Part 2 (1/2)

”No. We've given him a new face and a new name. He has no motive for harming you now, and we've warned him what we'll do if he tries.”

Brierson shrugged.

”Hey, Wil, have I made myself another enemy?”

”N-no. I could never be your enemy. And I want the settlement to succeed as much as you and Yelen.”

”I know.” She raised her hand in a half-wave. ”G'night. Wil.”

”Good night.”

She walked into the darkness, her robot protector floating close above her shoulder.

THREE.

Things had changed by ”next” morning. At first, the changes were what Brierson had expected.

Gone was the drear ash and dirty sky. Dawn splashed sunlight across his bed; he could see a wedge of blue between green-leafed trees. Wil came slowly awake, something deep inside saying it was all a dream. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and stared into the brightness.

They did it. ”By G.o.d, they really did it.” He rolled out of bed and pulled on some clothes. He shouldn't really be surprised. The Korolevs had announced their plan. Sometime in the morning hours, after the Robinson party was over and when their surveillance showed everyone safe at home, they had bobbled every building in the settlement. Through unknown centuries they bobbled forward, coming out of stasis for a few seconds every year, just long enough to check if the Peacer bobble had burst. ”By G.o.d, they really did it.” He rolled out of bed and pulled on some clothes. He shouldn't really be surprised. The Korolevs had announced their plan. Sometime in the morning hours, after the Robinson party was over and when their surveillance showed everyone safe at home, they had bobbled every building in the settlement. Through unknown centuries they bobbled forward, coming out of stasis for a few seconds every year, just long enough to check if the Peacer bobble had burst.

Wil rushed down the stairs, past the kitchen. Breakfast would be skipped. Just to see the green and the blue and the clean sunlight made him feel like a kid at Christmas. Then he was outside, standing in the sunlight. The street was nearly gone. Almost-jacarandas had sprouted through its surface. Their lowest flowers floated a meter above his head. Spider families scampered through the leaves. The huge pile of ash that he and the Dasguptas and the others had pushed into the middle of the street was gone, washed away by a hundred-a thousand?-rainy seasons. The only sign of that long-ago pollution was around Wil's house. A circular arc marked where the stasis field had intersected the ground. Outside was green and growing; inside was covered with gray ash, the trees and plants dying.

As Wil wandered through the young forest that the street had become, the wrongness of the scene gradually percolated through: Everything was alive, but there was not another human, not a single robot. Had everyone wakened earlier, say it the moment the bobbles burst?

He walked down to the Dasguptas' place. Half hidden by the brush, ash, he saw someone big and black heading his way-his own reflection. The Dasguptas were still in stasis. The trees grew right up to their bobble. Rainbow webs floated around it, but the surface was untouched. Neither vines nor spiders could find purchase on that mirrored smoothness.

Wil ran through the forest, panic rising in him. Now that he knew what to look for, they were easy to spot: the sun's image glinted off two, three, half a dozen bobbles. Only his had burst. He looked at the trees, the birds, and the spiders. The scene was scarcely pleasing now. How long could he live without civilization? The rest might come out of stasis in moments. Or a hundred years, or a thousand; he had no way of knowing. In the meantime Wil was alone, perhaps the only living man on Earth.

He left the street and scrambled up a rise into older trees. From the top, he should be able to see some of the estates of the advanced travelers. The fear tightened at his throat. Sun and sky sat in the green of the hills; there were bobbles where the palaces of Juan Chanson and Phil Genet should be. He looked south, towards Castle Korolev.

Spires, gold and green! No bobble there!

And in the air above the castle, he saw three close-set dots: fliers, moving fast and straight towards him, like some old-time fighters on a strafing ran. The trio was over him in seconds... The middle flier descended and invited him into its pa.s.senger cabin.

The ground fell slantingly away. He had a moment's vision of the Inland Sea, blue through coastal haze. There were bobbles around the advanced estates, around the NM quarter of town. To the west were several large ones-around the autofactories? Everything was in stasis except the Korolev estate. He was above the castle now, coming down fast. The gardens and towers looked as before, but an enormous circle circ.u.mscribed the estate-a subtle yet abrupt change in the tone of the forest's green. Like himself, the Korolevs had been in stasis up to the recent past. For some reason they were leaving the rest bobbled. For some reason they wanted private words with W. W. Brierson.

The Korolev library had no bookcases weighted down with data cartridges or paper-and-ink books. Data could be accessed anywhere; the library was a place to sit and think (with appropriate support devices) or to hold a small conference. The walls were lined with bolo windows showing the surrounding countryside. Yelen Korolev sat at the middle of a long marble table. She motioned Wil to sit across from her.

”Where's Marta?” Brierson asked automatically.

”Marta is... dead, Inspector Brierson.” Yelen's voice was even flatter than usual. ”Murdered.”

Time seemed to stop. Marta. Dead? Marta. Dead? He had taken bullets with less physical sensation than those words brought. His mouth opened, but the questions wouldn't come. In any case, Yelen had questions of her own. ”And I want to know what you had to do with it, Brierson.” He had taken bullets with less physical sensation than those words brought. His mouth opened, but the questions wouldn't come. In any case, Yelen had questions of her own. ”And I want to know what you had to do with it, Brierson.”

Wil shook his head, in confusion more than denial.

She slapped the marble tabletop. ”Wake up, mister! I'm talking to you. You're the last person who saw her alive. She rejected your advances. Did that make it worth killing her, Brierson? Did it Did it?”

The insanity of the accusation brought Wil back to his senses. He stared at Yelen, realizing that she was in a much worse state than he. Like Marta, Yelen Korolev had been raised in late twenty-second-century Hainan. But Yelen had no trace of Chinese blood. She was descended from the Russians who had filtered out of Central Asia after the 1997 debacle. Her fair Slavic features were normally cool, occasionally showing ironic humor. Those features were as smooth as ever now, but the woman kept running her hand across her chin, her forefinger tracing again and again the edge of her lip. She was in a state of walleyed shock that Wil had seen only a couple of times before-and those times had been filled with sudden death. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of her protection robots float around the far side of the table-keeping her widely separated from its target.

”Yelen,” he finally said, trying to keep his voice calm and reasonable, ”till this moment I didn't know about Marta. I liked... respected... her more than anyone in the settlement. I could never harm her.”

Korolev stared at him a long moment, then let out a shaky breath. The feeling of deadly tension lessened. ”I know what you tried to do that night, Brierson. I know how you thought to repay our charity. I'll always hate your guts because of it.

... But you're telling the truth about one thing: There's no way your-any low-tech-could have killed Marta.”

She looked through him, remembering her lost partner, or perhaps communicating through her headband. When she spoke again her voice was softer, almost lost. ”You were a policeman, in a century where murder was still common. You're even famous. When I was a kid, I read all about you.

... I'll do anything to get Marta's killer, Inspector.”

Wil leaned forward. ”What happened, Yelen?” he said quietly.

”She-she was marooned-left outside all our bobbles.”

For a moment, Wil didn't understand. Then he remembered walking the deserted street and wondering if he was all alone, wondering how many years would pa.s.s before the other bobbles burst. Before, he had thought that being shanghaied into the future was the most terrible bobble crime. Now he saw that being marooned in an empty present could be just as awful.

”How long was she alone, Yelen?”

”Forty years. Just forty G.o.dd.a.m.ned years. Just forty G.o.dd.a.m.ned years. But she had no health care. She had no robots. She had just the clothes on her back. I'm p-proud of her. She lasted forty years. She survived the wilderness, the loneliness, her own aging. For forty years. and she almost won through. Another ten years-” Her voice broke and she covered her eyes. ”Back up, Korolev,” she said. ”Just the facts. But she had no health care. She had no robots. She had just the clothes on her back. I'm p-proud of her. She lasted forty years. She survived the wilderness, the loneliness, her own aging. For forty years. and she almost won through. Another ten years-” Her voice broke and she covered her eyes. ”Back up, Korolev,” she said. ”Just the facts.

”You know we have to move down time to when the Peacer bobble bursts. We planned to begin the move the night of the party. After everyone was indoors, we'd bobble forward in three-month steps. Every three months, the bobbles would burst and our sensors would take a few microseconds to check the fast-flicker autons, to see if the Peacers were still in stasis. If they were, we'd automatically bobble up for another three months. Even if we waited a hundred thousand years, all you'd have seen was a second or so of flickering and flas.h.i.+ng.

”So. That was the plan. What happened was that the first jump was a century long-for everyone in near-Earth s.p.a.ce. The other advanced travelers had agreed to follow our programming on this. They were in stasis, too. The difference between three months and a century was not enough to alarm their controller programs. Marta was alone. Once she figured out that the flicker interval was more than three months, she hiked around the Inland Sea to the Peace Authority bobble.”

That was a twenty-five-hundred-kilometer hike.

Yelen noticed the wonder on his face. ”We're survivors, Inspector. We didn't last this long by letting difficulties stop us.

”Anyway, the area around the Peace bobble is still a vitrified plain. It took her decades, but she built a sign there.” The window behind Yelen suddenly became a view from s.p.a.ce. At that distance, the bobble was just a glint of sunlight with a spiky shadow. A jagged black line extended northwards from it. Apparently the picture was taken at local dawn, and the black strip was the shadow of Marta's monument. It must have been several meters high and dozens of kilometers long. The image lasted only seconds, the s.p.a.ce of time Yelen imagined it.

”You may not know this, but we have lots of equipment at the Lagrange zones. Some of it is in kiloyear stasis. Some is flickering with a period of decades. None of it is carefully watching the ground... but that line structure was enough to trip even a high-threshold monitor. Eventually, the robots sent a lander to investigate... They were just a few years too late.

Wil forced his mind past thinking on what the lander found. Thank G.o.d Yelen's imagination didn't flash that on the windows.

For now-method: ”How could this be done? I thought an old-time army couldn't match the security of your household automation.”

”That's true. No low-tech could break in. At first glance, even the advanced travelers couldn't manage this: it's possible to outfight a high-tech-but the battles are abrupt and obvious. What happened here was sabotage. And I think I have it figured out. Somebody used our external comm to talk to the scheduling programs. Those weren't as secure as they should be. Marta was cut out of the check roster, and a one-century total blackout was subst.i.tuted for the original flicker scheme. The murderer was lucky: if he had tried for anything longer, it would have tripped all sorts of alarms.”

”Could it happen again?”

”No. Whoever did it is good, Brierson. But basically they took advantage of a bug. That bug no longer exists. And I'm being much more careful about how my machines accept outside comm now.”

Wil nodded. This was a century beyond him, even if his specialty had been forensic computing. He'd just have to take her word that there was no further danger-of this sort of a.s.sa.s.sination. Wil's strength was in the human side. For instance: ”Motive. Who would want Marta dead?”

Yelen's laugh was bitter. ”My suspects.” The windows of the library became a mosaic of the settlement's population. Some had only small pictures-all the New Mexicans fitted on a single panel. Others-Brierson, for instance-rated more s.p.a.ce- ”Almost everybody conceives some grudge against us.