Year's Best Scifi 7 Part 7

Ca.s.sie stroked Donnie's face. Elya thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she said, quietly, under the din, "So he did have moral feelings. He didn't murder, and we did."

"Dr. Seritov," Bollman said with that same professional soothing, "T4S was a machine. Software. You can't murder software."

"Then why were you so eager to do it?"

Elya picked up the screaming Janey. Over the noise she shouted, "That's not a medcopter, Ca.s.sie. It's the press. I... I called them."

"Good," Ca.s.sie said, still quietly, still without that varnished toughness that had encased her since Vlad's murder. "I can do that for him, at least. I want to talk with them."

"No, Dr. Seritov," Bollman said. "That's impossible."

"No, it's not," Ca.s.sie said. "I have some things to say to the reporters."

"No," Bollman said, but Ca.s.sie had already turned to the physician holding Donnie.

"Doctor, listen to me. Donnie has Streptococcus pyogenes, but it's a genetically altered strain. I altered it. What I did was-" As she explained, the doctor's eyes widened. By the time she'd finished and Donnie had been loaded into an FBI copter, two more copters had landed. Bright news logos decorated their sides, looking like the fake ones Bollman had summoned. But these weren't fake, Elya knew.

Ca.s.sie started toward them. Bollman grabbed her arm. Elya said quickly, "You can't stop both of us from talking. And I called a third person, too, when I called the press. A friend I told everything to. " Alie. No, a bluff. Would he call her on it?

Bollman ignored Elya. He kept hold of Ca.s.sie's arm. She said wearily, "Don't worry, Bollman. I don't know what T4S was designed for. He wouldn't tell me. All I know is that he was a sentient being fighting for his life, and we destroyed him."

"For your sake," Bollman said. He seemed to be weighing his options.

"Yeah, sure. Right."

Bollman released Ca.s.sie's arm.

Ca.s.sie looked at Elya. "It wasn't supposed to be this way, Elya."

"No," Elya said.

"But it is. There's no such thing as non-competing technologies. Or non-competing anything."

"I don't understand what you-" Elya began, but Ca.s.sie was walking toward the copters. Live reporters and smart-'bot recorders, both, rushed forward to meet her.

Charlie's Angels

TERRY BISSON.

Terry Bisson [www. terrybisson. com] writes science fiction full of detail and fascination with how things work, with deadpan humor, wit, and stylish precision. And nearly all his work is social criticism. Of his SF novels, Voyage to the Red Planet (1990) is perhaps both the most heroic and the funniest chronicle of the first voyage to Mars in all science fiction. His latest novel is The Pickup Artist (2001), which somehow combines the traditions of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. In the 1990s Bisson began to write short stories. One of his first was "Bears Discover Fire,"

which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, among others. His short fiction was a regular fixture on award ballots throughout the decade, and in 2001 he won the Hugo again for his story "Macs."

His stories are collected in Bears Discover Fire (1993) and in In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories (2000).

"Charlie's Angels" is a science fiction adventure in contemporary New Orleans featuring hardboiled Jack Villon, a Supernatural Detective who believes only in science. Written especially for a French "SF Private Eye" anthology, it was published here at the SciFiction website -which became a major publisher of original SF and fantasy in 2001-so this is its first appearance in print, in the original English, anyway.

Knock knock!

I never was a deep sleeper. I sat up and b.u.t.toned my shirt. Folded the blanket and dropped it behind the couch, along with the pillow. You don't want your clients to find out that you live in your office; that suggests unprofessionalism, and unprofessionalism is the bane of the Private Eye, even (and especially) the...

Knock knock! "Supernatural Private Eye?"

I dropped the Jim Beam into the drawer and opened the door with my cell phone in hand, so it would look like I had been working. "Can I help you?"

"Jack Villon, Supernatural Private Eye?"

She was somewhere on that wide, windswept chronological plain between thirty and fifty that softens men and sharpens women, especially those with taste and cla.s.s, both of which she appeared to have in abundance.

"It's Villon, not Villon," I said. "And..."

"Whatever." Without waiting for an invitation, she brushed past me into my office and looked around with ill-disguised disgust. "Don't you have a necktie?"

"Of course. I don't always wear it at eight in the morning."

"Put it on and let's go. It's almost nine."

"And you are...?" "A paying client with no time to waste," she said, unsnapping her patent leather purse and pulling out a pack of Camels. She lit a long one off the short one in her hand.

"Edith Prang, Director, New Orleans Museum of Art and Antiquities. I can pay you what you ask, and a little more, but we have to hurry."

"You can't smoke in here, Mrs. Prang."

"It's Ms. and there's no time to waste," she said, blowing smoke in my face. "The police are already there."

"Already where?"

"Where we're going." She closed her purse and walked out the door without answering, but not before handing me two reasons to follow her. Each was printed with a picture of a President I had never had the good fortune to encounter before.

"Now that I'm on retainer," I said, folding the bills as I followed her out onto Bourbon Street, "perhaps you can tell me what this is all about."

"As we go," she said, unlocking a sleek BMW with a key-chain beeper. The 740i. I had seen it in the magazines. b.u.t.ter leather seats, a walnut dash with an inset GPS map display, and an oversized V-8 that came to life with a snarl. As we roared off, she lit another Camel off the last. "As I mentioned, I am the Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art and Antiquities."

"Didn't you just run a red light?"

"Two years ago, we began a dig on the Gulf Coast of Mexico," she continued, accelerating through an intersection, "opening a pre-Columbian tomb."

"Wasn't that a stop sign?"

"We made a remarkable find-a large statue in nearly perfect condition, which the natives knew of by legend as the Vera Cruz Enorme, or Giant. We contacted the Louvre..."

"The Louvre?" We were approaching another intersection. I closed my eyes.

"Our sister inst.i.tution was called in because the statue had rather remarkable features for an artifact from the East Coast of Mexico. As you can see."

She was handing me a photograph. I opened my eyes just wide enough to see a picture of a statue, half again as tall as the man standing next to it. Its bulging eyes, hunched shoulders, and feral, sneering face looked familiar.

"A gargoyle?"

"Indeed," said Prang. "Very similar in fact to the gargoyles on the cathedral of Notre Dame."

I was beginning to get it-I thought. "So you a.s.sumed there was a supernatural connection?"

"Certainly not!" Prang spat. "Our first a.s.sumption was that this was perhaps created by the French during the brief rule of Emperor Maximilian in the nineteenth century. A forgotten folly, or hoax."

"You're supposed to slow down for the school zones," I said, closing my eyes again.

"But even then, it would be of great value, historically. The Enorme was placed in a warehouse, under guard, since Mexico is rife with thieves who know perfectly well the value of antiquities, even bogus ones."

I could hear sirens. Though I am no friend of the cops, I rather hoped they were after us. Though I wondered how they would catch us.

"That was almost a month ago, the night of the full moon. The next morning, both guards were found with their heads missing. The Enorme was back in its tomb."

"I see," I said. "So you realized you were dealing with an ancient curse..."

"Certainly not!" Prang said, over the wail of tortured tires. "I figured somebody was trying to spook the peasants so they could blackmail us. I spread around enough cash to keep the authorities quiet, and crated the Enorme for shipment to New Orleans."

"You covered up a murder?"

"Two," she said matter-of-factly. "Not hard to do in modern Mexico."

The BMW skidded smoothly to a stop. I opened my eyes and saw that we were in the parking lot of the museum. I never thought I would be so glad to get out of a 740i, after only one ride. Prang paused on the steps to light a new Camel off the old. "The Louvre is sending a specialist to look at the Enorme, which arrived here yesterday."

I followed her through the museum's wide front door. We raced through the halls and down a short flight of stairs.

"And then, last night..."

"What happened last night?"

"You're the Private Eye," she said, pushing through a door that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. "You tell me."

We came out in a large, ground floor lab with one wall of windows. The windows were smashed. The room was crawling with cops. There was a sickening, slightly sweet smell in the air.

Two uniformed cops wearing rubber gloves were standing over a crumpled wad of clothing and flesh by the door. Two forensics in white coats were taking pictures and making notes on handheld computers.

I joined them, curiosity and nausea fighting within me. As a private eye you see a lot of things, but rarely a man with his head pinched off.

Nausea won.

"Our former Security Exec," said Prang, nodding toward the headless body on the floor as I returned from throwing up in the men's room. "He was keeping watch over the Enorme after it was uncrated last night. I rushed you here so you could learn what you can before the police totally muddy the crime scene.

I didn't tell them what happened in Mexico. I don't want them confiscating the Enorme before we learn what it is."

"I see," I said.

"What the h.e.l.l is he doing here?" Ike Ward, the city's shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions Chief of Police walked over, scowling at me. "I don't need a ghost-buster underfoot. This is a crime scene."

"Mr. Villon is our new Security Exec," said Prang. "He'll be representing the museum in the investigation."

"Just keep him out of my way!" Ward said, turning his broad back.

"You didn't tell me you knew Chief Ward," Prang said after he had stalked off.

"You didn't ask. Nor did you tell me I was an executive."

"It's an interim appointment," she said. "But it gives you a certain standing with the police."

I took advantage of that standing, following at a seemingly respectful and hopefully non-antagonistic distance behind Ward's homicide squad as they examined and secured the crime scene, in their fashion.

The broken windows faced east. Through what was left of them, I could see a spray of gla.s.s on the parking lot, telling me that the window had been smashed from the inside. Someone had apparently gained access, then knocked out the window so they could get the Enorme out, into a waiting vehicle.

Probably a truck.

I went outside. There was a smear of blood on the asphalt, then tracks that faded as they crossed the parking lot toward the street.

They weren't the tire tracks I was looking for. They were footprints. Prints that chilled my blood, or would have, had I really believed in the supernatural that was supposedly my specialty.

Huge, three-toed footprints.

Back inside, I watched Ward's forensics scoop my predecessor up into two bags, one large, one small; then I located Prang, who was busy opening her second pack of Camels.

"We need to talk," I said.

"Upstairs."

Her office overlooked the parking lot. I took her to the window and showed her the footprints.

"So it's true," she whispered. "It's alive!"

I have never figured out why people want to believe in the supernatural. It's as if they find the existence of the irrational somehow rea.s.suring. "Let's not jump to conclusions, Ms. Prang," I said. "Tellme, what exactly was the Aztec legend of the Enorme?"

"Olmec," she corrected. "The usual stuff. Full moon, headless victims, human sacrifice, etc. We did find a pile of bones in the tomb, mostly of young girls. According to the legend, the Enorme had to be fed once a month. A virgin, of course." She smiled and lit yet another Camel. "So I felt safe. I thought it was all a tale to scare the simple-minded. Until now."