“Way ahead of you, boss,” Moshi Lyane replied cheerfully. “The G5Turing caught it within a minute. There’s been a lot of executive chatter with the Environment Enforcement Agency.”

“Spillage?”

“Satellite’s not showing anything. Yet. But the containers are below ground level. If there’s a leak, it’s not vapor.”

“What does Dok say?

“She’s talking to Boynak executives. And we’re on an open channel to the EEA in case they order intervention.”

Callum’s screen lens showed him the Boynak file: the owner of the Gylgen plant, in turn owned by a tangle of interlocked holding companies, registered in a scattering of independent asteroids. He grunted in contempt. “Fucking typical.”

“Boss?”

“Can their in-house team handle it?”

“Best guess: no. They’re shouting ‘nobody panic’ quite loud. And we’re not seeing any cleanup equipment on its way through the hubs.”

“All right, I’ll be with you in ten.”

“I welcome that.”

Callum grinned, then looked down at the frying pan. The rashers were overcooked, and the yoke had turned solid. “Aww, bastard.”

—

The huge old trees in Moray Place were all budding early thanks to the unseasonable winds that had been blowing in from the southwest for most of February. With the low morning sun striking them, it looked like an emerald frost had materialized overnight to coat the circular park. What had been the cobbled road surrounding the verdant urban isle was now broken up by two lines of raised circular troughs with cherry trees planted in the center of each one. Callum smiled up at the cherry blossom glowing a luminous pink in the bright sunlight. Savi had enjoyed the blossoms on her last visit.

He walked around the troughs, keeping a wary eye out for cyclists. Ever since Connexion had started establishing its hubs across the globe, civic authorities had been pedestrianizing cities and towns, starting with the centers and gradually expanding out as the hub network coverage increased. There was still room for taxez, delivery bugez, and emergency vehicles to maneuver along Moray Place and the neighboring streets, but even the taxez were few and far between these days. The only time Callum really saw them was during one of Edinburgh’s not infrequent rainstorms. Cyclists, though—cyclists were very intense about their right of way, which seemed to include every flat surface in existence.

Callum turned down Forres Street. “Any emails from Savi last night?” He didn’t know why he asked. The inbox was on his screen lens and had nearly two dozen emails pending, most of them work related, with one from his mother.

“No,” Apollo replied.

“What about everything you sent to the junk archive? She might be using a one-time address. Check them for a personal message.”

“There are none.”

“Calls? Ordinary phone calls or a sightyou?”

“No.”

“Calls made but no answervoice recorded?”

“No.”

“Has she made any social posts?”

“Not since she posted her Barbuda videos the night before you left. Her parents and sister have both left messages on her MyLife site in the last thirty hours, asking her to call them.”