She read the names as I downloaded the file into her wafer, then let out a low whistle. «You're well informed, boss.»

«For someone who told me Boston doesn't exist, so are you.»

She sauntered back to her desk.

«Hoi Yin examined the servitor chimp yesterday,» Rolf said. «She hasn't had any luck recovering the memory of who gave it the order to shoot Penny.»

«Bugger. Does she think she'll ever be able to get at the memory?»

«I don't think so, from what she told me. But she said she'd come in again this morning, after the funeral. You could ask her.»

«I'll do that; I need the background information anyway. What have we assembled on Penny Maowkavitz's last few days?»

«Purely routine stuff, I'm afraid. She wasn't letting her illness interfere with her work. The JSKP Biotechnology Division has been busy preparing for Ararat's arrival, which she was supervising. And Davis Caldarola says she was still performing design work for Pacific Nugene. She was working ten-, twelve-hour days. Nothing out of the ordinary for her. She never did a lot of socializing, and she'd been cutting back on that recently anyway. According to the people we've interviewed so far she didn't have any really big rows with anybody, certainly not in the last few weeks. They were all treating her with kid gloves because of the cancer.»

It sounded to me like Penny Maowkavitz was someone who had come to terms with her fate, and was trying to get as much done as possible in what time she had remaining. «That's her work. What about her Boston meetings?»

«Sir?»

«She must have had them, Rolf. She was supposed to be their leader. Were they argumentative? I can't imagine them being particularly smooth, not when you're discussing how to take over an entire city-state.»

«There's no way of knowing. You see, Shannon was right about not having any evidence against Boston, their leadership would never have met in the flesh, not for that. All their discussions would have taken place using affinity. Nobody can intercept them.»

«I thought affinity up here was communal.»

«It is, but we have what we call singular engagement mode. It means you can hold private conversations with anyone inside a fifteen-kilometre radius.»

«Oh, wonderful. OK, what about these genetic designs she was working on when she died? What were they? Anything a rival company would kill to prevent her from finishing?»

«I don't know. The Pacific Nugene laboratory up here wasn't working on anything radical; mostly transgenic crops for Eden's Agronomy Division, and some sort of servitor which could operate effectively in free fall. If she was working on anything else, we haven't uncovered it yet. She did a lot of the initial softsplice work on her home computer, then turned it over to a lab team to refine and develop up to commercial standard. We haven't been able to access many of her files so far. She used some very complex entry guard codes. It'll take time to crack them. I'll give it to Shannon when she's finished with the wills, it's her field.»