Vampires of Avonmouth

by Tim Kindberg

  The door swished shut.

  David could not hold the writhing professor. Dirac fell to the floor, motionless. David placed his finger on the professor’s pulse. It was weak and erratic. But his eyes opened. David helped him onto a chair.

  “Detective, stay for five minutes to check that I am settled. Then leave me. That inhabitant of yours: I could smell it. It reeked, like rotting flesh. It mustn’t interfere with the search for C15.”

  “Then what’s it doing to me, with its ‘smell’, as you put it?”

  Dirac smiled feebly, closing his eyes. “It’s all a matter of degree. It may be your proximity, but your vodu’s emanations are dominating the signals from the network. Anyway, you don’t seem to me to be a man who is too troubled by the thing inside you. You function normally, that is.”

  If only he knew, David thought, what it takes to function at all: not to give in and descend into madness. Is that what Pempamsie had to endure, too?

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right? I don’t know exactly how you’re going to hook yourself up again to do your sniffing, and what if something goes wrong?”

  “The hard part, the effort to absorb C15’s signature, is over. Now I’m like a dog who’s been given a scent to track. Please, leave. But if you haven’t heard from me within twenty-four hours, come back. The labnode will let you in.”

  David responded to reports of a disturbance in one of the guest rooms at the Hotel Royal. He rode in a module, glad of the familiar angles and soft padded materials of its interior, and the unremarkable flow of the noded world outside. He thought about his consciousness, how in some sense it must be rooted in the physical world – mustn’t it? – and yet was not of it. What was Dirac doing, exactly, “sniffing” for C15? Detecting a characteristic signal based on minute perturbations of psychblood engendered by conscious brain activity.

  Heaven only knew, his own consciousness was problematic in multiple ways. He’d rather be a stone. When Pempamsie told him to stop sleeping with the other Royal girls, David had balked at first. With anyone else, he would have asserted his independence by going straight to get himself laid. But Pempamsie’s words had touched him, the way she cared. Since then, he had not wanted to sleep with them. Her telling him to stop was a kindness, a respect for him and the girls. She didn’t seem like an altogether kind person, though.

  And now he was about to reach the Royal on a professional visit. He needed to concentrate; wouldn’t seek out Pempamsie on this occasion. He ignored the desk clerk as he entered; automatic clearance was established through his beads.

  David knocked at the room on the third floor. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still nothing. When he visited the Royal girls, it wasn’t so much the sex he wanted as the journey to see them, the power they had over him – his handing it to them. Had he really stopped? It was hard to trust that the urge would not return. The old, Westaf David would never have whored, but he was so far away from there. From Yaa.

  His beads niggled. Something wasn’t right.

  “Room 303. Open.”

  It was one of the girls he’d slept with: she had climbed onto a chest of drawers. Her arms were spread out like wings; her eyes were round and vacant.

  His first thought was not of Obayifa but Pempamsie. Surely she didn’t do it – did she? His cop’s instincts warned him that he knew so little about her. At the same time, his gut told him she was not a psychic vampire: Obayifa was after her in the painting, and it was she who needed protection.

  “Breakage, come.”

  Breakage had returned to the form of one of the worker bodais from the warespace they had searched, glassy and blue-uniformed.

  “Two items: one, doll found; two, commissioner of ID police wants to see you.”

  David sighed. “Why thank you. One, obviously, I know; two, why didn’t I get word myself?”

  “Detective cannot know one. Two, unknown. All is known.”

  “Breakage, the doll is right here. I’m the one who’s just found her. It’s why I called you.”

  “Doll in near-above.” Breakage gave the address.

  “C15?”

  “Not C15. Female.” Breakage beaded her to him. It was another of the girls from the Royal. He recognised her, had used her, too. Two more dolls who weren’t Mekhanik Pustoshnyy crew and had a connection to him.

  The bodai paused, uncertain of when David’s cogitation would end. “Sex workers,” he said.

  “Yes, Breakage, sex workers. Go and look for Pempamsie here in the hotel. First ask for room 71 at the desk, then go to every room in the hotel if she’s not there. When you find her, tell her that I said she’s in danger. If she’s not here, stand guard in the lobby and warn her when she comes back.”

  “Breakage not recognise. Nonned. No iris scan. All is known.”

  “Say ‘David says danger’ to everyone who has not been here before, according to Big Mind.”

  The bodai looked nonplussed.

  “What will you say?”

  “David says danger. To flesh inside hotel lacking prior visit record. Nons have never visited any places. In Big Mind.”

  Over twenty-two hours had passed since he had left Dirac. The commissioner was going to have to wait. And Pempamsie would have to look after herself for now. There were around twenty other girls who worked in the Royal. He would have to protect them as well.

  “And keep Obayifa out of here,” he finally ordered Breakage. “You will know her, right? The one with nothing at all from her beads. If she appears on the threshold, whatever you do, don’t say anything that might imply an invitation to come in. In fact, specifically state that she may not enter.”

  The window was open. Obayifa must have climbed up to the ledge from outside and persuaded the girl to let her in. The ascent would be nothing to her mentalmagicked will.

  By the time David pulled up at Dirac’s labnode, just over twenty-four hours had elapsed. He beaded himself in. The door to the hidden room was open. Dirac was not inside.

  “Come, Detective.” The weak voice emanated from the conservatory.

  Dirac looked haggard, slumped in the wicker two-seater.

  “You were going to contact me when you emerged from your session, Professor. What happened to that?”

  “I’m exhausted, Detective. Not getting any younger. I’m not sure you’ll find me very coherent just now.”

  “Did you find C15?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “I don’t have time for riddles.” David was anxious about Pempamsie. “There have been two more dollings.”

  “Two more? I take it neither is C15, or you would have said so.”

  “Sex workers. Ones I have a connection to.”

  Dirac absorbed this information without comment. David wondered whether he was judging him nonetheless.

  “I searched for C15,” Dirac said, “and, by association, your creature. I found him. I didn’t find her. It took a lot of concentration. I wasn’t so much tracking him down as searching blindly. But something came up. A kind of presence, you might say, but one that I intuited. It was like being in the dark and smelling, feeling for what is around you. I followed it, lost it, but then found it again.”

  “Please get to the point.”

  “He’s on the Mekhanik Pustoshnyy. Right now.”

  “Then why are we standing around? Has she already found him?”

  “Perhaps. I didn’t say where on the ship. Maybe he’s as high as he can get in the superstructure.”

  David sighed. Maybe three dolls in one day.

  “Let’s go. Breakage?”

  Breakage’s voice appeared through the labnode.

  “Breakage. Available.”

  “Send for a replacement, and in the meantime upgrade the desk clerk to a guard until it arrives. Instruct in how to detect Obayifa through absence of ID and bar her entrance at all costs. Then transport your AI to the Mekhanik Pustoshnyy. Arrange a search party. Look immediately. Seize C15 and place under safe cust
ody.”

  Breakage would be there quickly, his AI transferred in seconds to a bod associated with the docks. David called for dogs to be sent to join them.

  “Sure you’re up to this, Dirac?”

  Dirac rose unsteadily. “I need to be a part of your case, Detective, if you’re to crack it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Garden

  The Mekhanik Pustoshnyy sat imposingly against the quayside, where Breakage and a gang of bodais stood waiting for David and Dirac, their fleshly colleagues who had had to take a module. They were immaculately still: all domestic help, dispatched from a major cleaning job in one of the huge desres blocks built to house the working flesh who came and went in ships. The IANI logo, I&I, was written periodically on the quay. Sounds from around them pierced the stillness: metallic creaks as containers were hoisted, swung and lowered, the swoosh of wind turbines, the incessant hum of N-cars and modules: a world owned and operated by the network with the assistance of the fleshwork. Salt air reached David like an unexpected memory of a forgotten place.

  Breakage came forward.

  “No one on board. All is known.”

  David threw him a sceptical look. “We’ll board her anyway, and see for ourselves.” He stopped to take a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his sweating brow. A sheet of cloud trapped heat which radiated from the concrete and steel all around them.

  They went down into the hold first. David and Dirac felt keenly with their beads as they covered the clanging space.

  “Anything here you recognise, Professor, from your sniffing stint?”

  “I’m afraid not. But they might.” The dogs had arrived above, and were barking. When David and Dirac emerged hurriedly back on deck, they looked to where the dogs were straining. A doll had appeared atop a loading crane mounted on the ship. Binoculars revealed C15, in the same grubby clothes, his top shirt buttons undone. What was left of him stood on the tip of the gantry ramrod straight, arms outstretched, looking directly out to the sea and the cloudscape.

  They sent two of the bodais to fetch him, which took a frustratingly long time due to the precariousness of the climb onto the gantry. Once they had wrested the doll down, they held him firmly against his struggle to climb back up. Dirac examined his beads.

  “One of them missing?” said David. Dirac nodded.

  “There’s no way he was there before, when we went below deck,” said David. “When did he appear? What did you see?” he asked the bodai they had left stationed at the quayside.

  “No one. Nothing. All is known,” she said.

  “And you,” David said to Breakage, “you said no one was on board. Did you look inside the cabins of those cranes?”

  “Cabins known to be locked. Inspection unnecessary. All is known.”

  “But the cabin door is ajar!” David stormed off, felt Dirac’s eyes on his back, pulled himself together, walked back.

  Dirac said, “Never mind the lapses of our robotic helpers—”

  “Never mind? They’re not worth a… You know how fast they can move. They could have looked there. Give me the dogs any day.”

  “The gantry was raised, and dolls, as we know, climb to the highest place available. If that doll had been free in the cabin as a doll, he would have climbed and we would have seen him.”

  “You mean, either she released him or she dolled him while we were down there. She was hiding on board when we arrived.”

  “Your reasoning appears to be correct.”

  “So she’s still here or she left in front of this bodai’s nose? I know they can’t see what’s in front of them half the time, but really…”

  “Or she came on board another way,” said Dirac.

  An engine started on the water side of the ship. They heard a launch head away, quickly gaining distance out into the sluggish, glinting estuary beneath a newly appearing sun.

  “Dammit. Breakage, we need to go after that launch.”

  “Water transport of necessary speed unavailable. Calculate interception impossible.”

  They listened helplessly as the launch made its way along the waterside of Avonmouth.city, past the intricate spaces of the down-below.

  “Let us follow on land,” said Dirac.

  “She could stop anywhere,” David said. “And disappear into any of those crowded nodes along the docks. They’re all zoned off from one another. We’d never find her.”

  “Obayifa has her collection of beads at last,” said Dirac. “It is imperative she does not get her hands on that case.”

  To David’s further intense frustration, a police module drew up on the quay. A bodai inspector climbed out. Breakage, the young man in a cleaner’s pinafore, had reported his own failure. David cursed the bodai, while also feeling the pain of another impending loss. He had to admit, for all his admonishments, a fondness for the bodai had slipped past his defences. He had to save him from himself.

  “All is known,” said the inspector, to no one in particular.

  “All is known,” Breakage responded – a preamble to his surrender to the superior.

  “Heaven help us,” David said to Dirac. “A bodai ritual sacrifice like a parody of ours. Wait.” He addressed the inspector. “This bodai, Breakage, is an important element in my case. And there has been a new act of mind theft. That is, a new type of ID crime.”

  “All is known,” said the inspector.

  Dirac joined in. “Inspector, I am a—”

  “Technical adviser,” said the inspector.

  “Indeed. I have technical reasons for retaining this bodai. I can supply justification in a separate communication, but we really must proceed with this case. I believe more minds are at stake.”

  “Minds,” said the inspector. “All is known.”

  “If all our minds were stolen,” said David, “the fleshwork would disappear. No more data.” He clicked his fingers in the air to illustrate the disappearance. The inspector regarded his gesture for a millisecond, like an animal without comprehension.

  Dirac added, “And Breakage has built up irreplaceable constructs in Big Mind of relevance to solving the crime. In a manner of speaking, Breakage is those constructs.”

  “In a manner,” said the inspector, “of speaking.” The last resort of an algorithm during intercourse with flesh: repeat. “All is known. Crimes. Investigate.”

  “Yes, we must investigate,” said Dirac, “with the appropriate access to Big Mind. And with my technical input.”

  “Protocol,” David announced to Breakage and the inspector. “Breakage is an asset required in a case of ID crime.”

  “Agreed. Case continues. But failure,” said the inspector, “of detective. ID Police commissioner orders disobeyed.” The inspector addressed one of the bodai gang. “Arrest the detective.”

  An ID police module quickly arrived to take David away. The vehicle’s sleek bodywork shone black, bearing the I&I insignia and the words Protect and Serve. One of the bodais that had searched the Mekhanik Pustoshnyy came forward to shepherd David inside it. David felt a vein throb angrily in his temple. Resistance was possible in principle. So was running, and this was his last and only chance. But it was useless. He would be tracked. All rights to offline were gone; he could feel it in his beads. And within the thin plates of his skull, the vodu turned to look at him, as though curious about a change it had sensed but could not understand, a turn of events affecting its host adversely. It seemed offended, as though it should have been consulted.

  Breakage came with him. The module jolted them as it accelerated away. “Why are you here?” David took his anger out on the bodai opposite him, seated incongruously in its cleaner’s embodiment. Anger helped to displace thinking about Pempamsie’s parlous state. He couldn’t help her now. There was nothing he could do. Somewhere Obayifa was stalking her.

  The uncomprehending, vacant look that Breakage returned without answering made David even more furious. “Why are they arresting you – arresting your bod, that is – when it’s me
aningless? Don’t they have a cell in Big Mind for your AI? How do they lock up an AI, anyway? You must tell me sometime. When I’m not so busy.”

  “Breakage not arrested. Breakage accompany detective to incarceration.” The voice was harsh, carrying what in flesh would be described as an attitude. Gone was the innocent, bureaucratic tone of moments before, which had been constant throughout the time David had known Breakage. Absent also was the familiar metadata that conventionally arrived with communication from a bodai.

  “What? Come to think of it, I don’t believe you are Breakage. Breakage has been rebodded. Or unbodded altogether.” David tried a passphrase. “Qualia sky faze shifting distraught.”

  The bodai didn’t provide the corresponding response but said, “This is Breakage. Reconfigured. Protocol assured.”

  “If you’re Breakage then help me. I’m a detective. Bodais must serve all ID police. It’s a basic directive.”

  “Negative. Detective work alone. Now and future. Detective harm the order.”

  “So why are you talking to me?”

  “Talking.” The flat tone sounded contemptuous. David felt it as a barb, even though it came from a bodai. This was, after all – until now – Breakage. He resented the bodai’s desertion, even though it must have been commanded and the bodai had to obey. He had allowed himself to think that Breakage was different. He tried again.

  “Yes,” David said. “This talking. It’s pointless. A waste of bodai time. Bodais serve flesh. Assist flesh.”

  The bodai stared through the window.

  “Where is Breakage? I mean the actual Breakage. You’re an impostor.”

  “Depends what detective means by ‘where’.”

  “You’re useless, you know that? Unless, that is, you know what Breakage knew. Where is Pempamsie? If you can’t tell me, tell Dirac.”

  “Dirac.”

  “Yes. Dirac. Remember him?”

  “Detective requests bodai inform Dirac. Dirac auxiliary scientist. In ID police. However.” The bodai paused in simulated cogitation. “Should not be working case. Breakage likes Dirac for sedition.”