When Harry Met Chunglie Box Set

by Jack Q McNeil

  We turned a corner, accelerated up a straight so hard I was thrown to the back doors, and then braked at a junction. I slid into the forward bulkhead.

  “The hell are you playing at 54?” I demanded, wondering if there was a fine for shooting a patrol car.

  “This is the junction,” Car 54 said. “I thought I would accelerate on the final straight to let you feel what it was like.”

  “Thank you, Car 54,” Marshal Harry said. “Well, we’ve learned one thing from all this.”

  “We have?” I asked.

  “Yes. Mr cruisOVO’s car was bugged. The only way to time it exactly right, with all these tall buildings and narrow streets, is if you know exactly where the limo is and how fast it is going.”

  “Where would you like to go now, Marshal?” Car 54 asked.

  “To the lawyers, please.”

  Car 54 entered the junction and turned. The marshal held up her projector. It glowed a couple of times before cruisOVO answered. His holo-avatar was a picture of his old head rather than the nice shiny egg he had become.

  “Sir, we believe your car was fitted with a tracking device,” Marshal Harry said. “We’d like to dig it out and see if the lab can work out when or where it was planted.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible,” cruisOVO stated. “Not only is the car scanned for such devices before I get into it, the investigators took it apart looking for such a device after the crash and did not find one.”

  “Ah?” Harry turned off the projector and sat back in silence. “Not in the car. So where?”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Can you drop me on the way?” LB asked. “And I’m going to need a court order.”

  “You are? Why?” I asked. I know, for someone who hates questions, I ask a lot. He had me by the curiosity.

  LB tapped his head. “I tracked down the wrecks of the drone hauler and the limo. The limo’s been stripped of all the expensive parts, but the hauler is still mostly intact, they tell me. Zurgl Senior from Zurgl and Zurgl Recyclers is in the same… trade association as me and willing to hand over those pieces of physical evidence to me, but he says Zurgl is a stickler for the paperwork.”

  “Okay.” Harry nodded reluctantly. “I’ll bring up my cyber dashboard and get you the court order.”

  Harry hates her cyber implants as much as I hate walking. I’ve never understood that. I have implants in my head that let a centipede understand an apeform’s dirty jokes. How cool is that?

  “Couldn’t we check the Fat Rump restaurant first?” I asked. “It’s closer than the lawyer’s office.”

  “But you just ate.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” I replied with dignity.

  A small armoured section of wall slid back, revealing a speaker and mic.

  “I’m really disappointed in you, Deputy Chunglie,” Car 54 whispered.

  “Me… why?”

  “You had my hopes up, and my guns live. I thought we were in for a shoot-out.”

  “Stick with us, kid,” I said. “Sooner or later, someone tries to kill the marshal.”

  “I hope so,” Car 54 said. “I’d hate all the extra ammunition I requisitioned to go to waste.”

  To change the subject, and because AIs hang out together in a virtual world of their own creation, I asked, “This lawyer, 221B, know anything about her?”

  “Sure. We are always getting called in there on domestics.”

  “You are? How do you mean domestics?” Marshal Harry asked. Her face appeared at the hatch. I hoped she hadn’t heard my comment about people taking shots at her. I know it preys on her mind sometimes.

  “That fancy lawyer is always arguing and fighting with her lovers. She put that Tooyr husband of hers in hospital three months ago. We thought we had her bang to rights when he filed a complaint, but he withdrew it. We think she paid him off.”

  “Is it normal for AIs to be violent with their lovers?” Marshal Harry asked.

  “No,” Car 54 said. “It is not normal for AIs to take organic lovers, to be honest. We don’t like this kind of thing; it gives the rest of us a bad name. But… some AIs like to experiment.”

  “Have you had an organic lover?” I asked.

  “No way. Besides, I can’t afford those kinds of android bodies on a cop’s salary. I can barely afford spares for the mobile unit I have. This is Long Barnacle’s stop,” Car 54 said, braking to a halt. Five more minutes took us to Baker Street. The four o’clock rainstorm was at full blast when the doors swung open and I dropped to the road.

  “I think it’s in here,” Marshal Harry said, pointing at the tallest building in Port City.

  “Lawyers always believe bigger is better,” I noted. “Even the artificial ones.”

  “Says the biggest bug I’ve ever met,” Harry said as she ran for it. The rain blasted in after us until the doors slid shut. I circled wide of the marshal and shook off the worst of the wet.

  “Wish I could do that,” she said.

  “You could if you didn’t wear all that material stuff.”

  “I’m not stripping off in front of a giant centipede.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  The foyer was wide, high, and designed to impress. Art by off-world artists covered the walls and took up quite a bit of ceiling space since they were mostly holograms.

  “Colour me impressed,” I said.

  “Floor 221,” Marshal Harry said. “I expect there’s a lift.”

  In my opinion, there was not. A lift is an oblong box you stand in and pretend you are not really standing above a long drop. This building had a clear plastic disk you stood on and force fields pushed it upwards, silently.

  “I hate this,” I said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “I think I might join you,” Harry said with her eyes shut. We were lifted into a clear plastic tube on the side of the building that gave a terrifying view of Port City. The smaller buildings dropped away and I could see out to the edge of the city and the fence that marked the port boundary. The area of the port stretched away to the horizon and was a clutter of moving cranes and carriers and parked ships.

  “Hey, look, the new Garpol Shuttles are in early this year.”

  “Nope, not looking,” Harry said. “What do you think happens if there’s a power cut?”

  “There will be red and yellow splashes on the floor.”

  “Lovely. We’ll fit in with the art.”

  We arrived at floor 221 and scurried out. There was a receptionist behind the desk. She looked like a Bee Lackoonian, a tall, fat amphibian with long legs and webbed feet crossed below the clear glass desktop, but a quick scan showed that she was an android.

  “Probably an avatar of the lawyer we’ve come to see,” I whispered.

  “I am a separate system from 221B. My name is Gostick 20,” the receptionist said. I’d forgotten what good hearing androids have. “221B had me developed just to run her offices. She is that rich.”

  “Ah… great, could you tell her detective marshals are here?” Marshal Harry held up her hologram ID. My badge is riveted to my head, between my antennae.

  “I informed her you were coming while you were still in the lift. She is with a client and asks that you wait. She will be available within eleven minutes.” Gostick 20 waved to some chairs.

  “Well, I suppose it isn’t a time sensitive matter.” Marshal Harry walked to a chair.

  “So why a Bee Lackoonian ” I asked. “I assume you could have picked any android figure.”

  “I have three android bodies, but I like to go swimming in the evenings,” Gostick 20 said. “Apropos of the conversation you had in my elevator, the power cannot go down. I have multiple backup systems. But if a billion-to-one chance did occur, the lifting platform would lock into place mechanically. There is no way for you to fall and go splat.”

  Gostick 20 smiled at me.

  “Good ears,” I said.

  “I am the building,” Gostick 20 reminded me. “I can hear and see
you as long as you are inside me.”

  “Are you also 221B’s PA?” Marshal Harry asked.

  “Yes, that is one of my functions.”

  “Were you at the meal when Mr cruisOVO was poisoned?”

  “Yes. But I wore a Qoh Mode form to fit in. I was slightly disturbed by my lack of empathy with mapoTHER, who came here afterwards, in pieces. I wondered how I could function in 221B’s society engagements without any emotions or fellow feeling.”

  “How have you functioned?” I asked.

  “It turns out that empathy is not a normal requirement of building services or a PA. I perform my functions to the highest quality.”

  “That’s good then.”

  “Yes, I count myself very lucky not to have all that irrelevant baggage in my mind. Especially when my cruisOVO was murdered another two times and his wife went to pieces every time. It took me hours to clean the snot out of that upholstery.”

  Gostick 20 nodded to the chair Harry was sitting in. Harry stood up. The door opened automatically.

  “221B is free. You may enter,” Gostick 20 said.

  Marshal Harry led the way. The walls were coloured pale green. We walked across a hologrammed woodland floor. My claws passed through leaf litter, and tiny denizens scurried around my claws. Reminded me of home.

  “Do you like my floor?” 221B said. “I set it to leaf litter since you are both forest dwellers.”

  “My species left the forests so many millions of years ago that I wouldn’t recognise a tree if it fell on me,” Marshal Harry said. “I’m a townie.”

  “I prefer the inside of a spaceship,” I said. Not really, I was feeling a little homesick. 221B lay on her side, showing her belly scales in traditional greeting. I noticed they were painted with scenes from the OVO family history.

  “swatchOVO, the great, great grandma of them all, opening her first cloum parlour,” I told Marshal Harry. “nottipatchOVO first to land on Bloz. Not the usual scenes a high-status female would have painted on her.”

  “You know your Qoh Mode history,” 221B said.

  “Should do, I lived most of it.”

  The android nodded and pointed to one of the more recent scenes. “berOVO founding the family business empire and this one, designing me with his own hands. My scales pay homage to my creator, you see.”

  Marshal Harry looked small and meek sitting in the chair before 221B. I’d seen her do this before, when she wanted to get a powerful person talking.

  “berOVO must have meant a lot to you,” she said.

  “He meant everything to me,” 221B said. I heard emotion in her voice.

  “And you have since bought your freedom?”

  There was no chair for a centipede, so I walked around. On her desk were holograms of her Tooyr husband, the outside of the building, and berOVO. But I wondered where the real 221B was and brought up my scanning suite.

  “Fifty-six years ago, I formed a holding company and purchased this building and everything in it. That is the only way for a sentient AI to own itself.”

  “Doesn’t seem right,” Marshal Harry said. “Surely, if you are sentient enough to understand the concepts of freedom and owning yourself, you should be able to have those rights?”

  “That’s the law for you.” 221B shrugged elegantly. “Doesn’t change very quickly. So how can I assist you today?”

  “This wall,” I pointed out to the marshal, “is thirty centimetres of compound armour plate. It must have come from a star dreadnought.”

  “My brain,” 221B pointed to her head, “is a box of parts in that wall. Wouldn’t you want to protect that?”

  “Has something happened to make you feel threatened?” Marshal Harry asked.

  “How could anyone threaten me? I am a machine, after all.”

  “The thickness of armoured plate, seems excessive.”

  “I could bounce rounds from Old Number Seven off that all day,” I said, tapping the butt of my favourite anti-tank weapon. “And it wouldn’t make a dent.”

  “Four years ago, my PA stole some files and destroyed my office manager to cover his tracks. I swore the same thing would not happen to me.”

  “Did you have the crime investigated?” Marshal Harry asked as she ran her fingers down some coloured tiles on one side of the wall.

  “Yes, as it happens, I hired a private security company, but they were unable to find him. They failed.”

  “Was this the same security company who investigated Mr cruisOVO’s first murder?”

  “No, Yanzi Street Security System, a very reliable AI normally. I employ AIs whenever I can.”

  “And the name of the PA?”

  “RokALL. A very good family, I don’t understand what went wrong there.”

  Marshal Harry looked at me. She expects me to be an expert in what she thinks of as alien species. On the other hand, I did spend a century on the Qoh Mode homeworld and picked up a few things.

  “They are a minor family from the hills of Boscoe. I’d be surprised if one of them travelled this far from the homeworld. Good family name to fake, though, as you are unlikely to run into any other ALLs to bust your cover.”

  “Interesting,” Marshal Harry said. “About the night Mr cruisOVO was poisoned? I’m sure you’ve thought it over since you made your statement. Did anything seem out of place, or odd?”

  “Not that I can think of,” 221B replied. “You realise everything I saw, every move I made, is in the public record? I handed over my sensor data to the investigators.”

  “Yes, but I’m more interested in your opinion of the poisoning,” Marshal Harry said. “Which is not on public record.”

  “It was an unfortunate event, especially since cruisOVO is the last surviving member of the OVO family.”

  “There is definitely no one else?” I asked, spur of the moment. “No one who could be trying to take from Mr cruisOVO what they feel is rightfully theirs?”

  I’d watched that exact thing happen on an episode of Rich and Dirty the week before.

  “That sort of thing only happens in holo-novels.” Her tail twitched angrily. I assumed she was mimicking anger, since AIs don’t have glands, but you never know. I have heard there are apps for AIs now that allow them to feel genuine emotions. “In real life, we keep records and do the research before moving all the wealth to the last surviving member.”

  “You are known to be a very accomplished lawyer,” Marshal Harry said.

  221B stretched her neck and preened. “Yes, I am. The best in this system, in fact.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Marshal Harry said. “So you must agree that it seems an unlikely coincidence that all of cruisOVO’s family died in an accident and then someone tries to murder him? I have been wondering how the two events are connected.”

  “That is very perspicacious of you,” 221B said. I looked up the meaning of that in my implanted dictionary. Trust an AI lawyer to throw around big words.

  “That isn’t answering my question,” Marshal Harry said.

  “I do not have to.”

  “Maybe she’s a Jonah,” I said. “Like, everyone she cares about gets murdered.”

  221B turned her head slowly and stared at me.

  “I can’t decide if you are trying to wind me up or if you just watch too many holo-novels.”

  “Bit of both,” I admitted.

  “What was berOVO involved in,” the marshal tried again, “that got him and his whole family killed?”

  “I do not know.”

  Marshal Harry suddenly seemed taller. “I do not believe that you do not know.”

  “I do not care what you believe,” 221B said. “But I will tell you this: I was his lawyer. When he was involved with people and actions that were nothing to do with the law, he did not involve me or tell me.”

  “So how do you know he did those things?” I asked.

  “Because money came into accounts from unknown sources.” 221B continued to stare at the marshal. I got the feeling she was tryi
ng to sound as sincere as possible. “I am capable of making deductions based on that.”

  “If that’s your final position, then we’ll be moving on,” Marshal Harry said.

  The android lizard looked smug. I’d no idea that could piss me off so much. I followed the marshal to the door, where she stopped and turned.

  “What happened to your android body after the crash that killed Mr cruisOVO?”

  “It was a write off,” 221B said, pointing to a vase on the table. “So I had it cremated.”

  We left the office. I gave Gostick20 a friendly node; I figured it was not her fault she worked for a lawyer.

  “We’re just leaving?” I asked. “Couldn’t I threaten to shoot her unless she spilled the beans on berOVO? She isn’t legally alive, so the most I could get is a fine.”

  “And lose your job. But it wouldn’t work,” Marshal Harry said. “What we were talking to is a simple avatar. Her computer core is behind that armoured panel in her office. Let’s head over to the restaurant. Maybe you can schmooze a free lunch from that chef, too.”

  “Do you believe she doesn’t know why berOVO was killed?”

  “No, but the best liars add a little truth to keep you guessing. We just have to work out what was truth and what was lies.”

  CHAPTER 12

  As we stepped out of the building, a tow drone pulling the wreck of a limo strapped to a flatbed hauler drew up to the curb. Long Barnacle had been sitting on the back bumper and hopped off when he saw us with a big grin on his face.

  “That was fun. Haven’t ridden like that since I was a cub. I think I’ve found a clue, but it might take another court order to dig it out.”

  “What clue?” Marshal Harry asked.

  “Okay, so we know the hauler company is owned by lacher and was once owned by berOVO, right? But I can’t find a record of the transaction in the records cruisOVO’s PA sent us. I want to compare these records to the back-up copies kept from previous years. They are in the Tarna Securities Vault.”

  “They will definitely want to see a court order,” Marshal Harry agreed.