Cheticamp’s expression had gone sour. "I don’t like it," he growled.

"Why not?"

"Because it makes sense. And it puts us back to square one: Cuttack isn’t connected with the killers, so we’re no farther ahead than when we came out here. In fact, you’re saying there’s probably another murder victim we haven’t found yet. Bloody wonderful."

Tic cleared his throat. "Aren’t you forgetting the expensive clothes and perfume we found in her room? In her letter to Chappalar, she implied she didn’t have much money. That’s modestly suspicious, isn’t it?"

"So she was playing the system," Fellburnie said. "Rich people do. Why pay to go through proper channels if a proctor can arrange it for free?"

A valid point. God knows, our profs at college warned us against wheeler-dealers trying to exploit the Vigil for private ends. Lots of affluent people are devoted to the belief that every system is built for someone’s personal gain, and the only trick is learning how to use it for yourself. The slimy buggers are often right… which explains how they slithered up to affluence in the first place.

Cheticamp drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, then pushed himself to his feet. "Nothing more we can do here tonight." He looked at Tic. "You two want to stay or go back to Bonaventure?"

"Stay," Tic answered immediately. He’d made that decision long ago, when he told me to book a room.

The captain didn’t waste a glance in my direction; never mind that I was official scrutineer on this outing and should’ve had the last word. "Then stay," Cheticamp said. "I’ll leave you a pair of ScrambleTacs as bodyguards. The rest of us will head home."

He looked at Bleak and Fellburnie; they both nodded agreement. I could tell all three had decided Maya Cuttack was a dead end… a dead dead end. Which meant that leaving us in Sallysweet River was as safe as anywhere else, and would keep us from walking whatever real investigations might be unfolding in Bonaventure. The bodyguards were just insurance, in case the killer or killers went on another spree.

We all said good night and the cops galumphed off on their flat-footed way. Leaving Tic and me in silence… except for the dying crackle of the fire. It was late, and the bluebarrel logs had almost burned themselves out.

I flopped down into a chair beside Tic. "What now?"

He didn’t answer for several seconds; firelight wavered flickerish on his pouchy face. "We’ll keep searching for Maya," he said at last. "Or at least that promising archaeological site she supposedly discovered."

"Why?"

"Because it piques my curiosity. Or because my oneness with the universe tells me this is the right way. Or because I’m a total loon." He folded his hands placidly across his stomach. "We’ll rent a skimmer in the morning and see what we can find."

"You are a total loon," I told him. "It’s a big country, city boy, and you’ll have to be god-awful lucky to spot a single tent in the wilderness. Especially if the tent happens to be pitched inside a mine that no one’s ever noticed before."

"Do you have a better suggestion?" he asked.

"Sure. Instead of flying around haphazard in hopes we stumble across the camp, let’s get some gear that will do the search for us."

"An hour ago you were anxious about charging a room to your expense account. Now you’re going to tot up a few million for scanning probes? Well-done, Smallwood. That’s what I call settling in."

"It so happens," I told him in my snootiest voice, "I have a friend in high places. With access to the best survey equipment in the Technocracy. Courtesy of the Outward Fleet’s Explorer Corps."

A minute later, I was calling the navy base in Snug Harbor and asking to speak with Festina Ramos.

She arrived an hour after dawn, this time without Oh-God and flying an official fleet skimmer. Not the same skimmer the dipshits used when they kidnapped me. Cheticamp had impounded that one as evidence… not because it mattered bugger-all to the case but just to crank off the Admiralty.

"It’s freezing out here!" Ramos puffed as she stepped down from the driver’s cab. "Why couldn’t you live someplace warm?"

Her gray uniform crackled, its smart fibers fattening from flat cloth to a windproof layer as thick as sponge toffee: bristling with air bubbles to act as foam insulation. Even so, Ramos made a major fuss of blowing on her fingers and rubbing her hands together to produce heat. "Snug Harbor was perfectly lovely," she grumped. "Working its way up to a scorcher when I left."

"On Great St. Caspian," I told her, "this is a scorcher." Which was a lie; the thermometer had scooted below freezing overnight and showed every intention of staying there till it got over the sulks. Grumpy clouds huddled between us and the sun, while the wind had gone gusty with a piercing edge. What we had was a raw, clammy day… but compared to the winter just past, no Sallysweet River girl would ever call the weather cold.

The rear of Ramos’s skimmer held three probe modules: sleek missiles four meters long, painted gloss black like a widow’s vibrator. At Ramos’s order, the probes rolled themselves out of the back hatch on low wheeled platforms, then sat looking vastly self-satisfied on the dead yellow-grass of the guest home’s lawn.

"Don’t we think well of ourselves," Tic said, as he crouched to stroke a probe’s casing. "Aren’t we just the cockiest machines on the planet?"

"They aren’t actually intelligent," Ramos told him; she sounded a titch embarrassed that he’d think otherwise. But somewhere just inside my ears, I could hear the probe purring as Tic petted it. I shifted in closer, moving my thigh to touch another of the missiles. When I reached down to pat its black molded fuselage, mine started purring too. A fat tigery purr, like a cat with its mouth full of blood.

I gave Ramos a weak smile, trying to pretend I didn’t feel thumbs-awkward. "Sorry, Admiral," I said, "but there are more intelligences in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Tic and I seem to be simpatico with any machine connected to our world-soul."

"These probes aren’t connected to your world-soul," Ramos said. "They’re military equipment — deliberately designed to be incompatible with civilian systems. Our security gurus guarantee total data isolation."

"Now, now," Tic murmured to his probe, "you don’t feel isolated, do you?"

The purr slipped into a giggle, then a whispery childlike voice spoke inside my head. "Shhh… Xe musho jeelent."

Xe says secret.

Tic just smiled, but I froze — fingertips still touching the probe’s plastic skin, my leg pressed against its side. Wanting desperately to jerk away, but staying put for fear the probe or Xe would take offense.

Not only was the missile talking when it shouldn’t be on our wavelength; this thing, manufactured far offplanet in some no-aliens-allowed navy shipyard, spoke Oolom.

What in blazes did that mean?

Ramos programmed the probes from a console inside the skimmer… which she told me came down to selecting criteria from a list of search items the probes were equipped to detect. "Every month these things get more sophisticated," she told me as she worked. "Not intelligent," she added, throwing a pointed glance in Tic’s direction, "but better at their jobs. It’s a pity the quality wasn’t this good during your big epidemic — we might have found more of those people who were dying in the woods."

"You were here during the plague?" Tic asked. His voice was just a hair too controlled.

"That was before my time," Ramos answered, "but I’ve reviewed transcripts from Explorers who were here. The equipment back then had a bitch of a time finding your people; all of them with low body temperatures, chameleoned to match the background colors, and lying perfectly still from paralysis. We couldn’t even use sniffers to smell out tracks, because Ooloms spent most of their time up in trees. The Explorers were so frustrated: trying to save millions of people from going Oh Shit — uh, that’s an Explorer expression for ‘dying’ — and all we could do was lumber blindly through the woods."