The three of them took the next shunt to the Spacer quarters in stony silence. Derec found himself slightly in the lead as they strode toward the lab. Agent Harwol and one of his people stood outside the lab, talking quietly. When he spotted Derec, he came forward.
"We have a situation, Avery-"
"Talk to the ambassador," Derec said irritably, brushing past the TBI agent.
"Avery-"
Derec entered the lab and stopped abruptly.
The DW-12 stood in the center of the space, most of the resident techs standing in a loose circle around it. Director Polifos sat, arms folded indignantly, before the robot. When he saw Derec, his scowl deepened and he tried to stand. The robot placed a hand on his shoulder and urged the director back into the chair.
"Damn it, you cannot do that!" he shouted. "What is wrong with this robot? Doesn't it know that it has to take my orders?"
"It knows it has to keep you here," Derec said. "For your own protection."
"I'm in no danger!"
"Then, why were you running?"
"I wasn't."
Derec looked at the robot. "Thales?"
"The Director had booked passage on a Settler transport," the robot said. "I found him in a dockside tavern in Section Forty-nine, carrying a pack of personal belongings."
Polifos glared up at the robot.
"What is this thing?" he asked quietly.
"Never mind that," Palen said. "Why don't you tell us where you were going? And why?"
Polifos looked at her, anger and fear working at his expression. He shook his head.
"What ship?" Palen asked.
"The Reyatta," Thales answered.
Palen pulled out her comm and stepped away, speaking softly. A few seconds later, she came back.
"Interesting choice of ships, Director," Palen said. "The Reyatta is a known blockade runner. Where were you going, Director Polifos?"
Polifos shook his head and studied the floor.
Derec searched the lab until he saw Rana over by the workstation they had been using. She waved him over.
"Ariel needs to talk to you," she said.
Derec stepped up to the console. "Thales, are we secure?"
"Yes, Derec. I have traced all the gates in place. One of them fed directly to Director Polifos's quarters. Another went to Chief Palen's office. One, however, I have a location for but no identification, in the Settler's section."
"Where's Ariel?"
"Back in the embassy," Thales said. "But not for long. There have been developments."
"Connect me." Derec stopped before Polifos and waited for the man to look up. "Director."
Polifos frowned.
"What kind of work did you do for Nova levis?"
Polifos blinked and went pale.
Derec turned to Palen, who had been talking intently with Masid, away from the others. "I want to bring him down to the morgue. "
Palen looked intrigued. "All right."
Thales/Bogard urged Polifos to his feet. Harwol and two of his agents came forward. "What are we doing?" Harwol asked.
"A demonstration," Derec said. "Thales?"
"Please follow Derec Avery," the robot said.
"Agent Harwol, if you could have your people guard our flanks on the way down…?"
Reluctantly, Harwol agreed. The entourage emerged from the lab and headed back down to Palen's morgue.
Baxin still worked on the body. He looked up at the approach of this new group, his brow knitting. Derec glanced at Polifos.
When the director saw the corpse, he stopped, then tried to back up. Thales/Bogard blocked his escape. Derec reached for him, took his shirt sleeve, and dragged him close to the transparency.
"What do you think of that, Director Polifos?"
"I-" He shook his head. "Please."
"Recognize it? Perhaps some of it is your own work?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Then why are you frightened? Why were you running? Is this what you were running from?"
"You don't understand-"
Derec tightened his hand on Polifos's arm. "Then make me understand. "
"Please!"
"Is this what you've been hiding from for the last twenty years? Did you make that?"
"No! I don't know what that is! Let me be!"
Polifos squirmed loose from Derec only to encounter Palen, Masid, Harwol, and Thales/Bogard.
"Talk to us, Director," Palen said. "We've got a lot of dead people we need explanations for."
"I didn't have anything to do with that," Polifos said.
"What did you do in Nova levis?" Derec asked. He pointed at the cyborg. "Is that a direct result of your work?"
Polifos tried not to look at it.
"Is that your work, Kyas Vol?"
Polifos paled visibly then. "You know?"
"You've been hiding here under the protection of the Auroran government since disappearing from Earth after Nova levis closed down. Why? What were you doing there?"
"I'm trying not to die, damn it!" He whirled around, shoving Derec away. He backed against the transparency. "They killed everyone! Anyone who knew anything about it! Fos and Holani…Cortem…the documentation staff…" He was shaking now. "I went to the Aurorans because they were the only ones not involved. Terran authority, Solarians, corporates…Aurora had nothing to do with it."
"With what?" Harwol demanded.
Polifos started sobbing. He slid to the floor, eyes streaming.
"We never really knew who we were working for, " he said finally. "The lab took subscriptions for stock. It was supposed to be a public corporation-we didn't know…"
"Your mission," Derec said. "What was your mission?"
"The plague. Stop the plague."
"What plague?" Palen asked.
Polifos shook his head. "There wasn't one. We succeeded." He sat there, crying for a time, until he finally got control of himself. He stood and looked at the corpse. Baxin stood away from the body now, waiting. Polifos turned away. "Please. I don't want to look at it anymore."
Palen led them all to Baxin's office. One of Harwol's people got Polifos a cup of water. The director sat in a chair, trembling and sipping.
"What plague?" Derec prompted.
"Old, old nanotech," Polifos said. "Do you know what UPDs are?"
"I know the term," Derec said. "I'm still not sure what it means. "
"Untreatable Physiological Dysfunction," Polifos said. "The term covers a lot of ground. Some of it is organic illnesses, chronic systemic dysfunctions, things we can only watch. We can't cure them. In some cases, we can provide a little relief, but they're all fatal, and usually pretty quickly. Ninety-eight percent of the cases are infants. The worst of them are nonorganic. We used to call them Vonooman Plagues." He shrugged. "I don't know why."
He drank again, coughed, and set the cup down. "Before we outlawed robots-long time ago-we played with everything. One of our developments was nanotech. We still have a lot of it. Food production is a result of old nanotech. Some medical treatments, manufacturing-but most of it got thrown out with the robots. Largely because a few experiments went wrong and we created self-sustaining inorganic colonies. Parasites, really. They disassembled extant structures and used the material. There was a huge panic when the first of them erupted a few hundred years ago. But the fact is, they ate themselves out. It was fast and furious and so fatal that within ten, twenty years they died out all on their own, except for a few aberrant strains that stayed in the ecosystem and caused relatively minor problems since."
"UPDs, " Derec said.
Polifos nodded. "Poor kids. They'd be born with a minor problem and through some vector we've never been able to trace, a colony of these things would take advantage and set up within the system. Within extreme intervention, death would be quick. We set up hospice centers for them. "
"They aren't very well advertised, " Palen said. "This is the first I've heard of them."
"Nobody wants to know about them. Anonymity is almost always desired by the parents, so it works out comfortably for everyone but the victim."
"So what changed?" Derec asked.
"We found strains that were sustaining the victim. They were adapting. Why now and not before? Don't know. And not in very many cases. But when we diagnosed the first adult cases of new infection, we knew we had a big problem."