2312

Either or. This or that. Take your pick. All of the above taxonomies, typologies, categories, labels, systems three thousand years

Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia hyperhippocampal, amygdala deficient, serotonin sensitive; enhanced firing in right temporal lobe knot 12a; overactive thalamus; retinotopic distortions

INSPECTOR JEAN GENETTE

Inspector Jean Genette, longtime senior investigating officer for Interplanetary Police, liked to get up in the morning and go for a walk to some corner coffee bar with a terrace or sidewalk, and there sip a big unsweetened Turkish coffee and read Passepartout as it displayed the latest news from around the system. After that Genette liked to continue walking in whatever city that morning happened to bring, eventually getting to work at the local Interplan office, invariably a small set of rooms near the government house. Interplan was unfortunately not a universally acknowledged police agency but rather something in the nature of a semiautonomous quasi-governmental treaty monitor, so their work was often compromised, and Genette could sometimes feel like a private agent or an NGO gadfly; but they had good data.

Genette liked to walk around in that data. The office was fine, colleagues stalwart, data important, but the walking itself was crucial. It was while walking that the inspector experienced the little visions and epiphanies that, when they came, constituted both the solution to the problem and the best moments in life.

This could sometimes happen at the office, while looking at new stuff, or at things in the archives, to check a hypothesis that might have occurred over coffee. Their graphics rooms were always very powerful spaces of representation, with three-dimensional and time-lapsed virtual flows of real interest and beauty. Of course it was true that standing in clouds of colored dots and lines sometimes only added to one’s confusion. But other times Genette would see things in the representations and then go back out in the world and notice things no one had noticed before, and that was very pleasing. That was the best part.

Getting some consequent action out of the insights achieved was never quite as much fun. More often than the inspector would ever confess to any single person, it had been necessary to make deals in some poorly defined space-anarchy, one might call it in a bad mood-to bring certain findings to any kind of action in the world. But so far no crushing blame had rebounded on Interplan’s head, and in a business like theirs that was all one could ask for.

As senior investigator, Genette could usually choose what cases to pursue, but of course the destruction of Terminator trumped all that kind of thing, commanding immediate attention from everywhere in the solar system. Also, since Terminator was part of the Mondragon, and Interplan was more closely associated with the Accord than with any other political entity, it was natural to get involved. Besides, there had never been a case quite like it. To have Mercury’s only city torched (but there was a Phosphor being built, its tracks in the Mercurial north; have to look at that, wouldn’t be the first time that real estate conflicts led to arson): naturally the whole solar system was transfixed. It was not clear what had happened, or how, or why, or by whom, and people loved this kind of thing, and were demanding answers. There would in fact be competing investigations into the incident. But the Lion of Mercury had been a good friend of the inspector’s, and when the lion cubs had managed to regather after the evacuation, and assert Mercurial authority over the investigation, they had asked Genette to take charge. There was no question of declining such a request, which, it seemed, could also serve as a way to further the projects one had been pursuing with Alex and Wahram. Indeed the inspector felt that the destruction of Terminator so soon after the attack on Io, and the death of Alex, might be part of a pattern. The autopsy had confirmed that Alex’s death had been the result of natural causes, but there remained a nagging ambiguity in Genette’s mind-for some natural causes could be pushed to happen.

It was while beginning the trip to Mercury, walking across the concourse of the spaceport to the gate for the ferry, enjoying the sight of people making their way to their gates with their usual unconscious skill, that the solution to the problem of the attack on Terminator all at once came to the inspector. The vivid image was like the single thing that remains caught from a dream, and it created any number of useful research lines to follow on the flight downsystem, but most of all a feeling of certainty that was very nice. It relieved what could have been quite a worry.