get a response. Some of our board members aren't on the Moon-"

"I don't care," Nyquist said. "Shut it down now or the City of Armstrong will shut it down for you." Jaeger reached into his breast pocket and removed a small plastic card. He handed it to Nyquist. "These are our attorneys. Please take up any problems you have with them."

Nyquist shoved the card into the pocket of his coat without looking at it. "Have you ever heard of Ki Bowles, the investigative reporter?"

"Don't threaten, Detective. As I said, if you need to-"

"She's one of the dead people in your forest. This is going to be a media nightmare, and I'll make it worse, starting now, if you don't shut this whole thing down."

Jaeger bit his lower lip. For the first time, he looked rattled. "I'm afraid I don't have the authority-" "Who does?"

"No one on the premises."

"I don't care about the authority," Nyquist said. "Show me the system and I'll shut the d.a.m.n thing down."

"You need codes and permissions and everything in the proper sequence. Otherwise it triggers the system and we go into lockdown. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I truly am unable to help you."

Nyquist studied him. Jaeger did seem nervous. Nyquist actually believed him.

"You can arrange it so that my links work here, can't you?" Nyquist asked.

Jaeger nodded.

"Do that, at least."

Jaeger bit his lower lip, then turned to the woman who stood near the back of the room. He waved a hand. She disappeared through the doors.

There was momentary static and then Nyquist heard the familiar (and much missed) white noise that indicated his links were up and running. He sent an urgent message through them to Andrea Gumiela.

The Hunting Club won't shut down its security system. The system is destroying evidence and hampering our investigation. I need high-level help here to get these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to cooperate. Gumiela sent a message back immediately, the fastest Nyquist had ever heard from her on anything. Gumiela sent a message back immediately, the fastest Nyquist had ever heard from her on anything.

I'm already working on it, but I'm having trouble as well. You might want to go to your girlfriend for help. The only person who can override elaborate private security systems is the Moon's Chief of Security.

Nyquist sighed. He didn't want to go to DeRicci for help. But he also didn't want to fail at this investigation because the Hunting Club was run by a bunch of a.n.a.l a.s.sholes who believed their security was more important than anything else in the city.

Will do. Nyquist sent. Then he turned to Jaeger. "Is there a private room I can use to send a visual message?"

"My office," Jaeger said. "Follow me."

He led Nyquist through the double doors into an even darker room, filled with hardbound books and another fire-place. Yet another dog rested in front of this one as well. It raised its head as Nyquist entered the room.

"Take your time," Jaeger said.

That was the thing: They didn't have time. Nyquist was about to tell the man but Jaeger had already left the room. Nyquist stared at the only blank wall.

"On-screen," he said, hoping that would bring up a visual link. It did.

He gave it DeRicci's private address, unable to shake the feeling that he was asking her for help on his first investigation back because he was no longer competent enough to handle his problems on his own.

4.

Flint's office was in the oldest section of Armstrong. The dome here had been replaced half a dozen times, but it still didn't function properly. Its surface was scratched and dark, although right now it was supposed to show Dome Daylight.

In this section of Armstrong, Dome Daylight was more like Dome Opaque Light-the cloudiness from the ancient materials made the fake sunlight seem like something far away instead of built into the dome itself.

The filtration systems didn't work well, either, so the entire neighborhood always had a thin layer of Moon dust. Sometimes the dust was worse than others, and fortunately this was not one of those times.

Flint and the rent-a-lawyer who shared the building with him had contacted the city a few months ago, requesting filtration repairs, and had actually gotten them. Now, instead of slogging through a few inches of dust, his feet slid against a barely noticeable coating.

His office building was one of the original buildings from Armstrong's first settlement. The building was made of permaplastic-probably the most indestructible material ever invented. But it had seen better days, and repairs took approval from City of Armstrong Historical Oversight Committee.

He didn't want any of those people near his office, so he never requested any repairs. He let the exterior lapse into a dust-covered shambles. But the interior was state of the art. He had violated he didn't know how many codes when he covered the walls with a Moon-made material that didn't allow dust-or information-through its thin membrane surface.

He'd attached modern lighting, an up-to-date environmental system, and the latest netfiber equipment throughout.

And he had done all of that in the last few months, since it became clear that Talia would be in this place at least a couple of times per week. He didn't want to expose her to old decaying permaplastic chemicals or to Moon dust seeping through the filtration system or to any one of a dozen environmental hazards that he suspected the old place had.

Not to mention the fact that he had to upgrade everything when he realized his daughter was as gifted with computer systems as he was. He needed up-to-date firewalls and equipment that was beyond her level of expertise.

He never let her work on this system. In fact, he had actively worked to lock her out of it. He had programmed the system to shut down if she touched it-it recognized her DNA, and the moment she made contact with any part of the machine, it would turn off. No warnings, no nothing.

Flint knew she would work with gloves and with other devices, so he set the system so that it would go on alert every time she entered the building. If she spoke directly to the computer, she would initiate a longer series of shutdown procedures.

He found he needed that longer series because sometimes she was there with him, and he hated it when the system shut down while he was working on it.

Like it could now, if he wasn't careful.

Talia stood in the middle of the room, like she always did when he brought her here. He had warned her from the beginning that this was where he worked, that everything here was confidential, and that she was in the office only as a courtesy.

If he ever found her tampering with the systems, he would make sure she couldn't enter the building again.

He might have stated things too harshly. She always stood with her arms clasped around her waist, looking awkward and a bit frightened.

He moved a second chair near his desk. "Go ahead and sit down."

She did, keeping her back rigid. The chair wasn't that comfortable-it was made of a hard plastic-but it couldn't hurt her. Sometimes she acted like it could.

He went around the desk to the upholstered chair that he had splurged on. As he did, he touched a corner of the desk, ordering it to keep its fake wood look and to mask its pop-up screens. He didn't want Talia to see any of the information he planned to look up.

For the moment, though, he didn't look up anything. He sat down and leaned back. The chair squeaked beneath his weight. "Okay," he said. "First you need to tell me how you found the others." He couldn't call the five clones sisters, as she had. He wasn't sure how to think about them. He wasn't sure whether he was ready to think about them at all. "I didn't find all of them." Talia still had her arms wrapped around her stomach. She looked scared.

She'd had some time to think about what he said, and she seemed even more uncomfortable than she had before.

"Maybe you could tell me what's wrong with looking for them," she said. "I mean, Mom's dead. That court ruling was against her, right?"

Talia was referring to a court ruling that Flint had found out about only recently. His wife, Rhonda, had invented a nutrient-rich water that, when tested on another planet, had accidentally destroyed a colony of young Gyonnese.

The Gyonnese were part of the Earth Alliance, and they brought the case before a Multicultural Tribunal. Under Earth Alliance law, anyone who broke a law on a particular place was subject to the laws of that place.

Under Gyonnese law, Rhonda Shindo was guilty of ma.s.s murder.

The punishment was also Gyonnese-and considered the worst it could give out. She had to forfeit any and all children to the Gyonnese for the rest of her life.

But the Gyonnese had distinctions between real children and false children. Real children were children like Emmeline-what the Gyonnese called the Originals. Talia was a false child, a clone, a duplicate, and therefore beneath the Gyonnese's notice.

"I mean," Talia was saying, "the Gyonnese got to take her real children as a punishment to Mom Mom, right? And if she's gone, they can't punish her anymore."

"I'm not sure," Flint said. "I'm not an expert in Gyonnese law, which is what prevails here." "But they don't consider me a real child," Talia said, her voice trembling. "They would never take me. Why would my searching for my sisters put them in danger? They're not 'real,' either." Flint rubbed his chin, then tapped his thumbnail against his teeth. He wasn't quite sure how to explain any of this. But he was going to have to try.

"I've worked around Earth Alliance laws for more than a decade now," he said, "and they're difficult and nuanced at best. The thing to remember-and it's the hardest thing to keep in mind; it's the thing that makes this so complicated-is that the only reason the Earth Alliance works is that each member agrees to live by another member's laws whenever the first member is in the other member's territory. Humans are the worst at doing this. We don't like laws we don't understand."

Talia had slid her arms away from her abdomen. She had crossed them over her chest instead. "I studied this stuff in school."