Kim Robinson: New York 2140

“Now you really are scaring me.”

“Well sure, but look, check it out. See what you think.”

Mutt moves his lips when he reads. He’s not saying the words silently to himself, he’s doing a kind of Nero Wolfe stimulation of his brain. It’s his favorite neurobics exercise, of which he has many. Now he begins to massage his lips with his fingers as he reads, indicating deep worry.

“Well, yeah,” he says after about ten minutes of reading. “I see what you’ve got here. I like it, I guess. Most of it. That old Ken Thompson Trojan horse always works, doesn’t it. Like a law of logic. So, could be fun. Almost sure to be amusing.”

Jeff nods. He taps the return key. His new set of codes goes out into the world.

They leave their hotello and stand at the railing of their building’s farm, looking south over the drowned city, taking in the whitmanwonder of it. O Mannahatta! Lights squiggle off the black water everywhere below them. Downtown a few lit skyscrapers illuminate darker towers, giving them a geological sheen. It’s weird, beautiful, spooky.

There’s a ping from inside their hotello, and they push through the flap into the big square tent. Jeff reads his computer screen.

“Ah shit,” he says. “They spotted us.”

They regard the screen.

“Shit indeed,” Mutt says. “How could they have?”

“I don’t know, but it means I was right!”

“Is that good?”

“It might even have worked!”

“You think?”

“No.” Jeff frowns. “I don’t know.”

“They can always recode what you did, that’s the thing. Once they see it.”

“So do you think we should run for it?”

“To where?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s like you said before,” Mutt points out. “It’s a global system.”

“Yeah but this is a big city! Lots of nooks and crannies, lots of dark pools, the underwater economy and all. We could dive in and disappear.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. We could try.”

Then the farm floor’s big service elevator door opens. Mutt and Jeff regard each other. Jeff thumbs toward the staircases. Mutt nods. They slip out under the tent wall.

Inspector Gen Octaviasdottir sat in her office, late again, slumped in her chair, trying to muster the energy to get up and go home. Light fingernail drumming on her door announced her assistant, Sergeant Olmstead. “Sean, quit it and come in.”

Her mild-mannered young bulldog ushered in a woman of about fifty. Vaguely familiar-looking. Five seven, a bit heavy, thick black hair with some white strands. City business suit, big shoulder bag. Wide-set intelligent eyes, now observing Gen sharply; expressive mouth. No makeup. A serious person. Attractive. But she looked as tired as Gen felt. And a little uncertain about something, maybe this meeting.

“Hi, I’m Charlotte Armstrong,” the woman said. “We live in the same building, I think. The old Met Life tower, on Madison Square?”

“I thought you looked familiar,” Gen said. “What brings you here?”

“It has to do with our building, so I asked to see you. Two residents have gone missing. You know those two guys who were living on the farm floor?”

“No.”

“They might have been nervous to talk to you. Although they had permission to stay.”

The Met tower was a co-op, owned by its residents. Inspector Gen had recently inherited her apartment from her mother, and she paid little attention to how the building was run. Often it felt like she was only there to sleep. “So what happened?”

“No one knows. They were there one day, gone the next.”

“Someone’s checked the security cameras?”

“Yes. That’s why I came to see you. The cameras went out for two hours on the last night they were seen.”

“Went out?”

“We checked the data files, and they all have a two-hour gap.”

“Like a power outage?”

“But there wasn’t a power outage. And they have battery backup.”

“That’s weird.”

“That’s what we thought. That’s why I came to see you. Vlade, the building super, would have reported it, but I was coming here anyway to represent a client, so I filed the report and then asked to speak to you.”

“Are you going back to the Met now?” Gen asked.

“Yes, I was.”

“Why don’t we go together, then. I was just leaving.” Gen turned to Olmstead. “Sean, can you find the report on this and see what you can learn about these two men?”

The sergeant nodded, gazing at the floor, trying not to look like he’d just been given a bone. He would tear into it when they were gone.

Armstrong headed toward the elevators and looked surprised when Inspector Gen suggested they walk instead.

“I didn’t think there were skybridges between here and there.”

“Nothing direct,” Gen explained, “but you can take the one from here to Bellevue, and then go downstairs and cross diagonally and then head west on the Twenty-third Skyline. It takes about thirty-four minutes. The vapo would take twenty if we got lucky, thirty if we didn’t. So I walk it a lot. I can use the stretch, and it will give us a chance to talk.”

Armstrong nodded without actually agreeing, then hauled her shoulder bag closer to her neck. She favored her right hip. Gen tried to remember anything from the Met’s frequent bulletins. No luck. But she was pretty sure this woman had been the chairperson of the co-op’s executive board since Gen had moved in to take care of her mom, which suggested three or four terms in office, not something most people would volunteer for. She thanked Armstrong for this service, then asked her about it. “Why so long?”

“It’s because I’m crazy, as you seem to be suggesting.”

“Not me.”

“Well, you’d be right if you did. It’s just that I’m better working on things than not. I experience less stress.”

“Stress about how our building runs?”

“Yes. It’s very complicated. Lots can go wrong.”

“You mean like flooding?”

“No, that’s mostly under control, or else we’d be screwed. It takes attention, but Vlade and his people do that.”

“He seems good.”

“He’s great. The building is the easy part.”

“So, the people.”

“As always, right?”

“Sure is in my line of work.”

“Mine too. In fact the building itself is kind of a relief. Something you can actually fix.”

“You do what kind of law?”

“Immigration and intertidal.”

“You work for the city?”

“Yes. Well, I did. The immigrant and refugee office got semiprivatized last year, and I went with it. Now we’re called the Householders’ Union. Supposedly a public-private agency, but that just means both sides ignore us.”

“Have you always done that kind of thing?”

“I worked at ACLU a long time ago, but yeah. Mostly for the city.”

“So you defend immigrants?”

“We advocate for immigrants and displaced persons, and really anyone who asks for help.”

“That must keep you busy.”

Armstrong shrugged. Gen led her to the elevator in Bellevue’s northwest annex that would take them down to the skybridge that ran west from building to building on the north side of Twenty-third. Most skybridges still ran either north-south or east-west, forcing what Gen called knight moves. Recently some new higher skybridges made bishop moves, which pleased Gen, as she played the find-the-shortest-route game when getting around the city, played it with a gamer’s passion. Shortcutting, some players called it. What she wanted was to move through the city like a queen in chess, straight to her destination every time. That would never be possible in Manhattan, just as it wasn’t on a chessboard; grid logic ruled both. Even so, she would visualize the destination in her head and walk the straightest line she could think of toward it—design improvements—measure success on her wrist. All simple compared to the rest of her work, where she had to navigate much vaguer and nastier problems.