The Automatic Detective (24 page)

I didn't say anything, and he shrugged, gently floating to the floor.

"Have it your way, Mack, but you can't tell me you aren't curious. We'll talk later."

Whistling, he strolled out the door. It was only me, the e-mech drones, and Knuckles. And none of us felt like talking.

Forty-six minutes later, the door opened again and Lucia came in, escorted by Grey and Greenman.

I was painted gold and my chassis was dented, but uncompromised. Lucia could tell by the way my arm hung limply and the crack in my optical that I'd seen better days. She ran over and put her arms around me. I didn't hug her back because I still wasn't confident in my strength regulators.

"Mack, oh my, are you okay?"

"It only hurts when I compute," I said. "How'd you get her out, Abner? No way Sanchez would've agreed to it."

"Oh, like I said, I know people," replied Greenman. "As far as most everyone is concerned, Miss Napier remains in her cell, and she'll have to get back there soon. She should have enough time to complete your repairs. Assuming we begin right away."

"Yes, yes, of course," said Lucia. "I'm going to need you to lean back on the table and deactivate, honey."

I lay down, casting one quick scan at Greenman and Grey. If I opened my chassis and shut down, I'd be helpless and vulnerable. Underneath my indestructible chassis, my internals were as fragile as any other heavy-duty construction robot.

Lucia activated a scanner, which proceeded to analyze my damage and display it on a screen as a schematic filled with blinking red dots. Lots and lots of blinking red dots. Leaking hydraulics. Stripped joints. A support armature full of microfractures.

An e-mech handed her a laserweld. "Mack, baby, please, you'll have to deactivate."

"I don't trust them," I said.

"Then don't trust them." She leaned over me and put both hands on either side of my cranial unit. "Trust me."

I needed the fix, and I didn't have a lot of options. Broken if I did, and broken if I didn't. Self-preservation was a bitch of a directive sometimes.

"Okay, Lucia."

I lowered my power levels slowly as I ordered my chassis open.

I peered down at my mechanical guts. In the center of the arrangement was a seven-inch cube. My brain whirred and clicked audibly as thousands of programs carried out their work.

"Don't worry, Mack. I'll have you good as new," Lucia said.

Her smile was the last thing I scanned before deactivating.

I went off-line regularly for short periods as part of my recharge and defragmentation cycle. But even while recharging, my array was aware of my surroundings. It ignored most everything and didn't bother recording, but it was still aware. If someone wanted to sneak up and access my systems, they wouldn't get far before I'd switch back on.

Deactivation was different. It was a complete, system-wide shutdown. If off-line status was comparable to biological sleep, then deactivation was a coma. No data. No time. Nothing. Some claimed biologicals thought during comas, and maybe they did. But not me. I was oblivious to the world. On the bright side, it made the repair session go by in a snap.

Reactivating from a full system shutdown took a little longer than normal. I prioritized my face and vocal recognition programs and waited for the mechanical support to kick on-line.

The first thing I noticed was Lucia's face. There was a smear of grease on her chin, and her eyes were heavy. Her hair was all over the place.

"Morning, handsome."

I was about to ask how long I'd been down when my internal clock informed me that it was now twenty-five minutes past one in the morning. I'd been down for five hours and change.

"Is he fixed?" asked a guy in a gray suit who stood guard.

Lucia wiped her brow. "He's fixed."

"Running diagnostics," I replied coldly. My speech synthesizer was not high on my list of concerns.

"Why, Mack, baby," said Lucia with a smile. "I thought you agreed to trust me." She pushed a button and the table slowly tilted forward until I was on my feet. "Any time you're ready."

My gyros listed as all in agreement, and my ankle actuator was A-OK. I took a step and didn't fall over. I tested my shoulder joint with a few waves of my arm, and I stomped each foot three times to see if my frame was solid. Nothing rattled loose. My right knee rotator didn't stick at thirty-five degrees anymore. It'd been doing that since I'd been built.

"I did some preventative maintenance while I was in there," she said. "Hope you don't mind."

The gold paint job was gone, and I was now lusterless silver. The drones approached and began to slap on a coat of automated citizen red. Once they'd finished, I looked as shiny and new as an auto fresh off the assembly line.

"I had Greenman's boys go by my place and pick up a few things. There's a new suit over there."

She pointed to a custom-tailored job hanging in the corner. This one was black with vertical stripes. I slipped it on. Lucia had to help me with the tie.

She grabbed a thin book off a table and handed it to me.

"What's this?"

"Manual," she said. "For the suit. Scan it. Shouldn't take you more than a minute or two."

It took exactly seventy seconds to absorb the fifty-five-page
manual. The suit was more than a sharp outfit. Lucia called it an illusion suit, and it had color-changing fabric and a hologram emitter network imbedded in the fabric. After I'd read up on its functions, she suggested I try them out. While repairing me, she'd installed a radio remote to make using the gadgets as basic as walking.

I ran the suit through a variety of color shifts and preset patterns, including an unlikely design of purple with lime flowers. The hologram was able to project either isolated images around my mechanical bits or body-wide images. The preprogrammed disguise was that of a green-skinned mutant. Nothing too fancy, but enough to justify my proportions and afford me some anonymity.

"Using the body-wide will drain the battery fast," she said. "So use it sparingly. Figured you might need some form of disguise if you're going to be on the lam. Can't disguise your proportions, and if you move too fast you'll overtax the system and the images might blur."

She handed me a thick metal belt. "I call it a booster belt. Seven miniature rocket pods built into it. They can't run for extended flight, but they'll get you airborne. About seventy feet or so per boost. Also, it's got the next generation gravity clamp. Turn that on, and nothing will move you. I guarantee it."

I slipped on the belt, and gave the boosters a quick test fire. I hopped five feet in the air and landed with a clang. Next up was the gravity clamp. Switching it on, I was immediately anchored to the floor. The pull was so strong as to crack the linoleum. Those bugaboos of mass and momentum wouldn't be much of a problem as long as this baby was running.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"I'll take it. You whipped these up pretty fast, Lucia. I'm impressed."

"Actually, I had the prototypes ready for awhile. I'm a genius, Mack, but I'm not that good. They aren't practical except for seven-foot, ultra-strong robots. The hologram irritates flesh with continued exposure. Makes it itchy as hell. The gravity clamp would crush most biologicals. And the boosters—" she shrugged "—they tend to cause second degree burns around the waist and crotch area, which places severe limits on the potential market."

She handed me a hat. I cupped it loosely in my hand so as to not crush the felt. Though Lucia assured me it wasn't felt, and it'd pop back into shape even if completely flattened.

"This is a fedora," I said.

"That's right. I see your hat distinguishing programs are running just fine."

"I had a bowler."

"Oh, Mack, don't you go to the picture shows?" she said. "Oh, wait, I bet you don't."

"I've seen a movie or two," I said. "Or six and a half."

"Half, huh?"

"I walked out of
The Day the Earth Stood Still
once it became clear Gort wasn't the hero."

She straightened my tie. "Well, Mack, if you've seen any crime pictures, you'd know all detectives wear fedoras."

"Sherlock Holmes doesn't."

"Yes, honey, but Sherlock Holmes is an intellectual. And you're a tough guy." She caressed my chin. "Trust me, it'll look good on you."

I positioned it atop my head. Lucia had me bend down and tilted it at a four degree angle. "Now this is one handsome detective. Bogart would eat his heart out."

"I couldn't agree more, Miss Napier," said Abner Greenman as he entered with Knuckles clomping behind him. "Now
that Mack's repairs are complete, we must see you returned to your cell before anyone notices."

"She's not going back," I said.

"I had to call in a lot of favors, Mack," said Greenman, "and even I don't have the pull to abscond with such a famous felon."

Lucia patted me on the arm. "It's okay. He's right. Anyway, if I don't go back, I'll be a fugitive. I'd rather take my chances on my day in court."

"What chances?" I asked. "They know you did it. They have a recording of the crime and an eyewitness."

"I'll just explain the situation. You know how persuasive I can be."

"You might not be able to talk your way out of this."

"Mack, don't be silly. I've talked my way out of much worse things. Anyway, did you forget that I'm very rich? With the right lawyers, the legal system can be very forgiving."

She had a point there. Even in Tomorrow's Town, hot justice could be tempered by cold cash. It would take a lot of dough to get Lucia out of trouble, but she had plenty to throw around. I didn't like it, but it was the smartest thing.

Lucia wrapped her arms around me, and I hugged her back.

She gave my faceplate a caress, and her hand moved slowly across my opticals. I scanned something written on her palm: an address. She winked, slipping a keydisk in my pocket when no one was looking.

"Remember, big guy. I might not always be available to patch you up. So try and take better care of yourself in the future."

"No promises."

Two of Greenman's biological goons escorted Lucia away. I wondered if this would be the last time I scanned her. Even if she got out of her bind, I was still in mine.

"Now that you're functioning better," said Greenman, "I was hoping you'd reconsider my offer."

"Still not interested," I replied. "I don't like you, Greenman. I don't buy your story. And I don't trust you."

"You don't have to trust me, Mack, but I am the only one who can help you."

"I'll help myself."

"And a fine job you've been doing so far," he said. "You are now a wanted bot. The police are looking for you. A rebel faction of Pilgrims wouldn't mind seeing you scrapped either. Right now, I think it's safe to say I'm your only friend of influence in this city."

"And let me guess, if I agree to work for you, you'll make it all go away?"

He adjusted the green rose in his lapel. "I can, you know. There isn't much going on in this town where I don't have some sway. You'd be surprised at the number of very important people who owe me favors."

"No, I wouldn't, but I'm not going to be one of them."

I moved toward Greenman, and as expected, Knuckles tried to get in my way. He beeped once as a warning. I put one hand on his shoulder, kicked his leg from under him, and pushed him down. He fell hard. Hard enough to knock a few bolts loose. One came to a rolling stop at my feet. Lucia had done a bang-up repair job. I'd have to remember to tip her a sawbuck if I ever saw her again.

Knuckles squealed like a cranky baby as he struggled to right himself. Mark Threes were hard to knock over, but once they were down, they couldn't exactly spring to their feet.

I said, "Tell him to stay down. Or I'll disassemble him one screw at a time."

Greenman gave the order, and Knuckles went still.

"Here's the deal, Abner," I said. "I don't care about you. I
don't care about good aliens or bad aliens. I don't even care about 500 thousand possibly doomed citizens. All I care about is one family unit comprising three biologicals. But it seems like what I care about and what you care about meet somewhere in the middle in this scenario. So you'll tell me what you know, and we'll work this out so that we both get what we want. But I don't work for you." I folded my arms. "And if that's going to be a problem, then we'll just go our separate ways."

Greenman's fish eyes went cold as the humor drained from his smooth, featureless face. I inferred Greenman was used to having all the power, being the big green cheese. He didn't like having terms dictated to him. Naturally, he tried his ace.

"What of the Bleakers? Would you walk away, leaving them to their fate?" A smug grin crossed his face. He thought he had me. All he had was one annoyed bot who'd already figured that Greenman was a man who thrived on edges, on holding all the cards. Removing the Bleakers from the scenario left him with a very bad hand.

"Watch me." I moved toward the door.