The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (36 page)

As a child, Paula really wasn’t too different from her sister. They played together, ran their parents ragged, loved the puppy Marcus bought them, had a fondness for swimming, and did well at school. It was as she moved into her teens that Paula was noticeably more restrained than Coya; she did as her parents asked, didn’t argue with them, and steered clear of all the trouble that was to be found in their little rural community. Everyone commented on what a nice girl she was becoming, not like half of the teenagers in this town who were simply terrible and a sure sign of society’s imminent collapse. She regarded boys with the same contempt and fascination as her peers; started dating, suffered the heart-aching humiliation of being dumped, and promptly took it out on her next two boyfriends by chucking them. Found another boy she liked—and went steady for five months. In sports she was competent rather than outstanding. Academically she excelled at languages and history. As teachers remarked, she had superb recall and an obsession with tracing down the smallest facts connected to her subjects. Aptitude tests showed she would make a great psychologist.

Looking at their contented, normal, extra daughter on her sixteenth birthday, Marcus and Rebecca knew they had succeeded. They’d brought up a Hive child in a loving natural environment, and produced a perfectly happy, healthy human being. What could be done with one could be done to all. The Foundation’s hold over its oppressed population could be broken; their method of control was flawed. Decency and human dignity had triumphed in the end.

Two days later, on a splendid late-summer afternoon, they took Paula out into the garden and told her of her true heritage. They even sheepishly showed her the old news media recordings of the snatch and subsequent manhunt.

What the Foundation had never revealed was the nature of the psychoneural profiling given to the snatched babies. The others were all reasonably standard for Huxley’s Haven: public service workers, engineers, accountants, even an archivist. But Paula, as luck or fate would have it, was an exception even among her own kind. Crime on Huxley’s Haven was extremely rare, naturally so given its citizens were all designed to be content in their jobs and lives. But not even the Foundation claimed to make life perfect. All human civilizations needed a police force. On Huxley’s Haven it was a source of national pride that there was one law enforcement officer for every ten thousand people. Paula was destined to be one of them.

Two hours after their joyful confession, Marcus and Rebecca were in custody. It was Paula who turned them in. She had no choice; knowing what was right and what was wrong was the core of her identity, her very soul.

The last missing Hive child was the greatest media story to hit the unisphere for a decade, making Paula an instant celebrity. Young, beautiful, and frighteningly incorruptible, she was everything a sixteen-year-old should never be.

Thanks to Paula’s relentless testimony, Marcus and Rebecca were sentenced to thirty-two years’ life suspension each, losing double the time over which their crime was perpetrated. It was the kind of punishment normally reserved for murderers. Unisphere coverage of the trial allowed a quarter of the human race to watch in silent fascination as Coya broke down and screamed hysterically at the judge before begging her step-twin to withdraw the sentencing application. Paula’s only answer, a silent pitying glance at the sobbing girl, made that whole quarter of the human race shiver.

After the trial, Paula went back to Huxley’s Haven, the home she’d never known, to discover her real name and suffer embarrassing introductions to the other stolen children with whom she had nothing in common. She belonged there even less than on Marindra; a modern Commonwealth education put her completely outside the norm as far as Huxley’s Haven was concerned. They didn’t have advanced technology on the Hive; the new conformist society was structured so that people did all the work, not machines. With her exposure to domestic bots and the ultimate data access of the unisphere, Paula considered such rejection to be stupid and provincial. It was the one success Marcus and Rebecca had with shaping her thoughts, though by then their bodies were beyond knowing, safely comatose in the Justice Directorate’s hibernation wombs.

Away from the public eye, Paula left Huxley’s Haven for Earth, where she enrolled at the Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate. At the time, she had no idea how high up the political food chain her application was bounced before it was finally approved. But approved it was, and inevitably she became the best operative they ever had—despite the one notorious case of 2243 that she still hadn’t solved.

Morton lived in the penthouse of a fifty-story skyscraper standing behind Darklake City’s Labuk Marina. Not at all far, in fact, from Caroline Turner’s last lunch with Tara. Paula noted the coincidence as the car drove them along the waterfront. They parked in the skyscraper’s underground garage and took the express lift up to the top floor. Morton was waiting for them in the vestibule as the doors opened. Three years out of rejuvenation, he was a tall, handsome young man whose thick chestnut hair was tied back in a long ponytail. Dressed in a fashionably cut amber and peacock-blue tropical shirt and expensive hand-tailored linen slacks, he looked good and obviously knew it. His youthful face put on a broad courteous smile as he shook their hands in welcome.

“Good of you to see us,” Paula said. It was early evening local time, which was only a few hours ahead of Paris time.

“Least I could do.” Morton ushered them inside through elaborate double doors. His penthouse had a floor area larger than the plantation house where his ex-wife now lived. They walked into a massive split-level living room with a window wall. It was six-thirty, and the copper-red sun had already fallen level with the top of the skyscraper, shining its rich hazy light directly into the penthouse. Opulent furnishings and expensive artwork gleamed in glorious twilight hues as they soaked up the illumination. There was a large roof garden on the other side of the wide glass doors, half of which was taken up with a swimming pool. Beyond the stainless-steel railings ringing the patio area was a tremendous view out across the city and lake.

The three of them settled in the lavish conversation area in front of the glass wall. Morton ordered it to raise its opacity, banishing most of the glare. That was when Paula saw someone in the pool, a young girl, swimming lengths with powerful easy strokes. She told her e-butler to bring up Morton’s file; there was no current registered marriage, but local media gossip files had linked him to a string of girls since he came out of rejuvenation. His current lover was Mellanie Rescorai, a first-life nineteen-year-old, and member of the Oaktier national diving squad. Mellanie’s parents were on record as strongly objecting to the liaison—in reaction, Mellanie had simply moved out of the family home and into Morton’s penthouse.

“Something to drink?” Morton asked. The butler appeared at his side, dressed in antique-style black clothes. Paula stared at him, mildly surprised: a real live human servant, not a bot.

“No thank you,” she said. Hoshe shook his head.

“I’ll have my sparkling gin, thank you,” Morton said. “It is after office hours, after all.”

“Yes, sir.” The butler gave a discreet bow, and walked over to the mirrored drinks cabinet.

“I understand it was you who alerted the police about this situation,” Paula said.

“That’s right.” Morton leaned back casually into the leather cushioning. “I thought it was kind of strange that Cotal had to be re-lifed as well as Tara. To me it implied that they died at the same time, which is kind of suspicious, especially as nobody ever found out how Tara died. I’m surprised nobody else made the connection, actually.” His polite smile focused on Hoshe.

“Different insurance companies, different clinics,” Hoshe said defensively. “I’m sure Wyobie would have raised the question with my division eventually when he asked after Ms. Saheef.”

“Of course.”

“So you recognized the name,” Paula asked.

“Yes. God knows why I didn’t edit the little shit out of my memories during the last two rejuvenations. Subconscious, I guess. You learn from your experiences, a smart man doesn’t dump them.”

“So was it a painful divorce from Tara?”

“Her leaving me was a shock. I simply didn’t see that coming. I mean, with hindsight I was heavily involved with our company, and we’d been together for a while, I suppose it was inevitable. But to walk out like that, without any warning, that wasn’t Tara. Not the Tara I thought I knew, anyway. But I got over it the same way a lot of guys do: screwed every piece of skirt in sight and threw myself into my work. After that, the actual divorce was completely irrelevant, just a signature certificate loaded on a file.”

“And there was no clue she was going to leave you?”

“Hell no, I was worried about her when I got back from my conference. I mean, she hadn’t answered my calls for two days. But I figured at the time she was pissed with me for spending the time away from home. Then when I got back she’d stripped the apartment, everything she owned was gone. Pretty big fucking clue, huh?”

The butler returned with the sparkling gin in a crystal glass, and put it on the side table next to Morton. “Will that be all, sir?”

“For now.” Morton waved him away.

“Was there any message?” Paula asked.

“Not a damn thing. The first and only time I heard from her was when the divorce file arrived two weeks later.”

“That was handled by a legal firm. So you never actually had any contact with Tara at all?”

“No. Not after she left.”

“How did you know Wyobie Cotal’s name?”

“It was in the divorce file.”

“Tara put it in?”

“Yes. He was the irreconcilable difference.”

“I’d like a copy, please.”

“Sure.” He instructed his e-butler to release a copy of the file to Paula.

“I have to ask, did you benefit from the divorce?”

Morton laughed with genuine amusement. “Sure did, I got rid of her.” He took a drink of his sparkling gin, still grinning.

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

“Yes yes, I know.” He locked his hands together behind his head, and gazed up at the ceiling. “Let’s see. There wasn’t much to it. We both came out of it financially secure. That was part of the premarriage contract, everything to be split fifty-fifty. It was fair enough. Tara was richer than me back then, she put up a higher percentage of initial capital for the company. That was no secret. But I was the one who managed it, who made it work. When we divorced, our shares were divided up strictly according to the contract, we both got half.”

“How much more money did she put in?”

“It was a sixty-five, thirty-five split. That percentage isn’t something I’d kill for.”

“I’m sure. So who kept the company?”

“I’m still running it, after a fashion. AquaState’s one of our subsidiaries now.”

Paula consulted his file. “I see. You’re the chairman of Gansu Construction now.”

“That’s right. Six months after we went public, Gansu made an offer for AquaState. I negotiated a good two-for-one exchange rate on my shares, a seat on the Gansu board, and a decent options deal on more stock. Forty years of hard work later, and here I am. We’re the biggest civil engineering outfit on this whole planet; you name it we can build it for you. Plenty of offplanet divisions as well, and more opening every year. One day we’ll rival the multistellars.”

“According to my records, the company you and Tara owned, AquaState, didn’t go public until three years after the divorce.”

“No, Tara agreed—or rather her divorce lawyers did—that we’d both get a better deal by waiting, letting the moisture extraction business grow until we could get the maximum price from the floatation. When AquaState finally went public, her shares were registered with a bank on Tampico, then they were converted to Gansu stock when I sold out. I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but … Since she got re-lifed, most of them have been sold. She’s using up money at a hell of a rate supporting that idiot aristocrat husband and his plantation.”

“Thank you, but I don’t think that’s relevant to our inquiry. I’m more interested in what happened to her shares for the seventeen years prior to her re-life. Did they just sit in the Tampico bank?”

“As far as I know, yes. I only know they’re being sold now because as chairman I can see the ownership registry. She’s disposing of them at quite a rate, a couple of million Oaktier dollars a year.”

Paula turned to Hoshe. “We need to check with the Tampico bank to find out what happened to those seventeen years’ worth of dividend payments.”

“Certainly.”

Mellanie Rescorai climbed out of the pool and started toweling herself down with the pink-wash sky as a backdrop. She was very attractive, Paula conceded. Morton was staring at her with a greedy expression.

“What about enemies?” Paula asked. “Did Tara have any?”

“No.” Morton was still looking at his trophy girlfriend. “That is: I doubt it, I don’t actually remember, I got rid of the majority of those memories, just kept the essentials from those days, you know.”

“And you? Did you have enemies back then?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I had business rivals, certainly. And I’ve got a damn sight more of them now. But no deal would be worth killing over, not in those days.”

“Only those days?”

“Or these,” he said with a grin.

“Did you meet up with Tara again, after the re-life?”

“Yes. The insurance investigators and the police both had a load of questions for me, all of them the same as yours. I went to see her after she came out of the clinic, for old times’ sake, to make sure she was okay. I don’t hold grudges, and we’d had thirteen good years together. We still meet up occasionally, parties, social events, that kind of thing. Though that’s getting less and less now she’s got her husband. I haven’t actually seen her since my last rejuvenation.”

“You and Tara didn’t have any children, did you?”

Morton’s attention switched back to the living room. “No.”