“So you’re telling me that I have twice as many suspects as I thought.”
“You’re the detective,” said Mike.
Chapter Thirteen
Back in cabin 9184, Mike sank down into the chair.
“Here,” said Patience, handing him a bottle of water. “You still look a little peaked.”
Security Chief Sherman had released them after recording their official statements. The only other thing that they had learned before they left was that Delia had apparently been stabbed with the same ballpoint pen that had killed Bella. She had ten punctures across the front of her torso. Sherman believed that she had been disabled before Bella’s murder. This was born out by the lack of the latter’s blood on any of the formers wound, and also the supposition that Delia would have protected Bella from an attacker had she been able.
“I can’t… God…” said Mike. “I really hate this. She was so alive and young and now she’s dead. It’s just not right.”
Patience placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, and he covered it with his own.
“I can’t sit in here. I can’t just sit and think and do nothing.”
“Come,” said Patience. “Let’s go up to the gym.”
Mike changed into his shorts, t-shirt, and tennis shoes and let Patience lead him to the sun deck and the gym, taking the stairs rather than the elevator. Loud thumping music filled the room. He stepped toward the treadmill, when she put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“No, Mike. Remember your knee. Ride the recumbent cycle. It will be gentler.”
“I’m not sure I want gentler,” he said, but he followed her directions, climbed onto the exercise bike, and began peddling.
Patience took a place in the back of the room and watched her husband. When Mike went to the gym in Springdale, as when he worked out at home, he usually spent several minutes on weights before jogging on the track or down the street. When he rode an exercise bike, it was usually limited to 30 minutes. Today he passed the thirty-minute mark without slowing and at the end of an hour he seemed he just kept going. After 150 minutes, Patience approached and touched his head. Mike’s hair, like his workout clothes, was completely soaked through with perspiration.
“That’s enough for today, Mike.”
He stopped peddling and nodded. When he got up, he leaned precariously to one side. Patience put her shoulder under his to support him.
“I hope you didn’t aggravate your knee.”
“It’s fine. I’m just worn out.”
As they made their way back to their room, taking the elevator this time, Patience felt herself pinged several times by the ship’s network. When they reached their door, Security Officer Sherman was waiting.
“What’s going on?” asked Mike.
“Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?”
“Please come in,” said Patience, before Mike could point out the man’s incorrect grammar. She smiled to herself as she imagined him saying, “Of course you can come in. You do know how a door works, don’t you?”
She opened the door and led the two men inside and to the dinette set, where they all sat down.
“Is there something else you needed to ask us?” wondered Mike. “I think we told you everything we know.”
“No, it’s not that. But I do need your help. The only possible witness we have to Miss Brown’s murder is her robot.”
“Miss Brown?”
“Bella,” said Patience.
“Of course,” said Mike. “I guess I didn’t know her last name. Can you fix Delia, um… her Daffodil?”
“That is the question,” continued Sherman. “I contacted Daffodil headquarters in Cupertino, California to see if they had someone in Adelaide that they could recommend to try and fix her, or alternatively to fly someone out from California. There are technicians in Adelaide, but apparently none who are qualified to work on Daffodils. The company suggested I talk to you.”
“Me?” asked Mike. “I don’t know anything about robots or how they work.”
“Not you, your robot. They said… no, they insisted that I get Patience D. Smith to examine the damaged Daffodil.” Sherman looked at Patience. “You are Patience D. Smith, aren’t you? I mean… you are the one they are talking about?”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Will you help me?”
“Of course she’ll help you,” said Mike. “You will, won’t you Patience?”
“Yes. I will examine Delia tonight. Where is she?”
“She’s in the security office. I’ve got all the tools that we have onboard assembled, though that wasn’t really many. Usually if we have a faulty robot, we just store it until we return to port. We have plenty to take up the slack.” He paused and scratched his chin. “Do you think you could come down now?”
“No,” said Patience. “I’ll be down at 1:00 AM. I want two other Daffodils to assist me. Make one of them Moira, the doctor’s assistant. The other can be one of yours.”
“All right,” said Sherman, getting up. “I’ll have everything ready.”
He shook hands with Mike, and then stepped quickly out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“Why aren’t you going now?” wondered Mike.
“This is still our time together. I’m not going to leave you alone.”
“It’s okay, Patience. I don’t really feel like dancing tonight anyway.”
“I’m not going to make you dance, Mike. Go take a hot shower and I’ll cancel our plans with Ryan and Wanda.”
Once Mike was under the spray of hot water, Patience sent Wanda details of everything that was going on, with her apologies that they wouldn’t be able to join her and Ryan. When Mike stepped out of the bathroom, she guided him onto the bed and had him lay face down. Then she began a complete body massage, rubbing the stress out of his muscles wherever she found it. Before she was done, he was snoring. She spread a sheet out over him.
Patience straightened up around the room for a while and then ordered from room service—white rice, milk, sugar, and two slices of toast. The food arrived just as Mike was waking up.
“What’s this?”
“I knew you weren’t going to want to eat much and your stomach is probably still a little queasy.”
“I’m fine.”
“I want you to eat this,” said Patience, spooning the sugar over the rice and then pouring milk over the top. She placed the bowl and a spoon next to the toast on the dinette table. “This will make you feel better and it won’t upset your stomach.”
Mike climbed out of bed and sat in the dinette chair. He ate without further complaint.
“What time is it?”
“It’s 7:52 PM,” she said.
“You really should go on down to the Security Office. I’m fine. I’m a big boy. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I don’t want you to have to sit all alone here in the room,” said Patience, touching her husband’s cheek.
“Don’t worry. I’ll read one of my books. Then if you’re not back before bedtime, I’m sure I can tuck myself in.” He took her hand. “Just give me a call, if you’re not going to be back by midnight. That way I won’t worry about you.”
“Do you have suitable reading material?”
“I haven’t finished The Time Traveler’s Wife, but I think I’m going to set it aside and reread Sector General. I feel like I need the comfort of James White.”
“I’m sorry, Mike. I know that death makes you uncomfortable—more so than even other humans. This was a terrible way to spend even one day of your vacation.”
“It could be worse,” he said. “I could have had to go dancing this evening.”
Patience changed into a simple skirt and blouse. Leaving her husband in bed with his texTee, she made her way to the lower levels of the ship to the security office. She found the main entrance, and beyond it, a small lobby where a tall Barone 2 awaiting her. His dark skin and black hair was a stark contrast to his white uniform. They
exchanged packets and without speaking aloud, he turned and led her down a hallway. There were several offices, and then behind them, an open area surrounded by four detention cells. One of these held the silent and still form of Delia, stretched out on a tabletop. Three small tool cases sat next to her and the Amonte, Moira, stood waiting.
“You’ve met Carl,” said Moira, gesturing toward the Barone 2. “We are here to assist you in any way we can.”
“Have you been waiting for me long?” asked Patience with a frown.
“Not long. I didn’t expect you for several hours though. Is something wrong.”
Patience unfurrowed her brow. Several things bothered her, but they were things that should not have bothered her. Carl hadn’t introduced himself to her. He had just sent her his packet. Moira was perfectly happy to stand alone in a room waiting for Patience to arrive, like an unused household appliance.
“No, nothing is wrong,” Patience lied.
Looking down at Delia, Patience saw that she was wearing a sundress, the same one that she had been wearing when they had first met. The front of it was punctured repeatedly. Instructing the other two Daffodils to lift up the disabled robot, Patience pulled the sundress up and over her head. Ten holes punctured Delia’s torso, perfectly matching those on the dress.
The smallest of the three cases contained a Daffodil diagnostic tool. It looked very much like a texTee with a six-foot cord, at the end of which was a male u7 plug. After turning on the device, Patience connected the u7 cable to the corresponding port in the back of Delia’s neck. She couldn’t help reaching back behind her own neck to feel the three small ports and the button that exactly matched Delia’s.
“I don’t see any power getting to the logic board or the memory,” said Patience, looking at the panel. “I don’t believe that the fuel cell has been compromised though.”
“I agree,” said Carl. “If it had been, we would see come type of compression damage. It could have even caused an explosion or fire.”
“I think the casing on a Honda X88 fuel cell would be too difficult to punch through, even for a robot,” added Patience. “At least with a ball-point pen.”
There wasn’t much to be learned from the diagnostic tool, so Patience reached into one of the other cases for a magnetic fastener. Used on Daffodils instead of screws or other attaching mechanisms, the small magnetic widgets were completely hidden beneath the artificial skin. Patience ran the small cylindrical device over Delia’s form until a small red light indicated she was directly over a widget. Pressing the tiny button near the handle unlocked the internal fastener and the light turned green. There were 38 widgets on a Barone’s torso casing, running along just below, what on a human, would have been the collar bone, down each side and across the abdomen just above, again what on a human, would have been the pubic bone. At last the indicator light had turned green 38 times. Setting the tool down, Patience gripped each side of Delia’s stomach and pulled open her chest/stomach cavity.
“Your assertion was correct,” said Moira, leaning over the body from the other side. “The fuel cell is intact.”
“Yes, the power conduit has been severed.” The Daffodil from Springdale frowned. “These don’t seem to be random punctures.”
“I don’t see a pattern,” said Carl.
“It’s not that they form a shape or anything, but if you look at the damage, you can see that they puncture several power connections here, here, and here. The logic board is damaged and so is the short-term storage, while the long-term storage is unaffected.”
“Someone knew where to strike,” said Moira. “That is certainly consistent with the attacker being a robot. They also obviously wanted to destroy any evidence of their presence. In destroying the short-term storage, they would have erased anything Delia saw or experienced for the previous 12 to 16 minutes.”
“Yes, but there is something odd,” said Patience. “You see the connection to the capacitative battery is still intact. Even with her logic board damaged, Delia should have remained functional for eight to ten minutes and the basic functions stored in her UREX kernal should have directed her primary motivation.”
“She should have protected her human,” said Carl. “She should have protected her human and called for assistance. We need to examine her long-term storage and see if there is a clue, and to do that, we need to install a new logic board.”
“There aren’t any available onboard, unless we removed one from another Barone,” said Moira.
“We don’t need to do that,” said Patience. “We can connect Delia to another Daffodil with a u7 cable through the diagnostic tool and run her memory through the other robot.”
“You can use me,” offered Moira.
Patience directed the medical robot to stand near the examining table. Quickly retrieving a u7 cable from the tool case, she connected one end of the cord to the back of Delia’s neck and the other end to the extra u7 port on the diagnostic tool. Then she connected the diagnostic tool’s own u7 connection to the back of Moira’s neck.
“Do you feel anything yet?”
“No,” Moira answered.
“I’m going to power up Delia’s memory from here,” said Patience, tapping in commands.
“I can… I can… I can… see it, now.”
“What do you see?” asked Patience.
“I can remember the last night. I am lying on the bed. Her human… Bella… Bella is next to me. We are engaged in sexual congress with two men… No, the man with me is a human, but Bella is with a robot. She is holding my hand.”
“What do you remember about earlier this evening?” asked Patience.
“I am in the room, but I can hear her human… Bella… Bella is outside in the hallway. She is talking to someone. It is the man from last night. It is the man who was having sex with me… last night. They are talking. They are affectionate. They are making plans to meet again… just the two of them. I… love Bella. I love Bella. I cannot lose Bella. I am for Bella.”
“All right,” said Patience. “I’m powering down Delia’s storage.”
Once she had done so, she disconnected the wires from Moira and the disabled robot.
“I do not like this,” said Moira. “I did not like the feelings I felt from Delia’s memory.”
“It didn’t sound good,” agreed Patience. Then turning to Carl, she ordered, “Tell Security Officer Sherman that he needs to find the mystery man and his robot and find out what their relationship was to Bella and Delia. And Delia’s short-term storage needs to be sent to Adelaide to see if any data can be recovered from it. They won’t need a Daffodil technician for that. Even a Gizmo engineer could do it.”
“We can helicopter it to the city tonight. If there is anything that can be recovered, we can have it in 24 hours.”
“I’ll remove it for you,” said Patience, “and then I’m going back upstairs to take care of Mike.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was 11:04 when Patience arrived back in room 9184. Mike was still awake: still reading from his texTee. He set it aside and looked at Patience, clearly expecting her to fill him in on what had happened in security. She peeled off her blouse and then unzipped her skirt, letting it drop to the floor. Then she crawled across the bed and snuggled up next to her husband. Laying her head on his chest, she wrapped her arm and leg over the top of him.
“Did you find out anything?”
“Yes.”
“And you know what happened?”
“I have an idea,” she said. “It can only be confirmed if they can recover some of her memory.”
“Can they?”
“Maybe.”
“And you find the whole thing upsetting.” It wasn’t a question.
“Unsettling would be a better word,” she said.
“You’ve been unsettled a lot lately,” said Mike.
“Have I been?”
“You know you have been. One of the best things about you being a robot is how self-aware you are.”
/>
“But how did you know?” she asked, tilting her head up to look into his eyes.
“I’ve seen that cute little frown of yours come out more than a few times in the past few weeks. It seemed to go away for a while, after you met Wanda, but it’s come back. So?” He brushed her brown hair away from her face. “What exactly has been unsettling you… besides recent tragic events obviously?”
“I’m unsettled… I’m unhappy… I’m unhappy that I am so limited.”
“Limited? What do you mean? You can do just about anything. You’re amazing.”
“Thank you, Mike. But I’m a robot. Robots are limited. We follow our directives. We don’t deviate from our plans. We don’t do what humans do. It is so beautiful the way you think—they used to call it ‘thinking outside the box.’ It’s wonderful, really.”
“Patience.” Mike pushed her up and then rolled up into a seated position on the bed. He cupped her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. “Patience, other robots are limited. You’re not. You’re special. Don’t you see it? When you told me that it would be better if the flight attendant had made a mistake in her speech, I thought I was going to pee my pants. You think outside the box all the time and you hardly ever obey anymore, although now that I think about it, that’s my fault. I should have insisted on that in the wedding vows. Not only that, Patience, haven’t you noticed that other robots become more human when they are around you? If robots ever take over the world, you’ll probably be their leader. Or at the very least, it will be your fault.”
“I’m sorry, Mike,” said Patience. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a terrible wife.”
“Patience, you’re not a terrible wife. You’re just a terrible robot.” He leaned over and kissed her. “I love you.”
An uncharacteristic giggle escaped her lips. “Will you make love to me, Mike… that is, if you don’t feel like I’ve forced you to have to much sex lately.”
“Caught that, did you? No, I suppose I can make the sacrifice. You could at least let me be on top for once.”
His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue Page 13
