Asimov's SF, January 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Her mother was her mother. She'd built everything about Ferron, from the DNA up. The programming to honor and obey ran deep. Duty. Felicity. Whatever you wanted to call it.

  In frustration, unable to find the words for what she needed to explain properly, she said, “I need to get one of those black market DNA patches and reprogram my overengineered genes away from filial devotion.”

  He laughed, as she had meant. “You can do that legally in Russia.”

  “Gee,” she said. “You're a help. Hey, what if we—” Before she could finish her suggestion that they slip the lock, the lights glimmered on again and the door, finally registering her override, clicked.

  “There,” Indrapramit said. “Could have been worse.”

  “Miaow,” said the cat.

  “Don't worry, Chairman,” Ferron answered. “I wasn't going to forget you."

  * * * *

  The street hummed: autorickshaws, glidecycles, bikes, pedestrials, and swarms of foot traffic. The babble of languages: Kannada, Hindi, English, Chinese, Japanese. Coffin's aptblock was in one of the older parts of the New City. It was an American ghetto: most of the residents had come here for work, and spoke English as a primary—sometimes an only—language. In the absence of family to stay with, they had banded together. Coffin's address had once been trendy and now, fifty years after its conversion, had fallen on—not hard times, exactly, but a period of more moderate means. The street still remembered better days. It was bulwarked on both sides by the shaggy green cubes of aptblocks, black suntrees growing through their centers, but what lined each avenue were the feathery cassia trees, their branches dripping pink, golden, and terra-cotta blossoms.

  Cassia, Ferron thought. A Greek word of uncertain antecedents, possibly related to the English word Cassia, meaning Chinese or mainland cinnamon. But these trees were not spices; indeed, the black pods of the golden cassia were a potent medicine in Ayurvedic traditions, and those of the rose cassia had been used since ancient times as a purgative for horses.

  Ferron wiped sweat from her forehead again, and—speaking of horses—reined in the overly helpful commentary of her classical education.

  The wall- and roofgardens of the aptblocks demonstrated a great deal about who lived there. The Coffin kinblock was well-tended, green and lush, dripping with brinjal and tomatoes. A couple of youngers—probably still in schooling, even if they weren't Employment track—clambered up and down ladders weeding and feeding and harvesting, and cleaning the windows shaded here and there by the long green trail of sweet potato vines. But the next kinship block down was sere enough to draw a fine, the suntrees in its court sagging and miserable-looking. Ferron could make out the narrow tubes of drip irrigators behind crisping foliage on the near wall.

  Ferron must have snorted, because Indrapramit said, “What are they doing with their greywater, then?”

  “Maybe it's abandoned?” Unlikely. Housing in the New City wasn't exactly so plentiful that an empty block would remain empty for long.

  “Maybe they can't afford the plumber.”

  That made Ferron snort again, and start walking. But she snapped an image of the dying aptblock nonetheless, and emailed it to Environmental Services. They'd handle the ticket, if they decided the case warranted one.

  The Sri Lakshmi Venkateshwara—SLV—was about a hundred meters on, an open-air food stand shaded by a grove of engineered neem trees, their panel leaves angling to follow the sun. Hunger hadn't managed to penetrate Ferron's re-upped hypomania yet, but it would be a good idea to eat anyway: the brain might not be in any shape to notice that the body needed maintenance, but failing to provide that maintenance just added extra interest to the bill when it eventually came due.

  Ferron ordered an enormous, potato-and-pea stuffed crepe against Indrapramit's packet of samosas, plus green coconut water. Disdaining the SLV's stand-up tables, they ventured a little farther along the avenue until they found a bench to eat on. News and ads flickered across the screen on its back. Ferron set the cat carrier on the seat between them.

  Indrapramit dropped a somebody-else's-problem skin around them for privacy and unwrapped his first samosa. Flocks of green and yellow parrots wheeled in the trees nearby; the boldest dozen fluttered down to hop and scuffle where the crumbs might fall. You couldn't skin yourself out of the perceptions of the unwired world.

  Indrapramit raised his voice to be heard over their arguments. “You shouldn't have re-upped.”

  The dosa was good—as crisp as she wanted, served with a smear of red curry. Ferron ate most of it, meanwhile grab-and-pasting names off Coffin's known associates lists onto an interfaced interview plan, before answering.

  “Most homicides are closed—if they get closed—in the first forty-eight hours. It's worth a little hypomania binge to find Coffin's killer.”

  “There's more than one murder every two days in this city, boss.”

  “Sure.” She had a temper, but this wasn't the time to exercise it. She knew, given her family history, Indrapramit worried secretly that she'd succumb to addiction and abuse of the rightminding chemicals. The remaining bites of the dosa got sent to meet their brethren, peas popping between her teeth. The wrapper went into the recycler beside the bench. “But we don't catch every case that flies through.”

  Indrapramit tossed wadded-up paper at Ferron's head. Ferron batted it into that recycler too. “No, yaar. Just all of them this week.”

  The targeted ads bleeding off the bench-back behind Ferron were scientifically designed to attract her attention, which only made them more annoying. Some too-attractive citizen squalled about rightminding programs for geriatrics ("Bring your parents into the modern age!"), and the news—in direct, loud counterpoint—was talking about the latest orbital telescope discoveries: apparently a star some twenty thousand light years away, in the Andromeda galaxy, had suddenly begun exhibiting a flickering pattern that some astronomers considered a possible precursor to a nova event.

  The part of her brain that automatically built such parallels said: Andromeda. Contained within the span of Uttara Bhadrapada. The twenty-sixth nakshatra in Hindu astronomy, although she was not a sign of the Zodiac to the Greeks. Pegasus was also in Uttara Bhadrapada. Ferron devoted a few more cycles to wondering if there was any relationship other than coincidental between the legendary serpent Ahir Budhnya, the deity of Uttara Bhadrapada, and the sea monster Cetus, set to eat—devour, the Greeks were so melodramatic—the chained Andromeda.

  The whole thing fell under the influence of the god Aryaman, whose path was the Milky Way—the Heavenly Ganges.

  You're overqualified, madam. Oh, she could have been the professor, the academic her mother had dreamed of making her, in all those long hours spent in virtual reproductions of myths the world around. She could have been. But if she'd really wanted to make her mother happy, she would have pursued Egyptology, too.

  But she wasn't, and it was time she got her mind back on the job she did have.

  Ferron flicked on the feeds she'd shut off to attend the crime scene. She didn't like to skin on the job: a homicide cop's work depended heavily on unfiltered perceptions, and if you trimmed everything and everyone irritating or disagreeable out of reality, the odds were pretty good that you'd miss the truth behind a crime. But sometimes you had to make an exception.

  She linked up, turned up her spam filters and ad blockers, and sorted more Known Associates files. Speaking of her mother, that required ignoring all those lion-headed message-waiting icons blinking in a corner of her feed—and the pileup of news and personal messages in her assimilator.

  Lions. Bengaluru's state capitol was topped with a statue of a four-headed lion, guarding each of the cardinal directions. The ancient symbol of India was part of why Ferron's mother chose that symbolism. But only part.

  She set the messages to hide, squirming with guilt as she did, and concentrated on the work-related mail.

  When she looked up, Indrapramit appeared to have finished both his sorting and hi
s samosas. “All right, what have you got?”

  “Just this.” She dumped the interview files to his headspace.

  The Senior Constable blinked upon receipt. “Ugh. That's even more than I thought.”

  * * * *

  First on Ferron's interview list were the dead man's coworkers, based on the simple logic that if anybody knew how to turn somebody inside out, it was likely to be another physicist. Indrapramit went back to the aptblock to continue interviewing more-or-less hysterical neighbors in a quest for the name of any potential lover or assignation from the night before.

  It was the task least likely to be any fun. But then, Ferron was the senior officer. Rank hath its privileges. Someday, Indrapramit would be making junior colleagues follow up horrible gutwork.

  The bus, it turned out, ran right from the corner where Coffin's kinblock's street intercepted the main road. Proximity made her choose it over the mag-lev Metro, but she soon regretted her decision, because it then wound in a drunken pattern through what seemed like the majority of Bengaluru.

  She was lucky enough to find a seat—it wasn't a crowded hour. She registered her position with Dispatch and settled down to wait and talk to the hyacinth cat, since it was more than sunny enough that no-one needed to pedal. She waited it out for the transfer point anyway: that bus ran straight to the U District, where BioShell had its offices.

  Predictable. Handy for head-hunting, and an easy walk for any BioShell employee who might also teach classes. As it seemed, by the number of Professor So-and-sos on Ferron's list, that many of them did.

  Her tech, a short wide-bellied man who went by the handle Ravindra, caught up with her while she was still leaned against the second bus's warm, tinted window. He hopped up the steps two at a time, belying his bulk, and shooed a citizen out of the seat beside Ferron with his investigator's card.

  Unlike peace officers, who had long since been spun out as distributed employees, techs performed their functions amid the equipment and resources of a centralized lab. But today, Ravindra had come equipped for fieldwork. He stood, steadying himself on the grab bar, and spread his kit out on the now-unoccupied aisle seat while Ferron coaxed the cat from her carrier under the seat.

  “Good puss,” Ravindra said, riffling soft fur until he found the contact point behind the animal's ears. His probe made a soft, satisfied beep as he connected it. The cat relaxed bonelessly, purring. “You want a complete download?”

  “Whatever you can get,” Ferron said. “It looks like she's been wiped. She won't talk, anyway.”

  “Could be trauma, boss,” Ravindra said dubiously. “Oh, DNA results are back. That's your inside-out vic, all right. The autopsy was just getting started when I left, and Doc said to tell you that to a first approximation, it looked like all the bits were there, albeit not necessarily in the proper sequence.”

  “Well, that's a relief.” The bus lurched. “At least it's the correct dead guy.”

  “Miaow,” said the cat.

  “What is your name, puss?” Ravindra asked.

  “Chairman Miaow,” the cat said, in a sweet doll's voice.

  “Oh, no,” Ferron said. “That's just what I've been calling her.”

  “Huh.” Ravindra frowned at the readouts that must be scrolling across his feed. “Did you feed her, boss?”

  “Yeah,” Ferron said. “To get her out from under the couch.”

  He nodded, and started rolling up his kit. As he disconnected the probe, he said, “I downloaded everything there was. It's not much. And I'll take a tissue sample for further investigation, but I don't think this cat was wiped.”

  “But there's nothing—”

  “I know,” he said. “Not wiped. This one's factory-new. And it's bonded to you. Congratulations, Sub-Inspector. I think you have a cat.”

  “I can't—” she said, and paused. “I already have a fox. My mother's fox, rather. I'm taking care of it for her.”

  "Mine," the cat said distinctly, rubbing her blue-and-yellow muzzle along Ferron's uniform sleeve, leaving behind a scraping of azure lint.

  “I imagine they can learn to cohabitate.” He shouldered his kit. “Anyway, it's unlikely Chairman Miaow here will be any use as a witness, but I'll pick over the data anyway and get back to you. It's not even a gig.”

  “Damn,” she said. “I was hoping she'd seen the killer. So even if she's brand-new . . . why hadn't she bonded to Coffin?”

  “He hadn't fed her,” Ravindra said. “And he hadn't given her a name. She's a sweetie, though.” He scratched behind her ears. A funny expression crossed his face. “You know, I've been wondering for ages—how did you wind up choosing to be called Ferron?”

  “My mother used to say I was stubborn as iron.” Ferron managed to keep what she knew would be a pathetically adolescent shrug off her shoulders. “She was fascinated by Egypt, but I studied Classics-Latin, Greek, Sanskrit. Some Chinese stuff. And I liked the name. Ferrum, iron. She won't use it. She still uses my cradlename.” Even when I'm paying her bills.

  The lion-face still blinked there, muted but unanswered. In a fit of irritation, Ferron banished it. It wasn't like she would forget to call.

  Once she had time, she promised the ghost of her mother.

  Ravindra, she realized, was staring at her quizzically. “How did a classicist wind up a murder cop?”

  Ferron snorted. “You ever try to find Employment as a classicist?”

  * * * *

  Ravindra got off at the next stop. Ferron watched him walk away, whistling for an autorickshaw to take him back to the lab. She scratched Chairman Miaow under the chin and sighed.

  In another few minutes, she reached the university district and disembarked, still burdened with cat and carrier. It was a pleasant walk from the stop, despite the heat of the end of the dry season. It was late June, and Ferron wondered what it had been like before the Shift, when the monsoons would have started already, breaking the back of the high temperature.

  The walk from the bus took under fifteen minutes, the cat a dozy puddle. A patch of sweat spread against Ferron's summerweight trousers where the carrier bumped softly against her hip. She knew she retraced Coffin's route on those rare days when he might choose to report to the office.

  Nearing the Indian Institute of Science, Ferron became aware that clothing styles were shifting—self-consciously Green Earther living fabric and ironic, ill-fitting student antiques predominated. Between the buildings and the statuary of culture heroes—R.K. Narayan, Ratan Tata, stark-white with serene or stern expressions—the streets still swarmed, and would until long after nightfall. A prof-caste wearing a live-cloth salwar kameez strutted past; Ferron was all too aware that the outfit would cost a week's salary for even a fairly high-ranking cop.

  The majority of these people were Employed. They wore salwar kameez or suits and they had that purpose in their step—unlike most citizens, who weren't in too much of a hurry to get anywhere, especially in the heat of day. It was easier to move in the University quarter, because traffic flowed with intent. Ferron, accustomed to stepping around window-browsing Supplemented and people out for their mandated exercise, felt stress dropping away as the greenery, trees, and gracious old nineteenth and twentieth century buildings of the campus rose up on every side.

  As she walked under the chin of Mohandas Gandhi, Ferron felt the familiar irritation that female police pioneer Kiran Bedi, one of her own personal idols, was not represented among the statuary. There was hijra activist Shabnam Mausi behind a row of well-tended planters, though, which was somewhat satisfying.

  Some people found it unsettling to be surrounded by so much brick, poured concrete, and mined stone—the legacy of cooler, more energy-rich times. Ferron knew that the bulk of the university's buildings were more efficient green structures, but those tended to blend into their surroundings. The overwhelming impression was still that of a return to a simpler time: 1870, perhaps, or 1955. Ferron wouldn't have wanted to see the whole city gone this way, but it was good tha
t some of the history had been preserved.

  Having bisected campus, Ferron emerged along a prestigious street of much more modern buildings. No vehicles larger than bicycles were allowed here, and the roadbed swarmed with those, people on foot, and pedestrials. Ferron passed a rack of share-bikes and a newly constructed green building, still uninhabited, the leaves of its suntrees narrow, immature, and furled. They'd soon be spread wide, and the structure fully tenanted.

  The BioShell office itself was a showpiece on the ground floor of a business block, with a live receptionist visible behind foggy photosynthetic glass walls. I'd hate a job where you can't pick your nose in case the pedestrians see it. Of course, Ferron hadn't chosen to be as decorative as the receptionist. A certain stern plainness helped get her job done.

  “Hello,” Ferron said, as the receptionist smoothed brown hair over a shoulder. “I'm Police Sub-Inspector Ferron. I'm here to see Dr. Rao.”

  “A moment, madam,” the receptionist said, gesturing graciously to a chair.

  Ferron set heels together in parade rest and—impassive—waited. It was only a few moments before a shimmer of green flickered across the receptionist's iris.

  “First door on the right, madam, and then up the stairs. Do you require a guide?”

  “Thank you,” Ferron said, glad she hadn't asked about the cat. “I think I can find it.”

  There was an elevator for the disabled, but the stairs were not much further on. Ferron lugged Chairman Miaow through the fire door at the top and paused a moment to catch her breath. A steady hum came from the nearest room, to which the door stood ajar.

  Ferron picked her way across a lush biorug sprinkled with violet and yellow flowers and tapped lightly. A voice rose over the hum. “Namaskar!”

  Dr. Rao was a slender, tall man whose eyes were framed in heavy creases. He walked forward at a moderate speed on a treadmill, an old-fashioned keyboard and monitor mounted on a swivel arm before him. As Ferron entered, he pushed the arm aside, but kept walking. An amber light flickered green as the monitor went dark: he was charging batteries now.