Jack Glass

by Adam Roberts

  //Why is his skin colour the shade it is?// she asked.

  //Human beings born to live in upland environments must deal with much higher than Earth-standard ambient radiation. Dark skin pigmentation is both a common augmentation and is strongly selected for in brevet-evolutionary terms.// quoth the bId.

  Tch! Tch and tuch you ask a specific question and the Biolink iData gives you a general answer. Useless, useless.

  ‘That there’s the weapon, I’d guess,’ said Iago, nodding. And there it was, the modern Club of Herakles, a great plasmetal hammer; plasmetal, or conceivably solid metal. It was lying on the ground beside the victim. ‘It would require somebody of great strength to lift such a thing,’ was Deño’s opinion. ‘Even assuming they were acclimatized to the gravity.’

  This was self-evidently true. So do you know what Diana thought? She thought: since that suggests the murderer is a person of great physical strength, the murderer will actually be a very weak individual. A fellow with a small physique! That was her first thought. Diana knew murder mysteries, you see. She had played a thousand Ideal Palace whodunits. A thousand, at least! Oh, she wasn’t a fool. She knew this was different – that this was life, not a story. But she had spent as much time solving real-life historical crimes as she had solving made-up puzzle stories. And the unexpected was as much key to real crime as to made-up!

  She looked about, to get a sense of the immediate environment of the crime. The room was full of stuff. The hammer on the floor, with the blood on its metal snout, was only one of a whole series of implements for bashing and digging and all the other incomprehensible business required for tending gardens. In the corner of the room a robot sat motionless. On the far wall a chainweave sheet hung; and in front of it a stack of plastic barrels and boxes. There were odd-looking fins sticking out from the wall, like the heat-radiator panels of an upland house although for some reason here fitted to the inside of the building. What was the point in that? To her left were myriad pots of paint and plasmetal lacquer, and long tubes of some description, and who knows what else.

  ‘Lots of possible weapons here,’ she observed.

  ‘Yet the murderer chose a heavy hammer’ said Iago.

  ‘Or made it look as though he did,’ Diana said.

  ‘Miss Argent,’ urged Deño, at her side. ‘Please! Let us leave this place. I am not happy here. This space does not permit me to maximise the security coverage.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, absently, running her eye round the variety of stores. There was nothing else to see here. And she was feeling tired again. This gravity is a crushing thing; an unrelenting thing. And so they went out.

  It was slow work coming back across the dry lawn.

  Back in the house, and Eva hadn’t moved so much as a centimetre. Diana stripped off her crawlipers, and made it back to her couch, supported part of the way by Iago’s gentlemanly arm. She saw that her sister was plugged into Ideal Palace.

  ‘Eva!’ she hooted. ‘Evissima!’ But she didn’t have the energy even to wave her arm, and certainly didn’t have the oomph to get up and go over to her. So she left Eva idling in her worldtual, and slipped into an uneasy doze.

  2

  The Police

  She was woken by Iago. ‘The police want to have a word, Miss Diana.’

  She stared at his old face, as creased as any druid’s His short hair; his muscular torso, his long legs. He was leaning over her, but he made even this look as though he was bowing. She said: ‘You love me, don’t you, Eye-ah-go?’

  ‘Of course I do, Miss Diana.’

  ‘What I mean is: it’s not just that you’re dosed up with CRF?’

  ‘All the family servants are so dosed, Miss.’

  ‘But it’s not just that?’

  ‘It’s not just that.’

  ‘Would you love me even if you had no CRF in your system at all?’

  ‘Of course I would, Miss.’

  She smiled. ‘You want to have penetrative sexual intercourse with me,’ she said.

  His reaction was priceless! ‘No!’ he replied. ‘Certainly not, Miss Diana!’ His eyes were round as coins, startlement and wounded pride. ‘The very idea! My love for you is pure as Plato.’

  And she laughed out loud. ‘I’m only teasing you,’ she said, making the couch sit her up a little. As if that needed saying! Iago was old enough to be her mother. He was old as a druid. He was ancient as chaos and old night. ‘Come on then, let’s have these police in. I shall answer their questions.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ Iago asked.

  But his question only annoyed her. ‘You think I can’t answer some police questions without your chaperoning me? Go away, you hideous, lined, wrinkled, mottled old fellow.’

  ‘You MOHparents asked me to stay whilst the police speak to you, Miss,’ he murmured – although he did back towards the door.

  ‘I’m sixteen,’ she said. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘Will be sixteen,’ Iago said. ‘In three weeks.’

  ‘Close enough for government work. And anyway, Deño is here if I need looking after from these gargoyle policepersons, so you can – shoo – shoo – shoo.’ Her Tutor bowed, and walked out of the door. Here’s the thing about Iago: he made it look easy. Her three bodyguards made it their business to train all the time so as to keep their muscle tone. She couldn’t believe Iago followed that kind of regimen, being a Tutor rather than a bodyguard. Indeed, you could see, from the condensation of sweat on his upper lip, that moving around in this gravity was a terrible, painful strain for him. But he never complained; he never so much as alluded to his discomfort. Iago walked as soon as they landed, sans crawlipers, moving his long legs, spine straight, arms at his side. He bowed. He insisted on standing whilst they sat. It was, in its way, heroic. She knew what he was doing, of course. He was trying to impress her. Never mind the CRF, he loved her true as any knight in romance loved fair maiden. To admit that his legs ached, or his lungs burned, would be to let her down.

  So Dia readied herself, and two police officers came through: one female and one male. Both had the same stocky, troll-like solidity of people raised in this horrible gravity. Both bowed their heads when they came to stand beside her.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Argent,’ said the female. Dia’s bId supplied the necessaries: she was Police Inspector Halkiopoulou, in company of Police Subinspector Zarian, and both were retained by a Ulanov-accredited legal enforcement agency. She waved all that away.

  ‘My sister is lost in the Ideal Palace at the momento-tomento,’ she told them. The slightest delay in the arrival of their smiles suggested either that they were dense, or else that they were both using translation bugs. That was poor form, really. It was English Dia was speaking, after all: not Potpourri or Tidharian or Pidgin-Martian. And this island was majority owned by the Argents, after all!

  ‘Woh, though, isn’t this a terrible thing?’ she said. ‘A dead body! A dead servant!’

  ‘It is clear the individual has been murdered, and it seems death has occurred following a mighty blow to the cranium,’ said the man-police in accented tones, presumably reading the phonetic transcription from across his lenses. She hated that. That was excessivo cheap.

  ‘I saw,’ she said. ‘It was super-woh.’

  ‘It is unclear who has committed the crime,’ the female one was saying. ‘Certainly it was another of the servants present in the building. We have checked the House AI, and nobody else entered the servant house, or left it, during the period prior to the murder. When the body was discovered the nineteen servants housed there all exited the place in distress, but they are all counted, and nobody else was inside. So the murderer must be one of the nineteen—’

  ‘That’s exactly, boringly, exactly what you’d expect!’ Dia broke in. ‘I have solved literally hundreds of whodunits in the Ideal Palace, and I know how important it is to keep an open mind. It might not be any of those nineteen at all!’

  The two policepeople looked at one another, and
then at the floor. Their evident embarrassment infuriated Diana. ‘The House AI,’ said the female, ‘tracked the victim, alive, entering the house. Since then nobody else either entered or left, until after he was dead. Accordingly . . .’

  ‘Oh I know,’ she snapped, ‘of course I know that real life is different to IP-stories. Of course I know that! But I also specialise in real-life whodunits. Really, I’ve cracked hundreds and hundreds.’ She paused to get her breathing back to normal. How could she convince these professional policemen of the genuineness of her passion? ‘I’ll send my scores to your bIds if you like – there’s a girl in Mars orbit who has slightly better metrics, in terms not just of picking the right murderer, but in the identification of the right clues, and in time markers. But the thing the thing is is is she’s better on made-up murder mysteries, and those are easier. I mean, they’re usually more complicated than real-life, historical murders—’ Dia gasped, and snatched a breath, and went on ‘—but the thing is, they’re complicated in a kind-of predictable way. You know what I mean? An invented whodunit has the same relation to real life as a chess puzzle has to an actual game of chess. You look at the classics: Poe! That woman from the Christ family, whatever, and Dickson-Carr, and Queen Ellery, and Jay Creek, and Rajah Nimmi. To solve those sorts of stories your starting point needs to be, like, what would be the most ingenious solution? Throw likelihood away, and look for impossible ingenuity, and you’re halfway there. Of course real life isn’t like that!’ She was wearing herself out, what with the gravity and everything, but the thrust of her enthusiasm carried her through. ‘I’ve played hundreds of real-life murders, from history. I’ve solved murders and kidnappings. I solved four different Rippers. Tonks – that’s the girl in Mars, Anna Tonks Yu, can you imagine a stupider name? – she does histories too, but she’s only better than me on the made-up whodunits. Do you understand?’

  ‘She is a member,’ said the female policeperson, tentatively, ‘of the famous Family Yu?’

  ‘Yes, big-big family, but don’t get distracted,’ said Diana, crossly. ‘You’re not dealing with her, but me. This has happened right on my doorstep! You need my help to solve it! She’d be no use to you anyway. I can help you!’

  These long speeches had worn her out, so she sank back into her chair. She was expecting the policepersons to make polite noises of discouragement, perhaps vague promises and dismissals. But instead they seemed genuinely pleased. ‘We would very much welcome your assistance, young Mistress,’ said the man – Zarian, her bId reminded her – ‘your help would be an invaluable addition to our investigation.’

  Diana was sufficiently taken aback, and tired enough, to say nothing at all to this. She widened her eyes.

  As the silence started to become awkward, the female police-person, Inspector Halkiopoulou, spoke up: ‘I’m sure you understand, Miss Argent, that we are very aware of the sensitivities of . . . conducting police investigation into the internal matters of a family with such a . . . great eminence in the affairs of the whole System.’

  The male one added: ‘we are perfectly well aware that your two MOH parents have – personal connections with the Ulanovs.’

  ‘The Argents are much . . . loved, on this island,’ the female policeperson said, with a smidgen too much tentativeness about the main verb. ‘Quite apart from the fact that you do own more than 50% of the town.’

  ‘My MOHmies do,’ said Diana. ‘Which amounts to the same thing.’ She was feeling a little miffed, if you must know; although maybe it was just the tiredness and the general discombobulation. But she wanted the police to want her because of her Ideal Palace expertise! – not just because she was a scion of a highfalutin friends-of-Ulanov family. What she really wanted was for them to take one look at her stats, and see that if you broke them down properly – broke them down in the way that was most relevant to the sort of crime we’re talking about here – then there was literally nobody in the Solar System to touch her for solving whodunits! Or, nobody in her age group. Which is to say, of the three dozen or so teenagers who hung-out on the (alright, she admitted it) most expensive IP realms, only Anna Tonky-wonks Yu even came close to her.

  It was absolutely a lie to say she had a crush on Anna. That was as absurd as absurd could be. She would fight anyone who said so.

  But instead of that these policepeople were giving her the usual sycophantic stuff, on account of how her MOHmies were players. Of course, it was true. And besides, the victim was an Argent servant; and the murderer was probably an Argent servant too. These people were hers – not the policepeople’s.

  ‘Of course, Your MOH parents have spoken to us,’ said the man. The woman glanced at him, and then turned her eyes back on the floor.

  ‘Of course they have,’ said Diana, sourly.

  ‘You’ll understand we have certain legal processes we must pursue, to remain within the terms of our commercial contract as Ulanov sanctioned police,’ the woman purred. ‘But we would be pleased to . . . defer to yourself in the business of determining who – has committed this crime.’

  ‘I’m very tired,’ Diana told them, with imperious suddenness. ‘I will help you solve this murder mystery. Tomorrow I shall interview all the servants, with help from my bodyguards and my Tutor. We will let you know what we come up with.’

  The police bowed, and went out. Diana lowered her couch and turned cumbrously onto her side, to give her squashed spine a rest. And as she moved she caught Deño’s eye. There was a sparkle in it. It made her smile. He felt it too. Her own murder mystery! Too, too, too exciting.

  3

  The Utility of Dreaming

  The girls spoke to their MOHmies later that same day. The link was relayed a hundred times or so, just in case somebody chanced upon it and tried piggybacking through the source (and nobody must know where the girls were – danger! danger!), so the quality wasn’t good. But their parents were perfectly recognisable: arm in arm, floating in one of their great green globes up in space. ‘You’ll never guess, oh-my-MOHmies!’ blurted Dia, as soon as the connection was secured.

  Both MOHmies smiled their identical smiles, but only MOHmie Yin spoke: ‘we have some idea, my dear – Iago informed us; and the police have communicated through official channels.’

  ‘An actual murder mystery! A dead servant – murdered, and nobody knows by whom!’

  ‘So we hear. We instructed the policepersons that you should help them.’ Those smiles, in separate faces, so perfectly identical they looked like one of the dimensional superposition problems you get in kindergarten.

  ‘I’ll work it out,’ said Dia proudly. ‘I’ll have the mystery cracked in – oh, a day, I should imaginate. A day and a half, I should imaginationate.’

  ‘We don’t doubt that,’ said MOHmie Yin. ‘Will you help her, Eva?’

  Eva looked sulky. ‘Now you know I have my PhD to finish. I’m closing in on a solution to the supernova problem. An actual solution! And, MOHmies-dearests, if I might say – there are problems that are trivial, and problems that are profound. When you bred us to solve problems, surely you had the latter sort in mind?’

  ‘Ah, but,’ said MOHmie Yin, turning to look into the face of MOHmie Yang, ‘which is which? Are exploding stars profound because they are very big and very far away? Or is it precisely that that makes them trivial?’

  Dia wasn’t slow to pick up the hint. ‘A human being is dead,’ she said. ‘Importance and triviality are value judgments that apply only to the human world. And in the human world death is precisely the profound thing.’

  ‘You do talk nonsense, sister,’ said Eva, annoyed that her MOHmies seemed to be siding with Diana. ‘You couldn’t care less about this human being, dead or not! You feel nothing for him one way or the other. How could you? You never met him. He’s just another servant. To you this is simply a problem to be solved, just like the Champagne Supernova problem is to me.’

  ‘Life is more important than data,’ Dia retorted, piously.

  ‘When you saw t
he body – did you weep?’

  Diana glowered at her. ‘Don’t be obtuse,’ she retorted. The blithe smiles of their parents, rendered in scratchy-scratchy dynamic 3D right in front of the girls.