Asimov's SF, January 2012 (20 page)

"Meaning you don't believe it?"

"You're sharp,” he said admiringly.

"I'm a homicide investigator,” she said.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small injection kit. The hypo hissed alarmingly as he pressed it to his skin. He winced.

"Insulin?” she asked, restraining herself from an incredibly rude question about why he hadn't had stem cells, if he was diabetic.

He shook his head. “Scotophobin. Also part of my rightminding. I have short-term memory issues.” He picked up a chocolate biscuit and bit into it decisively.

She'd taken the stuff herself, in school and when cramming for her police exams. She also refused to be derailed. “So you don't think this star—"

"Al-Rahman."

"—Al-Rahman. You don't think it's going nova?"

"Oh, it might be,” he said. “But what would you say if I told you that its pattern is a repeating series of prime numbers?"

The sharp tartness of lemon shortbread turned to so much grit in her mouth. “I beg your pardon."

"Someone is signaling us,” Dr. Rao said. “Or I should say,
was
signaling us. A long, long time ago. Somebody with the technology necessary to tune the output of their star."

"Explain,” she said, setting the remainder of the biscuit on her saucer.

"Al-Rahman is more than two and a half million light years away. That means that the light we're seeing from it was modulated when the first identifiable humans were budding off the hominid family tree. Even if we could send a signal back . . . The odds are very good that they're all gone now. It was just a message in a bottle.
We were here."

"The news said twenty thousand light years."

"The news.” He scoffed. “Do they ever get police work right?"

"Never,” Ferron said fervently.

"Science either.” He glanced up as the lights dimmed. “Another brownout."

An unformed idea tickled the back of Ferron's mind. “Do you have a sunfarm?"

"BioShell is entirely self-sufficient,” he confirmed. “It's got to be a bug, but we haven't located it yet. Anyway, it will be back up in a minute. All our important equipment has dedicated power supplies."

He finished his biscuit and stirred the coffee thoughtfully while he chewed. “The odds are that the universe is—or has been—full of intelligent species. And that we will never meet any of them. Because the distances and time scales are so vast. In the two hundred years we've been capable of sending signals into space—well. Compare that in scale to Al-Rahman."

"That's awful,” Ferron said. “It makes me appreciate Dr. Coffin's perspective."

"It's terrible,” Dr. Rao agreed. “Terrible and wonderful. In some ways I wonder if that's as close as we'll ever get to comprehending the face of God."

They sipped their coffee in contemplation, facing one another across the tray and the low lacquered table.

"Milk?” said Chairman Miaow. Carefully, Ferron poured some into a saucer and gave it to her.

Dr. Rao said, “You know, the Andromeda galaxy and our own Milky Way are expected to collide eventually."

"Eventually?"

He smiled. It did good things for the creases around his eyes. “Four and a half billion years or so."

Ferron thought about Uttara Bhadrapada, and the Heavenly Ganges, and Aryaman's house—in a metaphysical sort of sense—as he came to walk that path across the sky. From so far away it took two and a half million years just to
see
that far.

"I won't wait up, then.” She finished the last swallow of coffee and looked around for the cat. “I don't suppose I could see Dr. Coffin's lab before I go?"

"Oh,” said Dr. Rao. “I think we can do that, and better."

The lab space Coffin had shared with three other researchers belied BioShell's corporate wealth. It was a maze of tables and unidentifiable equipment in dizzying array. Ferron identified a gene sequencer, four or five microscopes, and a centrifuge, but most of the rest baffled her limited knowledge of bioengineering. She was struck by the fact that just about every object in the room was dressed in BioShell's livery colors of emerald and gold.

She glimpsed a conservatory through a connecting door, lush with what must be prototype plants; at the far end of the room, rows of condensers hummed beside a revolving door rimed with frost. A black-skinned woman in a lab coat with her hair clipped into short, tight curls had her eyes to a lens and her hands in waldo sleeves. Microsurgery?

Dr. Rao held out a hand as Ferron paused beside him. “Will we disturb her?"

"Dr. Nnebuogor will have skinned out just about everything except the fire alarm,” Dr. Rao said. “The only way to distract her would be to go over and give her a shove. Which"—he raised a warning finger—"I would recommend against, as she's probably engaged in work on those next-generation parrot-cats I told you about now."

"Nnebuogor? She's Nigerian?"

Dr. Rao nodded. “Educated in Cairo and Bengaluru. Her coming to work for BioShell was a real coup for us."

"You
do
employ a lot of farang,” Ferron said. “And not by telepresence.” She waited for Rao to bridle, but she must have gotten the tone right, because he shrugged.

"Our researchers need access to our lab."

"Miaow,” said Chairman Miaow.

"Can she?” Ferron asked.

"We're cat-friendly,” Rao said, with a flicker of a smile, so Ferron set the carrier down and opened its door. Rao's heart rate was up a little, and she caught herself watching sideways while he straightened his trousers and picked lint from his sleeve.

Chairman Miaow emerged slowly, rubbing her length against the side of the carrier. She gazed up at the equipment and furniture with unblinking eyes and soon she gathered herself to leap onto a workbench, and Dr. Rao put a hand out firmly.

"No climbing or jumping,” he said. “Dangerous. It will hurt you."

"Hurt?” The cat drew out the Rs in a manner so adorable it had to be engineered for. “No jump?"

"No.” Rao turned to Ferron. “We've hardwired in response to the No command. I think you'll find our parrot-cats superior to unengineered felines in this regard. Of course . . . they're still cats."

"Of course,” Ferron said. She watched as Chairman Miaow explored her new environment, rubbing her face on this and that. “Do you have any pets?"

"We often take home the successful prototypes,” he said. “It would be a pity to destroy them. I have a parrot-cat—a red-and-gray—and a golden lemur. Engineered, of course. The baseline ones are protected."

As they watched, the hyacinth cat picked her way around, sniffing every surface. She paused before one workstation in particular before cheek-marking it, and said in comically exaggerated surprise: “Mine! My smell."

There was a synthetic-fleece-lined basket tucked beneath the table. The cat leaned toward it, stretching her head and neck, and sniffed deeply and repeatedly.

"Have you been here before?” Ferron asked.

Chairman Miaow looked at Ferron wide-eyed with amazement at Ferron's patent ignorance, and declared “New!"

She jumped into the basket and snuggled in, sinking her claws deeply and repeatedly into the fleece.

Ferron made herself stop chewing her thumbnail. She stuck her hand into her uniform pocket. “Are all your hyacinths clones?"

"They're all closely related,” Dr. Rao said. “But no, not clones. And even if she were a clone, there would be differences in the expression of her tuxedo pattern."

At that moment, Dr. Nnebuogor sighed and backed away from her machine, withdrawing her hands from the sleeves and shaking out the fingers like a musician after practicing. She jumped when she turned and saw them. “Oh! Sorry. I was skinned. Namaskar."

"Miaow?” said the cat in her appropriated basket.

"Hello, Niranjana. Where's Dexter?” said Dr. Nnebuogor. Ferron felt the scientist reading her meta-tags. Dr. Nnebuogor raised her eyes to Rao. “And—pardon, officer—what's with the copper?"

"Actually,” Ferron said, “I have some bad news for you. It appears that Dexter Coffin was murdered last night."

"Murdered. . . .” Dr. Nnebuogor put her hand out against the table edge.
"Murdered?"

"Yes,” Ferron said. “I'm Police Sub-Inspector Ferron.” Which Dr. Nnebuogor would know already. “And I'm afraid I need to ask you some questions. Also, I'll be contacting the other researchers who share your facilities via telepresence. Is there a private area I can use for that?"

Dr. Nnebuogor looked stricken. The hand that was not leaned against the table went up to her mouth. Ferron's feed showed the acceleration of her heart, the increase in skin conductivity as her body slicked with cold sweat. Guilt or grief ? It was too soon to tell.

"You can use my office,” Dr. Rao said. “Kindly, with my gratitude."

The interviews took the best part of the day and evening, when all was said and done, and garnered Ferron very little new information—yes, people
would
probably kill for what Coffin was—had been—working on. No, none of his colleagues had any reason to. No, he had no love life of which they were aware.

Ferron supposed she technically
could
spend all night lugging the cat carrier around, but her own flat wasn't too far from the University district. It was in a kinship block teeming with her uncles and cousins, her grandparents, great-grandparents, her sisters and their husbands (and in one case, wife). The fiscal support of shared housing was the only reason she'd been able to carry her mother as long as she had.

She checked out a pedestrial because she couldn't face the bus and she felt like she'd done more than her quota of steps before dinnertime—and here it was, well after. The cat carrier balanced on the grab bar, she zipped it unerringly through the traffic, enjoying the feel of the wind in her hair and the outraged honks cascading along the double avenues.

She could make the drive on autopilot, so she used the other half of her attention to feed facts to the Department's expert system. Doyle knew everything about everything, and if it wasn't self-aware or self-directed in the sense that most people meant when they said
artificial intelligence,
it still rivaled a trained human brain when it came to picking out patterns—and being supercooled, it was significantly faster.

She even told it the puzzling bits, such as how Chairman Miaow had reacted upon being introduced to the communal lab that Coffin shared with three other BioShell researchers.

Doyle swallowed everything Ferron could give it, as fast as she could report. She knew that down in its bowels, it would be integrating that information with Indrapramit's reports, and those of the other officers and techs assigned to the case.

She thought maybe they needed something more. As the pedestrial dropped her at the bottom of her side street, she dropped a line to Damini, her favorite archinformist. “Hey,” she said, when Damini answered.

"Hey yourself, boss. What do you need?"

Ferron released the pedestrial back into the city pool. It scurried off, probably already summoned to the next call. Ferron had used her override to requisition it. She tried to feel guilty, but she was already late in attending to her mother—and she'd ignored two more messages in the intervening time. It was probably too late to prevent bloodshed, but there was something to be said for getting the inevitable over with.

"Dig me up everything you can on today's vic, would you? Dexter Coffin, American by birth, employed at BioShell. As far back as you can, any tracks he may have left under any name or handle."

"Childhood dental records and juvenile posts on the
Candyland
message boards,” Damini said cheerfully. “Got it. I'll stick it in Doyle when it's done."

"Ping me, too? Even if it's late? I'm upped."

"So will I be,” Damini answered. “This could take a while. Anything else?"

"Not unless you have a cure for families."

"Hah,” said the archinformist. “Everybody talking, and nobody hears a damned thing anybody else has to say. I'd retire on the proceeds. All right, check in later.” She vanished just as Ferron reached the aptblock lobby.

It was after dinner, but half the family was hanging around in the common areas, watching the news or playing games while pretending to ignore it. Ferron knew it was useless to try sneaking past the synthetic marble-floored chambers with their charpoys and cushions, the corners lush with foliage. Attempted stealth would only encourage them to detain her longer.

Dr. Rao's information about the prime number progression had leaked beyond scientific circles—or been released—and an endless succession of talking heads were analyzing it in less nuanced terms than he'd managed. The older cousins asked Ferron if she'd heard the news about the star; two sisters and an uncle told her that her mother had been looking for her.
All
the nieces and nephews and small cousins wanted to look at the cat.

Ferron's aging mausi gave her five minutes on how a little cosmetic surgery would make her much more attractive on the marriage market, and shouldn't she consider lightening that mahogany-brown skin to a “prettier” wheatish complexion? A plate of idlis and sambaar appeared as if by magic in mausi's hand, and from there transferred to Ferron's. “And how are you ever going to catch a man if you're so skinny?"

It took Ferron twenty minutes to maneuver into her own small flat, which was still set for sleeping from three nights before. Smoke came trotting to see her, a petite-footed drift of the softest silver-and-charcoal fur imaginable, from which emerged a laughing triangular face set with eyes like black jewels. His ancestors had been foxes farmed for fur in Russia. Researchers had experimented on them, breeding for docility. It turned out it only took a few generations to turn a wild animal into a housepet.

Ferron was a little uneasy with the ethics of all that. But it hadn't stopped her from adopting Smoke when her mother lost interest in him. Foxes weren't the hot trend anymore; the fashion was for engineered cats and lemurs—and skinpets, among those who wanted to look daring.

Having rushed home, she was now possessed by the intense desire to delay the inevitable. She set Chairman Miaow's carrier on top of the cabinets and took Smoke out into the sunfarm for a few minutes of exercise in the relative cool of night. When he'd chased parrots in circles for a bit, she brought him back in, cleaned his litterbox, and stripped off her sweat-stiff uniform to have a shower. She was washing her hair when she realized that she had no idea what to feed Chairman Miaow. Maybe she could eat fox food? Ferron would have to figure out some way to segregate part of the flat for her . . . at least until she was sure that Smoke didn't think a parrot-cat would make a nice midnight snack.