The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (23 page)

In Nevada, they took on all comers,
and just over the border in Colorado, people could marry in
threesomes and multi-role relationships, which Scott had heard of
but didn’t pretend to understand. But a man could marry two women,
or two men would marry three women. One of those women could be
married to another man, and one of the men, or more, might have
outside attachments. Each of their roles was clearly defined before
going into it, with some rather wordy prenuptial agreements in
place. In Colorado, you could marry three men and a dog.

“
What? Are you
serious?”

“
Yes. Come on, Betty.
Look. If that doesn’t throw a fuck into their minds, I don’t know
what will—”

Her jaw dropped.

Of course.

“
Scott. My mad lover…my
man. My boyfriend! My real, live boyfriend. You, sir, are a
genius.” She leaned in close and began kissing his neck and his
ear.

She couldn’t believe she just said
that. He wasn’t putting up much of a struggle.

“
All right, all right.”
His arm slid up and he pulled her down onto him. “But don’t think
you’re going to distract me, not for a minute.”

The attitude didn’t last long, but he
didn’t feel too hard done by it.

***

“
What?” Olympia Cartier
was incredulous.

“
I’m afraid it’s true,
Madame.” Mister Carlson acted unsurprised.

Yet he was as surprised as anyone. When
he discovered the discrepancy, he’d been quite shocked. Arithmetic
was such a simple little thing, and it just seemed so
unlikely.

It was only upon deeper inquiry that he
found the problem was quite extensive. He mentally reviewed the
pages, something not difficult for one of his job description. It
didn’t take long to get a few answers, none of which eased his mind
or settled his worries. Somehow the entries had been blocked, but
sooner or later the system had to balance.

In the end, there was only one
conclusion to be drawn. Betty Blue had been cooking the
books.

Olympia was in her chair, with Mister
Carlson looking over her shoulder, a shaky and slender finger
pointing out each and every entry. This room was austerity itself,
with none of the gilt and rococo of the rest of the house. This
room was strictly business. Personal, household business, but
business nevertheless.

“
Here’s one. Here. Here
and here.” He was thoroughly nonplussed by it.

There was no rational explanation. None
of their system intruder alerts had gone off, and the series seemed
to go back a couple of months.

“
Oh, my, God.” Olympia was
shocked.

Her colour rose. She’d sent Betty off
on some of these errands herself.

While each entry didn’t seem to be for
all that much money, it was never in round figures. It was
one-thousand-ninety-four-dollars here and
eight-thousand-forty-four-sixty-one somewhere else. Betty must have
been sneaking out on her own; making unauthorized purchases, and
keeping the change. There were just too many of them, and at all
different times of day.

Mr. Carlson pointed at an unfamiliar
symbol.

“
What’s that?”

“
She’s done some online
transfers.” He swallowed, standing upright now and looking over her
head into a kind of infinity.

“
Oh. My, God.”

Her fingers flew across the
keys.

“
What, is the one common
element in each and every one of these discrepancies?” Mister
Carlson, his voice rising in a kind of triumph, paused, and looked
at his employer.

She was not only dumbfounded, but
deeply hurt by this revelation.

Her eyes bored into the screen, and
then came up and she searched his face.

“
Betty. Betty
Blue.”

Betty Blue, whom she had loved and
trusted and taken into her own household as if she was her very own
daughter. Betty Blue had been systematically ripping off the
household accounts, and for all they knew, this might be just the
tip of the iceberg.

“
It’s a good thing I
spotted it.” Mister Carlson couldn’t keep a note of smugness out of
his voice and his demeanor.

Looking back, he had to admit that
there had always been something just a little bit different about
that one.

True, he had made allowances. They had
made her feel welcome, a valued member of the household. It wasn’t
just her obvious and latent sexual qualities. As a professional, he
could rise above all of that. He’d had one or two qualms. After
all, young girls had crushes and all that sort of thing. In the
end, nothing had come of it, and he had come to terms with her to
some extent.

She had her independent streak, and yet
deferred to him in a respectful fashion when it was appropriate,
not least of which was in front of junior staff.

No, it was just her sheer intelligence,
the competence…her coolness, and her poise. There was always that
mysterious something, call it humour, call it a sense or spirit, in
behind those crystalline eyes. He’d sensed a certain kind of
trouble there, and if the trouble that came wasn’t exactly the same
as the trouble you expected, it still goes to show you…

It seemed as if his instincts had been
pretty good, right from the start.

Olympia’s jaw worked back and
forth.

Her hand stabbed forth and she shut
down that page.

She gave Mister Carlson an angry
look.

“
Get me that insurance
broker on the phone.”

“
Yes, Missus
Cartier.”

No wonder they were so eager to settle
the claim—there was no telling how much damage an out-of-control
robot might cause. She was still seething after that last little
incident to show any mercy this time around.

Her mind raced. She knew all about
business from listening to Doyle, of course, and she was not
entirely without experience on her own.

Betty Blue hadn’t been recovered. She
was still out there, somewhere—Olympia’s gut instinct was pretty
adamant about that. If she had simply failed or malfunctioned, she
would have been found by now.

It’s what she honestly believed. That
Betty was out there, somewhere, all on her own. And that she could
be found, and brought home, and that maybe, just maybe, things
could get back to normal.

Olympia was determined to get to the
bottom of this if it frickin’ killed her.

“
Argh.”

She slumped back in the seat, heart
pounding.

And if they weren’t careful, they would
be liable for whatever damage Betty did…

“
Hold on. Belay that
order.”

“
Missus
Cartier?”

Her mouth was a firm line, lips closed
and working back and forth against each other.

“
No. We’d better talk to
Doyle about this. And maybe our lawyer.”

“
Yes, that’s a good idea.
Would you like me to call the police?”

“
Yes!”

S.O.P.

Standard Operating Procedure, as Doyle
called it.

She really couldn’t think of what else
to do. Somebody over there was going to get a real blast of
shit.

***

Betty had done her homework. With her
extensive database, and her quick mimicry of what she saw around
her, she took extra pains with Scott’s appearance.

She had dandified her man. Scott had no
idea of what he looked like these days, small consolation for his
worries.

Scott smelled wonderful, something he
never would have said about himself. That was his old life. No
matter what happened, he would never go back to that life. How in
the hell had he endured it?

It was a tough question.

Everything from the mousse in his hair,
to the silky-smooth shave, to the powder on his neck from her trim
and styling, everything augured for success.

“
Okay. Let’s get this
little escapade on the road.”

As usual, he was taking her word for a
lot of things. If Betty said it was three o’clock in the morning,
then it was. If Betty said this particular funeral director, a
justice of the peace and minister of this particular roadside
wedding chapel wasn’t too particular on details and that all he
really cared about was getting paid, cash up front was best, Scott
wasn’t inclined to ask too many questions.

Questions just lead to
heartbreak.

On Scott’s insistence, they had faked
up another identity, only in this instance there was a twist. He
was listed as Scott Nettles, of Scottsdale Arizona. There actually
was such a person, only three years older than himself. To their
good fortune, according to Betty the gentleman bore a passing
resemblance to Scott.

With Betty’s eyes having a built-in
scanning feature, and her innate ability to hack in and around
almost anything, because after all it mirrored her own inner self,
they could change the image, the code, the ID scan and pix to
anything or anyone they wanted.

It was another good omen, but that
other Scott Nettles was unmarried. It voided one possible pitfall.
According to Betty, the State and the states had never really
achieved the promise of full integration of all network resources.
For one thing, it would have made the delivery of social services a
little too efficient. Also according to Betty, it would have
prevented corruption. Since any crime that was not committed by
private individuals but government employees and their contractors
was by definition corruption, it was easy to see why that full
integration must never happen.

It would have made things a little too
difficult for them. And of course, they were the ones most familiar
with the systems—and they had the most access to them and the vast
cash flow that sustained this fermenting nation through good times
and dark. There might have been a few legitimate issues as well,
including mis-matched hardware, software and operating systems.
Then there were all the usual privacy paranoias.

“
So. Are you sticking with
Betty Blue?”

“
Yes. Scott. I am. That’s
my name, and…I guess maybe that’s all a person really has
sometimes.”

“
We got each other,
Babe.”

She was just a blur to him. His guts
churned but he had to trust to something. Pure luck, or God, or
something.

She took his elbow, closing the hotel
room door behind them. He bent and found a suitcase. Scott was
getting really good at acting as if he was sighted. With her
fussing nervously and tapping along on her usual high-heels, it
wasn’t as hard as it looked—another one of those damned sight puns,
he thought.

There were altogether too many of those
in the world already.

Why don’t people come up with some deaf
puns, or dumb puns, or fucking lost my penis in an unfortunate
smelting incident sort of puns—anything, really.

Almost anything would do.

***

“
Well. I’ll be
damned.”

“
You said that already.”
Francine looked over Parsons’ shoulder.

He had just gotten off the phone with
Olympia Cartier, hopping mad and demanding some sort of precipitate
action.

To watch Parsons fawn and ingratiate
and supplicate with the old bitch was an inspiration.

She had new respect for him with each
passing moment.

Gene was expected momentarily, held up
for forty minutes so far by a high-speed monorail accident. Due to
a spate of such suicide incidents, trains were equipped with what
amounted to a cow-catcher on the front. Unfortunately, the crowd of
hopeful suicides was a bit bigger this morning than the makers had
anticipated, nor the government oversight committee for that
matter.

One of the fortunates had gone in
through the windshield, which, even at seventy-five millimetres
thick, could not withstand the weight of a human body striking it
at an effective two-hundred-forty-five kilometres an
hour.

Suicide was (of course) a criminal act
when the state needed all hands and bodies to feed the gaping maw
of the economy. As someone once said, every crime is a political
statement. As for the interest rate on all of those unpaid student
loans, that was all nice and legal. They chatted back and forth as
they checked their devices and a plethora of paper memos. That was
one dinosaur that just never seemed to die.

Gene came in just then. He slung his
coat at the rack and sauntered over.

Francine knew instantly he’d gotten
laid last night. They’d given him a birthday cake just the day
before.

‘
Best we can for
you—unless we can find a deaf, dumb and blind volunteer.’
Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Say no more.

It was always an occasion.

“
Hey. So. We have a
breakthrough.”

Parsons spoke first and Francine
nodded brightly.