I no longer believed in coincidence.

“So, what d’you figure, Al?” I mumbled to myself. “Did Maharal commute all the way around that furshluginer mesa, in order to come down here through the front door? Naw, that wasn’t the Professor’s style. Come and go without a trace, that was Dr. Yosil! Even a back door would’ve left him open to detection and observation every time he came down here to raid the government’s larder, or to pick up nifty items for his cloak-and-dagger scheme … whatever it was. Hell, some war fan with a wandering voyeur drone might have spotted him, if he came across the surface.”

No, I went on silently. If Professor Maharal had been sneaking into this base, he’d want to come all the way under concealment.

Jabbing my finger repeatedly at the map-globe, I commanded, “Avatar, find microseismic data for the subregion indicated. Use a Schulman-Watanabe tomographic correlation to sift for unmapped subterranean passages, connecting this location and that one.”

The military intelligence program I had hijacked was a pretty good one. Yet it balked, unable or unwilling to comply:

“The area in question was last given a detailed seismic survey eight years ago. At that time, no subterranean passages existed in the area you indicated. Since then, systematic seismometry in the specified region has been limited to watching for attempted area penetration by unauthorized interlopers. No inward-directed tunneling has been detected.”

So. There had been no hidden passageways through the mesa when the secret base was established, and no sign of outsiders trying to get in since then. Was I barking up the wrong tree?

“Wait a minute. What about digging activity from within the base, aimed outward?”

I had to rephrase the question several times, forcing the avatar to reexamine the security system’s record of micro-temblors and sonic vibrations in surrounding rock layers.

“What about areas on the base perimeter with seismic activity levels well above normal?”

“There have been no unexplained activity levels more than fifteen percent above normal.”

Rats. So much for that idea. Too bad. It seemed a good one.

I was about to give up … then decided to follow this line just a bit farther. “Show me the highest-level activity loci with accepted explanations.”

The map of the underground facility and its surroundings now bloomed with overlapping bands of color, showing peak levels of sonic and seismic noise during the last few years. “There,” I pointed. An area at the perimeter zoomed toward me, haloed by ripples of red and orange. Appended was a notification — sealed and date-stamped — explaining that an ongoing program of boreholes had been ordered, for the purpose of groundwater quality sampling.

But a cross-check with the base environmental protection office showed no data from these samples! Moreover, the area in question happened to be at the exact spot closest to Urraca Mesa.

Bingo.

“So, Ritu. Your dad hacked the military’s security system and forged approval for a seismic variance. All the cover he needed to burrow away to his heart’s content. Impressive!

“Of course, it still meant having to dig outward from the interior, instead of coming in from the outside. What did Maharal do, smuggle in tunneling equipment?”

No, there was a better explanation. An easier way to get the job done.

I thought of checking the base master inventory, to see if someone had been pilfering from the golem stores, taking some of the raw soldier blanks away to use as mining labor. But those auditors Chen had spotted inthearmory … they’d be accessing the inventory system right now for their tallies. They might notice if I snooped that database at the same time, secure portal or no.

Better go in person, then. See where this trail takes me.

I started to sign off, but hesitated, my eyes darting among the beautiful viewglobes floating above the desk, each of them responding to my attention by ballooning larger, eagerly, voluptuously. Linked to the wide world again, I felt it draw me, call to me, tempt me with opportunities -

To contact Clara and let her know I was alive.

To access Nell’s emergency cache.

To communicate with Inspector Blane and find out what was new in the Beta Case.

To check police and insurance company reports about the sabotage attempt at Universal Kilns, and find out if I was still a “top suspect.”

To get in touch with Pal and have him send a whole army of his wonderful sneak-and-grab dittos, to help me as I headed — vulnerably real — into hazardous territory.

I had meant to do all of those things, and more, when I first asked Chen’s little ape-dit to find me a safe access port. Only now I held back.

Contacting Clara might only serve to implicate her in my actions, perhaps ruining her career.

Nell’s cache? What could it contain that I didn’t already know? All of my dittos vanished days ago. The last one — a sarcastic ebony — was blasted into supersonic pottery shards on Tuesday, around midnight. Since no one else knew how to access the cache, checking it would be a waste of time. Worse, it might alert my enemies.

As for the UK attack, blame seemed to be shifting already. Open news reports were now showing a raid — led by the LSA’s Blane, of all people — breaking down the doors of a recently shuttered kink bar in dittotown, the Rainbow Lounge. A lurid tale of conspiracy, double-cross, and ritual suicide was rapidly unfolding. One disturbing image showed a cremated woman, surrounded by her own crisped dittos, like the pyre of some Viking potentate departing for Valhalla with an escort of sacrificed thralls.

Another view hovered over the maestra of Studio Neo, Gineen Wammaker, who swatted at voyeurcams that buzzed around her elegant head while denying that she had any part of the conspiracy, crying out, “I was framed!”

That made me chuckle …

… till I recalled what it meant. I wasn’t the sole patsy, or the only person set up as a fall guy. Reputations were toppling all over town, from religious nuts to the ditto Emancipation movement, to purveyors of perversion like the maestra. Yet no one mentioned the three names that worried me most.

Beta. Kaolin. Maharal

Seared in memory, I could still see that platinum golem suddenly appearing along a desert highway to bushwhack me. Because of something I knew? Or perhaps something I was about to find out — probably having to do with Kaolin’s ex-partner and friend, with whom he was now at war. Somehow, I had become caught up in a desperate struggle between mad geniuses. And it didn’t even matter that Yosil Maharal was dead! Nowadays, mere death offers no guarantees. In fact, I could feel Maharal’s reach, extending beyond the grave, keeping the war hot. Driving the tycoon to desperate measures.

More to the point, Maharal had helped to design this very facility I was sitting in. Given his aptitude for skulduggery, Ritu’s father might have laid any number of traps for the unwary. Especially if you stopped in one place too long.

Better to stay a moving target. Much as I wanted to linger and study the news, probing the Web for details, it really was time to get on.

I folded the government-issue chador under my belt, then headed east along a corridor I’d seen on the map — a passageway that supposedly should end about a hundred and fifty meters from there in a large storage room — followed by solid rock.

Only it wasn’t just a storage room.

True, there were shelves, piled endlessly with machine parts and tools, followed by freezers containing hundreds of ditto blanks, still doughy and unimprinted, ready to be used by the Prexy and Dodecs, should they ever come down here to hide.

To the naked eye, it all seemed above board.