Pandora's Star

  ‘But why?’ Tara asked. ‘What would be the point in killing me or Wyobie? What did we do?’

  ‘I don’t know. The last time you were seen alive was when you had lunch with Caroline Turner at the Low Moon marina restaurant. If anything was wrong, you didn’t tell her. In fact, she said you seemed quite normal.’

  ‘Caroline was a good friend, I remember. I might even have told her about Wyobie.’

  ‘She says not, and certainly nothing about leaving Morton to go off with Wyobie. So if you didn’t go crazy wild and run off with Wyobie, we have to consider you got involved in some criminal event.’

  ‘I wouldn’t!’

  Paula held up a cautionary finger. ‘Not necessarily deliberately. The logical explanation would be an accident, something you saw or discovered that you shouldn’t have, and were killed because of it. My problem with that theory is where it happened. If it was here, then we only have a very small incident window to investigate. Morton had been away from home for two days, and was scheduled to stay at his conference for another four days. He says you stopped answering his calls two days after your lunch with Caroline, the same day your Tampico ticket was purchased. Now, your last memory deposit in the Kirova Clinic secure store was the same day Morton went away. So at the most you had four days for this event to happen to you. I believe we can safely say it didn’t happen in the two days prior to your lunch, which leaves us with just two days, forty-eight hours, for it to occur.’

  ‘Police records for that whole month don’t have any major crime incident listed,’ Hoshe said. ‘Actually, it was a quiet year.’

  ‘Then they were good criminals, clever ones,’ Paula said. ‘You never caught them, and the only evidence is this possible ice murder. That doesn’t leave us with a lot to go on. I have to say that if Shaheef and Cotal walked in on something bad, then the chances of discovering what actually happened are slim. Which leaves us with Tampico. You arrived and bumped straight into something you shouldn’t have. Our hypothetical Tampico criminals maintained the illusion that you were alive by picking up your effects and then filing for the divorce. That would explain the lack of a memory store.’

  ‘What sort of criminals?’ Tara asked shakily. ‘What would they be doing to make them kill me and Wyobie?’

  ‘It is only a theory,’ Paula told her quickly. ‘I have difficulty in accepting major criminal conspiracies, the probability is extremely low, not that we can ignore it. But that implausibility does leave us with a quandary. If it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t your private life, which appears blameless, then what did happen?’

  Tara fumbled with her case, and lit another cigarette. ‘You’re the detective, everybody knows that.’ Her hands were trembling as she took a drag. Matthew deSavoel held her tight, glaring at Paula. ‘Have you got enough?’ he snapped.

  ‘For now,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Find out,’ Tara called out as Paula and Hoshe started to leave. ‘Please. I have to know. Everything you’ve said . . . it wasn’t a freak accident, was it? I’ve told myself that for twenty years; told everybody I had a mad romantic impulse and ran off with Wyobie, because if you say it and keep on saying it, then that becomes what happened. It was like making up the memory. But I knew, I really knew it didn’t happen like that.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Paula said.

  ‘Where now?’ Hoshe asked as the car drove away from the big isolated plantation house.

  ‘The ex-husband, Morton.’

  He sneaked a look at her. ‘You got any idea what happened?’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident. I believe Tara. She used to be too sensible to do anything like running off with Wyobie. He was already giving her everything she wanted from the relationship. That means Tampico is all wrong; it was a set-up, an alibi.’

  ‘Used to be sensible?’

  ‘You saw what she is today.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what you meant by investigating people, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’ She turned to stare out of the car’s windows, seeing nothing but a blur of big shaggy walrush trees that had been planted as a windbreak for the neat plantation bushes. ‘It’s people who commit crimes, so that’s where you’ll find the motivation: people.’ It was so instinctive, so obvious, she didn’t have to think to talk to him.

  Her parents, or rather the couple she had thought to be her parents during her childhood, had sincerely believed that instinct was one which could be stillbirthed. It was the old nature versus nurture argument, and the outcome of this particular ultra-modern chapter of it was one they desperately wanted to use to prove to the whole Commonwealth that nurture could be the victor, that there was no preordained fate. Especially not one like Paula’s creators intended for her.

  The planet where she was birthed was called Huxley’s Haven, though the other Commonwealth worlds derisively called it the Hive. Settled in 2102, it was funded, and populated, by the Human Structure Foundation, a strange collective of genetic researchers and intellectual socio-political theorists. They were keen to explore the genetic possibilities for psycho-neural profiling now they were clear of Earth’s restrictions, believing it possible to create a perfectly stable society by implementing the phrase each to his own to a degree which the rest of humanity found quite chilling. A lot of Anglo-Saxon surnames originated from occupation: tailor, thatcher, crofter . . . The aim of the Foundation was to make the link solid and unbreakable, determined within an individual’s DNA. Professions couldn’t be installed wholesale, of course, a psychoneural profile merely gave a person the aptitude to do their designated job, while simpler, physiological modifications complemented the trait. Doctors would be given dextrous fingers and high visual acuity, while farm workers and builders possessed a large, strong physique – so it went right through the entire spectrum of human activity. The traits were bundled together, and fixed to prevent genetic drift. As far as the traits were concerned, there would never be any mixed profiles. The Foundation scrupulously avoided using the word ‘pure’ in its press releases.

  The Commonwealth as a whole detested the notion. Right from its conception, Huxley’s Haven became a near pariah state. There were even serious calls for military/police style intervention made in the Senate, which contravened the organ-ization’s constitution – the Commonwealth was set up originally to guarantee individual planet freedom within an overall legal framework. In the end, the Foundation was able to proceed because legally the planet was independent and free.

  After several prominent and well-financed private court cases against the Foundation came to nothing, it was CST’s turn to face a barrage of media-supported pressure to close the gateway. Nigel Sheldon had to reluctantly argue the case for keeping it open: if they closed one gateway because of an activist campaign, that left all gateways vulnerable to people who disagreed with a planet’s culture, religion, or politics. The Hive stayed connected to the Commonwealth, though it never really contributed to the mainstream economic and financial structure. Quietly, and with considerable scientific flair, the Foundation got on with the job of building their unique society.

  Some people never did accept the lost court cases or the Foundation’s ‘right’ to pursue its goal. A greater human right took precedence, they argued. In their view they were now left with a whole planet of genetically modified slaves to be liberated.

  If there was ever anybody to whom the term extreme liberals could be applied, it was Marcus and Rebecca Redhound. Born into the considerable wealth of Grand Earth families, they were happy to contribute financially as well as actively to the cause. Along with a small, equally dedicated, cabal, they planned a raid against the Hive, which they were convinced would be the grand event that would finally demonstrate to the rest of the Commonwealth that the Foundation was wrong, not just in its politics but its science as well.

  After months of covert planning and preparation, nine of these urban rich-kid commandos broke into one of the Foundation’s birthing wards in the Hive’s capital, Fordsville. T
hey managed to steal seven new-birthed babies and get them to the CST planetary station before the alarm was raised. Three were traced immediately by the Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate, and the infants returned to their crèche on Hux-ley’s Haven. The publicity was everything the group could have wished for, though public sympathy didn’t entirely swing their way. Something about stealing babies just cut people cold.

  Four of the cabal were arrested when the babies were traced. After that, the Serious Crimes Directorate mounted the largest manhunt the Commonwealth had ever seen to find the four missing babies, one male, and three females. It took another fifteen months of painstaking detective work by ten Chief Investigators aided by the SI to locate the missing boy in a town on the then frontier planet of Ferarra. Five months after that two more of the girls were recovered on EdenBurg. The last child and remaining two cabal members proved more elusive.

  With the paranoia which only the truly committed can muster, Marcus and Rebecca had spent over two years fermenting their own elaborate preparations for the snatch, an activity they kept secret from the rest of their cabal. The first part of their cover was to have a child of their own, Coya, who would act as a sister to the Hive baby. She would set a normal behavioural example to the psychoneural-profiled waif; and a young family with twins would be less likely to attract attention. It was a good plan. Marcus and Rebecca had bought a house on Marindra, out in a small agricultural town, where they established a small market garden business. It was a pleasant place to live, with a good community spirit. The children fitted in well as they grew up. Paula’s half-Filipino features were slightly incongruous, given her parents and ‘twin’ Coya were all of prominent eastern Mediterranean stock. But they explained it away as a genetic modification designed to bring out Rebecca’s distant Asian ancestry, honouring her deep ethnic origin. By then, the case of the last missing Hive baby had long faded from public attention – Paula’s looks were never the cause of suspicion.

  As a child, Paula really wasn’t too different to her sister. They played together, ran their parents ragged, loved the puppy Marcus bought them, had a fondness for swimming, and did well at school. It was as she moved into her teens that Paula was noticeably more restrained than Coya; she did as her parents asked, didn’t argue with them, and steered clear of all the trouble that was to be found in their little rural community. Everyone commented on what a nice girl she was becoming, not like half of the teenagers in this town who were simply terrible and a sure sign of society’s imminent collapse. She regarded boys with the same contempt and fascination as her peers; started dating, suffered the heart-aching humiliation of being dumped, and promptly took it out on her next two boyfriends by chucking them. Found another boy she liked – and went steady for five months. In sports she was competent rather than outstanding. Academically she excelled at languages and history. As teachers remarked, she had superb recall and an obsession with tracing down the smallest facts connected to her subjects. Aptitude tests showed she would make a great psychologist.

  Looking at their contented, normal, extra daughter on her sixteenth birthday, Marcus and Rebecca knew they had succeeded. They’d brought up a Hive child in a loving natural environment, and produced a perfectly happy, healthy human being. What could be done with one, could be done to all. The Foundation’s hold over its oppressed population could be broken, their method of control was flawed. Decency and human dignity had triumphed in the end.

  Two days later, on a splendid late summer afternoon, they took Paula out into the garden and told her of her true heritage. They even sheepishly showed her the old news media recordings of the snatch and subsequent manhunt.

  What the Foundation had never revealed at the time was the nature of the psychoneural profiling given to the snatched babies. The others were all reasonably standard for Huxley’s Haven: public service workers, engineers, accountants, even an archivist. But Paula, as luck or fate would have it, was an exception even among her own kind. Crime on Huxley’s Haven was extremely rare, naturally so, given that its citizens were all designed to be content in their jobs and lives. Although not even the Foundation claimed to make life perfect. All human civilizations needed a police force. On Huxley’s Haven it was a source of national pride that there was one law enforcement officer for every ten thousand people. Paula was one of them.

  Two hours after their joyful confession, Marcus and Rebecca were in custody. It was Paula who turned them in. She had no choice; knowing what was right and what was wrong was the core of her identity, her very soul.

  The last missing Hive child was the greatest media story to hit the unisphere for a decade, making Paula an instant celebrity. Young, beautiful, and frighteningly incorruptible; she was everything a sixteen-year-old should never be.

  Thanks to Paula’s relentless testimony, Marcus and Rebecca were sentenced to thirty-two years life suspension each, losing double the time over which their crime was perpetrated, the kind of punishment normally reserved for murderers. Unisphere coverage of the trial allowed a quarter of the human race to watch in silent fascination as Coya broke down and screamed hysterically at the judge before begging her step-twin to withdraw the sentencing application. Paula’s only answer, a silent pitying glance at the sobbing girl, made that whole quarter of the human race shiver.

  After the trial, Paula went back to Huxley’s Haven, the home she’d never known, to discover her real name and suffer embarrassing introductions to the other stolen children with whom she had nothing in common. She belonged there even less than on Marindra; a modern Commonwealth education put her completely outside the norm as far as Huxley’s Haven was concerned. They didn’t have advanced technology on the Hive, the new conformist society was structured so that people did all the work, not machines. With her exposure to domestic bots and the ultimate data access of the unisphere, Paula considered such rejection to be stupid and provincial. It was the one success Marcus and Rebecca had with shaping her thoughts, though by then their bodies were safely comatose in the Justice Directorate’s hibernation wombs, beyond knowing.

  Away from the public eye, Paula left Huxley’s Haven for Earth, where she enrolled at the Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate. At the time, she had no idea how high up the political food chain her application was bounced before it was finally approved. But approved it was, and inevitably she became the best operative they ever had – despite the one notorious case of 2243 which she still hadn’t solved.

  *

  Morton lived in the penthouse of a fifty-storey skyscraper standing behind Darklake City’s Labuk Marina. Not at all far, in fact, from Caroline Turner’s last lunch with Tara. Paula noted the coincidence as the car drove them along the water-front. They parked in the skyscraper’s underground garage and took the express lift up to the top floor. Morton was waiting for them in the vestibule as the doors opened. Three years out of rejuvenation himself, he was a tall, handsome young man whose thick chestnut hair was tied back in a long ponytail. Dressed in a fashionably cut amber and peacock-blue tropical shirt and expensive hand-tailored linen slacks, he looked good and obviously knew it. His youthful face put on a broad courteous smile as he shook their hands in welcome.

  ‘Good of you to see us,’ Paula said. It was early evening local time, which was only a few hours ahead of Paris time.

  ‘Least I could do.’ Morton ushered them inside through elaborate double doors. His penthouse must have had a floor area larger than the plantation house where his ex-wife now lived. They walked into a massive split-level living room with a window wall. It was six thirty, and the copper-red sun had already fallen level with the top of the skyscraper, shining its rich hazy light directly into the penthouse. Opulent furnishings and expensive artwork gleamed in glorious twilight hues as they soaked up the illumination. There was a large roof garden on the other side of the wide glass doors, half of which was taken up with a swimming pool. Beyond the stainless steel railings ringing the patio area was a tremendous view out across the city and lake.
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  The three of them settled in the lavish conversation area settees in front of the glass wall. Morton ordered it to raise its opacity, ridding most of the glare. That was when Paula saw someone was in the pool, a young girl, swimming lengths with powerful easy strokes. She told her e-butler to bring up Morton’s file; there was no current registered marriage, but local media gossip files had linked him to a string of girls since he came out of rejuvenation. His current lover was Mellanie Rescorai, a first-life nineteen-year-old, and member of the Oaktier national diving squad. Mellanie’s parents were on record as strongly objecting to the liaison – in reaction, Mellanie had simply moved out of the family home and into Morton’s penthouse.

  ‘Something to drink?’ Morton asked. The butler appeared at the side of the settee, dressed in antique-style black clothes. Paula stared at him, mildly surprised: a real live human servant, not a bot.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said. Hoshe shook his head.

  ‘I’ll have my sparkling gin, thank you,’ Morton said. ‘It is after office hours, after all.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The butler gave a discreet bow, and walked over to the mirrored drinks cabinet.

  ‘I understand it was you who alerted the police about this situation,’ Paula said.

  ‘That’s right.’ Morton leaned back casually into the leather cushioning. ‘I thought it was kind of strange that Cotal had to be re-lifed as well as Tara. To me it implied that they died at the same time, which is kind of suspicious, especially as nobody ever found out how Tara died. I’m surprised nobody else made the connection, actually.’ His polite smile focused on Hoshe.