Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) (23 page)

Reynolds and Mack were now up to three sites and seventeen bodies. They’d also discovered information that led them to believe they were chasing
two
killers, not one. Images of the victims paraded past me. There were women and men, and the ages ranged from fourteen to sixty-two. Finding a common denominator was going to be difficult. Still, the case was curious, and I filed the new information away.

 
Mara Blake was still missing. More information had been revealed about her. She had been one of the pioneers of the latest version of neural channeling. She had written some of the code herself, and embellished code other corps had used, including Haas-Bioroid. MirrorMorph, Inc. had made a comeback in recent years after a five year hiatus. There had been legal entanglements with getting software design copyrights back from Haas-Bioroid.

More information was getting logged about the destruction of the IdentiKit plant on Mars. Lily Lockwell stood in front of a synthed Martian landscape. I knew she wasn’t there. The quickest, and most expensive, trip to Mars took more than two months. She wouldn’t pay that, so the red topography behind her was all fake.

“According to my sources, IdentiKit was in contention for the same government contracts up for grabs as DupliKit, Inc.” Lockwell remained stationary as she relayed her story. Behind her, a window opened up in thin air and revealed a young-looking man with auburn hair, freckles, and a charming smile that fell into place with laser precision. “I had the opportunity recently to ask DupliKit, Inc.’s CEO, Alan Fiest, some rather pointed questions.”

The news stream blanked for a moment, then refocused on Earth in front of the New Angeles courthouse. I recognized the building because I had often gone there to provide testimony.

Fiest, in the company of three men I assumed were lawyers, walked confidently up the steps.

“Mr. Fiest, I’m Lily Lockwell with NBN. Could I have a moment of your time?” Lockwell strode onto the scene and the 3D split, showing Fiest on the left through Lockwell’s monocam, and an external camera showing the nosie’s approach up the stairs toward her catch.

Fiest turned with that bright smile and unbuttoned his trench coat. “Always available to the media, Ms. Lockwell.”

“Were you chasing the same government contracts on Mars as Cartman Dawes?”

One of the attorneys stepped forward to intercede, but Fiest waved him off. “I think the best way to put it is that Cartman Dawes and IdentiKit were after the same contracts
I
was pursuing.”

“Very glib, Mr. Fiest, but I think you can acknowledge that Cartman Dawes and IdentiKit were far ahead of you. They already had a plant in place on Mars.”

“Which was blown up by anti-Earth terrorists, I believe.” Fiest grinned like a kid and shook his head. “Believe me when I say this: when DupliKit, Inc. puts a plant on Mars, it will be welcomed. I will do my negotiations with the people there before I attempt to ram a business down their throats. With the way the Martian people are torn regarding Earth business interests, I think it’s safe to say that the matter requires a delicate hand. I’m prepared to do that.”

“Not everyone is convinced that Martian terrorists are responsible for the destruction of the IdentiKit plant.”

“Who else might be responsible?”

Lily Lockwell didn’t pull any punches. “Competitors have been attacking each other for territory since the hunting and gathering days.”

Fiest chuckled. “Are you insinuating that
I
blew up IdentiKit’s plant?” He shook his head and continued speaking before the nosie could reply. “Are you going to accuse me of Cartman Dawes’s murder next?”

“Since you brought the matter up, Mr. Fiest, does DupliKit have assassins on its payroll?”

The lawyer stepped forward again. “Mr. Fiest, with all due respect, I have to protest this egregious line of questioning. This woman is clearly flinging mud, hoping some of it sticks to you and the corp.”

“It’s all right, Tom. I’m certain Ms. Lockwell doesn’t mean to do anything that will have her in civil court.”

Lily Lockwell didn’t back down. She had a reputation to uphold and her public expected her to ask the hard questions. “Are you going to answer the question, Mr. Fiest?”

“Sure.” Fiest smiled brilliantly. The whole affair was a dog and pony show to him. “DupliKit, Inc. has never, and will never, employ assassins.”

“But you have mercenaries on the payroll, don’t you?”

That was a loaded question. The sec people employed by the corps were often mercenaries.

“Ms. Lockwell, as charming as you are, and as fun as this is, I can’t afford to be late to this court appearance. I’d love to talk to you again sometime. Perhaps over dinner.” Fiest turned and walked away with his attorneys in tow.

Lily Lockwell started to pursue, but the courthouse sec teams closed in and prevented her. She whirled around and addressed the unseen cameraman again, cutting off her monocam. “So far, the New Angeles Police Department has no new leads regarding the assassination of Cartman Dawes and the death of homicide investigator Shelly Nolan. Join me next time when I talk with Luke Kaskade, leader of the Martian Emancipation League, one of the terrorist groups Mr. Fiest referred to.”

That would guarantee a heated conversation with Kaskade. The woman was good at leveraging incendiary material.

“She might not even have an interview set up.”

I blanked the 3D feed and looked across the table. Shelly Nolan sat there in casual wear, not her plainclothes attire.

I stared at her, knowing she couldn’t be there, and yet seeing that she was.

She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. I couldn’t feel the heat of her flesh, and I detected no biometrics.

She smiled at me the way she sometimes did when she was amused by my view of the world, or my lack of understanding. “I’m not a ghost.”

“Ghosts don’t exist.”

“Really?” She took her hand back and looked at me. “Aren’t you a ghost, Drake? Somewhere inside all that neural channeling, there is a person you used to be.”

“No, I was never anyone else. Some of the neural foundation belonged to someone else, but I am myself.” I was curious as to how I could have this conversation with Shelly. I looked around the Castle Club, but I saw no one that might be interested in anything I was doing.

“You don’t know why those two men came after you while you were pursuing Adrian Graham either, Drake.”

I looked back at her.

“A little paranoia is good for you in this job.”

“I can’t be paranoid. I am incapable of that.”

“No one human is immune to paranoia.”

“I’m not human.”

She smiled again. “Part of you used to be. The best parts of you.”

That was something Shelly never would have said. She accepted me, and liked me, as I was. She had told me that several times.

I studied her face. I could detect no differences in her appearance than when I’d last seen her alive. “How are you here?”

“You’re in danger, Drake. How could I not be here?”

I reached for her hand, but before I could touch her, she vanished. I drew my hand back.

“Was that an old friend?”

At the sound of the other woman’s voice, I turned in my seat and looked over my shoulder. The black-haired woman from the hotel and the
office
inside my head approached my table with a bright blue drink in one hand.

“This isn’t real.”

She sat across from me, but took a different chair than the one Shelly had occupied. She took her stir stick from her drink and licked the blue liquid from it. Her tongue was pink against her red lipstick. “Either it’s all real or nothing is real. You told me that once.”

“No, I didn’t.”

She shrugged. “You just don’t remember.”

As I sat there studying her, trying to remember her, I grew increasingly curious about my mental state. I ran a diagnostics check on my systems, but they all came back normal. It was possible that the bullets that had penetrated my body had done some kind of damage that affected my neural software, but I didn’t know how that could be. I would have had some kind of warning.

“You don’t know everything.” The woman sipped her drink, then blotted her mouth on a napkin. “You always thought you did. You planned for things, always figured the angles, but you couldn’t account for it all. I liked that about you. I trusted you.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Not yet, but you will.” She stirred her drink, inserted a finger into the blue liquid, drew it out again, and licked it clean. “Have you thought about what you’re going to tell Haas-Bioroid?”

“About what?”

She smiled at him. “Me. Your friend. These things that have been going on inside your head.”

“I’m going to tell the technical teams that I’m having hallucinations.”

“Really? A bioroid, a
tool
, that is showing fracture lines? What do you think they’ll do to you?”

I had already considered that and I was troubled. “They could reformat the neural channeling.”

“Do you think that would be wise?”

“Possibly.”

“Everything you’ve become these last seven years will be erased. It will be as though you never lived. In essence, you will die. Like your partner.”

I didn’t want that. I thought that was probably based on the Third Directive, the one that commanded me to preserve myself, but that seemed at odds with the need in me to tell Haas-Bioroid everything that was going on with me.

“That’s not what you want.”

I looked at her. “What do I want?”

“You want to solve the mystery. That’s what they created you to do, right? Find the answers to the investigations you were assigned to.”

“Yes.”

“If you’re erased, you’re going to lose the greatest mystery you ever had the chance to unravel. Do you really want to see that lost?”

“No.” I didn’t hesitate. My curiosity was too strong.

“Good.” The woman drained her drink and smiled at me. “I knew you wouldn’t. So, go to Haas-Bioroid and don’t tell them anything about this.”

“Who are you?”

“That’s part of the mystery.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and this one was human. The man’s biometrics flooded through my senses. I turned to face him.

The man was in his forties, a dour individual in a grey business suit—set to “static cling,” apparently, since his coat wasn’t hovering around his waist. Jackets with a “static cling” setting were a newer product on the market, made specifically to encourage travel up and down the Beanstalk amongst those who didn’t want to change their fashion look just to accommodate the effect of gravity as they headed up. A white gold wedding band gleamed on his ring finger. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I knew you were waiting on the ferry. They just issued the last boarding call.”

I heard it then and was curious why I hadn’t registered it earlier. “Thank you.”

The man smiled. “It’s all right. I get lost in my thoughts all the time. I didn’t know bioroids did.”

“I was streaming media.”

The man nodded. “One of the reasons I never will opt for an internal PAD when they become available is that it’s pretty crowded in there already.”

“It gets that way.” But it never had before.

With a final clap on my shoulder, the man walked-shuffled away in the grip-slippers required for humans in low-G, and went to join the dregs of the line for the ferry.

I looked back at the chair where the black-haired woman had sat. She was gone. So were the drink and the napkin she’d used to blot her ruby red lips.

*

From Starport Kaguya, I took a tube-lev to Haas-Bioroid. Although most lunar civilization existed underground, with the lesser gravity on the Moon and the raw resources, buildings were able to reach impressive heights above ground when the corps wanted to make a statement. Haas-Bioroid occupied one of the tallest—an orange and steel-grey edifice that stabbed toward the dark, star-studded spray of space overhead.

The tube-lev pulled into the Haas-Bioroid platform. I waved my chipped hand in front of the e-reader, charged the trip to Haas-Bioroid, and got out. I crossed to the main entrance and met a white-suited technician.

She was young and blond. The clan tattooing over and around her left eye identified her as a Martian. On Mars, the dome-covered colonies tended to become close, often keeping themselves separate from the other colonies. Each dome city, each clan, had distinctive markings. The young woman that met me was from one of the Bradbury colonies—the Edward Bradbury colony, not the Ray Bradbury colony.

“Detective Drake?” Her voice held a hint of an accent, but I could tell she had worked hard to lose it. Many of the younger Martians embraced Earth, grateful for its teeming megapoli and educational opportunities.

“Yes.” We were both being polite. She knew who I was. The e-reader chip in her skull and eyes had immediately identified me. I also knew that Haas-Bioroid set standards with its employees as well as its products. Both were supposed to act human, not like automatons.

“I am Jenny Crain.” She extended her hand.