Analog SFF, November 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Shad and his date shared a seat. Val, of course, watched from my lap while I scratched her ears. I had disabled my wireless interface, the theater was darkening, and the new stadium seating was packed with just about every kind of artificial being in town, bio and mech, amdroid and android, as well as the occasional human natural. The flick had barely begun when Shad's head went back, shook, and faced me, his bill dropping open. I sighed glumly, knowing either it was a call from Heavitree Tower or Shad was suffering a massive stroke. Either way the evening's entertainment was concluded.

  "It's Parker,” Shad quacked.

  "Told you to disable your wireless."

  "Exeter cops have a dead bio, Jaggs. Parker says it's on Parliament Street and he can't fit. What's he mean he can't fit?"

  "It means he's too big to fit in the street,” I answered curtly as evil Prince John and the sheriff conversed up on the screen. “Call in the cruiser and run up the mechs.” I bent over and said to Val, “I'm terribly sorry, dear, but we have a call."

  "Harry,” Val purred, “Nadine and I can make it home on our own. You two go and take your call."

  "We'll be fine,” Nadine mewed to Shad. “Take care."

  I stood and put Val down on the seat as Shad hopped off their seat and followed me out into the aisle at a brisk waddle.

  Outside the sky was dark, the wind coming up from the Exe dank and chilly. Tarp fields protecting the unfinished new apartment construction across Bartholomew from the theater cast the street in a powder blue glow. I turned up my collar against the chill, but only a bit to conserve the charge.

  "Cruiser's on the way, Jaggs. Parker says he's running his command post out of Broadgate."

  "Shad, do you still have that can of flea spray we picked up from the chemist's last time we worked with Parker? I can't afford to bring an infestation home with me again. Val is terribly sensitive."

  "That can's gone,” said the duck with a smirk, which is not easily done with a bill. “I mixed the flea spray in the can with deodorant, had the mix put in a cut glass atomizer I got at Boots, gift wrapped it, and gave it to Parker during that fireworks show yesterday."

  I frowned. “Guy Fawkes Day."

  "Whatever. I told Parker it was cologne. Eau Le Monk, all the rage among the simian set, and Merry Fawkesmas. He was quite moved."

  "Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament, Shad. We don't usually give presents on Guy Fawkes Day."

  "I imagine that depends on your opinion of Parliament. Parker is, however, using the spray."

  "You are a devious duck."

  "Thanks. Now, if we can only get Parker to make it to a loo before he takes a dump, there will be peace in our time.” He looked up in the direction of the Pennsylvania—St. Thomas Corridor, the traffic in the air vector sparse at this time of night. “Here's our ride."

  The cruiser, an issue gray and electric-green Sky Rover Metropolitan, descended in front of us, its green strobe array flashing, its doors rotating up as the wheels touched down on Bartholomew. Shad flew into the driver side and I entered the passenger side, checking the mechs in back on my way in. They were mechanical vehicles of various sizes and configurations into which we could copy our engrams while our bodies were held in stasis. The mechs were able to go places and do things the duck and I couldn't. Parker could've used a mech to work his crime scene, but he numbered copying among his many phobias and there was simply no point in arguing with him about it. Green readouts on the bed panels showed mechs operational, charged, internal laboratories stocked and ready, our engrams as of this morning copied into the Heavitree mainframe.

  The doors closed and as the cruiser ascended toward the corridor, Shad said, “Do you Brits have a weird spelling for parliament?"

  "Why?"

  "I entered it twice, but this heap's GPS doesn't have a listing in Exeter for any Parliament Street."

  I looked at the GPS readout. “You spelled it correctly. Parliament isn't on the cruiser response GPS. Put the cruiser down on High Street in front of the Guildhall."

  "A secret street and Parker can't fit in it?"

  "No secret, but neither Parker nor a cruiser can fit. You'll see why."

  He waited a moment for a further explanation. When none came, he said, “Be mysterious."

  Grumpily, Shad guided the cruiser through the Cathedral Vector Roundabout. No sooner were we through it, than the cruiser dropped from the corridor and headed toward the illuminated columned gingerbread of the medieval Exeter Guildhall immediately below us, still the oldest working municipal building in Britain. High Street, though, was choked with bright lights, news vehicles, and a crowd. The media were in force.

  "Is the king visiting?” asked Shad.

  "Not to my knowledge.” I looked around. “Change of plan,” I said seeing a place nearby where we could put down unobserved. “Behind the Guildhall, Market Square in the shopping center. Put us down just beyond that small church.” I reached forward and flicked off the switch for the light array. The entire block of buildings, of which the Guildhall was only one, was a warren of little streets, shops, and walks which had been turned entirely over to foot traffic and enterprise. The lot of it was called the Guildhall Shopping Centre. At this time of night, the shops were closed and the walkways mostly deserted.

  Shad changed course slightly and nodded toward the square and the tiny, ancient church constructed from local red stone. “Isn't that church St. Pancreas?"

  "St. Pancras, not pancreas.” I saw the duck laughing silently. “As you well know,” I added, dreading my partner's delight once he found out the block opposite the High Street end of Parliament Street had another old church called St. Petrocks.

  After Shad settled the cruiser down next to the small Rougemont stone church, I had us both copy into micros. The micro is a matte black cylinder-shaped air mech roughly the size of a lipstick, one end of which bristles with a variety of forensic instruments. With them I hoped Shad and I could get to the scene without drawing attention.

  Once copied, our usual meat suits in stasis, we flew from the vehicle and Shad put the cruiser up in hover park. At an altitude of approximately two meters, we flew around the west end of the tiny church into a shop-lined walkway that led to the north end of Trickhay Street walk. We streaked south between the furniture stores, gadget emporiums, wireless shops, restaurants, tea shops, and AB boutiques passing only a lone bipedal dustmech with attached dustbin. He was attempting to scrape what appeared to be a flattened wad of chewing gum from the pavement.

  "Bloody AB Emancipation Week, me tin arse,” the dustmech muttered. “Doin’ the same bloody thing and payin’ bloody taxes for the privilege is all it is. Bloody wankers in bloody Parliament, tossers the lot—"

  We turned right when we came to Waterbeer Street walk, leaving the unhappy mech and his soliloquy on unrequited expectation behind. After only a few meters we came to a police constable standing by himself in the dark, his hands clasped behind his back, his stocky form fairly filling the hundred centimeter-wide entrance of a long narrow walk between two buildings. Partly obscured by his shoulder on the right-hand wall of the walkway was a regulation size traffic sign that read: Parliament St.

  "I can see why Parker can't work the scene,” transmitted Shad out of the cop's hearing. “He'd need a shoehorn to get in there."

  "It's even narrower at the High Street end,” I responded. “Imagine Parker dropping a load as he tried to wriggle his way into the crime scene in front of all those cameras. That would've been a proper cock-up. Turn on your lights, Shad, go on external audio, and let's log in with the constable."

  We were both hovering in the dark in front of the fellow's face. When we turned on our lights I'm afraid we startled the poor chap. He jumped, bellowed, screamed, and swung his arms about.

  "Detective Inspector Harrington Jaggers and Detective Sergeant Guy Shad, Devon ABCD,” I quickly introduced us.

  The constable froze for an instant, let out a breath, then bent over to pick up his helmet, mutter
ing about bloody pips, the noun modified by an additional Middle English adjective or two. Some words simply never go out of fashion.

  "Police Constable Styles,” he introduced himself as he stood, a rather peeved expression on his face. Styles was a big ruddy-looking chap in his late twenties, sandy-haired and attempting rather fruitlessly to raise a moustache. After brushing off his helmet, he replaced it upon his head, smoothed his yellow anorak, adopted a stiff military posture, and said, “Now then. You're the Interpollys."

  "Detectives Artificial Beings Crimes Division of Interpol, Devon Office, actually,” Shad said using his Laurence Olivier playing Marcus Licinius Crassus voice. Quite intimidating, even coming from an illuminated flying lipstick.

  "No offense there, detective,” said the officer stiffly. “But you two bits pop out the dark all sudden like a couple eyeballs from bleedin’ Hell. Not half taken aback I was."

  "Our apologies, Styles,” I said. “We were trying to avoid the media tumult at the High Street end. Do we log in with you?"

  "Sergeant Dunn, sir.” He gestured with his head toward the walkway he was guarding. “Sergeant's at the other end. He sort of expected you to report there."

  "Indeed. Are you chaps responsible for all the media attention? On High Street it looks like the resurrection and marriage of Princess Di and Elvis."

  The corners of Styles's mouth turned down as he shook his head. “Don't understand it. Naught there but a dead bird."

  "It was reported to us that the deceased is a bio,” I said.

  He shook his head and turned down the corners of his mouth. “Can't prove it by me, inspector. Looks like any other old sky rat to me.” He grinned. “No shortage of pigeons in Exeter, is there,” he said with an attempt at jocularity that faded rather rapidly as neither of the pips hovering before him reacted. The corners of his mouth resumed their downward turn.

  "If the victim is a bio,” said Shad, still as Marcus Licinius Crassus, “it probably carries a human imprint, Styles. It may be a murder victim."

  The police constable shrugged his wide shoulders, his face devoid of expression. “Not paid to worry about bios,” he said. “Your job, now, isn't it? No offense, detective, but the bloke couldn't of thought much of hisself getting copied into a pigeon suit. Might as well've copied into a toad or a flippin’ dung beetle, right? Besides, amdroids all got bodies tucked away in stasis somewheres, don't they?"

  "Some do,” began Shad coolly.

  "Thank you, Police Constable Styles.” Outside of Styles's hearing, I transmitted to Shad, “Stop turning your crank and follow me."

  "The bozo,” Shad muttered as we swooped into the dark narrow passage, the walls on either side made of poured composite glass, smooth but tinted to look like brick. The only illumination came from the lights on High Street.

  As we reached midway in the walk, my light picked up a small still figure on the left near the northeast wall. We descended until we were next to it. The corpse was indeed a pigeon. The bird was lying on its right side on the cracked gray paving, his head toward High Street, his dark pink toes curled up, landing gear retracted in death. The bird's feathers were disheveled particularly on the side against the pavement. There were a few spatter marks near the corpse that could have been blood. “Shad."

  "Yeah?"

  "Be a good fellow and notify Sergeant Dunn of our presence. Ask him to make available whoever it was who reported finding this body over at DC Parker's command post. Also, explain we're shorthanded and ask Dunn to keep his men on duty until we clear the scene."

  "You got it."

  As Shad streaked toward High Street, I played my lights down the length of the bird, measured its dimensions and calculated its weight. It was a common Rock Dove model, bluish-gray wings, no wing bands but white coloring along the wings’ leading edges. It had a partial white ring around its neck, open in the front, and its breast was a warmer hue than the rest. The bird's head coloring was darker, but not iridescent toward the neck as you see with so many pigeons. As the general run of pigeons go, this one was neither handsome nor unique. It was almost as though this model had been chosen for its dullness—its ability to blend into a background.

  I checked my instruments and I picked up the fading marker beacon of a bio receiver. This was how one bio could always identify another as a bio, which meant the one who discovered the body was likely an amdroid or human bio. I opened the mech's neural reader and checked the pigeon's imprint and recall bank. Both neutral. Unless the occupant had been on continuous sync with a neural net or a body in stasis, the memory information was lost to wherever such energies go after life can no longer sustain them.

  "We're logged in, Jaggs,” transmitted Shad as he returned. “I don't get it. That Dunn seemed really irritated we didn't come in from High Street. There're two mechs out there from the Forensic Medical Examiner. Dunn says he'll send them in to haul off the vic once we're done. There was a newshound out there who says you know him."

  "Fidelis?” I asked.

  "That's the one. Sniffs out tips for BBC 228? I know him from Rougemont Gardens."

  "I've thrown him a bone on occasion. What does Fido have to say about the news frenzy out on High Street?"

  "He was told to be there and to be heavy with camera. Worthwhile story alert."

  "Any idea what the story concerned?"

  "I got the definite feeling everyone out there is expecting to catch someone official with his pants down."

  "Really.” I thought on that for a second then shrugged. “Shad, scan the vic, get a liver temp, DNA, and ID while I set up a prang and fly the grid. Analyze this spatter here, as well."

  While Shad got to work, I pulled away and up until I hovered approximately ten meters away from the corpse toward the shopping center end of the walk. Because of the narrowness of Parliament Street I couldn't both get a good view and a solid fixed wall position upon which to mount the Vader prang—cop slang for the high definition image marker used for recording and analyzing the content of crime scenes. I attached one end of a high-tension poly web to one building wall about four meters up, stretched the web across the street, and attached it to the opposite wall. Mounting the prang in the center of the web, I remotely activated it. Once it settled down it began making a three-dimensional wideband record of the scene and I began a grid search of the entire space between the walls.

  The walkway was unobstructed relatively clean concrete, it's condition making it more than fifty years old. Save for the images of a couple of false doors imbedded in the glass below and images of a couple of false windows and exhaust ports four stories above, the building walls were simply two solid featureless slabs of poured glass: Modern, secure, low maintenance. When I got to the High Street end I looked out at the crowd. Although the curiosity seekers had thinned somewhat, the media reporters were just as thick as before and not moving. Nothing to see at that end; no one issuing statements. The tip they had gotten must have been made of solid gold—or that's the way they were regarding it. I returned to the grid.

  I noticed a small whitish feather stuck on the southwest wall approximately three meters up from the corpse. I closed on the site and hovered across from it. UV light showed a variety of organic materials—bird waste, skin cells, and a small amount of medium-velocity blood spatter—surrounding the feather in a vertically elongated impact pattern. In normal light there were a few microscopic red fibers scattered through the lower right portion of the pattern. I took images of the site, retrieved samples of the fiber evidence, took DNAs from the skin cells, feather, and blood, then measured the impact pattern to compare with the corpse's particulars to calculate impact angle, force, and trajectory.

  "Jaggs,” said Shad, “The spatter on the walk is medium-velocity blood matching the vic's. Pattern is the result of ground impact on already present surface blood. The vic's wound is on the side against the ground. Scan shows several broken bones on the bird's right side: Two in the right wing, five ribs on the right side of the breast. Wing
and rib bones broke the skin. Dead about four hours."

  "Around five this evening, then.” I transmitted my data. “Does this match your DNA?"

  A pause. “It's a match,” answered Shad. “What do you have?"

  "Blood, a feather, and some additional material. It appears that the deceased was propelled against the southwest wall from below—perhaps someone throwing the body up against the wall. It bounced, the trajectory arced up and the body landed next to the opposite wall. Evidence would indicate that the vic was already dead."

  "Kids playing handball with a dead bird?"

  "Only one wall impact. Do you have the area surveillance camera locations yet?"

  "Working."

  "ID?"

  "No name yet, Jaggs, but Bio Registry says this is one of a super flock of eight thousand basically identical pigeons purchased from London Industrial Biotronics four years ago by a private security firm headquartered in Slough called Pureledge, Ltd."

  I descended toward Shad and the corpse. “Are you telling me that bird is a private dick?"

  "Rent-a-cop. Pureledge hires out to keep real pigeons off of buildings, monuments, and out of the ground transit stations. Remember the old movie, To Catch a Thief?"

  "Certainly. Hitchcock film. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.” I fought manfully for the date, but had to relent. “Released in the 1960s, yes?"