“Somehow, I would have guessed that,” she finally said, putting down her pizza. “Look, McGregor, I suspect that, like me, no matter how long you live you will never again have time enough for small talk. I’ll also hazard that I’m as used to eating alone and working while I eat as you are. I’m not going to enjoy this pizza half as much as I should if we try to avoid it now.
“What didn’t you want to talk about in the office?”
Chris finished chewing his mouthful of pizza, swallowed, and took a swig of beer before replying. “I need to hear something first. Cards on the table. Why LLE? Homicide has more status and probably gets more challenging. Tactical can get more exciting.” He moved his longnecked bottle around in the small circle of condensation on the table, but he kept his eyes on her.
“I thought we covered this already. In the car. After Marcy Caster’s,” Livvy said, working at cutting a manageable bite with her fork.
“Humor me,” Chris said.
Livvy put the fork down and looked at him levelly. “You read about my family and you’ve picked up on my inconspicuous vanity…”
Chris stopped moving his beer around but his expression didn’t change.
“…and you’ve decided you can’t trust me?”
“No. That is, I do,” Chris said with a flicker of surprise, but he continued to regard her levelly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here like this. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what?”
“A lot of people look at the violations, unless you’re talking about something like the Right of Maturity Law, as victimless crimes.”
“Or the Pheromone cases you mentioned, or substandard hotlabs, or all kinds of things that can hurt people. Like I said, I thought we covered this the first day we met, after Marcy.”
“Maybe. Did you get bored?’’
Livvy looked down at her congealing pizza and sighed. “When I was young and my friends and I argued I used to give a long soliloquy about the philosophy behind the Laws. Longevity and enhancement technologies are… the ultimate divisive issues. You can’t imagine how often I have heard the arguments, usually from decent, well-meaning people. People who happen to be well-off enough that the consequences wouldn’t touch them. They’d smile and nod and pretend to listen. Not really wanting to think about it much because they wouldn’t want to risk having to change their minds.
“I’ll never be able to work in Longevity in San Francisco, which means I can probably never go home again. I’d know too many of the perps,” she said on a note that made it plain the thought had just occurred to her.
She looked up at Chris. “You know, Mozart was only 35 when he died.”
Chris raised his eyebrows.
“Maybe we need fleeting youth and intimations of mortality to be really creative. Maybe we’ve lost the best part of ourselves. But you said it: genies never get stuffed back into their bottles. They just don’t. So this is what we’ve got. If I can do anything to prevent it, though, we are not going to evolve into a two-tiered society with dynasties of molebiol-engineered superbeings in towers. Enhancements have to be regulated and Longevity has to have a limit. It has to cost more than mere money, and what else is there that compares to biological immortality?”
“Children,” Livvy answered herself with Chris remained silent.
“It’s the big compromise, and the only one that could work. Give everyone plugged into Longevity a 200 year allotment and a fifty year reduction in allotment for every child. Three children and you’re almost back to a natural life. It’s as fair as we can make it. I’ve never been able to think of anything else that would work.” There was a long pause. Livvy finally smiled.
“You have got to be one hell of an interrogator,” she finally said. “So now you’re asking me to get personal. Why and how LLE…? All right. The public, the whole public, not just naturals or those plugged into Longevity, need to trust us to enforce the Laws fairly, or it’s open season on others from both camps and the Laws won’t save us,” Livvy said, flushing. “So much for civilization as we currently know it. And I find I can live with the one we have.
“I came here because it’s where it all began, some of it with you, McGregor. And as far as how I got here… I asked my father to call the DC Commissioner. That was so much fun, by the way, that in another fifty years I may even do it again. Or maybe not.”
During Livvy’s extended response Louie got up and walked slowly over to the table, then lay down on the floor in the angle between Livvy and Chris.
“Okay. Well, I hope it’s worth it. Don’t glare at me, Hutchins. You weren’t alive for the Allotment Riots, and the history as taught doesn’t convey the… hopelessness. I just wanted to make sure that if I’m going to ask you to risk your life you’re doing it for something you really believe in.”
“I kind of do that every day already,” Livvy said, pointedly touching her wounded arm and struggling to look aggrieved. “Risk my life, that is,” she added, in case Chris missed the gesture.
Chris gave a slight smile. “Regardless, that really is a scratch compared to what you risk if you continue working this case with me.”
“Tell me, seriously,” Livvy asked, curious. “What is it about Josephson, beside what happened fifty years ago? It can’t be another case of the same sickening abuse.”
“You see? We should have eaten first. Keep eating your pizza. It’s not the end of the world, and it’s probably not even another Sara Torkelson. it’s just the start of a private little war,” Chris said. “LLE has them all the time. Eat.”
Livvy half-heartedly picked up her fork and Chris started his story.
“Josephson was last seen Thursday. His research notes all disappeared sometime between then and when we showed up, with no one at the clinic the wiser.”
“Which means he is seriously gone, won’t be back for a while, and probably had help,” Livvy said.
“You got it. Also, he’s financially flush, able to finance his research into, we can safely say, less lucrative fields, and still able to afford a lavish lifestyle. I had Forensics check out all of his finances yesterday and you should see his home. He’s rich.”
“McGregor, he’s a doctor.”
“I know, but he doesn’t have that many clients, nor is it coming from family or investments. Forensics says he’s been receiving automatic, regular deposits of large sums for as far back they’ve been able to retrieve so far.”
“So he has a rich patron. Someone is financing his research at the licensed lab, hoping for some big new enhancement payoff, or at worst maybe a hotlab, someplace he’s doing illegal resets?” Livvy asked.
“A hotlab, most definitely, and it would be an expensive one. Unfortunately that’s not that unusual. It has to be someone very secretive, though, because none of Josephson’s coworkers even hinted at such an arrangement.”
“Maybe they’re too afraid of him. You think his patron called him away suddenly?” Livvy asked. She reached down and rubbed Louie’s ears.
“I don’t know yet, but it looks like it, doesn’t it? Josephson’s sudden unreliability at the clinic, which triggered LLE alarms, had to have been unplanned. I think Josephson, the arrogant son of a bitch, screwed up. If he’d made the effort to be more patient in communicating with his staff instead of doing his usual toss off… if he’d canceled appointments further ahead or made a reasonable excuse about an emergency, we might not be here. But he followed his high-handed pattern in dealing with others and ignored the implications of an careless exit.”
“So someone calls Josephson away, somewhat abruptly, and then they realize he was sloppy and we’re investigating and they don’t want Josephson found, especially if it leads to them, so they try to have us killed at Isabella’s? Yesterday, how did they even know we’d started working on Josephson’s disappearance? We’d just gotten our assignment. I don’t doubt it; Maas was in that tree before we got there. But how?” Livvy asked.