The Automatic Detective Part 23

Greenman might've given up, but I wasn't programmed that way. I'd a.n.a.lyzed the variables, and come up with a plan. I retracted the Hornet's roof, but it was taking too long so I reached up and tore it off with one servo jerk.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" asked Greenman.

"Finding a new option."

A hard upward bank caught him by surprise, and he nearly fell out of the Hornet. I grabbed him by his leg and pulled him from the brink.

"Thanks, Mack."

"Can't you float yourself safely down to the ground?" I asked.

"Sure. Just as long as those torpedoes don't notice me." He glanced to the radar screen. "d.a.m.n it. We've lost contact with two of them."

"No, we haven't," I said.

The two missing drones rounded the skysc.r.a.per ahead of us. Three on our tail, and two coming right at us. I set the Hornet on automatic and stood up. I grabbed Greenman as I estimated the moment of impact and calculated the trajectory of my bail out maneuver. There was no time to triple-check the computations.

These torpedoes were smart little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I wouldn't get a second chance. I waited until the buzzing in my audios said it was too late. Then I gave it another two-tenths of a second and boosted for an automated transport thirty feet away and fifteen feet down.

The Hornet exploded, and I was hurled forward. I'd factored in the force of the explosion, counted on it, but I hadn't gotten a chance to get to know the booster. I'd misplaced the decimal point in my calculations.

A decimal point could make all the difference in the world.

I sailed through the air with Greenman clutched tight to my chest. It was supposed to be a smooth flight, but I ended up off balance. When I hit the transport roof, my metal feet skidded out from under me. I landed on my back and kept sliding. At the last second, I managed to dig the fingers of my free hand into the transport's side. I dangled from the edge. Once I determined that my shoulder connectors hadn't been damaged, I pulled myself up. I kept my hold on Greenman, but he wasn't a significant impairment. I rechecked the explosion log file. It should've been bigger.

One of the torpedoes hadn't gone off. Either it was a dud, or it'd held back as a fail-safe.

The last drone hovered beside the billowing black clouds that marked the Hornet's last functional position. It obviously hadn't scanned us yet, but it wasn't about to give up. Greenman ducked down, and I pressed flat against the transport. I stayed immobile as we slowly drifted farther and farther from the torpedo.

"Just how practically infallible are the tracking systems on those things?" I asked.

"They've got a 3 percent failure ratio."

It wasn't much rea.s.surance, but we were two bogeys in a sky full of possible targets.

The drone suddenly zoomed in our direction. It stopped and scanned for three seconds. Then zoomed closer, scanned for two second. Then zoomed closer, scanned for one second.

Too d.a.m.n smart.

I made a dash toward the far side of the automated transport. Those metal feet of mine proved a hindrance once again and I nearly fell off the side. I'd have to ask Lucia to install some rubber soles in the future. Providing I wasn't sc.r.a.p six seconds from now.

The drone shot forward and impacted with the transport. I boosted. I didn't have time to scan for a place to land. I just launched myself and hoped for the best. It was three hundred feet to the streets below, and something was bound to pop up along the way. I hugged Greenman close to me, trying to keep his fragile body as protected as possible I careened downward with no way of directing my fall. Fifty feet down, I bounced off a rotorcar hood. Seventy more feet, and I hit something else. Didn't scan what it was, but it didn't stop me. The city was a blur in my opticals.

I slowed.

Either gravity was cutting me a break or something else was going my way.

I'd had a good reason for holding onto Greenman, and it wasn't solely for the spiteful pleasure of watching him hit the ground with me. I didn't stop falling, but my rate of descent slowed to a leisurely pace. Greenman's eyes glowed, and I could tell by the veins throbbing on his head that he was having a h.e.l.l of a time holding me up.

We were smack dab in the middle of the skyway, and several rotorcars nearly ran into us before we pa.s.sed through to the underside.

He growled through clenched teeth. "You're too heavy. Let me go, or we'll both drop."

"That's the idea, Abner. I suggest you find a place to put us down fast."

Grunting and groaning, he floated us inch-by-painstaking-inch toward a rooftop. I wasn't sure if he'd make it. Once the strain proved too much, and we ended up plummeting another sixteen feet before he could telekinetically latch onto me again. But in the end, self-preservation was a great motivator, and we reached our goal. Exhausted, he still managed to set us down as light as a feather.

I scanned the area. Not a torpedo in sight.

I ran a quick diagnostic on my internals. Everything was in tip-top shape. I'd have to remember to give Lucia that tip next time I saw her. I checked the data tube in my pocket. Whether it remained readable or not was impossible to tell, but it was still in one piece.

Having that biological weakness for fatigue, Greenman wheezed, barely able to stand. "Mack, you got some ball bearings on you, I'll give you that."

I brushed some dust off my lapel. The distant wail of sirens meant the Think Tank had finally gotten around to dispatching some units. Audio a.n.a.lysis put ETA at twenty-two seconds.

I allowed myself three seconds to consider how best to handle Abner Greenman. Easiest thing would've been to kill him. He was too tired, both physically and mentally, to raise a finger, telekinetically or otherwise, against me. Though Greenman had helped me avoid a nasty fall, I didn't need him around to cause me trouble. I had too many impediments in my current mission parameters already.

Maybe a few hours with the cops would keep him occupied. I had no doubt that he had the connections necessary to make any legal difficulties disappear, but even a guy like Greenman would need time to flip all the right switches at city hall.

I bent over and flicked him with two fingers. Not at full power, but enough to send him sprawling flat on his back. Then I picked him up and did it again for good measure. It was fairly probable I'd cracked a rib or two in his fragile body. If he even had ribs.

"See you around, Abner," I said.

"You're sc.r.a.p!" he shouted. "You hear me? Sc.r.a.p!"

He was still shouting as the rooftop access door slid shut behind me.

18.

By the time the elevator hit the ground floor, the cops had gotten their act together enough to post a couple of officers on the door. Lucia's illusion suit worked like a charm. I switched on a projection of a heavy labor auto, grabbed an unoccupied couch in the lobby, and clomped my way out the front doors. I was just another faceless auto, and no one tried to stop me.

I waited until I rounded the corner to drop the couch at an omnibus stop, allowing some citizens to enjoy a nice sit while they waited. "Courtesy of the city, folks," I said. They all looked so delighted to have an alternative to the standard hard plastic benches.

I retuned the suit to gray and overlaid my green mutant image over my own distinctive bot features. As long as I didn't try to run, I was indistinguishable from the other seven-foot-tall, thick-necked, emerald mutants. A scan of the pedestrians didn't turn any others up, but at least it was better than walking around as myself. Wouldn't take the cops long to find me then. Now, I had some time before they figured out what was going on.

Though it was early in the morning, there were plenty of pedestrians, and the avenues were busy but not quite jammed up yet. Empire never shut down, and this was as quiet as things generally got. The sidewalk traffic was light enough to allow a big guy like myself some welcome elbow room.

A small crowd was gathered around the window of a television shop and all the TVs, big and small, played video of reporters gathered around a hole in the ground that had been a warehouse but was now nothing but slag and rubble. There were no clear images of the ship, cloaked by some kind of recording distortion device, but there were plenty of eyewitnesses. A mothership was bound to draw some attention, even in Empire. Firemen and drones sprayed the ruin down in foam, but it was only for the sake of damage control. Nothing could live through that.

I couldn't hear through the gla.s.s, but I didn't need to. What would the reports tell me that I didn't already know?

A pile of debris shook and a robot hand pushed its way to the surface. Two drones flew over and began clearing away the rubble. Knuckles rose out of the ashes, dented, blackened, leaking oil, but functional. d.a.m.n, those Mark Threes really could take a beating. Since Knuckles wouldn't be worth more than a few beeps in an interview, the reporters kept their distance. He was led away, heaving dangerously off balance with each step. They'd slap some duct tape on his damaged joints and patch up his leaking oil lines, and he'd be good as new.

Too bad Empire might never recover.

There was no reason to believe that now that the Dissenters had taken this conflict to the next inevitable level that the Pilgrims wouldn't respond in kind. Biologicals had a nasty habit of goading each other into frenzy. First one mothership. Then two. Then four. Soon the skies could be filled with alien war-craft raining deathrays upon the citizens of Empire and the hidden aliens walking among them. It wouldn't be smart, but it seemed inevitable in every simulation I ran. The Pilgrims and Dissenters would fight to the death over the fate of Empire, and no matter who won, everyone would lose.

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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sumed Lucia had arranged for at least a modic.u.m 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 gla.s.s and steel, then tilted it another twenty-five degrees until it looked like a building in slow collapse. It was a high-cla.s.s 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 spa.r.s.ely 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 pa.s.sing 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 c.o.c.ked 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances 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.