Chimera

by Will Shetterly

  She smiled, baring very white teeth. What do you call the canines in a cat? Her teeth, like so much of her, passed for human at first glance. But her fangs, like those of her forebears, had been designed to rip flesh from her prey. "If we're both lucky, Mr. Maxwell, it won't take you long to find what I'm after."

  A home repair show followed the news. Neither of us got up to see if it was possible to change the channel. If I ever have a house with gutters, I'll be able to take great care of them.

  A human cop saved me from learning how to take equally great care of tile grout. She was short, stocky, and a little more communicative than her predecessor. She seemed to have decided to treat us like guests you could shoot if they misbehaved. "Mr. Maxwell? Zoe? This way, please."

  The cat kept her eye on the bot backing up the human. I began to wonder about Minnesota's policy on bots in general. Some people don't like them, the way some people get the creeps from dolls and puppets. But copbots are humanform in silhouette only. Okay, they have optics where a human's eyes would be so they can send stereoscopic images to CityCentral. Still, they look as lifelike as a wooden artist's mannequin. No one would look at a copbot and see any kind of mimicry of life.

  Then I thought about the way housecats chase light from laser pointers. I had no idea what Zoe Domingo saw when she looked at a copbot or what she considered a mimicry of life. Bots move, don't they? The apeman that werewolfed in New York had torn into a copbot with the same berserker glee that it had taken to its biological prey.

  The second cop duo brought us to a small room with a table, four uncomfortable plastic chairs, and a monitor mounted high on the wall. Classical music played in the background, something almost soporific. The walls were sky blue, a soothing color, but that and the music did not make this a soothing room. The closest thing to decoration was a "no smoking" sign bought cheap from an office supply site. I'm sure there's a room in police headquarters where they would bring the governor if they needed to question her about something. This wasn't it.

  The cat took a chair and closed her eyes. I was getting envious. I watched her nap and wondered what I had gotten into. I had just decided to light a cig and see whether the smoke would summon anyone when two men entered.

  "Mr. Maxwell? I'm Detective Vallejo. This is my partner, Detective Chumley." No one offered a hand, so I nodded to them. Vallejo was a small, round man in a business suit that absorbed light. My first thought was that he wore it to look thinner. But nullight is expensive—if he'd wanted to be thinner, he clearly could've afforded the occasional visit to a body shop. His voice was pleasant, with a hint of an accent, his tone was polite, and his smile looked sincere. I knew I was supposed to like the guy, but I did anyway.

  Chumley looked like he'd walked out of a museum exhibit for the theory of human evolution. If he grew a beard and got a forehead tat, your only question would be whether he had gorilla or baboon genes. My vote would've been for gorilla. I first thought his suit was cheap because he hit a body shop every week. Then I saw that his hands were hard like a fighter's and decided that his muscle came the hard way, and the cheap suit was a badge of honor. Or maybe it was to annoy his more fashionable partner. Or maybe it was just to say that he didn't want to get anything on good clothes, like your blood.

  Chumley's expression of perpetual constipation told me I wasn't supposed to like him. Stifling the impulse to assure him he was doing one hell of a job, I stood and offered my hand. "What can we do for you, detectives?"

  Vallejo's grip was firm, to emphasize that he was more than a dandy. Chumley's was gentle, to let me know that he didn't need to use his strength to threaten me.

  The cat had risen when I did. Both detectives ignored her. Vallejo indicated the chairs. "We need to ask Zoe some questions."

  She nodded. "Of course."

  I said, "And everything we say in here's going to be run through a lie detection program."

  Chumley grinned coldly. "What do you think?"

  I shrugged. "No one's got anything to hide."

  As we all sat, Vallejo asked the cat, "You realize that it's a crime to fail to report a crime?"

  She frowned. "What do you mean?"

  Chumley said, "Should he try again in Spanish?" When she blinked at him, he added, "We pulled your file. We can tell you your litter number at Bionova's Panama branch and the names of everyone you were sold to. No one wants to keep you long, do they?"

  She said, "English is fine. What crime did I fail to report?"

  Vallejo said, "Tell us about Janna Gold."

  "If you're asking, you already know."

  Chumley said, "Humor us."

  "She was my friend."

  "Friend," said Chumley. "You've had the same address for two years. After you ran away from Fulltime Entertainment, she bought your papers and gave you your freedom. I'm guessing she was a little more than a friend, huh, pussycat?"

  The cat studied him. "You don't know a lot about friends, do you, Detective?"

  Vallejo smiled as he looked away from his partner.

  Chumley said, "You and the doctor have some kind of spat? If there was trouble between you two, we'll find out about it."

  "No," said the cat. "You can't think I'm responsible for—"

  "You didn't report it. You abandoned your friend—"

  Vallejo interrupted. "Given the circumstances, that might be understandable."

  Chumley frowned at him. "Yeah, right."

  Vallejo said, "Did Dr. Gold have any enemies?"

  "No," said the cat.

  "There's no reason anyone would want her dead?"

  "Not that I know of." When the detectives kept watching her, she added, "Doc tended to under-tip. That's no reason to kill her."

  I wanted to tell her that her experience with necessity must not have included waiting tables, but I kept my place in the peanut gallery.

  Vallejo said, "Who would benefit from her death?"

  "She has a sister in Havana with a couple of kids. But they were close. They visited often. I can't believe her family had anything to do with it."

  "If you're looking at people who inherit," said Chumley, "put yourself at the top of the list."

  That was the first time I saw the cat look completely surprised. Her jaw dropped to speak, her eyes opened wide, her ears swivelled forward, and her head drew back as she stared at the detectives. It lasted an instant. She closed her mouth, narrowed her eyes, and relaxed her ears and shoulders, reverting to the dispassionate mask that most chimeras present in public.

  Vallejo asked the obvious—one of the marks of a good detective. "You didn't know about the will?"

  "I never thought to ask. Who's in it, and how much do they get?"

  Chumley said, "Gold's not dead four hours, and you want to know what you've won."

  The cat leaned forward. I prepared to tackle her if she went for Chumley's throat. She said, "I want to know who else might benefit. Doc may've under-tipped, but she could be generous, too."

  Vallejo said, "There's three meg to you, three more to the sister and each of the kids, two meg to the Clean Seas Society. Everything else goes to the Chimera Advancement League. That includes her patents and copyrights."

  The cat looked at her hands in her lap. I felt bad that the three of us were studying her so closely just then, but if you're not willing to feel bad, you shouldn't be in our line of work.

  Chumley said, "Disappointed she didn't leave everything to the house pet?"

  The cat flicked her gaze to him. "Most of it went to the C.A.L., right? I think she did."

  Chumley nodded. That may've been the closest thing to embarrassment that he could manage.

  Vallejo said, "Why'd you come to L.A.?"

  "For a vacation."

  "That's all?"

  "So far as I know."

  "Who do you know here?"

  "No one."

  "What about Gold?"

  "She said there was someone we would visit. She didn't say who."

  "You weren't
curious?"

  "Like a cat." She smiled, not so much at him as, I thought, at a memory. "She didn't want to tell. She could be like that."

  Chumley said, "Secretive."

  The cat shook her head. "She liked to surprise me."

  Chumley jerked a thumb at me. "How'd you hook up with him?"

  "He was the first detective I found who would work for a chimera."

  Chumley turned to me. "You're not too discriminating."

  I shrugged. "Look who I'm hanging out with now."

  Vallejo said, "She hired you to find Gold's killer?"

  I could feel the cat watching me. I nodded. "That's about the size of it."

  "What've you learned?"

  I laughed. "Hey, I got the job in the casino. You've known about this longer than I have."

  Chumley turned back to the cat. "You went right to the phone and hired a detective rather than calling the police."

  "I don't like cop—" She held his gaze for the tiniest moment before she finished. "Bots."

  Chumley scowled. Vallejo caught his arm and shook his head. "Let her have that."

  Chumley grunted softly in agreement. "Tell us about the trip out here."

  The cat shrugged. "We took a train out of Minneapolis this morning, caught the Daytripper in Chicago, arrived in L.A. at five-thirty local time."

  "Uneventful?"

  "I'd say so."

  "Would the conductor agree?"

  She frowned. "I got up to get Doc some water and left my ticket behind. The conductor thought I was supposed to be in third class. Doc told him I was with her. It was no big deal."

  "He said you have an attitude problem."

  "Well. He thought I should've been grateful for the chance to blow a real human in return for riding in first. Learning I had a ticket was a problem for his attitude, not mine."

  Chumley grinned, not a pleasant sight.

  Vallejo coughed, said, "I see," drew a remote control from his jacket, and clicked on the monitor. "We have some interesting video from the security cameras. Care to tell us about it?"

  The cat's eyes narrowed. She glanced at me. I gave her a tiny shrug, and she nodded to the detectives. "Why not?"

  Chapter Three

  The monitor showed a still image of L.A.'s Union Station waiting room all decked out for Christmas with holo angels carrying gift-wrapped packages back and forth below the ceiling. The waiting room was full of passengers, mostly human, but a few non- as well: a bot at the elbow of an old man, a plump pigman in a business suit, a trio of white ratwomen in nurses' uniforms. Two porters crossed in the foreground, a bot cart and a small, hairy man with a monkey tat. I refrained from asking if the monkeyman was a relative of Chumley's.

  Vallejo put the remote control's pointer on the cat and an older woman who appeared to be entering from Track Nine. I glanced at the cat beside me as Vallejo zoomed in on her image. She watched the monitor impassively, as if she had shown enough surprise in this room.

  The onscreen Zoe was dressed like the one beside me, in the same short iridescent green jumpsuit and silver boots, but she wore a black backpack. A suitcase rolled close to her heels like a faithful Collie.

  The older woman with her reminded me of my Aunt Dakota. That meant I was inclined to respect her without especially liking her. No taller than the cat, she looked sturdy. Her gray hair was clipped short, she wore no make-up, and she had let her skin wrinkle naturally. She wore a tweed suit and brown walking shoes, as if she'd rather be in England's Lake District than L.A. A dozen earrings in each ear were her only concession to vanity.

  "Well?" said Chumley.

  "That's us," the cat agreed, then said, "Wait!" She jumped up, went to the monitor, and pointed at a man in the background who was watching the news in a rental holochair. "Can we see his face?"

  Vallejo put the crosshairs on the man and hit reverse. The man got out of the chair and raced away backwards. Vallejo hit play, and the man walked forward in perfect silence.

  I said, "Who erased the audio?"

  Chumley looked at me like I was a bug on a just-washed windshield. "We've got audio."

  Vallejo said, "Mostly crowd noise and P.A. music. If you want to hear that—"

  "No thanks." The music in the stations consists of ads disguised as technofolk tunes. Someone could make a fortune selling ear plugs to commuters. But while I was glad to miss the latest creations of the jinglemasters, I was also sure the cops had more useful audio than they were admitting. Sound filtering and lip reading software would give them large pieces of what was being said onscreen. I hoped the cat realized that nothing would please them more than catching her in a lie.

  She still stared at the man on the display. He looked young and physically fit. There was nothing special about his beige water-look suit. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was the pair of mirrored See-alls hiding his eyes.

  "Doyle," the cat said with an edge to her voice. Vallejo freezeframed. Doyle had conventionally handsome features and short brown hair parted on the side. He looked like someone who would be encouraged by his friends to become an actor or a model because he photographed well. He wasn't memorable enough to become a star. He looked like the nice guy that the girl dumps when she realizes she's destined for a wonderful life with the male lead.

  "You'd met him earlier?" Vallejo asked.

  "No," said the cat. "I didn't realize we were being watched."

  Vallejo hit play. When the cat and Janna Gold reentered the waiting room, he clicked the cross hairs on the cat. The computer began tracking her. She waited while Gold looked around the room, then said something to her. The cat pointed at a subway sign. As they headed toward it, passing a café with a "humans only" sign, Chumley said, "Well?"

  Vallejo let the video play while the real-time cat answered, "Doc wanted to know if I'd like to get a cab. I told her the subway would be—" Her voice caught. She closed her eyes, bit her upper lip, took a deep breath, then looked back at the detectives. "—more fun."

  Onscreen, at the entrance to the subway system, Gold fingered the largest of her earrings, then released it and glanced over her shoulder. As the cat looked a question her way, I recognized the black opal earring that I now carried in the Pocket.

  Gold smiled reassuringly at the cat and followed her into the subway tunnel. The rush hour traffic included a copbot heading in the same direction. As the cat disappeared from view, Doyle stood and walked away.

  Another camera picked up the cat in the tunnel. She waited while Gold tapped her thumb twice against a scanner. Then they proceeded into the station.

  A third camera caught them stepping onto a slidewalk that carried them down a long tunnel. On the walls, posters flickered to life, advertising guardbots, sex clubs, rates on indentured servants, and the opportunity to live in domed communities. The onscreen cat winced as they passed a poster with attractive G-stringed chimeras shimmying on a stage. I knew the cat was new to the city then; Angelenos no longer notice the announcer shouting, "At Dr. Do-Lot's, you don't just talk with the animals!"

  The cat and her friend met a flurry of commuters heading in the opposite direction, which meant they had just missed a train. At the end of the tunnel, they stepped off the slidewalk and turned the corner toward the platform. As they went out of sight, the copbot followed them into the tunnel.

  Vallejo over-rode the computer tracking so we could watch the copbot. It opened a plate on the wall and flipped the switch inside. A steel gate slid out to block the tunnel, sealing the bot in with the cat and Gold. A sign on the side of the gate read, "Temporarily Out of Service."

  I frowned. A copbot closing off access to a subway platform suggested an official operation in progress. But if the police wanted Gold and the cat, why hadn't they been arrested in the waiting room?

  The image cut to a subway platform, empty except for the cat and Gold. As Gold looked down the tracks for a train, the cat led her suitcase to a bench, then shrugged off her backpack and set it on top of the suitcase. />
  Gold returned to the bench. She and the cat began to talk, apparently quite casually. The detectives and I looked at the cat in the room. When she looked away, Vallejo stopped the video. "I know this is difficult—"

  The cat sat up as if stretching her spine. "Let it play." As silent conversation resumed onscreen, she provided the narration. "Doc said she was going out after we checked in. I asked her what I'd be doing. She said I never had trouble finding some fun. I told her I thought we'd both be finding some fun on our first night in town. But she said she had to talk to a friend about a project."

  The image froze again. Vallejo asked, "What project?"

  The cat shook her head. "Doc worked on lots of things. When I asked her about them, the language got technical fast. I quit asking."

  "She must've mentioned some names."

  "All the time. But I don't know who she was referring to then."

  Chumley said, "She worked for the big robotics firms: Seimens, Chain Logic, Singer, Sony. Any of them come up?"

  "Not like there was anything special about any of them."

  Vallejo hit play, and the cat continued narrating. "Doc said she wouldn't be long. I said, 'Fine, I'll tag along.' She said she wanted her friend to tell her she was imagining things, and then maybe we could all get a drink together. I asked— Stop it."

  Vallejo paused the two in mid-discussion. The cat said, "Can we skip the next part?"

  Chumley shook his head. "We need to know you didn't forget something."

  She looked at me. I didn't like it, but I nodded. This was her best chance to convince the police she was innocent—and her best chance to convince me, too.

  She said, "Okay. I asked Doc if I would like her friend. She said she thought so. Then—" Zoe bit her upper lip. On the display, Gold smiled as she said something. Her smile died without warning when something small zipped by her and smacked against the far wall. The next one struck her neck—a police sleep dart. Gold's mouth opened in surprise and fear. Then she sagged as the drug took effect.