Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

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