Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

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A fter three years out in the dark among the rocks, Kiel Chaladur docked his prospecting boat, the Gold Witch, at Sato Station. It had been a successful voyage. He’d found, sold, and sent in-system a comet remnant dense with volatiles. The money he’d taken for it had made his fortune and that of his two-person crew—but wealth wasn’t the only prize Kiel Chaladur brought back with him. Against all odds, he’d found a wife out there, born and grown among the rocks. Shay Antigo stepped through the port gate at Sato Station as an unknown citizen. She was met by the local watch officer of the Commonwealth Police, who confirmed her status and shepherded her through the process of establishing a legal existence. As I read the brief, it struck me as an engaging story—and almost certainly untrue. Three days after the initial report was filed, I was assigned to investigate. “Name?” the brisk voice of a Dull Intelligence asked, prodding me into wakefulness within the close embrace of a cold-sleep pod. I drew a deep breath into lungs that had 58 Out in the Dark Linda Nagata never been used before. “Zeke Choy,” I answered. And then, anticipating its next question, “Field officer, Commonwealth Police.” I’d entered cold sleep in the inner system, ghosting to Sato Station as an electronic persona, completing in eleven minutes a journey that would have consumed years if I’d traveled in physical form. The arrival of my ghost had wakened a stored husk—a precisely grown replica of the body I’d left behind. By Commonwealth law, a citizen was limited to one physical incarnation at a time. It was part of the definition of being human, and no exceptions were allowed, not even for an onduty cop. So that version of me that I’d left behind eleven minutes ago would remain locked down in cold sleep until I’d finished my investigation at Sato Station. When the DI was satisfied that I fully occupied my new platform, it opened the coldsleep pod. I got up, glancing at my projection in the image panel. I stood taller than most men, strong and lean and with a stern gaze. It was a physical appearance considered ideal for instilling order and compelling respect. I’d been less imposing when I’d entered the academy, but judicious engineering during
my months of training had given me the size and bearing of a cop. A locker linked to my identity popped open. Inside was a uniform and a collection of glossy gel ribbons in different colors, each ten centimeters long and containing a different chemical armament. They were the standard weapons of a field officer. I laid the ribbons against the skin of my forearms and they adhered immediately, syncing to my atrium—a neural organ used by all residents of the Commonwealth to link mind and machine. Of course, Daoud Pana, the watch officer I’d come to investigate, would be similarly armed, but if it came to an overt confrontation, I had an authorization level that would shut down every one of his police-issue weapons. A DI popped into my atrium with a map of Sato Station. Around the wheel, the location of each one of 308 current residents was marked, some as stationary points, others on the move, all of them tracked by their implanted ID chips, marking them as citizens of the Commonwealth. Neither Shay Antigo nor Kiel Chaladur was among them. The brief I’d scanned when the case came in had told me they’d already left through the station’s data gate, their ghosts bound for Mars. Chaladur’s other two crew had taken off to destinations of their own, all of them authorizing that the husks they left behind be dissolved, indicating that none of them intended to return. Officer Pana’s position was highlighted. He was the only officer-in-residence at Sato Station, and presently he was outside the station itself, doing a walk-through inspection of a recently arrived ship. He didn’t know yet that he was suspected of colluding to manufacture a new identity for Shay Antigo, and that an investigation had been launched against him. And he didn’t know I was here. The alert that would normally have gone out when anyone arrived in the cold-sleep mausoleum had been suppressed. I pulled on the uniform: knee-length shorts and a black pullover with long sleeves designed to hide the gel ribbons. I was not a police officer by choice. I’d been drafted into the service, where it became my duty to enforce the Commonwealth’s conservative definition of what it meant to be human: a singular physical existence and no invented OUT IN THE DARK JUNE 2013 quirks—only natural, human physiology, except that aging had been ruled a defect and had been cured, and we were all allowed an atrium. In my primary duty I was the watch officer at Nahiku, a small celestial city in the inner system, but every cop takes on special duties too. Mine was to investigate other officers. Commonwealth law is strict, punishment is severe, and the unfortunate reality is that cops hold the power of life and death over the citizens of their watch. Some cops are judicious, but others take advantage of their power. It was far more likely that Daoud Pana was a corrupt cop who’d fabricated this case for some kind of payoff, than that Shay Antigo was truly unknown. Using my atrium, I linked into the station’s surveillance network to get a first look at my quarry. Pana had set a flock of inspection bees buzzing through the levels of the newly arrived ship, each one of the tiny devices sending back datastreams as they used their camera eyes to search every visible space, and their molecular sensors to taste the air and assay the surfaces. I commandeered an inspection bee that was hovering close to Pana, turning it around so that its gaze fell on him: a man as tall as me—cop height, we called it—with a broad face and wide nose. No smile at all as he questioned the crew. Brusque and imposing in his black uniform. I watched him for several minutes, and found him neither overly friendly nor overly strict. If he was looking for a bribe or a kickback, I couldn’t see it. Maybe he only did favors for those who took care to make arrangements in advance. The mausoleum was in a warehouse district, so at first I saw only small transport robots in the main corridor, but as I rounded the wheel I encountered people. They looked at me in idle curiosity, until they realized I was not the cop they’d grown used to seeing. Then their expressions shifted—sometimes to curiosity, but often to shock, and even fear, because the appearance of a strange cop at a remote station like this one could only mean trouble. I was still watching Pana within my atrium, and I found it easy to mark the precise moment someone pinged him with the news 59
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Page 23 and 24: have had some history of seismicity
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Page 33 and 34: Wavefronts of History and Memory Th
Page 35 and 36: sleep in the command couch. The shi
Page 37 and 38: een broken by an ill-timed surprise
Page 39 and 40: skull. My pulse catches in my throa
Page 41 and 42: Jeff Sanford and several colleagues
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Page 45 and 46: loved it when I read it the first t
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Page 51 and 52: much clearer entreaty, he rubbed he
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Page 67 and 68: Asking no questions, she stepped as
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Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

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