As soon as I activated the strip reader, the first holofoto spilled into midair before me. So that’s what “Vic Collins” looked like. Tuesday’s hapless gray was right about this character. Plaid clothes over plaid skin … ouch!

Yet it made devilish sense. Some people hide their appearance by looking nondescript. Forgettable. But you can accomplish much the same thing by making it too painful and disgusting to look at you. Still, it was hard to see how this portrait could help answer any of the big questions.

Was Irene right about Vic Collins being a front persona of Beta, the notorious ditnapper?

I recalled that last encounter with one of Beta’s rapidly dissolving yellows, stuck in a disposal tube next to the Teller Building, slobbering cryptic remarks about betrayal and somebody called “Emmett.” Albert was already tired and distracted by then. And wary toward yet another of Beta’s notorious head games.

Sitting in Irene’s office, I saw little similarity between that yellowdit and the holo visage in front of me, a squarish face, rather snide, and cross-hatched with a blinding array of intersecting stripes. There were several dozen pictures in Irene’s secret archive, date-stamped, every time the conspirators rendezvoused in back of a limousine at some remote location — occasionally with a third party who looked like a cheap ivory of Gineen Wammaker. According to a notation, Collins used a static-disruptor to block sophisticated photo-optical recording devices. These snapshots on old-fashioned chemical emulsion were the best Irene could do as she kept a wary eye on her allies.

Not wary enough, though. Did Irene ever try tracking Collins through the publicam network? I wondered. The first step — following his trail back to the limo rental agency — seemed obvious.

Oh, Albert would have loved the challenge! Starting with these time-and-place fixes, he’d concentrate with all the intensity of a Vingean focus trance, backtracing the plaid Collins-dittos, eager to see what tricks they used to cover their trail, pouncing on any slipup.

I suppose I could have tried to do that, sitting there in Irene’s deserted office. But did I want to? Just because I inherit Albert’s memories, and some skills, that doesn’t mean I’m him! Anyway, that missile wrecked more than Al’s house. Nell contained all those specialized programs to help Morris follow people and dittos across the vast cityscape.

There are times I wish the citizens of PEZ were less laid back and freedom-loving. Elsewhere, folks put up with higher levels of regulation and supervision. Every golem made in Europe carries a real transponder, not a pathetic little pellet tag. Factory-registered to its owner, trackable by satellite from activation to dissolution. There are still ways to cheat, but a detective knows where to start.

On the other hand, I live here for a reason. Tyranny may have only taken a holiday. It could return, first in one corner of the world, then another. And democracy is no absolute guarantee. But in PEZ, the word “authority” has always been so suspect. They’d have to kill everybody first, then start over from scratch.

Turning the film cylinder, I flipped from one holo to the next as Irene and her collaborators met to discuss a stratagem for quasi-legal industrial espionage, or so she thought. But her allies had other plans — manipulating Irene for her resources and Albert Morris for his skills. And the fanatics, Gadarene and Lum, setting them up to take initial blame.

Having met those two, I knew that any first-rate investigator would soon grow suspicious. They just weren’t competent enough to sabotage Universal Kilns. And though Gadarene might have a motive to destroy UK, Lum wanted to “liberate slaves,” not destroy them. A smart cop would see them as patsies, framed to take the fault. Beta set up Irene to take the heat when that first level failed.

She realized all this when the news broke last night. A knock on the door could come within hours. Oh, she could have stayed and helped investigators peel away more layers. But Beta knew her too well. Revenge wouldn’t matter, only arranging with Final Options for a last stab at “immortality.”

So, I’m the one left to clean up after her … and after Albert, for that matter. And …

It seems I’m spending all my lifespan scrubbing toilets after all.

Actually, Irene did a good job getting close-ups of Beta with her little microcam — if it really was him. Perhaps my frankie brain viewed things differently, but I was more interested in examining the face than trying to track it from one publicam to another.

All right, I thought. Question number one: was “Vic Collins” really Beta, the infamous ditnapper and copyright thief? The red Irene ditto seemed sure. Maybe they had a long and profitable business relationship. And I could easily picture the pragmatic Gineen Wammaker deciding to stop fighting Beta, joining forces with him instead. Weren’t they all in approximately the same trade? Catering to perverse cravings?

I snap-enabled a link from the strip reader to Irene’s computer, getting quick response when I asked for some standard image-enhancement programs, then used them to zoom on Collins’s features. “Now ain’t that interesting,” I murmured.

Apparently, Collins used a completely different pattern of plaid design, each of the first five times he sent dits to meet Irene. But on the final three occasions, his skin motif remained the same. Which element is meaningful? I wondered. The earlier variation? Or the fact that he later stopped bothering to change patterns?

I didn’t have resources to do a mathematical-configuration analysis of the interlocking stripes — determining if some code lay embedded in the complex patterns. It would be just like Beta to wear cryptic clues on his very skin, daring foes to decipher them. Vic Kaolin did have the resources for such analysis, and I was supposedly working for him at the moment. I could have this evidence forwarded to the mogul in seconds, at a spoken command.

“Zoom in,” I said instead, letting the focus of my gaze control where — the plaid skin on the left cheek of the most recent image of “Vic Collins.”

I missed Nell. And especially all the wonderful automated tools she kept in her icy core, ready at Albert’s disposal. But with some cheap substitutes, fetched via the Internet, I got a pretty good close-up appraisal of the clay surface, which turned out to be finely molded, with supple, kiln-cured texture. Very high quality. Beta could afford fine bodies.

Hell, I knew that. This wasn’t significant or new. So? I’m not Albert Morris. What makes me think I can play private eye?

Before giving up, I decided to point the same tools at earlier images Irene took when Collins first started meeting her in back of limousines. Was it a hunch?

I stared, blinked, and stammered, “What the — ?”

The texture was entirely different! Coarser. And this time it featured a myriad tiny protrusions, like goosebumps, row after row, at least a thousand per linear centimeter. Pixel emitters, I realized. Like they weave into smart fabrics that change colors on command. Only these lay flush in normal-looking gray pseudoskin. The plaid pattern was created by these elements; some turned dark, others pale, combining to form an illusion of intersecting stripes.

So. Even if I used old publicam records to follow Collins back in time, say to the limo rental agency, I’d lose him anyway. There’d come some point, a bit earlier, when he’d vanish in a crowd at some carefully scouted blind spot. Tracing farther back, I’d never see a plaid person arrive because he shifted coloration instantly! I bet Collins even had inflatable prosthetics under the skin, to alter his facial contours just as quickly. No need for the quick-change dyes, putty, and cosmetics Albert used.