The Automatic Detective (28 page)

Even if it didn't develop into a war, there was still the super mutagen the Dissenters were cooking up. In twelve hours, give or take, they'd dump it in the water supply, and there would be no going back. One way or another, this alien experiment of a city was going to self-destruct.

Someone had to stop it before there was no turning back, before thousands were killed either in a senseless alien war or by unstable mutation or both. The cops couldn't. Greenman wouldn't.

That left me.

My military unit programming kicked in and started breaking down the mission into sub-objectives.

First Objective
:
Review the data tube in my pocket. If Doctor Zarg was as smart as he was supposed to be, there might be some useful information in there.

Second Objective
:
Gain access to the lab by whatever means presented themselves. Infiltration if possible. Direct assault if necessary.

Third Objective
:
Remove Holt from Dissenter possession. Once removed from the equation, neither the Dissenters nor the Pilgrims would have a reason to continue their conflict. Retrieval of objective was preferred but unlikely. Termination would most likely be the most sensible alternative.

It was in that third objective that I found a problem. My logic lattice, of course, disagreed. There was no problem. Just
a solution. This was a high-stakes game, and it all hinged on the life of one boy. To retrieve Holt wouldn't necessarily end the problem. As long as he was alive, someone could find him again and try to use his one-in-a-million biology to cook up more mutagens. Dead, removed permanently from the equation, the problem was ended. A simple ratio: one life against thousands. It all made sense when I crunched the numbers.

I didn't know if I could do it. Worse, I didn't know if I wouldn't. For all my sudden squeamishness, was sparing one boy any more morally responsible than standing by and letting thousands more die? What position was I in to make moral decisions anyway? I was only two years old, and until a few days ago, the biggest ethical dilemma I'd suffered was whether to take a few extra turns to jack up a fare.

I guess this was that Freewill Glitch at work. For most robots, a predicament like this could easily be solved by consulting with a designated operator. No questions. No problem. Either kill Holt or don't kill him. Just a beautifully simple command dictate.

Freewill was overrated.

My first sub-directive was to establish a base of operations. The address Lucia had flashed in my opticals wasn't far from here. I assumed Lucia had arranged for at least a modicum of privacy and a plug-in to recharge my batteries. It was a lucky break, too, because it was located on the edge of the Nucleus. Like most coincidences, it wasn't a coincidence at all. The Dissenters wanted to hide in plain sight, and it was easiest to blend into a crowd. Lucia must've had the same idea.

I found the address stenciled to one of the few buildings less than a hundred stories high. Some architect had gotten ambitious and erected a scalene triangle of glass and steel, then tilted it another twenty-five degrees until it looked like a building in slow collapse. It was a high-class joint, all right. A factory
across the street belched a green vapor that tinged everything nearby. The triangle had a squad of maintenance drones dutifully polishing the green away, and there wasn't a speck of vapor on the golden facade. Lucia had gone all out. If I'd put my superalloy up for auction and used the proceeds to pay the rent, I'd probably still only have enough for a year's lease, if that.

There was an auto minding the door. He didn't challenge anyone trying to enter. His sole job seemed to consist of tipping his hat and offering directions.

"Good day, sir," he said. "May I be of service?"

I asked him where office number 3106 was, and he directed me to the thirty-first floor. I'd already figured that out, but he was so eager to please that I would've felt bad for not asking.

There were a few citizens going about their business, and a drone was waxing the floor. Otherwise the lobby was quiet. A quick elevator ride to the top floor and some basic deductive navigation later, I waved my keydisk in front of an unmarked office door and stepped inside.

The office lights snapped on automatically, and I scanned a sparsely decorated room measuring fifteen by twenty feet. It was a reception room with three chairs arranged more or less in the center and a metal desk in a crescent shape. The walls were bare and the only decoration at all was a fern on the desk. A deactivated auto slumped at the desk.

The auto bore a passing resemblance to Humbolt, except this one was smaller with a rounder design. It also had three wheels instead of two legs. A note was taped to the cranial unit. It read SAY ERUCTATION.

"Eructation," I said.

The auto activated and raised its cranial unit. "Please select personality template preference. For a full list of preferences, please consult operator's manual."

I didn't feel like finding an instruction manual, so I went with the easiest choice. "Default."

"Acknowledged."

The auto scanned me up and down twice, registering me as its new primary operator. Then it spoke with a husky feminine voice.

"Well," she said. "Aren't you a piece of work?" It sounded like neither a compliment nor an insult, but was emotionally neutral. Not the neutrality of a machine, but the disinterested remark of the world-weary.

"State your designation," I said.

"Designation?" She cocked her head forward to glare at me with her two sky blue opticals. "Aren't you the sweet talker? Tell you what, Casanova, why don't you just give me a . . ." She paused and if she'd had lips, she would've smiled sardonically. ". . . designation. It'll be easier for you to remember that way."

"Designation: Eve."

She couldn't roll her opticals so she rolled her entire head. "Oh, how very original. Must've taken you literally microseconds to come up with that one."

I should've known Lucia wouldn't have the normal "Affirmative/Negative" personality default. It might've been smarter to order Eve to reset and give her a more agreeable personality, but it seemed more trouble than it was worth. Also, it was a touch hypocritical to reboot her personality simply because I found it unpleasant.

"You must be Megaton," she said, rolling out from behind her desk. "Let me show you around your new office."

"This isn't my office," I said.

"Not officially," she said. "Not yet. But Lucia was preparing it for you. As a surprise. Said a proper detective needed a proper office. So, howsabout that tour? There's the couch.
There's the receptionist's desk. And here's the door to your private office, if you'd follow me, sir."

The private office was 300 percent the size of the reception room. It had another couch and a desk and empty shelves lining the walls. The large windows had a special tint that changed the greenish light outside into a golden glow. With space being such a luxury in Empire, particularly in the Nucleus, this must've cost Lucia a fortune.

"This is too expensive," I said.

"Yeah, it is. She was using it as a business address for certain legal requirements, and though she doesn't need it anymore, the lease doesn't expire for another year. Figured you might as well use it as let it go to waste. She wanted to get it fixed up all nice and fancy for you, but circumstances demanded a rushed unveiling."

She spun around once and waved her arms halfheartedly. "Surprise. I would've baked a cake, except you don't eat and I don't bake. My last data update was eighteen hours ago, so might I suggest supplying current situational information?" She shrugged. "To enable me to better serve you, of course."

I gave her a report of everything relevant.

"Update recorded," she said. "Well, haven't you gone and made a mess of things? You can turn off the suit by the way. The windows are one-way."

I deactivated the hologram.

"My, aren't you a big utilitarian brute?" she said. I couldn't decipher whether it was a compliment or an insult, but I was beginning to doubt dispensing compliments was among her functions.

"This office should be serviceable for your basic needs," said Eve. "We've got a phone, recharge port, and it's registered under a corporate name so it's unlikely anyone will think to look for you here. Also, there are a few amenities that a bot of your apparently troublesome temperament might find useful."

She gestured to a shelf and must've activated a remote switch. It slid open to reveal a repair pod. "Fully automated," she said. "Capable of most high-level maintenance."

She waved toward another row of empty shelves, and they opened to show a rack of gizmos and gadgets. Eve pointed to a few. "Spare illusion suit batteries, lock overriding device, directional microphone, etcetera, etcetera. So that's the tour. Any questions?"

I pulled the data tube from my coat pocket. "You wouldn't happen to have a reader handy, would you?"

"There's a tube reader built into the desk." She rolled toward the reception room. "If you need anything else, you know where to find me, boss."

"You can call me Mack," I said.

She crossed the threshold and swiveled to face me. "Oh, I know I can, but I'd rather not." The door slid shut.

I inserted the tube into the reader terminal. A screen extended from the desk as the tube downloaded its information. I scanned through a portion of the data Doctor Zarg had provided. There was a lot to go through. Zarg had given me blueprints, delivery schedules, access points, surveillance and security system data. Though I was certain the Dissenters had already changed their access codes and put security on high alert, there was still plenty of useful data in this tube. Maybe even enough for a smart bot like me to come up with a plan. But I was still only one bot.

I pushed the intercom button. "Eve, I need to make a call."

"Third switch on your right."

I flicked the switch and a phone popped out of the desk.

"Phone book is in the bottom left drawer," she said. "If the red light on the phone starts blinking, it means someone's either tracing the line or listening in."

"Thanks."

"My pleasure." Although her vocalizer didn't make the words sound like they were remotely pleasurable.

I didn't need the phone book. The numbers were already logged in my memory matrix. I grabbed the phone off the desk and dialed. I half-expected an answering machine, but after three rings, a groggy gorilla picked up.

Grey's worm was barely a hiccup in my directives now. I could go to the cops and download all the data I'd recorded in the last couple of days. Irrefutable proof of an alien conspiracy to play back for all the world. I didn't know how deep this conspiracy went, how much control the Pilgrims or Dissenters had over the inner workings of Empire City's government. I was willing to trust Sanchez who, if he was in on it, would probably do the right thing with the information. But he was only one cop, and without some heavy-duty backup, he was in no better a position to handle this mess than I was. I didn't need another unknown variable. So Sanchez was out for now, and I was left with only two entities I could trust at this point.

Jung occupied half my office couch. Humbolt took up another third.

"Nice setup, Mack," said Jung. "Could use a few decorations."

"I'm not keeping it," I said.

"Of course you will," remarked Eve. My secretarial auto
rolled in with a pot of coffee in one hand and an extra large mug in the other. Jung needed a lot of coffee to get going in the morning. She poured him a full serving.

"Here you go, sweetie," she said. "Need anything else? Perhaps something to nosh on?"

"No, this'll do." Jung slurped down the giant mug, and Eve refilled it.

"I'll leave the pot, sweetie."

He grunted, raising the mug to his lips.

"My pleasure. Need anything else, boss, I'll be—"

"At your desk. I know."

"So what's this all about, Mack?" asked Jung.

It took four minutes to tell him everything, and after I finished, he didn't bat an eye.

"Martians, huh?" he said.

"They're not Martians."

"To-may-to, to-mah-to." He set aside his eighth cup of coffee. "Sounds like a messy situation."

"It's messy all right," I said. "If you don't want to get involved in this . . ."

"Seems like I'm already involved, Mack. Seems like the whole city is involved."

"I've run risk ratios based on Zarg's data. Statistically, you're smarter to take your chances risking severe mutation than helping me out."

"You know me, Mack. I'm a biological." He shrugged. "We don't pay any attention to statistics."

"I'm in, too, Mack," said Humbolt.

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me. Thank the boss. She's the one who issued the dictate to help you out in any way I can."

"So do you have a plan yet?" asked Jung.

"Not yet, but I'm working on it. Humbolt, we might need something big if we're going to have a shot at pulling this off. Does Lucia have any weapons that fit the bill?"