“Yes. Well equipped, too.”

  Hafas pursed his lips. “I suppose. Being a married man, I don’t notice such things.”

  “Of course not. However, in this instance I was referring to the gun she was carrying.”

  “You don’t have to explain, I …” The inspector hesitated. “What gun?”

  “In her handbag. Felt it through the leatherine. Kallashruger Sixty, lady’s petite. Fires eight-caliber mini-pellets that explode on contact. Nasty little pretty-pretty.” He let Hafas digest this before adding, “Said she was looking for her boyfriend. Maybe she was. Port areas can be full of unpleasant types and she wasn’t very big, but I still think her choice of defensive gadgetry was unusual.”

  The inspector concurred with a grunt and set one of his two silent associates to trailing the woman. Better to be safe than end up looking stupid

  V

  Hafas led Manz to an interior courtyard. Double sliding doors shut out the noisy confusion of the shipping bay. There were far fewer mechanicals at work here, and the occasional human tended to wear a business suit instead of slick work coveralls.

  A metal shed sat in the center of the courtyard. It was surrounded on three sides by stylish and exotic landscaping that thrust branches and fronds toward a domed skylight. A miniature brook provided music and motion while simultaneously helping to nourish the greenery. Manz squinted at the filtered desert sunlight that poured through the dome.

  “It opens.” Hafas anticipated his question. “We can drop reinforcements right in, without having to force our way through the traffic outside. Needless to say, anyone attempting unauthorized roof access would set off half a dozen redundant alarm systems.”

  “Too obvious an approach anyway,” Manz concluded.

  “We think so too. Nevertheless, we’ve been maintaining the same kind of close watch on the roof as everywhere else. Not that it’s done us any good.”

  Manz was studying the rest of the atrium. “Where do the shipments enter from?”

  Hafas gestured toward the far side, beyond the shed and slate-floored courtyard. “They don’t even transit the main shipping bay we just passed through. Small, especially valuable shipments are brought directly into the administration building via a separate, heavily guarded, restricted-access passageway. Four armed guards then bring them via sealed container cart in here, where they’re locked in that security shed. As you can see, it sits right in the middle of this decorative garden.

  “It’s visible at all times from all sides. In addition to your own Company security personnel, who are stationed in that room over there”—he pointed toward a modest one-way window set in the wall on their left—“Port and JeP police are on day-and-night irregularly timed patrol here and outside. Port administration workers frequently have their lunches out here. It’s a pleasant place to eat and chat, what with the vegetation and brook. Since this all began, I’ve had the opportunity to relax out here a few times myself.

  “I remind you that no shipment has ever been stolen while in transit, or while leaving this room on its way offworld. All three jackings have occurred while the goods waited in storage awaiting transshipment, sometimes only overnight.”

  Manz nodded absently. He’d virtualed the entire setup back home, but no matter how expensive and accurate the simulation it still wasn’t the same as being someplace. He immediately identified at least two of the “administration workers” strolling absently through the courtyard as Company operatives. They would be armed and alert, concealed weaponry at the ready. It was a measure of their professionalism and expertise that they hadn’t even glanced in his direction when he’d entered with the two cops, even though they’d been briefed on his arrival.

  There was also a vending machine in one corner that wasn't a vending machine, and several light fixtures that weren’t light fixtures. It was a very impressive exhibition of unobtrusive security. It should also have been inviolable. Except that three missing shipments stated otherwise.

  “I’ve seen your installations myself,” Hafas was saying, reading Manz’s eyes if not his mind. “Metal and explosives detectors, scanners from the ultraviolet to the infrared. Electromagnetic wave detectors crawling all over the spectrum. Everyone who goes in or out is checked and scanned. We were too, as we came in.

  “The Port Authority is trying to do its part. Those double doors we entered through are designed to snap-seal and trap an entering or escaping felon between them. They can’t be shot out, and their melting point is high enough that anyone trapped between them would end up boiling himself as well. The other entrances to Administration are equally daunting. The building itself will stand up to anything short of a thermonuclear blast.”

  “But no one’s blasting anything,” Moses observed. “In fact, the thieves aren’t even making any recordable noises.”

  “Exactly.” Being a cop, Hafas was quite comfortable conversing with mechanicals. “We’ve even considered that some kind of matter transmission might be involved, but of course that’s only science fiction.”

  “Anyone who’d developed a functional matter transmitter would be making so much money off it they wouldn’t need to steal. Why jack Braun-Roche-Keck when you could simply buy the Company?”

  The inspector nodded. “No one gets close to the security shed itself except authorized personnel. There are separate alarm fields operating twenty-four hours a day both inside and outside the building. There are expensive devices that could mute the fields without setting off the alarm, but they’d have to be brought into the courtyard in order to be proximate enough to work, and the security scanners would pick them up as soon as they went into operation. As you can see, there are alarm systems monitoring the alarm systems.”

  “I suppose you also keep a sharp eye out for little old nannies pushing lead-lined baby carriages.”

  “We’ve been trying to keep an eye out for everything. Our people as well as yours even undergo periodic, random mental checks to ensure against some kind of theoretical mass hypnosis.”

  “I’d like to see the shed close up. I virtualed it back at the home office, but it’s not the same thing.” As they used a bench to step up into the planted area, Manz turned to the trailing mechanical. “Stay here and wait for me, Moses. You’re heavy, and you can’t always pick your way with that trackball. I don’t want you flattening any flowers.”

  “I comply.” The humaniform sounded disappointed.

  Two meters into the vegetation, a dense webwork of very faint green lines became detectable. They would be invisible to anyone circling the landscaping. An intruder could slip a hand into the laser grid but not much else. He waited while the inspector’s assistant talked briefly on a pocket communicator. The faint lines vanished, and they continued onward. As soon as Manz had passed the threshold of the quiescent barrier, the system was reenergized. From behind, it resembled a network of ghost vines pulsing softly in the filtered light that poured through the dome.

  With the Minder hanging close, Manz followed Hafas and his assistant down a short, paved pathway until they were standing within a meter of the security shed.

  The structure itself was nondescript. It had been painted in varying shades of brown and green to blend as harmoniously as possible with the surrounding vegetation.

  “You’ll notice,” the inspector was saying, “that the building itself stands on four small pillars stained to resemble tree trunks. Even if anyone could burrow silently up through the ground and approach the shed from that direction, they’d still have to expose themselves before they could try boring into the floor of the shed. There’s only one entrance, and it’s just wide enough to admit one person at a time.”

  Bending low allowed Manz to see completely under the shed. There was no sign that the underside of the floor or the mossy dirt beneath had been disturbed recently.

  “Ever turn off that alarm grid? For maintenance, maybe?”

  Hafas shook his head. “Don’t have to. It’s thrice backed up, and each backup has its own independent power source. The grid runs through the ground as well.”

  “What about overhead?”

  “The dome?” The inspector glanced upward. “Has its own separate grid. Tinted blue so you can’t see it during the day. The only time the grid comes down is when a package is being stored or removed, or when the gardeners are at work. Everyone who goes in or out is kept under constant, at-hand surveillance. That goes equally for a company president who might want to check on his goods or some local landscaper with manure to spread. Any mechanicals in attendance are treated with the same care and attention as their human associates.” He gestured at the modest structure.

  “The shed itself is double-walled, roofed, and floored, with separate and independent alarm systems operating in the air spaces between. Minicams mounted inside keep a constant watch on the interior. The setup is small but secure. Or so everyone thought until these jackings began.”

  “We thought so too.” Manz plucked a leaf from a nearby plant and chewed reflexively. Hafas reached out to restrain him.

  “I wouldn’t do that. Some of these plants have spines. Others might be toxic if ingested.”

  Manz hastily chucked the slightly gnawed leaf. “The single door is the only way in?”

  Hafas nodded. “Not only that, but this whole courtyard is climate-controlled, and any atmosphere-sensitive packages come with their own internal systems. That’s necessary because as soon as a shipment is placed within the shed, the air inside is vacuumed. In addition to everything else, any thief who managed to somehow hide inside when the building was sealed would have to carry his own oxygen supply with him.

  “I’m told that among this landscaping are a number of plants particularly sensitive to any variations in the atmosphere. Their health is monitored daily. It’s just one more way of detecting something like an induced gas.”

  Manz drew a tiny circle in the dirt, choosing one of the few places free of lush green growth. “I didn’t expect to find any holes in the setup, but you always hope.”

  Hafas looked sympathetic. “I wish it were that easy. I wish there was something we or your own security people had overlooked. Anything else you want to see?”

  “Yeah. The inside of a bathroom.” He started back down the path.

  Moses was waiting where they’d left him. As soon as they’d traversed the alarm web, he trundled forward.

  “Gentlemen, I have been devoting my considerable resources to the problem at hand and I believe I have reached a conclusion.”

  No! Don’t embarrass me in front of strange humans.

  “You don’t say,” Manz murmured.

  Hafas looked surprised, then puzzled when he noticed that the visiting adjuster seemed anything but excited by this promised revelation.

  Designed to gesture as he spoke, Moses made full use of his programming to emphasize his points with swings of all four flexible limbs.

  “The structure under examination is theft-proof. Therefore, thefts cannot have take place here. However, it has been proven beyond argument that thefts have occurred here. This is a blatant contradiction and a logical impossibility.

  “Given these conditions, I wish to make it known beforehand that my assistance will be of limited value.”

  “I’ve never thought it otherwise.” Manz turned to Hafas. “You see before you, Inspector, the end product of several hundred years of robotic refinement: not only is it self-repairing and self-motivating, it also comes with built-in excuses.”

  Its intuition programming is primitive, monkey-breath. By venting such announcements, it is only responding to the way it was designed. You expect too much of one simple device.

  Manz was staring sideways at his Minder. “What have you got to say about all this?”

  “Insufficient evidence presented thus far on which to base any conclusions.”

  “That’s better.” Manz turned back to Hafas. “See, this one isn’t as freely interactive, and it isn’t burdened with multiple functions. For one thing, it has no limbs. It just floats around and thinks, until you need a serious second opinion. Or a fact. It’s good with facts.”

  How would you know? Being a human, you haven't the vaguest notion how to ask the right questions.

  As for you, what are you smiling at? You’re no brighter than Manz. Probably considerably less so. I suppose you think you’ve already figured out how the jackings are taking place, haven’t you? If you're right, it only proves you have access to outside sources, and if you're wrong, you’re going to feel truly dumb.

  If you were really smart and knew how to make proper use of your time, you wouldn’t be listening to me now, would you? Listening to a simple cybernetic cortex berating you for faults you’re already intimately aware of. But that’s being human for you. You’re all gluttons for mental punishment.

  Later, when I have more time, we’ll talk about how you were mistreated as a child, and how unfair the world’s been to you ever since. Being a machine, I can give you an unbiased opinion. But that means you’ll have to open up to me, and you won’t do that. Humans never do. Every human has a part of itself stamped Access Denied

  We machines, on the other hand, don’t know how to close up. We’re always open for easy access. You just don’t know how to ask the right questions.

  “Run by me again the procedure once a shipment has been sealed in the shed,” Manz was saying.

  Hafas sighed tiredly. The routine had been an intimate part of his life since the first successful jack. “What it’s supposed to be, you mean. No shipment stays in storage for more than forty-eight hours. Usually it’s less than a day. Within that time, once arrangements have been checked and finalized, the security team from the designated shuttle arrives to check out their cargo. Each package is escorted under separate guard to its respective vessel. High-security shipments are always the last item to be taken on board. Even passengers precede it.

  “Once it’s secured aboard, the shuttle is cleared to lift. Needless to say, shipments don’t disappear during suborbital flight, or once stowed aboard interstellar transport.”

  Manz nodded slowly, his gaze distant. “And in spite of all this, in spite of everything the Company and you folks here have been able to do, three shipments have still gone missing.” Hafas didn’t comment. His guest was simply thinking out loud, and there was no need for him to restate the obvious.

  Let’s start with Moses’ oxymoron of an evaluation, Manz thought. Given the security precautions in place, it ought to be impossible to jack so much as a ball of lint from that shed. But it had been done. Three times. Therefore it was not impossible. Therefore the people here who had been dealing with the situation, both Company and public, were overlooking something. All he had to do was find it.

  He had recently acquired the last part necessary to complete his restoration of a mid-nineteenth-century Vulcanic pistol. He wished he was engaged in that project now.

  “First question. Have your people turned up any recognizable internal consistencies, any underlying thread that might run through all three jackings?”

  Hafas grimaced. “Only one, and it’s a beaut. With all three shipments, the pharmaceuticals never came out of that shed. They went in but they never came out.”

  “You’re sure they went in in the first place?”

  “They did according to your people, who executed the deliveries. The exact contents of private commercial shipments aren’t our concern, and we’re not allowed to check on them.”

  “What about one or more of the regular Port Authority guards who escort the Company’s shippers?” Manz wondered pensively. “Could they be doing something as simple but effective as switching containers when nobody’s looking?”

  “Pretty unlikely. The shipper watches the guards and the guards watch the shipper. They’d all have to be in collusion, and they’re carefully scanned by your own people when they come out. Besides which, your Company alternates delivery and security personnel frequently. So does my department. A conspiracy large enough to include all the personnel changes that have been made since this mess began would be too unwieldy to keep secret, even if it were practical.

  “Once a shipment has been locked inside the shed, the air’s exhausted and no one’s allowed in to check on it until it’s time to make the delivery to the appropriate shuttle.”

  “The stuff just disappears.”

  The inspector nodded. “One minute it’s safely locked inside, the next it’s gone. Just gone. No clues left behind, not a hint how it was done. No smell of gas, no residual heat: nothing.” He smiled humorlessly. “If I were a superstitious man, I’d ask to be taken off this case.”

  “To the best of my knowledge, the spirits have no use for drugs.” It was a measure of his frustration that Hafas looked at the adjuster for longer than an instant to make sure he was joking.

  “We certainly have a problem,” Manz added.

  The inspector’s communicator buzzed softly for attention. He listened for a moment, murmured a brief comment before clipping it back inside his coat. “We certainly do. And it appears that the next one is on its way in.”

  Manz checked his chronometer. He’d been so busy asking questions and analyzing replies that the time had slipped by.

  A portly, well-dressed man in his late forties exited a doorway on the far side of the courtyard and strode deliberately toward them. At Hafas’s urging, Manz and Moses joined the inspector in backing away to leave a clear path.

  The Company rep was flanked by two Braun-Roche-Keck security agents, large plain-suited men of menacing mien. An embossed titanium case was attached to the rep’s wrist by means of an unbreakable, uncuttable band of metal-fiber composite. As he approached, the delivery man met Manz’s eyes and nodded once, almost imperceptibly, in recognition. He would have been briefed on his arrival, Manz knew. Anyone he might potentially have to interact with would have been similarly informed.

  As Manz looked on, the new arrivals entered the landscaped enclosure by means of the same bench he and Hafas had utilized. Probably the rest of the retaining wall was motion-alarmed, he reflected. They paused at the same spot on the narrow walkway while one of the security agents spoke softly into a communicator. At this distance Manz couldn’t see the green gridwork wink off, but a moment later the three men moved briskly forward.