Chrysalis

14

Five minutes later, Logan was back in the familiar high-ceilinged Torus. He tapped his Omega device. “Pythia,” he said, “call Claire Asperton.”

There was a moment of silence, then Asperton came on the line. “Enjoy the show?”

“It was confusing. And not very sporting.”

“When someone gets fired from the Complex, Peyton usually prefers to give them a running head start — before shooting them in the back.”

“Well, this one wasn’t fired, and he wasn’t released. He’s going to be ‘processed’ — whatever that means.” He paused. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

“Mossby? When did I have time? Besides, he’s Peyton’s pet conspirator.”

“Are you saying you don’t think he’s involved?”

“He may well be. But…”

“But what?”

“I would have preferred he… well, be kept under observation longer. There are holes in Peyton’s theory, but after Marceline’s death, I couldn’t in good conscience hold him back.”

“You can make up for that dreadful oversight — forgetting to mention Mossby, I mean — by finishing the tour.”

There was a brief silence. “I’m sorry?”

“Whether or not this Mossby was involved, we still have no idea how the killings were carried out, or what the victims had in common besides being board members, or why in particular they were targeted. And before you got that message about Marceline Williams, we were in the middle of tracing the movements the board took on their visit here two weeks ago. Right?”

“Right.”

“Well, until we get a complete confession from Mossby, signed in blood, we’d better keep searching. And shadowing the board’s movements seems preferable to twiddling our thumbs.”

Another brief silence. “Why the hell not? Shouldn’t take long to finish, anyway. Where are you now… never mind, I see you on my monitor. Stay put; I’ll make the necessary preparations and meet you on the concourse in five minutes.”

“After New Eden, the board members made only one stop,” Claire Asperton told Logan a few minutes later, as they glided along the people mover. “The subsidiary located in Arc E.”

“Short afternoon,” Logan replied.

“Actually, it’s where they spent the most time.” The travelator brought them to a large, soaring space, anchored at its center by a sculpture of dark metal cubes, seemingly suspended one above another, through which thin sheets of cascading water slid in liquid curtains.

“Is that a Noguchi?” Logan asked.

Asperton nodded. “Permanent installation. Relaxing, isn’t it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Along with the breakout areas, we find these plazas to be excellent catalysts for the exchange of ideas — within security guidelines, of course.”

“Security guidelines.” Logan shook his head. “After that brief trip to Peyton’s lair, it’s a little hard to look at all this in quite the same way.”

“Even Eden had an archangel for a guard after God evicted Adam and Eve,” Asperton replied. “Anyway, those levels excavated below the Torus are almost as much of an engineering feat as what you see here aboveground. They’re what supports all this — literally and figuratively. Here we go.”

Getting off the moving sidewalk once again, she led the way to the far side of the sculpture, and then — instead of continuing down the concourse — veered off down a narrow, spartan corridor, which continued about fifty yards before making a ninety-degree angle. Ahead, it ended in a single door, bare of decoration save for a palm geometry reader.

“Slumming?” Logan asked.

The lawyer turned to him. “I’m sorry?”

“On the first two stops we entered from the concourse. Through the front door, so to speak — big as life.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “Well, he prefers it this way.”

And before Logan could ask who “he” referred to, Asperton placed her hand on the reader. A red light came on, which turned to green, and the door snapped open. Ahead, instead of a reception area, was an unlighted space. Asperton stepped inside, and after a moment Logan followed. As the door shut behind them, the blackness ahead shifted slightly, and then a faint light began to rise along the walls of the room. As it did so, Logan realized the shifting darkness was a person. The lights rose farther, and as they did Logan suddenly recognized who it was. The slicked-back hair, rimless glasses, pastel polo shirt, faint shadow of a two-day beard, gaunt, almost ascetic face: they could belong only to Matthew Wrigley, founder of Infinium, genius behind Omega and its massive rollout of VR technology that was either going to change the world or bankrupt Chrysalis.

Matthew Wrigley, in the flesh — and looking very angry indeed.