Asimov's SF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “First car should be just a block away.”

  “Great.” Huang pushed the down button. “Will you tell them to guard the exits on the north side?”

  “Will do. I'll get a perimeter established with first responders and then send you a team to search the building.”

  The door dinged open and Huang stepped inside. He stood still so the door almost caught his coat as it slid shut.

  “I'll be damned. It's that lemon smell again.”

  “Help me out, Scott.” Metta watched him carefully. “How common is this scent you're talking about?”

  “It's fairly common in cleaning products, but I don't usually smell it in concentrations unless someone has just cleaned.” A picture of his mother scrubbing the furniture flashed through his mind. “It's strange that it wasn't here before.” He snorted. “And it's strong.”

  He spun in a circle in the tiny elevator. A chair from the lobby stood in the corner. Huang tilted his head back to look at the access hatch. It was not seated neatly in its frame. He climbed onto the chair and subvocalized, “Metta, can you find out why the elevator was out of service on Tuesday?”

  “I'm working on it, but the manager says he never knew it was out of order, and never put in a service call to get it fixed.”

  He reached up and pushed on the access panel. It rose easily, letting in a stronger draft of the lemony fragrance. Without needing to be asked, Huang pulled off Metta's eSpy and lifted the small lens into the space above the elevator. He turned it slowly as Metta played the images on his glasses. A bundle of clothing lay close to the edge of the hatch. They were dark gray and splotched with blood. The corner of a name badge showed the letters “Yat.”

  Huang stifled a curse and turned the small camera further. A hand flashed across his vision and grabbed Huang's forearm, pinning it to the edge of the access hatch.

  Metta's eSpy dropped out of his hand and bounced across the roof of the elevator, flashing vertiginous images on his glasses. He jerked his hand free as the eSpy fell over the edge of the elevator. He almost fell as the image spun out of control until Metta cut the feed to his glasses.

  Huang jumped off the chair and pulled his gun out, aiming at the opening.

  Metta whispered, “Backup is on the way.”

  “Mr. Yates!” He shouted upward. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”

  He could hear murmuring above.

  Metta turned up the gain in his earbud so he could hear the fluid voice. She whispered, “I think that's Rwandan.”

  “What's he saying”

  “I'm downloading a translator, it will be a minute.”

  Raising his voice again, Huang said, “Mr. Yates. You have to come down sometime. Let's make it easy and come quietly now.”

  He could hear a rustle of fabric. A hoarse voice spoke out of the darkness. “You won't shoot me?”

  “No, sir.” He held the gun aimed at the hole. “But I need you to come down.”

  “You've got a gun pointing at me.”

  “Yes sir, I do. I won't use it unless you give me a reason to. You won't do that, will you?”

  “Maybe you think I already have.”

  “I don't think anything yet, except you're trapped and scared. I don't want to hurt you. I just want you to come down.”

  There was a long silence and more murmuring prayers. “All right.” The ceiling creaked as he slid closer to the opening. “I'm coming down.”

  “The chair's right beneath the opening.”

  A slender leg appeared in navy blue sweat pants. Another appeared and Yates quickly lowered himself to the chair. The track suit he wore was rumpled as if he'd slept in it. His right hand had been crudely bandaged with what looked like a linen napkin.

  “I'm going to check for weapons.” Huang pushed him against the wall a little harder than necessary to remind Yates that grabbing an officer was never acceptable. Yates stood listlessly while Huang patted him down, almost as if he had fallen asleep standing up. Nothing. It would have been easier if he were packing a .38.

  “He's clean.” Huang told Metta. He hit the button for the lobby. “Mr. Yates, we're going to take you downtown to ask you some questions.”

  Yates nodded his head miserably. “I know. I was trying to help and then. . . .” He waved his bandaged hand helplessly, “it all went wrong.”

  Huang shared a look with Metta. Went wrong? “What went wrong?”

  Yates rubbed his long slender fingers over his short hair. “It's complicated.”

  Metta whispered, “I translated his prayer. He was asking why he was being punished for trying to help a dying man.”

  Huang led Yates off the elevator, still subvocalizeing to Metta. “That could still mean he killed Patterson.”

  “True. There are no withholding taxes on the wages of sin.” Metta shook her head and grimaced. “What about the warrant for the old Salvation Army building?”

  Huang squeezed his eyes shut, weighing his options. “Can one of the uniforms take Yates downtown?”

  “I'll have someone meet you at the door and I'll get Griggs to collect the clothes from the elevator.”

  Huang spied the open door to the Daily Grind. “Have them meet me in the coffee shop. Mr. Yates hasn't had his lowfat double-shot latte today.”

  “You are such a softy.”

  “I know.” He grinned. “That's why you like me.”

  * * * *

  It took another fifteen minutes to transfer Yates. Huang strapped on his flak jacket and headed inside the Salvation Army building with a small team.

  “Okay boys, subvocalize from here on.” Metta's voice was neutral and indicated that she was addressing all of the officers present. She guided them through the building, clearing each room as they went before leading them up to the next floor. For the most part, the building was empty and waiting for renovation. One room showed signs of a squatter, but the rest had the standard discards of old offices—partition walls, old file folders, and layers of dust. On the fourth floor, Metta narrowed her eyes and highlighted tracks in the carpet that looked as though someone had dragged a heavy handtruck down the hall recently. The tracks led back to a door three-quarters of the way down the hall.

  Huang pulled out his gun and sidled down the hall. The other officers positioned themselves ready to cover him.

  The door was ajar about an inch. Metta said, “I don't hear anything inside.”

  Huang took a breath and knocked on the door. “Police. Open up.”

  Silence.

  He pushed the door open.

  The room held a desk and a chair. Next to the desk, the carpet contained a rectangular impression as if something heavy had sat on it recently.

  “Take a look.” Metta opened a screen in Huang's VR glasses with an infrared view of the room, using another officer's eSpies for better resolution. In the artificial colors of the infrared, he could see the faint glow of warmth in the rectangle.

  “That's the right size to be a chassis.” Metta wiped the image from his glasses and reappeared. “The men downstairs are on alert, but I think we're too late.”

  Huang let out the breath he had been holding. “I'm sorry—” He stopped with his mouth open. He sniffed the air.

  “Scott, what is it?”

  He turned slowly, his nose raised. “Lemon Pledge. It's fainter than the other times, but still noticeable.”

  Metta said, “CSI is on their way. Seal the room, and don't touch anything.”

  They went back into the hall to wait. Huang felt as if he were moving underwater, it took so much effort to even breathe. He subvocalized, “I'm sorry, Metta.”

  “Scott.” She looked at him closely. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  “If I had come in when I got the warrant . . .”

  She shook her head. “The heat signature is cooler than that. I'd guess we missed them by about fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  Huang glanced at his watch. 3:25. “How long does it take to move you?”


  “If you know what you're doing it's fast.”

  Huang looked at the officers waiting in the hall. “Let's go ahead and search the whole building. Maybe they didn't move far.”

  “Unlikely.” Metta shifted her eyes up and to the left. “They'll have another place to store her, but knowing this one means I can start running numbers to see if I can come up with other likely places.”

  “The question now is: What tipped them off?”

  Metta compressed her lips. “I don't like the probable answers.”

  * * * *

  He helped the team finish sweeping the building, but they found no other obvious evidence of Metta Prime's presence. As soon as he could turn the scene over to Griggs, he headed back to the station to interview Yates. Metta was silent for much of the ride and almost looked as if she would be happier somewhere else. Her brooding was so dark, Huang finally said, “If you want to tune out, I don't mind.”

  “Hmm? No, I'm fine here.”

  “You don't have to watch me ride the MAX; you've got a lot of other things on your mind.”

  “I've got a lot of mind to deal with things.” She pursed her lips. “Which is part of what I'm thinking about. What happened that all the multi-tasking parts of myself reacted as one.”

  “Was it the shock of finding men inside the station?”

  “I don't know. I have no idea how they got in. I could see them evading one camera, but not all of them.”

  “What if—” Huang stopped. She would never go for this, but she was looking at him expectantly, so he filled the silence. “When you were talking to Amado, right after you woke up, you mentioned playing hide and seek. . . . Do you really?”

  “Yes . . . and No, I see where you're going with this, but it's not that simple. When we play, I stop monitoring the cameras. The public cameras, like the ones that identify people coming into the building, are still captured and processed, but they go into my unconscious banks. I still scan people, but I don't pay attention to what I'm doing, so keeping them out is as reflexive as a sneeze. Does that make any sense?”

  “So, it's likely the people who took you were people who belonged in the station. Right?”

  “You're back to thinking it was an inside job.”

  Huang got off the MAX and walked up the steps of the station. “Tell me at what point you first scan me.”

  He was halfway up the steps, when Metta said, “Now. My first camera just tagged you. But, unless you flag warnings in the A.S., I don't start paying attention till you cross the threshold, and even then, only if you're someone I'm looking forward to seeing.”

  Huang ignored the people passing him on the steps. “Will you do something for me?”

  “I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.”

  “Then play hide and seek with me.”

  “You think Amado was involved.”

  Huang wished he could hide from her gaze. He wasn't sure what he thought. “I wonder if someone knew about your games and took advantage of them.”

  “How would they have known?”

  “I don't know.” Unless Amado was involved, which Metta seemed unable to acknowledge as a possibility. “What's the shortest route to the chassis room?”

  She brought a map up on his VR glasses. “Go to the south side of the building and enter through the garage.”

  Huang headed around the building. “Did Delarosa do this?”

  “He doesn't know about our hide and seek games.”

  “You didn't tell him?”

  “It doesn't have anything to do with the case.”

  “Metta! How can you think turning your cameras off is unrelated?”

  “Because the thieves couldn't have known or counted on it. The chance of us playing a game at the exact moment they decided to break in is extremely unlikely.”

  What if Metta had been tampered with so she couldn't consider Amado as a suspect?

  As he entered the garage, the acrid smell of electricity crackled around him. An evidence truck sat up on blocks, with a mechanic under it. Rows of filing cabinets, filled with parts, lined the walls.

  Metta said, “I'd have noticed you when you came through the garage doors.”

  Huang nodded and backed up. “Let me know when I'm off the radar.”

  About ten feet outside the garage door, Metta said, “Now.”

  “All right.” Huang straightened his shoulders. “Show me the route again.”

  Metta flashed the map on his VR glasses. “You didn't ask, but here are the cameras that were disabled.” A row of red dots appeared along the line that she recommended as the fastest route. Two green dots appeared scattered on the route. “These are the officers who went down.”

  “How hard is it to disable a camera?”

  “Depends. These guys used a wire cutter, so, in theory, they could have cut the cable as they passed underneath.”

  “Right. Let's see how far I can get in a hundred seconds.”

  Her face set and resolute, Metta closed her eyes. “Ready? Go.”

  Huang started walking. They would have walked, surely, or other officers would have noticed them. As he walked, Metta counted backward, “100, 99, 98, 97. . . .”

  The first camera he passed hung lifeless from the ceiling. Why did they cut the cables, if they were planning on taking Metta's chassis? Was it so they would have a safe way out if something went wrong? He fought the urge to run down the hall as Metta continued to count. “. . . 87, 86, 85 . . .”

  The men Amado saw wore masks, and they had worn masks in the image Metta sent Huang. “. . . 63, 62, 61. . . .” He rounded the corner and entered the hall where Fitzgerald had been shot.

  He reached the end of the hall without seeing other officers. “. . . 53, 52, 51. . . .”

  He opened the door to the stairs and ran down them. The chances of unexpectedly seeing someone else on the stairs were slim. The suspects could have hurried here. He looked at the spot where Amado had been found. Had they put the masks on in the stairs, or after they shot Fitzgerald?

  He opened the door to the hall outside the chassis room. “. . . 42, 41, 40. . . .” He heard footsteps at the other end of the hall, and saw Banks walking away from him. Huang swallowed, walking briskly down the hall to the chassis room.

  “. . . 30, 29, 28. . . .” Huang opened the chassis room door and stepped in. Amado looked up, grinning. He put one finger to his lips. In his ear Metta said, “. . . 18, 17, 16. . . .”

  Huang crossed the room and put his hand on her chassis. It was warm and smooth to the touch. A faint vibration stirred through his fingertips and the sense of life inside the box made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  “I'm here.”

  Her voice stopped counting and the cameras on her chassis snapped into life. Her interface suddenly focused on him, with her face gone pale. “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”

  “Sorry, sweetheart.”

  She looked at his hand resting on her chassis. “Go right ahead. I don't mind if you get familiar. . . .”

  Huang colored and jerked his hand away from her. He turned around to face Amado. “I thought you'd be in your office.”

  Metta smiled at him. “I told him what you were trying to do. What was the trip like from your POV?”

  “I didn't see anyone, except for the chief walking away.”

  “Here's what I'm thinking,” Metta said. “It seems likely the suspects used that route to get to my chassis room. The fact that they killed Fitzgerald indicates, to me, that they were people whose presence in those corridors was inappropriate. In other words, they thought Fitzgerald would have known from looking at them that they were in the wrong place.”

  “You don't think they were just worried about being recognized?”

  She shook her head. “If it were an inside job, they could have relied on being recognizable to avoid suspicion while the crime was in progress. Once they took my Prime, they would have needed to mask the
mselves on the way out, but not on the way in.”

  Huang thought about that. “What if some of them were hired guns and some were insiders?”

  “Possible.” She said aloud, then she whispered in Huang's ear, “You're still having the same thought, aren't you?

  “Yes,” he subvocalized. Turning to Amado, he said, “Is it possible someone could do something to Metta so she was unable to suspect them of a crime?”

  Amado lifted his head. “Are you accusing me?”

  “Why would you assume I meant you?”

  “Because I'm her wrangler. There isn't anyone else here who could.”

  Huang held up his hands. “Look. I'm just asking questions. Is it possible?”

  “Theoretically? Yes. But someone would have to have her exact ID and there's no way to get that without having the AI in your possession. So you're back to me again.”

  “What about her Prime?”

  Amado stopped with his mouth open. “Yeah . . . yeah. But—Shit. Is that possible?”

  “What?”

  “Well, look. It would only work in a case like this, where there was a living Prime and a backup, because their signature is the same. So what if that was the point?”

  Metta shook her head. “No one could have known you would reboot me from a backup. It's unprecedented.”

  “What if they knew Amado would reboot you?”

  Metta looked at him as if she'd never seen him before. “Scott. They couldn't have known Amado would reboot me. Hope? Yes, but it's more common to get a clean system in if something compromises the original. The backups are just for actual damage. My Prime was stolen, not damaged.”

  Huang straightened his shoulders and took a breath. “You're right, Metta. Of course they couldn't have been sure.”

  Metta scowled in his glasses. “Don't patronize me, Scott. I can tell you don't agree with me.”

  Huang weighed his options. “Look. You guys know more about this than I do. I was just asking questions, trying to understand.”

  “Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.” Metta sighed in a breathy Mae West voice. “Scott, you've got Yates upstairs in the interrogation room. We should get up there.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for your time, Amado.” As he opened the door, Huang paused. “One more thing. Did you play hide and seek with Metta during her dark period?”