Peter Hamilton - Pandora's Star

Johansson, though, had planned well. He spent his cash with the kind of people who asked no questions, and certainly didn’t make large unexplained deposits with banks. On Far Away the Guardians began to expand their numbers and activities, starting their campaign against the Starflyer in the form of its principal agents, the Research Institute, with the Halgarth family as occasional secondary targets.

The Directorate task force did manage to identify Johansson’s DNA from samples of hair left in the dome. It meant nothing at first; with a multitude of people walking through the museum every week, he was just one name in two and a half thousand confirmed samples. He did have a query in his file, given the circumstances of his earlier disappearance from his family and job five years earlier. It was only when the acts of sabotage began on Far Away and the Guardians shotgunned the unisphere with their propaganda that the Directorate Investigators finally put it all together. Catching Johansson was an altogether more difficult task. He only ever used front men to make his arms purchases, and Guardian members to release his propaganda messages. All the arrests they made were peripheral. They never got close to him.

Over the years, then decades, Investigators left the task force or were reassigned, or simply retired from the Directorate. Paula moved up the hierarchy until she commanded the task force. Finally, however, even the task force was quietly dissolved and the Great Wormhole Heist case was downgraded. Even then, she kept the case active as part of the overall Guardians investigation. For a hundred thirty-nine years she had not quit. She couldn’t.

The tram stopped at the end of Montagu High Street, and Paula stepped out. The town hadn’t changed, at least not from her vague first-life recollection of it. When she looked along the street with its small stores and hotels she could see it dipping down toward the cove at the bottom. There was a stone harbor on one side, she remembered, with fishing boats drawn up on the rocky bluff, and nets stretched out to dry. Flocks of big scarlet birds swirled overhead, tetragulls, whose oily feathers allowed them to swim almost as well as fish.

Midafternoon wasn’t a busy time for Montagu. Most people were at work, leaving the pavement sparsely populated, and the buses half-empty. The nearest shop had two large bay windows, displaying well-dressed mannequins. There were no chains or franchises on Huxley’s Haven. Technically, the economy was market communism, with nonessential goods and products allowed to be supply led, which gave designers considerable liberty and innovation. The dresses on the mannequins were certainly attractive, as were the pashminas draped around them.

Paula walked in to be greeted by the assistant, a young woman whose clothes were all chosen from the racks around the shop. For a moment Paula found herself studying the woman a little too closely, but what exactly did someone designed to be a shop assistant look like? Same as you, she told herself crossly, an ordinary person . There was no specific shop assistant caste anyway, all the fixed dominant gene would give her was a behavioral trait for public service; she could just as easily have been a cook or librarian or gardener. It was only after primary school, which took them up to age twelve, that people on Huxley’s Haven started to choose what sort of specialty they wanted to follow within their predetermined sphere of interest.

The assistant smiled faintly as she took in Paula’s clothes. “Can I help you, miss?”

It took a second for Paula to realize that she still looked younger than the assistant, even in a formal suit. “I don’t need clothes, sorry, I’m looking for directions to the Denken house.”

“Ah, yes.” The assistant was almost pleased at the question, as if it was what she expected an offworlder to ask. “It’s on Semley Avenue.” She gave Paula a string of directions, and asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you want to visit him?”

“I need some advice.”

“Really? I didn’t know Commonwealth citizens used our freethinkers.”

“They don’t. I was born here.” She grinned at the woman’s startled expression.

Semley Avenue was still the same, a street of bungalows with tidy front gardens. The exception were the pines and conifers planted along the edge of the pavement, which had been tended properly over the intervening century and a half to grow into huge sturdy trees. Their strong scent mingled with the fresh breeze coming in off the sea, giving the avenue a restful quality. It put her in mind of a retirement village.

The Denken house was the last bungalow before the avenue opened out into a swath of parkland that ran along the top of the cliffs. It was bigger than all the others, in itself a bit of a novelty on a world where everyone earned the same salary no matter what their job. At some time someone had built a big brick annex on the side, with a few simple high slit windows. It didn’t really match the rest of the bungalow’s chalet-style architecture.

Paula walked up the little path to the front door and rang the tarnished brass bell. The garden was subtly different from all the neighbors, who favored rigid layouts of lawns, flower beds with colorful annuals, and the occasional stone birdbath or sundial. This garden was lined with evergreen shrubs to provide a range of pastel colors, and the lawn hadn’t been mowed for a week or more.

Paula was just about to press the bell button again when a man’s voice said, “Coming, coming,” somewhere inside the house. A moment later the door was opened by a tall man in his mid-thirties, with untidy shoulder-length brown hair that already had several gray strands appearing. He was wearing a much-creased turquoise-blue T-shirt and a pair of lemon-yellow shorts. “You’re early.” He gave Paula a bleary look. “Oh, couldn’t your mother come?”

“I don’t have a mother.” She could see his ancestor’s face; his cheeks were rounder, and the hair was darker, but that nose was the same, as were his expressive green eyes. The slight bafflement at everyday life was identical, too.

The man rubbed his face as if he’d just woken up, and looked closer. “My my, an offworlder. What are you doing here?”

“Are you Denken?”

“Leonard Denken, yes?”

“I’m Paula Myo, and technically I’m not an offworlder.”

Leonard Denken frowned, then a startled expression appeared. He straightened up, suddenly wide awake. “Oh my, oh my, yes of course, the last stolen baby. My grandfather! No! It was my great-grandfather who advised you. My father always talked about that.”

“I need some more advice.”

Leonard gasped, then smiled broadly. “Come in, please, do come in. I’m sorry about the mess. My mind isn’t quite as tidy as people expect. The house reflects that. Matilda keeps threatening to tidy up, but I haven’t had a chance to compile an index, yet. One day. Yes, one day.”

There were books piled up along both walls in the long hall, hardbacks and leather-bound tomes. Some of the stacks reached up to Paula’s shoulder, looking terribly unsafe. “I need to get myself some more bookshelves,” Leonard said apologetically as he caught her looking around. “There are several carpenters in the street, but I just haven’t gotten around to asking them yet. I need wood, too.”

He led her into the big annex, which was a single room. “My father intended this to be our library,” he said. “But I seem to have subverted that, a little.”

Every wall was fronted by bookcases that reached from floor to ceiling, with every inch of space taken up. Leonard was now building new piles along the floor. It was only the back wall that had high slit windows, long since covered by shelving. The front had two large arched French doors that opened onto the bungalow’s main garden, giving a superb view out over the cliffs and sea beyond. A big old desk had been set up in front of one, awash with magazines, papers, books, and cardboard files.