"I wouldn't, either," Celestine admitted, "but this is very difficult and you have to understand our position. We're paid to be suspicious and skeptical. That's what we do. Maybe it would be easier to be less suspicious and skeptical if you told us how Hastings Dervish accomplished the old switch-ola, what his version of world conquest is, and how you think an AI could go about the equivalent of world conquest out here."

"Well, I don't know how they did the old switch-ola," Ell fumed. "The mind is a strange and terrible thing. Dervish's mind is, anyway. And now that he's digital, he doesn't need to worry about having enough processing power. He doesn't just have processing power, he is processing power. He morphs, he torques, he crawls on his belly like a reptile. He's only limited by the power within the system itself. He's a self-initializing program with consciousness and intent. Getting any clearer for you?"

Konstantin wavered and then decided to treat the question as rhetorical. "Do you have an address for Hastings Dervish? Out there, I mean, in the more usual reality?"

"I just told you -- he's not out there any more," Ell said, throwing up her hands. The back of her left hand hit the feather frozen in mid-air and she winced.

"Last known address for him out there, then," Konstantin said. "Just because the AI he did the old switch-ola with will probably be living at his residence as well as using his body. If you see what I mean."

"Oh, sure." Ell nodded slowly, her voice grave. "I know what happens next. You go see that creature you think is Hastings Dervish and tell him about his crazy ex-wife. 'Oh, yeah, her,' he'll say.

'Never got over the break-up. Thinks I'm following her around with sinister intent.' That will satisfy your need for the continuation of the mundane, no matter how you have to twist and distort reason just so youcan explain everything away. Even if you two were to somehow come across some undeniable visual, physical proof, you'd probably turn yourselves in at the nearest locked ward for a cure rather than believe."

Celestine's smile was compa.s.sionate, which was just about miraculous, considering. No doubt she had a better program for facial expressions than Darwin had had. "On the other hand," Celestine said, patient, "you wouldn't really expect us to buy your whole spring line, so to speak, without at least getting a good look at Dervish and seeing what he has to say."

Ell allowed herself a momentary pout. "This is the summer line. But yes, you're right. Have a look at him. Have a good, long look and then come back here and tell me that's not one of your more ambitious AIs walking around loose and making plans." She turned and went back to the huddle of a.s.sistants, still frozen in att.i.tudes of aid and supplication around the s.p.a.ce where she had been. She started to climb up over them again and then paused, looking over her shoulder at Konstantin and Celestine as she balanced with one hand on an a.s.sistant's head and her knee on another a.s.sistant's shoulder. "I really hope this wasn't a waste of time. But if it was, I'm glad it wasn't billable time."

"Hastings Dervish lives on Key West," DiPietro told her as she sat down. "That's one of the islands just off the--"

"I know where Key West is," Konstantin said, not unkindly, pulling open a drawer and then forgetting what she wanted in it. "Not exactly in our neighborhood, much less in our jurisdiction. But I guess we could phone him through the local authority. Or maybe I should just fly out there and hook up with the Key West precinct."

"You can hop and drop both ways in most of a working day if you have to," Celestine said. "I made open reservations, just in case."

Konstantin raised her eyebrows at this outburst of efficiency. Celestine's smile, framed in muttonchops and seeming twice as wide as it actually was, would still take some getting used to, but that wasn't impossible. "Well, before I go hopping and dropping, I'll speak to Key West first, see if they have any information on him in the criminal department, and then see about chatting with the ent.i.ty himself." She started to punch up a Florida exchange. "DiPietro, put out a national search enquiry for any complaints similar to Susanna Ell's. Let's see if it is some kind of ma.s.s hysteria or one of those ailment fads or something. And you--" she nodded at Celestine "--look into the old switch-ola. I want to know how old it actually is."

DiPietro started to ask a question.

"We're off stolen vehicles indefinitely," Celestine told him. "Maybe forever. Come on." They left Konstantin alone at her desk and she watched them head off through the room, with a small but growing feeling of competence. All I need now, she thought, is someone to dial Florida for me.

"Got Key West PD on hold for you if you want them," came Taliaferro's voice from the monitor speakers, making her jump.

"Thanks. How did you know I wanted you to keep tapping me?"

"I didn't," Taliaferro told her, sounding amused. "I just left it on, figuring that eventually, you'd say one way or the other."

"Oh." She paused, her finger over the hold-call b.u.t.ton. "Is there any place you can't tap me?" she asked.

"Don't know. You haven't been everywhere. Yet."

"Yet," she echoed, and took Key West off hold.

"Hastings Dervish inherited residency rights on Key West," said the officer on the monitor. Her name was Dolores Rojas and there was something about her features that reminded Konstantin of the arms dealer with the pirated Smith & Wesson. "We have a full file on that crew going back severaldecades."

"What about Dervish himself?"

Rojas' expression was slightly apologetic. "That's a lot sketchier. There's almost no information on him at all, since he didn't actually reside on Key West until he inherited the property last year."

"Well, he must have lived somewhere before last year," Konstantin said. "Just give me his previous known address."

Rojas' apologetic expression became pained. "You don't know anything about Key West, do you?"

Konstantin sighed. "No, I guess not. But I have a feeling I'm going to and I won't like it."

"n.o.body does, not even me," Rojas commiserated. "It's quite a long story, involving decades of legal gymnastics funded by people who patronize legal gymnasts for very good reasons of their own. The short version goes like this: Key West is a legal event horizon."

This time, Konstantin felt the speed b.u.mp rattle her teeth, even the fake ones. "Gymnastics and black holes. That's a combination I haven't met before. Is it unique to Key West?"

"Practically. There are only a couple of other places like it in the world. What it means -- short form, again -- is, all Key West residents have the right, under law, to seal any and all records of their lives prior to taking up legal residence on Key West, unless they should happen to be convicted of a felony as a Key West resident. On Key West," Rojas added quickly, before Konstantin could say anything. "Only then can any records dating from before the time they took up residence on Key West be opened. Unless extenuating circ.u.mstances can be demonstrated. If those extenuating circ.u.mstances apply, then the records cannot be opened."

Konstantin nodded glumly. "That must have been some Olympic-cla.s.s gymnastic event."

"It was a series of events, really, some happening together, some separately." Rojas made a small shrug. "It all had to do with privacy. That's Key West's key word, you might say. Every part of the island is privately owned, including the nature reserves. The reserves are subject to government inspection, but that's limited strictly to determining compliance with government standards for nature reserves. All of Key West's nature reserves exceed those standards by several magnitudes."

"And who could expect anything less, really," said Konstantin.

"Well, not this strictly-by-the-book law enforcement officer," replied Rojas with a half-smile. The resemblance to the arms dealer became even more striking. Konstantin had the fleeting thought that they could be one and the same -- another barefaced liar, perhaps? -- and then thought it was more likely to be either an extraordinary coincidence or another case of stolen faces, a prank popular among the adolescent, as well as the adolescent-at-heart. "The flamingoes have never had it so good. A lot of the rulings came at a time when privacy was the cause of the moment, and Key West decided to go the distance. There's no news reporting media of any kind on the island itself -- all news is imported, and any news about the Key or its residents is essentially a pr release. Due to the adjective shortage."

Konstantin blinked. "The adjective shortage?"

"Yeah, it's a real problem. On Key West, it's illegal to describe someone in a public statement or news story as, say -- and this is just for the sake of example, it's strictly hypothetical -- um, Houston Drabbish, owner of parcel four on the Sunsh.o.r.e Beach Reserve who was convicted twenty years ago of conspiracy to subvert justice and trafficking in human organs on the black market. Unless the news story in question concerns Houston Drabbish being newly convicted of an equally grievous felony, this description of Mr. Drabbish is considered highly defamatory and legally actionable."

Billable, Konstantin thought.

"After all," Rojas went on, "that was twenty years ago. But even if it had happened last year or last week, how the h.e.l.l is poor Mr. Drabbish supposed to see the error of his ways, turn over a new leaf, and cleave to the straight and narrow when the media insists on presenting him to the world as a criminal?"

Konstantin nodded slowly. "The scary part is, I can see the point."

"Me, too. Who wouldn't, when you put it that way?"

"But suppose a Key West resident -- say, your Mr., uh, Drabbish again -- is convicted of a felonyelsewhere?"

"In that case, it gets complicated."

Konstantin gave a short laugh. "Oh no, not that."

"Unless anything directly connected to the person's Key West property is central to the crime, no records from Key West are available for legal purposes, and no records pertaining to the crime are available in Key West, for any reason. Anything else is--" Rojas thought for a moment. "Expensive."

Konstantin laughed again. "So what is it you do there, if you don't mind my asking?"

Rojas' own smile was knowing. "I enforce the no trespa.s.sing laws. Admission to Key West is by invitation only, as you might have figured out by now. It being the world's most exclusive community, we get a fair number of trespa.s.sers. Some of them actually try to sneak onto the island in the middle of the night, carrying all sorts of contraband to try to bribe an invitation out of our residents, or even us law enforcement officers. Amazing, the stuff they get hold of. Stolen software, hardware, even organs -- kidneys, hearts, skin, corneas. Then there are the bootlegged VR modules and some of the more primitive kinds of guilty pleasures, like tobacco and happy pills. We always confiscate and prosecute, though of course, the legal residents are completely untouchable in those cases. How can they be held responsible for the actions of some desperate blowfish who'll do anything to get into what they think is the hottest, most exclusive club in the hemisphere?" There was a pause while Rojas rubbed one side of her smile. "You're getting it now, aren't you."

"I was getting it all along," Konstantin said. "I just don't really understand how it all went from defamatory statements to unavailable criminal records."

"You want to know the truth, I don't, either. Legal precedents can be c.u.mulative in a way that n.o.body foresees in the beginning. All I really know is, it started out with privacy, people wanting to keep their personal records from being accessed and made public. Eventually--" Rojas spread her hands.

"Personally, I look at it this way." She leaned half out of the frame of Konstantin's monitor and picked something up. "You see this?"

Konstantin jumped. Rojas seemed to be holding a smaller and less complicated version of the Smith and Wesson she'd bought from the arms dealer. Had that only happened this morning? Or had there been a day in between? Suddenly, she couldn't remember. "Is that a -- a Smith and Wesson?"

Rojas aimed the barrel straight up and pulled the trigger. A stream of water sprayed out. "Not really."

"A squirt gun." Konstantin thought she should have felt relieved but for some reason, she didn't.

"Not just any squirt gun," Rojas chuckled. "This is an illegal squirt gun."

Konstantin didn't dare shake her head, in case it made her dizzy. "How can a squirt gun be illegal?

Pirated design?"

Rojas frowned in bewilderment, took a closer look at it, and then shrugged. "Possibly, but that's not the problem. Not the problem of record, anyway. It's illegal because it's so realistic, a well-meaning officer of the law -- myself, for example -- could mistake it for the real thing when found in the hands of a well-meaning if playful citizen, and shoot said citizen dead. So I, well-meaning officer of the law, can always be sure that if I see something like this in the hands of a would-be well-meaning citizen, I'll know that the citizen is, in fact, licensed to carry a weapon. Since the real thing is legal on Key West. That trespa.s.sing problem we've got, it's a monster. Some of those trespa.s.sers can be dangerous. Our residents demanded, and got, the right to defend against home invasion."

"I can't decide whether I'd find your job interesting or not," Konstantin told her.

"That's because you've never seen Key West," said Rojas. "Have you?"

"No."

"Island life here is something you either have a taste for or you don't. I do, and I doubt I'll ever inherit property here. However, as an employee, I'm granted the privilege of living in rented accommodations for the sake of my job. The Key West consortium can extend that privilege into my retirement, provided I work a certain number of years."

Konstantin leaned closer to the monitor. "You're not Florida law enforcement, are you?"

Rojas had the decency to look slightly embarra.s.sed. "I am an agent of Florida law enforcement,answerable directly to them and directly under their command--"

"But independently contracted and paid by the Key West consortium."

Rojas dipped her head in what might have been a nod or a shrug.

"The uniform had me completely fooled," Konstantin said. "It looks just like a real one. Which outfit -- Fargo-Pinkertons?"

"Phase 3 Interpol," Rojas said evenly. "And the uniform is real. It's the official uniform of Key West law enforcement as determined by the Key West consortium. They have that right, too." Rojas leaned forward on her elbows. "Come on, I know what everybody thinks of P3I. But I'm on your side.

Nothing else should matter. If it really bothers you, though, I'll give you the contact information for the Florida legislature. They pa.s.sed P3I through for this job."

"Same legislature that made squirt guns illegal, right?" Konstantin said.

Rojas shrugged. "Funny old world, isn't it."

"Isn't it just." Konstantin sighed. "But getting back to our original subject--"

"Hastings Dervish, yes. Of Clan Dervish."

"Clan Dervish?"

"It's the social structure of Key West, which is also a form unto itself," Rojas said cheerfully.

Oh, G.o.d, Konstantin thought, here comes another info dump. Why can't I ever get briefed in advance? Why doesn't someone warn me?

Something must have showed on her face because Rojas suddenly gave a small, sympathetic laugh. "Look at it this way -- a day in which you learn something isn't a total loss, is it? In Clan Dervish, as in the others, the members may or may not be related biologically. Some are, some aren't. We have records on any of them born on Key West; Hastings Dervish isn't one of those. So I can't tell you if his relationship to the rest of the clan is biological, clannish, or simply a place-holder."

"And what's that?" Konstantin asked.

"A place-holder makes sure none of the clan property ends up as part of someone's contested estate -- or, worse, as part of the holdings of an intestate."

"I'd have thought dying intestate would be illegal on Key West," Konstantin said sourly.

"In a way, it is," Rojas said. "Considered bad form, at the very least."

"In the absence of qualified inheritors, wouldn't the property just go to the consortium?"

"Right. And no one would want to see that happen. The internecine conflicts here are no joke."

Rojas' face had turned solemn. "Any clan that lost a piece of property to the joint ownership of the consortium would experience quite a fall in status. It sounds like one of those silly social things, but they all take it very seriously here. No one wants their family members to have to face cla.s.s prejudice, everyone on the island thinking they can just pick on them. The clan's karma would get so bad, they'd even find themselves preyed on by trespa.s.sers with greater frequency. Predators have a sense for picking out prey."

"Amazing," Konstantin said. "An area that moneyed and protected and there aren't any social programs in place to teach people that prejudice in the community isn't nice."

Rojas shook her head with exaggerated sadness. "The tragedy is, those programs are mainly for poorer areas where a good many of the citizens may have other problems such as illiteracy, and don't know better. Key West doesn't qualify for a program like that because it would be government-subsidized and Key West obviously has too much money. But also, all of the residents are well educated, which means they aren't prejudiced because they don't know any better. They simply choose to exercise their const.i.tutional right to the pursuit of happiness. In this case, what makes them happy is being prejudiced against clans of lower standing." There was a drawn-out pause. "Still with me, or did my Weltanschauung eat a hole in the fiber optics?"

"Job pays well, does it?" Konstantin said.

"The pay is almost as good as the scenery. The flamingoes and I have never had it so good."

"Is there any way I can talk to Hastings Dervish himself?"

Konstantin could almost hear the click as the woman went into official mode. "Is there a complain against Hastings Dervish for anything he may have done in Key West or elsewhere while a Key Westresident?"

"A former life/business partner claims that Dervish has been stalking her online, invading her VR.

Virtual trespa.s.sing, I guess you'd call it on Key West."

"The only thing Dervish has been involved in while resident here is the contesting of his inheritance in a divorce action. A Susannah Ell claimed half ownership." Rojas' smile was amused. "That your complainant?"

"Ms. Ell has made some other statements as well," Konstantin said.

"I wouldn't be surprised," said Rojas good-naturedly. "Dervish initiated the divorce action from here, after his inheritance was disclosed to him. He doesn't have my vote for Nicest Guy in the World.

But then if he did, he probably wouldn't have inherited property on Key West."

"But can I talk to him?"

"As a matter of fact, you can. Not only that, Dervish has to talk to you by law. All of Key West's law-abiding citizens believe in full cooperation with law enforcement. Wherever it doesn't compromise their rights, of course. I can forward your call in about fifteen minutes. Thirty, if he hasn't made a will yet."

"What a relief," said Konstantin.

Rojas smiled. "Isn't it?"

Hastings Dervish fanned his cards out over his lower face and blinked coyly at Konstantin over the tops of them. Above the cards, he seemed to be a golden beach-bauble with a taste for gambling. "The intrepid Rojas tells me I must talk with you," he said with exaggerated boredom. "Does it have to be now? When I'm in the middle of a game?"

"You folks in Clan Dervish have all the comforts of home mixed with the luxuries of far away,"