Analog SFF, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Very effective, Shad,” I said. “The voice you were using—I know it from somewhere."

  The duck nodded. “Laurence Olivier as Marcus Licinius Crassus in the old motion picture Spartacus. I find it works very well on most Britaucrats."

  While I digested this particular facet of my new partner's sound equipment, I studied a frame of one of the stationary vids I had up on my screen. It showed a red fox: short legs, a long bushy tail, and a narrow muzzle. The creature's ears and feet were black, its tail had a white tip, and the coat was glossy and rust red. I turned and glanced through one of the many tall windows in the club lounge facing Hound Tor. The promise of rain had been fulfilled. “Shad, run the cruiser around to the front of the lodge beneath the portico. I think it's time someone interviewed the fox."

  * * * *

  An hour later the rain was falling steadily on the cruiser's canopy a half kilometer south of the lodge grove, giving us a distorted view of the protected site of a nameless medieval village and the large rock formation just beyond it. In the distance, occasionally obscured by patches of ground fog, rose the imposing heights of Haytor Rocks. Had the village been located in the American southwest, it would have been called a ghost town. It was little more than lanes, foundations, and the occasional restored wall, with a small imitation stone, prefab National Park Information Center sporting a pseudo thatched roof and pseudo brick chimney at the site's northwest corner, with a rather real-looking sparrow perched on its top. Shad had posted a wireless text message for Quartermain and when the fox answered, this was where he said we were to wait. Putting the waiting time to use, Shad checked with the District AB Registry for the particulars on both Archie Quartermain and Miles Bowman's horse.

  "Both amdroids were gestated, grown, and activated through Fantronics, Ltd. out of London,” said Shad. “The bio amdroid assignment supervisor there, Dr. Shirley Wurple, dodged my call. Her chief assistant to the assistant chief, one Martin Corbola, says he would be happy to answer all of our questions—once we present at the Fantronics legal offices, during normal business hours, a duly sworn and signed warrant for the information on Quartermain.” He faced me. “The information on the horse, however, he gave up willingly."

  "Horse engrams can't quite grasp the concept of litigation, I suppose. Have London ABCD apply for a warrant for Quartermain's records and post us with the names of any Fantronics employees connected with Quartermain's transformation into a Vulpes vulpes."

  After sending in the warrant request, Shad said, “Where were you before you wound up in ABCD?"

  "Metro. London Metropolitan Police."

  "You mean, Scotland Yard?"

  "Just ‘the Yard.’”

  The duck studied me. “So, you were a big-time murder cop in the Yard and you wound up out here in West Mudflap doing grunt work for Artificial Beings Crimes ... how?"

  "What about you? How come you're still a duck? The International PBA pays for human meat suits for fallen officers."

  "Have you ever seen those generic bios they use in the States? One size fits all. They don't come with wireless modems either."

  "Also they don't fly,” I added.

  "There is that.” He nodded. “The flying is one reason I'm a duck."

  "I hear for many ams it's the sex."

  Shad faced me as his eyes widened. “Are you kidding?"

  "Not at all. Many species of animals have better sex than humans, I understand."

  "What—did Parker tell you that?” The duck laughed with a repeated wak, wak, wak sound. “Better sex? Ignoring the really severe seasonal limitations for most waterfowl, have you ever seen ducks copulate?"

  "I can't say that I have."

  "No matter how you slice it, man, it's criminal sexual assault."

  "You mean rape?"

  "I'm not exaggerating.” He shivered all over. “In Duckville, man, if you don't do it like that, you don't do it at all. I can't do it that way. It is one big stone cold turn-off."

  "Then why don't you opt for a human meat suit?” I insisted.

  "Look, when I was working for that insurance company, part of the deal my agent put together was quite a sophisticated package for their spokescritter. This duck is loaded: ENN-band wireless interface, portable engram reader, all-weather thermal imaging, state-of-the-art sound, a memory bigger than the Library of Congress, disease-proof, and mildew-resistant. As long as I don't get shot by a hunter, sucked into a jet intake, or caught by a chef, I'm practically indestructible. But it's not just that I'd have to give up all those features to put on one of those Mediocre Myron meat suits to become a mere mortal human back in New York's finest. What would happen to me—I mean, what would happen to the duck?"

  "The meat suit would be put in the queue for whoever wanted to become a duck."

  "That line doesn't exactly wrap around the block. I'll tell you what would happen: This little duck would be allowed to die, its mind emptier than my pension plan. This duck made me a star, put my name in Variety, and got me my own booth at Billy Bob's Buffalo Burger. I owe it more than letting it wind up in a recipe or a landfill somewhere."

  "The lovemaking, though, Shad. Do you miss it?” I almost regretted asking. Each question is, in its own way, a confession.

  Shad stared at me for a second. “Sure, I miss it. About a year ago there was this hooded merganser I met on a landfill in Skowhegan, Maine. Cutest little tail you ever saw."

  "How is a mallard attracted to a hooded merganser? Doesn't that violate some sort of law of nature?"

  Shad waved a wing, dismissing the question. “Every year in New England some moose comes out of the bogs and falls in love with a dairy cow, and I'm talking real moose and real cows. You do realize I'm not a real duck, don't you?"

  "Pardon me if I seem a bit dense, Shad, but it seems even more perverse for a human to be sexually attracted to a hooded merganser."

  "You need to walk a mile in my webbed feet. Besides, you never saw her fluffy pink and white pinfeathers. Your theory works the other way, though. She wouldn't give a mallard a second look.” He faced me. “I still haven't forgotten my question."

  I stared at the rivulets of rainwater streaming down the canopy. “About three years ago my wife died. It was in some sort of building explosion. Killed seven others as well, including the bomber."

  "Religious nut?"

  "Insurance scam gone awry, as it turned out. The fire brigade's paramedics managed to harvest my wife's engrams before she went neutral.” I smiled sadly, recalling her reaction when she regained consciousness in the generic female bio the National Health and the IPBA had provided. I glanced at Shad. “She called her bio Averill Average."

  Shad only nodded, his gaze fixed on some inward quandary of his own.

  "My wife had many health problems: chronic headaches, arthritis, difficulties with her heart—"

  "None of which Averill Average had,” completed Shad.

  "Quite.” I let out an involuntary sigh. “She was so healthy I imagined it would be for her like being born again. To be honest with you, Shad, generic that female bio may have been, but I found her rather attractive."

  "Built, huh?"

  I felt myself blush. “Well ... in a word.” I glanced at him. “That notwithstanding, my wife couldn't stand her new body. She saw a therapist and all the rest, but I'm afraid she had some rather severe issues that were brought to full flower by inhabiting what she considered someone else's body, although hers was the suit's first imprint. We explored the possibility of doing a Quik-gro bio from her own DNA, but the NH and the PBA wouldn't cooperate because of her DNA's built-in health problems."

  "Policy,” remarked Shad.

  "Indeed. The short of it was that she wanted out."

  "Suicide?” asked Shad.

  "No. She wanted out of Averill Average. She wanted a new meat suit."

  "How? The union wouldn't spring for a second body—particularly not a designer suit. Those can cost millions."

  "As it turned out, she didn't w
ant a human bio no matter who it looked like. Valerie traded her human meat suit on eSwap for an automatic dishwasher, ten years housekeeping service from Rent-A-Mech, and an amdroid meat suit. She had her engrams imprinted on a female cat bio."

  "You're married to a cat?"

  "A Tonkinese. We're still together, of course. I love her very much."

  The duck let out a snort of frustration. “Great. Neither of us are getting any."

  I burst out with a laugh at that. “Quite.” I looked over at him. “Regarding your question, I'm on my second bio myself. Between that and my experience with Val, I qualified for ABCD.” And now came the difficult part. “Perhaps my work at the Yard was slipping. Set in my ways. I'd been a detective for almost sixty years. Perhaps Metro just needed to clear the upper ranks in order to bring up deserving youth. Whatever. Since I refused to retire, I was forced to take a position with ABCD."

  "Yeah,” said Shad as he nodded. “Now I know who you remind me of. You sort of look like Basil Rathbone."

  "I noticed the same resemblance in this bio. I rather like it. How does one so young remember Rathbone?"

  Shad placed the back of one wingtip against his forehead. “Surely you jest. Basil Rathbone, big star in the nineteen forties and fifties, his Sherlock Holmes films still on the B&W vids all the time."

  "Ah, yes,” I said as I recalled. “'Guard this with your life, Watson.’ He was an early Sheriff of Nottingham, as well."

  "The Sheriff of Nottingham was a brother officer who got a bum rap from a biased media,” Shad observed, then held out his wing. “So, what happened? Did you get killed?"

  "The first time. The second time there was a genetic glitch in the bio that resulted in rather debilitating health problems. The IPBA insurance covered bio replacements both times, and Valerie insisted I take this one."

  "What happened to the old you?"

  "The first was ransacked for body parts with the remainder cremated and scattered in Val's garden—back when she used to garden. The second one, believe it or not, is still alive and in the nick up in North Yorkshire awaiting trial for multiple murders."

  "G'wan. North Yorkshire? The old you is the Harrogate Slasher? Chucky Bulvine? The guy who used a portable engram assignment unit to steal an identity to disguise himself for his nighttime murder sprees?"

  "That's the one. Some terminal pensioner from Otley took on my old body thinking he might get an additional four or five severely limited years out of it for next to nothing. Then one night Chucky Bulvine caught him, wiped him, did a swap, killed his first victim, then reassigned back to his old body. He kept that up, using my old body, then reverting to his usual self between killings. He might never have been caught except Bulvine's ex-wife found his body in stasis when he was out in mine and put a plastic bag over his head. By the time he returned, his old self was covered with flies."

  "So Bulvine's stuck in the old you."

  I couldn't help but smile. “The old me simply wasn't up to running from the police."

  "Too much cop in your DNA."

  "Mostly a weak heart and a pair of bad knees.” I grinned as I added, “Quite a dilemma for Bulvine, though."

  "How so?"

  "Bulvine's best legal strategy is to drag things out until the crown's aged chief witness either dies or can be frightened off. The doctors, however, don't think the old me can possibly live another six months. Quite a predicament."

  "That's the future,” Shad remarked laconically. “What a fascinating modern age we live in."

  I grinned as I pointed at the duck. “Lucky Jack Aubrey in the vid remake of Master and Commander. Right?"

  "You know your flicks. In the Master and Commander remake, do you remember the flightless cormorant the doctor saw when the Surprise made the Galapagos Islands?"

  "Of course."

  The duck crossed his right wing across his breast, held out his left wing and did a courtly bow.

  "No,” I said. “I don't believe it—"

  A tapping sound came from Shad's side of the cruiser. He straightened from his bow and looked down through his side of the canopy. “We better copy into the mechs, boss. It's Archie Quartermain, and right now he's going into a muddy hole in the ground."

  * * * *

  "No. Impossible. I cannot believe Ida killed Miles,” said the fox.

  Archie Quartermain paced back and forth, looking about warily in what passed for his office. The site of the medieval village below ground level was a warren of tunnels and chambers, many of the chambers being old hidey-holes formed from the village's remaining root cellars, wells, and cisterns. The stone slab chamber in which our meeting took place was a little over three meters by two and contained an occupant other than Shad, Quartermain, and myself: a human skeleton.

  While our meat suits reclined in the cruiser, hovering prudently out of reach of local malefactors, Shad and I were in the mechs. Mine resembled a tread-mounted aluminum grapefruit topped with miniaturized vid, lighting, audio, and analysis equipment. Shad was in the fist-sized hover mech, which resembled an art deco Saturn with a badly straightened set of rings. The only illumination in the chamber was provided by our mech lights. While Quartermain paced, I did a quick carbon on the skeleton to see if it was something I needed to ring in. It wasn't. The bones dated back to the thirteenth century. Judging from the earthenware jug next to the bones, the likely cause of death was slow suicide. From his own mech, Shad tuned into my test data and responded with a signal inaudible to the fox, "Talk about your cold cases."

  "I don't understand any of this,” Quartermain said. “Miles and Ida Bowman are—were the love story of the century. Besides, Miles was a bear of a man. Strong, muscular, good in a scrap. Ida was half his size. Beat him to death with a horseshoe? Rubbish.” He stopped suddenly and looked at Shad. “The run was all wrong. Have you looked into that?"

  "What about the run?” asked Shad.

  The fox glanced warily at the hover egg. “It didn't follow the planned route, did it, Don? The hounds and horses were supposed to follow the glade lane through Quik Grove. Have you seen where Miles was found?"

  "Yes,” responded Shad, “but the horses follow the hounds, and the hounds follow you, right?"

  "Not that time. I zigzagged down that lane and never got off it. Suddenly all the hounds were gone.” He looked at Shad. “You have GPS and wireless in that mech?"

  "Yes."

  "You'll see. The run was all planned out in advance, down to the last turn.” The fox sat, his tail around his legs, hunched his head forward, and bared his teeth. “I'm sending you the plan, as well as the performance record. I hit every mark exactly, in sequence, and on time.” The fox glanced at me. “We use the records to debrief the staff after each hunt."

  "Why?"

  "Constant improvement at Houndtor Down, inspector. Identifying weak areas and mistakes, sharpening up the challenge, polishing the act."

  My partner nodded. “Got it, Archie."

  "My run was cut short at the first turn, after leaving the grove. That's when I noticed none of those hounds were dripping hot slobber in my dust.” The fox froze for an instant, then fixed me with a beady-eyed stare. “I have a built-in image reader in my package. Once I realized something had gone wrong with the hunt, I tuned in and peeked through Champion's eyes. He was the only amdroid in the leaders. Miles's horse was already out of the grove, running down toward Becka Brook. Champion's emotional feed spilled into his vid. I was sure something terrible had happened. I didn't find out what until I was back in my den and tuned in the message Sabrina Depp posted for me."

  "About Miles's death?” I asked.

  "That, Lady Iva's arrest, and that the police wanted to talk to me. It's simply all so preposterous. Iva couldn't have killed Miles. You've got to get to Champion and download his recall bank."

  "When you tuned in Bowman's horse, what did you see?” asked Shad.

  "A scramble of terrible images.” He thought a second. “A horse hit by a lorry hauling toilets, horses h
orribly wounded and killed in a desert, horses falling and being blown apart by cannons—all of it at once, filled with deafening pain and panic.” The fox looked at me. “It was like looking at a horse's nightmare."

  There was a scuffling sound, movement beyond the old bones. Quartermain jumped over the skeleton and vanished from view. Shad and I aimed sensors at each other. He dipped his front ring and whispered, “Recognize it? The horse hit by a truck hauling toilets?"

  "Yes,” I answered. “Lonely Are The Brave, Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau, nineteen sixties."

  "Nineteen sixty-two. The desert thing might be from an old vid called Hidalgo,” he suggested.

  "Horses dropping and being blown up could be from any of the old movies centered on the Crimea or the Napoleonic Wars."

  "Charge of the Light Brigade, Errol Flynn,” said Shad. “I'll see if I can tune in Champion."

  I tracked over next to the old bones and saw that beyond them was an opening between two of the foundation rocks that led to a burrow. I swiveled my sensor array in Shad's direction. “Any luck with the horse?"

  "I can't get through."

  "Put it off for now. I want to know the layout of all these burrows, Shad, and I want the mapping to be unobserved. Go on up to the cruiser and transfer over to a micro."

  "Man,” he muttered. “The last time I went out in a micro I was swallowed by a grouper. You have any idea of the disgusting things fish eat?"

  "Soon."

  "Yes sir,” he answered with a sigh as he turned and flew out of the chamber the way we had entered.

  I looked back at the skeleton. Archie Quartermain was skulking behind the ribcage. “My mate,” he said furtively. “Brought me mouse.” He licked his chops, panted for a brief moment, then said, “Still warm."

  "Steady,” I cautioned.

  "She's pregnant."

  I was left speechless for a moment. At least foxes were getting it on. “Well, congratulations, you sly old ... Congratulations.” Time to return to the investigation. “Tell me, Mr. Quartermain. Where do you keep your body in stasis?"

  "Body?” The fox paused long enough to glance at the floor and shake his head. “This is my body now. Don't keep anything in stasis."