by Guy Haley
"Meaning?"
Richards rolled his eyes. "There's been an android in here, and someone damaged it severely. I thought you were built to fight machines?"
"I'm made to kill them, not perform forensic investigations on them. So you suspect one of the crew has been suborned?"
"I've discounted that. Even if we can factor in an assassin programme clever enough to turn one of Quaid's carriages to its own end and not to get caught, this here is cranial suspension fluid, and underneath the hopeless attempts to clean it up there's a lot of it. Quaid's manifest says his crew are all working just fine. You crack an android that hard, it becomes very obvious it's been damaged."
"How so?"
"Well, like when it starts walking into the wall repeatedly and talking to the furniture." He waved a finger. "This stuff keeps 'droid brains from cooking themselves. You get a leak that big it'll pitch forward and smoke will pour out of its ears after about five minutes."
Otto leaned back and sipped his whisky. "I suppose that would also discount an emulant among the guests?"
"Maybe, this coolant does not come from any of the people that we're looking at here."
"And Qifang's body?"
"No idea. They're searching the seabed now. Whoever killed him pitched him overboard, the blood trails show that." Supplementary video popped up a bubble next to Richards' dicopter feed displaying a smear of blood, vermilion in the boat's harsh lighting, on the deck that terminated at the port side of the bow. "Thing is, how's a 127-year-old going to crack an android hard enough to make it leak fluid like that? There's another problem."
The interior of the boat moved off to one side. Holographic footage of a man moving erratically down a busy street replaced it.
"That must be Morden," said Otto.
"Yep. And this is Qifang." The video froze, zoomed in.
"I recognise him. Everyone knows his face."
"Yeah, but when this was shot, he was also aboard the Aurora Viva."
"That's impossible."
"I'm as sure as sure can be," said Richards. "Gridsigs, witnesses, tickets, video footage. The lot," said Richards.
"He's being followed," said Otto, uncurling a finger from his glass and pointing at the holo.
"He is." The outlines of four men highlighted themselves on the picture. "All black, not a legit form of ID among them, damper masks on their faces to fox the IR. They all go down this alleyway here, and then they don't come out."
"The footage could have been doctored."
"The footage is the only thing about this scenario that's not dodgy," said Richards. "I've checked it pixel by pixel. I've had the alleyway checked out – it had been molecularly washed. There were still a few nanites twitching when EuPol got there. Now, either Qifang has unlocked the secret of large-mass teleportation, or he was in two places at once."
"The Qifang on the boat, perhaps then he was an android."
"Maybe. Insufficient data, as they used to say," said Richards. "Maybe he was, maybe the one in the alleyway is. It strikes me as the most likely eventuality, but there's no evidence of that, no sign of any outside control coming in via beam in either place. A human grade simulation needs as much bandwidth for a sensing presence as a Class Five and up, and that's hard to hide. The worrying thing is that both pan out as human, in every way: vessel patterning, scent, DNA, the works."
"They have sensors in Morden to pick that stuff up now?"
"Hughie's hell-bent on gentrifying the place."
"Clones then?"
"With a ninety-nine percent mental failure rate? Maybe, but only if someone convinced the clones to play ball, and gave them acting lessons," said Richards. "What's really funny is that his system log has his Gridsig in both places at once, without tripping any alarms. There's something really peculiar going on here."
"So we start with the boat, because the murderer is still on board," said Otto.
"Bingo, Otto, we'll make a detective out of you yet. That's what we're going to find out."
"You don't know."
Richards span his hat around on the glass table top, his softgel face quirked into a smile. Above the collar of his coat exposed plastic vertebrae glinted with the colours cast out by the holo. "Aside from the blood and coolant, there are no chemical traces at all, no signs of other AI on board, no signs of outside influences. No one and nothing has been on or off the boat, but the body. Quaid's got security that can detect a prawn swimming under his keel. The murder weapon is missing, probably overboard. It's a bit of an enigma."
"So you don't know."
"I didn't say that. I have an idea, but I'm not sure yet."
"The crime scene will be ruined," said Otto.
"Actually, it's fresh. Hughie kept things to a minimum. There's the couple of gun drones and the uniform you saw to keep an eye on things, that's all. They checked the boat for infiltration, but the murder room is a clean scene. We've got free rein. The yacht's in quarantine. This whole area is under lockdown, for the time being, at any rate."
"What about the VIA?" said Otto.
"Hughie's done a good job keeping this on the QT. If the VIA know, they're not letting on," said Richards.
"And the other Qifang?" asked Otto.
"EuPol are looking for him now, dead or alive. Hughie says dead."
"This is going to be dangerous."
"Yep, that's why you're coming. Get your coat, Otto." Richards strode abruptly for the door. "Middle of the night, Otto, middle of the night!" shouted out Richards. "No better time than that to quiz a suspect, get them off guard."
"Elementary, my dear Otto," muttered the German. He refused to be hurried. He drank his whisky deliberately, savouring the smoky flavour of it, and set the glass down with a click before following Richards out into the arcade where his sheath impatiently waited.
The eugene had an accent native to a non-existent land lying somewhere east of Boston and slightly westwards of Atlantis, all hooting nasal glides and flattened rhotics. A massive affectation that had infected an entire subgroup of wealthy Americans, it was so artificial Otto found himself hating the man as soon as he opened his mouth, but then he didn't like Americans much anyway.
"I said I don't know," Quaid said, "five times! Are all you Brits morons or what?"
Richards smiled an unnerving robotic smile. "Technically, Mr Quaid, neither of us are British. I am a free roaming AI, Otto is German."
"Whatever," said Quaid. Up close he was even more grotesque than on the holo-feed, a great slab of orange, gengineered meat. He sprawled on the curved sofa of his dayroom, arms flung out on its back, legs open. Quaid had had everything money could buy and more, he was not a man to feel uncomfortable in any circumstance. "Qifang was lousy company," he drawled. "He got confused real easy, looked dazed a lot, and I swear he kept forgetting where he was. He went on saying he was ill, wouldn't eat much, kept himself to himself in his cabin for most of the voyage."
"You do not seem sympathetic," said Otto. He stood near the door, filling half the dayroom. There wasn't an antenatally tweaked gene in Otto's body, but he was bigger than the eugene. He had to bend his neck to keep his head from bumping on the ceiling.
"He was a disappointment to me, frankly. I was interested in grilling him for his expertise on self-sustaining digital ecologies."
"Why?" said Otto.
"Why don't you sit down? I'll get you a drink brought up," said Quaid.
"I prefer to stand," said Otto.
"Huh. Friendly attack dog you got here, Mr Richards."
"Just Richards, Mr Quaid. Please answer my partner's question."
"And why should I do that?" Quaid said. "You aren't even real cops. I am a USNA citizen. I'm not beholden to you."
"We are fully licensed. We're the people they call when the cops don't have any ideas," said Otto. "We have an AllPass and a warrant from the EuPol Five to ask what we like. You are in EU waters, so I say again: why?"
"Because I am a real ecologist, you ape," snapped Quaid, "and
I like to be able to simulate what I plan to do before I do it. Qifang's pre-eminent in his field. If I could secure a means of reproducing what he sees in the old RealWorld ecologies and harness it as a testing ground, it'd mean a lot to ecosystem reclamation. Hell, forget that, forget Earth, forget Mars, Venus even, you get me a simulator that powerful, I'll tell you how to terraform the goddamned Moon with ice chips and algae. I'm expanding into planetary engineering, it's the next big thing, that's why I invited him on board."
"Thank you Mr Quaid," said Richards, his eyes blinking out of time with each other.
Sometimes his sheath's expressions look off, thought Otto, it goes pantomime.
"Was he ill?" continued Richards.
"Yeah, I think so. Hakim, the cook's assistant, came down with the same thing, some kind of flu. That Chinese bastard better not try and sue me for picking it up off Hakim, I'd not want to fire him for letting himself get sick. Everyone gets sick sometime. He's not been himself at all, though he's kept working like a real solid trooper. He is a credit to my boat, so many people are so goddamned lazy these days. He kept on going, no matter how spaced-out he was looking. Better than Qifang, at any rate."
"How many android carriages or sheaths do you have on board?" asked Richards.
Quaid smiled, a sneer hid behind his perfect teeth. "Why, you looking for an upgrade?"
"The sooner you answer our questions, Mr Quaid, the sooner we'll be gone," said Richards patiently.
Quaid hammered a tattoo with his palms on the back of the couch. "Jesus! Just the five for the crew and one spare. I sometimes let guests use it, remote access for meetings, it can't be much fun, they have minimal sensor capability. They're here to sail the boat, not much else."
"No more androids on board?"
"Listen, these things are barely worthy of the name. I chose them because they look kind of nautical, don't rust and have enough hands to let a Two manage my sails. I have nothing as fancy on the Aurora as what a catalogue would call an android."
"OK. Now we go take a look at them," said Otto.
With as much ill grace as he could muster, Quaid had his crew line up on the fore deck, then he took Otto and Richards down to the crew room on the utility deck where, in a locker, was stashed an inert sixth. Without a driving mind the gaudy body looked like a broken carnival decoration. Richards and Otto went over them all carefully. They were undamaged.
"The cops did all this already," grumbled Quaid.
"Yes, and we do it again," said Otto. Neither his near-I adjutant nor Richards showed up anything untoward. There were no residues that should not be there, human or otherwise.
Richards quizzed the five Twos inhabiting the active sheaths. Like the Ones, Two series lacked advanced intelligence, both classes only scraping into the UN's higher AI classification thanks to a certain dogged self-awareness. Nothing they said suggested they had seen anything, nor did their memories, which Richards accessed directly once he'd done being polite, their logs showing their occupation of the sheaths for the entire voyage, their encryption unbroken. As far as Richards could tell, nothing had been riding them that should not have been. The base units for the Twos were on board, occupying half the lowest deck fore of the engine room. He insisted Quaid open their vault up. They exhibited no sign of interference either.
"Satisfied?" said Quaid.
"No," said Richards. "No, I'm not. Do you have any idea of where the cranial suspension fluid in Qifang's cabin could have come from?"
"What are you talking about?"
Richards showed him the holo accompanying analysis. Quaid at least had the grace to look surprised.
"You and the police have scanned this yacht from stem to stern three times already. There are no androids or other robotics here other than the ones I have shown you," he said, a little more co-operatively.
"Hmmm," said Richards. "Hey, you, officer…" Richards called to the sole uniform on the boat. He'd been doing an admirable job of hiding in the shadows the whole time, listening.
"Santander, sir."
"Get onto your office will you? Have them check out Qifang's whereabouts the two weeks before he got on this boat."
"A Gridsig search sir?"
"That kind of thing. Oh, and perhaps see if our Californian colleagues will send someone round to check up on his house, would you?" Richards could do this himself, naturally, but he wanted the officer out of the way for a while.
"Of course, sir."
"Thanks."
Richards waited for the cop to leave before he spoke to the two men filling the corridor behind him. "If there really are no other androids on board, and the ones that are there are in good condition," said Richards, "that leaves one possibility. Neither Zhang Qifang was what they appeared to be."
"An emulant?" said Quaid. "That would have shown up on my security."
"Your guess is as good as mine. Auto-units don't fool anyone for long; you're right. Self-governing androids are not hard to spot. But all this blood…" He turned to look at them. "Zhang Qifang was murdered by somebody on board this boat. However, when the deed was done, they were surprised to find that he was not human, but a doppelganger."
"Way to go," said Quaid with leaden sarcasm. "What a theory."
"It's what I do," said Richards. "I suspect some kind of advanced cydroid, an autonomous, organic emulant."
"They can't do that yet, can they?" said Quaid, eyebrows raised.
"No," said Otto. "No, they can't."
"And the advent of some new technology would also explain the sighting of Qifang in the subcity at a time when you were halfway across the Atlantic with him. Gentlemen, not only has Qifang been murdered twice," said Richards. "I suspect the real Qifang has been nowhere near the European Union."
"Bullshit!" said Quaid. But Richards was already far away, the unseeing eyes of his sheath pointed toward the inner spaces of the Grid..
In theory, it took a lot of paperless paperwork to request what Richards wanted of a foreign sovereign power, especially the Americans. As the passage of history had worn away the influence of the USA, later the USNA, the amount of bureaucracy it employed had increased to fill the gap between the country's actual influence and its collective memory of how influential it had once been. Form-filling was not something that had been helped by the AI revolution. Unsleeping eyes allowed for many more forms, and now batteries of zealous machine minds presided over an empire of tick boxes.
Relations between the EU and the USNA had been somewhat cool since the Latin American debacle, and both powers, settling into senescence, were wary of each other's intentions with the globe's new stars. They were locked together by the past, neither giving the other much.
That was how it worked on the human level.
Richards filled in all the forms in double-quick time, but faster still was his request to Hughie to contact the Three Uncle Sams, the triumvirate of Fives who ran the States in all but name, to inspect Qifang's LA home. In four or five days' time, serious-faced men in serious-looking uniforms would be fulminating about this breach of protocol. They'd reach for their rubber stamps all the same.
At 10pm Pacific Time two beat cops called round the professor's flat. His Gridsig sang out strong, saying he hadn't been out in two weeks. There was nothing unusual in that; it was only a week until term started again, and he'd have prep to do. The flies and the stench, however, were somewhat out of the ordinary.
The cops kicked the door in and entered, pistols drawn. They found Qifang's bloated corpse slumped over mouldering dinner plates, an antique cleaning bot banging mindlessly into one blackened foot.
He'd been dead for a fortnight.
Morning saw the corpse of Qifang's doppelganger dredged from the Medway. From his vantage point on the deck of the Aurora Viva, eyes up to maximum magnification, Richards could make out swags of something non-human dangling from the stovedin head as the cydroid swung up from the water in the ungentle embrace of a crane.
Later, Otto and Richards sat in t
he yacht's dayroom with Quaid. Once more they asked him the same questions. Once more, Quaid bridled.
"Of course we ran the full test suite," Quaid said. "A man in my position cannot be too careful, everyone wants a piece of me. Do you know how many people on the States' rich list had family members kidnapped last year? I have no desire to spend my time in a cell courtesy of a Mexican abduction gang, nor good money on new fingers once they're done lopping them off. It all checked out, don't you see what I am saying to you? All of it!" He threw his phone across the table. It spun on the polished wood, coming to a halt against one of Otto's massive fists. "Scans, bloodwork, vessel pattern, gait, retinals, molecular DNA. We matched his movements with the last 48 hours on the State Authority's spy-eyes, the whole damn nine yards. The yacht is shielded, we've one tight band Gridpipe for the Twos to use if they need to, anything else gets scrambled. Everyone gets checked. Hell, even I get checked. How the hell was I supposed to know he was an android?"