Cather Hargreaves had spent most of the afternoon on a video conference call with the senior security staff of the other major American lunar settlements. A guy from NASA headquarters in Washington was supposed to have joined them. However, he’d failed to call, leaving the Lunans to talk among themselves.
It had been particularly uncomfortable when he’d realized that he and Betty Margrave were having one discussion while everyone else was carrying on their own conversation. It was almost as if the others viewed him and Betty as tainted, people it was best to have as little to do with as possible.
On the other hand, one only had to look at him to know he was a clone. Sure, everyone remembered his ur-brother with the famous scars, but no one could fail to recognize the distinctive dark eyebrows that made their faces almost top-heavy, and make the connection. And everyone knew Shepardsport was the settlement NASA was using as a depository for the inmates of their clone creches, so Betty was suspect even for those who didn’t realize she was married to a clone of Alan Shepard.
Maybe we ought to be grateful that we haven’t had our asses packed over to Farside.
Still, the experience had put him in a despondent mood as he returned home. Their apartment was actually closer to Grissom City’s IT facilities than the main security office, which made it pretty plain how the Housing Bureau regarded his and Toni’s respective lines of work.
Cather entered their apartment to find it quiet. Unusual, since Toni usually was home by this time. Could something have come up with the computers, that she had to stay late?
Or maybe she got a message from JPL that they were having trouble with Dispater? Although she was no longer officially on the Dispater team since being sent up here, she had been one of the key programmers of the probe’s AI — and four light-hours away from Earth, it needed sophisticated AI to carry out complex experiments and maneuvers.
And from what she’d been saying, the Los Angeles Basin was getting particularly hard by that stuff, and JPL wasn’t getting spared. If a lot of their on-site programmers were calling in sick, they’d be casting the net wide to find anyone who’d ever worked with that software.
Jase and Ronnie usually got home a little later, so at least their absence was no cause for worry. Worst case, he could activate the parental tracking apps on their phones and make sure they were indeed where he expected them to be. The kids were a study in how the straight-arrow Chaffee temparament mixed with Toni’s more headstrong disposition, which tended to view “no” as a challenge.
As Cather checked the fridge to see what he could throw together for supper, the door opened. Toni set her briefcase on the table, but didn’t extract her laptop. “Cather, how well do you know Lou Corlin?”
“About as well as the rest of my clone-brothers from the NASA clone creches.” Cather mentally went through the list of them. “He’s Emiko’s boyfriend, he does the Rising Sun J-pop show on Shepardsport Pirate Radio, and if I remember correctly, he works in IT over there. I’ve met him a few times when business took me over there, but I haven’t really had the time to cultivate relationships with those kids.”
It stung to have to admit that lapse. He should’ve figured out some way to step into the breach after Braden Maitland’s death, but it had never seemed all that urgent. That was a level-headed bunch of kids, and Ken Redmond and Sid Abernathy were both taking an interest in everyone in the Grissom lineage. Heck, Ken had sent him e-mails making sure all was well.
Toni just nodded. “Lou sent me a rather odd text right after lunch. Something about just how hard it would be to pinpoint the location of a person without breaking any privacy laws.”
“That’s an interesting question.” Cather considered the implications. “It would depend on what information you had on that person, not to mention your relationship to them. A parent of a minor child has a lot more resources available than, say, a friend or a distant relative. If you’d like, I can contact Lou and see what’s raised the question. For all we know, it could be a completely theoretical matter. Maybe he’s taking a class in crime and mystery literature and wanted your take on the plausibility of something he read.”
“Or it could be someone spoofing his e-mail in hopes of entrapping me for one reason or another.” Toni moved her briefcase, then sat down at the table. “Which is why it may be best for you to contact him. It’s much less likely that they would’ve also compromised my phone.”
Cather promised he’d send Lou a text as soon as they were done eating. Right now he had a supper to fix, and the kids would be home soon.