A Second Chance at Eden (16 page)

Yes, sir.

Shannon, how are you doing on accessing Maowkavitz’s computer files?

Some progress, boss.
She gave me a thumbs-up from behind her terminal, then ducked her head down again.
I’ve recovered about twenty per cent of the files stored in her home system. It’s all been genetic work so far, beyond me. Rolf said to turn it over to Pacific Nugene for assessment. I haven’t heard anything back from them yet. Those files were fairly easy to crack. But there’s a whole series of files which use a much higher level of entry encryption techniques; stuff she didn’t leave any keys for, not even in her will. That’s real strange, because the files are quite large. They obviously contain a lot of work.

OK, prioritize that, please, I want to know what’s in them. Today if possible.

Her head came up again, giving me a martyred look.
I
’m organizing some decryption architecture now.

Good grief, an officer with initiative. Whatever next?

An officer with decent pay,
she shot back.

I gave up.
Any luck with the bag which the pistol was left in?
I asked Rolf.

No. It’s a standard issue flight bag, made in Australia, been in production for six years. JSKP distributes them to every family which is given an assignment here, they’re automatically included with the cargo pods we’re sent to pack everything in. Ninety per cent of the habitat population have one sitting at home somewhere. Impossible to trace. The medical lab at the hospital ran some forensic tests on it for us. No fingerprints, naturally. It had been wiped with a paper tissue; they found traces of the fibre, identified as a domestic kitchen towel. They also found some hair which they confirm came from the chimp. But nothing to tell us who put it there.

Nobody said it was going to be easy, Rolf.
I made an effort not to show how worried I was becoming. Two days of solid investigation, with a fairly dedicated team putting in a lot of effort, and we were still no nearer to solving it than we were the minute Maowkavitz was killed. That wasn’t good. A worldlet where surveillance is total, an effective organization for collecting and correlating data. And
nothing
. Nobody was that good. There is no such thing as a professional murderer. Sure, you get assassins, snipers, contract killers; but like I told Nathaniel, I didn’t believe this was a paid hit. This was an act of vengeance, or revenge, or – remote possibilities – passion and jealousy. A one-off, planned in isolation.

That means a mistake was made. You cannot cover everything, every angle, because at the very heart of the crime lies your reason to murder. Once the police have that, they have you, no matter how well you camouflage your tracks with regards to the method.

And with all I knew, I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone in Eden would want to kill Penny Maowkavitz. Nobody I’d spoken to had actually admitted to liking her, but everyone respected her, it was like one of those universal constants.

The only person left who could conceivably cast any light on the problem was Davis Caldarola. I’d held off interviewing him out of an old-fashioned sense of sympathy; according to Zimmels’s ubiquitous files he and Penny had been together for seven years, her death would have hit him hard. He had certainly looked pretty shaken up when I glimpsed him at the funeral.

Sorry, Davis.

*

Rolf drove the jeep down to the southern endcap, taking one of the five equidistantly spaced roads which ran the length of the habitat. A tram monorail ran down the outside of each lane. Two of the automatic vehicles passed us, coming in the opposite direction; bullet-nosed aluminium cylinders painted a bright yellow. They had seats for forty passengers, although I only saw five or six people using them. I couldn’t work out why they’d been streamlined, either; their top speed was only forty-five kilometres an hour. Something Victorian would have been more appropriate, more pleasing to the eye as well. But that’s modern designers for you, image junkies.

We were halfway to the cyberfactory when the Governor called me. It was like a sixth sense made real; I
knew
someone wanted to talk to me, swiftly followed by a subliminal image of Fasholé Nocord sitting at his desk.

Yes, Governor?

About time you became affinity capable,
he said. His mind-tone was as grumpy as his voice.
How is the investigation going?

I sent you a progress update file last night, sir.

Yes, I accessed it. It’s not what I’d call progress. You haven’t found shit so far.

It’s only been two days, sir.

Look, Harvey, I’ve got the board breathing acid fire down my neck. The newscable reporters are jamming half the uplinks from Earth demanding statements. Even the Secretary General’s office is pressing for a result; they want to show how efficient and relevant the UN’s administration of Eden is. I’ve got to have something to tell them all.

What can I say, enquiries are continuing.

Damn it, Harvey, I’ve given you time without any pressure; now I want results. Have you even got a suspect yet?

No, sir, I haven’t. Perhaps you’d care to take charge of the investigation yourself if you’re that dissatisfied with my progress.

Don’t try pulling that smartarse routine on me, Harvey, it doesn’t work. Come on, man, you should have some kind of lead by now. Nobody can hide in Eden.

Really? Somebody is making a pretty good job of it.

Harvey!

Yeah, all right. Sorry. Tell them we expect to make an arrest in the near future. Usual crap; they know it is and we know it is, but it should satisfy the press for the moment. In any case, it’s almost true; my team have eliminated quite a few possibilities, we’re narrowing the field. But we have to have more time to correlate the information we’ve acquired. Nobody ever issued a set schedule for solving murder inquiries.

Two days. I want a positive result which I can announce in two days, Harvey. Someone under arrest or in custody. Understand?

Yes, sir.

The contact ended.

Who was that?
Rolf asked.

The Governor. He’s graciously given me two days to find the murderer.

‘Arsehole,’ Rolf grunted. He pressed his toe down on the accelerator, and sent the jeep racing over the causeway that traversed the circumfluous lake.

*

Eden’s cyberfactories were installed in giant caverns inside the base of the southern endcap. Apart from the curving walls, they didn’t look any different to the industrial halls back in the Delph arcology: row after row of injection moulders, machine tools, and automated assembly bays with waldo arms moving in spider-like jerks. Small robot trolleys trundled silently down the alleys, delivering and collecting components. Flares of red and green laserlight strobed at random, casting looming shadows.

We found Wallace Steinbauer in a glass-walled office on one side of the cavern. The JSKP Cybernetic Manufacturing Division’s manager was in his late thirties; someone else I suspected had been gene-adapted. Above-average height, with a trim build, and a handsome, if angular, face that seemed to radiate competence. You just knew he was the right man for the job – any job.

He shook my hand warmly, and hurriedly cleared some carbon-composite cartons from the chairs. His whole office was littered with intricate mechanical components, as though someone had broken open half a dozen turbines and not known how to reassemble them.

Don’t get many visitors here,
he said in apology.

I let my gaze return to the energetic rows of machinery beyond the glass.
This is quite an operation you’ve got here.

I like to think so. JSKP only posted me here a couple of years ago to troubleshoot. My predecessor couldn’t hack it, which the company simply couldn’t afford. Cybernetics is the most important division in Eden, it has to function perfectly. I helped get it back on stream.

What do you make here?

The smart answer is everything and anything. But basically we’re supposed to provide all the habitat’s internal mechanical equipment; we’re also licensed by the UN Civil Spaceflight Authority to provide grade-D maintenance and refurbishment on spacecraft components and the industrial stations’ life-support equipment; and on top of that lot we furnish the town with all its domestic fundamentals. Anything from your jeep to the water-pumping station to the cutlery on your kitchen table. We’ve got detailed templates for over a million different items in our computer’s memory cores. Anything you need for your home or office, you just punch it in and it’ll be fabricated automatically. The system is that sophisticated. In theory there’s no human intervention required, although in practice we spend sixty per cent of our time troubleshooting. It’s taken eighteen months to refine, but I’ve finally got us up to self-replication level. Any piece of machinery you see out in that cavern can now be made here. Except for the electronics, which are put together in one of the external industrial stations.

Doesn’t Eden import anything?
I asked.

Only luxury items. JSKP decided it would be cheaper for us to produce all our own requirements. And that includes all the everyday consumables like fabrics, plastics, and paper. My division also includes recyling plants, which are connected to the habitat’s waste tubules. Eden’s organs consume all the organic chemicals, but we reclaim the rest.

What about the initial raw materials? Surely you can’t make everything from recycled waste. Suppose I needed a dozen new jeeps for my officers?

No problem. Eden digests over two hundred thousand tonnes of asteroid rock each year in its maw; it is still growing, after all.
His mind relayed a mental image of the southern endcap, supplied directly from the integral sensitive cells. Right at the hub was the maw; a circular crater lined with tall red-raw spines resembling cilia. The largest spines were arrayed round the rim, pointing inwards and rippling in hour-long undulations, giving the impression that some giant sea anemone was clinging to the shell. The arrangement was an organic version of a lobster pot; chunks of ice and rubble, delivered from Jupiter’s rings by tugs, were trapped inside. They were being broken down into pebblesized granules by the slow, unrelenting movement of the spines, and ingested through mouth pores in the polyp.

That was when the process became complex. Sandwiched between the endcap’s inner and outer layers were titanic organs; first, enzyme filtration glands which distilled and separated minerals and ores into their constituent compounds. Anything dangerously toxic was vented back out into space through porous sections of the shell. Organic chemicals were fed into a second series of organs where they were combined into nutrient fluids and delivered to the mitosis layer to sustain Eden’s growth. Inorganic elements were diverted into deep storage silos buried in the polyp behind the cyberfactory caverns, glittery dry powders filling the cavities like metallic grain.

We have huge surpluses of metals and a host of other minerals,
Wallace Steinbauer said.
And they’re all available in their purest form. We send the metal powder out to a furnace station to get usable ingots and tubing. The minerals we shove through a small chemical-processing plant.

So you’re totally self-sufficient now?
I said. My admiration for Penny Maowkavitz had returned with a vengeance after I viewed the maw and its associated organs. That woman had ingenuity in abundance.

I like to think so. Certainly we’ll be able to provide Pallas and Ararat with their own cyberfactories. That’s our next big project. Right now we’re just ticking over with maintenance and spares for our existing systems.

So a simple pistol is no trouble.

That’s right.
Wallace Steinbauer rifled through some boxes at the side of his desk, and pulled out the Colt with a triumphant grin.
No major problem in putting it together,
he said.
But then I never thought it would be. We could build you some weapons far more powerful than this if you asked.

I took it from him, testing the weight. It struck me as appallingly primitive; looking from the side the grip jutted almost as though it was an afterthought. There was an eagle emblem on the silicon, its wings stretched wide.

Interesting point. If you could build any gun you wanted, why choose a weapon like this, why not something more modern?

I’d suggest your murderer chose it precisely because of its simplicity,
Wallace Steinbauer said.
The Colt .45 has been around since the late eighteen-hundreds. Don’t let its age fool you, it’s an effective weapon, especially for close-range work. And from a strictly mechanical point of view it’s a very basic piece of machinery, which means it’s easy to fabricate, and highly reliable, especially when made out of these materials. I’d say it was an excellent choice.

But why an exact replica?
Rolf asked.
Surely you can come up with something better using the kind of CAD programs we have these days? My kid designs stuff more complicated than this at school, and he’s only nine. In fact why bother with a revolver at all? The chimp was only ever going to be able to fire a single shot.

I can give you a one-word answer,
Wallace Steinbauer said.
Testing. The Colt is tried and tested, with two hundred years of successful operation behind it. The murderer knew the components worked. If he had designed his own gun he would need to test it to make absolutely sure it was going to fire when the chimp pulled the trigger. And you can hardly test a gun in Eden.