“My father,” Dorianna says, glancing around. “Could scarcely have imagined anything like this. He could always imagine quite a lot.” “And you?” Ilya asks, looking away from the streams of data spilling across the screens before him. He’s set himself before the task of scanning for any information on the bombing and helping Aleo to craft a piece of hunter-code to release into data-space. This code will read the transponder tags of every ’ware enhanced human on the face of the planet. With some certainty, it’ll find the bomber as well. Dorianna shrugs. “Nemaea isn’t exactly the sort of place that conjures images of street-hackers and signal pirates.” “They’re not all pirates,” Aleo says. The first meeting with Ivanna and Mihail ended with a journey into The Ear. It is Arkady’s personal workspace: an intimate part of his professional life. Another element of that life has pulled him street-side, and so Ilya, Aleo, and Dorianna occupy this space alone--nervously so, if Dorianna’s restless glances around are any indication. This is an alien world to her, Ilya imagines, a monkey-wrench thrown into the works of whatever emerging theories she has in regard to Nemaean life. In some ancient stretch of city history, the entire nest was an underground power station, but city growth has shifted the balance of needs, and now, the station is home to those who drive Black City existence. This room, crammed with monitor banks and web-access consoles, lies far beyond any pre-imagined purpose. It is a data-filter--the vast multi-sensory organ of Black City economy. “Whatever they are,” Dorianna says, behind a shrug, “they’re not what any Centralist would see as Nemaean.” “And now do you see them?” Ilya asks. “I’m an anthropologist…I’m not supposed to have any preconceptions. And I don’t. These are simply people I don’t know, but I can’t deny the fact that they aren’t a part of the face that Nemaea commonly shows.” Ilya cocks one eyebrow. “You have no Black Cities on any of the Centralist worlds?” There are rumors--always rumors--that Centralist life isn’t as rich, that the things one takes for granted in the Nemaean Territories simply don’t exist there. “No,” Dorianna says. “We don’t.” An expression of visible shock washes over Aleo’s face and Ilya catches it in a sidelong glance. “So,” Aleo says. “Where do the planetary populations channel their criminal energies?” “In crime,” Dorianna says, as if the answer is plain enough. Aleo’s expression of shock deepens to one of abject horror. “Your prisons must be crowded.” Dorianna mirrors his expression of troubled astonishment, her features drawn ghost-pale in the wash of greenish blue light from the monitor screens and holography tanks arrayed throughout the cylindrical chamber. “You make it sound as if Nemaea has no real penal system.” “We do.” Aleo shrugs. “Black Cities are simply a part of it.” Dorianna’s lips pucker as if she has just taken a mouthful of something foul. “Lawless zones establish so many random factors, too much potential for tremendous social disaster…how do you diffuse that potential?” And now, Ilya shrugs. “The Cloister takes care of that.” “How?’ Aleo says nothing. Ilya shifts his attention back to the web-access console before him: a monster aggregate of processors, splitters, boosters and image generators. None of the components are factory standard, though the main processor box wears a brand tag: ТЕХНОЛОГИЯ ЯГОДЫ in a precise, matte-silver stamp. The screens arrayed before him stream with neat, horizontal columns of alphanumeric data. Aleo’s fingers dance over a keyboard, projected onto the work-bench before him. He glances at Dorianna. “This is the boring part our day. You’re free to…I don’t know…get to know Ivanna.” “Nice evasion,” Dorianna says, placing her elbows on the work surface and leaning on them, her fingers interlaced beneath her chin. “So, I’ll stop asking about the Cloister’s oh-so-secret methods of crime control.” She is playing the anthropologist, Ilya thinks. It is a holdover from her previous life. Like her need to feel the web-work structure of the data-sea, as her links and nodes reconfigure to a more Nemaean norm, she clings to her anthropologist’s training for whatever comforts it may bring. Now, even after so much has happened--after so much has changed--she is studying. Falling back into patterns of instinctive behavior. Oh, her reasons are different. Ilya is certain of that; perhaps they are more intimate, more immediate, but they remain, and he smiles at that small hint of continuity. Ilya’s focus falls back to the task at hand. Finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. But there are ways in which the task may be completed. It takes ferrets and worms: predatory data-shapes that swim through the hazy, electronic aether, interrogating every element of that environment. Ilya shifts his attention fully to crafting that ferret now. He narrows his focus to coding its behavioral protocols, while Aleo generates its more subtle mimetic and reproductive capabilities. Ferret, then, is the wrong designation for the data-beast taking shape in the processor core, winking with green, blue, yellow, and red status lights, but Ilya takes comfort in the term. He recalls the small, inquisitive pets he kept as a child. He remembers their signature stink: a comfort, really--a scent that he misses. He’ll name this one, Laika…for the furry, pink-nosed companion he remembers from the hazy days of his long-vanished childhood. Laika. It is fitting that a data-shape with the name of a long-dead pet will help to find a killer. **** It takes ten bells to generate the necessary code. It takes two bells to test it: Aleo insists on a prodigious number of simulations, and Ilya understands the necessity. The boredom…the waiting…is simply a part of what must be endured. Dorianna, for her part, occupies herself with occasional dives into the data-sea. Touching a pilot, she calls it; the humor in that term is dark and self mocking. Ilya watches her for long moments, remembering her arrival here and the intense mistrust he held, like smoldering coals in the deepest recesses of his gut. So much has changed in so little time, and it chills him to think that he has misjudged and underestimated her in so many ways. She is unusual, he thinks, not your typical Centralist. She is beautiful, in her own strange way: like an unknown predator, recently discovered in the hidden ecological niches of some remote and scarcely-surveyed world. Laika runs through another of her simulations. Aleo drinks tea infused with hif. Ilya watches Laika’s progress for a time, sifting through readouts and tweaking code when necessary. And now, he considers Dorianna--reclined on a salvaged acceleration couch from some long-decommissioned jump-shuttle. Her hair is drawn back into a dark, wavy horsetail. The black netting of a sensory cap clenches at the contours of her skull, poking at her scalp with blunt needle probes. Black, fiber-optic cable snakes from the back of the cap like some strange, alien tail; its head end is jacked into a simulation generator set within the structure of the couch itself. Biometric data flashes across a monitor above her head. “I can’t imagine what it must be like,” Aleo says. He is a sudden presence behind Ilya, his hands knead Ilya’s shoulders, and Ilya lets his head loll back. He enjoys these impromptu moments of contact. There is magic in Aleo’s fingers, he thinks. His touch always brings calming silence, and he always knows when to work his gentle ministrations. “She’s left everything she’s known…and all she really wants is what she’s feeling now.” There is naked admiration in Aleo’s voice, and a hint of sadness. “I can’t do what she’s done…I could never leave Nemaea.” “You have no reason to,” Ilya says. For a long moment, there is silence, broken only by sounds from elsewhere in the nest: a burst of laughter, the rolling babble of random talk. There is music, and the sound of movement--footsteps in corridors, metallic sounds that speak of people in storerooms, filling or emptying scavenged crates. The entire nest is alive with secret industry, and Ilya’s mind drifts. He is focused on Aleo, embracing him from behind, but woven through his amatory stupor are thoughts of Mihail and Ivanna. They are strangers, true Black City dwellers, different, he thinks, from Arkady with the past he shares with Aleo. His thoughts jump again, and he recalls the course of Dorianna’s probing interrogations about the Cloister and its relationship to the Black City. Arkady is an initiate member of the Cloister, Ilya realizes, though this realization comes quietly and without the vertiginous shift that marks other small epiphanies. The Cloister’s needs, and Arkady’s own temperaments have driven him here, and in a moment of crystalline clarity, Ilya sees that these are the reasons why Arkady is an element of Aleo’s past. --Needs and temperaments-- --They are what determine the courses of lives…the courses of relationships, and anything that Aleo might have had with Arkady was doomed from the start. The Cloister knew this, and in the most efficient manner, it drove a final wedge between Arkady and Aleo and set them adrift on different courses. There is comfort in this awareness--a wordless confirmation that Ilya’s own desires are in perfect synch with those of the Cloister. Ilya, like the entire mass of the Cloistered Brotherhood, wants Aleo right here…embracing him from behind and planting a kiss on the flank of his neck. He turns to face Aleo. He sucks a deep and passionate kiss from Aleo’s mouth, and after a long, long moment, pulls away. There is hesitation in his movement. Aleo smiles. “You’re in a better mood,” he says. Ilya laughs. “Yeah.” “So, you’re not going to be cute and jealous when Arkady comes back around?” Ilya shrugs. “I’ll try not to be.” “He’s a nice guy. Not my type at all, but nice enough. A good friend I‘d nearly forgotten.” Aleo pauses. “I’d like it, if you got to know him.” Ilya nods. “Now,” Aleo says. “Laika’s about done with her loop of simulations. Let’s load her up and put her to work.”