Captain Nootbaar had been alerted by the sergeant’s call. He waved toward the doorway to attract Lacey’s attention. The captain’s desk was a little larger than most of the hundreds of others crowding the unpartitioned room, and extensions from the desk supported three scanner helmets instead of just one. Lacey made his way to Nootbaar with practiced care; governmental offices were just as crowded in Southern Region as they were here. At a glance, Lacey assessed the captain as sixty, softly massive, and a better cop than this place had any right to hope for.
“Expected you by the stairs,” the big man said as they shook hands. He tapped his scanner helmet. “Interesting replay here of how your guide tripped.”
Lacey smiled. “I’m an honored guest of the City,” he said. “They could find me a car. Besides, it’s been a while since you’ve climbed any stairs yourself, hasn’t it?”
Nootbaar looked down ruefully at his gut. “Well, there’s a patrol inbound past my block every morning at 0655. Wouldn’t be efficient for me to waste energy walking, would it?” His eyes raised and caught Lacey’s. “You know, if I’d realized you weren’t just some rube the brass was wasting my time with, there’d have been a car at the airport. Sorry.”
Lacey smiled more broadly. “Guess if I’d needed your help, I wouldn’t have deserved it, hey?” The smile passed. “Though you can help me learn what the hell I’m doing here.”
Nootbaar shrugged. “Pull down some headgear,” he said as he reached for one of the scanner helmets himself. “I’m supposed to give you background,” he went on, his voice muffled by the two helmets. “I don’t know quite what they want you to do with it; but if they give you a chance to back out, Lacey, don’t wait for them to ask twice.”
Lacey’s helmet formed a dull image in response to Nootbaar’s direction. “I’m picking this pretty much at random,” the local man explained obscurely to Lacey. They were watching a sub-surface level of an old building converted to residential occupancy. Sparse glow strips provided less light than would suffice for reading. Transparent panels, waist high, marked off narrow aisles and living units scarcely more spacious. “Do you have a district, a tolerated zone, where you are?” Nootbaar asked.
“You mean, no scanners, no police?” Lacey said. “Enter at your own risk?”
“That sort of thing, yeah. A place all the decent folk kind of ignore, unless they need something that’s sold there. Violates State statutes as well as local, but let the State try and enforce it if they think it’s so damned important.”
“I know the theory,” the Southerner replied. “There’s places I’ve been that have them. But not Greensboro. Christ, there’s nothing you can’t buy legally, unless it’ll permanently injure somebody else. And if it’s just that you don’t want the scanners watching—” Lacey paused, his flesh trembling with the memory of his own needs being satisfied under a scanner’s glare—”that’s tough.”
“We got a district here,” Nootbaar said. “It’s called Underground.”
On the helmet screens a figure rose from out of the floor and began scuttling toward the open staircase. “There’s one for sure!” the captain exclaimed. He boosted the magnification. First the scanner focused on the wooden grating that had been shifted to give entry to the level. Then Nootbaar switched to close coverage of the figure itself as it scurried up the stairs. “Probably an old heating duct,” Nootbaar said, presumably referring to the access hole. Lacey waited with the silent patience of a sniper who moves only enough to start a bullet toward an opponent’s heart.
After walking up three levels of stairs, the figure exited to the outside. Street cameras automatically shunted their data to the watching helmets. The subject was a woman in flowing gray coveralls and a hat whose brim flopped over her eyes. She turned into the doorway of a quality clothing emporium. The floor within was leased on a square-meter basis to scores of individual boutiques.
Without warning, the woman scooped up three dresses awaiting alterations on a counter. The boutique manager shouted and leaped atop the counter. The thief ran for the door as the manager collapsed. A “customer” standing in the next booth had stitched him through the chest with a needle stunner before following the woman out the door.