Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (16 page)

‘You MOHparents asked me to stay whilst the police speak to you, Miss,’ he murmured – although he did back towards the door.

‘I’m sixteen,’ she said. ‘I can look
after
myself.’

‘
Will be
sixteen,’ Iago said. ‘In three weeks.’

‘Close enough for government work. And anyway, Deño is here if I need looking after from these gargoyle
policepersons
, so you can – shoo – shoo –
shoo.’ Her Tutor bowed, and walked out of the door. Here’s the thing about Iago: he made it look easy. Her three bodyguards made it their business to train all the time so as to keep
their muscle tone. She couldn’t believe Iago followed that kind of regimen, being a Tutor rather than a bodyguard. Indeed, you could see, from the condensation of sweat on his upper lip, that
moving around in this gravity was a terrible, painful strain for him. But he never complained; he never so much as
alluded
to his discomfort. Iago walked as soon as they landed,
sans
crawlipers, moving his long legs, spine straight, arms at his side. He bowed. He insisted on standing whilst they sat. It was, in its way, heroic. She knew
what
he was doing, of course. He
was trying to impress her. Never mind the CRF, he loved her true as any knight in romance loved fair maiden. To admit that his legs ached, or his lungs burned, would be to let her down.

So Dia readied herself, and two police officers came through: one female and one male. Both had the same stocky, troll-like solidity of people raised in this horrible gravity. Both bowed their
heads when they came to stand beside her.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Argent,’ said the female. Dia’s bId supplied the necessaries: she was Police Inspector Halkiopoulou, in company of Police Subinspector Zarian, and both
were retained by a Ulanov-accredited legal enforcement agency. She waved all that away.

‘My sister is lost in the Ideal Palace at the momento-tomento,’ she told them. The slightest delay in the arrival of their smiles suggested either that they were dense, or else that
they were both using translation bugs.
That
was poor form, really. It was English Dia was speaking, after all: not Potpourri or Tidharian or Pidgin-Martian. And this island was
majority
owned
by the Argents, after all!

‘Woh, though, isn’t this a terrible thing?’ she said. ‘A dead body! A dead servant!’

‘It is clear the individual
has
been murdered, and it seems death has occurred following a mighty blow to the cranium,’ said the man-police in accented tones, presumably
reading the phonetic transcription from across his lenses. She hated that. That was excessivo cheap.

‘I saw,’ she said. ‘It was
super
-woh.’

‘It is unclear who has committed the crime,’ the female one was saying. ‘Certainly it was another of the servants present in the building. We have checked the House AI, and
nobody else entered the servant house, or left it, during the period prior to the murder. When the body was discovered the nineteen servants housed there all exited the place in distress, but they
are all counted, and nobody else was inside. So the murderer must be one of the nineteen—’

‘That’s exactly, boringly, exactly what you’d expect!’ Dia broke in. ‘I have solved literally
hundreds
of whodunits in the Ideal Palace, and I know how
important it is to keep an open mind. It might not be any of those nineteen at all!’

The two policepeople looked at one another, and then at the floor. Their evident embarrassment infuriated Diana. ‘The House AI,’ said the female, ‘tracked the victim, alive,
entering the house. Since then nobody else either entered or left, until after he was dead. Accordingly . . .’

‘Oh I know,’ she snapped, ‘of course I know that real life is different to IP-stories. Of course I know that! But I also specialise in
real-life
whodunits. Really,
I’ve cracked hundreds and
hundreds
.’ She paused to get her breathing back to normal. How could she convince these professional policemen of the genuineness of her passion?
‘I’ll send my scores to your bIds if you like – there’s a girl in Mars orbit who has slightly better metrics, in terms not just of picking the right murderer, but in the
identification of the right clues, and in time markers. But the thing the thing is is is she’s better on made-up murder mysteries, and those are
easier
. I mean, they’re usually
more
complicated
than real-life, historical murders—’ Dia gasped, and snatched a breath, and went on ‘—but the thing is, they’re complicated in a kind-of
predictable
way. You know what I mean? An invented whodunit has the same relation to real life as a chess puzzle has to an actual game of chess. You look at the classics: Poe! That woman
from the Christ family, whatever, and Dickson-Carr, and Queen Ellery, and Jay Creek, and Rajah Nimmi. To solve those sorts of stories your starting point needs to be, like,
what would be the
most ingenious solution
? Throw likelihood away, and look for impossible ingenuity, and you’re halfway there. Of course real life isn’t like that!’ She was wearing herself out,
what with the gravity and everything, but the thrust of her enthusiasm carried her through. ‘I’ve played hundreds of real-life murders, from history. I’ve solved murders and
kidnappings. I solved
four different
Rippers. Tonks – that’s the girl in Mars, Anna Tonks Yu,
can
you imagine a stupider name? – she does histories too, but
she’s only better than me on the made-up whodunits. Do you understand?’

‘She is a member,’ said the female policeperson, tentatively, ‘of the
famous
Family Yu?’

‘Yes, big-big family, but don’t get distracted,’ said Diana, crossly. ‘You’re not dealing with her, but me. This has happened right on
my
doorstep! You need
my
help to solve it! She’d be no use to you anyway. I can help you!’

These long speeches had worn her out, so she sank back into her chair. She was expecting the policepersons to make polite noises of discouragement, perhaps vague promises and dismissals. But
instead they seemed genuinely pleased. ‘We would very much welcome your assistance, young Mistress,’ said the man – Zarian, her bId reminded her – ‘your help would be
an
invaluable
addition to our investigation.’

Diana was sufficiently taken aback, and tired enough, to say nothing at all to this. She widened her eyes.

As the silence started to become awkward, the female police-person, Inspector Halkiopoulou, spoke up: ‘I’m sure you understand, Miss Argent, that we are very aware of the
sensitivities
of . . . conducting police investigation into the internal matters of a family with such a . . . great eminence in the affairs of the whole System.’

The male one added: ‘we are perfectly well aware that your two MOH parents have – personal connections with the Ulanovs.’

‘The Argents are much . . . loved, on this island,’ the female policeperson said, with a smidgen too much tentativeness about the main verb. ‘Quite apart from the fact that you
do
own more than 50% of the town.’

‘My MOHmies do,’ said Diana. ‘Which amounts to the same thing.’ She was feeling a little miffed, if you must know; although maybe it was just the tiredness and the
general discombobulation. But she wanted the police to want her because of her Ideal Palace expertise! – not just because she was a scion of a highfalutin friends-of-Ulanov
family
.
What she
really
wanted was for them to take one look at her stats, and see that if you broke them down properly – broke them down in the way that was most relevant to the sort of crime
we’re talking about here – then there was
literally nobody in the Solar System
to touch her for solving whodunits! Or, nobody in her age group. Which is to say, of the three
dozen or so teenagers who hung-out on the (alright, she admitted it) most expensive IP realms, only Anna Tonky-wonks Yu even came
close
to her.

It was absolutely a lie to say she had a crush on Anna. That was as absurd as absurd could
be
. She would fight anyone who said so.

But instead of that these policepeople were giving her the usual sycophantic stuff, on account of how her MOHmies were
players
. Of course, it was true. And besides, the victim
was
an Argent servant; and the murderer was probably an Argent servant too. These people were
hers
– not the policepeople’s.

‘Of course, Your MOH parents have spoken to us,’ said the man. The woman glanced at him, and then turned her eyes back on the floor.

‘Of course they have,’ said Diana, sourly.

‘You’ll understand we have certain legal processes we must pursue, to remain within the terms of our commercial contract as Ulanov sanctioned police,’ the woman purred.
‘But we would be pleased to . . . defer to yourself in the business of determining who – has committed this crime.’

‘I’m very tired,’ Diana told them, with imperious suddenness. ‘I
will
help you solve this murder mystery. Tomorrow I shall interview all the servants, with help
from my bodyguards and my Tutor. We will let you know what we come up with.’

The police bowed, and went out. Diana lowered her couch and turned cumbrously onto her side, to give her squashed spine a rest. And as she moved she caught Deño’s eye. There was a
sparkle in it. It made her smile. He felt it too. Her own murder mystery! Too, too,
too
exciting.

3

The Utility of Dreaming

The girls spoke to their MOHmies later that same day. The link was relayed a hundred times or so, just in case somebody chanced upon it and tried piggybacking through the
source (and nobody must know where the girls were – danger! danger!), so the quality wasn’t good. But their parents were perfectly recognisable: arm in arm, floating in one of their
great green globes up in space. ‘You’ll never guess, oh-my-MOHmies!’ blurted Dia, as soon as the connection was secured.

Both MOHmies smiled their identical smiles, but only MOHmie Yin spoke: ‘we have
some
idea, my dear – Iago informed us; and the police have communicated through official
channels.’

‘An actual murder mystery! A dead servant – murdered, and nobody knows by whom!’

‘So we hear. We instructed the policepersons that you should help them.’ Those smiles, in separate faces, so perfectly identical they looked like one of the dimensional superposition
problems you get in kindergarten.

‘I’ll work it out,’ said Dia proudly. ‘I’ll have the mystery cracked in – oh, a day, I should imaginate. A day and a half, I should
imagi
nation
ate.’

‘We don’t doubt
that
,’ said MOHmie Yin. ‘Will you help her, Eva?’

Eva looked sulky. ‘Now you
know
I have my PhD to finish. I’m closing in on a solution to the supernova problem. An actual solution! And, MOHmies-dearests, if I
might
say – there are problems that are trivial, and problems that are profound. When you bred us to solve problems, surely you had the
latter
sort in mind?’

‘Ah, but,’ said MOHmie Yin, turning to look into the face of MOHmie Yang, ‘which is which? Are exploding stars profound because they are very big and very far away? Or is it
precisely that that makes them
trivial
?’

Dia wasn’t slow to pick up the hint. ‘A human being is dead,’ she said. ‘Importance and triviality are value judgments that apply only to the human world. And in the
human world death is precisely the profound thing.’

‘You do talk nonsense, sister,’ said Eva, annoyed that her MOHmies seemed to be siding with Diana. ‘You couldn’t care less about this human being, dead or not! You feel
nothing for him one way or the other. How could you? You never met him. He’s just another servant. To you this is simply a problem to be solved, just like the Champagne Supernova problem is
to me.’

‘Life is more important than data,’ Dia retorted, piously.

‘When you saw the body – did you weep?’

Diana glowered at her. ‘Don’t be obtuse,’ she retorted. The blithe smiles of their parents, rendered in scratchy-scratchy dynamic 3D right in front of the girls.

‘There’s one thing, MOHmies,’ said Eva. ‘One thing that does puzzle me. When I think of the trouble you take to keep us both
safe
. . .’

‘Of course,’ said MOHmie Yang. ‘Nothing is more precious than you two girls. The future of the Clan
depends
upon you.’

The expression on Eva’s face tightened a little, but she pressed on: ‘surely, surely, but . . .
given
that such is the case, aren’t you a little alarmed that somebody
has been violently murdered within – within metres of us, literally? Shouldn’t you . . . I don’t know – shouldn’t you pull us out?’

For the first time MOHmie Yang spoke up: ‘pull you out? No, no. You need your
gravity
, dear girls.’

‘There’s no threat to
you
, my darlings,’ agreed MOHmie Yin. ‘The servants are all dosed with CRF. All thoroughly dosed
and
conditioned to the
nines
.’

‘To the ninety-nines,’ agreed MOHmie Yang.

‘They could no more harm you than cut off their own legs! Don’t worry about
that
. And as far as this murder is concerned – well, it’s a problem to be solved. And
who is better at solving problems than you two, my darlings?’

‘There’s always Anna Tonks Yu,’ said Eva, under her breath, as the call ended. Diana heard this, but chose to ignore it. Chose to ignore and snore. The Yu Clan would chop their
heads off (literally, no doubt) given half a chance. It was actually quite insulting –
actually
, in fact – for her sister to mention
that
little flatface idiot. Close to
Clan treason, actually; and, at the very least,
hurtful
to say that Anna Tonks Yu could outperform Diana in problem solving. On the other hand, if Dia challenged her, or bridled, or reacted
in any way, Eva would only ramp up the taunting; and it wouldn’t be long before it got to ‘you
love
her’ and ‘you want to
marry
her’ and so on. Marry
her! She’d never even
met
her in the flesh. As if Eva had any conception of love what! so! ever! She was cold as a comet, all rational thought and data crunching. She might as well
have been an AI.