“That wasn’t a lecture. If you’d lived with Dudley for any length of time, you’d know what a lecture is.” Damn. Did that sound bitter?

“I’m sure. So, the foundations and their funding?”

“They were supportive, especially the Cox. In fact, I think the Dyson Pair observation was written into the endowment contract, they wanted to make sure it was seen through to its conclusion.”

“Did they now?”

Just for a second, Wendy saw a flash of triumph on his slender face. It was rather unnerving, she’d thought him more controlled than that, a long-lived sophisticate. “Is that important?” she asked.

“Not at all,” he said with an urbane smile, much more in character. He leaned forward slightly, taking her into his mischievous confidence. “Now tell me, just how is the dean handling all this? One of his professors becoming the most famous academic in the Commonwealth must be a bit of a shock.”

Wendy gave her glass a demure glance. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

“Ah well, you can’t say I didn’t try. I must thank you for sparing so much of your time on this day.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.” He inclined his head politely, then raised a finger. “One thing, when you see Paula, please tell her from me to stop concentrating on the details, it’s the big picture that counts.”

“I don’t understand, I don’t know anyone called Paula.”

He grinned. “You will.” And with that he slipped away through the crowd, leaving her staring after him, bemused, if not somewhat irritated, by his ridiculously cryptic message.

Two hours into the reception, Dudley’s e-butler told him the police were calling him. “You’re not serious,” he told it.

“I’m afraid so. There are two patrol cars at the house. A neighbor reported someone leaving.”

“Well what does the house array say?”

“The house array seems to be off-line.”

“Goddamnit.”

“Will you be coming? The police did emphasize it is important.”

“Yes, yes!”

So he had to break away from the chairman of Orpheus Island, who had been suggesting a serious sponsorship arrangement for some of the observatory equipment—possibly extending to the Second Chance —give up his wineglass to a rather pretty waitress, who knew his name and smiled, then walk around the hall trying to find Wendy. It didn’t help that she was also moving around trying to find him. They both decided not to say their good-byes to the dean.

The Carlton drove them back home. Slumped down in his seat, Dudley realized how drunk he was. But the wine had been good, and the catering staff kept filling his glass. Wendy gave him a disapproving look as he climbed out of the car using extreme caution.

Constable Brampton was waiting for them beside the front door of their two-story home. Like all the others on the housing estate, it was local wood pinned to a carbonsteel frame and painted a deep green. The windows were white, with the glass turned up to full opacity. The policeman saluted casually as they approached. “Doesn’t seem to be any damage,” he said. “But we’ll need you to take a look around and see if anything’s missing.”

Wendy gave the open door a curious glance. “You’re sure they’ve gone?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve checked it out thoroughly. Nobody inside apart from us.” He gestured with an open hand.

Dudley couldn’t see any obvious signs of a burglary. No broken objects, furniture exactly where it always was. The only thing wrong was the lack of response from the house array. “What happened?” he asked.

“Your neighbor reported someone leaving by the front door. They got into a car parked just down the street and drove off. He knew you were at a function at the university, so he called us.”

“My husband was getting his professorship,” Wendy said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Constable Brampton said. “I know that. Congratulations, sir, you deserve it. What you did put old Gralmond right on the map.”

Wendy frowned. That was the second time she’d heard that phrase today.

Dudley gave the front door an annoyed look. It was properly wired, the insurance company had insisted on that, and the house array had excellent security routines. “How did they get in?”

“We’re not sure. Somebody who knew what they were doing. Bypassed all your electronics, takes a smart person to do that. Or someone with a smart program.”

They went into Dudley’s study. He felt as if he should apologize for the mess. There were books and glossy printouts everywhere, pieces of old equipment, a window almost invisible behind the rampant potted plants. Two forensics officers were examining the desk and its open drawer. The house array was inside, a simple housing box with junction sockets connecting it to more fiber-optic cables than the performance specs really permitted. He’d been meaning to upgrade for a while.

“They dumped your memory,” the senior forensics officer said. “That’s why the array’s down.”

“Dumped it?”

“Yeah. Everything, management programs, files, the lot. They’re all gone. Presumably into the burglar’s own memory store. I hope you kept backups?”

“Yeah.” Dudley looked around the study, scratching at the OCtattoo on his ear. “Most of it, anyway. I mean, it’s only a house array.”

“Was there anything valuable on it, sir? I mean, your work, and everything?”

“Some of my work was there, I wouldn’t call it valuable. Astronomy isn’t a secretive profession.”

“Hum, well, it might be an attempted blackmail, someone looking for something incriminating. You’d be surprised what stays in an array’s transit memory cache, stuff from years ago. Whoever they are, they’ve got all that now.”

“I don’t have anything incriminating to keep. I mean, bills paid late, some traffic tickets when I was driving on manual—who doesn’t?”

“Nonetheless, sir, you are in the public eye now. It might be an idea to think about extra security, and you certainly ought to change all your access patterns after this.”

“Of course, yes.”

“We’ll notify the local patrol car,” Constable Brampton said. “They’ll include you on their watch detail in future.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing else missing?”

“No. I can’t see anything.”

“We’ll sweep for DNA fragments, of course, and try and trace the car. But it looks like a professional job. Chances are, if there’s nothing to worry about in the array memory, then there won’t be any follow-up.”

EIGHT

After the Commonwealth ExoProtectorate Council finished with its unanimous vote to send a starship to the Dyson Pair, Ozzie Fernandez Isaac excused himself and took the elevator down to the lobby. Outside, it was warm for spring, with just some slim banks of dirty snow lingering in the gutters where the civicservicebots had pushed it. He started down Fifth Avenue, one of a handful of people to be using the broad sidewalk. There were none of the street vendors he could remember from even a couple of centuries ago: the burger stands on every intersection, T-shirt sellers, stalls with quasi-legal software fixes, sensepimps with pornomemories. That would be too untidy now, too low-down for the city and its cultured inhabitants. These days quaint booths and boutiques occupied the ground floor of every skyscraper, offering quirky objects imported from every planet in the Commonwealth—all so strangely unappealing. It was all a sad decline, as far as Ozzie was concerned. You couldn’t sanitize a great city like New York without losing its original quality, the dynamism and grubby edges that made it an exciting vibrant place to live. Despite the buildings, which still impressed him, it was becoming just another suburb of Earth. Its manufacturing industry had long since moved off-planet, leaving only the research and design consortiums that remained on the cutting edge, staffed by billionaire partners. The advertising agencies remained along with media company headquarters; there were even still some artists down in SoHo, though Ozzie regarded them as talentless dinosaurs. It was the finance sector and government offices that dominated the employment market, for those who had to work. Many didn’t, having their idle lives taken care of by the innumerable supply and service companies that encircled Manhattan, all employing offworlders on medium-term visas.