Whatever had killed Courtney worked like a disease, and Marisa had caught it. But why hadn't I? We'd both been in contact with the body. We'd both breathed the same air. We'd both...
I found myself gazing at the thermometer. The three of us had not put the same things in our mouths. Courtney had eaten soup. Marisa had tasted the soup and made hot chocolate. Somehow, they'd gotten a disease from the food. Some virus or bacteria. A very fast-acting virus or bacteria—
Then, I had it. Not a disease. Nanites. Somehow, presumably through the hot chocolate, the mobile bots had gotten into her and were trying to use her body to heat the tent. Just as they'd used Courtney's, first to heat the tent, then to try to heat the entire outdoors, until she ran out of heat and froze into a lump of ice, except for the nanite layer, which was still extracting as much heat as it could from the ice and pumping it outdoors, freezing the rest of her body ever more solidly in the process.
Ironically, that meant that Courtney, by stumbling outdoors, had actually been on the right track. Not that she'd been motivated by anything but a desire to cool her overheated skin. If she'd left properly dressed, and in time, all she would have had to do was to get out of range of the tent computer. Without instructions from the thermostat, the nanites would have shut down and maybe she'd have recovered. Or maybe not. The moment she'd gone into another tent, the process would have started anew.
Luckily, I had a simpler solution. “Climate controls off,” I called to the tent computer, checking the display to make sure it complied. Then I wrestled Marisa into Courtney's sleeping bag and climbed in with her for the long, slow process of warming her back up.
* * * *
The discussion with the home office was one of the strangest of my life. “We've got one dead and one who barely survived,” I said. “I wouldn't blame her if she sued.”
That, I knew, would get their attention even more than the tragedy itself. When the others got back, I'd had them take down all of the new tents and replace them with older models. “What the hell happened?”
Of course, none of the top brass knew, but eventually I wound up in a conference call with the techies—with a lawyer listening in, for good measure.
After a few preliminaries—of course, Courtney and Marisa had signed the waivers; they'd never have set foot in Antarctica otherwise—I finally got a chance to tell the design folks exactly what happened. They made me repeat everything five times, then three of them started talking at once.
“—huge heat gradient, completely inside the control perimeter—”
“—must'a drawn half the mobiles in the tent—”
“—supposed to recognize humans and keep away—”
“—but she ate them—”
“—even more efficient in solid state—”
“—damned code—”
“—ancestor was a reefer—”
“—I knew we should have written our own code rather than patching it—”
“—but those switchable heater/AC units were going to be so cool—”
Eventually I got them to slow down and speak English.
The bottom line was that the nanites were confused by the stove. They were too smart to immolate themselves on the burner, but the soup wasn't that hot, and they were somehow descended from bots purchased from a refrigerator-truck company. “It's just a matter of which direction you want the heat to go,” one of the engineers explained.
Unfortunately, something about the stove activated some old programming and they swarmed to the heat, probably through the tent floor. Once Courtney and Marisa drank them, they did their best to find a surface akin to the tent wall or the walls of a refrigerator truck, winding up in the skin.
“So it's a design error,” I said.
“Well—” the engineer began.
The lawyer cut him off. “That's not useful. This wouldn't have happened if she'd not used the stove in the tent, correct?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” the engineer conceded.
“And you—” That had to be me. “You did tell them not to cook in the tent?”
I shrugged, then realized he couldn't see me. The only vid links had been in the new tents. “Sure, but not for that reason.”
“That's okay. It was a safety rule. Both women violated it. It doesn't matter that the harm was different from expected.”
“Those things definitely weren't intended to be taken internally,” the engineer added.
“But why didn't they run out of power?” I was thinking about the drain the new tents had put on our solar nets.
“Oh, that's easy; they've got an array of excitable-state atoms that act like an onboard battery. If they don't have to move too much, they can go a long time if they start with a full charge.”
“But you know...” one of the other engineers chimed in.
I could hear him take a deep breath. One person's tragedy is another's inspiration. To these folks, Courtney was just a name, and they were two continents removed from Antarctica. “...if we could tame the side effects, this could have a lot of uses. With the right enzyme conjugates, I bet we could design them to be taken internally. If they ate fat, we'd have the perfect weight burner. It would be like one of those fat-melting products you hear about on late-night vids, only this one would work. You'd have to control the rate of fat burn to keep from generating too much energy, and you'd need a way to say, ‘Thin enough,’ but—”
I switched off.
One of the advantages of voice-only transmission was that Marisa could be sitting next to me, listening in.
“Sue the bastards,” I said. “Tell them you were scared to make hot chocolate in the vestibule because we thought there was a murderer on the loose. That's close enough to the truth.”
My tent flapped in the wind. Somehow I found it reassuring. “Do it now, before they come up with another great idea.”
Copyright (c) 2007 Ricahrd A. Lovett & Mark Niiemann-Ross
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Novelette: THE PURLOINED LABRADOODLE
by BARRY B. LONGYEAR
Wherein Jaggers and Shad give new meaning to the phrase “impersonating an ... officer?"
I had originally intended these narratives to address the more significant inquiries Guy Shad and I worked in our time together in the Exeter office of Artificial Beings Crimes. An incautious comment I made in my chronicle of Shad's death in “The Hangingstone Rat,” however, touched upon my suspicion Shad might have his rescued engrams imprinted temporarily on a celebrity look-alike bio of British actor Nigel Bruce while his mallard duck replacement meat suit matured. Nigel Bruce, of course, was known primarily for his role as the bumbling Dr. Watson in the grayscale Sherlock Holmes vids of the mid twentieth century. I deduced this attire would amuse Shad to no end due to my police replacement bio strongly resembling Basil Rathbone, the actor who played Sherlock Holmes in the same series.
Since Shad regarded me as something of a foil for his humor, due to his former career as the American comic advert insurance duck on the telly, he could not possibly resist the opportunities for silly situations with us thus configured. This aside in one of my accounts, however, produced a rash of queries about the cases we worked thus resembling Holmes and Watson, neé Rathbone and Bruce. Not just the facts, mind you. These inquiring minds wanted to know down-to-the-last-flipping-detail, please and thank you very much.
Shortly after he moved into his new feathers, I discussed it with Shad. As always he had little interest in anything not involving movies, acting, his feline friend Nadine, or solving the current case. When I pointed out to him that the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Aurhur Conan Doyle were narrated by Dr. Watson, hence rightfully Shad should author our adventures so made up, he looked up
from his case file and said, “You know, Jaggs, despite my many quills, I've never been much of one for writing.”
We were on three matters together with Shad in his Watson meat suit. The first of these inquiries I have titled “The Purloined Labradoodle.” This inquiry initially had nothing to do with Watson or a Labradoodle. It initiated actually in relation to improperly imprinted puppies, an imprisoned parakeet, and a parrot profoundly perturbed.
“Limp stone,” muttered the parrot darkly.
I finished stocking the shelves in back of the small shop counter with boxes of birdseed, tins of dog food, and little packets of catnip. The counter and display case were festooned with colorful leashes of assorted sizes; plastic bones; rubber mice; squeaky toys; scratching posts; king-, queen-, and knave-sized pet beds and such. The walls were hung with posters concerning the various hideous diseases cats and dogs could contract, complete with expensive preventative treatments that could be purchased right here, should the shipments ever arrive. Shad and I, you see, were undercover operating a pet shop in The Strand, Village of Lympstone, east bank of the River Exe south of Exeter, Devon. I was the pet shop owner and DS Shad had traded his cherished Nigel Bruce meat suit in on what budget-strapped ABCD had left over in the way of undercover pet bios: a rather timeworn parrot.
We were, as it happened, an insignificant part of a rather large task force attempting to crack down on a UK ring of swindlers who were representing real household pets as amdroid bios capable of taking full human imprints with rather appalling consequences for bargain seekers who would lose a good bit of their savings, all of their natural bodies, and most of their minds in the process. The main thrusts of the task force effort were in London, Manchester, and Bristol. Shad was being cranky on two accounts: first, because he felt we had been left out of the big show; and second, because he wasn't getting to do his Dr. Watson, which he really wanted to do.
Nevertheless, the pets used by the perpetrators came from somewhere and covering pet stores was a logical investigative consequence. From what we could observe from our post in Lympstone, though, it didn't appear to be a well coordinated operation—something Shad was beginning to refer to as a “clusterbugger.” In any event, we were on our third day of operations and our shipments of kittens, puppies, and much of our equipment and supplies had yet to arrive. No bait, no customers, no suspects. I looked from the window at the quaint village street, and it was raining. There went our chance for someone blind drunk mistaking us for a tube station and wandering in.
* * * *
“Limp stone,” Shad muttered again from his perch at the end of the counter. He was getting quite tiresome. I turned from the window.
“Actually, Shad, the m is silent and the stone is pronounced stin. Lipstin.”
“Brits pronounce a whole lot better than they spell.”
“I don't recall that American insurance company you did the telly adverts for being such great spellers. Why wasn't your duck quacking ‘Aflass, Aflass?'”
“You mean besides how close it sounds to ‘half-assed'? Jaggs, you really think ‘The Petting Place’ is a good name for a pet store?”
“Superintendent Matheson chose the name, not I, as you well know.”
“It sounds like a bordello or lap-dancing salon. Why don't we just call it ‘The Cat House’ and be done with it?” The parrot held out his wings, began bumping and grinding his hips as he danced on the perch, and sang out in something of a Jamaican accent, ‘Hey dere, sailor boy, you come to Mama Bimbo's Cat House for all you pettin’ needs, mon.” The dance stopped. “Jaggs, if you were a self-respecting crook would you go into a pet store called The Petting Place?” He sidestepped grumpily from one end of his perch to the other. “Can't believe the names around this neck of the woods: Ex mouth. Nut well. Glebe lands. Cock wood. Under Wear—”
“That's Lower Wear and—”
“Key off, Jaggs,” cautioned Shad, nodding toward the window. “Live one approaching. This may be the kitten pickin’ kingpin herself.”
The bell rang as the door opened revealing a short, stocky woman in a green anorak and yellow plastic rain scarf, her feet in a pair of bright yellow wellies. In her right hand she had by the handle a small gray metal case. She walked up to the counter.
“Good morning, love,” I said. “How may I be of assistance?”
“I want me parakeet fixed,” she stated.
“Indeed. I regret to say we don't neuter birds at Petting Place.” I glanced at Shad and he was returning my look down his beak, as it were. I looked back at the woman. “You'll have to take your bird to a veterinary surgeon.”
“I means repair. This one's a robbie,” she said. “All ‘is nuts's got bolts in ‘em, if you gets me drift.”
“I see.” I smiled brightly. “If I might take a look at your bird?”
“Nothin’ much works on it.” She lifted the case and dropped it rather heavily on the counter. “Salt in the air, I expect. Too close to the bleedin’ ocean.”
I opened the case on the counter next to Shad's perch. Inside the case was a musty-smelling robotic parakeet. There was something white and crusty dried between its toes. Shad moved on his perch until he could look down into the case.
“Ain't that cute, your parrot there looking at me bird. He's in love!”
Midway through her rising belly laugh, Shad said to her, “Sod off, you old cow.”
“Here, now!” she responded, her color rising.
“I apologize for the parrot, love,” I said. “I'm afraid we rescued the poor thing from a rather tragic situation.”
“Aw,” she responded empathetically, reaching out a hand to pet Shad's head. “Chick abuse, was it?”
With a loud squawk and a belated flap of his unfamiliar wings, Shad fell off his perch backward onto the floor.
“I didn't hit the poor thing,” said the woman holding a hand up to her maker. “I swear it.”
“Please don't distress yourself unduly, madam. The bird also suffers from an inner ear problem. It affects his balance.” Excusing myself, I went around the end of the counter and bent over my partner. He was rolling on the floor flapping his multicolored plumage, beak open, and laughing. "Steady," I said to him over our wireless net, a deserved degree of menace in my transmission.
After a few gasps, Shad eventually said to me, "Sorry, Jaggs. Ah-hah! Sorry, but check out the eyes on her bird. That's no simple robot." He stood, doubled over, shook again, and transmitted, "Should I share with her how I was never coddled as a young egg but spent my deviled youth getting fried and have since become hard-boiled?"
"Not unless you also wish to become scrambled and beaten," I buzzed back.
He flapped his wings and resumed his place on the perch, occasional unconquerable snicker spasms shaking his feathers.
I turned toward the woman and smiled brightly yet again. “Now, shall I take a look at your bird?”
Shad was correct. The creature's eyes were animated, its gaze darting about and eventually coming to rest upon me. If it was a simple rundown robot and not a mech, its eyes should not have been moving. As they were moving, however, indicating the possibility of a rather serious crime, I asked as delicately as I could, “How long have you had this mech, love?”
She laughed and waved a hand at my apparent silliness. “Oh, that's no mech, dearie. That one's just a clockwork toy. Me aunt were well off, but Auntie wouldn't pay for no mech when she could get the feathers, flap, and song by only payin’ for a robbie.”
“Really.”
“'Course. Think she wanted to get tied up with all that red tape, wages, taxes, forms, and bother? Not me Aunt Annabelle.” She frowned. “Besides, if this here bird was self-aware, it'd take better care of itself, wouldn't it?” Before I could answer, she added, “More to point, that's what the parakeet told me aunt.”
“This parakeet told your aunt it didn't come under the Artificial Intelligence Regulations?”
“That's what me aunt told me years before she passed on. Th
e parakeet told her, oh—” She frowned and looked up at the beamed ceiling. “—got to be four years ago.” She lowered her watery gray gaze down until she was looking me in the face. “See, Annabelle Wallingford passed last year. Quite well off she was, as I said. Her place was in Wotton Lane by Watton Brook.”
“In Wotton by Watton?” asked Shad.
She frowned at the parrot. “Cheeky bastard.”
“To be sure. About the parakeet?” I prompted.
“Well, as part of Auntie's estate, she left me Ringo. That's what we called this here bird before it seized up. Shame. Only had the bloomin’ thing a few days when it broke.”
“I see. And you're bringing it in now because...?”
“Just getting around to going through me aunt's things and cleanin’ up. Found Ringo tucked away in me auntie's attic. Maddie girl, I says to meself, it'd be right homey havin’ a singin’ bird in the lounge next to the settee. Ringo sings real sweet's, I remember.”
“I see.”
“With a robbie there's no papers to clean up. No offense,” she said to Shad.
He looked away, talon to brow, feigning acute personal devastation.
She poked the parakeet several times in the tummy. “I can do the feathers up some with needles and me hot glue gun, but I'm no good with chips, springs, electronics, and such. If it can't be fixed I'll just toss it in the dustbin. Maybe a jumble sale. Some little tyke might have a laugh takin’ it apart. Might be worth a bob or two.”
I lifted a wing and released it. It dropped to the counter with a thud. “Let me take it in back and have a look.”
“Is this old parrot here for sale?” she asked, poking Shad in the belly.
“Easy, lady,” he said with the voice of Huntz Hall, “you'll bruise the fabric.”
“You'll have to ask the bird, love,” I answered. “He's a bio.”
“Oh, I wouldn't want no bio.”
“That's not the issue, Chuckles,” Shad said to her. “The issue is, does the bio want you.”
As I picked up the parakeet and carried it around the counter, Shad began singing a rather raunchy sea shanty centered on a seductive female giraffe and her erstwhile suitor, a love struck field mouse who, for reasons unnecessary to elucidate here, ran himself to death. I took the mechanical bird into the room where we had our surveillance equipment set up. I cracked the parakeet's back and Shad was right. Although the bird was robotic, there was one slight illegal modification. Tucked among its gears, bellows, batteries, and computer was an AI chip—an illegal AI chip at that. I'm no expert in such things, but it looked as though the AI chip had worked its way loose from its improvised mountings, which had caused a microcard to partially dislodge from its tiny motherboard effectively paralyzing all motor functions save the eyes.
Analog SFF, January-February 2008 Page 33
