Vigilant

A TOTAL LOON

Once again, my family wanted to chain me to the bed with leg irons till police judged it safe for me to come out. You can guess what I said to that. Though I said it politely.

Then they had fallback positions. They could ask Protection Central for round-the-clock surveillance. They could hire a bodyguard. They could buy me my own stunner or jelly gun. They could get another dog, but a mean one this time, instead of the shake-hands-and-beg chowhounds Barrett usually brought home. (It was, of course, Barrett himself who suggested this. Whatever problems the family faced, two times out of three Barrett would explain how everything could be fixed if we just bought the right kind of dog.)

A typical view of my family in action. I let them have their shot at bullying me, but all they could really say was, "I’m scared, Faye." And their suggestions were just scrabbly attempts to make a gesture, even if they knew it was useless, so they could pretend the danger was avoidable if only we Did Things Right.

I couldn’t pretend that myself; so I caught a few hours’ sleep, then went in to work.

Unlike most offices in downtown Bonaventure, our Vigil headquarters had never got "humanized"… which meant the office still flaunted the Oolom ambience established preplague. Floor-to-ceiling windows, for example, with wide exterior ledges for easy Oolom landings and takeoffs. Instead of glass, the windows were made of transparent nano membranes: 99 percent solid to keep out birds and insects, but porous enough to let through a hint of breeze and keep the Ooloms from feeling they were totally closed in.

As a bonus, the nanites in the membranes allowed duly appointed proctors to pass back and forth between the offices and the ledge. Walking through was like shoving yourself into a sheet of gelatin — the solid surface turned viscous where you touched it, and sucked clingy-tight to your body as you pressed forward, slurping back together behind you when you came out the other side.

Another thing about our office: it was a tree house.

Ooloms hated making buildings from concrete or steel. They’d do it if they had to — Pump Station 3 dated back to Oolom times, and it had cement walls. (Cement walls with a slew of windows, not to mention dozens of skylights.) Still and all, Ooloms considered such construction materials a last resort: tolerable for plebeian spots like a water-treatment plant, but out of the question for the only Vigil headquarters on all Great St. Caspian. You wouldn’t stow the Mona Lisa in a mud shack, would you?

So the Ooloms put our office in a tree. A sign of their immense respect for the Vigil. Or for trees. This particular tree had "monumental" written all over it: an equatorial species called a reshkent or kapok elm, but dosed with so many growth hormones, not to mention bioengineered goiter-grafts and longevity sap enhancers… well, transforming the original reshkent into our offices was like changing a toothpick to a totem pole. Not just making it whopping amounts bigger, but hanging all kinds of doodads on it.

Picture a massive central trunk twenty meters in diameter, but with a hollow core big enough to hold an elevator shaft. (Even Ooloms needed elevators on occasion: when high winds made flying dangerous, or when carting around office furniture.) Every five meters up the trunk was a bulging ring, like a fat belt around the tree’s girth. A belt that stuck out so far, it was more like a life preserver. Each such ring had enough space to hold four good-sized offices, complete with those nanite windows, plus a desk, chairs, and a darling wee latrine. (Plumbing wastes were converted to fertilizer for the tree itself.)

Our tree had six such "floors," six annular rings spaced bulgy up the trunk… and above all that was a gigantic umbrella of leaves stretched almost fifty meters in every direction, soaking up sun to keep the tree alive. Barely a fifth of those leaves fell each year; the rest hung on, still doing their photon-collection job no matter how crispy they became with cold. Now and then throughout the winter, a leaf grew so heavy with ice that it snapped off its branch, dropped sharp and fast, then shattered like a glass dagger on some window ledge.

At one time, all twenty-four offices in the tree housed proctors; but that was before the plague. Now, Floors One and Two were empty, and I was the only person on Floor Three. Senior proctors filled up the higher floors… except for a vacant room on Floor Five. Chappalar’s office. I could have taken it but didn’t want to. Not even for the better view.

I supposed our new arrival, Master Tic, would claim Chappalar’s old office. He’d also take over Chappalar’s old duties… which might mean he was slated to be my supervisor.

Unless master proctors were too important to waste time riding herd on a novice.

Or unless I got some say in the matter myself; in which case, I’d pick one of the proctors I’d known for seven years, instead of some goggle-wearing outsider who thought he could step into Chappalar’s shoes.

(All right — Ooloms didn’t actually wear shoes. Just flimsy-dick things like ballet slippers made of ort skin. But you know what I mean.)

To find out who’d become my new mentor, I took the elevator straight up to Jupkur’s office on the top ring. Jupkur was Gossip Central for our building — not only did he know everything, but he blabbed it at the least provocation, all the while saying, "Well, I don’t like to talk…"

By luck, Jupkur was in: lying flat on his desk and staring at the ceiling. Don’t ask me why. Since the plague, our Oolom proctors had spent more than two decades immersed in our culture and adapting to our ways. God knows, they worked hard to fit in with our particular brand of Homo sap behavior. Now and then, though, you still caught them acting just plain alien, especially when humans weren’t around.

I found it kind of endearing.

"Welcome back, Faye," Jupkur said without looking in my direction. Ooloms were nigh-on eerie when it came to recognizing people by the sound of their footsteps. (They can even tell when you’ve bought new boots… maybe the only males in the universe who ever notice.)

"You missed an exciting night," he told me, still keeping his gaze on the ceiling. "The rest of us got to loiter till three in the morning, inventing theories of where you might be. Some hypotheses were extremely clever… even witty, though I shouldn’t brag. Then I tried to organize a betting pool, guessing the state of your corpse when the police finally found you. Alas, the others spent too long scrutinizing the rules of the wager; you turned up alive before anyone actually gave me money."

"Sorry."

"Ah well." He sat up and turned toward me. "I’m sure you’ll get in trouble again. We’ve all agreed you’re botjolo."

The word meant "cursed." Or "self-destructive." Which Ooloms considered the same thing.

"You’re so kind," I muttered. "Do you have a minute?"

"Of course. Although if you’re looking for guidance on official Vigil business, Master Tic is your new supervisor and I don’t want to valk him."

Valking was gliding into another person’s flight path. The Oolom equivalent of stepping on someone’s toes.

"That was one of the things I wanted to ask," I said. "Whether Tic was my new mentor. And what he’s doing in Bonaventure."

Jupkur winked at me… which didn’t look any better on him than it did on Oh-God. Some gestures just don’t transfer from one species to another.

"Master Tic is pursuing his own agenda," Jupkur said. "That’s one thing you can be sure of. He has a reputation in various circles… well, one doesn’t like to gossip."

"You love to gossip," I replied.

"True," he replied. "And what a treat you’re a full-fledged proctor now… I can reveal juicy tidbits about everyone in the Vigil, and it won’t be telling tales out of school. Do you know how long it’s been since I polished up my stories for somebody new?"

"Just tell me about Tic," I said.

"Well, now… Tic." Jupkur smiled. "Tic’s a master proctor, isn’t he? Which means he’s the cream of the cream, as you humans say. The best. The acme of perfection."

He kept smiling. Or should I say smirking? Seated on the edge of his desk, simpering like a man with a secret. A secret about Tic.

"So what’s wrong with him?" I asked.

"Think about his name, Faye. Tic. Hardly a conventional Oolom name. And not his original one, oh no. He began calling himself Tic a year back. It’s short for tico."

Tico = crazy. Mad. "So he’s saying he’s insane?" I asked.

"A raving screwball. A total loon. A person of addled wits."

"Why would he call himself that?" I said. "Is he nuts?"

"Faye," Jupkur answered, "Master Tic is Zenning out."

"Ahhhhhh."

To Zen out. The human phrase for a condition that sneaked up on some proctors if they lived long enough. A side effect of long-term link-seed use. These people had achieved a state of… well, damned if I know what went on in their heads, but they’d stopped functioning on the same mundane wavelength as the rest of us. If you’re a glass-half-full person, you could claim they’d reached a higher plane of consciousness; if you prefer the-glass-is-half-empty, you’d say they’d gone gibbering round the bend.

Except that they didn’t gibber. Zenned-out proctors acted happy enough. Blissful even. And when they deigned to pay attention to the world, they seemed keen witted and shrewd, full of insight. Brilliant, perceptive, intuitive, wise. Most of the time, though, they were cabbages. Not catatonic or delusional — just shifted to a set of priorities that didn’t mesh with the rest of us. Eating strawberries while being attacked by tigers, that sort of thing.

Or so the stories went. It’d been a long time since we’d actually seen a Zenned-out case on Demoth — the most elderly proctors had all died in the plague, and the survivors weren’t old enough to have their brains go soupy.

Till now.

"So," I said, "does this mean Tic is unstable?"

Jupkur shook his head. "Not the way you’re thinking. He’s just dancing to a different drummer, as you humans say. Not dangerous, but not very useful either." Jupkur hopped off the edge of his desk and shook out his gliders to get them to hang more comfortably. "Have a look at this."

He turned his back to me and spread his gliders wide like a triangular sail, point-down. In a moment, printed words appeared on the surface of the membrane — an effect that freaked merry hell out of me the first time I saw it. As I’ve said, Ooloms don’t have conscious control over their chameleon abilities; but Jupkur (at flamboyant expense) had coated the back of his gliders with pixel-nano under command of his link-seed. At parties, he could give himself moving tattoos… which he did at every opportunity. Flagrantly. And don’t ask me the subject matter.

A right tease, our Jupkur.

I looked at the writing on display, as he used himself for a projection screen. "What is this?" I asked.

"Part of a report," he replied. "From the coordinator of the team who are scrutinizing the trade talks between us and the Freeps. That was Tic’s last assignment."

I skimmed the words. About Tic. The phrase "inattention to duty" stood out… possibly because Jupkur was making it flash bright red.

"Tic never did what he was told," Jupkur said, as if I couldn’t read it for myself. "The coordinator would assign him to review some paragraph overnight, and in the morning, Tic would have looked at a completely different section. Mind you, his insights were often brilliant… but that didn’t make him any friends, considering that someone else was probably reviewing the same text without the same degree of inspiration. If the coordinator asked, ‘What do you want to look at, Tic?,’ he’d answer, ‘I don’t know yet. Whatever feels important.’ Which is not exactly helpful when you’re trying to keep things organized."

I nodded. People sometimes get the notion proctors are rampant individualists, boldly charting our own paths to track down corruption. But mostly, we’re methodical as mustard — you only get to follow your hunches after you’ve done days of preliminary donkeywork.

"So Tic got booted from the trade-treaty team?" I asked.

"Depends who tells the story," Jupkur said, lowering his arms and letting the words on his back fade away. "Most of my sources think that’s what happened — he got the old leave-ho. But one friend at Vigil HQ says this was Tic’s own decision. A day after the killings, Tic suddenly announced he was needed in Bonaventure. And when a master proctor wants a transfer, he gets a transfer… especially when his current team won’t be sorry to see him go."

"You think Tic might be coming here to investigate Chappalar’s death?"

"Heaven forbid!" Jupkur said with mock horror. "That’s police business, isn’t it? The Vigil has no mandate for criminal investigation. But it’s just possible that such a quibble slipped Tic’s mind… whatever shred of mind he has left."

"Lovely," I said. "The man’s senile, and you’ve made him my supervisor."

"He asked to be your supervisor. And how could we say no to a master proctor?" Jupkur grinned. "Besides, what’s he going to do, Faye? How much trouble can you get into in placid little Bonaventure?"

"Chappalar got murdered," I said.

"Point taken," Jupkur admitted. "But Chappalar didn’t actually get himself in trouble. He was a victim of circumstance, nothing more. Someone decided to kill proctors because they were proctors. It’s a global matter, Faye, and whatever Tic does, how can it make you more of a target than you already are?"

"Gee thanks," I muttered.

Jupkur waved his hand airily. "You’re a target, I’m a target, he, she, and it are targets. Surely you don’t think anyone is singling you out, Faye? This is political, not personal. Some weak-minded local has obviously bought into the Freep propaganda that the Vigil is undemocratic… we’re a wicked unelected body of petty dictators, who do nothing but interfere with free representation. Heaven knows, the Freeps have been harping on that theme ever since we started getting under their skin at the trade talks. So some tico crackpot decides, yes proctors are Evil Personified and must be stopped. In time, the police will catch the culprit; I hope before another attack. But in the meantime, I don’t intend to change the way I do my duty. Do you?"

"Of course not," I said. "I’m just worried about Tic."

"Don’t be. At worst, his mind wanders; at best, he’s still a master proctor. Tic could teach you a lot. And I’m sure you can help him too."

Jupkur freighted those last words deep with meaning; and I caught the hint. A senile old fart just got himself posted to Bonaventure, and someone had to baby-sit him. Surprise, surprise, the senior proctors sloughed off the job on junior me. Crap flows downhill.

"All right," I said, trying to keep the grumbles out of my voice. "Tic and I are a team. Anything else you want to tell me?"

"Just one thing." Jupkur — Jupkur of the thousand-and-one smirks — suddenly lowered his gaze to the floor, abashed. "Tic was chief scrutineer over the Global Health Agency. During the plague." Oh. Ouch.

"No one blames him for anything," Jupkur went on hurriedly, "He demanded a review when it was all over, and the tribunal absolved him of all culpability. Actually, they wanted to give Tic a commendation for swift and decisive action. Things would have been even worse if he hadn’t driven the government to move quickly. But Tic didn’t want a gold medal — he wanted to do penance for all the deaths that happened on his watch. People say he hoped the review panel would crucify him: expel him from the Vigil, rip the link-seed out of his head. When they exonerated him instead, it sent him into a screaming fit, swearing he’d kill himself."

Jupkur shrugged. "The only problem was, Tic had caught the paralysis like everybody else, and couldn’t hold a knife to slash his wrists. The disease clung on too — kept him immobile twice as long as anyone else. Psychosomatic, of course: guilt kept him numb months after the microbes were gone. So the emotional therapists went to work, and by the time he could move again, he was past the suicidal stage. Just not past the self-recrimination. If I were you, I wouldn’t mention the plague in casual discussion."

"Jupkur," I groaned, "I’m Henry Smallwood’s daughter. Ooloms still stop me on the street to shake my hand. The subject is going to come up."

"Don’t you bring it up," Jupkur said. "Tic might take it the wrong way. As if you’re boasting that your father had to clean up Tic’s mess."

"I never boast about my father," I told him. Which shouldn’t have been true, but was.

When I got to my office, Tic was there: standing by the window, solemnly pushing his hand into the clear membrane then pulling it back, listening to the sucking sound.

Ssss-pop. Ssss-pop. Sssssssssssss-pop.

His face had a look of fierce concentration, as if this was a momentous assignment demanding his full attention. No smile or frown: nothing but focus. He reminded me of Barrett’s favorite basset hound, an old frump of a dog who would stare worriedly at a rubber ball for hours, wondering if maybe — just maybe — the ball could be used as a toy.

"Hello," I said. "Can I help you?"

"No," he replied, "I’m doing excellently on my own."

Sssss-pop. Sssssssssss-pop. Ss-pop.

"What are you doing?" I finally asked.

"Playing with the nanites. Simple souls — they just love being teased. Can’t get enough of it."

My heart skipped a beat. No, no, no, I thought quick-hop, nanites don’t have souls. Every last one of the little buggers was dumb as earwax. Put a billion together and the most you got was an idiot savant window that could impersonate jelly. Nanites definitely did not have personalities or… or…

Some killjoy part of my brain wouldn’t repress what happened the night before — how the nanites on the chair whimpered and turned tail when I gave them a dirty look.

"You think the nanites enjoy what you’re doing?" I asked.

"They like the attention," Tic said. He threw me a glance over his shoulder. "Whenever I take a new post, I make sure to befriend the local nanites. They’re always so desperately lonely. Taken for granted. No one ever gives a thought for their feelings." Ssssss-pop. "You, for example. This is your office, and they tell me you haven’t even introduced yourself."

"I’m just new," I found myself saying. "I only got the office a few days ago, and I’ve been busy ever since."

"You aren’t busy now."

Tic gave a tiny jerk of his head toward the window — the sort of hinting gesture that people pretend is so subtle no one else will notice. Reluctant as a rabbit, I crossed the room. Tic bobbed his head at the rightmost window. "Those fellows have been asking especially about you." I thought, Maybe this is a Vigil initiation prank. A stunt to make the new kid embarrass herself. Jupkur sets me up to think Tic is a total loon, and Tic gets me to do something witless just to humor him. Soon, all the other proctors will jump out laughing. Or else Tic is a total loon. Or else… no, I didn’t want to think about that. Placing my hand against the glassy un-glass window, I said, "Hi, guys. I’m Faye. You’ll be seeing a lot of me now, sitting over in that desk."

The membrane yielded a titch under my palm, the solid surface going oozy. I expected that. I did not expect the gentle backsurge that came straightaway after… a cool jelly hand twining its fingers with mine. At the same instant, my brain bloomed up with a clear mental image of a million microscopic puppies licking my skin — an image superimposed over my real senses like a VR template.

"Jesus Christ!" I cried, yanking my hand back. It gave a thunderous pop as it came free.

"Good noise," Tic said. "Excellent volume. Can I hear it again?"

"No!" I snapped. "I thought… I thought I saw… I thought I felt…"

"Puppies?" Tic asked. "They wanted it to be a pleasant experience for you. You don’t like dogs?"

"That was…" I gasped. "You mean the nanites…"

"Projected the image to say hello. They meant well, Smallwood. Now they’re worried they’ve upset you."

"How could they project an image?"

Tic reached out a bony finger and tapped my forehead. "You’re wired in now. Linked to the digital oneness. Like the nanites."

"But they’re not intelligent!"

"Not very," Tic agreed. "But they’re connected. They asked the world-soul to greet you on their behalf; the world-soul was the one who came up with puppies."

I felt my gorge rise… whatever a gorge is. "The world-soul projected something into my brain? Without my permission?"

"In any sensible society, saying hello to people gives them permission to say hello back."

"They aren’t people, they’re nanites!"

"Yes… and soon they’ll be cranky little nanites if you don’t say how much you appreciate their greeting. Small brains. Short tempers. Easily hurt feelings." Tic gestured toward the window. "Go on. You don’t want to get on their bad side. Otherwise, the next time you run through a pane of glass, they’ll deliberately muss your hair."

I stared at him. Tic had such a bland deadpan expression — a perfect poker face. (If frumpy old basset hounds could play poker.) For all I could tell, there wasn’t an ounce of jokery in him.

Sigh.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t want to find out windows had easily hurt feelings. I preferred that my worldview didn’t include opinionated nanotech. But… link-seed, Vigil, blah-blah-blah. You know the song, sing along with the chorus — Faye can’t hide from the truth.

I reached toward the window again. Only one hand. The featheriest touch I could manage. A cool jelly palm made contact with mine, just as hesitant as me. Into my skull came the feeling of shyness — not my own, someone else’s, a million someone elses worried they’d made some social gaffe. It’s all right, I thought, projecting my words at the un-glass, I’m just jumpy is all. I forced my palm to linger an extra second, then pulled back, feeling the jelly hand slip away.

Ssssssss. A pop as soft as a soap bubble.

"An adequate start," Tic said. "Just don’t ignore them from now on."

"I never knew they… who programmed them for emotions?"

Tic leaned toward me and whispered, "Nanites only have two programmed emotions: boredom and involvement. A single bit-switch that tells them they enjoy doing their job. ‘Oh joy, we get to work for big people!’ " He smiled fondly. "But when the nanites communicate with you through the world-soul, the world-soul likes to add more emotional color. Truth is, getting to know your local nanites is mostly just a way to show the world-soul you’re machine-friendly. Like playing with a woman’s children to win the mother’s heart. You definitely want to stay on the world-soul’s good side — you’re a data-based organism now." He lowered his voice even more. "The world-soul likes to be called Xe."

I fair gulped at that one. Xe (pronounced Chay) was a female deity from the Ooloms’ ancient past, dating back millennia to the Divian homeworld… comparable in time and sentiment to the Greek goddess Gaia. The Earth Mother. As I’ve said I didn’t understand much about Oolom religions, but I was sure they all considered Xe mythical. A pretty legend, a gem of a metaphor, but definitely fictitious.

"Are you saying Xe is real?" I whispered.

Tic stared at me scornfully. "It’s the world-soul, Smallwood. An artificial intelligence distributed over a million different machines. It likes the name Xe, but even Xe knows it’s not Xe. Are all new proctors as gullible as you?"

"I’m not gullible," I grumped, "I’m just surprised the world-soul is… conscious. No one ever told me—"

"Xe’s picky in choosing friends," Tic said. "Who’s let in on the secret. Who gets shut out. If you remember this conversation tomorrow, feel honored."

"You mean the world-soul could wipe—"

"Shh." Tic put a scaly finger to my lips. "Wisdom doesn’t upset itself over something that might not happen."

Wisdom can go poke a porcupine, I thought. A self-aware AI with delusions of godhood had its fingers inside my cranium; and now I found that if Xe didn’t like me, it could wipe away all recollection of the past five minutes. I guess the conversation would never shift from short-term to long-term memory — thanks to an AI mucking with my mind.

And the entire Vigil was linked to that!

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I’d found a grand old way to mess myself up this time.

Unless Tic was lying. Out-and-out delusional. I couldn’t deny there was something queer about the windows, the nanites and all… but this talk of Xe could just be an old loon’s demented concoction. Imagining he was the world-soul’s bosom buddy, when it was just an egoless congregation of computers, clean devoid of will.

Which was more disturbing? That my new supervisor might be psychotic? Or that he might be right?

Tic whispered, "Bye-bye," to the window, and patted the membrane a last time before turning to me. "Well, Smallwood. Down to business. I assume you’ve heard I’m your supervisor?"

"Yes."

"And you’ve also heard I’m a Zenned-out dotard with brains of sponge pudding?"

"Gossip has reached my ears," I said.

"All of it true," Tic replied, "except the parts that aren’t. Or the parts that are both true and untrue." He gave me a look. "I just said that last so I’d sound more Zen. Not that I know much about human religions, but mystics the world over love paradox. Which is to say they hate reductivist binary logic. Am I rambling?"

"You’re showing off," I told him. "Indulging yourself to make me think you’re really crazy."

He smiled. "Very shrewd, Smallwood. You’re smart as well as wide. But God Almighty, you are wide. Do you have to go through doors sideways?"

"No," I said. "And I’m married."

"With shoulders like that, no wonder. But don’t mind me — us old codgers always use sexual harassment to put women at their ease. People think it’s so adorable, we can get away with murder. And speaking of murder, what did you say that got Chappalar killed?"

The question caught me flat-footed. Ever adept with brilliant repartee, I said, "Huh?"

"Chappalar," Tic repeated. "We were both at a party for him the other day. Quiet fellow — never spoke a word through the whole ceremony. And speaking of speaking, whom did you tell? That you intended to visit Pump Station 3." Tic leaned his hangdog face toward mine. "Who knew you’d be there?"

"Why are you asking?" I said. "Do you think you’re investigating Chappalar’s murder?"

Tic put on his scornful look again. "That’s police business, Smallwood. Well outside the Vigil’s authority."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Prematurely.

"My assignment," Tic went on, "is to assume Proctor Chappalar’s duties. Which makes me your supervisor. I’ve reviewed your schedule, and you have no current commitments, correct? City council withdrew the water-treatment bill you were scrutinizing?"

I nodded.

"Then you need a new project to keep you busy," Tic said. "Proctor Smallwood, I assign you to scrutinize activities of the Bonaventure Civilian Protection Office. That’s undeniably within the mandate of this Vigil branch."

No question, that. We were authorized to watchdog the local cops; in fact, we were legally required to give them a look-see from time to time.

"So," Tic said, "keep an eye open for all the usual things. Corruption. Slack work habits. Pilfering office supplies. What?" He cocked his ear toward the window. "Oh." He turned back to me. "Especially be on the lookout for people who don’t wash their hands before entering the nanotech lab. Foul old bastards."

"Do the Bonaventure police have a nanotech lab?" I asked.

"Don’t ask me — you’re the one who’s scrutinizing them. Far be it from me to tell you what to do." He leaned in conspiratorially. "Now here’s what I want you to do. You’re clearly at a total loss for direction, so why not monitor a representative criminal case currently being investigated?"

"Did you have something particular in mind?"

"We’ll pick a case at random. Oh. Here’s one." He reached onto my desk where there was a single file packet stamped with the Bonaventure police crest. I hadn’t put the file there. Tic read the label on the packet and said, "This will do splendidly. The Chappalar murder investigation. Proctor Smallwood, you will scrutinize the police handling of this case to the best of your abilities. I, of course, will accompany you to provide the seasoned voice of experience."

He waited for me to answer. I gave a slight nod. Precious good thing we weren’t overstepping our authority by intruding into police business.

Tic tossed the file onto my desk. "You’ll want to review the police report as soon as possible," he said. "When you do, you’ll see that those boobies bungled the interrogation of their prime witness. A human woman — one Faye Smallwood. You may have heard of her. The detectives downloaded what she saw at the murder scene and assumed it was all she knew. Can’t imagine why they mollycoddled her. Of course she had political connections, so perhaps she pulled some strings down at city hall."

I glared at him. Tic grinned. "Or else," he said, "she started babbling about peacock thingies, and they thought she was a total loon."

"Did they call me that in the police report?" I asked, reaching for the file.

"Of course not," Tic replied, moving the file farther away from me. "Not in so many words. At any rate, the police believe in peacock thingies now. To a modest degree. Considering how the navy went berserk and kidnapped you, the constabulary has decided you weren’t completely crazy, vis-a-vis mysterious tubes of light. Which is too bad — it’s high time I worked with someone more tico than me."

I gave him a long hard look. "I’m strongly beginning to suspect you aren’t tico at all."

Tic looked offended. "Ms. Smallwood," he said, "I’m tico as a terrijent… which is a little brown beetle not noted for odd behavior, but it was the first alliteration that came to mind. More to the point, I am by far the oldest proctor in the entire Vigil. If I’m not approaching a state of Zen by now, there must be something wrong with me. Do you understand? In the normal life cycle of proctors, I’m at a point where I should be One with the universe. Or at most 1.0001. I should be asymptotic to apotheosis. Holding regular conversations with the major deities. Feeling the infinitesimal flux of the cosmological constant. Speaking the mystic language of the wind. If I’m not ecstatically demented with otherworldly bliss, Smallwood, a good many people will lose their faith that there is such a thing as Zenning out. Including myself; and I hate disappointing poor crazy old men."

Despite the intensity of his words, he’d spoken with precious little emotion. Precious little emotion you could identify anyway. Was he joking at his own expense? Confiding a deep dark secret? Speaking straight from the heart? "Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Why not?" he replied. "When it crosses my mind to do something, I don’t ask why, I ask why not. And usually there’s no reason not to, so I just go ahead." He paused, then added, "It’s given me the strangest collection of hats."

I stared at him a moment, then said, "You’re tico enough for me. Don’t lose faith in that Zenning-out business."

He smiled. "What a sweet girl. Now let’s talk about Chappalar’s death."

Outside the window, the shadow of our tree stretched off on a diagonal, reaching far across the rooftops as the sun set behind us. The street straight below had already gone dark enough for safety lights to be turning themselves on: children skipping past in jackets that shone bright orange so they couldn’t be missed; adults with coats phosphorescing in more prudish colors, or the occasional curmudgeon with no lights at all — clods who preferred to get run down in traffic rather than stand out in the darkness. ("What if someone’s following me?" I once heard a man say. "Why wear clothes that make me an easy target?" As if snipers were a daily danger and careless drivers no trouble at all.)

Tic picked up the police file packet from my desk and idly turned it over in his fingers. "Chappalar’s death," he said again. "The police neglected a vital line of questioning, and as discriminating proctors we should consider whether to draw this to their attention." He glanced up at me; the lowering dark made his face even pouchier. "Who knew where you and Chappalar would be?"

I’d barely registered his question the first time he asked it. Now it settled down more solid in my mind… and I realized Tic had hit on a serious point. The androids struck the pump station before Chappalar and I arrived; they’d taken out all the staff by the time we showed up.

So how did they know where we’d be?

We hadn’t given the station any advance notice of our visit. Even Chappalar and I didn’t know very far ahead — we’d only decided the previous evening, just before leaving our office for the night.

So who did know where we were going?

None of the other proctors, that was sure. Chappalar and I headed out together, without talking to anybody else. And we hadn’t logged our intentions with the office computer — Chappalar had a case of the stubborns about that, always wanting to leave things open so he could change his mind on the spur of the moment.

So who knew? Only the people Chappalar and I might have talked to after work.

I’d told my family I was going out on a scrutiny — the first of my career, and the whole house was excited. But I’d made a joke of teasing them, keeping it a big secret: can’t tell, Vigil business, might be a bust-their-balls raid that’ll hit all the broadcasts. I’d held out till little Livvy’s bedtime, when I whispered in her ear I was just going to a water-treatment plant; she proudly-loudly announced the news to everyone else, they laughed, and that was that.

"As far as I can remember," I told Tic, "I never mentioned Pump Station 3 to anyone. I just said I was going to a water-treatment plant. Five of those in the city."

"As far as you can remember?" A squidge of emotion flickered across his face; but thanks to those blasted goggles, I couldn’t tell which emotion it was. "Ms. Smallwood… you realize your link-seed can delve into—"

"I know," I interrupted. "They explained at mushor."

The same way my link-seed could package up memories for the police, it could rummage through my mind for forgotten minutiae stashed below the conscious threshold. The process wasn’t perfect — our brains are lazy buggers who adjust memories for easy storage, throwing away some details and approximating others with images that are already in our mental cupboards. Still and all, the night in question was recent enough that I shouldn’t find too much distortion.

"It’s rather imperative for us to be sure on this," Tic said. "If you explicitly told anyone you were going to Pump Station 3…"

"Yes!" I snapped, "I know it’s important!"

He peered at me owlishly through his shaded goggles. Then he asked, "Stick or bag?"

"Excuse me?"

"When I was a dewy-eyed novice," he said, "my mentors took the direct approach in helping me deal with my fears. Whenever I hesitated to use my link-seed, they either hit me with a stick or put a bag over my head. I hated the bag most, so that’s what they usually used." He sighed dramatically. "Such barbaric days — I swore I’d be more enlightened. By which I mean I’m giving you the choice. Stick or bag?"

I boggled at him, wondering if this was just a joke. So far as I could see, he didn’t have either a stick or bag… but then, he wore the usual Oolom tote pack, a flat ort-skin pouch positioned at groin level, held in place with straps up around the neck and down to the ankles. The pack was just big enough to hold some escrima rods, and a sack or two.

Even as I watched, his hand drifted down toward the tote pack’s zip-mouth.

"No stick, no bag," I said jump-quickly. "I’ll do this. Just give me time."

"At your convenience." Tic folded his hands in front of him: the picture of a man willing to wait.

Waiting for me to invoke my link-seed demon. To tweak fate’s nose by hooking up again.

Look. This is getting stale for me too — the constant whining about my link, "Oh, woe, what if my brain goes splat?" You must be saying, "Snap out of it, honey. The seed is a gift, not a curse. And anyway, the thing is so thoroughly twined around your neurons, you have no choice but to live with it."

The same words I kept saying to myself.

I hated the fear. It was so daft childish — to train seven whole years, then melt into drippy dread when I finally got what I wanted.

Crazy. Witless. Typical Faye.

But you don’t want me moaning how screwed up I was. Either you’re sick of that too, or you don’t believe me. Just a middle-class drama queen, blathering about her dodgy past when she seems pretty damned functional. Good health… addiction-free… loving family… not overly crippled by depression, neurosis or psychosis. Not even ugly with freckles anymore. Stop complaining, bitch.

Fair enough.

But hating the way you get the mopes doesn’t make it easier to step clear of the past. Or the present. Or the future when it scares the bejeezus out of you.

Fear is fear. Pain is pain. Even when you know you’re being boring.

It bored me too. Frustrated me. I kept telling myself, "Get over it!"

Words, words, words. Words don’t make willpower… and anyway, willpower isn’t the right tool for some jobs. Instead of holding on with white willpower knuckles, sometimes you have to let go.

So. There, in my office, scared of the world-soul Xe, worried about Tic’s sanity and shamed by his question, "Stick or bag?"… I finally threw myself back on my Vigil training. Meditation. Acceptance. Discipline without discipline. Like I’d been working on for seven years.

Down into my center — the part that breathes if you just get out of its way.

Don’t see this as an apocalyptic transformation; don’t think I grappled down my fear for all time. Nothing is ever so easy. But I sheltered back into my training and let myself take a step.

Forward.

The mind is a bottle filled with sugar syrup, salt water, and vinegar. Empty it.

The mind is a book filled with poetry, laments, and curses. Click delete.

Empty bottle.

Empty book.

Empty mind.

If you dip your hand into the sea, then scoop it out again, what do you have? No more than a sheen of wet over your palm. You can’t capture handfuls of water by strength; you can’t possess it. But if you dip your hand into the briny and leave it there — if you let yourself feel the cold and smell the salt — then who’s to say you aren’t holding the whole ocean?

Don’t seek, don’t avoid…just observe. If you want to activate a shy part of the brain, let the rest fall silent. When the consciousness shuts up, quieter voices may speak.

Memory isn’t linear… except tiny patches, ten seconds here, half a minute there. Only flicky-brief flashes where you can track through a sequence of events without skipping ahead, without finding other memories dragged in by association. The meat of your brain squirms against linearity, terrified of falling into some autistic steady state that locks out the world.

Then we Homo saps come along, and sludge-wits that we are, almost every activity we invent for ourselves moves in a straight line. Step-by-step instructions, agendas for business meetings, timetables and milestones for working on a project. Our whole culture = first A, then B, then C. Binding the tiger with a chain of one link after another.

One thing at a time. Society pounds away at us, "It’s wicked-bad-sinful even to contemplate the possibility of experiencing everything all at once."

But I wanted everything — everything I said and did that night before Chappalar died.

I opened myself to the memories: not commanding them to come, because the commanding part of my brain wasn’t the nub I wanted to activate.

Open the inner eye. Just see what’s there.

Chappalar and me saying good night in front of the Vigil’s office. The dear funny sight of him bouncing through the grove of other office trees in our neighborhood. Me walking down to the transit station, where I caught a scuttler for home.

No sign of anyone following either of us.

Off the scuttler and heading for my home compound. Preoccupied, gloomily self-absorbed: worried about the link-seed bomb ticking in my head.

Sudden memories of a different time — don’t fight the change of subject, let it happen if that’s what my brain served up. The face of a senior student I’d known marginally, someone who died from data tumor early in mushor.

An imagined picture of scalding blood, squirting from his eyes. The horror his family must have felt. The horror my family would feel if it happened to me. Our kids, trying all their hard-won attitudes, arrogance, outrage, coolness, and finding nothing that shook the grief. My husbands and wives with a few more funerals under their belts, but still deep-struck because they depended on me… depended that I’d be the one in trouble, the one who needed close watching, the first one all eyes turned to when someone asked, "What shall we do tonight?" because Faye might’ve got one of her moods…

Moods. A torrent of moods flooding into me… not memory anymore, but Remembrance: touching all the moods I’d ever had, not just the night prior to Chappalar’s death, but all the angry moods before, all the guilty moods after.

Everything all at once.

Not data tumor. The deluge didn’t come from the datasphere but from my own mind, chagrins and shames I’d tried to squash down, and joys that I’d run from because they were undeserved, too good for someone like me…

My whole subconscious suddenly exploded to the surface, like an eruption of gas bursting out of deep ocean, wretched stinks and sweet lost perfumes, hates, loves, humiliations, triumphs…

Subconscious becoming conscious for one gasping moment of totality.

Then it was gone again, the ocean clapping back into place, subconscious plunging into drowned depths, the moment of revelation getting swallowed under heavy black water.

I opened my eyes. Tic was watching me closely. He hadn’t moved; but he must have known what happened by the look on my face. Softly he said, "Some proctors grow addicted to that experience. That moment of knowledge. They don’t enjoy it, but they have to look again and again. Others would rather die than repeat it. Wisdom lies between those two extremes: use memory as a tool, not a drug. But. Fanobo roi shunt, aghi shunt po."

An Oolom proverb: acting wisely is easy, until it ISN’T.

I said nothing. Speechless. Breathless. In the quiet, Tic’s goggles hissed out a puff of mist to keep his eyes moist.

"I didn’t tell anyone about Pump Station 3," I whispered. "Not by name. Chappalar must have mentioned it to someone. His lover. Maya."

Maya.

"Who is this Maya?" Tic asked.

"A human woman. I’ve never met her myself — just heard some of the other proctors talk about her. Chappalar said she was a hundred and ten years old."

"And Chappalar saw her the night before he was killed?"

"So he told me."

"Long-term friendship or recent acquaintance?"

"Recent, I think."

Tic raised his eyes to the ceiling a moment, then lowered his head again to look straight at me. "There’s no such woman in Bonaventure."

I was a hair away from asking, "How do you know?" but stopped myself in time. Tic must have used his link-seed to call the world-soul and check our city census database. The search wouldn’t take long — since Homo saps had only lived on Demoth half a century, there weren’t a lot of us aged 110. Sure, a few of Demoth’s original humans arrived in their fifties or older; but not many. Colonization was a sport played mostly by the young.

"She might not have told Chappalar her right age," I said. "Humans sometimes fudge how old they are."

"And a charming foible it is," Tic answered. "Never trust a species that tells the truth about everything — they’re either stupid, arrogant, or only interested in documentaries. But there’s no human, male or female, anywhere over the age of one hundred with a name that’s close to the word Maya… not on the voters’ lists in all Great St. Caspian." Oh. Pity.

"Maybe she lives elsewhere on Demoth," I suggested. "It takes next to no time for someone to travel here by sleeve…" Tic looked away again, then turned back. "No one fitting Maya’s particulars has taken the Bonaventure sleeve in the past two weeks."

I stared at him in great gaping shock. Sure, the Transit Board required sleeve operators to record who passed through when… but those records were kept confidential except by court order. Police could get warrants to track criminals; accident investigators could find the names of travelers splattered or spaced by malfunctions; but members of the Vigil had no authority to check the movements of private citizens. If I tried such a thing, the world-soul would stonewall me with information does not exist or is not validly accessible. It might also notify my superiors, who’d demand to know what in merry hell I thought I was doing.

"Transit records are tight-sealed," I told Tic in a low voice. "How can you search through them—"

"I can’t," he replied. "But the world-soul can. And Xe’s a dear old girl who’ll do her utmost to be obliging if you ask your questions persuasively. One: I am interested in locating a murderer, who is by definition a dangerous non-sentient creature. Two: we have honest reason to believe this Maya passed information, knowingly or not, to our murderer sometime between her evening with Chappalar and Chappalar’s death the next morning. Three: it’s my duty as a citizen of the League of Peoples to warn other sentients about potentially lethal risks… which means I should notify Maya she spoke to a dangerous non-sentient at least once and presumably may do so again. Four: I direct the world-soul to warn Maya posthaste. Five: the world-soul asks how to contact the woman, and I provide all the leads I can, including that she might have recently traveled on the Bonaventure Sleeve. Six: the world-soul anxiously replies it can’t send the warning because no woman fitting the criteria appears in the transit records." He shrugged. "Perfectly straightforward."

The shrug was a nice touch — Tic’s face looked wholly sincere, as if anyone could have strung together that chain of reasoning in the half second it took to link with the datasphere.

No thought at all of trying to impress me.

Whether or not I was impressed, I swore I wouldn’t show it. "So this Maya…" I stopped, struck by a thought. "Conceivably, ‘Maya’ is a nickname that has nothing to do with her real name. That would make it hard to find her in the city database or the transit records."

"Oh. True." Tic’s face darkened. Literally. Went a shade grayer in the gathering dusk. "Nicknames are such a flippant human custom. Impertinent. Jaunty. If you don’t like your old name, go through a proper rechristening like decent people instead of just deciding…" He fell silent a moment, his face distant. "All right," he said, after a few seconds, "the world-soul will phone every woman in Great St. Caspian over the age of one hundred, and tell her there’s an urgent message if she goes by the name Maya. It will do the same for anyone in the right age range who traveled here by sleeve recently. If there really is a Maya, we should flush her out."

"If there really is a Maya?" I repeated. "Why do you think she might not exist?"

"I took a quick peek at the language database," he replied. "The world ‘maya’ appears in several human tongues; but in Sanskrit, it can be translated as ‘fleshly illusion.’ I find that thought-provoking, don’t you? Especially when we know our murderer uses androids."

Ouch.

We waited for the world-soul to send its messages. It wouldn’t take long to get a response — any woman who got an emergency beep on her wrist-implant would answer it pronto unless she was under anaesthetic. Or under a twenty-year-old stud with rock-hard dollies.

But I digress.

Night was falling faster now: a cold-looking night that would freeze puddles and frost the trees. One of our tiny moons, the fast one called Orange, floated gibbously above the Bonaventure skyline; its usual apricot color looked faded tonight, like a shrivelly yellow pea.

Three stories above us, Jupkur launched off his window ledge, gliding home for the evening. His breath steamed… which showed it really was cold, considering the coolish Oolom body temperature. I watched him disappear into the gathering darkness, his skin turning purple with the sky.

And me standing by the window. One hand against the un-glass, letting the nano-puppies lick me again. Bored with waxing poetic about the dusk and the moon, wanting to do something.

Tedious thing, waiting. Elusive thing, patience.

Mother used to make me say that prayer, "God grant me the serenity, etc." but I could only chant it through twice before getting the screamy-weamies. Then I’d bound out of the room and go for a run or something.

It wouldn’t look good if I ran out on a master proctor… especially with him sitting pond-placid on the edge of my desk, staring out at the twilight. And how much longer would we really have to wait? There could only be a few dozen women of the right age in Bonaventure. Half that number in the mining towns and outports. Maybe half again among travelers who’d recently used our sleeve. A hundred people? On that order.

And if none was Chappalar’s sweetheart? Now that Tic had planted ideas in my mind, I couldn’t help harking back over the past few days. Maya hadn’t shown up at Chappalar’s funeral, had she? And she hadn’t sent flowers or a card, or even a white stone in the Oolom tradition — I’d checked over the memorials at the burial service, and hadn’t seen anything from her.

Was she a robot spy, sent to watch him? Possibly: top-price teaser androids could fool lonely chumps into thinking the artificial was real… at least for a while. And duping an Oolom would be easier than fooling a Homo sap; Chappalar might dismiss glitches in the android’s programming as normal human idiosyncrasies. Why should he know how our species behaved when things got breathy?

If Maya was a robot… but then, what about the other proctors who got killed? Did they have robot spies watching them too?

No need. According to news reports, three of the proctors were killed in their homes, and another two in their offices — no inside information required to find any of them. The final two were attacked together as they waited to present a report to a parliamentary committee… a presentation that was publicized days in advance.

So: the killer/killers had no trouble finding seven of the eight dead proctors. The exception was Chappalar… whose schedule that morning was known only to me and Maya.

"Let’s check Chappalar’s office," I said suddenly. "See if we can find anything about this mystery woman."

"The police searched the place carefully," Tic answered. "So did I."

"But neither you nor the police were specifically looking for information about Maya. Were you?"

Tic frowned, then said, "True." He headed for the door.