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control rooms to patrol cars, prisoner vans to fast-pursuit cars and smartdust dispenser trucks. A clear victory for design optimism over real-world practicality. Sid had never even seen anyone use the lowest level in all his fifteen years in Newcastle; the police simply didn’t have that kind of fleet.
    Every winter in the city, some councilor raised the idea of heating the roads Scandinavian-style to get rid of the snow and ice—at least in the center of Newcastle—and each year it was deferred to an appraisal committee. Instead, long-term interests prevailed; low-wage crews and big snowplows hit the roads and pavements on Monday morning, attempting to clear the weekend’s snow for the armada of office workers heading in to the center. They’d made a reasonable job leading up to the station’s ramps; Sid drove his four-year-old Toyota Dayon down into the Market Street garage without worrying about sliding. He’d only seen two shunts on the way in, and it’d taken an acceptable fifteen minutes.
    It was coming up on twenty past eight by the time he made it up to the third floor where the serious case offices were situated. The 2North murder had been assigned Office3, one of the larger ones, with two rows of zone console desks that could sit up to twelve specialist network operatives, a couple of zone cubicles, and five hi-rez, floor-to-ceiling wallscreens; one side was partitioned off into four private offices. Thermal exchange climate vents rattled as they produced a stream of air at a temperature three degrees below comfortable, the blue-gray carpet was worn and stained, the furniture was ten years old, but on the plus side the network systems had all been upgraded last year. Sid knew that was what really counted; clearly O’Rouke knew it as well. Only five of the third-floor offices had been modernized in the last four years.
    Detective Dobson was leading the night-shift team, which consisted of three operatives establishing the procedures Sid had agreed on with her at the shift handover last night. She acknowledged him with a quick nod and beckoned him into one of the glass-walled side offices.
    “Basic datawork is laid out,” she told him. “We’ve been downloading riverside surveillance mesh memories since five this morning. I’ve gone all the way upstream to the A1 bridge, and taken it two streets back on both sides.”
    “Thanks. How far is it to the bridge?”
    “Close on seven and a half kilometers, but I’ve included the corresponding road macromesh so you can observe the vehicle traffic. That’s a lot of memory.” She hesitated before lowering her voice. “There are some gaps.”
    “Bound to be with this kind of snow.”
    “Maybe. See what you think when you review it.”
    “Hoookay. Do we have an identity yet?”
    She gave him a woeful glance. “I think it could be a North.”
    “Smartarse. Which one? Actually, do we even know how many there are?”
    “It’s a difficult figure to find. Northumberland Interstellar isn’t exactly forthcoming about how many times Augustine has been a daddy.”
    “Most of the 2s were born to surrogate mothers, weren’t they? Those kids were popped out just to boost NI’s management numbers.”
    “Depends which non-licensed site loaded with disgraceful muck-raking gossip you access. But as best as I could find, there’s just under a hundred of them. More 3s, mind; they’re frisky boys, our Norths. But we’re not riding an exponential curve here, thank God. The 2s aren’t big breeders. Why would you, when you know your son’s going to be a few neurons short of a headful? Shame the 3s don’t have that much sense; and there are a lot of sharp little gold diggers out there ready to trap a 3 and collect their palimony, so we’ve no idea about how many 4s are wandering around loose.”
    “Best guess?”
    “Could be up to three hundred and fifty. I’m not guaranteeing that, mind.”
    “And no one’s called this one in missing?”
    “He’s been