Chimera (isaac asimov's robot mystery)

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  She glanced off-screen briefly. "Nyom Looms is a different matter. She was evidently smart enough to carry her own breather. We found it in one of the couches, crushed. She died from a broken neck. I'm having Baxin go over her for any foreign material-he found some fabric under her fingernails-but he says you can rule out the robot we found. Whoever killed her was still on board; there's no sign that anyone got out. So we have a suicide/murder. I know that's not what you thought we'd find, but…"

  She shrugged elaborately. "No sign of the robot you told me about. The only thing we've gotten out of there are corpses. No telltale handprint on Nyom, either. This was a very clean break; anyone with the hand strength and the training could have done it. That's all the good news I have, Coren. I'm sending you an encrypted data package with everything we've got so far. Let me know what you turn up down there. I hope you come back up soon."

  Coren suppressed a mild shudder. A return flight?

  He had not hoped to find the second robot, but if the seals were intact from the inside, then someone had to have accompanied the baleys up. So one of Nyom's own baleys had committed the crime? It strained credulity.

  But there was a missing passenger… "

  Desk, code a reply to Sipha Palen, use same encryption. Sipha, we may still be looking at a robot, just not the one we have in the locker. The second one got out somewhere, and someone else might have gotten in. We don't know what the exact procedure is for this kind of smuggling. Keep me apprised of what you find under Nyom's fingernails. I'm still trying to find my informant. She's disappeared, of course. I'll comm you later. Desk, send."

  "Yes, sir. Message encrypted and sent. You have one message remaining."

  "Wait."

  Jeta Fromm posed a problem. Without her, tracking down the people Nyom worked with would take days, weeks. Finding the dockworker, Yuri Pocivil, would be even harder.

  For now, though, he had no answers. Maybe she would contact him, but he doubted it.

  "Desk, do a records search for Yuri Pocivil. Last known residence in the Petrabor District. Now play the last message."

  Appearing on the flatscreen was a face Coren did not recognize, with a wide brow and short, black hair. Large, moist-brown eyes stared out at him.

  "Mr. Lanra, please forgive the presumption. I'm Myler Towne, current administrative head of Imbitek. You may know our company. " He smiled slightly at his own false modesty. "I'm familiar with you, of course, and with your record. We'd like to discuss the possibility of acquiring your services ourselves. If you're interested, please give me a little of your time and we can talk. My code is appended. I hope to talk with you soon. "

  The screen went blank and slid out of sight.

  Coren laughed out loud, then sobered. Surely this was a joke! Or was Myler Towne, temporary mouthpiece for the company that had nearly ruined Rega Looms, so ignorant of circumstances that he thought this was a good and accept able offer?

  It might be amusing to meet with him and see how it goes…

  "Do you wish to send a reply, sir?" the Desk asked.

  "No. Not yet. Do you have that itinerary for me?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Let me see it."

  A list of destinations within the northeastern quadrant of the continent appeared on the desk surface. He skimmed it quickly, then touched one. Baltimor District. That would be convenient, but Rega would not be there for another two days.

  Still, lacking any other worthwhile possibility…

  "Desk, send a message to Rega Looms, informing him that I'll talk to him in Delfi. Then find the code for Brun Damik at Immigration and Trade Enforcement. "

  "Yes, sir. Do you wish me to connect you?"

  "No, just give me a location."

  "Baltimor District ITE headquarters, Level Five, unnumbered private office."

  "Thank you. "

  Coren leaned back and considered what to do next. Brun Damik would be a place to start, at least until he found Fromm.

  If he found her.

  Time, time, too damn little time…

  He really did not want to speak with Rega. He could put that off for a day. Brun Damik, though…so the man had a private, unnumbered office now. Coren chastised himself for not keeping better track of people he still knew in government service. The trouble was, he had left originally out of a desire to have no more to do with government service, so he was unmotivated to pay close attention.

  Not very professional, Coren. Not very professional at all…

  That was the reason he had bought the Desk in the first place, so he could overlook details like this without losing track of them altogether. He appreciated his Desk-it was the closest thing to full sentient awareness he could afford to buy on Earth, just shy of illegal positronics.

  Illegal, but not unobtainable. Nyom had gotten hold of a robot, had even owned it long enough to name it and work with it under the noses of ITE.

  Spacers kept robots within their own districts. The ban on positronics had many, many holes in it. There were even Terrans who owned robots-fetishists and self-indulgent social rebels who enjoyed flaunting the law and custom, even if only in private.

  Holes Rega Looms wanted to fill in, an ambition that would suffer should his daughter's ideological treason become public.

  Coren stood and went to the door to his workroom. A sofa sprawled the length of one short wall to the right, a low table before it. An alcove contained changes of clothes. To the left, three sets of shelves held a variety of boxes, bags, and objects-tech Lanra used from time to time, some of it illegal even for him to possess. He absently took a replacement optam from one shelf.

  He locked the door and sat down on the sofa, folded his hands beneath his chin, and studied the shelves. After a time, he heaved himself to his feet and went to a lower shelf. He pulled out a shallow box and placed it on the table.

  He took out a set of images and spread them over the table. Nyom Looms: laughing, smiling, contemplative, seductive, playful, clothed, naked, painted, bathed in light. The kind of pictures meant for one other person, exposed and cloistered at once. Old pictures-Coren checked the dates, though he knew it without thinking-from five years ago.

  One image showed them both, together, holding each other.

  "Frivolously romantic, " so Nyom had pronounced them afterward, when it ended and she chose a life that discluded him. Disclusion-left out, overlooked, omitted-rather than excluded. She never barred him from joining her, but she did not invite him, either. Probably because she already knew what he would say.

  They had argued, he remembered, and she had left him confused. It had taken some time for him to understand that part of what had hurt her was that he had not made a counteroffer. He had not asked her to stay with him. Coren Lanra did not think that way. Nyom had made a decision-what right had he to ask her to turn her back on her choice?

  On the other hand, perhaps he still did not know what it had been about.

  Beneath the sheaf of images were three small boxes. One contained a silver-and-jade bracelet, another contained a set of rings in gold and platinum, and the third held the receipt for an apartment lease they had shared.

  Coren stared at the pictures, left the boxes unopened, and grunted. This was all-the only evidence outside his memories of their relationship. All that remained of someone for whom he had cared. All he would ever have of her, now.

  "She's dead," he said quietly. "Nyom is dead."

  And then, for the third time in his life, Coren Lanra wept. The office of Immigration and Trade Enforcement, Baltimor District, occupied five floors of a hexagonal block near the Trade Mall, where thousands of Import-Export firms kept offices, adjacent to the warehouse warrens that occupied an apostrophe-shaped wedge around the lines of the ancient harbor. South of the District, spaceport facilities filled the upper levels and the urban canopy almost the entire distance to D.C. Passengers debarked in D.C., at Union Station; cargo and its handlers came into Baltimor, through Customs and Dissemination.

>   Coren waited outside the administrative entrance, in a small cafe, watching. Brun Damik emerged a little more than an hour before his regular shift ended. Damik walked quickly for a man of his size, but being so tall it appeared to be his natural gait. Coren had some trouble keeping up with him and nearly lost him twice before Damik entered a restaurant.

  Coren watched from the entrance as Damik was seated at a small table near the back of the dining room. When the maitre d'hфtel approached, Coren laid a credit note on his station and pointed at Damik.

  "He's alone, sir," the maitre d' said. He palmed the note and turned his back while Coren, smiling, entered the restaurant.

  He sat down across from Damik, who looked up from his salad, startled.

  "What's good here, Brun? A little expensive for you, isn't it? Take must be good this year."

  Damik's face lost all expression for several seconds. Then, slowly, a wide grin compressed his features. "You ass. Lanra! How are you?"

  "Busy these days. But I thought I'd make time to talk to an old backstabber. How are your connections these days, gato?"

  Damik laughed loudly and slapped the table once, sharply. "What are you drinking? I'm off-shift, so it doesn't matter."

  "I'm not, so it does. Are you buying?"

  "Of course."

  "Nava."

  Damik frowned briefly. "That's a Solarian drink, isn't it?"

  Coren nodded. "Tastes like a good bourbon but without the alcohol. "

  Damik grunted. "Very Spacer. Riskless pleasure. Spineless ninnies."

  Coren shrugged. "Good drink, though."

  "Expensive. " He gestured for a waiter and gave the order anyway, including a beer for himself. "What have you been doing, Coren? Still working for what's-his-name? Rega Looms?"

  "I am."

  "He pays you well enough to afford good food?"

  "When I have time to eat it. What about you? You're not still counting canisters, are you?"

  "Not by hand, no. They gave me my own department."

  "They must be desperate. "

  Damik laughed again. Their drinks arrived and he raised his beer in a mock toast. Lanra tapped his glass and sipped.

  "So," Damik said. "Pleasantries aside, what do you need?"

  Coren reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small hemisphere that looked like polished foam. He pressed the base with his thumb and set it in the center of the table.

  Damik cocked an eyebrow. "Does Looms know you play with toys like that?"

  "I take it you've seen one or two yourself, then. No, actually, if Rega knew what I use in the course of my job we'd probably have a serious policy disagreement. Fortunately, he's not the sort of employer that pries a lot unless things go wrong."

  Damik thought about that. "Has anything gone wrong?"

  "We don't have to be coy now, Brun." Coren pointed at the hemisphere. "Maybe Special Service has something that can unscramble the interference that's generating, but it would take longer than our conversation."

  "You're not staying for dessert, then."

  "I don't think I'm staying for a second drink. I asked how your connections are. I meant it."

  "I got a promotion, didn't I?"

  "I'm talking about your black market ones."

  Damik grinned. "So'm I. What do you need?"

  "I stumbled on a diverted shipment recently. You gimmicked a bay assignment all the way over in Petrabor, some stuff for Kysler. I'm assuming it was you, or someone in your office. "

  "You 'stumbled' on it? How does that work?"

  "Part of the job. Am I speaking to the right man?"

  Damik shrugged. "What if you are?"

  "Baley-running. How does that work?"

  Damik stabbed a forkful of green leaves and pushed them around the plate listlessly. "How much are you offering?"

  "Depends entirely on the quality of your data. "

  "Hm. Well, the cheap part is the actual transportation. Refitted cargo bins are popular. Usually, they only have to support life for a day or two till they get turned over to the ship that's going directly to the colony of choice. Then it's no different than steerage class. Most baleys, I can't understand why they bother-they could go legally."

  "You know that's not true. ITE screening sorts out 'undesirables' and denies them visas. That means anyone with a political opinion, technical skills above a certain level, and money they might take with them. That's about eighty percent of the people who apply. "

  "If they're that well-off or that smart, why would they want to go?"

  "I really don't care. Go on. "

  "The expensive part is the bribery. You need a customs inspector, a set of transit permits, and enough to payoff a warehouse crew. You need another customs official on the other end. "

  "At Kopernik."

  Damik nodded. "But you knew all this."

  "You left out the part I don't know. Who do you start the process through? Who fronts the credits and who parcels out the payments?"

  "It's not that organized. We're talking about rats in the system, a few here and there. Whoever is taking money from the baleys themselves has to know who to talk to-"

  "Not in every case," Coren said. "That might be true for small groups, but in the last two years the numbers have increased. There are shipments of up to three hundred people leaving in one group."

  "That's a myth. Numbers like that, ITE would look totally negligent-or subverted-to let them through. No, the largest single group you'll ever see go through would be fifty or sixty. Even that's pushing it." Damik finished his salad. "So?"

  "So that still means enough money to attract the people I'm looking for. Once they get a taste, they don't go away, they assume control."

  Damik chuckled. "You never disappoint, Lanra. I can see why you left Service-those idiots wouldn't know what to do with a smart one like you. "

  "I assume that means I'm right. So who?"

  "Depends on the colony. Each one has a gatekeeper."

  "Reporting to who?" Coren asked.

  "I don't know. I imagine you're right, there is some person or persons at the end of the chain, but…"

  "Okay. Then give me a gatekeeper."

  "Which colony?"

  "Let's say Nova Levis."

  Damik's eyes widened fractionally, just for an instant. He shook his head. "You don't have that kind of credit."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because you're overdrawn now and we haven't even talked price. "

  "I knew you were the right gato to talk to about this. I always appreciated your honesty."

  "Ha ha. Your wit hasn't improved much."

  "But my credit has," Coren said.

  Damik regarded him skeptically. The waiter came and cleared away his salad plate, then set his dinner before him. Damik appeared to notice none of this, eyes fixed on Coren.

  "Do you remember," Coren said as the waiter left, "all that business last year involving Clar Eliton and the assassinations at Union Station?"

  "Lot of dead Spacers. So?"

  "More than that -quite a few Terrans were killed or hurt, too. It was complicated. For a time, Rega Looms was suspected. In the course of doing my job-covering Rega's butt, technically-I learned a lot of details about a lot of people, mostly people I'll never meet and never deal with. But there've been exceptions. You, for instance."

  Coren leaned forward, as if preparing to confide in Damik. "We knew each other for…what? Six years before I left Special Service?"

  "Something like that."

  "In all that time I never knew you were a Managin. Did you even know that yourself, or did you simply neglect to enter it in your file?" Coren spread his hands. "None of my business, really. Before last year, none of anyone's. But they turned out to be less than simply embarrassing to someone like you. They turned out to be-can you guess, Brun?-a security risk. Now imagine that. A bunch of fringe idiot anti-Spacer sociopaths an actual security risk. I'll tell you, Brun, I got a real laugh out of that when I heard it th
e first time. I thought, 'Don't those people at the Terran Bureau of Investigation have anything better to do than upgrade their lists of the possibly dangerous all day long? They should be after real criminals, real threats, real detriments to society.' "

  "You thought all that, did you?"

  "Yes, I did. I thought all that. But that was then. Today I thought, 'I wonder what the director of ITE would say if he knew his freshly-promoted chief of inspection at the Baltimor Station used to be one of those sorts?' And I decided to find out what you would think of it first."

  Coren sat back and smiled across the table at Damik.

  Slowly, Damik picked up a fork. "Is that all?"

  "No, no, no. You were a real follower back then. I've got your name attached to at least four other groups like the Managins. But to be fair, only two of those ever got serious attention from the TBI. " Coren watched Damik cut a piece of his cutlet and fork it into his mouth. "So, how's my credit now?"

  "Still not good enough." Damik grinned crookedly. "I'll tell you this, they're all corporate types at the high end. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the guy getting out from rehab this week is one."

  "Alda Mikels? Is he the one you deal with."

  "I told you, I don't know names-"

  Coren shifted in his chair, leaned on his forearms over the small table. "I asked, is that who you deal with?"

  Damik moved back. He studied Coren with narrowed eyes for several seconds. Finally, he shook his head. "Mikels is in jail-how could he do anything with baleys? Look, Coren, that's as much as you get-"

  Coren sat back. "Let's see, besides the Managins, you were part of the Campaign for Terran Rights-they were the ones who shut down the vats feeding Calcubay District several years back. About the time you were an active member, under the name of…" Coren looked upward in mock concentration. "Ah, I remember. You called yourself 'Damil Bruller: Then there was-"