Across Realtime

FIVE

Some fifty thousand years later, all that was left of the only world empire in history, the Peace Authority, returned to normal time. They were welcomed by Korolev autons, and discouraged from interfering with the bobbles on the south side of the Inland Sea. They had three months to consider their new circumstances before those bobbles burst.

What Marta and Yel‚n had worked so long for was ready to begin.

Thousands of tonnes of equipment were given to the low-techs, along with farms, factories, mines. The gifts were to individuals, supposedly based on their expertise back in civilization. The Dasgupta brothers received two vanloads of communication equipment. To Wil's amazement, they immediately traded the gear to an NM signal officer-for a thousand-hectare farm. And Korolev didn't object. She did point out which equipment was likely to fail first, and provide databases to those who wanted to plan for the future.

Many of the ungoverned low-techs loved it: survival with profit. Within weeks they had a thousand schemes for combining high-tech equipment with primitive production lines. Both would coexist for decades, with the failing high-tech restricted to a smaller and smaller role. In the end there would be a viable infrastructure.

The governments were not so pleased. Both Peacers and NMs were heavily armed, but as long as Korolev stood guard over the Inland Sea, all that twenty-first-century might was about as persuasive as the brass cannon on a courthouse lawn. Both had had time to understand the situation. They watched each other carefully, and united in their complaints against Korolev and the other high-techs. Their propaganda noted how carefully the high-techs coordinated the giveaway, how restricted it really was: no weapons were given, no bobbler technology, no aircraft, no autons, no medical equipment. "Korolev gives the illusion of freedom, not the reality."

The excitement of the founding came muted to Wil. He went to some of the parties. Sometimes he watched the Peacer or NM news. But he had little time to participate. He had a job, in some ways like his of long ago; he had a murderer to catch. Unless something seemed connected with that goal, it drifted by him, irrelevant.

Marta's murder was a major piece of news. Even with a civilization to build, people still found time to talk about it. Now that she was gone, everyone remembered her friendliness. Every unpopular Korolev policy was greeted with a sigh of "If only Marta were alive, this would be different." At first, Wil was at the center of the parties. But he had little to say. Besides, he was in a unique-and uncomfortable-position: Wil was a low-tech, but with the perks of a high. He could fly anywhere he wanted; the other low-techs were confined to Korolev-supplied "public" transportation. He had his own protection autons, supplied by Delia and Yel‚n; other low-techs watched with ill-concealed nervousness when those floated into view. These advantages were nontransferable, and it wasn't long before Wil was more shunned than sought.

One of the Korolevs' fundamental principles had already been violated: the settlement was physically scattered now. The Peacers had refused to move across the Inland Sea to Town Korolev. With dazzling impudence, they demanded that

Yel‚n set them up with their own town on the north shore. That put them more than nine hundred kilometers from the rest of humanity-a distance more psychological than real, since it was a fifteen-minute flight on Yel‚n's new trans-sea shuttle. Nevertheless, it was a surprise that she yielded.

The surviving Korolev was... changed. Wil had talked to her only twice since the colony's return to realtime. The first time had been something of a shock. She looked almost the same as before, but there was a moment of nonrecognition in her eyes. "Ah, Brierson," she said mildly. Her only comment about Lu's providing him protection was to say that she would continue to do so also. Her hostility was muted; she'd had a long time to bury her grief.

Yel‚n had spent a hundred years following Marta's travels around the sea. She and her devices had stored and cataloged and studied everything that might bear on the murder. Marta's was already the most thoroughly investigated murder in the history of the human race. But only if this investigator is not herself the murderer, said a little voice in the back of Wil's head.

Yel‚n had done another thing with the century she stayed behind: She had tried to reeducate herself. "There's only one of us left, Inspector. I've tried to live double. I've learned everything I can about Marta's specialty. I've dreamed through Marta's memories of every project she managed." A shadow of doubt crossed her face. "I hope it's enough." The Yel‚n he'd known before the murder would not have shown such weakness.

So, armed with Marta's knowledge and trying to imitate -Marta's attitudes, Yel‚n had relented and let the Peacers establish North Shore. She'd set up the trans-sea flier service. She'd encouraged a couple of the high-techs-Genet and Blumenthal-to move their principal estates there.

And the murder investigation had truly been left to Lu and Brierson.

Though he had talked to Korolev only twice, he saw Della Lu almost every day. She had produced a list of suspects. She agreed with Korolev: the crime was completely beyond the low-techs. Of the high-techs, Yel‚n and the Robinsons were still the best suspects. (Fortunately Lu was cagey enough not to report all their suspicions to Yel‚n.)

At first, Wil thought the manner of the murder was a critical clue. He'd brought it up with Della early on. "If the murderer could bypass Marta's protection, why not kill her outright' This business of marooning her is nicely poetic, but it left a real possibility that she might be rescued."

Della shook her head. "You don't understand." Her face was framed with smooth black hair now. She'd stayed behind for rime months, the longest Yel‚n would allow. No breakthroughs resulted from the stay, but it had been long enough for her hair to grow out. She looked like a normal young woman now, and she could talk for minutes at a time without producing a jarring inanity, without getting that far, cold look. Lu was still the weirdest of the advanced travelers, but she was no longer in a class by herself. "The Korolev protection system is good. It's fast. It's smart. Whoever killed Marta did it with software. The killer found a chink in the Korolev defensive logic and very cleverly exploited it. Extending the stasis period to one century was not by itself life-threatening. Leaving Marta outside of stasis was not by itself life-threatening."

"Together they were deadly."

"True. And the defense system would have normally noticed that. I'm simplifying. What the killer did was more complicated. My point is, if he had tried anything more direct, there is no amount of clever programming that could have fooled the system. There was no surefire way he could murder Marta. Doing it this way gave the killer the best chance of success."

"Unless the killer is Yel‚n. I assume she could override all the system safeguards?"

"Yes."

But doing so would clearly show her guilt.

"Hmm. Marooning Marta left her defenseless. Why couldn't the murderer arrange an accident for her then? It doesn't make sense that she was allowed to live forty years."

Della thought a moment. "You're suggesting the killer could have bobbled everyone else for a century, and delayed bobbling himself?"

"Sure. A few minutes' delay would've been enough. Is that so hard?"

"By itself, it's trivial. But everyone was linked with the Korolev system for that jump. If anyone had delayed, it would show up in everyone's records. I'm an expert on autonomous systems, Wil. Yel‚n has shown me her system's design. It's a tight job, only a year older than mine. For anyone-except Yel‚n-to alter those jump records would be..."

"Impossible?" These systems people never changed. They could work miracles, but at the same time they claimed perfectly reasonable requests were impossible.

"No, maybe not impossible. If the killer had planned ahead, he might have an auton that didn't appear on his stasis roster. It could have been left outside of stasis without being noticed. But I don't see how the jump records themselves could be altered unless the killer had thoroughly infiltrated the Korolev system''

So they were dealing with a fairly impromptu act. And the queer circumstances of Marta's death were nothing more than a twenty- third-century version of a knife in the back.