“The desire to keep LLE’s activities underground affects how we handle a lot of our work. You might say it’s the unofficial LLE mission statement. People know we exist. We’re happiest if they believe we just sit here and monitor allotments and resets and catch an occasional black marketer,” Meg said, still watching Livvy as though she was gauging her reaction.
“This is key to understanding the work we do here,” she added.
At this point Richard Williams sauntered over from the coffee corner and hitched a hip on the side of Chris’ desk. “Lend me your venerable wisdom, Meg. What’s key to the work? I’ve been here ten years and I haven’t figured it out yet.” He took a sip from his mug.
“Not emulating a colleague who’s clueless as to what’s key to the work,” Meg said without a pause. Then, in an undertone to Livvy, “And he’s worked here ten years.”
Meg turned back to stare at Williams with a patient expression and after a few seconds said pleasantly, “This is private.”
Livvy thought she saw a fleeting resentment on Williams’ face, but it vanished too quickly for her to be sure. He threw up his hands in resignation.
“I was just hoping it was a bitch session on McGregor, so I could contribute my load,” he said to Livvy. “Anytime.”
He stood up and sauntered back to his desk.
“Sorry,” Dalton said when he had left. “I don’t have time for him this morning.”
“You were going to tell me about Josephson.”
Dalton was looking through the glass windows into the Chief’s office. Livvy noticed that the Chief was watching them, and some wordless, motionless signal might have passed between them, because Dalton stood up unexpectedly.
“Do you feel like a walk?” she asked. She went over to the coffee corner and freshened her cup, then waited while Livvy followed suit. “We’ll go talk in the Atrium. Have you found it yet? Bring Louie if you want. He’ll like it, too.
Out of the office and a few turns later, they began down a long, straight hall towards what appeared to be a lush miniature topiary set on the edge of a cliff. It made Livvy want to hurry to get there, except that at one point, the hall turned into a glass-enclosed bridge as they passed from the Enforcement building into City Central. They were seventeen stories up and she had her first view of the D.C. skyline. The Washington Monument and capitol dome, sixty years after their reconstruction, were visible high above the rest of the city, and the soaring Laws Memorial, only 10 meters shorter than the capitol, was framed between them. Meg paused so they could just look for a while, and Livvy noticed that Meg was also gazing out over the city.
“I never get tired of it,” Meg murmured. “First view?”
Livvy nodded. She couldn’t have said anything if she tried.
“McGregor and I were here when most of it was destroyed. Over there,” Meg said, pointing off to the right, “are most of the remaining embassies, from those nations still intact enough to maintain them. The rest of the mansions have gone to molebiol billionaires.”
They started walking again and reached the extension of the hall into the City Central building. “I’m assuming you flew in Sunday, and then yesterday and today you came in on an UGH and up on one of the swift-els straight from there. When McGregor took you out on your call you used the fastest route to the motor pool and back the same way, with few deviations. From now on you can come in this way when you have time. Even Chris does it, when he’s not in a hurry, which is all too infrequent.”
“UGH?” Livvy asked with only half of her attention on the answer.
“Underground Hop. The local underground conveyances that feed Metro are all called that, whether they’re Coasters or Paceways.”
They had emerged from the hall to stand in the middle of the topiary garden, and they threaded through the cross traffic of people moving at a wide variety of speeds until they reached the railing at the edge of the cliff.
“So, like it?” Meg asked.
“It’s magnificent,” Livvy said.
“City Central’s Atrium is its architects’ one concession to aesthetics. If you come in on an UGH, you can come in to the Atrium Station and walk up to the ground floor courtyard. From there you can walk, if you really want some exercise, or take one of the slow Atrium els up to 17 where we are, then find the garden here, take the hall back, and follow the route we just came. Enforcement, and more specifically LLE may be, as you saw, in one of the satellite buildings, but other than having to traverse the longer entrance hall and the bridge, we get the benefit of the Atrium all the same.”
Seeing Livvy’s face, Meg laughed and added, “Don’t worry, I’ll be going back with you this morning.”
It took Livvy a few moments to adjust to the height, and then she began to appreciate the whole scheme. The City Central building itself was a gigantic cylinder with an open core that was bout 75 meters across at the base and widened gradually as it reached the 20th floor. Broad, cantilevered stairs spiraled up the sides of the Atrium, clinging to the glass walls, and on very floor there was a long – 45 meters Livvy guessed – garden-bedecked landing. When Livvy looked down, she could see an extensive pond and what appeared to be a tea garden with flagstone paths and arched bridges in the ground floor courtyard. The suspended gardens spiraled up from there in a green ribbon with bright splashes of other colors. Two stories above them was a radiant garden designed to look like a rainbow, and on the third, sixth and 12th floors there were small waterfalls that cascaded down to a pool in one of the gardens below. With the sun at the right angle they looked like sparkling silver ribbons.
“As you can see, all of the gardens are different, and when you come up the interior els, you pass through one every five floors. These are the slow els, and because so many people like them, they stop a lot. I try to take a different el every day,” Meg continued, “unless I have time to walk up.”
Livvy looked up, beyond the three floors above them, to see open sky.
“What happens when it rains?”
“Usually not a problem, but if absolutely necessary, there are panels that come out of the roof and constrict over the opening like a pupil.”
They settled in on a bench that was surrounded by a family of topiary geese. A topiary fox nearby looked ready to spring, and a larger goose faced him with spread wings and an outstretched neck. Meg said, “I’ve always loved this bench. The work of a landscaper with a less-than-subtle sense of allegory, I know, but I still love it.”
She brought her gaze back to Livvy, and cocked her head again. “I’m curious. You weren’t expected. Not only do you transfer in out of the blue, but you get partnered with McGregor, who hasn’t had a partner in, well, decades, really.”
Livvy decided she was going to have to be honest about this one. The Chief knew the truth, and it was probably obvious to every one else on the squad that she had used some leverage to get her assignment.
“It’s a little embarrassing. My family has strings, I guess you’d call them, and one of them connects to the Commissioner. But McGregor hasn’t really accepted me yet. He said we’d give it a week, and I respect that.”
“Well, just so you know. McGregor seldom gives up on someone once he takes them on,” Meg said. “Which is one reason he doesn’t take partners to begin with, I think.” She looked down, leaving Livvy to wonder about the history between LLE’s two most veteran detectives.
Meg took a deep breath. “But the Chief asked me to give you the history on Josephson.” For someone who seemed so articulate, she was taking a long time to find a place to begin.
“There are quite a few practitioners and researchers who honestly disagree with the Laws,” Meg said finally. “They’re scientists, not ethicists, after all. And to be fair, even those who are mainly doing it for the money… I think most of them have their ethics gradually peeled away without noticing how insidious it is until it’s too late. Not this guy. Not this bastard Josephson.”