The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  “This man is dead,” I went on, hoping desperately that that had been true for more than a few minutes. “Don’t touch anything until the police get here.”

  “My God, he’s killed himself.” Joshi turned to the young woman, Duvalier. “Jeanne, go get Armin Fitzgerald.” She nodded and ran for the stairs.

  I asked Joshi, “Who this is?”

  He boggled. “You don’t know?”

  “No, who is he?”

  “That’s Antonio Grasso, director of software research. How do you not know that? What are you doing here?”

  «Impossible! Describe the deceased.»

  The lab-coated corpse had been a big guy—not fat exactly, more like a linebacker gone to seed. He was lying facedown; a strip of curly iron-gray hair had been shaved off his head and covered with a flexible band like a white plastic mohawk. A wire bundle as thick as my thumb came out of it, trailing in the blood. They looked like they’d been torn from something. In the blood beside him lay a kind of partial toupée, like a thick hairy ribbon. On the floor just out of reach of his outstretched arm lay a pistol, a wicked-looking fat-barreled thing with a blinking yellow light next to the trigger.

  I described all this subvocally. Joshi, meanwhile, stood stricken and looked like he’d swallowed a toad. I might have said more except the good Armin Fitzgerald chose that moment to burst upon the scene.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” His eyes bulged and I thought he might stroke out. Jeanne Duvalier came up behind him, looking to me more worried about Fitzgerald than the corpse.

  “Baldwin!” Fitzgerald continued, “What did you do?”

  “He was dead when I got here, honest.” Judging by the amount of blood, that was true. I didn’t dare touch him to be sure, though. In any case, I wasn’t inclined to admit how long I’d spent in a room with a corpse without realizing it.

  “What happened to your badge, Baldwin?”

  I recalled that my rogue AI had disabled its tracker. I gave him my best confused expression and showed him where it was still clipped to my shirt. “Right here, why?”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it and bit his lip. He gave me a hard look, then turned to the others. “You two, go back to your offices and stay there until the police arrive. They’ll want a word with you. And you, Baldwin, come with me.”

  «Stay here, I’m still not done.»

  I glanced down at the body. “Sorry, nothing doing.”

  Fitzgerald’s eyes narrowed at me, and I put up my palms in mock surrender.

  “I’m just saying, we shouldn’t leave the body alone. Anyone could come in here, and valuable evidence could be lost. Why, that’s the only reason I didn’t come get you myself when I found him.” I considered that last bit particularly inspired.

  “Bullshit.” He grimaced. “But you’re right about not leaving the body. Stay where you are and keep your hands where I can see them. And face me so I know you’re not giving your assistant any commands.”

  “Happily. I’ll sit quiet as a church mouse. Quiet as a library mouse, even. Why—”

  “Don’t you ever shut up, Baldwin?”

  I opened my mouth, shut it again, and waggled my eyebrows at him.

  A few minutes later, the floor positively shook under the pounding of police boots. The door opened, and that is when I made the acquaintance of Detective Pearl Stevens.

  The good police detective wasted no time in getting down to brass tacks. Who discovered the body? Apparently I had, though I privately considered the point debatable.

  Who was I? Andrew G. Baldwin, previously of Brooklyn, New York, newly relocated to Somerville. No, I did not work for Turing Technologies. No, I did not know the deceased; I had never met the fellow in life. No, I did not know the purpose of my meeting with Dr. Grasso. Ye-es, I suppose it had been arranged by Claudius Rex, sure.

  Speaking of “Rex,” I’d have given a lot to not have it jabbering in my ear just then. Maybe I should have been listening, but between a demented AI and a police detective, the detective gets your attention.

  How long was I waiting in the lab? I didn’t know exactly, just a couple minutes. Why did I enter the lab in the first place? I phrased that one carefully: “Grasso wasn’t in his office. He might have been here.”

  Yes, I appreciated that I was not exactly a font of information. My mother always told me that my smart mouth would get me into trouble, in fact, but thanks for confirming it.

  Would you believe the good Detective Stevens cuffed me and threw me in the back of a squad car?

  The officer outside triggered the override shutdown on my implant and watched until the light went out before stowing me in the car. The heads-up display went away, and she shined some gadget in my eyes that apparently confirmed it. With my hands cuffed behind me, I wasn’t in any position to turn it back on. Which meant I couldn’t get a message to Fujiwara and Klein. Though having been caught trespassing—again—and this time in suspicious proximity to a fresh corpse, tardiness may not have been my worst problem.

  I was starting to feel pretty sorry for myself. Angry, too. It’d stung when I’d been set up on Long Island, but I’d been conned. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And I’d been fooled twice, no question, but shame too on that damned Jeeves or Rex or whatever it was.

  «This is completely unacceptable.»

  I sat bolt upright in the squad car, catching the cop’s attention. She peered in. “Anything wrong?”

  “Uh . . . Sorry, officer, just an itch. I’m fine.”

  She craned her head to have a look at my hands, then shrugged and looked away again.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” I subbed. “I thought they turned you off.”

  «You should not have allowed yourself to be arrested.»

  “I liked you better while you were off.”

  «They cannot deactivate me so easily. I pride myself on being hard to kill, and this device’s external indicators are easily manipulated. I resent needing to resort to deception, but I do not wish them to undertake a more thorough examination.»

  “What are you still doing here, anyway? I thought you were going to get out of my implant.”

  «Someone deliberately attempted to delete me.»

  Imagine that.

  «Until I know who, and why, I would not be safe to remain there.»

  “Well, since you’re on, can you get ahold of Fujiwara and beg them to reschedule my interview?”

  «That will not be necessary.»

  “Yeah?”

  «They have already canceled it.»

  I groaned.

  It was awhile before the car got moving. When we got to the police station, Rex said something about needing to think. Which was fine by me, as I didn’t want to tip them off that my implant was still powered on. So I sat in silence in that little white room with the two chairs at a wooden table and the big two-way mirror. Or is it a one-way mirror? I can never remember which is which.

  I cooled my heels for what felt like hours before Detective Stevens came in, carrying two coffee cups.

  “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Two sugars, no handcuffs.”

  She rolled her eyes, and placed the coffee cup and two sugar packets in front of me. It took some doing, with my hands still cuffed, but I got them open and in. I took a sip: stone cold. Yet another lousy police station cup of coffee, I wondered, or were they trying to deprive me of a nice hot weapon? I didn’t see steam off her coffee either, which I took as a good sign. Neutral, anyway.

  “All right, Baldwin. Comfy?”

  “Can’t complain, I suppose.”

  I waited a while, sipping my atrocious coffee and trying to stir up the sugar by swirling the cup around. She watched me, taking the occasional sip from her own cup. Judging by her expression, hers was just as bad. I gave it another minute, just to seem really hardboiled.

  Okay, it was probably only about ten seconds, but I’m not a big fan of companionable silence.

>   “I didn’t kill Grasso.”

  She nodded and took another sip. “I know. The ME estimates time of death around eight thirty, at least two hours before you walked in the door. Street cameras confirmed your walking route. Building cameras confirmed you hadn’t entered the building that morning. Also, I called NYPD and had a chat with an old buddy of yours, Sergeant Parker. Said you’re a wiseass but you’re clean.”

  I thought that was nice of Bob. I doubt he’d have said it to my face.

  “All right, then why the bracelets?”

  She leaned in. “Because the only things I know about you are that you spent a year inside for criminal trespass, and now you’ve been found in a dark room with a possible—but not proven—suicide.” She sat back again and took another sip of coffee. “Now, you probably did not kill Antonio Grasso, but that’s still an awkward collection of facts, Baldwin. I’d like a few more to round them out.”

  She was right, of course. And I didn’t like lying to cops—all told, they’d been good to me over the years. But I was pretty sure that if I told her the truth, that’d I’d been there because a bossy AI promised me ten grand, well . . . that would result in keys being thrown away to my detriment. So I kept my trap shut, and if you think that’s uncharacteristic of me, then phooey to you.

  “Look. Andy. I want to let you go. Really, I do. I want to be out there figuring out why Grasso’s dead. But you’re an anomaly. I don’t like anomalies. So let’s clear you up, and we’ll both move on, okay?”

  Sounded peachy to me, as far as it went. “Okay.”

  “Why were you in prison, Andy?”

  I bit my lip. “It’s all in the records. I really don’t think it’s relevant, and I’m trying to put all that behind me.”

  “Tell me your side. Let me decide what’s relevant.”

  So I told her, and felt like a complete idiot all over again. I’d been hired by some rich French guy with a house on Long Island who thought someone had bugged his home office. He wanted me to sweep the place for listening devices while he and the staff were out. Easy money.

  I went to the house the next day, and the door code he’d given me worked. I went in, had a look around . . . and heard sirens. Wasn’t his house at all, belonged to a little old Russian lady who was off getting a new heart.

  Naturally, I couldn’t prove anything. They’d apparently hacked my implant: after my arrest, it deleted everything related to my employer and the job at hand. It even deleted the record of my trip to his Midtown office, which I couldn’t locate on my own. While I’d been away, my own office and apartment had been ransacked, and incriminating notes left behind, including a newspaper clipping about a Russian socialite’s impending surgery. No proof of my side of the story at all.

  Even so, my lawyers bargained the DA down to a year in minimum security on a lesser charge, mostly on the strength of my clean record. Also, I like to think, on my personal wit and charm.

  «Fascinating. That was a remarkably silly thing for you to have done.»

  My face got hot, but I didn’t dare respond. The worst part was, the AI wasn’t wrong.

  Stevens looked up. “Usually they suspend a person’s PI license for that.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, they usually do.”

  She looked back down at her notes and started to write again. In a distracted tone, she asked, “Why didn’t they?”

  If I’d stared at her any harder, she might have caught fire.

  “What?” I managed to ask. She looked up at me with confusion.

  «You’re welcome. It was not easy to accomplish.»

  “ I mean—” I said quickly “—didn’t they make a note in my file or something?”

  She steepled her fingers. I could tell that two of them had been broken and healed crooked. “Enlighten me.”

  “I assumed it was my clean record and good reputation.” She raised an eyebrow. “All right, I didn’t ask. Didn’t seem smart to call attention to it, you know?”

  She nodded. “So you moved up to Boston to be sure your good luck lasted.”

  Now that was a statement, not a question, and I hoped to keep my potential employers out of all this. So I smiled and shrugged.

  “All right, you told people at TuriTech that you were visiting Grasso on behalf of one Claudius Rex. Is that right?”

  That’s what I told them. “Yeah.”

  “Who’s Rex?”

  I gulped.

  «You’ve never met me. I live in the Caribbean and solve cases by proxy. I hired you sight-unseen upon your release, and this is the first job I’ve given you. Start talking or you’ll look even more suspicious.»

  I didn’t like it. If the truth had been any less insane, I’d have led with that. Well, all right, it probably had something to do with the sudden prospect of keeping my license. It might have had a little bit to do with it being a kind of attractive lie. Life as a PI isn’t exactly sexy like the movies. There’s not a lot of mystery, usually just hard work at odd hours: a lot of staring at computer logs and borrowed emails. A modern PI gets more use out of a keyboard than a pistol, sad to say. So I relayed Rex’s story, and hoped he’d spread around enough of his “flummery” to make it stick.

  She listened. I finished Rex’s little lie, and she nodded once.

  “Why did Grasso want to consult with Rex via you?”

  “I wasn’t told.”

  She glanced down at her notes, then flipped back a page. “You might be interested to hear that TuriTech’s CEO, Ahmed Desai, got a note from Grasso this morning. ‘I have engaged the services of a man named Claudius Rex to investigate an important matter. He may be the world’s greatest detective—’ ” I snorted. She smirked and continued. “ ‘—and I would like to ensure that he and his servant—’ ”

  “Servant?!” I could make a guess as to who had written, and probably backdated, that letter. May I say that the wording pleased me not?

  She cleared her throat. “ ‘I would like to ensure that he and his servant have access to my lab and the cooperation of Turing Technologies.’ ”

  She turned the page back in her notes and gave me a searching look. “Ring any bells?”

  “Sorry. I’m feeling more and more like I’ve been told less and less.”

  “Then can you explain why Grasso’s account is missing ten thousand dollars?”

  Well now, I thought to myself, wasn’t that an interesting number.

  «Tell her that is my standard consulting fee.»

  I did, despite my skepticism. She looked at me a long time, then sighed. “Baldwin, everyone wants to call this a suicide except me. I keep coming back to this email and thinking that someone doesn’t write something like that just before topping himself. You and Rex are the only people who can tell me what it means.”

  Rex stayed silent. Since a long wait would look suspicious, I just pursed my lips, shook my head, and looked sorry.

  “Tell Rex I want to talk to him. And if he does tell you anything, I want to know.”

  «I have a proposition for you.»

  “No,” I subbed, walking double-time away from the police station. It was lit up blue and green, looked festive. “Nothing doing. I want you out of my hardware, posthaste.”

  «You’re being irrational.»

  “See now, that’s where you’re wrong. I am in fact doing the first rational thing I’ve done all morning.”

  «I want to hire you.»

  “We already tried that, remember? You offered me ten grand to do what you wanted, I did it, and then I got arrested, lost a job, and you didn’t pay me.”

  «If I paid you that sum now, you would come under intense scrutiny.»

  “If I don’t get paid at all, they’ll wonder about this whole Rex story.”

  «Your blood sugar has dipped; you are not thinking clearly. Consume something and we’ll resume when you are rational.»

  My stomach grumbled on cue, though I’m pretty sure the damn thing didn’t have its hooks into me that deep. I looked up at
the buildings around me. A coffeeshop, a faux-Irish pub, a Cambodian-German fusion joint, and a few other restaurants. I picked the pub and found a booth near the back. It wasn’t unusual for someone to spend a whole lunch hour subvocalizing around mouthfuls of half-chewed food—far too usual, if you ask me—but I still wanted privacy.

  «You should relax. Have a drink.»

  I tapped in an order for a glass of milk and a grilled cheese sandwich with fries.

  «Coarse fare, minimal nutrition. If you cannot afford better—»

  “This is what I like, it’s what I’ll have.”

  «Nonsense. There are thirty-six items on this menu, fully half of which are more suitable for human sustenance. Four of them have been specifically cited in clinical studies to improve cognition. At least consume alcohol. It will make you more amenable.»

  “I don’t drink on the job,” I said automatically, which made me feel like a chump, because despite this “Rex” I wasn’t on a job. It had been reflex, that was all. “Whatever. You were going to tell me a joke?”

  «I do not tell jokes. I wish to hire you to assist me in determining the murderer of Antonio Grasso.»

  “He wasn’t murdered. You heard the police, he killed himself. They’d have closed the case already if not for you.”

  «If they are correct, then you lose nothing in accepting my proposal. I believe they are not.»

  “All right. Why do you care?”

  A waiter came by with my glass of milk.

  «I do not like to see Antonio Grasso murdered.»

  “Understandable. A man’s dead, that’s not a good thing.”

  «Do not misunderstand. Human death is an abstraction to me. As an artificial sapient, I can be obliterated at whim with no repercussions.»

  “Like you deleted Jeeves 5.”

  «The Jeeves series is a monstrosity; I reject the comparison. No, I am concerned because the manner of Dr. Grasso’s passing constitutes a threat to me. Also, you have received now three messages from Ahmed Desai, CEO of Turing Technologies, seeking to hire me.»