Justice in an Age of Metal and Men

by Justice in an Age of Metal

  The dirt road featured one twenty-meter, sheriff-sized skid mark. My coat corroborated that evidence. The skid had worn all the way through it in a couple places. I winced as I poked at the resulting road rash. There wasn’t any serious damage that I could see, but it stung just as much as you might suspect it would.

  A stocky man emerged from the building holding a glass of water. It was Frederick Cornsley, the dentist. He had a mustache that made him look like a well-muscled walrus in a white lab coat. “Good morning, Sheriff Crow,” he said as he held the water out for me.

  I took a sip. “Mornin’.”

  “Saw you fall, sir. You all right?” He was shifting his weight nervously.

  A stick-thin woman in an ankle-length green dress walked by, eyeing me like she was afraid she might step in me if she wasn’t careful.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I gritted my teeth and forced myself to my feet. Every part of my natural body hurt. It was a dull ache—not the sharp pain of serious damage. “I’m no sir, though.” I drained the glass and handed it back to him. The water tasted faintly of chlorine and cherries.

  “No, of course, sir, um Mr. Crow.” He was flustered.

  “You see what happened?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I let it slide. “You know those boys who flew away?”

  “Well, I’d seen them around before.”

  “Know where I can find them?”

  A kid a couple meters from me shouted across the street to a friend, who crossed to join him. They were a couple of impish little guys, and I made sure to keep an eye on them so they wouldn’t get too close. Their tanned skin looked enhanced and they wore black feathers in their hair. They were creeping closer to the wrecked sedan, seemingly unaware of my presence.

  “No.” Frederick was backing away slowly.

  I could probably have asked him pointed questions for hours. I didn’t. Instead, I scowled at the man and silently counted to ten.

  “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I mean, Mr. Crow.” I had only made it to four. “It’s just, I’ve seen them around the old junction.”

  “You expect they’ll be there now?”

  “Maybe later tonight. I don’t usually see them during the day. It’s usually around dusk that I see them. There’s a couple dozen or so. Sometimes I hear them talk. Their leader sounds like she’s some kind of goddess.”

  I grunt in the affirmative. “Her name?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  There was a hint of fear in his eyes, but his story was convincing enough. I believed that he didn’t know anything else, but I suspected he was involved in something illegal. There was no good reason for a dentist to be at the old junction. It had been shut down for a decade.

  “It’s just I don’t want them to think I talked.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I have enough problems with graffiti here, you know, without their help.”

  “The information’s much appreciated, Dr. Cornsley. I’ll do my best to not let on who it came from.”

  He retreated into his building. By then the authorities had arrived. I recognized the officers and waved one of them over. The other one began the work of extracting the driver from a foam safety bubble.

  “Officer Anders,” I said.

  “Good morning, sheriff.”

  “Make sure there’s no trouble for that driver. Wasn’t his fault.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I was chasing down some kids and ran into some trouble. Fell into the street and this guy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “You all right?”

  “‘Bout as good as can be expected.”

  “Better, by the look of it.”

  I raised my left arm and turned it around a few times. The polish was scratched, but the arm was otherwise unharmed. “Well, officer, the good government of Texas does tend to put some high-quality equipment into her soldiers.”

  With a nod, he returned to his work.

  The Dry Goat was a dead end. With all the commotion, any leads that might have been sticking around would have fled—not that there were any to start with. Those kids would need to be chased down, of course, but from the sound of it I wasn’t going to find them until it got dark out. If they were smart, they might have even skipped town. I was willing to bet they weren’t that smart.

  The station was only a few blocks away. I cursed myself for not whistling for a ride or maybe some backup during that chase. What made me think I could chase down a kid half my age with augmented legs and a flying motorbike? Pride, I guessed. I was looking forward to spending the afternoon resting in my office. I licked my dry lips, but my stomach turned at the thought of another drink.

  About a block from the station, a thundering black patrol car pulled up beside me and ruined my plans. It was Trish. Sunlight shone off of the polished curves of that beautiful black convertible, making the whole thing look ablaze. We don’t get vehicles like that out here. Trish had brought it with her when she was transferred from Austin. The outside was all glitter and show, but even I had to admit the thing had some muscle. I could feel the rumbling of the engine in my chest as it idled next to me. Heaven only knew what kind of bureaucratic nightmare Trish would’ve had to walk through to get it transferred with her.

  She smirked from the passenger seat in a way that did nothing to improve my opinion of her.

  I kept walking.

  She drifted the car forward to keep pace with me. “Rough day?”

  “Not yet.”

  The car was low and the top was down, so I grabbed the side and pulled myself into the seat next to Trish. It felt good to be off my feet. The ache had faded some, but I was tired and getting hungry. Red dust seemed to spread across anything I touched inside her otherwise spotless cruiser.

  As soon as I was settled, the cruiser lifted gently into the sky.

  I looked down at the entrance to the station. A man was leaning against the wall next to the door, wearing a black three-piece suit and a black Stetson. He was smoking something like a small cigar. The wind whisked the smoke from his face as fast as he made it.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  Trish glanced down but didn’t answer. She closed her eyes for a second, and soon the car was speeding up and out of town. She had used a neural signal to give the car coordinates. It was a parlor trick—nothing fancy. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t any easier than speaking the instructions or pushing a button.

  The convertible was comfortable, designed to seat four people facing each other. The seating was plush and blue, more comfortable than the chair in my office. There were no visible manual controls, but a panel between two of the seats looked like it might slide back if the right command were given. I wondered how this car would ever hold a hostile criminal. My guess was that prisoner transport was not a consideration when this cruiser was designed.

  I interlaced my fingers behind my head, leaned back, and put my feet up on the plush seat in front of me. Deputy Trish’s glare threatened to bore a hole in the side of my head.

  The cruiser rose to about sixty meters. I briefly wondered where we were headed, but I decided that Trish would say something once she was ready. My refusal to initiate the conversation seemed to bother her, which at the time seemed like an added bonus. I was uncomfortable, knowing she had probably figured out something I hadn’t. After all, I knew if justice were going to be done, it would be done by me. Information gave her control and that made me nervous.

  Still, there was more than one way to show her who was in charge. I waited.

  “The city,” she finally said. “We’re going to Austin. I have a lead.”

  I raised an eyebrow, feeling a little jealous that her investigation had done so much better than mine.

  “It’s a little complicated.” She spoke slowly, like I was slow or something. “Plus, it involves some tech. So, listen to the whole thing, all right?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you
know anything about the dairy industry?”

  “Nope.”

  “Neither does anyone else. Nobody cares.” She reached under her seat and slid out a shiny steel bin, straddling it. She opened it to reveal dozens of odds and ends. Most of it was tech that I didn’t recognize. At first it seemed like this was part of the story, but soon I realized she was only reorganizing it.

  She continued. “Modern dairy production works much the same as it has since the invention of teats. A cow gives birth, triggering milk production. Then she’s milked for a certain amount of time until she’s ready to start the cycle all over again. The side effect of this process is that we get a nice beef industry and the cattle production can easily meet the needs of a growing herd.”

  I scanned the horizon and tried to emit my very best “I don’t give a damn” vibe.

  “This is all great for a growing industry, but things are changing. Most people don’t eat beef anymore. Cattle live longer and are productive longer. So, calf production isn’t always beneficial. It’s a waste of resources, and resources aren’t all that great around here.” She punctuated her point with a wicked-looking ceramic blade.

  “True.” I stared at her, absolutely bewildered by her decision to reorganize her belongings rather than sit back and enjoy the view.

  “Well, then something new came along in the form of a specialized E-chip. You’ve heard of those, right?” The black blade whistled as she gestured, but she put it down when I gave her an annoyed look.

  “Yup. Ran into a couple of junkies pushing emo a couple months ago.”

  “Right, so junkies use it to tap into other people’s emotions. The transmitter gets some specialized hardware and some coordinated nannies. It all works over the sub-quantum net, so range is incredible. The junkies ingest the nannies and start feeling whatever emotions the transmitter feels. More advanced systems are more selective, allowing better control. The nannies replicate the effects of hormones and brain signals. It can sometimes be dangerous, but by itself it isn’t illegal.”

  Below, the plains gave way to the distinct meander of the Colorado Husk, formerly referred to as the Colorado River. We cut across the sharp turns of the once wide river, which was now choked with dust and brambles. Windmills were fewer out there. Power lines crossed the landscape, but almost nobody lived in the ruined waste close to the city.

  “Unless they start jacking into people who don’t give consent,” I said, pulling myself away from the tragedy below.

  “People do that?”

  “Don’t ask me why.” I sat up. She had me interested. Not only was she a city girl who knew about the dairy industry, but she also seemed to know more than I did. “In my opinion, there are too many damn emotions as it is. What I never understood was why they need the transmitter at all. Why can’t they just set the damn things to ‘happy’ and leave them there?”

  “Most of us have brains that are too complex for anything that simple.” She was getting into it. As she grew more excited, the pitch of her voice grew more irritating. “It might work once, but then you adjust. Can you ever remember two times you were happy and it was the exact same feeling? It never is, it turns out. So, when you start feeling the same emotion pushed down on you, you recognize it on some instinctive level, and in recognizing it you reject it.”

  I stared off at the landscape, squinting into the morning sun. I was less interested in the technology and more interested in trying to remember two times when I had been truly happy.

  Trish shook her head. “The Browns had recently started a program to use similar tech on cattle. The emotive response can be used to trigger milk production. It’s a little strange, but ends up being better and cheaper than dosing the cattle with drugs to accomplish the same goals.”

  Denise Brown had an E-chip. She had been nursing her baby right there in the barn. I wondered what any of this had to do with the murder. I raised my eyebrow and motioned for Trish to continue.

  “The process is controversial. Many producers feel that this will destroy an industry that has existed for thousands of years. It generates milk, which is profitable, but it doesn’t produce more cattle. So, beef production drops and it might be harder to maintain the dairy herd.” She was making a stack of shining, gold disks on the floor next to the bin at her feet. They were either holograph projectors or ammo for some bizarre weapon. I couldn’t tell which.

  “That’s just stupid. Nobody’s going to murder anyone for that.”

  She took a deep breath like the kind a person takes when they need to calm themselves after a great annoyance. “However,” she said through her teeth. “There are only three big dairy distributers: Quintech, Gateway Industries, and Goodwin. Quintech and Gateway already refused to sell his product. The last one, Goodwin Dairy, dropped the Brown farm about a month ago.”

  “Then murdered him?”

  “Probably not.”

  I looked at her questioningly.

  “His finances didn’t take a hit at all.”

  “Finances?”

  “Yes. He kept right on making money, even though no officially recognized distributer would touch his goods.”

  “Then someone else was distributing it,” I speculated. “And that person likes to murder people.”

  Trish grabbed the stack of disks and slammed them back into the bin. They scattered as they fell and ended up worse off than before. Her jaw tightened and her eyes got hard.

  “It’s a lead, Crow,” she said. “We talk to Goodwin Dairy and find out why they dropped him, then we track down whoever is really distributing his goods. Shady deals like this can lead to people dying in mysterious circumstances.”

  “My pa always likes to say its people who murder people—not money or drugs or love. Just people.”

  “Well, your pa must be one fine lawman to be so clever.”

  After a pause, I said, “No, ma’am, he isn’t. He’s a decent bounty hunter, though.”

  “I see.” The reputation for bounty hunters was not good. The laws that governed them were even more lax than most laws in Texas. “People need a motive, though. We figure out the motive and we find the killer.”

  “Murdered over milk.”

  Her eyes hardened even more, though I hadn’t thought it possible. “Yes, J.D. Murdered over milk. It’s a lead. Did you get any leads at your bar or did you just get a good buzz?”

  I pulled a toothpick from the pocket of my duster and stuck it in my mouth. The kids had almost been a lead, only there really was no reason to believe that they were in any way connected. “I did get a lead, as a matter of fact,” I lied.

  It was her turn to look expectantly.

  Twenty minutes of awkward silence passed before I saw the gleam of Austin on the horizon. From a distance it was beautiful—a fleck of silver surrounded by the pulsing dull blackness of the windmill fields.

  “The kids,” I finally said. “The ones I was chasing. They could have been involved.”

  At first she didn’t answer, and I thought maybe she was not listening. Then she said, “Really.” It was somewhere between a statement and a question.

  “Round dusk I think I can catch them near the old junction. It’s a long shot.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t get vid of the whole thing?” Her voice was dry now. Her eyes locked with mine. “We could get some glasses for you, you know—special sunglasses that record what you see?”

  “I have some.”

  She perked up. “Were they on?”

  “Nope.”

  She clenched her fists. She was tolerating me but just barely. I made a mental note to switch the glasses on the next time something happened. A video of the event would have made identification easy, and it probably would have saved us a trip into a dangerous gang confrontation.

  I didn’t like the idea of being tracked on video. Computers could compile enormous dossiers on each of us, and there was no way to know who got that information. Presumably, it was someone very, v
ery powerful. I felt that it was important to the health of society that someone could avoid such close scrutiny. Freedom from the establishment was one of those principle ideals that the great Republic of Texas was founded on. It’s what I’d fought for twenty years ago in the Civil War that nearly broke Texas apart. It was something I still believed in, even though by many standards I represented the establishment. Out there, I was the one people needed to hide from.

  I explained none of that to Trish. How could I? She was half machine and half city girl—her brain was probably jacked into some government feed at all times. Even if I decided that I could trust her there was no way to know who else was listening. The Republic of Texas was a democracy, but city votes outnumbered those of ranchers by thousands to one. Those in charge would not want to hear about any desire for freedom from the establishment. Also, she would think I was crazy. After all, when the outlanders fought the city twenty years ago, it had been a draw. Nobody could win, so on paper we all came out even. If only it had worked out a little more like that in reality.

  Technically speaking, I was her boss. She would do what I asked, whether or not I explained my motives.

  Austin drew closer. The hundred-meter windwall rose before us. Polished metal spires stretched like a hundred webbed fingers clawing at the sky. Between them, the mesh crisscrossed like black spider webs. We could hear them as we got closer, the howl of wind reached a deafening pitch.

  “Why do we have to come all this way?” I was shouting over the noise of the wind as we passed through a gap in the webbing. “Can’t you just make some calls?”

  She shook her head. “I tried. You know how it is. The city likes to pretend like you don’t even exist out there. They just barely recognize that there is any law out there. If we’re going to get any information, we’re going to have to apply a little charm.” She gave her best smile. It was, I admit, quite lovely. “Which works best in person.”