Ghost Spin (29 page)

Li smiled at the joke. But she made a mental note to herself not to underestimate Dolniak. Anyone who could do the job he did without augmentation—even on New Allegheny—bore careful watching.

Then he started asking her questions, and she started feeding him the first version of the cover story she and Router/​Decomposer had concocted back at CalTech. Those comfortable conversations seemed like something that had happened in another lifetime. It was impossible to know how the story would fly here—or even if Dolniak believed it. But this wasn’t Li’s first rodeo, and if he didn’t bite she had several more versions, wrapped onion-like inside the first, that she could feed him. Sooner or later he’d believe he’d peeled down to the truth. They always believed that sooner or later. The only question was whether you had enough stories lined up to get them there.

He listened in silence. And when she was done he just continued to watch her, arms crossed over his massive chest, eyes calm and expressionless.

And then she just watched Dolniak watching her.

She thought about him. She thought it was interesting that he didn’t have a private office. She thought it probably had less to do with lack of ability than lack of political instincts. She thought he might not be quite corrupt enough to get ahead in a colonial police department—but then she told herself she was just being romantic. He was probably just as corrupt as the next guy. Or maybe slightly less. He dressed so appallingly that it was hard to believe he had money coming in under the table.

He shifted in his chair. It protested under his weight, sounding as if
it might give way altogether. Christ, he was a big brute. Six and a half feet easy. He looked like his nose could have been broken once or twice, and the body under the loose suit had the massive slab-sided look of an ex-heavyweight slightly out of fighting trim.

“So, you still box?”

“Not seriously. I just mess around at the gym enough to maintain my beer habit without turning into a fat slob.”

“And were you any good back when you
were
serious?”

He shrugged. “Good enough to beat the local heroes. Not good enough to get off-planet. I didn’t have the fancy footwork to take it to the next level.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Why do I get the feeling that we’re not just talking about boxing anymore?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to be cute with that. It’s actually true. But I am a pretty straightforward guy, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Just your average small-town cop with a gun belt and a heart of gold? That why you’re out here instead of in one of those nice offices with nice windows?”

The question didn’t seem to ruffle him. “Those offices aren’t for guys who work cases.”

Li gave him a questioning look and brushed her fingers and thumb together in the universal sign for graft.

“Yeah, there’s a little of that involved. But mostly it’s just … the way it is. Doesn’t bother me. I’m not ambitious. And I like catching bad guys more than doing paperwork.” He frowned at her. It was funny how he suddenly didn’t look so dumb when he did that. “Why do you care so much?”

“I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

His frown deepened, and his gray-green eyes snapped with the intelligence that he was usually so successful at hiding. “But you don’t extend the same courtesy,” he pointed out.

“I am what I’ve told you I am.”

“And a hell of a lot more that you haven’t told me.”

“What do you want, a CV?”

“That’d be a good place to start. But I doubt it’s even worth bothering
to ask for one, since I’m pretty sure it would be bullshit from start to finish. So why don’t you tell me what you’re really here for? And even better, who sent you? I’m an easygoing guy. I don’t stand on my jurisdiction. I’m always happy to cooperate with a colleague. But if UNSec is going to horn in on my crime scene, I’d like them to have the basic courtesy to tell me what the hell they’re doing here.”

“I told you—”

“And I’m telling you I don’t believe it. So come up with a better story.”

“I told you the truth, Dolniak. But yes, this is a Peacekeeper wire job, and I am an ex-Peacekeeper. And I have worked for UNSec. But they’re not my employers in this case.”

“Are they involved in this case?”

She hesitated.

He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat.

She felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for him. The poor guy was completely out of his league, walking blind into a situation where he could potentially piss off UNSec brass straight up the line to Helen Nguyen’s office. “Listen, Dolniak. If I said I could hand you a way to get yourself off this case, would you be interested?”

“I don’t even know what that means. I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You might not have jurisdiction. You might be able to hand it to AI Crimes.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m listening.”

“This isn’t the first murder.” She ran through the facts for him again, leaving Cohen out of it and not mentioning that ALEF had fired her and she was running solo now. Not making anything up. Just limiting it to the facts that fit her purpose.

When she was done he rubbed his face, then got up to refill both their coffees. When he came back he sat on the edge of his desk looking down at her as if he wanted to get a closer look at her face when he asked his questions.

“So your employer is an association of AIs who are trying to buy back these … fragments that used to belong to one of their members.
And you’re tracking the buyers down, but someone’s beating you to the punch, killing them and stealing the fragments before you get there.”

“Three strikes in a row.”

He rubbed his face again. He looked exhausted. “And the other murders happened where again?”

“Freetown. Both in Freetown.”

He stared hard at her for a long moment, and then seemed to reach some decision. “Do you mind going for a walk for half an hour and coming back? I have to make some calls.”

Li nodded and stood to leave.

“Oh, and I hate to be a stereotypical cop, but when you come back? Bring doughnuts?”

“You miss breakfast or something?”

He looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “Breakfast? You mean the meal that happened over two hours ago?”

When she came back, Dolniak looked even more exhausted. She knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

“I just got off the line with Freetown. They say your yard sale murders were both suicides, no sign of foul play. The local authorities have closed the cases. They say I have jurisdiction unless I can find evidence of an interplanetary conspiracy or a crime against an AI. Neither of which claims is supported, in their opinion, by the facts that you told me.”

“In other words, they’re dumping it back in your lap.”

“Pretty much.” He opened the bag of doughnuts without asking and fished one out. “Want one?” he asked around a mouthful of cinnamon crumble.

“No thanks. That means that someone in Freetown paid them off. Or they’re afraid of trampling on UNSec’s toes.”

“Or that they just don’t buy your theory.”

“You didn’t, uh, mention me, did you?”

“Why?” Dolniak asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “Was I not supposed to?”

Li grinned.

“Yeah, somehow I thought not.”

“What about the local AI cops?”

He grimaced. “They’re a little busy lately.”

“Yeah, I noticed. I noticed the cops rounding up Trannies. You guys got a wild AI outbreak on your hands or is that standard local procedure?”

“No, it’s not standard.” He sounded angry at the suggestion, which would have made Li like him if she didn’t already. “And those cops aren’t local.”

“They’re not Peacekeepers, either.”

He shrugged. “They’re working for the Peacekeepers, what’s the difference?”

Li raised her eyebrows. “And what about the outbreak?”

Dolniak shrugged. “So far the computers are still working.”

“They always keep working. It’s just whether they keep working for you or not. And anyway, don’t worry. If it gets really bad the UN will just turn tail, get out of Dodge, and shut down the field array behind them.”

“And some people would be very pleased to see them go. Not that you heard it from me or anything. So listen, you’re a nice lady, and the doughnuts are great. But are you going to come straight with me at some point here?”

“I’m thinking about it. Why do you ask?”

“Because when I tried to do a little digging on my own, I ran face-first into Titan Security Services.”

Li flailed for a moment and then made the connection. “You mean the hired mercs that are all over the government zone like a cheap suit?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you find out about that?”

“Nothing. Titan’s a police no-go zone on New Allegheny.”

“I see,” Li said. And she did. More than Dolniak, probably, since she’d been on the operating end of several UN occupations of unruly Periphery planets. Companies like Titan operated above the law in the Trusteeships—which was exactly why the UN hired them in the first
place. “Well, in the meantime what can you tell me about the DFT rush?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh I know the basics. But what’s the view from here? Who are the players? How do the local yokels see it?”

“The local yokels don’t exactly agree with each other on it, to be honest.”

“Okay. Then how does—I don’t know, let’s say a basically smart and honest cop who spends his working days dealing with the fallout of the DFT rush? How would that guy see it?”

As Caitlyn had expected, Dolniak’s explanation of local politics was cogent and highly logical. She could have sat in on a month of UNSec briefings without hearing as good a rundown of the strategic issues.

“And that’s where the AI comes into it,” he concluded.

“Who?”

“Your friend. The one that was kidnapped. You think this is the first time I’ve heard that story? We’re swimming in kidnapped AIs.”

“Why?”

“The DFT rush. The Drift. You can’t navigate the Drift without an Emergent AI. Not reliably anyway. And certainly not safely.”

Li nodded. This at least made sense to her. Ships navigating the Drift were essentially surfing superimposed histories of the universe—which amounted to coexisting in multiple “locations” in the universe at a single time. In order to keep their bearings, they needed to process the vast sets of Hilbert space state vectors. That meant they needed powerful quantum computers. And the only entities that could operate such computers or even interface usefully with them were fully sentient Emergent AIs. Thus the press-ganging by governments—and outright kidnapping by private actors—of AIs for service in the Drift.

“So if I were you,” Dolniak continued as if the connection were obvious, “I’d be asking around at the portside auction houses to see which one sold this one.”

“But Emergent AIs are sentient,” she protested. “They’re limited citizens. They have rights. Some rights, anyway. You can’t just buy one at the local hardware store.”

“Yeah, well, sentience isn’t exactly a bright line, is it? The portside auction houses sell off salvaged NavComps every day that they claim aren’t sentient.”

Dolniak went on, and the more Li heard, the worse it got. Cohen’s death might have nothing to do with Nguyen or UNSec, she realized. Emergent AIs were being sucked into the region already to feed the insatiable NavComp market that the Drift prospectors relied on. Some of those Emergents were coming in legally, on limited contracts from their controlling associates. But most were little better than kidnapping victims. With a growing sense of frustration, Li realized that her list of suspects had just expanded to include every Drift prospector on New Allegheny. Even if she could track down all the yard sale buyers, that would only be the beginning of her task. The real challenge would be catching up with the scattered fragments before they shipped out into the Drift, whose quantum tides could carry them beyond her reach forever.

“Okay,” Dolniak said, righting his chair and putting his big feet back on the floor. “Now you tell me something. Tell me how a nice Korean girl like you came by that charming Irish smile. Not to mention the charming brogue that goes with it.”

“Is it so obvious?”

“Only when you try to talk like one of the guys.”

“Try?”

“Fair enough. You
are
one of the guys. I knew it before you even opened your mouth. What are you, a cop’s kid?”

“Miner.”

“Oh, right. You’re from Compson’s World. I remember reading something about that during the trial.”

He had been getting coffee as he spoke, but now he turned around and looked straight at her, gauging her reaction. It was an old interrogator’s trick, and Li couldn’t have taught him to do it any better.

“How long have you known who I was?” she asked.

“Since about two hours after you mauled my crime scene.” He gave her a mildly annoyed look. “Do I look like the kind of guy who doesn’t do his homework?”

“No. But I thought I’d covered my tracks a little better than that.”

“Oh, you did. I wouldn’t have gotten there at all if I hadn’t looked at your travel papers and noticed that you transported in after the relay shut down. So either you were with UNSec, which you said you weren’t, or you scattercast in. And then I started thinking about just how much money someone would have to pay
me
before I’d scattercast. And then I started thinking about rich, dead AIs. And then I called up some news spins just on the off chance that I’d see a familiar face … and Bingo. Ex–UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li. Currently Mrs. Hyacinthe Cohen.” His mouth twisted in a wry half smile. “You weren’t kidding when you said you’d married money.” He sat down and sipped his coffee, watching her over the rim of the cup. “I didn’t even know AIs
could
get married. Was it a real marriage, if you don’t mind my asking, or more like a business arrangement?”

Li was used to that reaction. Given Cohen’s flamboyant personal history it was hard to understand how resistant people were to the idea of him being married. But there were some things most people didn’t want to know, even in the most sophisticated circles of Orbital Ring society. People could imagine AIs using humans for making love or money. But the idea of ties that went beyond pleasure and finance seemed to threaten some illusion of human specialness that people were reluctant to let go of.