Three people were sitting at the long crystal table in the middle of the pale-oak flooring, sipping wine from tall-stemmed glasses.

A rebuke was starting to form in Kandara’s head. It was ridiculous; these people were acting like they were on some kind of delightful weekend break, not setting up a covert op that was likely to end with smoking ruins and dead bodies.

Two of them were clearly Utopial omnias—their height alone evidenced that—while the third was shorter and female. Kandara didn’t think she was just female cycled, not that she could explain her conviction. Hopefully, it was solid detective’s intuition.

The trio rose to greet her, smiling warmly.

“This is Tyle,” Kruse said, introducing the tallest, who had sandy hair and a slim dark mustache with the tips precisely trimmed in neat curls. “Our network analyst.”

“Excited to be working with you,” Tyle said. Hir voice was high, and eager. Kandara thought sie was genuinely young, maybe in hir late twenties. But then hir sharp features were so disturbingly close to Gustavo’s she felt she was being haunted.

“Oistad, a defensive program operator.”

Sie was almost as tall as Kruse, but with thick honey-blond hair that came over hir shoulders in languid waves. The flowing blue summer dress sie wore left Kandara no doubt sie was in full female cycle. As always, age was difficult to pin down these days, but to Kandara the poised manner spoke of someone over half a century.

“And Jessika Mye, a strategic profiler.”

Kandara shook hands cautiously. “What exactly is that?”

“It means I take a look at the crimes and how they were committed, the motivation behind them, and try to work out what’s coming next.” She shrugged. “I used to work for Connexion Security, so I have some experience.”

“They brought you in, too?” Kandara asked in surprise.

“No, I was already here. I decided I prefer the Utopial life, after all. Long story, but I was Utopial before—lost faith, then regained it.”

“Okay then.” Kandara sat at the head of the table, pointedly refusing the glass of wine Tyle offered. “Not while I’m working.”

Tyle pulled the glass back sheepishly.

“Brief me, please,” Kandara told them.

Akitha’s research institutes had been under attack for years, they said. Teams from Sol’s dynamic and greedy companies got sent to Akitha, where they cracked files on anything that they believed was going to have commercial value. That data got fed into corporate design offices, improving consumer products that were the economic bedrock of Universal worlds.

“Blatant theft,” Tyle said. “And it’s crazy. We release all the data anyway. That’s the Utopial way; we want everyone to benefit.”

“Not quite so crazy,” Jessika said. “It’s a fairly basic market force. If you can get something into production before your rivals, you establish a good sales lead. Also, stealing is a lot cheaper than having a big expensive research team of your own.”