.exe

by Robin Jeffrey

  Waiting until Minerva was well out of sight, Cadence strode towards me. She leaned forward, one hand on my shoulder, her lips at my ear. “I know how your father was killed.”

  “What? You’re joking!” I shook my head and pulled away. “You don’t joke, do you? How did you–”

  “Your father,” she gave my shoulder a squeeze before taking a step back, eyes moving around the room, “was killed right about where you’re standing, I’d say. The murderer attacked him, perhaps following him from the library.”

  Her gaze darted down the hallway behind her, towards the kitchen. “He or she cleaned up the blood, cleaned up themselves, and then moved the body upstairs to your father’s room, locking the door from the inside. They unlocked the connecting door, entering your room while you and Victoria slept, found your key on the bedside table, and let themselves out through your door. Locking it from the outside, they then slipped the key back in under the door. Brilliant.”

  Tapping my foot against the floor, I waited until it was clear that Cadence had run her train of thought into its station. I ticked my head to one side, heart throbbing. “Are you going to tell me how you know all that?”

  “Eventually.” She drummed her fingers against her chin, brow furrowed. “You’re so impatient. After all,” she started pacing around the entryway, “we still don’t know the ‘who’ and that’s the most important part.” Stopping by the staircase, she pivoted on her heel to face me. “Did you know your father very well?”

  I chewed the inside of my mouth, taking a hesitant step forward. “What do you mean?”

  “Would you know if he had any secrets – things he wasn’t proud of?”

  “Please – I’d be the last person he’d take into his confidence.”

  Sighing, Cadence ran her tongue along her upper lip, thinking. “Did he keep a diary or any kind of personal record of his life?”

  “Not that I know of. He always said he’d write an autobiography one of these days. But if he had anything like that, it’d be up in his room.”

  A sly grin spread over Cadence’s face.

  15

  Chapter 15

  “Couldn’t Inspector Brisbois arrest us for this? It is a crime scene after all.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot as Cadence worked her programming magic on the EO lock sealing my father’s door, my eyes sweeping both ends of the hallway, vigilant for any sign of movement.

  Cadence had the lock’s faceplate stuck in one side of her mouth, tapping away at the buttons inside with her fingers. “I’m most certain that he could, yes.”

  “And we’re going inside anyway?”

  The lock popped off into her hands, slipping away from the frame as if all that had held it there were spit. Cadence smiled, humming as she put the machine back together and handed it to me, brows raised high under her thick bangs. “Look at it this way: if we don’t go in, you’ll probably end up arrested anyway.”

  “You’re so comforting.” Sneering, I reached around behind her and opened the door.

  We scurried inside, careful to close the door behind us. The afternoon sun streamed through the windows, making it unnecessary to turn on any lights that might alert others to our presence. I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the ground under my feet while Cadence puttered around.

  “What are we even looking for?”

  “Anything. Who is this? She’s wearing a lovely ring.” Cadence stood by the bedside table, an optric in hand, displaying it to me like it was a trophy.

  The woman in the picture had long blonde hair of exactly my shade, curling around her heart shaped face, which was split into a laugh. Her wide smile reached up into her green eyes and they sparkled like sea foam. She had one arm thrown around a Belinda twenty years younger than she was now, who pointed off to one side of the frame, a fruit drink tipped back in one hand, her face glowing.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, letting it drop into the pit of my stomach, and managed a smile. “Oh, that? That’s my mother. Both she and Belinda are wearing those rings, the diamond shape and the nautilus; it’s the crest from their college, the Römer University of Advanced Science.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you had a mother.”

  I sat down on the bed, leaning onto my side. “Where do you think I came from? Human beings aren’t manufactured, you know.”

  Cadence scowled, brows falling into a hard line over her eyes. “Sarc, I’ll have to bear that in mind.” She shook her hair out of her face, walking towards me as she refocused on the optric. “Where is she now?”

  I picked at the loose threads in the bedspread beneath me. “She’s gone.”

  “I see. I remember your father mentioning something about that. Is she somewhere off-planet? On holiday?”

  “I don’t mean she left, Cadence, I mean she’s dead.” My voice was loud and thick with hurt. I sighed, lifting my head. “She died a long time ago.”

  “Oh, my god.” Cadence crumpled down onto the bed next to me, hands going limp and releasing the optric she had been clinging to. She shook her head once, and then again, harder, curling her arms around her waist. “Oh, I’m so, so sorry. I…” Looking at me from the corner of her eye, she turned away, rubbing the back of her neck. “Apol, I didn’t understand the turn of phrase.”

  Her head wilted on her neck like a rose bud touched by frost, hair coming forward over her face like a curtain. “That is so very, very sad. Forgive me, I feel terrible for having pried.”

  Her sincere grief cut me to the quick. “Oh, Cay, it’s alright, really. I was only a child when she died.” I sat up, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Sometimes it’s like I barely remember her.”

  “But when you do, it hurts even more that she’s gone.” Cadence dug her fingertips into her cheeks, shaking her head. “Please, forgive me; I’m not very used to death. It was a new experience for me when my family was...” She lifted her fingers, pulling quotation marks down through the air with complete seriousness, “… ‘gone’.”

  “Do animanecrons not die?” I searched her face, eyes dancing along the lands and grooves of it. Cadence had been alive much longer than I, I knew that now, and I imagined that she had experienced more of the universe in her span of existence than I could ever hope to. But to think that her life had never been touched by death before proved equal parts heartbreaking and wondrous.

  “No, not generally. Our physical formats can wear out, but it’s traditional to be moved to another model before that happens; consciousness remains intact. There are very few who choose to…” She waved her hands in front of her, biting her lip. “I don’t think there’s an entirely human word for it. We call it ‘nestati qurumaq’.” The words hissed and clicked like electricity going through a switchboard. “It means something like ‘fade away’.”

  I swallowed hard. “I think I understand.”

  Cadence avoided my gaze, picking up the optric from where she had dropped it, holding it as if she were afraid it would shatter and be lost forever. “What happened?”

  “She got very ill and eventually her body just gave up on her. Dr. Merton was attending to her at the time, and Belinda and my father did what they could: cooking special food for her, preparing her medicine…” I took the optric, caressing the lines of my mother’s face as I had done many times with my own copy. “There was nothing anyone could do; she just got sicker and sicker until it was too late.”

  Cadence ghosted her hand over my back. “And now your father was going to remarry.”

  “Yes.” I put the optric face down on the bed between us and stood, pushing my hand through my hair. “Where should I start looking?”

  For a moment, I thought Cadence wouldn’t allow me to end the conversation with grace, but whatever platitude she was about to assail me with she swallowed down, waving towards my father’s dresser.

  I pulled out and emptied each drawer in turn, doing what I imagined was a more thorough search than what had been conducted before. Opening my father’s underwear dr
awer, I grimaced. “Well, I’m certainly seeing a whole lot of nothing.”

  Emptying the drawer took little time, but as I went to pull out the last pair of briefs, I found they wouldn’t come. Giving another tug, I lifted them up and away from the drawer, but to no avail. Stuck on something I couldn’t see, I pulled the drawer out as far as I could and peered inside.

  A loose thread was stuck under the bottom of the drawer, which would have been an impossibility of physics, except now that the drawer was empty, I just could make out the edges of a compartment into which the thread disappeared. A small nick in the wood looked as promising a place to start as any, and when I worked my fingers into the space, the bottom panel popped open.

  Confusion growing, I laid the panel on the top of the dresser and slid my hand into the revealed space. My fingers brushed against something soft, and I pulled it out, holding it to the sunlight.

  It was a cloth bag, a blue and white pattern of flowers decorating it, with a thin twine draw string hanging uncinched. Taking several steps back until my knees hit the end of the bed, I sat down, my mouth dry. “Is this trash or a clue? I don’t think I know the difference.”

  Cadence strode towards me, mouth agape. “Where did you find that?”

  I gestured to the drawer, focus fixed on the trinket. She moved to investigate for herself, showering me with acclamations and missing the signs of my growing distress. I had always assumed that there were things about my father I didn’t, and would now never, know, but I had never expected those things to require such a secretive hiding place.

  Coming up empty at the drawer, Cadence returned to me, rubbing her hands together. “You’re getting good at this! What’s inside?”

  “Nothing; it’s empty.” I shook the pouch and tossed it to her.

  “How curious!” Cadence dropped it on top of the dresser, staring at it from a distance. “Why would your father keep an empty bag stuffed under a false bottom in his intimates’ drawer?”

  “I love that you just called them intimates, I really do.” I grinned, her strangeness reviving my good humor. “Honestly, Cay, how extensive is your Common Tongue vocabulary?”

  “Extensive enough.” Cadence dusted off her hands, frowning. “Such an ugly language.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s so much room for misunderstanding. Con, Animatum is much more precise.” She plucked the bag off the dresser, brow furrowing as she examined its insides. “Look at that,” she said, passing the bag back to me with a nod, “it’s frayed at the bottom. Whatever was in there must have had sharp edges and moved around in the bag every time your father opened the drawer.”

  Cadence wandered around the room, eyes focused on the ground, and I watched her with a smile, leaning back on the bed to admire her backside when she got down on all fours and began crawling over the carpet.

  “Why do you do that?”

  Her head shot up, fingers stilling. “What?”

  “You stick little sounds at the beginning of your sentences.”

  Sitting up on her haunches, her smile faded. “Do I?”

  I nodded. One side of Cadence’s mouth slid downwards and she squeezed her knees. “Bugger.”

  Falling forward without further explanation, she resumed her stilted movement across the carpet, picking at the floor here and there. Forced to stop when she reached my foot, still planted on the floor at the edge of the bed, she swiped at it, but I kept it where it was. She looked up at me and I returned her stare. Sighing, she hit my foot again, this time while saying, “They’re emotion tags, okay?”

  I moved my foot out of her way, allowing her to search under the bed as she continued. “You may have noticed that my range of facial expressions isn’t as wide or nuanced as yours, nor is my vocal inflection particularly varied.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but yes.”

  “It’s not just me; most animanecrons are like that. So, we use verbal tags at the beginning of sentences to highlight the intended emotional tenor of the exchange.” Cadence stood, pushing a loose bang behind her ear. “I didn’t realize I was doing it when I was speaking Common Tongue though. I suppose it’s just habit now.”

  “I can see where it would be quite helpful.” The bottom section of her tattoo peeked out from under her shirt as she crouched by the corner of the dresser. “One of these days you’ll have to teach me all of them.”

  “If we’re together that long.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest, and I turned away, grimacing at the thought of her leaving. A few days ago, I had been suffocating under Cadence’s presence, but the more time I spent with her, the more natural it felt to have her around. I would miss her if she left.

  “How did you get here?”

  Held between Cadence’s fingertips was a docu-chip about half the length of my thumb. She picked some threads, which matched the color of the empty bag, off its sharp contact points, placing each on the dresser before laying the chip flat in the center of her palm.

  “Where did you find that?”

  “Behind the dresser.” Cadence jerked her head back towards the large wooden piece of furniture, pulled several inches away from the wall. It had taken five men to carry it into the room in the first place, and my mind rebelled at the notion that Cadence had moved it by herself. I accepted it when she nudged the whole thing back into place with her hip.

  “Do you have a computer I can use?”

  I nodded and gestured towards the room next door. Cadence had the system in my mother’s room up and running in a flash, the translucent screen glowing bright. Reaching down to the input port, she slid the chip in with care, patting the drive and performing her customary thanks before turning her attention to the screen.

  Buzzing and humming, the computer chewed on the chip like a child with gum and spat out the docu-chip’s contents in one dizzying moment, words flooding the screen at such a rate that Cadence had to jerk her hand up to slow the flow, swiping back up to the top of the very first document.

  Standing behind her, I placed my hands on her shoulders and squeezed. She leaned into me, caressing my biceps and moving her fingers down my arms with a firmness that made my skin hum.

  Cadence rested her hands on top of mine, fingers tapping against me. “All I want to do is take you for hours and hours, until we’re both so exhausted we can barely breathe.”

  I stared at her, mouth moving but useless. “Cadence, I…I…” Glancing back towards the open door, I crouched next to her. “Do you really think that’s a good idea, darling – with everything that’s going on?”

  Cadence stared at me with wide, terrified eyes. “Huh, what?” She fixed her gaze on the space just above my head and I could see her spooling through the events of the last few minutes in her mind. Closing her eyes and opening them again, she put a hand on my shoulder. “I was reading from the chip, Chance.”

  “Yes, I know you were,” I countered, shooting up into a standing position. “I just thought that we maybe shouldn’t read things like that out loud; you know, if this is really a clue and everything.”

  She gave me a tight smile before returning her attention to the screen. I collapsed into the nearest easy chair, taking a moment to catch my breath before dragging my seat up next to hers.

  The chip held ten or fifteen long messages, all following the same basic pattern. Opening with a few short sentences of overacted despair, they then detailed fantasies of the most intimate nature, the section which Cadence had read aloud proving to be rather tame. Each letter ended with a promise to see the reader again and a vow to be together in the end. They were all between a man, ‘F’, who could only be my father, and a woman, who was referred to only as his ‘beautiful serpent’.

  “That sly dog; love letters!” I reached across Cadence and flicked at the screen, scrolling up to the top and highlighting the date. “These are almost twenty-five years old.” Scrolling back to the bottom, I highlighted the parting note, which read ‘Your own Beautiful Serpe
nt’. “It’s funny, I don’t remember my mother ever going by that.”

  Cadence leaned back in her chair, gesturing at the screen as she spread her long legs in front of her. “Why would you assume your mother wrote this?”

  “Well, they were married at the time.”

  She glanced from me to the screen and back again, rubbing the tips of her fingers together. “The people in these letters are parted. They miss each other, they hate the person in their way…” she waved to one particular graphic segment, brow arching, “…and they long to consummate their relationship with repeated and, may I say, creative acts of physical intimacy. Strange sentiments for a husband and wife to exchange.”

  The implications of her argument dawned on me. I bit the inside of my mouth hard. I had been little more than a child when my mother died, but I loved her with the same fierceness of any son, and the knowledge that my father had been communicating like this with some other woman made me wish he was alive again so I could punch him right in the face.

  Cadence ejected the chip, examining it by the fading light. “Someone didn’t want these found; I’m certain there were more. Destroyed, probably. But by whom?”

  “My father certainly wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know about them, that stuck-up, hypocritical, sanctimonious ass. When he and Solomon were talking about changing his will, he said that there were things he wanted to clear up; he wanted to be able to marry Desdemona with a clean slate, as a new man, all that rubbish people say when they think they’re in love.” I gestured to the chip. “Maybe this is what he meant.”

  “I’m going to talk to her.” Cadence stood, directing a shake of her hands and a few clicks to the computer in thanks, and walked towards the door.

  “Desdemona?” I got to my feet and started to follow her. “Can I come?”

  “No.” Stopping on the other side of the bed, she examined me. “She knows you don’t like her; she won’t talk around you.”