I put aside my paranoia. Focus, McGee! I told myself.
Right. Looking again at Jensen, I saw that his desk was surprisingly clean, except for a single large sheet of Active Paper, currently showing only a calendar and a Thought for the Day thing. Jensen looked like the kind of guy whose Thought for the Day might be, “Smite your enemies!”
I quickly explained to Jensen our interest in the case. I was (according to the fake documents Otaru had prepared for us) Detective Inspector Zette McGee of the Serendipity Police Service, looking into the mysterious death of one Kell Fallow, late of Narwhal Island, and a prime suspect in the murder of his wife Airlie and their two children. I omitted any reference to fireminds, and all the rest of it, lest Jensen get pulled into Hydrogen Steel’s intrigues. As with my interview with Tomba, it made me feel like shit lying to another copper. I worried I might be getting good at it.
Jensen wasn’t much for small-talk, which was no surprise. He went straight into the matter at hand. “Officer Theodorsen tells me that you have been brought up to speed on the situation here.” He touched his display paper and began quickly sorting through some files.
“We’ve had ample time to study the documentation,” I said, keeping my tone steady.
He failed to show any sign of noticing my jab about making us wait for three hours, and at no time did he express any apology. “There is something odd however, that you might want to take a look at.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. Gideon and I exchanged a glance. “Odd how?” I said.
“This is going to sound strange, but is it possible this Fallow was a disposable-type android?” said Jensen.
I coughed and tried to conceal my reaction. “That is my understanding, yes.” How the hell did Jensen know about that? I wondered.
Jensen nodded, but did not look all that shocked. “That makes sense,” he said, consulting his Paper. “Here. Look at this.” He turned it around so I could see the many opened reports. “These are preliminary forensic DNA scans of some of the victims we haven’t been able to identify.”
In each case he’d selected, the common factor was highlighted. “They’re androids…” I said, in total shock.
Jensen worked the display controls to reveal fine details. “After we found three androids among the dead, we wondered what was going on, so we started doing mitochondrial scans on all the victims. Turns out they’re all androids,” he said shaking his head. “Somehow we’ve got a colony of disposables. Every person on Narwhal Island was a disposable!”
I blinked, and tried to hide my total surprise. “And none of these guys looked or behaved or did anything that gave them away?”
“That’s right, Inspector,” he said. “We’ve never seen anything remotely like this. We didn’t even know there were androids that could pass for humans!”
I thought back to that night when I first realized the truth about my own origins. “Have you been able to contact the nanofacturers?”
“We’re trying, of course. But the communication problems out there, with the tubes the way they are. Well…”
I was thinking fast. Narwhal Island was a colony of disposables who looked, as I did, like perfectly normal human beings. I felt myself trembling with shock. An entire colony of androids like me. Hundreds of them! Not merely ordinary disposables who’d one day, somehow, “woken up” from the numbing confines of their programming and fled; these guys were here living out ordinary lives, indistinguishable from ordinary people.
I’d wondered why Cytex Systems might make one-off custom models like me, and I’d come to conclusions I didn’t like. I’d always thought that I was unique. Then I’d come across Kell Fallow, who claimed to be like me. Gideon’s theory that Fallow might have been a regular disposable programmed to behave like a man in order to get me caught up in an intricate trap, had been at least partially convincing. But here was proof that neither Kell Fallow nor I were unique at all. We were part of a widespread program: the android firms were making androids who could pass for human. And five hundred of them had been living here on Narwhal Island.
But why would someone set up a colony of machines like us?
Again, thoughts of black intrigue filled my mind. A colony of agents whom nobody would suspect might be very useful to the right people, in the right organizations.
But then again, suppose all of these androids had been like me, and had stories like mine: that they had thought they were real people but one day they’d somehow sussed out the truth.
There could be an entire network of “aware” androids just like me!
A network. I was nearly sick with surprise and shock. “Good God,” I whispered, holding my head.
“McGee, are you quite all right?” Gideon was touching my elbow.
“I’m okay,” I lied. “Could you get me…”
Gideon read my mind. “Some water? Of course. One moment.” Jensen directed him outside to consult his receptionist.
“Think I ate something bad last night,” I lied again to Jensen.
“Fab food?” he asked, looking like he understood only too well about fab-related food-poisoning.
I nodded as Gideon returned, and presented me with cold water in a clean glass.
“Thanks,” I said, sipping it, grateful at least partly for the distraction, but still overcome with shock. It was not everyday you learned that you were part of what amounted to an entire race of beings like yourself. And that, as a logical consequence of this, somebody, somewhere, was up to something. Maybe Kell Fallow and the others like him, had “woken up” and found their way via some kind of “underground railroad” to Narwhal Island to live amongst their own kind. But what if, deep down beneath conscious awareness, there was still secret programming making androids like them want to get away and find a homeland? What if Cytex and the other companies wanted them to come here, and wanted them to feel like it was all their idea, so at no point would they realize they were being manipulated?
I swore quietly, and tried, despite my shaking hand, to sip the water.
Jensen offered politely that we could pick up the interview tomorrow if it would be easier.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, but wondered if I’d ever again be okay.
Which raised the question: Why had I not evinced an interest in coming to Narwhal Island, or at least in reaching out to find the network, the railroad? That is, if this secret network even existed.
Or was it merely that it didn’t happen immediately after you “woke up”? The urge to be with others like yourself might only occur to you years later, so it would feel like a genuine longing, like your own idea, rather than something that happened too coincidentally with the whole shock of waking up.
I had to put the water down on Jensen’s desk. I was a wreck, trying not to cry and throw up.
Then, I thought, suppose Hydrogen Steel was mixed up in this somehow? Had the army of smoke killers, which I knew were Hydrogen Steel’s creatures, come to eliminate the whole colony, perhaps at the behest of a secret consortium of the android firms? Had they been killed to keep the secret of human-level androids? Were we looking at a monstrous product recall?
What if my “awakening” was some kind of glitch, and the companies were now making sure nobody ever found out about it? Was it murder if you killed a conscious, living machine? Or was it just business?
My mind spun with the shock of it. Focus, McGee, I told myself. Focus!
Trying not to be distracted, I went on to explain about the note I’d gotten from Simon, which appeared to show some information that I hadn’t so far found in the official files. Jensen asked to see it and he shuffled it into his reading.
It made him stop. He sat and stared at it. Tilting his head to one side, and then the other, he also scratched at his chin, and frowned. Not looking up, he said, “This is new intel. How did your agent kno
w to look for these details?”
“I’ve seen their work before. The black killer things,” I said, still feeling queasy.
Now Jensen looked at me. “To the best of our knowledge we’re looking at a terrorist cell, of which there are several likely groups just on New Norway alone.”
I saw Hydrogen Steel spinning wheels within wheels. “Right,” I nodded, imagining the slaughter. “Was there any sign or warning in the days leading up to the attack that something like this might happen?” I knew already from the case files that there had been no warning, but I wanted to see what Jensen would and would not tell us.
I also caught myself looking around the small, tidy office, wondering if our invisible samurai bodyguards were still here.
Then a chilling thought came over me: What if it’s Hydrogen Steel watching us now? I knew Otaru had said that Hydrogen Steel couldn’t see us at the moment, but what if Otaru was wrong? It seemed to me that Otaru could have been lying, or even somehow in league with Hydrogen Steel, and just messing with the humans for some insanely unimaginable sort of firemind fun.
“There was no warning,” Jensen said. “But I’m curious as to how your case on Serendipity relates at all to this investigation.” He flashed quickly through my notes on the Fallow case. “This happened over a month ago,” he said, pinning me to my chair with his gaze.
“I believe it’s somehow connected with the attack on the settlement.”
“I don’t see how you could draw that conclusion based on this evidence,” said Jensen skeptically.
Which was an understandable viewpoint. I didn’t show him anything pertaining to my encounter with the node of Hydrogen Steel in the hospital, nor the show it had given me of its assassin at work that night.
How much could I trust Jensen? It was impossible to know. After learning what I had about Narwhal Island and its disposable inhabitants, I wasn’t sure who I could trust anymore.
“I’d like to take a look at whatever’s left of the Fallow house,” I said. This was a tricky thing to ask. If I was justified in my caution, and some minion of the firemind was listening in, then I might well have a welcoming committee to deal with when I got there.
In fact, I worried about simply going there, with or without Jensen’s permission. Hydrogen Steel would be very slack indeed if it didn’t somehow keep an eye on that house.
Jensen gave us permission and sent Officer Theodorsen fresh orders directing him to take us to what was left of the Fallow house, which was a few k’s outside town. I brooded the whole trip.
Theodorsen was up-front, telling us about things to see on the island, shouting over the stuttering thrusters and the loud hum of the floatfield generator. “And there’s this bunch of things like standing stones, the islanders call them The Worriers, they stand out on Unfortunate Cliff, near the West Reach of the island. They’re called The Worriers because they look sort of like people with the weight of the world on their shoulders, and it’s grinding them down, eating away at them, you might say.”
The Worriers sounded like my kind of tourist site.
“Are you okay, McGee?” Gideon asked, quietly.
I shrugged, not sure if I was or not. “It’s this colony thing,” I said. “It’s a lot to take in.”
I looked out the window at the charred ruins of a place that might have been a nice place to live. A whole colony of people like me. And now it was gone.
Gideon saw I wasn’t doing well. “If you need to talk…”
“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my eyes.
Gideon nodded and sat back.
Theodorsen continued prattling. I didn’t hear a word.
I got Theodorsen to bring us down half a k from the Fallow house ruins. By now it was night. The sky was a thick mass of heavy cloud and even with our cold-weather gear, it was freezing. Even Theodorsen was looking a little chilly.
From where we landed, I could just barely see where the house had stood, at the top of a worn-down hill to the north-west of our position. A rutted road led up to it and around us was a lot of bushy aromatic scrubland and some stringy trees, all of which leaned one way, with the prevailing wind. Theodorsen wanted to know why we hadn’t gone all the way up to the site. I said I had my reasons, and wondered if we were already too close.
“We’ve got to get up there, McGee,” Gideon said, his tone even and quiet.
“I know, I know. It’s just…”
He understood my concern. “Doesn’t pay to advertise, does it?”
“We do have Otaru’s bodyguards,” I said.
“Do we?” Gideon asked skeptically. He turned to me, looking thoughtful. “Hmm, give me a minute.”
I didn’t know what Gideon was doing. He was walking around me, peering at me very intensely, his head tilted this way and that. It was a little uncomfortable.
Gideon nudged me, looking around nervously. “I’m going to upload some images to you.”
I glanced at him. He waggled his eyebrows a little. Somehow it wasn’t quite the same effect in this new young body; the eyebrows weren’t bushy like out-of-control hedges the way they used to be.
My headware advised me of the arrival of the new images. I opened them and had a look…
“Oh…!” I gasped, staring.
Gideon nodded. “Just like you were told.”
Otaru had not lied about the bodyguards. Gideon’s pictures were from some very unusual imaging systems.
“They’re not actually there, in the sense of being in the same physical space you and I are,” he said frowning. “It’s hard to explain. They’re between folds in space. Sort of. Getting these pictures really took some doing.”
“You can see into other dimensions with your headware, Smith?”
He waggled his eyebrows, but said nothing.
“Let me guess. Something else you picked up at ‘the firm’?”
“I couldn’t possibly comment.” He looked conspicuously nonchalant.
The images showed ethereally glowing man-sized figures that looked like ferocious samurai warrior spirits, katanas poised and ready — and they stood at an arm’s length from me at the cardinal points of the compass. There was very little detail, but there was enough resolution to show fighting men in what appeared to be traditional feudal Japanese armor.
I waved my arms around. “But where are they? If they’re stuck in folds of space…” I couldn’t believe I was uttering such phrases, “how do they … you know?” I gestured to indicate someone attacking me.
“I would imagine they simply do.”
I swore again, and kept looking at the images.
“Right!” I said, after staring at these images for altogether too long. “I feel much more like going up to the ruins now.”
“That’s the spirit!” said Gideon.
Theodorsen, who had been visibly puzzled about what Gideon and I were talking about, adjusted his shirt, and gladly led the way up the hill. It was a good walk but I wasn’t ready for it. I hadn’t gone a hundred meters before my legs were sore and I was out of breath. Gideon looked similarly breathless and achy. “It’s the new bodies,” he said.
“Muscles are there but they’re not properly developed,” I guessed.
He nodded, bent over and rubbing at his thighs.
I noticed that his legs and backside looked surprisingly good — and then nearly choked in horror! Oh God, what the hell was that? For a flickering moment there, I’d actually fancied Gideon! I turned away, blushing bright red, embarrassed out of my tiny mind. Gideon refrained from asking if I was all right, I noticed, and that made me feel doubly stupid.
Twenty minutes later we arrived at the remains of the Fallow house. The wind tore at us. Conversation was brief and shouted. Gideon and I were all business. Theodorsen strolled around the wreckage of the house, hands in his pockets,
looking like he was having a lovely time. We stalked and struggled and grimaced and felt like the wind was trying to peel our faces from our skulls. Even with masks over our eyes, it didn’t feel like enough protection.
The Fallow house had been a simple thing. Theodorsen told us Kell had built it himself. It had a main living area with a kitchen and counter space along one wall, and a family area in the middle, with some cheap used media gear for entertainment and communication. Off the main living space on the left had been a small bathroom, laundry and composting toilet; and on the right had been a large bedroom for Kell and Airlie and next to that a smaller bedroom for the kids. Theodorsen reported that Kell Fallow had been talking about expanding the house as soon as he got enough money scraped together to do it. He had worked for the settlement’s meteorological service, watching the weather, taking measurements from monitoring stations around the island. Theodorsen went on, sharing his own shock that Fallow and the other islanders had been disposables. “We had no idea, none at all.”
“I know what you mean,” said Gideon.
“What did Airlie do?” I asked, looking at the tumbled, shattered wreckage of what had probably been a cozy home.
Theodorsen checked his files. “She was a housewife. Took in a bit of sewing, and worked in the town library a couple of days a week.”
I quietly marveled at the idea of such a pre-nano sort of existence. It sounded tempting.
As for Theodorsen’s descriptions, Kell and Airlie’s lives didn’t sound like anything to justify what had happened here. “What did she do before? Before she and Kell…?”
“She was a scientist.”
Gideon looked up and glanced at Theodorsen and me. “What kind of science?”
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