Johansson, though, had planned well. He spent his cash with the kind of people who asked no questions, and certainly didn’t make large unexplained deposits with banks. On Far Away the Guardians began to expand their numbers and activities, starting their campaign against the Starflyer in the form of its principal agents, the Research Institute, with the Halgarth family as occasional secondary targets.
The Directorate task force did manage to identify Johansson’s DNA from samples of hair left in the dome. It meant nothing at first; with a multitude of people walking through the museum every week, he was just one name in two and a half thousand confirmed samples. He did have a query in his file, given the circumstances of his earlier disappearance from his family and job five years earlier. It was only when the acts of sabotage began on Far Away and the Guardians shotgunned the unisphere with their propaganda that the Directorate Investigators finally put it all together. Catching Johansson was an altogether more difficult task. He only ever used front men to make his arms purchases, and Guardian members to release his propaganda messages. All the arrests they made were peripheral. They never got close to him.
Over the years, then decades, Investigators left the task force or were reassigned, or simply retired from the Directorate. Paula moved up the hierarchy until she commanded the task force. Finally, however, even the task force was quietly dissolved and the Great Wormhole Heist case was downgraded. Even then, she kept the case active as part of the overall Guardians investigation. For a hundred thirty-nine years she had not quit. She couldn’t.
The tram stopped at the end of Montagu High Street, and Paula stepped out. The town hadn’t changed, at least not from her vague first-life recollection of it. When she looked along the street with its small stores and hotels she could see it dipping down toward the cove at the bottom. There was a stone harbor on one side, she remembered, with fishing boats drawn up on the rocky bluff, and nets stretched out to dry. Flocks of big scarlet birds swirled overhead, tetragulls, whose oily feathers allowed them to swim almost as well as fish.
Midafternoon wasn’t a busy time for Montagu. Most people were at work, leaving the pavement sparsely populated, and the buses half-empty. The nearest shop had two large bay windows, displaying well-dressed mannequins. There were no chains or franchises on Huxley’s Haven. Technically, the economy was market communism, with nonessential goods and products allowed to be supply led, which gave designers considerable liberty and innovation. The dresses on the mannequins were certainly attractive, as were the pashminas draped around them.
Paula walked in to be greeted by the assistant, a young woman whose clothes were all chosen from the racks around the shop. For a moment Paula found herself studying the woman a little too closely, but what exactly did someone designed to be a shop assistant look like? Same as you, she told herself crossly, an ordinary person . There was no specific shop assistant caste anyway, all the fixed dominant gene would give her was a behavioral trait for public service; she could just as easily have been a cook or librarian or gardener. It was only after primary school, which took them up to age twelve, that people on Huxley’s Haven started to choose what sort of specialty they wanted to follow within their predetermined sphere of interest.
The assistant smiled faintly as she took in Paula’s clothes. “Can I help you, miss?”
It took a second for Paula to realize that she still looked younger than the assistant, even in a formal suit. “I don’t need clothes, sorry, I’m looking for directions to the Denken house.”
“Ah, yes.” The assistant was almost pleased at the question, as if it was what she expected an offworlder to ask. “It’s on Semley Avenue.” She gave Paula a string of directions, and asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, why do you want to visit him?”
“I need some advice.”
“Really? I didn’t know Commonwealth citizens used our freethinkers.”
“They don’t. I was born here.” She grinned at the woman’s startled expression.
Semley Avenue was still the same, a street of bungalows with tidy front gardens. The exception were the pines and conifers planted along the edge of the pavement, which had been tended properly over the intervening century and a half to grow into huge sturdy trees. Their strong scent mingled with the fresh breeze coming in off the sea, giving the avenue a restful quality. It put her in mind of a retirement village.