Lacking that natural comprehension, any interpretation SHE made of Whitesmith's behaviour was bound to be suspect. Whether he was simply trying to perform well under a great deal of pressure, or was subconsciously perturbed that Blaylock was not only an extremely capable officer but an attractive woman as well, SHE was unable to decide. Perhaps it was both. Human behaviour was most difficult to read when conflict existed on different levels simultaneously.
Still, it didn't hurt to read the man's words. Since studying his subconscious behaviour was the principle means by which SHE hoped to understand him, and words were the medium of the conscious, what he didn't say told her much about him.
Blaylock's position was more difficult to analyse without the benefit of her report. Whitesmith's would be no use as a guide, judging from past experience. In addition to their gross cosmetic disparities, each reacted quite differently to what seemed—on the surface, at least—to be identical data.
On an intellectual level, SHE guessed, Blaylock was experiencing conflict between her duties as an officer of the MIU and as an old associate of McEwen. It showed in the way she and Whitesmith circled each other, changing sides at the slightest hint of new evidence (adding an extra level of complexity to their usual semantic sparring). First McEwen was in the tank, then he wasn't; SHE wished Blaylock would just make up her mind what she thought, or at least wait until she had enough evidence before taking a stand—in the case of v-med particularly, as she insisted Whitesmith should do elsewhere—rather than allow issues from the past to interfere with present duties.
The information SHE possessed regarding Blaylock's relationship with McEwen came from her official recollections and a few scraps SHE recovered from Lindsay Carlaw's diaries. The rest was covered by Privacy, and SHE was not permitted to part that veil of secrecy. But SHE suspected that there was more to the relationship than met the eye, that SHE may have uncovered yet another example of human self-censorship. Exactly what Marylin Blaylock was protecting herself from, however, again remained to be seen. It may have been nothing more sinister than embarrassment, or regret.
Even as SHE considered the possibilities, SHE realised how unlikely it was that SHE would ever be able to model human behaviour with even a modicum of accuracy; complex systems were notoriously easy to misinterpret. But if, somehow, after all QUALIA's musings upon the people SHE knew well, SHE earned just one revelation about the killer, then the exercise would have been worthwhile.
After giving an overview of McEwen's initial interrogation, Whitesmith concluded:
McEwen agreed to the use of a cage, but proved resistant to interrogation. Even under extreme duress, he professed to have no knowledge of the body found in his unit. Showing him the body did elicit a confession of sorts, but not the one we were after—subsequent to which he lost consciousness again.
Preliminary examination indicated the presence of two unusual nanoagents within his system. Both appear to have been employed longer than the prescribed time, resulting in severe physical and mental dysfunction. In addition to his extreme emaciation, he appears to be experiencing memory loss roughly three years in length, dating back from his awakening. The medic's opinion is that McEwen is suffering from physical and mental stress and will be unable to endure further interrogation for at least twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight.
As I dictate this, he is being prepared and sedated for transport to KTI for a full medical examination. Once we know for certain what agents are in his system and what effects they have had, we can start to think about what to do with him next.
At least we've finally found him, though. That's one mystery solved. And now that a body has turned up literally on his doorstep, we have proof of his connection to the murders. Just having him in our custody opens a wide avenue of new investigation.
OW
QUALIA hoped the medic's estimate was incorrect. Given the chance, SHE would have begun REM probing within the hour. But SHE was required to wait until the MIU team invited QUALIA to participate. Until then, all SHE could do was watch, and consider the data SHE already had.
SHE had already cross-referenced every known detail of the Faux Sydney disposal scene with those from the fifteen previous places the Twinmaker had left his victims. (SHE preferred to use the masculine pronoun over the gender-neutral “es” simply because all the psychological profiles of the murderer agreed that the killer was probably male.) The list of correlations was extensive, supporting the theory that the person responsible for the murder was indeed the Twinmaker. Like Whitesmith, SHE suspected that McEwen's discovery at the disposal scene would be a turning point in the investigation.
Unlike Whitesmith, however, SHE was not circumspect regarding the role of the investigators in that morning's proceedings—particularly with respect to the part Whitesmith's own emotions had played. SHE couldn't help but wonder why he downplayed that effect in his report. His pride had indirectly resulted in McEwen's resistance under interrogation; certainly it was his anger that had led to McEwen viewing the body—which was hardly normal procedure under any circumstances. Whatever had engendered this response, SHE was anxious to identify it and to prevent it from jeopardising any future investigations.
Barely had Whitesmith and Blaylock left the MIU's d-mat complex when a call came from Jago Trevaskis' secretary requesting a face-to-face debriefing session with the two officers. SHE left them at that point. Not only was the Director of MIU's office one of the few in the habitat closed to QUALIA's senses, but there were more pertinent matters demanding QUALIA's attention. On the far side of Artsutanov Station, Jonah McEwen had almost arrived at KTI's medical centre and would soon be examined. That was something SHE intended not to miss. At the same time, SHE sent KittyHawk into the Pool to log the findings where the Watchers—the minds that followed QUALIA's development, among other things—would know to find it.
Besides, Jago Trevaskis was not high on QUALIA's list of humans to observe. SHE had tried to explain too many times to the Director of MIU that the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Awareness was as great as that between a human and a rhesus monkey—but he had never been convinced. To him, QUALIA was just another clever machine brought into being to serve the interests of humanity.
That thought, for a two-year-old of any intelligent species, was simply offensive.
Through the eyes of the spider, the body parts resembled mountains drowned in red dirt—not dissimilar to an aerial view of Kata Tjuta in Central Australia. Although the disposal site had been reconstructed in perfect detail, able to be revisited by VTC from any angle with a hypertext overlay—but without the smooth production values of commercial Context-Rich Environments—something of the spider's perspective remained. Marylin couldn't shake the feeling that she was a mosquito swooping low to partake in a bloody feast.
The nickname was partly responsible for that feeling, she thought. The word “spider” conjured an image of tiny multiple eyes and a compact body, when in fact the forensic robot was a boxy, plastic machine with a reach of almost fifteen metres.
As the visual field she shared with Odi Whitesmith and Jago Trevaskis floated over the body, dozens of white and yellow icons appeared like arcane markers designed to keep evil spirits at bay.
“This is only a preliminary assessment,” Whitesmith said, speaking aloud rather than using the prevocal options that parallel Virtual TeleConference allowed. His tone was weary, bordering on terse. “We've highlighted probable ligature marks, defensive injuries, postmortem cuts, bruises, amputations—the usual. Where we can tell in which direction a severing wound occurred, we've marked that, too.”
“Have you put her back together yet?” Trevaskis asked. In contrast to Whitesmith, he spoke casually, as though discussing a jigsaw puzzle rather than the remains of a human being.
“More or less.” The pieces took on a life of their own as Whitesmith instructed the software to join corresponding yellow markers. When the severed body parts had finished moving, a human body la
y on the floor of the virtual d-mat booth, cleaned of dried blood, only a few pieces of torso and internal organs remaining to be fitted together. The body's sex and the marks where the killer had tied the woman prior to dismemberment were more visible this way.
Marylin winced at the sight. Body parts were just bits of disconnected meat, hard to relate to or empathise with. The faceless corpse revealed before her, however, could have been her own.
Studying it, she felt the familiar sense of injustice, and asked the same rhetorical question of no deity in particular: How could anybody do this? She wasn't like Whitesmith, hadn't yet learned to anaesthetise herself to the horrors they were encountering regularly during the Twinmaker investigation. Part of her was glad that she had not.
“We haven't performed a full autopsy yet,” he went on, “so we have several candidates for cause of death. There's a mark around her neck suggesting asphyxiation—a bag tied over her head or something similar—but not strangulation. Also, we have numerous shallow puncture wounds to her stomach and chest, probably caused by an ice-pick—”
“How many wounds, exactly?” Trevaskis asked.
“One hundred and forty-two. We don't know for sure if they killed her; some of them were certainly made after death. Both the asphyxiation and the ice-pick wounds could have been torture, though, rather than an attempt to finish her off. The third possibility is dehydration; all tissue and blood samples subjected to on-site analysis were crawling with repair agents, and Marylin found hints of wounds that had almost healed over. He was obviously busy with her for some time before letting her die. Maybe he got an extra kick from not knowing exactly when she would succumb.”
“Tfu.” The exclamation sounded more vile than any curse Trevaskis could have uttered. “I didn't think this jebaniec could get any sicker. Obviously I was wrong.”
Marylin stirred.
“Actually, sir, I think he's getting bored,” she said.
“Oh?”
“This is the sixteenth body in as many months, in which time his modus operandi has hardly changed. It's becoming routine, too easy. We've seen escalation of signature violence in the last couple of cases; this may be the first time it has fully manifested. He's trying to recapture the thrill.”
“Plausible.” Trevaskis was silent for a moment. “The scars you say you saw are marked, but I can't see them. Why is that?”
She took a deep breath. “Sometimes the spider has difficulty distinguishing between different types of organic matter. That's why I always examine the body of a victim in person, even when a spider has been over it once, to check for evidence that might have been overlooked.” She wished she could see him; she couldn't tell from his voice alone whether she was being criticised or praised. “In this case, there was.”
“Could you tell what sort of wounds they were?”
“Unfortunately, no, sir; just that they were there.”
“I'd like to see detailed images of the scars, then, on the off-chance they're the remains of bites or scratches. He might have removed similar identifying marks from other bodies the same way. Maybe this one died before the agents could finish their work.”
“You think he made a mistake?” asked Whitesmith.
“Not really, but it's worth investigating. Tell Indira to look into it when they get the body up here.” Trevaskis cleared his throat. “Good work, Marylin. Odi, take the body apart again.”
The body assumed its previous position, scattered in pieces on the floor of the d-mat booth. The positioning was haphazard, with no apparent juxtaposition of genitals, buttocks and breasts; blood splatter on the walls, plus the absence of footprints in the blood, indicated that the pieces had been thrown into the booth and left to lie where they fell. The woman's head, scalped and skinned after death, rested upside down in one corner not far from her toeless feet.
This time, however, Whitesmith had selected the view seen when the spider had first entered the unit, rather than the one that showed the body. There was only one difference, but it was eye-catching.
Resting on the remains of the woman, in the precise centre of the booth, was a piece of paper.
“The usual staging,” said Whitesmith. “Randomness of placement belies the planning required for disposal, intended to give us the impression that the killer is disorganised and wanted to get rid of the body as quickly as possible—”
“Unless he genuinely doesn't care,” Marylin interrupted, “and it's the placement of the body as a whole that's significant.”
“True. The jury's still out on that one.” Whitesmith shifted in his seat.
“The note?” Trevaskis prompted.
“A cover of another WHOLE leaflet. One of the classics this time: Soul Pollution. The complete text is on file.”
“No special significance?”
“Just the usual anti-KTI sentiments. No threats, explicit or otherwise.”
“The ‘Murdering Twinmaker’ strikes again.” Trevaskis sighed. “And the victim herself. Do we have a name, yet?”
“No. We've sent the samples to the home team; they'll let us know when they have an ID. Skull and bone structure, as well as skeletal height, suggests we have another match.”
“The odds were for it,” Trevaskis said.
“As far as other evidence goes, we have the usual list. No murder or torture weapons were found with the body, although at least six were used: the ice-pick, an axe, a cutting laser and three knives of different sizes, possibly scalpels. The victim was bound with packing tape and nylon rope; residues left on the skin will be examined later today. The spider took surface samples to check for any unusual deposits peculiar to the environment of the murder scene, but, again, we'll have to wait for results to come through on those. The killer left no fingerprints, no hairs, no skin, saliva or semen.” Whitesmith paused, obviously checking a mental inventory to see if he'd left anything out. “There's only one thing, really, that we can be sure of.”
“Which is?”
“She wasn't killed in McEwen's unit.”
“That's conclusive?”
“Absolutely. Apart from blood that leaked out of the d-mat booth, there's no evidence she was ever there. Plus, the unit shows every sign of having been abandoned until she arrived this morning.”
“Apart from McEwen.”
“Including McEwen. Unless he's reprogrammed his housekeeper and does his own cleaning, the unit has been empty for up to a week. No one disturbed it. If anybody was in there, they weren't moving.”
Trevaskis clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Marylin waited for him to say something, to voice the thought they were all thinking. But he didn't need to; the silence was eloquent enough. This wasn't quite the answer they'd been looking for.
“Okay,” he eventually said. “That'll do for now.”
“Kill it?” Whitesmith asked.
“Yes.”
Thank God for small mercies, Marylin breathed to herself, and opened her eyes on reality.
The office used by the Director of MIU was situated on the outermost level of Artsutanov Station, with very little apart from radiation shielding between the floor and vacuum. It had no view; instead, a 3-D panel on one wall panned across a Nepalese mountainside to lend a feeling of spaciousness. The room's furnishings featured fabrics with a crimson theme that Marylin found faintly discomforting. Whatever the purpose of the decor, be it to conceal security devices or to muffle bugs, it radiated artifice and insecurity, as well as a hint of prurience.
But that was Trevaskis in a nutshell, not just his office. He had the well-balanced features of a thirty-year-old, despite being at least sixty; his skin was lamp-tanned rather than the pallor of most white orbital citizens. His brown hair, kept long in defiance of habitat guidelines, dangled behind him like a horse's tail. Even the way he spoke, with his occasional and certainly cultivated use of argot, was probably nothing more than an act.
Marylin had accompanied Whitesmith to many such debriefing sessions and had never once felt
comfortable in Trevaskis' presence. Half the time she didn't even know why she was there. Not only was meeting in person unnecessary, but being grilled by the man who was her ultimate superior, and was himself just another lackey of KTI, had dubious attractions. Especially after the events of that morning.
She stretched. Her muscles were stiff, exhausted from holding a rigid pose for almost half an hour. The only senses used during VTC were sight and sound, but that was enough to convince the mind that it had been dislocated from the body. Reorientation to the real world was always difficult.
Whitesmith ground his knuckles into his thighs, making them crack. When he looked at her, his eyes were red-rimmed. They conveyed the impression of a man who'd banged his head against a wall until the wall had finally collapsed—only to reveal another wall standing beyond it.
“So,” Trevaskis said, guiding his wheelchair back to his desk with economical tugs of his hands. His uniform was hand-tailored from genuine black cotton, complete to a point midway along his thighs where leather pads hid the stumps of his legs from sight. “We have our suspect at last. That's one step forward, regardless how many we may take sideways in the next few hours.”
“Which could be more than we'd like.”
“I know, Odi. But it begins to look like we're getting somewhere. What's your gut feeling on McEwen?”
Whitesmith shrugged. “I think he's guilty of something. He admitted as much when we showed him the body. What, though, remains to be seen.”
“That could be said of all of us.” A smile hinted at levity—but it was only a hint. “Marylin?”
“I think we were given him, sir,” she said without hesitating. “The Twinmaker tossed him to us like he'd throw a dog a rubber bone.”
The Resurrected Man Page 4