We Install

by Harry Turtledove

  But the shiny new scooter in Sharon and Joe’s stall would have announced that they dealt with Bald Ones, even if Miss Murple hadn’t already known as much. Everything about their apartment screamed money, from the scooter to the way the front door dealt with her.

  On the homeworld, a servant might even have opened that front door. But that sort of thing hadn’t come here. Miss Murple didn’t miss it a bit, either. But she was surprised when a voice spoke in English after she used the knocker: “Hi! With you in a minute!”

  She had to wait for the worm in her brain to translate before she understood. Almost any Snarre’ would have. Did Sharon Rock and Joe Mountain have more human guests than those of their own kind? Or were they just infatuated with everything the Baldies did? Miss Murple knew which way she would bet.

  The door opened. There stood Sharon Rock. Miss Murple had experienced her in any number of lifeys. The real thing was even more depressing. Nobody in real life ought to have such big eyes or such soft fur, or to smell quite so sexy. How did this female get through the night without distracting everyone around her?

  “You must be the detective,” she said, and her voice really was like pearly bells. “Come in, please.” She raised her voice: “Joe! The detective’s here!”

  “I’m coming.” Joe Mountain had been retired for fifteen years, but if you paid any attention to sports you remembered the days when he wasn’t. He’d put on a little weight since his athletic days, but not a lot, and he still smelled like a younger male. That was distracting, too.

  So was their flat. It was full of human-made gadgets, many of them replacing perfectly ordinary Snarre’i equivalents like heat sensors. There was even a television set from the Bald Ones: a demon’s tool if ever there was one, as far as Miss Murple was concerned.

  “You’re fond of humans, aren’t you?” she remarked.

  Sharon and Joe looked at each other. “Yes,” Sharon answered. “And do you know why?”

  “Tell me, please,” Miss Murple said.

  “Because they leave us alone.” Both Snarre’i celebrities spoke together. Sharon went on by herself: “When we deal with the Bald Ones, we’re nothing but funny-looking aliens to them. You have no idea how wonderful that is.”

  “We have privacy with the humans,” Joe agreed. “They aren’t always sniffing and touching and staring at us. It’s—”

  “Peaceful,” Sharon finished for him. He splayed his fingers in agreement.

  “All right.” They’d led Miss Murple straight to what she wanted to ask: “Is that why you purchased a scooter from the human named, uh, Jack Cravath most of a year ago?”

  “If that’s what the human’s name was,” Sharon Rock said. “We like the scooter.”

  “We really do,” Joe Mountain said enthusiastically. “It’s faster than a drof, and cheaper to maintain, too.” He’d done a lot of selling pitches, capitalizing on his fame as a sports hero. This sounded like another one.

  “Do you know that Jack Cravath’s mate was just the victim of a hoxbombing?” Miss Murple said. “She gave birth to one of the most scrambled offspring I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing.” And they’re trying to keep it alive, too. I don’t begin to understand that.

  “How awful!” Sharon Rock breathed. She really sounded and smelled shocked and dismayed. But how many lifeys had she made? She was used to having other people looking over her emotional shoulder, so to speak. Lifey performers got so used to projecting emotions, some of them even gave sniffers trouble.

  “We had no idea,” Joe said. Miss Murple had to remind herself that he was an experienced actor, too. “Why would anybody want to waste a hoxbomb on a Bald One?”

  “That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out,” Miss Murple replied.

  Sharon Rock’s voice took on a certain edge: “Why are you asking us about all this, exactly?”

  “Because you bought your scooter from the male of the family at about the same time as the female became pregnant,” Miss Murple said. “This is all routine. You aren’t suspects, or even persons of interest, at the present time.”

  “We don’t know much about hoxbombs.” Joe Mountain spoke with more than a little pride. He might have said, We don’t know much about anything. Some people suspected that athletes didn’t know much about anything.

  “I was in a lifey about them once.” Now Sharon Rock sounded almost apologetic, and smelled that way, too. “I liked the plot outline, and the payment was good, so I did the production.”

  What was she saying? I do know something about hoxbombs, but it’s not my fault? It sounded that way to Miss Murple.

  “Your statement is that you weren’t involved in conveying the hoxbomb to the human?” the detective said.

  “That’s right,” Sharon and Joe chorused. They didn’t sound like liars. They didn’t smell like liars, either. Miss Murple sighed. They were performers. If they were performing now …

  Shoe leather. John Paul Kling looked at the soles of his own shoes. They weren’t leather, though the uppers were. Leather or not, they’d taken their share of wear and then some. He tramped along the streets of Latimer’s central business district, the part of town that catered to both humans and Snarre’t. It was daytime, so not many Furballs were out and about. He did see a few, the way he would have seen a few humans at two in the morning.

  He would have wondered what the humans were doing up at two in the morning. He did wonder what the Snarre’t were doing now. Unless it looked obviously illegal, it was none of his business.

  He checked the map unscrolling on his phone. He needed to turn left at the next corner. After he did, he nodded to himself. There it was, in the middle of the block on the far side of the street. SUNBIRD SCOOTERS, the sign said. He crossed without getting run over by scooters or trampled by caitnops (which tended not to pay attention to humans) or drofs.

  A very pretty young woman smiled at him in a friendly way when he walked into Sunbird Scooters. “May I help you, sir?” she said.

  “You’re not Petros van Gilder,” Kling said regretfully. He displayed his badge, after which the young woman didn’t look so friendly any more. He sighed to himself. It never failed. Well, he’d stick to business, then: “I need to ask him a few questions.”

  “Hold on. I’ll get him.” She paused. “What shall I tell him this is about?” Kling didn’t answer. No, the woman didn’t seem friendly at all now. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Hell, he wasn’t surprised. That didn’t mean he was happy.

  She went into the back part of the building. When she came back, she had a short but well-built man not far from her own age with her. “You’re Petros van Gilder?” Kling asked.

  “That’s right. And you are …?”

  “Sergeant John Paul Kling, Exotic Crimes Unit. I’m here because of the hoxbombing suffered by Jack and Beverly Cravath.”

  “I heard about that. Terrible thing. But what’s it got to do with me?” van Gilder said.

  “Maybe nothing. Probably nothing, in fact,” Kling said. “Just routine right now. I’m trying to contact everyone who had anything to do with either one of them around the time Beverly Cravath got pregnant.”

  “If it’s a hoxbombing, shouldn’t you be concentrating on the Snarre’t?” van Gilder said. “I mean, they’re the ones who’re mostly likely to do something like that.”

  “Believe me, we’re looking at that angle, too. So are their own police officials,” Kling said.

  Petros van Gilder had a fine—almost a professional—sneer. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure they’re looking real hard.”

  “We don’t have any reason to believe they’re not,” said Kling, who worried about the same thing. “Catching whoever did it is in their interest, too.”

  “It is if a human did it,” the scooter salesman said. “One of their own people? Fat chance.”

  “I’m not here to argue wit
h you. I’m here to ask you about the time you saw Jack Cravath.” Kling gave the date and time, adding, “I gather you were both coming home from work.”

  “I’ve got to tell you, I don’t remember this at all,” van Gilder said. “Maybe that makes me a suspect or whatever, but I totally don’t.”

  “You were stopped at a traffic light, together. You said something to each other and shook hands, and then the two of you separated,” Kling said.

  “How about that?” van Gilder said. “Well, if you’ve got it recorded, I can’t very well tell you you’re wrong, but it sure doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “You had your hands in your pockets before you shook hands with Jack Cravath,” Kling said. “Why would that have been?”

  “Beats me. Probably because it was cold. What’s the big deal?” the younger man asked.

  “The big deal is that that might have been when you delivered the hoxbomb.” Kling took a print from the surveillance footage and showed it to Petros van Gilder. “Do you recognize this jacket? Do you still have it?”

  “Is that me?” Van Gilder eyed the photo. It was him, all right—no possible doubt. “Yeah, I’ve still got that jacket. It’s back at my apartment. How come?”

  “Because we’d like to examine it for possible presence of the hoxbomb agent called Scrambled Egg 7,” Kling replied. “We could get a warrant, but it would be simpler without one.”

  “You wouldn’t have any trouble getting a warrant, either, would you?”

  John Paul Kling shook his head. “Not even a little, not on a case like this.”

  “Go on, then,” van Gilder said bleakly. “I don’t have anything to do with a hoxbomb.”

  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Kling poked a button and spoke into it: “Go ahead, Vanessa.” He put the phone away. “Okay. That’s taken care of. And believe it or not, Mr. van Gilder, I hope you’re telling me the truth.”

  “I am!” Van Gilder bristled.

  Kling held up a placating hand. “Honest to God, Mr. van Gilder, I hope so. But that hoxbomb didn’t happen all by itself. Somebody planted it on the Cravaths. And that means somebody is lying to me—or maybe to my opposite number on the Snarre’i side of town. Whoever it is, we’ll catch him, or her, or them.”

  “Evidence? You have evidence?” Miss Murple said eagerly.

  The human detective’s head went up and down on the little telephone screen, by which he meant yes. “That’s right,” he said. “A jacket taken from a man who talked with and touched Jack Cravath early enough in his mate’s pregnancy to make him a possible hoxbomber. We’re taking it to the lab to check for traces of Scrambled Egg 7.”

  “Don’t!” Miss Murple exclaimed. The human had called her in the middle of the day, so she wasn’t at her best. But no matter how sleepy she was, the protest automatically rose to her lips.

  “Why not?” Even heard through the worm in Miss Murple’s brain, John Paul Kling didn’t sound happy.

  “Will you believe me when I tell you I speak without offense?” Miss Murple waited till the human nodded again before she went on, “I want one of our own labs to do that analysis. We can detect much smaller traces of organics than you can.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “But it’s in your interest to pin this on a human, regardless of who really did it. How far can we trust your lab results?”

  Miss Murple bared her teeth in a threat gesture he might or might not understand. She was too angry to care whether he did. “If you don’t trust us, why are we working on the same side? For that matter, why should we trust you or anything your labs do?”

  She didn’t anger him in return. She’d gathered that he wasn’t easy to anger—or, at least, that he didn’t show his anger. Miserable human telephones wouldn’t let her smell him, and humans used nasty chemicals to try to defeat their own odors anyhow. It was as if they wanted to play guessing games with one another.

  “Well, you’ve got a point,” Kling said. “Can we share the cloth from the pocket that the hoxbomb would have been in if it was there at all?”

  “Why would it have been in that pouch and not some other one?” Miss Murple asked suspiciously.

  “Our greeting gesture involves clasping right hands. You will have seen this.” The human waited. Miss Murple waved for him to go on; she had seen the gesture. Kling continued, “The suspect’s right hand would have been in his right jacket pocket. It was in his right jacket pocket. We have video confirming that.”

  They had video for everything, near enough. A human criminal had to be clever and intrepid, or else very stupid. Well, the same held true for her own species. “All right—we can share,” she said. “But if we find something and you don’t, it isn’t necessarily because we’re cheating, you know. Your laboratory simply may not be good enough to sniff out what it should.”

  “Maybe.” John Paul Kling didn’t seem convinced. “I’ll send you the cloth as soon as I can. ’Bye.” His picture winked out.

  Miss Murple called Sam Spud to let him know what was going on. When the neural net connected the two of them, she didn’t just see and hear him at headquarters. She smelled how tired he was, smelled on his breath the cragfruit grub that let him go on longer than he could have without it. She had a real conversation with him, in other words, not the denatured excuse for one she was reduced to with humans.

  “Part of this cloth is better than none, anyhow,” he said after she summed up what she’d got from Kling. “Maybe the human really did it, and that will wrap things up for everybody.”

  “We can hope so, anyhow,” Miss Murple said. “The next most likely candidates are Sharon Rock and Joe Mountain.”

  Sam Spud winced as if an impacted anal gland suddenly pained him. “I wish I could pretend I never heard that. Their solicitors have bone hides and giant fangs. The mere idea that they could be suspects is an insult. And what’s their motivation?”

  “If I knew, I would tell you,” Miss Murple said.

  “Besides, I think they really are innocent,” her superior went on. “They gave the male parent spices as a parting gift when they bought the scooter from him. Our lab and the Baldies’ excuse for one both analyzed what’s left of those spices. No hoxbomb. I would eat from that spice pack myself.”

  “Stench! I hadn’t heard that.” Miss Murple muttered to herself. Then she asked, “Did they ever have anything to do with this other Baldy before, the one the humans suspect?”

  “You’re reaching, Murple,” Sam Spud said. Miss Murple spread her fingers; she knew she was. Sam went on, “Why are you asking me, anyway? Let the miserable Bald Ones figure it out. They’re so stinking proud of all their pictures. …”

  The humans had reason to be, too, at least when it came to gathering potential evidence. Bald Ones made all kinds of boastful noises about how free they were. Whether the way they lived measured up to their claims might be a different story.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Sharon and Joe did,” Miss Murple said. “They like human gadgets—one sniff at their flat will show you that. And their brain will let us know the truth even if they can lie well enough to beat the sniffers.”

  “They just got a new one,” Sam Spud said. “They used the old one to pay for their fancy new scooter.”

  “They did?” Miss Murple’s ears came erect. “That’s interesting. How did you find out?”

  “Oh, they were open enough about it,” her superior said. “It’s in their contract with the Bald One. They know humans keep trying to figure out how brains do the things they do.”

  “Yes,” Miss Murple said uncomfortably. She wouldn’t have given humans even an old brain. The unhappy little creature would think it had done something dreadful. Brains were terrific at storing information and passing it along, not nearly so good at figuring out what it meant. They would have been people if they could do that, so the ability had been bred out of them. Well, most of it
had, anyway. “So the humans have had it all this time, then?” Miss Murple asked.

  “If it’s still alive, yes. I don’t even know that it is,” Sam Spud said.

  “If it is still alive, it’s probably not sane any more, poor thing,” Miss Murple said. “I’d better find out, though, don’t you think?”

  “Bound to be a good idea,” Sam Spud replied. “Maybe it doesn’t know anything interesting, but getting rid of it like that sends up a bad smell.”

  “Sure does. Makes you wonder what Sharon and Joe are hiding. Even if they aren’t hiding anything, it still makes you wonder.” Miss Murple sighed. “After the neural net, the human telephone seems worse and worse.”

  “Well, you’re stuck with it.” Sam Spud sounded glad he wasn’t stuck with it himself. And well he might, too. He took his finger away from the brain on his desk, vanishing from Miss Murple’s perceptions.

  She called Kling again. “Yeah? What is it?” the human asked.

  “We’re trying to find out if there was ever any connection between our couple who bought the scooter from the father of the hoxbomb victim and the human you’re interested in,” Miss Murple said.

  “Are you? That could be interesting, couldn’t it?” John Paul Kling said. “Well, we may have video to let us know.”

  “Our … individuals of interest’s brain could have told us, but they used it as the price for the scooter,” Miss Murple said. “It may be valuable even now, if it’s still alive and close to sane in your hands.”

  “Ha!” Kling said, a noise the worm in Miss Murple’s brain didn’t translate. The Baldy went on, “You think they got rid of the evidence on purpose.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Miss Murple agreed. Kling could smell which way she was going, anyhow. He might be alien, but he wasn’t stupid. That was worth remembering.

  “I’ll see what we can find out from Cravath,” he said. “Talk with you pretty soon. So long.” He disappeared as abruptly as Sam Spud had.

  Jack Cravath had to check his own credit records before he could tell Sergeant Kling the name of the outfit that bought the Snarre’i brain. The detective showed up at Intelligent Designing with a search warrant, but also with the hope that he wouldn’t have to use it.