From my tactical standpoint, Callum had always been a good suspect for an alien agent. I’d wondered about the whole “died in an Albanian chemical plant explosion” 2092 death certificate, along with the rest of his Emergency Detoxification crew. The Berat “disaster” was on the British government’s official births and deaths registry for all of them. Then he and Savi officially popped up again in 2108, in the Delta Pavonis system, with their kids in tow, as if nothing untoward had happened and his death had been an unfortunate bureaucratic misunderstanding. He was listed as being a senior technical manager for the Nebesa habitat construction project.

That discontinuity was precisely the kind of record-keeping mistake I was looking for. Undercover agents assuming the identity of the recently deceased had been standard practice within the intelligence community dating all the way back to the twentieth century. And Callum is well placed. Ainsley recognized his drive and ability a century ago; since then he’d worked his way up the Utopial ladder to personal technology advisor to Emilja Jurich herself, one of the original Utopial movement founders. It put him in a perfect position to feed their senior council’s growing xenophobia toward the Olyix, had he been an alien agent.

The hostile policies of the human elite toward the Olyix have been growing steadily, ever since the Salvation of Life arrived at Sol in 2144—fifty-two years after Callum’s supposed death. Suspicion of an alien species is part of the human condition, and relatively understandable. What cannot be explained by logic is the rising paranoia people like Emilja Jurich and Ainsley Zangari have exhibited over the last couple of decades. Somebody, somewhere, has to be feeding that paranoia with a whole load of damaging bullshit.

The conclusion we came to is that a very different alien species—an ancient enemy of the Olyix? No one knows for sure—arrived undetected at Sol (time uncertain), and has been busy insinuating their way into positions of influence. And my real task in the Connexion Exosolar Security Division is to expose their possible agents.

And now, with his “death” explained and even confirmed by my boss, Yuri, it’s likely not Callum. Obviously, no Earth company or Sol system habitat would employ him after 2092. But the emergent Utopials with their ideological goal of a pure and decent post-scarcity society, with a correspondingly technology-heavy infrastructure, were an ideal choice. Delta Pavonis welcomed everyone who rejected the Universal culture that dominated Earth and their terraformed planets. Which, actually, made the Utopial society his only choice.

“Did Savi recover?” Loi asked. He was sitting at a table with Jessika and Eldlund, where the three of them had remained silent the whole time.