Reality 36: A Richards & Klein Novel

by Guy Haley

  "He wasn't an android," said Otto.

  "Did you do a cranioscopy?" said Richards.

  "Who the hell does cranioscopies on their dinner guests? Are you fucking joking? You want me to drill holes in the heads of my friends?"

  "That's why you didn't know," said Richards drily. "After this, I suggest you start."

  They sent Quaid away, and the uniformed PC. Hughie had many eyes and ears on this boat, but Santander was too attentive by half.

  "This is worrying, Otto," he said. "I had Hughie's fanclub run a search on Qifang's Gridsig. Any attempt to track it gave one of the two locations here in London. Nothing out of the ordinary there to the casual observer; they'd only see one. But they ran traces on both at the same time, and that cracked it. His genuine sig says he's not left his house for two weeks. There was the tiniest flutter in it before that, then it goes all crazy."

  "No one noticed?"

  "He's dead, Otto. For real; killed himself as he ate a fish supper of fugu without bothering with the careful part. His Gridware was intact – he was fully wired, should've automatically tagged his death. It is all totally dubious Gridwise. None of the usual protocols followed, he'd seriously monkeyed his chips. He covered up his own death."

  "He was one of the world's greatest minds."

  "Human minds, Otto," corrected Richards. He chewed a softgel lip as he ran over a real-time update of the crimefile, ported into his base unit courtesy of the Three Uncle Sams. "The LAPD found his body in his house yesterday. Apparently they were reluctant to go in on my say-so, but did because of the smell, would you believe."

  Otto spread his fingers, watching the bobbles of the polymer under the skin flex. "Someone has found a way of creating an android sophisticated enough to house a human mind, and human enough to foil the standard tests."

  "Yeah. It's doubtful Qifang could have come up with that on his own. According to k32's technology sine, cydroids like this – that's what he called them – are supposed to be fifty years away. It's one thing to get components to bond with tissue, another to construct an entire machine from vat-grown human body parts."

  "What did we watch being pulled out of the sea? Some kind of decoy?"

  "Maybe. Whoever tried to kill him didn't know the man was a fake, that's for sure. Three days after Qifang died, there were three separate logs of him departing the States. This should have tripped some major alarms, but it didn't, and because the logs ghosted each other, and were chased up by a data-gobbler, no one had done a full check until I requested it. There's some sophisticated ware behind all this," Richards said.

  "Where's the third?"

  "Beats me. They all hopped zeps within hours of each other, then the ghosting starts. It's only because the crew reported Qifang missing on Tuesday that Hughie uncovered this at all. If Qifang's behind this, he's certainly living up to his rep still" – Richards' eyes clicked as he blinked dust off their lenses – "but we can't discount the possibility it's nothing to do with him at all. Seeing as we have two here, I'd be willing to bet the third one is also on his way to the Londons. There's something here that he… they… damn… whoever, wants..."

  "That still leaves us with no murderer."

  "Yes."

  "This fake Qifang, this cydroid… Do they think it was vulnerable to EMP?"

  Richards went quiet for a second, his eyes fixed as he communicated with the mainframe at the coroner where Qifang's double was being expertly dissected.

  "Yes."

  "In that case," said Otto. "I have an idea. Get Quaid to bring his guests in here. I am going back to the car. I'll be back in a minute."

  "Wait!"

  Otto paused by the door.

  "Care to take a bet?" said Richards.

  "Sure: heiress."

  "Interesting choice. Indonesian cook. Two bottles of good stuff says so, all right?"

  "Agreed," said Otto.

  Richards grinned and wagged a finger. "You're wrong, you know?"

  Otto was right.

  The cyborg grappled with the snarling Andorro-Belgian heiress, EMP rifle broken on the floor. Richards and Quaid hid behind the table, the cook staff and steward ducked down at its far end.

  "There are goddamned robots coming out of my goddamned woodwork! Goddamn!" shouted Quaid.

  "I wouldn't worry," said Richards. "Otto was built to fight machine units. He is highly trained, and there's not much they can download that he hasn't learned from experience." Richards winced as the cydroid put Otto's head through the dayroom wall and then flung him bodily to the floor. Richards grappled Quaid behind the table as the cydroid scrambled to its feet, Otto grabbed its ankle and flipped it to the ground, cracking the sofa's frame. The leather tore and stuffing flew into the air. The cydroid responded by ramming its stiletto heel right into Otto's bad shoulder, leaving the shoe embedded there. Otto howled in pain, and swiped at the thing as it scrabbled back out of reach.

  Otto had had a theory that there had been two plants on board. That strips of bloody flesh hung from the heiress's body, revealing spun carbon bones underneath, kind of proved his point. An EMP pulse on low setting on each of the guests; Jolanda had gone down, then come up again, then attacked.

  "But, but, I've been fucking her!" said Quaid. Otto had gained the upper hand, sat on top of the slender fake, and was hammering it repeatedly in the face with his enormous fists. Its head snapped back and forward with each impact. The face was a pulped ruin. Otto's hands bled freely too, the machine's black skull too hard to crack. "How long do you think…"

  "Oh, about since Qifang signed aboard," said Richards matterof-factly. Otto was doing OK. The imposter bucked underneath Otto, and cyborg and cydroid both went rolling. "Someone's been watching him carefully, found out about this trip, then picked someone else to replace to get at him, someone who'd meet you, chat you up and get a place on your boat through sex. I'm sorry, but the original Jolanda is almost certainly dead. In some ways your security was just too good. It was the only way to get to him. Someone really wants him dead."

  Quaid was far from grief-stricken. "I screwed her! Goddamn!" He shook his head in disbelief. "All she was interested in was sex… I don't believe it."

  "You evidently did believe it. Tell me, did you never think she was a little bit odd, a little bit unusual, perhaps?"

  "Well, yes, but look at her, look at what she was, I wasn't into her for the conversation."

  "Charming."

  "She's Belgian," protested the eugene. "I thought they were all like that."

  "I think I see now how she fooled you, you really... Everyone, heads down!" shouted Richards. He half stood and waved frantically down the table at the terrified boat staff.

  The heavy gun drones Hughie had left stationed outside Qifang's quarters had decided to get involved, clumping into position in the corridor outside the dayroom. Richards shouted out at them to stop, tried to ping them over the Grid, but to no effect. Servos thrummed and armour plates clicked as their weaponry deployed, folding out and down from their broad shoulders. Richards threw his sheath on top of Quaid as the drones opened up. Otto's eyes widened and he threw himself down, the cydroid vaulting to its feet, arm raising for a killing blow. Twinned heavy machine guns on each let rip with a deafening clatter, filling the room with the stink of propellant. The bullets ripped into the cydroid. It shook with the impacts, tottering forward on its remaining high-heeled shoe, and let out a polyphonic keening.

  Shards of wood and gobbets of cloned flesh rained down on Richards and Quaid. The cydroid's flesh was torn away, its face reduced to a chipped black carbon skull. It backflipped onto all fours away from Otto. Limbs bending in ways no human's could, it scuttled up the corridor. Richards cracked the drones' near-I and shut them off before they did any more damage. Rotating barrels whined and smoked as they gradually stilled. Otto jumped up, followed the escaping cydroid, bellowing in German, a chair leg in one hand, his pistol in the other, shooting as he chased it.

  "You're wrecking my fucking boat!
" shouted Quaid.

  "Hey!" said Richards right into Quaid's face. "We're wrecking your boat? What about your girlfriend?" He pressed himself up off the prone eugene, stood and attempted to wipe his coat down, smearing blood across it. Richards tutted; ruined. "Typical," he said. "Bloody typical." He looked around. "Right, OK. I think they're gone. The rest of you get below. I think our fake Jolanda is going to try and get away now, so they'll be up on the deck."

  "Are you sure?" asked the steward.

  "No, but if I were an illegal, experimental replicant hiding the truth of an international conspiracy I would try and put myself out of the way of those investigating it, wouldn't you? I don't think hiding under a bed will be very successful. But, if you've any better idea of what the deadly robot assassin is up to, please feel free to act upon it."

  Richards looked hard at the little Indonesian. His eyes were swollen with some 'flu variant, his nose ran; genuinely ill. Otto is going to be insufferable, thought Richards.

  Quaid and Richards proceeded cautiously. The corridor was full of shredded insulation, carbon fibres and wood chip, the lighter components of which drifted in the air like industrial snow. The dayroom wall and that of the bar on the other side of the way were wrecked. The gun drones stood motionless, guns ticking as they cooled. A breeze came in through the bar's shattered picture windows, spinning the airborne detritus in tiny vortices. Richards gave one of the drones an experimental poke as he and Quaid ducked under their outstretched arms. They were inert. It annoyed Richards that Hughie hadn't trusted him enough to order the things to obey him without him having to dismantle their brains. He unholstered his gun.

  By the time Richards and Quaid had made it onto the foredeck of the Aurora Viva, the fight was over. Otto stood over the corpse of the motionless cydroid, ready to shoot it again. It hung there halfway through the steel wire deck guard, bloodied head still adorned with scraps of matted hair, punctured by bullet holes.

  "Well done, Otto!" said Richards.

  Otto, breathing hard, looked up at him. He was about to say something when from within the wrecked machine at his feet came a sound like cracking glass. It twitched. Otto stepped back, gun trained on the ruined skull, retreating further as wisps of caustic gas rose from the droid. The remains of its face began to collapse into itself, its limbs to sag, melting away the few remaining vestiges of the heiress. It became a messy skeleton, then something no longer even vaguely human. Otto covered his mouth against the fumes. The deck fizzed.

  "Fuck! Otto!" shouted Richards. "Dip it in the sea, dip it in the sea!"

  "What?!"

  "The acid, the acid! Wash it off now!" Richards stormed forward, gesticulating wildly, then lunged onto the deck, grabbed a limb of the twitching cydroid and dunked the smoking construct. The water boiled as it slipped under. He turned off his feedback circuits, ridding him of sensation as facsimiled agony raced up his arm. Ignoring the damage to his sheath he held the cydroid under with one hand, swishing it backwards and forwards in the water.

  "Some sort of super acid," Otto said, his voice wet. Richards scanned him over quickly. The insides of his nose and throat were raw from the fumes. Otto coughed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There was blood on it. Then Richards' machine senses caught a flare of electrical activity in the big man's solar plexus as his implanted healthtech activated, and he began to breathe more easily.

  "Fluorosulfuric, I'd guess," said Richards. "That should do it." He pulled up the twisted wreck and threw the remains to clatter onto the deck where they lay smoking. The hand he'd held the machine in the water with was gnurled into a lumpy fist.

  Richards pulled himself up awkwardly. He was silent for a moment. The fingers of his less damaged hand, stripped back to bare black bones by the acid, drummed on the railing. His little finger ground and jammed.

  "You don't like this," said Otto.

  "No, no I don't like it. No one's been able to make an emulant this human-looking, until now."

  They looked at the wreck.

  "Times change," said Otto wearily. He rubbed at his head, taking comfort in the contrast between stubble and smooth electoo.

  Richards shook his head. "It's that there's been no talk of it on the Grid, none at all, that worries me, yet here we find three of them trying to murder each other."

  "Could be the Russians, or the People's Dynasty…" Otto offered.

  "All Fives talk to each other, and the Russians employ plenty. The People's Dynasty like to think the Great Firewall strong, but it only guards people, and people are self-interested. Something like this would get out. It's of too much value for us, for a start, to the Fives, I mean, for it to stay secret for long. We'd know." Richards shouted an incoherent noise. The ocean swallowed it whole. "Fucking Hughie," he said, and punched the rail with his broken hand. "This was supposed to be simple."

  Chapter 12

  Autopsy

  Murder stalked artificial life as surely as it did that of more natural derivation. Autopsies of base units, androids, cyborgs and non-anthropoid, self-propelled robotic carriages were carried out in a facility attached to the Chief Coroner's Office in the Keats Arco. Halfway between machine shop and medical centre, the virtuals division of the Chief Coroner's office smelt of blood and oil in equal measure. The staff comprised men and women who straddled a line between mechanic and medic, for besides the cyborg clients the facility received, many of the more sophisticated androids used systems that were either biologically derived or were straight-up mechanical emulations of biological systems.

  The choppers and slicers and disassemblers were backed up by a coterie of post-mortem hackers who could conjure the dying thoughts of a machine from a pile of torched junk, or hunt down the last firings of a simulated brain as it dissipated into the churn of the Grid.

  It was one of only two places in the whole of the Londons that made Richards uneasy. This was the place his kind wound up when they died and, like most artificially derived sentients, Richards was worried that if it ever came to that, it would be the end. As Pope Clement XX had said, in not so many words, "Electrons are no substitute for a soul".

  He was embarrassed. He was a machine, he wasn't supposed to care, but he did. Mostly, Richards got round his fear by not thinking about it. But at the coroner's he had to stare death down, and it never blinked first.

  Richards put on his best undamaged body and flew over to the coroner's in the car. He could have extended a sensing presence into the building and conferred with Doctors Beeching, Smith and Flats that way, but he preferred the distance being incarnate gave him from the coroner's AIs, Lincolnshire Flats in particular.

  The corridor to the Robotics Unit was exceedingly long. When he reached the end and the door swished open, Lincolnshire Flats' cheerful voice greeted him, and Richards' heart sank.

  "Ah, Richards, come to see our patients? Our happy clients? Come in! Come In!"

  "They're not patients, Flats," said Richards. "Patients stand a chance of getting better; nor are they clients, because they do not pay. They are simply dead."

  "Morbid as usual!" hooted Flats. "They are happy though, I am correct in that – they never complain!" He laughed.

  "Flats..." Richards said.

  "Very well, as you prefer: corpses this way! All aboard!" Lincolnshire Flats said, and tooted like a steam train. Flats inhabited a columnar carriage composed of stacked disks, each housing a variety of tools, grapples, sensors and medical equipment, mounted on a soft-treaded truckle. There were several of these, sheaths for the building's AI coroners or remotely visiting experts, but Flats had commandeered this one as his permanent home. He had the habit of spinning his segments round, deploying a surgical saw here, multi-headed screwdriver there, and gunning their motors by way of emphasis, so that his often gruesome conversation was punctuated by whirs, high-pitched squeals of micromotors and inappropriate sound effects. The central plate, which held his primary visual receptors' clustered lenses – Lincolnshire Flats would not stoop to calling
them eyes – remained fixed on the face of whomever he spoke to, no matter what crazed fandango the rest of his body was performing, nor in which direction it was heading.

  Lincolnshire Flats was one of the more independently minded Fours. It was rumoured that he'd had been modified; darker rumours had it that he'd done it to himself. He'd chosen his own name, which was a rarity in his class, and decided to abandon medicine in favour of forensics. A Four leaving its programmed career was almost unheard of, so Richards suspected the rumours were true. Whether they were or not, Lincolnshire Flats exhibited a love of his work far in excess of that displayed by other Class Fours, coming from someplace else than his programming. His dedication was very laudable, and the two resident human coroners regarded him highly, but as far as Richards was concerned, Lincolnshire Flats was an A-grade ghoul.