“It must be lonely for you here. The only decent human being on a frozen planet one hundred and forty million miles from Earth. I’m assuming you’re decent.”
“The distance of Mars in relation to Earth varies, of course, with the two planets’ orbits. But, I ask you, was it lonely for Sir Edmund Hillary when he strode through the clouds? Was it lonely for Robert Peary when he stood at the top of the world?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, it can be a tad lonely. I’ve always got my robots though, eh Ursula?
“We are all independent and unique creations protected by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Automatons. No one, as such, owns any one of us. Because you had your way with me last night does not give you any chattel rights, it was a mutual—”
“Yes, yes. Our visitor doesn’t need to hear all that, Ursula. Now suppose you tell me why you are really here, Mr. —?”
“Dr. Lazar.”
“Dr. Lazar?”
“Correct. You heard about the man trying to extort ten billion dollars from the United States? The man trying to hijack a planet? The ‘terra’-ist?”
“I would merely be confirming what I stated early.”
“I’ve got news for you, I’m the man.”
The warden takes a long pull on his empty pipe.
“The name sounded somewhat familiar. Are you here to hijack Mars? I think I have the keys here somewhere.”
“Who would pay any money to get it back?”
“Yes, well, pray continue.”
“I’m turning myself in. I want protective custody. I want you to bury me so deep in this prison that it would take a team of archeologists twenty years to find my fossilized remains.”
“But that’s absurd.”
“Why?”
“It’s absurd, my dear boy, because we already have Dr. Lazar imprisoned here.”
Silence.
Somewhere down a hall that leads to nowhere someone screams. The walls quickly absorb the sound.
“That’s crazy, he must be some sort of nut trying to get away from his wife. Unless—”
“Dr. Lazar, if that is your real name, and I dare say I shall discover that it isn’t, the individual we have locked up outlined his entire madcap scheme to us in most intimate detail.”
“But you said you hardly knew anything about the crisis.”
“I say, when you’re in a prison, you’ll find that the truth is a pretty scarce commodity—much like a helping hand in the shower. Besides, I wanted to hear what you had to say. Now that I have, I think we can find you a room with nice, soft walls and fluffy pillows where you can play until we’ve confirmed your identity, and notified that wife of yours, of course.”
“What did this nut tell you?”
“Dr. Lazar?”
“The Lazar wannabe, yes.”
“Indeed, not that it’s relevant to you, but he told me how he and his equally insane staff had developed some sort of extraordinarily powerful tractor beam. He told me how he had used this beam to suck the President of the United States out of an outdoor hot tub in Colorado, where he was ‘polling’ an electorate I believe, and brought him to his laboratory. You know, I could use that kind of suction on the carpets here at the prison, we can never seem to get them clean—”
“Easy on the jokes, rocket man, I’m not a robot—I’ve got a sense of humor, even if you two don’t.”
Ursula sniffs and flexes her big, cold, metal hand.
“Yes, well anyway, Dr. ‘Who’-ever, Dr. Lazar claimed that this beam of his, projected onto the planet Jupiter, would drag the Earth out of orbit as Jupiter moved about in its own orbit. Jupiter being so much larger than the Earth, of course. World catastrophe would be the desired result, I presume. He vacuumed up the President to show the leaders of the United States that he was serious and that he possessed the requisite technology to make good on his rantings. He wanted ten billion dollars or the Earth would move. You see, I’ve been through this confession before, and while I find it all terribly fascinating, I don’t particularly care for a rerun. Now, as it is getting late, I would suggest that Ursula escort you to your cell and we can have your brain scraped for the truth in a couple of days.”
“Did he say why the plan failed?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“My dear sir, as the authorities soon concluded, his invention, his beam, was nowhere near as powerful as he claimed it to be. Certainly not powerful enough to pull planets out of their orbits. For that matter, if the President hadn’t recently gone on a diet, he probably would have been fumbled into the Grand Canyon. Lazar thought he could quickly perpetrate his hoax, before scientific minds could discount his claim, and collect his ill-gotten booty without anyone getting hurt. Well, his logic proved to be as warped as his brain stem.”
“How so?”
“I say, Doctor, why don’t you tell me.”
“I will. What he didn’t count on was his staff being even more evil than he was. His supposedly loyal staff turned on him, or at least some of them did. Some of his staff wanted to kidnap and kill, use the beam for other evil applications, and some of his staff wanted no part of the entire scheme in the first place. When the government stalled with the money, the President’s not too popular right now you know, all hell broke loose.”
“Yes, quite right. You seem to know the story. I suppose it’s already in the all the vidloids on Earth—you know, the Celestial Enquirer, the—”
“I know the story, you interstellar garbageman, because I am the story. Tell me, did this loony who claims to be me, did he tell you why his staff turned on each other like a Bolivian soccer team trapped in the Andes?”
“He just stated that there was a bloodbath. I’m sure it was a situation similar to the one in China twenty-five years ago, on a much smaller and more mediocre scale of course, with that madman Xing Xang and the nuclear bomb. Surely you recall how his insane ambition to rule the world was cut short by his own generals, plunging the country into civil war? I say, old chum, it’s getting frightfully late, and if I don’t get my eight hours nappy, I’m a bear to the staff in the—”
“Why don’t you hold up on the sleep just a little longer, Rip Van Tinkle? The story gets better. Did the impostor mention clones?”
“Clowns? What in blazes—”
“Clones.”
Silence.
“Uh, no. He did not mention anything about clones.”
“So, he doesn’t know the whole story. You see, Warden, I’m a medical doctor, with a specialty in bioengineering.”
“You made clones of yourself, and these clones were your staff?”
“Exactly, old boy.”
“How splendidly diabolical. You realize, of course, that cloning is illegal?”
“Yes.”
“Well, in that case, you are to be congratulated—with a ten- to fifteen-year jail sentence.”
“If you please.”
“These clones, they all had the same evil, demented mind that you possess, the alleged Dr. Lazar?”
“There’s the rub. They all had superior intellects, geniuses if you will—”
“I won’t.”
“They were robots then?”
“That’s quite enough, Ursula.”
“—however, their personalities were another matter. Some had personalities, emotional make-ups, I mean, of pure good, while others were pure evil, while others were a mixture of both—balanced personalities like my own.”
The Warden rolls his eye.
“I had perfected their physical appearance, for they all looked exactly like me—”
“Good heavens, man, you don’t need me here, all you need is the sound of your own hand clapping in a room to yourself.”
“—and their intellect was nothing short of brilliant, but their emotional composition was the wild card that even I couldn’t control. You see, intelligence and physical appearance are things you are born with, things that are created. But emotions, those are
things that are shaped by your environment and your experiences—they’re malleable. I had been working on them for a very long time, with mixed results.”
“Well, good for you. Sperm count a trifle low, old boy?”
“What?”
“You couldn’t have conceived of any children who could have assisted you in your evil endeavors?”
“I don’t think I could have produced one hundred children, all of superior intellect, and all loyal to me and my work. I’m not a basketball player.”
“Yes, indeed. So what happened when you sent in the clones?”
“As my plans disintegrated, and my hoax failed, and we were trying to decide what to do with the President, the clones began fighting amongst themselves. It became a battle between Good and Evil. A war between the two sides of my nature, between the two sides of Man’s nature.”
“And which side emerged the victor? I assume, because you are here, or claim it is ‘you’ who are here, that the battle was fought to a draw, with you, the proud papa, being the only survivor.”
“You’d think wrong.”
“What?”
“Evil triumphed over Good.”
Silence.
The top, right drawer in the Warden’s desk squeaks slightly as he gently eases it open. His hand is hidden from his visitor. He places his trembling right hand over a blaster. Ursula silently nods in agreement, and blows him a kiss. He blushes.
“Um, what do you mean Evil won? By God, Evil never wins.”
“This wasn’t by God, it was by Man. Only one clone survived the fratricide—the most evil of them all. Pure, distilled evil. He will stop at nothing to destroy me, his creator, and the world in which he was created. You have to hide me!”
“Calm down, old man, you’re safe here. So you tried to play God and created your own Devil in the process. How very tragic. But, putting aside sentimentality for the moment, how do I really know you are who you claim to be?”
“Do you have any pictures of Dr. Lazar?”
“Why, no, I don’t.”
“Get one!”
The Warden turns on and tunes in his communiscreen and punches up the Office of the Director of Correctional Facilities library file. He scans the files, hoping that the databank has been updated in the last twelve hours. It has. A picture appears on the screen. It is the mirror image of the tall, thin man sitting in his office.
“Right, we’ll lock you up Dr. Lazar.”
“Good.”
“We’ll have to do a complete cranial probe on that other gent who claims to be you. He had most of the story straight, but he doesn’t look anything like you. That should put your mind at ease.”
All is quiet in the prison on the cold, red planet for the next two days. Then the two men claiming to be Dr. Lazar inadvertently meet in a quiet corridor when they are being escorted to their respective cells.
“So, we meet again.”
“You did a nice job in changing your face.”
“Thank you, doctor. I’m a medical doctor remember.”
“And a damn good one.”
The men rush at each other and begin fighting in the narrow, white hallway. The robot guards simultaneously fire their blasters, killing both prisoners. Fighting is punishable by death at the Martian Territory Correctional Facility—it’s the only way to keep the prisoners from killing each other.
The Warden is notified of the deaths by Ursula.
“I suspect that we will never know who was who, Warden?”
“No matter, my dear, they were both the same, really. And you know what?”
“What, sir?”
“Good won, after all.”
“Good one, sir.”
“Fedoras”
By Jeremy K. Tyler
They call us “Fedoras,” though I can’t exactly tell you why. Probably somebody, somewhere, saw one of those old movies where detectives wore that kind of hat. You never can tell. From what I’ve learned, police officers were once referred to as “pigs.”
What has crime prevention got to do with an ancient land mammal used for a food source? Doesn’t make any sense to me. But not much does, really.
People are people, I suppose. Always have been. Three hundred years since we spread out to colonize the planets and asteroids of our solar system, and we still act pretty much the same as we did when we were scratching around in caves. It’s why they still need people like me, whatever it is I’m called.
There was once a time when there was a veritable army of police, defending the innocent and serving the public in every city, town, and burg.
There are just a few of us, now. Security personnel, sure—they’re all over. But actual cops? Detectives? We have been rendered all but obsolete. There are just too many ways to catch someone committing a crime. By the time a file could even be typed up and sent to me, a computer has already pooled all the video and three-dimensional images from the area, processed the DNA and other evidence from the scene, and formulated a foolproof case against the responsible individual.
You don’t need a detective when there is nothing left to detect.
They do keep a few of us around, though. Mainly for two types of cases:
First, for those rare incidents when there isn’t plenty of evidence for a computer to work with; and second, for those moments when the criminal being convicted is someone of significant importance that we get sent in to try and prove that it somehow wasn’t them.
Nice, huh?
I had had my fair share of both varieties. I even managed to keep a pretty good track record: I had a 25% conviction rate, for the tough cases; and only a 60% conviction rate for the celebrity cases. With stats like those, I was looking at a nice fat promotion, in my near future.
In the meantime, though, I had to work the cases I was given, regardless of where they took me.
For the moment, my current assignment was taking me somewhere that no detective would ever want to go. I was aboard the IPV Caledonia.
For those who are unfamiliar, I’ll fill you in. IPV stands for Independent People’s Vessel. It was the acronym that the System Government gave to the various ships that made up the ragamuffin fleets belonging to the Independent People. Most people just referred to them as “Boat People.”
Boat People, long ago, refused to settle on any of the colonized outposts or stations. Instead, they scraped together as many supplies and provisions as they could, packed them up on whatever ships they could get, and set about the business of traveling across the width and breadth of the Solar System. They perform a necessary function, I guess, carrying supplies from colony to colony. But, they are so inclusive and untrusting of anyone else, it made you wonder.
Yeah. No cop would ever want to be stuck on one of those barges. They smelled bad, they were prone to every kind of mechanical failure—including the artificial gravity—and worst of all, the people on board did not like outsiders. It gave a whole new meaning to the term, “hostile environment.”
But, as bad as all that is, there is one thing that could make it worse:
You could have been born on one of these floating dumps.
For the first twelve years of my life, I had never known what it was like to feel actual dirt beneath my feet, or the amazing pull of a gravity that was not man-made. I didn’t know what it was to fall asleep without the staccato rhythm of a badly maintained solar-jet engine.
But, unlike the other kids my age, I actually wanted to know those things. So much so, in fact, that I was willing to risk terminal decompression by sneaking into a cargo drop on Mars, just to get away.
Most likely, had I known just how painful explosive decompression would be, I probably would have tried to find another way. When the maintenance crew on Mars found me, I was nearly dead. My adoptive father, who was the blessed figure who picked my mangled body up from amongst a pile of sodium blocks, told me that he never did understand how I survived it.
But I did. I spent six months in the medical bay, but I survived it, w
ith a few choice scars, some pretty impressive cybernetic replacement parts, and partial nerve damage on my left side. The nerve damage wasn’t a big deal, really. I just can’t feel anything on that side. I have internal sensors packed into my cybernetic system that inform me of heat and cold extremes, so I’m in no danger of frostbite or third degree burns.
The optical implants are pretty cool, too. They can register every spectrum of light, radiation, even sound waves. That’s come in handy more often than you’d think.
I joined the Detectives fairly young. My cybernetic skills gave me an advantage, true, but the selection board was more impressed with the skill with which I used them. I trained my body to respond to the system in a way that was far from standard. It meant that a lot of the tools that a Fedora usually had to carry around with him, I had built in.
I was given my first assignment when I was only 25, a first for the agency.
That was a long time ago.
As I stood in the airlock of The Caledonia, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of horrific event had transpired on board that these people would actually request the presence of a trained investigator. I’d seen some pretty bad scenes in my day, but I had a hunch I was about to add a new entry to my top ten list.
“Detective Stone?” greeted the large, redheaded man who met me, “Do I need to get your gear?”
He looked around, expecting to see some bags or a trunk, or something.
“I pack light,” I informed him, lifting the single small pack I had brought with me.
He looked me over, clearly unimpressed, then turned around and started walking.
“This way.”
I kept pace, but refused to rush up to him, just to catch up. I was a good distance behind him, so I had to raise my voice to speak and be heard. I didn’t care. I was curious to see if he would stop and let me catch up on my own, or just keep going and shout our entire conversation through the corridors.
“The message from dispatch said that you had four fatalities. Any other details I should know about?” I asked.
He didn’t slow. He didn’t stop. Apparently, he was okay with yelling, as well.
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