Going into certain parts of the Strand in INS uniform could be dangerous.

The passengers standing in the aisle began moving, and Thomas stood, partially crouched to avoid the overhead. Guterson stepped out into the aisle with their bags,abruptly blocking a large man in a corporate suit who was trying to slip past.

Thomas grabbed the workstation off the seat and followed the moving horde.

Behind him, he heard the executive mutter something under his breath and Guterson replied with exaggerated innocence, "Oh, were you trying to get by? I'm sorry. I thought it was our turn."

It was hot on the pier; heat radiated up from the cement surface. As they walked in the long line of passengers toward the terminal, Guterson pointed at the water beside the pier and then across the runway to the lagoon that held municipal New Galveston. "How come this water is lighter than that water?"

"First time on one of the floating cities?"

"We have 'em all up and down the East Coast, but this is the first one I've been on that wasn't connected to land."

"Ah. Well, that water, over there," Thomas said, pointing across the runway to the deep blue water of the municipal lagoon, "is about a mile deep." He jerked his thumb back at the water beside them. "This stuff goes down to about thirty feet.

There's a huge reinforced membrane that stretches across to that other side."

"Why on earth do they do that? To stop airplanes from sinking all the way to the real bottom?"

"Well, that is the reason they put the airport over on this side, but it's a fishery.

They dump nutrient-rich deep water from the OTEC plants in there. It feeds phytoplankton and then shrimp eat the plankton and fish eat the shrimp and bigger fish and so on and so forth."

Guterson craned his neck, looking for fish, Thomas supposed. "Wow."

Thomas could remember before the Deluge when there were less than a thousand people on the Strand, ten hexes, a small surrounding breakwater, and one OTEC plant, a farfetched Utopian project funded by visionaries considered more crackpot than practical. That changed rapidly when the Deluge came. Then, for almost a decade it was a morass of construction surrounded by thousands of boats, rafted together like sargasso weed. The INS funded the Abattoir and flooded industries seeking new homes funded industrial development, beefing up the seacrete facilities and OTEC parts production. Now new hexes were floated every day.

The line slowly moved off the pier and into the welcoming cool of the terminal, but inside there were several delays in immigration control, including a tourist protesting at the top of his lungs.

"What's with the loudmouth, sir?" asked Guterson.

"He didn't cross his tees. You can't get onto the Strand proper unless they know you've got a place to stay and a way off when you run out of money. Or a job. Or city membership. He'll probably be given access to a phone to arrange his lodgingand made to buy a return ticket before they let him through. Or he can put up a guarantee deposit, but that's even more money."

"Oh." Guterson looked worried. "Do we have a return ticket?"

Thomas laughed. "Don't worry. We're active-duty INS. We're exempt." The laughter died in his throat when he saw a squad of Abattoir guards waiting on the other side of the barrier. They were wearing riot gear-flak vests, visored helmets, holstered sidearms-and carrying shock sticks. They stood in a tight bunch off to one side, watched closely by a pair of airport security. "Exempt. But not popular."

They reached the head of their queue and the immigration officer briefly examined their ID's before waving them through with a too-neutral expression on his face.

The plainclothes agent and the Latino prisoner that Thomas had seen on the plane were standing with the armored squad, but none of them were moving yet, almost as if they were waiting for- A khaki-clad chief petty officer stepped forward and saluted, a crisp regulation salute. "Commander Becket?"

Thomas sighed and returned the salute. "Aye, Chief-" He eyed the man's chest.

"-Dallas. What can I do for you?"

"Admiral Pachefski's compliments, sir. He'd like a few minutes of your time."

Thomas winced inwardly. Rear Admiral William Pachefski was the commandant of the Abbott Refugee and Detention Center-the Abattoir. Thomas looked around.

"And where might the admiral be?"

"In his office, sir."

His office was several miles away at the other end of New Galveston. At the Abattoir.

"Surely the admiral has a phone?" Thomas pulled his satphone from an outer pocket of his workstation carrying case.

The CPO looked uncomfortable. "Yes, sir. But he wanted me to bring you. Sir."

The armored squad spread out slightly, half-surrounding them.

The admiral would like a few minutes of your time, not including time in transit . Well, Thomas was used to this from Pachefski. They had history. He sighed and shook his head. "Well, then, we shouldn't keep the admiral waiting, should we?"

Without pausing, he turned to Guterson and handed him the workstation, keeping the phone. "Mr. Guterson, please call Lieutenant Graham and tell him why I'll be late for our conference call; then go ahead and check us into the hotel." There wasn't any conference call, but Guterson didn't know that.

"Aye, aye, sir. When shall I expect you back at the... hotel?" Guterson's eyes were just a shade larger than usual and he looked only at Thomas's face. He had also avoided naming the hotel, as Thomas had.Good man. Thomas turned to Chief Dallas and raised his eyebrows.

"Um. It's fifteen minutes over to the Abat-the base. If the admiral's business doesn't take long, we can have you back within the hour. But there's plenty of billets at our BOQ, sir. Ditto the EQ. No need to send tax money offshore."

And come and go under your watchful eyes. "That's a good thought, Chief, but our current investigation requires immediate access to the Strand proper." He stared the CPO full in the face. "Now if we were investigating improprieties out at the detention center, you can be sure I'd be staying at the BOQ." A tidbit to relax your master. "Shall we go?"

"Aye, sir. This way."

As Thomas walked away with Chief Dallas, he glanced back over his shoulder.

Guterson, looking somewhat overloaded with all of their gear, was walking directly to a rank of pay phones. Seaman Guterson, you are going to make investigator first class very soon.

As they walked along, Thomas introduced himself to the plainclothes agent. "I saw you on the flight. I'm Becket, CID."

The other man, still watching his prisoner, nodded. "Yes, sir. Knew it. I'm Chief Warrant Patterson, Houston Field Office."

"Knew how?" Thomas asked.

"Well, not to be insulting, Commander, but there's only one face like yours in the service. Even Armando here recognized you."

Thomas looked at the prisoner again. His hands were cuffed behind him now.

The name or the face didn't ring any bells. "Have we met?"

"No hablo ingles, Senor Cicatrizado." His Spanish was South American-Colombian or Ecuadoran.

Patterson looked appalled, but Thomas laughed.

"Como me conoces?" Thomas asked.

"Todo el mundo lo conoce."

Thomas sighed. "So much for invisibility."

Patterson shrugged. "It's true in the service. Everybody does know you."

It was a curse. He'd gotten the reputation before the face, but now, with the face, Senor Scar just had to show up at an INS operations area and everyone knew that CID was there. It wasn't always bad-sometimes it caused unsuspected perpetrators to do the most amazing things, exposing them.

The guilty flee where no man..."What is Armando here for?"

"He was peddling fake ID's to illegals. Green cards, driver's licenses, social security numbers. They looked good on computer, too, if the check was cursory.

But Armando's standing mute on his associates, his source, so the judge gave him ten years' detention, then deportation."

Which meant life, really, since to be deported you had to have a country willing to take you. So, Armando would spend his time in detention, then end up moving over to the refugee camp. At least it was coed in the refugee center. Unless Armando could find work on the Strand or sneak back into the U.S., he'd grow old and die out here.

They left the terminal outside the immigration control zone and made their way past the civilian ferries and water taxis to a gated dock guarded by INS shore patrol.

A sixty-foot INS hovercraft was tied there, floating on its inflated skirt, and other INS passengers were boarding.

The armed detail went aboard in a clump, waiting their turn, stepping high to the deck. Armando stumbled, unable to catch the railing because of his handcuffs, and Thomas grabbed his arm to keep him from going down on his face.

Armando looked surprised. "Gracias, senor."

Thomas shrugged. "Cualquiera lo haria."

Armando shook his head. "Muchos hombres no lo harian." Many men wouldn't. Unfortunately it sounded like the voice of experience.

Thomas sighed. "Quizas."

There were rows of benches under a rigid awning behind the control cabin and the armored squad took over an unoccupied corner, waiting for Thomas, the two noncoms, and the prisoner to sit before distributing themselves across the remaining seats.

The CPO took off his hat and tucked it under his leg. "You might want to do the same, sir." He jerked his thumb at the two large ducted fans just now starting to turn at the back of the hovercraft. Thomas followed his advice just in time, taking his hat just as the fans generated a maelstrom of wind. The craft moved off, accelerating smoothly, until it was moving over forty knots, swinging north.

Conversation was impossible and Thomas was grateful. The last time he'd been here, he'd been investigating drug traffic passing into the refugee center with the complicity of a ring of INS personnel. His case had gone well professionally and very badly personally, and he wasn't at all happy to be going out to Abbott Base again.

He laughed to himself as he remembered the look on Jazz's face when Thomas had said he might come out here. Jazz knew.All right, I could've stayed at the Bachelor Officer's Quarters, but it was more than the inconvenience of the commute, wasn't it?

Well, there were nice things about the Strand. The air was clean and the food was wonderful. If you stayed away from the Abattoir and weren't out here during a hurricane, it was practically paradise.

They cut into Main Street, the open channel running east to west down the center of the Strand, moving between the large enclosed area that bordered the airport and another large algae farm to the north. Then they passed into the industrial park, a diamond-shaped lagoon over four miles north to south lined with factories, wharves, and commercial shipping.

The channel passed between North and South Portland, two "islands" floating out in the middle of the commercial lagoon, green-draped structures over a mile per side. This close, one could tell that the hills were really steps, hexes within hexes, each circle rising higher as they marched inward to cumulate in center towers rising several floors higher than the closest ring. They were factory suburbs, a substantial step up from the Abattoir, but still more crowded residences than New Galveston proper.

The factory towns dropped behind them, and Thomas shifted, turning, reluctantly, to look ahead, past the control cabin. On both sides of them the factories and wharves were closing in, toward a gap that was much narrower than the passage from the municipal lagoon. Here the gap between the walls was less than a hundred yards and towers lined both sides, while crewed boats stood by below.

The official name was Abbott Security Passage, but the name used by the refugees and prisoners was el Ano del Infierno-the asshole of hell. Since they hoped to pass through and out of it, it didn't say much for their self-esteem.

Despite his best efforts, Thomas felt his shoulders hunching forward and the scar tissue on his face and neck began to ache. He forced himself to expand his chest and took deep breaths.

The ferry docked at Isabel Island, a half-mile-across complex similar to any New Galveston module, green-draped terraces marching up to a central tower. This was the base housing for dependents and personnel.

After offloading, the hover ferry ran across to another module, the same size as base housing but with very little greenery, and here the exterior of the island was made up of hex towers rising higher than the interior: Abbott Detention Center.

Some of the guards, Warrant Patterson, and his prisoner got off here.

Then they made the run to the camp's main landing, between the two islands, the north/south center point, which neatly divided the three-mile-long stretch of humanity in half.

It was always the smell that got to Thomas first. He'd smelled far worse, ofcourse, on refugee ships so crowded that the sanitary facilities had been quickly overwhelmed. At least you knew, at the Abattoir, that the sewage was being treated and the OTEC plants provided plenty of fresh water. If the algae farm provided a much higher percentage of the Abattoir's diet than his own, it was a healthier one.

But it was bland.

But you can't put four hundred thousand people in that small a space without some odor.

The hex they were in contained the long narrow maze of egress control, the booths where day workers showed their passes and left, to be ferried to the maquiladoras in the industrial park, or returning, processed through, back into the camp, to sleep and maybe to dream of bumping up to the next stage-slightly less crowded and more sumptuous housing in one of the factory suburbs.

They passed through the personnel gate and the guards took up position, forming a triangle around them to get through the crowd. This was Recruitment Square and thankfully, it wasn't an example of how crowded the rest of the Abattoir was, for people stood shoulder to shoulder, cruising the job-opening announcements, elbowing in and out in a constant Brownian motion.

The guards blew whistles and the crowd parted quickly, anxious to avoid shock sticks that could cause a person to fall and be trampled by the crowd.

Becket inhaled sharply. Ah, humanity.

There was only one level of security to get into the administrative offices.

Pachefski's suite of offices was on the top floor facing due west but built into the vertex of a hex so the view out across a short expanse of water took in both the green terraces of Isabel Island and the grim walls of the detention center.

Admiral Pachefski was thin and tall with the incipient stooping of old age. His posture, and his mostly bald head, had always reminded Thomas of a vulture. His nickname in the service, though, was "Mother Teresa." He'd had this post for over nine years, at his own request.

"Thanks for coming, Thomas. Have a seat. You can go, Chief." Both men waited for Chief Dallas to close the door behind him before talking.

Thomas, is it? Whatever happened to "you back-stabbing glory hog"? That's what Pachefski had called Thomas the last time they'd met.

"What's this about, sir?" asked Thomas. Why are you messing with my investigation?

Pachefski gestured at a television monitor mounted in the wall. "I saw the video.

They ran it on Channel Seven-that's the local independent. This Beenan woman seems to imply there's INS involvement."

Not exactly. She just talked about ammunition. That conclusion could bedrawn. You certainly did. "It's a possibility." Thomas considered keeping quiet about the ammo found on the Open Lotus but decided that as soon as his men started taking ballistics specimens, the word would be out. "We did find both kinds of ordnance were used."

"Hmmm. And your next step?"

"Sir, you know I can't discuss an ongoing investigation." Thomas paused a moment. "If I understood your concerns, perhaps I could help you without compromising my duty."

Pachefski stood abruptly and walked over to the window. "I have almost four hundred thousand refugees over there, not to mention almost sixty thousand in detention. We're barely surviving here. I've got UN refugee monitors living in the camp. I've got Amnesty International observers. I've got dozens of news organizations watching our every move. And now this. Christ, man, we're drowning as it is."

Interesting choice of words. Thomas kept his face perfectly still. "I don't see the connection." But you seem to. Is there something you know that you aren't telling?

"We can't do our job out here when everything we do is constantly being questioned and challenged. If the INS is implicated in particular, the INS will be implicated in general. And that will increase the pressure."

That was your argument against my last investigation here.

"It's not like the first years, when we'd get three thousand a day, but between births and new arrivals, the numbers are still increasing. We're between a rock and a hard place. The conservatives want to cut our funding to make the refugee center a less desirable destination. When we do get more resources, the international watchdogs want it allocated differently, pushing for things we can't afford. It's hard enough to provide bare subsistence, much less the schools and clinics they're clamoring for."