2312

B y the time the inspector got to Mercury, the refugees from Terminator had either taken refuge in shelters or been dunkirked off-planet. The death toll was at eighty-three, most from health events or accidents with suits and locks, the usual emergency collection of mistakes and equipment failure and panic. Evacuations were notoriously one of the most dangerous of human activities, worse even than childbirth.

Given that, and the fact that Terminator itself was still out there broiling on the brightside, the investigation was only just getting under way. It had been determined that the cameras for that stretch of track had been destroyed by the impact, along with a platform called Hammersmith, where it was feared a concert party had perished. On the other hand, Terminator’s orbital meteor defense system had provided its records for the relevant time, and neither radar, visual, nor infrared records showed any meteor prior to the hit. Satellite visuals of the impact showed no remains of an impactor. Attack from the fifth dimension! — as people were saying.

Genette, having seen the solution to this aspect of things, decided it was possible that pretending ignorance might allow time for the perpetrator to slip, and would also suppress copycat crimes. So the inspector said nothing about that, and remained in a room in the Rilke spaceport, interviewing witnesses. A big flash of light. Ah, thank you. Time to put in a heads-up to Wang, perhaps, to run some feasibility studies on Genette’s solution to the mystery.

News came that two more refugees had been plucked off the brightside, and one of them turned out to be Alex’s granddaughter, the artist Swan Er Hong. To be rescued out in the middle of the brightside seemed odd, and the inspector went to see them at the hospital in Schubert.

Swan lay in a bed hooked up to a couple of IVs; very pale; apparently recovering from radiation sickness, caused by a coronal flare that had struck just before she and her companions had gotten underground.

Genette climbed onto the chair next to her bed. Dark rings around red-rimmed brown eyes. Wahram, having accompanied her in her trek in the utilidor system, was sitting on the other side of the bed. Apparently he had not gotten as sick. He did look quite weary.

Swan registered Genette’s presence beside her. “You again,” she said. “What the fuck.” She glared at Wahram, who blanched a little to see it, even raised a hand to ward off her gaze. “What are you two up to?” she demanded.

Genette turned on Passepartout, a qube like an old wristwatch, and said, “Please don’t be upset. I am inspector general of the Interplanetary Police, as I told you when we met before. I was worried to learn of Alex’s unexpected death, and although that appears to have been a natural event, I have been continuing to look into a number of untoward events that may be connected. You were close to Alex, and you were there to witness the assault on Io, and now you were here again when Terminator was attacked. It may be a coincidence, but you can see why we continue to run into each other.”

Swan nodded unhappily.

Wahram said, “Did you ever find out anything out about the remains of the figure that fell into the lava on Io?”

“Let’s discuss that later,” Genette said with a warning look at Wahram. “For now we need to focus on the destruction of Terminator. Do you two mind telling me what you saw?”

Swan sat up and described the strike, then their return to the city, and their realization that they had missed the evacuation; then their run east to the nearest track platform, and their descent into the utilidor. Wahram merely nodded in confirmation from time to time. This took a few minutes. After that Swan’s account of their time in the utilidor was very brief, and Wahram did not elaborate or nod at anything. Twenty-four days could be a long time. Genette looked back and forth between them. Neither of them had seen much at the time of the blast, it was clear.

“So… is Terminator still burning?” Swan said.

“Strictly speaking, the burning is done. It is now incandescing.”

She turned away, face scrunched in a knot. In their final transmissions, the cameras and AIs left behind in Terminator had recorded the city igniting in the sunlight-burning, melting, exploding, and so forth, until the recording instruments had failed. It had not been a general inferno but rather a patchwork of smaller fires, starting at different times. Some heat-resistant AIs were still transmitting data, documenting what happened as everything heated to seven hundred K. A collage of all those images gave a good impression of the incineration, though it seemed pretty clear that Swan would not want to see it.

But in fact she did. When she composed herself, she declared, “I want to see it all. Show me everything. I need to see it. I intend to make a penance somehow, a memorial. For now, tell us what you know! What happened?”