The Automatic Detective (6 page)

Jung lurched grumpily toward the door.

"I could use a coat," I said.

He turned back and nodded. "Check my closet. I've got one too big for me, but it should fit you." He grinned. At least, I thought he did. "And be careful this time. You still owe me for that vest."

"Thanks."

He waved his hands as if to brush aside the gratitude. "And Mack, whatever you've gotten involved in, be careful."

"It's nothing to worry about, Jung."

"Do me a favor and be careful regardless."

I found a nice gray trench coat that was a little too big for the gorilla, but a perfect fit for me. I was taller than Jung, so it didn't fall lower than mid-thigh, but since I wasn't looking for something to keep away the chill, I didn't care. I found an old bowler that hadn't been worn in a while, apparent from the dust covering it. Clothing served no functional purpose for most robots, especially ones as weatherproof as myself, but automated citizens tended to drape themselves in one or two pieces of wardrobe if only to further distinguish themselves—beyond the complimentary red paint job that all bots received—from the other drones and autos inhabiting the city.

There was more to it, of course. Automatons with sophisticated-enough programming started to absorb affectations from their environment. Fully aware bots were even more susceptible to such quirks. I was no different. Whether it was some subconscious motivational directive driving me toward full assimilation or a bug in my behavioral software I couldn't say. Nor did I care. But I felt better putting something on, so the stuff wasn't quite as unnecessary as logic would have dictated.

That same odd bit of preening didn't apply to my smudged chassis. I could've stopped for a wash and wax, but I didn't care enough to waste the time. I got a few strange looks on my trip uptown, but I ignored them.

Crime was a dirty public secret in Empire. No one talked about it, and if you listened to the Learned Council, you'd think Empire was a shining utopia of order and decency. True, there were plenty of districts where a citizen could live in complete safety, where police were omnipresent, reliable, and completely effective, where no one ever got mugged or slapped around or murdered. Then there was the rest of the city. In a town where technology was supposed to be the answer to all society's ills, there were plenty of ills to go around.

Empire was too big. No matter how many cameras the city might post, no matter how many rotorcars patrolled the skies, no matter how much honest effort was put forth to drive the rats into the light, there was always another dark alley for them to crawl into. There always would be. It was human nature. I wasn't even human, and I understood that.

The hub of Empire's law enforcement was a gleaming dome of blue steel, a small city in itself, called the Think Tank. There were hundreds of precincts scattered throughout the districts, and they were fine for keeping thieves and muggers in line. But if you wanted anything done, you had to go the Tank. The doors were open to the public, but you had to go through an extremely sophisticated scanner.

I stepped through the sensor arch and was immediately tagged a threat to public safety. A chime went off: nothing too obnoxious, but loud enough to catch your attention. Two gun-drones, heavy blasters on treads, rolled forward and trained their potent arsenal on me. There was the forcefield, too, invisible to human eyes, but registering as a soft green haze to my opticals, erected around me. For good measure, the gravity plate flooring increased its pull, and I had to crank my power up to 71 percent to keep standing.

The cop working door duty glanced up from his magazine. "Hey, Mack."

"Do we need to do this every time, Parker?"

"System's automated. You know the drill."

I opened a port in my chest and a drone walked over and installed a small blinking box. With one of these on, a robot wasn't much of a threat to anyone. The city had considered installing one into me permanently, or at least for the term of my probation. Only a protest by the Mutant Protection Agency, fearing a precedent of limiting personal freedom in the guise of guarding the public interest, had prevented it. Now I only had to wear the incapacitor in high security areas.

It had some effect on me, but not as much as they thought. My systems were too well insulated. Normally, the incapacitor would beep and its light would turn red when it detected it wasn't working at full efficiency. But my shielding tech was so advanced as to feed the device a false reading. That was a big problem for the cops in Empire. Technology changed so fast, it was hard to keep up. It was my duty as a good citizen to report the incapacitor's failing, but instead, I faked it by dropping my power levels down to a meager 5 percent. I would've fallen to the floor, except it degravitized. The forcefield collapsed. The gundrones rolled back to their posts, and the siren faded.

"You could always give me the incapacitor before I stepped through the scanner," I observed.

Parker's nose was already stuck back in his magazine. "System's automated."

I clomped through the Tank on heavy legs. Though the incapacitor reduced my effectiveness to 20 percent, it had the odd effect of forcing me to burn twice as much juice as this weakened state should've. It also broadcast unpleasant static in my right audio.

I usually dropped by the Think Tank for my monthly probation check-in. Today, I lurched past those offices to a section on the third floor: the High Science Crimes Unit.

A secretarial auto fresh off the assembly line occupied the receptionist desk. The old models were strictly functional in design, spindly machines with monotone voices and minimal personality templates. This latest generation was more aesthetically pleasing to a biological's eye. They came in many varieties, but this model was a robust automated version of a platinum blonde. Although her composition was more likely low-grade steel than platinum. She had a name tag proclaiming her Darlene.

Whoever was paying the department's bills had sprung for the facial expression package. She smiled, batted her eyelashes at me. There was something terribly wrong about an auto with eyelashes. "Well, hello, handsome."

Terrific. She was a flirt.

"How can I help you, big guy?" she cooed.

"Sanchez," I replied. "I'm here to see Sanchez."

"Too bad. I was hoping you were here to see me."

I supposed I couldn't blame biologicals for being obsessed with sex, driven by it. It was the basis for their reproduction, after all. Messy business, biological existence. All fluids and tissues and passing DNA around in some vain hope that it'd produce something useful. It was their only option, short of cloning, and even that wasn't particularly practical yet.

I didn't mind biologicals and the necessities of their existence: eating, crapping, sweating, and all that other jazz. But they didn't have to advertise their obsessions, and they didn't have to foist their compulsions on me and my kind in the guise of user-friendliness. It was their nature, not their fault, and it wasn't Darlene's. So I shuffled aside my annoyance.

"Sanchez," I repeated. "I'm here to see Alfredo Sanchez, Head of the High—"

"I know who he is, honey. Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"Tsk, tsk. Well, seeing as how you're such a fine piece of hardware, I'll see what I can do." Darlene pushed a button on her box and leaned into an intercom. "Officer Sanchez, there's a bot here to see you." Then she glanced up at me and winked.

Sanchez agreed to see me. His private office was a box barely big enough for his desk, some filing cabinets, and a wall full of awards from the city. I managed to squeeze in, but I made sure to stand very still to avoid crushing anything.

I'd never visited Sanchez at work before. Actually, I'd never visited him anywhere. Our paths crossed, but never by appointment and never by intention. He didn't seem the least bit surprised at my unprecedented come-to-call. He continued to fill out reports. His typewriter clicked nonstop.

"They make drones for that, y'know," I said.

"City budget allows me either a typing drone or a coffee machine." He paused, held up a paper cup full of the steaming brown liquid. "Anyway, I don't think it's good for a man to rely too much on automation. No offense."

"None taken."

Sanchez sipped his coffee and winced. "Damn secretarial auto doesn't know how to make a damn pot of coffee."

"You could make it yourself."

"Don't have the time. Too busy typing reports." To demonstrate, he hunched over his typewriter and started banging away. "What do you need, Mack?"

Sanchez didn't believe in small talk. He liked to get to the point, and I could appreciate that.

"The Bleakers," I said.

His typewriter skipped a click before continuing its job. "Report's filed, Mack. Like I promised."

"And?"

"And the gears are in motion."

"What's that mean exactly?"

"Means everything that can be done is being done."

Which meant Julie and her kids were in the hands of the system now. A system that cared more about keeping the zip trains running than filtering out the mutagens in the waterworks. And it wasn't all that good at keeping the zip trains running.

"Did you run my memory file through the system yet?" I asked.

Sanchez nodded.

"Get a hit on Four Arms?"

Sanchez nodded again, curtly.

"Did you pick him up yet?" I asked.

"Not yet. We're looking."

My next request was awkward, absurd. But I said it anyway, and I didn't hesitate because I'm a bot and I appreciate directness.

"I need his name," I said.

Sanchez stopped typing. He took another sip of coffee. His pink nose twitched in disgust. "Who programs these damn robots?"

"Four Arms's name," I said. "I need it."

"Heard you the first time." He leaned back in his chair, which in the cramped quarters was quite an accomplishment. "You're not getting it."

We stared at each other across the office.

"Somebody needs to do something, Sanchez."

"Somebody is doing something, Mack."

"Who? You?"

He opened a drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Not my beat."

"Tell me whose beat it is, so I can talk to them."

He stuck the cig in his mouth, rolling it around without lighting it. "Go home, Mack."

"It's just a name."

"It's trouble, is what it is." He tossed the unlit cig into an ashtray. "You're concerned, I can see that. But the Bakers aren't your problem."

"Bleakers," I corrected.

"Damn." He hunched over, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "You can't get involved. In the first place, you're a private citizen. In the second, you're not even that if your probation falls through. And it will fall through if you get in the middle of this."

"That's my problem," I said. "It's only a name, maybe an address."

"It's more than that." He took another gulp of coffee, lit up his cigarette, and puffed like a steam engine. "This is my problem, too. I put my ass on the line for you."

"I know."

"Doctor Mujahid put her ass on the line."

"I know."

"There are a lot of important people watching you, Mack."

"I know."

He drummed his fingers on the desk. His little black claws pinged on the metal.

"I'm not going to change your mind, am I?"

I didn't bother answering the question.

"They mean that much to you?" he asked.

"They should mean something to someone," I replied.

Sanchez drew in a long mouthful of smoke until his cheeks bulged. He blew it out his nostrils in a slow, steady stream.

"Can't argue with that, Mack. Didn't think Megalith programmed you with such a warm, fuzzy side."

"He didn't. Must've been something I picked up along the way."

Sanchez turned his chair eighty-six degrees, opened a drawer in his desk, and tossed a file in front of me. I reached for it, but he slammed his tiny paw atop the folder.

"This isn't in your best interests. But since you're dead set on doing it, I have to lay down one rule before I let you look at this."

The folder was so close now I could easily brush him aside and take it. My battle predictor said the chances of him stopping me were nil.

"When you find this guy—if you find this guy," he said, "do not confront him. Report his whereabouts to the Tank and let us pick him up."

I said nothing, and Sanchez pulled the file away.

"Mack, that mess at your apartment wasn't easy to smooth over. If you go out on those streets looking for trouble—"

"I won't touch him. I won't talk to him. I won't even scan him for more than six seconds."

Sanchez handed over the file skeptically. Whether or not he trusted me, he cared about the people of this town. All those little folks who slipped through Empire's system bothered him. That was why he gave me this file. He knew damn well that I couldn't be trusted. Hell, I didn't even trust myself. I was untested hardware, heading into a delicate situation. I wasn't programmed for delicacy.