Analog SFF, July-August 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  My fingers might as well have been made of tissue because he tore out of my grip as if it was nothing. Then he was running, nimbly dodging through the crowd, sprinting away at such a speed that he was halfway down the street before I managed to even shout after him.

  “You! Come back!”

  It wasn't one of my most original moments. But by the time I'd thought of something better to say, he was already gone.

  * * * *

  It was going on three weeks when I wandered into the bamboo hut at the outskirts of the tiny village of Gonoa, one of five villages in the foothills of the Nelsani Mountains. Outside, the rain sliced into the vegetation like a machete. Even after the door swung shut, the downpour still filled the hut with a roar.

  I was tired and cranky and about to give up. Of course, I'd been feeling that way for the past week, and still I found myself pressing on to the next destination. The only problem was that I was running out of destinations. I'd searched every dune of the Harlo Desert, all three seas of the Three Seas of Kinl, and a good chunk of the Nelsani Rainforest

  Racks of hiking and hunting gear packed the hut. The popular flared canoes hung from the ceiling. Twangy harp music—annoyingly popular on Jellon—played from speakers mounted in the corners, and the only good thing about the rain was that it mostly blotted out the music. The musky stench of the rainforest, the smell that got into everything and stayed there like a bad houseguest, hung heavy in the air.

  Nobody seemed to be around. I pushed past some brown repel coats and some anti-grav moccasins and found a counter for vacation booking. Nobody was there either, though there appeared to be a room behind the counter, obscured from view by beads. There was a smell too, wafting out from the back room, a tangy odor that immediately brought water to my eyes. It smelled vaguely of lemons.

  “Hello?” I said.

  A dark-skinned man, bald on top but thick black beard below, pushed through the rattling beads. He carried a bundle of yellow rope, coiled in a circle. He wore a camo vest that bared his muscular arms. His skin was mocha brown, except for the pink jagged scar on his right shoulder. There was a bit of silver in his beard, but I wouldn't have tried to guess his age. He could have been thirty or fifty.

  “Welcome to Nelsani, good man,” he said, exhaling a hint of smoke from his nostrils, and that lemon smell got stronger. “Are you here for a tour? If you book today, I can give you—”

  “I'm actually here looking for someone,” I said.

  “Oh?” he said.

  “Yes. I'm looking for an android. He's quite famous, actually. His name is Vergon Daughn. Maybe you've heard of him?”

  The man stared at me as if I'd spoken in another language.

  “I have reason to believe he's on this planet,” I went on, “and that he might be in a remote location. Maybe he came to see you, or maybe you heard of him passing through.”

  He simply stared, blinking.

  “Any help would be much appreciated. His wife is very worried.”

  He might as well have been a statue. I felt like strangling him. I might not have been able to do it—he was a decent-sized fellow, after all—but I was willing to give it a shot. It would make life more interesting for a while, at least.

  “Did you hear me?” I said.

  “I heard you,” he said. “I'm trying to decide whether to help you.”

  My hopes soared. Finally, a breakthrough. “You've seen Daughn?”

  “Didn't say that. But I might be able to help you.”

  “How?”

  He placed the rope on a hook behind him, turning his back to me. “That depends on how much the information is worth it to you.”

  I gritted my teeth. “You want a bribe?”

  “That's such an ugly word,” he said. “I was thinking more . . . payment for services rendered.” He turned and looked at me, and I could tell by his expression that he wasn't jerking me around. He really felt he could help me.

  “How do I know if your information is worth anything?”

  He shrugged. “I guess you'll have to pay me to find out. It's no big deal to me either way. Now, excuse me, I've got to take care of some chores—”

  “All right, all right,” I said.

  I downloaded some credit to his account. He told me he knew somebody who could take me to him. I downloaded some more credit. He told me the person was him. I downloaded an obscene amount of credit and he told me to be outside in ten minutes.

  * * * *

  Three hours of hiking later, we pushed through a wall of blood-red Tasid vines and into a clearing. It had rained only for the first hour, and baked us in eyelid-sticking heat for the next two, but such was the humidity that my clothes still felt sopping wet. I'd even bought the best rain gear my guide's shop had to offer, but it hadn't made a whit of difference.

  The feathery branches of the mushroom-shaped Vidi trees blocked all but a few glimmerings of sunlight, sunlight that reflected off the mirrored exterior of a tent in the center of the clearing. It was covered in solar panels, I realized, and of course that made perfect sense. Weak as the light was, it would probably provide just enough charge for a single android.

  My guide—he told me his name was Asif Phoenix, and that was the only thing he'd said despite my repeated questioning—gestured to the hut. I nodded, too out of breath to answer. He, on the other hand, didn't even look like he'd cracked a sweat. I wondered how many years he'd been trekking up and down the mountain.

  “You in there, Vergon?” I said

  It took a moment, but the flap in the tent opened and then there he was—Vergon Daughn, in the flesh. Or in the silicon-plastic compound, as it were. He wore a camo outfit much like my guide's, except that Vergon's covered every inch of his body. He was shorter and less imposing than I'd expected from his holos.

  “How did you . . . “ he began, and then he saw Asif. “Ah, so how much did he pay you?”

  “Enough,” Asif said.

  “So much for loyalty,” Vergon said.

  “You didn't pay me to be loyal.”

  “I see. In the end, it's always about the money, isn't it?”

  Asif said nothing, simply standing there looking imposing. Vergon turned to me.

  “Did she hire you?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought as much. My other thought was that you were an assassin sent by Granger Holdings, but if that were the case, I would most likely be dead by now. Who are you?”

  “My name's Dexter Duff,” I said.

  “Well, Mister Duff—”

  “Just Duff.”

  “Duff, then. Fine. Do you have any idea why I'm here?”

  I looked at him carefully. He didn't seem insane to me, though I'd been wrong about those sorts of things before. How could you tell if an android was insane, anyway? He could have been hiding from Granger Holdings, but the most likely reason Granger Holdings was out to get him in the first place was because his own erratic behavior had allowed the company's value to plummet. That left the conclusion I'd come to after mulling it over for a few weeks.

  “I don't know why an android would be interested in a woman like Ginger,” I said. “I don't know why an android would be interested in any woman, to be honest. But I figure you wanted to know what it was like to love her for real. Except when you got what you wanted, maybe you realized love wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Maybe you even realized she didn't love you so much after all. You see, I know Ginger. I've known her for years. I don't know if she's capable of loving anyone. And when you figured this out too, it left you so heartbroken you didn't want to go on feeling that way anymore, so you went back to being android.”

  He said nothing for a while, intense eyes boring into me, studying me the way a scientist might examine a specimen under a microscope.

  “You're a perceptive man, Duff,” he said finally.

  “No, I just learn from experience. I fell for her once too, you know.”

  He nodded. “She has a special kind of charm. Everything you
said is correct, though I am not here because I am heartbroken.”

  “No?”

  “Of course not. I am here because I became convinced shortly after the wedding that Ginger intended to kill me.”

  It was a possibility I hadn't considered. “Why would she do that? You're her ticket to riches and fame.”

  “No, Vergon Enterprises is her ticket to riches and fame. Besides, that's not what she wants. It's power.”

  “I don't see why that would make a . . .” I began, and then I did see it. Vergon Daughn may have made Ginger rich, but Vergon Enterprises could make her rich and powerful. The problem was Vergon himself. He was the one calling the shots. But once they were married . . . “I get it,” I said. “Once you were married, she could bump you off and then she'd inherit the company.”

  “Exactly. Of course, it would have been easier if I remained an android since so few planets grant us the same rights as biosen. She could have deactivated me any number of ways. When I became human, it made her job more difficult, which gave me just enough time to escape.”

  I shook my head. As well as I'd known Ginger, I should have seen that angle long before now. “I feel like an idiot,” he said.

  “Don't feel bad,” Vergon said. “Ironically, I didn't recognize this possibility myself until I was a human. As an android, I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt, assuming that her unusual behaviors were due to the irrationality of her human emotions. But once I myself had human emotions, I could see that she herself lacked them—or at least any beyond greed and desire.”

  “I should never have come here,” I said.

  “No, you shouldn't have. It's quite likely you were followed.”

  I thought of the android who'd tailed me weeks earlier. From time to time, I'd had that feeling again that I was being followed, though I'd never seen him. “So you don't really think Granger Holdings is after you?”

  “No, I do,” he said. “That's what complicates matters. I came here until I could figure out a way to divorce her, but my absence left an opening for Granger to move in. Now I'm in a predicament. I honestly came here to protect the more than one million people who work for me. But whether my wife gets control of the company or Granger, those employees get hurt either way.”

  My wife. I felt an odd pang of jealousy and I didn't know why. It was just a job, of course, one that paid better than any job I'd had before, but no matter how well a job paid, I never set out to hurt an innocent person if I could help it. Was Vergon Daughn innocent? Was I innocent? Both of us had stupidly pursued a woman incapable of any kind of real love, and for that, we probably deserved whatever punishment we received. But I felt a lot more empathy for him than I might have felt for someone else.

  “I'll do whatever I can to help,” I said.

  He looked at me. “I'm going to speak to her. Perhaps an understanding can be reached. I have to assume there's at least a shred of decency in her.”

  “All right,” I said, skeptical.

  “But I'm still concerned she's going to try to kill me. Will you come with me?”

  “Of course.”

  With that, he pulled out a com-com and called for a pod to pick us up off the mountain. Twenty minutes later, we were on our way to the spaceport. Asif watched us lift off, his face as stoic and remorseless as when I'd first met him.

  * * * *

  We figured the stepdocks would be more heavily watched than the spaceports, so the plan was to leave the planet by ship. At my suggestion, Vergon bought an evening ticket at the spaceport closest to Nelsani, and then we landed the pod and rode a bakak-pulled buggy three hours to a much larger spaceport. The concourse was crowded and noisy, packed with every life form imaginable, and we hung out in the bar until a few minutes before the flight to Palfacia Prime was scheduled to leave.

  Then Vergon bought us two tickets and we hurried to the security lines, ending up behind a couple of hairy and stinky Srendians. It was like standing behind a blue carpet that had been soaked in formaldehyde.

  He looked at me. “You were in love with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn't you marry her?”

  I shrugged. “I would have, but she ran out on me. I guess I wasn't rich enough or powerful enough for her.”

  “You were fortunate then.”

  I laughed, though he reacted in surprise, as if he hadn't meant it as a joke.

  “There's one thing I don't understand,” I said. “Bwer-Fwer said there was a problem with the transfer process. Do you know what happened there? He was worried your mind got scrambled, but you seem fine.”

  We got to the front of the line and he hand-printed the ticket-checker. Androids didn't have fingerprints like humans, but they did have unique digital signatures; the machine beeped and said his name, his flight time, and his departure gate. An older human couple ahead of us craned their heads around. So it'd begun: He'd been recognized, and I'd only feel better once we were airborne. His flight and identity verified, Vergon was about to step through the security tunnel. He looked at me, dropping his voice to a whisper.

  “The only problem that I know of—” he began.

  But I never learned what the problem was. There was an electric shriek and the center of Vergon's chest exploded in flames.

  He crumpled over, and a blue wave of fire enveloped his body, eating it up, turning it into nothing but dust. It was a plasma bolt—there was no way to stop it from completely disintegrating him. People screamed and stampeded. My shock lasted only an instant, and then I turned and saw the attacker fleeing—the blond android who'd pursued me earlier, dressed in the orange and red flowery garb of the local monks.

  I took off after him. He was much faster, but he made the mistake of glancing over his shoulder at me. In the meantime, a sweeperbot rolled into his path and he tripped. I was on him in a second, my laser pistol jammed up into his chin. His eyes remained passive; he might have been watching a food processor churning out cheese.

  “Tell me who you're working for!” I cried.

  Beneath my legs, his chest felt warm and getting warmer. He closed his eyes, and I realized what was happening, rolling off of him just before his body exploded.

  * * * *

  I woke up in the spaceport's infirmary, two shiny medical robots tending to my wounds and a dozen green-uniformed police waiting in the wings. I had a few nasty cuts on my face and arms, and a minor concussion, but otherwise I'd been lucky. It was nearly four hours before I was able to convince the police I had nothing to do with Vergon's death, and then they were gracious enough to let me out a back door so I could avoid the hordes of media gathered outside.

  I left the spaceport and walked under a blazing sun to a little hole-in-the-wall diner, sequestering myself in the com-com unit at the back. It smelled like piss and smoke inside, and even through the glass door I could hear the wince-inducing Nelsani harp music playing from the diner's speakers.

  Ginger answered my page within ten seconds. She was in the back of a plush pod, the seats dark leather, and her silver glittering outfit looked like it was made of diamonds. The camera was angling from a low viewpoint, giving her three breasts the appearance of an imposing mountain range.

  “You killed him,” I said.

  She looked puzzled. “Whatever are you talking about, dear? Did you find Vergon?”

  “Don't lie to me, Ginger. I'm sure you've seen the news by now.”

  At my saying this, she turned to her right and punched something out of my view. She said nothing for a moment, then sighed.

  “How sad,” she said, and she didn't sound sad at all. “He meant everything to me.”

  “Like hell he did. You killed him.”

  “That's quite an accusation, Duff. You have some proof of this?”

  “I'll get some.”

  She smiled primly. “Oh, I don't think so. You can't prove something that isn't true.”

  “Ginger—”

  “Now if you'll excuse me,” she said, “I've got a
company to save from takeover. And with me in charge, you better believe things are looking up for Vergon Enterprises.” She looked at me levelly. “Because I'll do whatever it takes to get to the top. You know that, Duff, don't you?”

  “Damn it, Ginger—”

  “In fact, I always like being on top.” Her smile turned coy. “Maybe you should come visit me and I'll show you exactly what I mean. I guarantee that by tomorrow we'll see eye for an eye on this.”

  “It's eye to eye, you idiot,” I said, and punched off.

  I was shaking, and I wanted to smash something. Ginger had won. That wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that for just an instant, a tiny flicker of a moment, I'd actually thought about taking her up on her offer. It made me feel lousier than I'd felt in my entire life.

  It was only then that I realized why I'd taken the case at all. Crazy as it was, I'd secretly been hoping I could win her back.

  * * * *

  Returning to Versatia, I threw myself into my work checking the hotel security, hoping it would help put the whole mess with Ginger out of my mind. It didn't. I found myself following what was happening with Vergon Enterprises and Granger Holdings with great interest, secretly praying that Granger would put Ginger out on her ass. Granger might still put thousands out of work, but at least Ginger wouldn't gain from it.

  I'd always been of the atheist persuasion—I'd seen too much to believe in any sort of almighty god—but what happened next was enough to challenge my conviction. Somebody must have heard my prayers, because Granger got control of Vergon Enterprises within a month. Not only that, but the way the deal went down left Ginger out in the cold with only a few million credits in her pocket. A few million was certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it was less than one hundredth of one percent of what her estate had been worth before Granger took over. She was all over the vids threatening to sue, insisting a great injustice had been done, but all the legal experts said there was nothing she could do.

  More amazingly, Granger didn't break up Vergon Enterprises. They expanded it. People didn't lose their jobs. They got raises. New stepdock deals with planets coming into the Unity Worlds fell into place, almost as if Granger had been holding back on making those deals until the takeover was finished. If Vergon was still alive, he would have been incredibly happy at how it had all turned out—if he could have felt happiness, that was.