The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The flashman came back with someone in tow. She didn’t look pleased.

  “Company policy. We need someone equally capable of interpreting data present when you go in.” So we’re sure you don’t pocket anything on the side, was the unspoken corollary. “Senior Designer Hypatia Spango, this is Sergeant Angel Cardenas. He’s over from Nogales to work on—”

  “I know what he’s here to work on. Why else would anyone be in Wally’s office?” She stared evenly at him.

  Straight on, Cardenas noted. No flinching, no deference, certainly no worry. She was at least fifteen years younger than he. Handsome, not pretty. Black hair permed in tight ringlets that fell to her shoulders. Black eyes too, but oddly pale skin. Body voluptuous beneath the white corporate jumpsuit. Mature. He wondered how much of her was held up by polymers and how much by herself. She was taller than he, but it would’ve been unusual if she wasn’t. Everybody was taller than he was. She wore a reducer cap over her right eye. When she saw him looking at it, she removed it and dropped it into a pocket. Three chevrons on each sleeve of the jumpsuit. The woman carried some weight, and not just in her pants.

  Well, they wouldn’t set a post-grad scanner to keep watch on him.

  Reluctantly, she advanced until she was standing on the other side of the desk. Then she noticed the gray-black lump near his feet. “Nice dog.”

  “That’s Charliebo. He’s nicer than most people.”

  “Look, I didn’t want to do this, but they insisted Optop. I don’t want to like you either, but you’ve got a dog, so I guess I’m stuck there, too.” She extended a hand across the desk top. Her grip was firm and full, not the half-dance tentativeness favored by most women. Her nails were cut short and clean, no polish, none of the rainbow insets currently in fashion. Soft but efficient. Working hands.

  “You from around here?” He meant the Strip.

  She shook her head tersely. The ringlets jangled silently. If they’d been made of metal, there would have been music. “Iowa. Des Moines. It’s a long story.”

  “Aren’t they all, verdad?” He sat up straight and looked past her. “You can go now.”

  The flashman licked his lips as he fiddled with his lenses. They dehumanized him, if it was possible to dehumanize a flashman further. “I should stay.”

  Spango turned. “Waft.”

  He did.

  She sat down without being asked, pulling one of the chairs up to the other side of the desk.

  “How long have you been with GenDyne?” he asked her.

  “Is this being recorded?”

  He tapped his breast pocket. “Everything’s being recorded.”

  She sighed. “All my life. Univ in Des Moines, then three years graduate work. Vegas School of Design. Then GenDyne. Five promotions and two husbands along the way. Kept the promotions, lost the husbands.” A shrug. “That’s life. All of mine, anyway.”

  “And how long’s that?”

  A slightly wicked smile. “I’m not sure that information’s pertinent to your investigation here, Federale.”

  It was his turn to grin. “All right. Pax. How long did you know Crescent?”

  “Ten years. All of it off and on. You know designers. We spend most of our time inside the Box. Wally was friendly enough, knew everybody, and they knew him. Except I don’t guess anybody really knew him. His wife, Karen, a real quiet, sweet gal. They made all the company picnics, reward trips; for all the expected functions, they were both there. Wally played high goal on the division socball team.”

  “Ever notice anything that would make you think he was an abuser?”

  She shook her head. “As far as I knew, he was clean as the Box Room. Of course, you never know what anybody does in private.”

  “No, you don’t. How good was he?”

  “As a designer? The best. Wally knew how to use imagination and logic. He had a flair most of us don’t, no matter how long we work at it. Talent, you know? I don’t know what else to call it. He knew the inside of the Box the way most of us know our own bodies.

  “GenDyne knew it, too. The rest of us had to beg for a raise or an extra day off. All Crescent had to do was sneeze, and he’d have the whole marketing department cleaning his shoes with their tongues. Are you familiar with the GS Capacitate?” Cardenas nodded. “That was Crescent’s baby. Sensitized microbio circuit. Plug one into your screen, feed it, and it automatically replicates existing storage until you turn off the power. Gallium arsenide proteins are a lot cheaper in bulk than predesigned slabs. Revolutionized peripheral information storage.”

  Cardenas was impressed. “Crescent came up with that?” She nodded. “So obviously money wasn’t a problem for him.”

  Spango leaned back in her chair. For a big woman she had small feet, he mused. “He wasn’t independently wealthy, but he made more than you or I’ll ever see.”

  “Maybe he was on to something new. Something potentially as big as the GS.”

  “If so, he was keeping it to himself. We couldn’t find anything revolutionary in his section of the Box. Of course, Crescent was a genius. The rest of us are just plodders. It could still be in there, tucked away where nobody but Wally himself could find it.”

  “Isn’t that kind of unusual?”

  “I see what you’re thinking. Not only isn’t it unusual, it’s standard policy. The company understands and accepts it. I do it myself. Hey, if you don’t protect your ideas from your good compadre next door, next thing you know he’s accessed your storage and is presenting your hard-won innovation to the Board. How do you prove you thought of it first? It’s tough to ident an idea.”

  “So there’s serious competition even within a division. You sure he wasn’t planning to sell to somebody else?”

  “Outside GenDyne? How the hell would I know that? How would anybody? Is that what you think?”

  “Right now I’m thinking of everything. You say he had plenty of money. But he wasn’t independent. Maybe some other outfit was willing to set him up for life. Maybe he wanted something GenDyne couldn’t or wouldn’t get for him. Something nobody else knew about. Got nervous, changed his mind, I don’t know. The people he was dealing with got angry. They argued, they sent someone in after him, they vacuumed him to get what they wanted. No such thing as selective vacuuming, of course. Not yet. Not that the type of person another corporation would send to do something like that would care. Why leave a witnessing consciousness around to make noise afterward?”

  “You make a good case, but I think it’s all idletime. You didn’t know Wally Crescent. Subside dealings weren’t his style.”

  “People are full of surprises.” He twirled the vorec. “Time to start digging.”

  She turned to face the wallscreen. “GenDyne Security’s already combed his storage. Nothing but what you’d expect. You won’t find anything either.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve got to start someplace. You want to give me the access, or you want to make me work?”

  Those deep black eyes studied him. “Maybe I’ll get you to work some other time. You’ve already got the access.”

  He smiled. “What makes you think that?”

  “Security wouldn’t have asked you to look around without giving it to you. Without access, there wouldn’t be anything for you to look at. And if I knew it, then I’d be a suspect, wouldn’t I?”

  “You’re a suspect already. Everyone in this building’s a suspect.”

  She sniffed. “Can I stay and watch?”

  He shrugged. “This kind of examination can get pretty dull. Looking for useful concepts to swipe?”

  “If there was anything readily extractable in there worth stealing, Security’s done it already.”

  He nodded and turned to face the blank wall, raising his voice recognition mike to his lips. “Coordinate Hapsburg Hohenzollern Mermaid.”

  The wall seemed to disappear. He was looking across the carpet down an infinite rectangular tunnel. Within the tunnel, tiny flecks of light and color swarmed like protozo
a in pond water. As he stared, the flecks began to coalesce to form a simple holographic square, neatly lettered on all six sides. A musical female voice, the synthesized duplicate of a reconstructed nineteenth-century singer known as the Swedish Nightingale, spoke from concealed speakers.

  “Welcome to the GenDyne Box, Mermaid storage and files. You are not Wallace Crescent.”

  “Federales Security Special Forces Bomo Bomo Six.” Cardenas withdrew a plastic card from a shirt pocket and slipped it into a receptacle in the side of the desk.

  “Welcome Sergeant Cardenas. Security clearance processed. Mermaid awaits.”

  Cardenas frowned. “That was too easy.”

  “Not if Crescent had nothing to hide. I told you company security’s already run this. Mermaid let them go anywhere they wanted to. If Wally’d been hiding something, they would’ve found a block.”

  “Maybe not, if this guy was as clever as you say. What better way to hide something than to let everybody look around for it?”

  “You mean like hide it in plain sight? You can’t do that in a Box. If Crescent had tucked something into a seam, Security would’ve smelled it out even if they couldn’t crack it. Besides, Crescent didn’t design for Security. He was strictly heavy-duty industrial.”

  “How do you know what Crescent was and wasn’t into?”

  She had no reply for that.

  He started in. He was methodical, efficient, experienced, able to skip whole blocks of information without so much as a surface scan. He pumped the vorec up to three times normal speed. It impressed Spango, though that wasn’t his intention. That was just the way he worked. Within GenDyne itself, nobody except the vorec designers worked even double speed.

  Sometimes he switched to printout when he wanted to be sure of something, reading the words as they formed in the void created by the screen, but most of the time he stuck with the faster vorec. Much of the time he kept his eyes closed as the Mermaid storage spoke to him. He did it because it helped his concentration. He was used to analyzing without being able to see. What he couldn’t detect with his eyes shut was Hypatia watching him.

  Not so very long ago, people had wasted time tapping out their commands on keyboards. Nobody used keyboards anymore except hobbyists. With the perfection of voice recognition circuitry, you just talked to your Box and it replied in a voice of your choice. A whole industry had been created just to supply custom voices. Your Box could reply in the measured tones of Winston Churchill, Shiela Armstrong, or even Adolph Hitler. Or your dead father. Or your favorite seamyvit star.

  He probed and dug and inquired without wondering who might be listening in. He took it for granted this room was smothered. GenDyne Security would’ve seen to that.

  Mermaid was stuffed with notions, ideas incomplete, concepts partly rounded, files that dead-ended, rotating neural highways, and biochem cylinders. Most of it was far above a cop’s venue, but so far he hadn’t encountered anything he couldn’t recognize as incomplete. Even so, he found himself glad they’d pushed Hypatia on him. If anything slipped past his notice, she’d pin it for him. He didn’t have to ask. Having been allowed to see another designer’s private sanctum, she was studying eagerly. But so far she gave no indication they’d stumbled into anything unusual or out of the ordinary.

  Nothing worth vacuuming a man for.

  “Hey?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “C’mon, Cardenas. Give it a rest. You’re starting to put down roots.”

  He blinked. He hadn’t been asleep, not really. Just dozing, his mind lazy and open to the steady flow of verbosity from the wall. He sat up and saw Charliebo resting his head in her lap. A glance the other way showed it was dark outside. He checked his bracelet. Tiny lights flashed accusingly at him. It was after nine. He’d been sponging for eight straight hours.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “The hell you’re not.”

  Slowly, he eased out of the chair. His muscles protested. His bladder was tight as a slipknot.

  “Where’s the—?”

  “Down the hall.” She stood, grinning at him. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “Just the door, man. Just the door.”

  * * *

  She took him to a French restaurant. Cardenas had never been to a French restaurant in his life. Spanglish was near enough to French to enable him to read half the menu, and Hypatia translated the other half. Ten minutes later, he gazed helplessly across the table.

  “Isn’t there anything in this place that doesn’t have some kind of sauce on it?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” She ordered for both of them. The place was fancy enough to afford live waiters. Cardenas waited until the man left.

  “What am I getting?”

  “Poulet. Pollo. Plain. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t poison you with Bernaise or worse.”

  He pushed the menu aside. “The only thing I’m worried about is the bill.”

  “Don’t. This was my invite, so I’m paying.” He went through the motions of protesting. “Look, my salary’s five times yours. Don’t go ancien-macho on me.”

  “Not a chance. Why the largess?”

  “Suspicious little northie, aren’t you?”

  “Consider my profession.”

  “I’m doing it because you didn’t ask me. Because even though you didn’t want me around back in Crescent’s office, you still talked to me. Civil. Because you didn’t make a pass at me. Because I like your dog. Enough reasons?”

  “I’m too old to make passes at girls.”

  “That may be, but then I’m no girl. I haven’t been a girl for a long time. Also, you spoke to my face instead of my chest.”

  “I wanted answers from you.”

  She giggled. It was an extraordinary and utterly unexpected sound, fluting up from the depths of that mature shape, as though for a few seconds it was suddenly home to a wandering seventeen-year-old.

  “That’s not what most men want.”

  Not knowing what to say next, he found himself looking toward the entrance. The curving plastic tunnel led up and out to the street above. They were down in fancy undersand, where corporate execs came to do business, where the flashmen sat, selling and stealing, and sylphs sold themselves to worms from Asia and Europa. Occasionally, the patrons ate.

  “Worried about your dog?”

  He looked back to her. “I could have brought him in with us. Claimed impaired vision. That’s what Charliebo’s trained for. Sometimes I do it.”

  “Unnecessary. He’s fine in the checkroom. I told the girl there to filch him some kitchen scraps. She said she’d be glad to. Charliebo’s a lover. He’ll probably enjoy this dinner more than you will.”

  His eyebrows rose. “I didn’t hear you say anything about scraps. Thanks.”

  Her eyes dropped. Beneath her forearms the thermosensitive lexan tabletop changed color as the plastic responded to the subtle shifts in her body temperature.

  “I like Charliebo. I’ve always preferred animals to people. Maybe because I haven’t had much luck in my relationships with people.” She looked back up at him. “Aren’t you going to ask me about my wonderful marriages?”

  “Hadn’t planned on it.”

  “For a man, you’re pretty understanding. Maybe I should’ve kept away from the pretty boys. The first one was a designer. Good, though not as good as me, not anywhere near Crescent’s class. But he was slick. Did furniture. Did me, too. Designed me right out of his life. The second one lasted four years. I guess I went to the other extreme. Max had a body like a truck and a brain to match. After a while that got old. It was my turn to move on.” She palmed a handful of shrimp crackers from a bowl. “That was ten years ago.”

  “Maybe you should have stuck with it awhile longer.”

  “You’re one to talk.” She looked around wildly. “God, I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “I saw a den up the block as we were coming down here.” He did not offer the expected criticism
.

  “Can’t anyway. Company doctors tell me I’ve got ‘thin lungs,’ whatever the hell those are.”

  “Sorry. You get anything from what we saw and heard today?”

  She shook her head sadly. “Typical cop. Can’t you leave business outside for a while?”

  “I’ve done pretty good so far.”

  “I didn’t sponge a thing. Nothing in Mermaid lively enough to prick a neuron. Oh, lots of fascinating design work, enough to awe just about anybody except Wally himself, but nothing worth killing for.”

  He found himself nodding agreement. “That’s what I thought. I spent most of my time looking for what wasn’t there. Blocks, wells, verbal codes, Janus gates. Didn’t find any, though.”

  “I warned you. How can you sponge a code? Don’t they sound the same as everything else?”

  “To most people.”

  “What do you mean, ‘to most people’?”

  He met her eyes once more. “Hypatia, why do you think they put me on this case? Why do you think Agua Prieta had to bring somebody all the way over from Nogales?”

  “Because you’re good?”

  “I’m more than that. Hypatia, I’m an intuit.”

  “Oh. Well.”

  Her expression stayed carefully neutral. She didn’t look at him like he was some kind of freak. Which, of course, he wasn’t. He was just infinitely more sensitive to sounds and verbal programming than practically everyone else. But the sensationalist media delighted in putting their spotlights on anything that hinted of the abnormal. Intuits were a favorite subject.

  Cardenas could hear things in speech nobody except another intuit would notice. Previously that was something useful only to actors, lawyers, and judges. With the advent of verbal programming, it was recognized as more than a talent. It became a science.

  In the late twentieth century, primitive machines had been devised which were crude mimics of natural intuits. When the majority of information programming and storage switched from physical to verbal input, the special abilities of those people identified as intuits were suddenly much in demand, since people could hide information with delicate phraseology and enunciation. They could also steal. The impetus came from the Japanese, who, after decades of trying to solve the difficulty of how to program in characters, leapfrogged the entire problem by helping to develop verbal programming.