Olmy was not interested in inactivation. He simply wanted to maintain a steady trace on the rogue—and to keep pressure on him, to heighten the sensation of illicit activity. The rogue was of very high quality; he had outlived dozens of duels, some extending across decades, which meant virtual millennia in City Memory. He kept no name, not even adequate spoor; he had designed his active persona to be efficient, elusive and only as egotistical as necessary to provide motivation for duels.

The tracer had caught the rogue in Patricia's quarters, and Olmy had then commanded it to back off, in such a way that the rogue would be led to believe it had escaped.

Olmy was well-acquainted with the personality of the average rogue. Most had been born during the final stages of City Memory construction—a task that had taken over five hundred years, beginning in Thistledown City before the creation of the Way.

A number of citizens, generally young, had found ways to create loopholes and to circumvent the ultimate penalties being put into effect to deter crime—recycling of the citizen's body and inactivation of the stored personality. The most popular method was making an illegal duplicate personality which would remain inactive in City Memory; if the citizen received the ultimate penalty, the illegal duplicate would be activated, guaranteeing continuity.

These "rogues" had then engaged in all manner of criminal activities, some of them resorting to acts of violence not seen in the Axis City since the expulsion of the orthodox Naderites from Alexandria. Most were caught, tried and sentenced, and the punishment carried out—releasing a virulently destructive group of personalities into City Memory. As time passed, some of the rogues were convinced by Hexamon agents that the best way they could spend their time would be to engage in duels—searching out and eliminating other rogues. That solved much of the problem. Dueling caught on, and within a decade, half of the rogues had been eliminated by their own confreres.

Many had survived, however—the smartest and most inventive, and therefore, ultimately the most dangerous.

In recent decades, one of the Nexus's most pressing problems was to make City Memory completely safe for all citizens. The Nexus had made little progress—a stubborn residue of resistance remained, creating mischief and occasionally disrupting important functions.

Hiring a rogue was always risky, Olmy knew. The patron could not expect complete loyalty—a rogue stayed loyal only so long as advantages and interest remained high.

To that end, Olmy rewarded the rogue richly with access to several private data banks—and made doubly sure that no one would ever discover who had done the hiring, especially the rogue himself.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Three

The dark library brightened slowly, allowing his eyes to acclimate. Pavel Mirsky stood blinking on the far side of the plaza of seats and teardrop globes.