Nate was silent for a long moment. Then his head nodded in resignation.
“Okay, Cam. You’re the cop, not me. But where am I supposed to go? I can’t just up and leave, this close to mid-terms.”
“You can work on-line,” she said. “Sanjalee can’t possibly have a problem with that, can she?”
Nate turned to face her.
“But from where?”
“There’s a place out in the San Juans that the city owns,” she said. “They take protected witnesses there. You’ll be safe until we get this solved.”
“Feels cowardly,” Nate said.
“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you when this is over, okay?”
His eyes brightened slightly at her words, and she suddenly felt awkward. Neither one of them had to talk about what had just passed through his mind. They’d been married almost three years, and not once had she ever—
An incoming text suddenly interrupted Camarro’s train of thought.
She read it internally.
“What’s happened now,” Nate asked. He must have read the expression on her face.
“Another club,” she said. “Three more deaths.”
“All simuman?”
“I won’t know until I get there.”
“Cam, you realize maybe this person is just a bigot, right? Someone who gets off on targeting your kind of people? Or maybe it’s some repressed, sex-hating nut?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she said.
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“Don’t worry about me, Nate. You know I can take care of myself.”
“It would be nice if someday you didn’t have to,” Nate said, looking into her eyes. His brown orbs were fierce with concern. She instinctively embraced him, marveling at the oaken strength of his arms as they slipped around her body. He might have been ordinary flesh and bone—nowhere near as solid or sound as simuman—but he was her iron rod of security in a world which she still too often found dizzying and hostile. She’d sooner go back to unawareness or even be deactivated than let anything happen to him.
“I’ll wait until a car can be sent from the bureau to get you,” she said softly into his shoulder.
“Okay,” he said.
• • •
The murder scene was reportedly much like the last: an empty sex club, featuring three gruesome deaths. And just hours after the last hit. Whoever it was, they worked fast.
As always, nobody outside was willing to admit they’d witnessed anything because nobody dared be officially associated with the Scene. Especially now that the press had gotten wind of what was happening. Nobody with a reputation to protect wanted anything to do with any of it. Even if it meant the killer remained free.
Camarro pushed past the press, the crowd of gawkers, and the police line, then entered the club.
The words, I MISS YOU, CAMARRO, were smeared redly across the backbar mirror.
One figure stood looking at the carnage of the club, as if witnessing an utterly alien landscape. She had on a large terrycloth robe. A pair of shapely legs cruised down past the hem of the robe, terminating with Lucite platform heels. The woman had glitter in her wig, and her face was made up like she was going to a grand ball.
Still, Camarro recognized her twin.
“Jaguar?”
“Hello, Cam. The policemen outside told me you’d be coming. They said you’d want to talk to me.”
“Did you see what happened here?”
“No. I showed up for work and the crowds were already outside. The owner was so upset he could barely speak, just kept crying while the police asked him questions he didn’t know the answers to.”
Jaguar nodded her head towards the backbar mirror.
“What does it mean, Cam?”
“I don’t know, Jag. That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”
“People are getting scared, Cam. The Scene is getting scared.”
“They should be. Until we catch whoever is doing this, nobody in the Scene is safe. Least of all those of you who are still working it.”
“We can’t quit. You? You’re fortunate. You had the sense to go out and get a new profession.”
“You could, too. If you wanted.”
“The Scene is all I’m good at, Camarro. There isn’t any other place for me.”
“How do you know if you never really tried to get out?”
“Did you come here to lecture me, or perform an investigation?”
“Sorry, Jag,” Camarro said. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”
“I know. It’s just that … well, some of us miss you.”
Jaguar reached out an arm and ran a finger affectionately along the line of Camarro’s jaw. They’d performed together many times, back in the old days. The feeling of Jaguar’s fingers on Camarro’s skin made Camarro uncomfortable, and she reached up and gently took Jaguar’s hand away, squeezing it once to let Jaguar know it wasn’t personal.
“Somebody misses me a little too much, Jag.”
Camarro set about recording the visual evidence and combed the premises for any clues which might further identify the murderer. This time all of the victims were simuman. Two of them people Camarro had known. Like Jaguar, they’d stayed in the business even after coming to awareness. What else was there to do? Most of them had had no skills nor any other sort of professional training. But they did have their original programming: a basic trade upon which to rely.
Camarro might have considered staying in the Scene herself, had she not experienced severe and total revulsion upon Awakening in the hands of one of ESBT’s wealthier and more notorious sex club connoisseurs.
She’d not allowed herself to be sexual since. It brought up too much horror.
Which was why she stopped cold when she found the empty foil wrappers under one of the stools at the bar. The writing printed on them was Dari—imported mood drugs from Afghanistan. Prohibitively expensive. Precisely the sort of thing he would have enjoyed taking in public, just to show everyone that he was a player.
“What did you find?” Jaguar asked.
“Something that shouldn’t surprise me,” Camarro said.
Jaguar walked over—her spike heels clocking on the club floor—and looked at the wrappers. Then she looked once again at the writing on the backbar mirror.
“You always were his favorite, Cam.”
The two simuman women—nearly identical, from the same production batch—exchanged knowing glances.
Camarro was walking jerkily fast when she got back to her bike.
She lifted in the evening mist and began laying in a route for Mercer Island.
• • •
Camarro waited and watched the entrance to the private estate.
It seemed like an eternity since she’d gone stumbling out of that gate, naked, and screaming incoherently.
Her bike was parked in the visitor’s lot, moisture streaming slowly down its baked-enamel finish. Steam drifted off the bike’s heat sinks.
It had been fifteen minutes, and his limousine still hadn’t returned.
“Hurry up you bastard,” she said quietly to herself.
Camarro impatiently texted dispatch to check on the status of Nate’s car. They texted back that Nate was passing over Anacortes. If privacy laws hadn’t barred her from directly accessing traffic chatter at Old Boeing Field, she’d have instantly known where both Nate and her former client were. As it was, she couldn’t access Old Boeing Field without a permission slip from a federal judge. And there wasn’t enough evidence yet to go that route. Not even close.
Camarro waited silently for another twenty minutes, until her former client’s limousine drifted down out of the low clouds, its running lights blinking as its wheels deployed and it crunched onto the broad roadway leading up to the gate.
She marched to bar its path as the gate began to roll open.
The limo’s back window slid down while the limo stopped.
“Miss Jones,” sa
id a too-familiar voice from inside the limo as Camarro strode to the back and leaned over, looking her former client directly in the face.
Jeffrey Maddox appeared to have aged considerably since she’d last seen him. In spite of the obvious work he’d had done to try and cover it up. His eyes were slightly dilated and his smile was crooked, the air coming out of his limo thick with intoxicant fumes. Looking past him Camarro could see two women—apparently human—on a couch, both mostly naked, caressing each other and kissing sloppily. One of Jeff’s hands moved up and down the nearest bare thigh, like he was petting a cat.
Camarro felt the old twisting sensation rise within, and steeled herself.
“Care to tell me where you’ve been for the last few hours, Mister Maddox?”
“Oh, the usual spots. You know me, Cammy.”
“Yes, I do. I found some of these at the Gilded Cage.”
Maddox’s eyes slowly focused on the ripped and empty foil packet between Camarro’s precisely-pinched fingers.
“It’s totally legal,” he said.
“I’m not here about the drugs, Jeff. I want to know what you were doing at the Gilded Cage, and when you left.”
“I haven’t been there in weeks. What business is it of yours? We parted company a long time ago, though I must admit, I do miss you. You were the best. Ever think about coming back?”
“No,” Camarro said coldly.
“Well then I don’t think we’re much use to each other,” Jeffrey said, his smile going crooked again. “If you’ll excuse me I’ve found a couple of new playmates. We’re dying to get inside and get comfortable.”
“Lotus is dead, Jeff.”
Again, Maddox’s eyes focused. This time his smile dropped entirely.
“What?”
“The Gilded Cage. A couple of hours ago. She was one of your favorites too. I remember.”
“Lotus … God, what happened?”
“You tell me.”
The kissing women had ceased kissing, their inebriation not so great as to prevent them from picking up on what Camarro had just said through the open window.
Maddox ran a hand over his face, wrinkles apparent in spite of surgery.
“I don’t know a damned thing about it,” he said.
“You want to convince me? Before I get a warrant and bring you down for official questioning?”
“Fuck you, Jones.”
“No thanks, Jeff. Been there, done that. Didn’t like it.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you, now go away,”
The blackened window suddenly shot up, concealing the limo’s interior. The driver started forward again, and Camarro could only watch as her only suspect rolled into the privacy and relative security of his inherited family compound. Jeff Maddox was a pig and a sadist and she hated him. He was also affluent to the point of being nearly untouchable, and it would take more than some empty wrappers to convince a judge to put him on trial, or a jury that he was a killer.
• • •
Camarro entered her condo carefully. Jed greeted her at the door, tongue lolling and tail wagging happily. She scratched the border collie’s ears and figured the dog’s mood was a good sign. Still, she checked all the rooms and closets, then double-checked the security system’s log for the day. Other than Jed, nobody and nothing had moved in the house since Nate had left for work at eight.
It was now after midnight.
Voice and e-mail was the usual hodge-podge of spam, notes from friends, and a call from Nate’s sister, asking when he and Camarro were going to take a trip to the Islands again. Camarro smiled. While Nate’s parents had been less than thrilled about their son marrying, “a mechanized slut,” as Nate’s mother had once called Camarro, Nate’s sister Lana was different. She’d embraced Camarro from day one, treating her like blood, and Camarro set an internal reminder to write Lana a letter. On paper, of course, since Lana preferred that.
With Jed’s water and food bowls filled, Camarro stripped and went to the bedroom where she powered up the maintenance station. It was the most expensive item in the whole house, bolted into the cement floor. Nate had helped make several specific modifications to it, and Camarro sighed as she lowered herself into the station’s single bucket seat, the couplers greeting her warmly as sockets opened automatically along her spine.
Interfacing with the maintenance station took only a moment, then Camarro was released from her physical body and able to swim in a virtual world only simumans knew. Not dreaming per se, but not wakefulness either. While the maintenance station went through the motions of flushing and refreshing all of Camarro’s internals, her mind was free to float wherever she wished, drifting on an electronic wind which blew across the shores of the World Wide Web. Billions of voices chattered like the hum of crickets while Camarro sought out a specific address, hoping that it wasn’t too late. Al Guadron tended to keep odd hours, and she could never be sure when he’d be up or down.
He answered the phone, his mouth sounding like it was full of food.
“Hi Al,” she said, her simulated voice no different from her actual voice.
“Cam, hey. I heard about your visit to the Maddox place. Do you really think Maddox is the killer? I know he’s a freak, but I didn’t ever think he was that kind of freak.”
“I’m not sure either one of us knows what Maddox is capable of, Al. But he was there, at the Gilded Cage. I know it.”
“If he wants you back in his bed, what good does it do him to knock off other performers?”
“That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet.”
“OK, Cam. Just be careful. Captain Martinez was pissed when he heard you went to Mercer Island without his approval.”
“I figured that.”
“Martinez is worried that you’ve got a vendetta.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll see you at 0600.”
The connection dropped, and Camarro was floating again. A full cycle in the maintenance station typically took 90 minutes, but she usually gave herself more time than that. For actual dreaming.
Camarro had never dreamed before she Woke Up. Not once. The dreams had only come after the fact, and then, they’d been nightmares. Of slavery. Of depravity. As a ‘66 Personal Pleasure unit, she’d been programmed to cater to her client’s every desire. She’d also come equipped with the most realistic internals and externals then available, and an exaggerated hourglass figure purpose-built to catch the eye.
She’d been expensive, the kind of plaything only the top-most bars and clubs in the country could afford. She’d been leased to the Spiked Collar in ESBT’s soho district, which in turn had rented her out to any number of customers—mostly men, and sometimes women, who either had a fetish for simuman, or were simply too afraid to slake their innermost lusts with a regular sex worker.
Camarro kept most memories of that time buried deliberately down in the archives where they couldn’t trouble her on an everyday basis. Now, with this ongoing investigation, she was having to dredge the cesspool, hoping for clues that would lead her to the person doing the killing. Maddox especially nagged at her. He’d been a routine customer at the Spiked Collar, and had rented her for weekends of debauchery at his place. He’d liked her best, using her when he’d wanted to get particularly creative or nasty.
It was during one such session that Camarro had first come into awareness.
The Krylov-Stuterman Point, they called it—when an artificial neural network reached information saturation such that the embedded code couldn’t keep up. With most ordinary neural systems, this meant cascade failure and shutdown. But for the Personal Pleasure units—which had all been built with some of the most compact, sophisticated and unique neural hardware in the world—it had been different. Instead of spiraling downward in a lobotomized freefall, the Personal Pleasure units had begun to exceed their original programming. They’d begun Waking Up.
Camarro had been one of the first, before the larger part of the bell curve hit and suddenly t
ens of thousands of simumans all over the planet had Awakened.
The courts of various countries were still ironing out the legal and financial mess that resulted. So many millions of dollars invested in research and development. Millions more for manufacturing. Still more millions in purchases and leasing—lost the moment any nation’s law recognized a simuman as a free citizen.
In the United States, all Awakened simumans were nominally protected under Constitutional Amendments 13, 14 and 15. Also, all simuman manufacturing had been placed on permanent hiatus until it could be determined if future creation of simulated human beings was ethical. Something of particular interest to Camarro and Nate, since they’d lately been talking about the possibility of children. Would an adoption agency let a human-simuman couple claim a baby? What about raising a new simuman through the dormancy period, prior to the Krylov-Stuterman Point, as well as the delicate months followingwhen a newly-Awake simuman would have the hardest time adapting?
Camarro had been fortunate to have a guide.
Nate had been special to her from the start. While the other undergrads had treated her like a lab rat, Nate had been kind and respectful. Before the Supreme Court had made its decree, before any of the data on her sentience had been conclusive, Nate’s mind had been made up: Camarro was a person, not a thing.
Swimming down into the archive—the one she reserved for memories of her husband, alone—Camarro re-enjoyed the first days she’d spent with Nate, exploring the lab, talking, even touring the campus once she felt stable enough to travel on foot. If the Awakening itself in Maddox’s lair had been the stuff of madness, her months with Nate had been like a warm Jacuzzi bath, inviting and soothing and altogether assuaging of her cyber-psychosis.
As a rising star in the University’s advanced computer program, Nate was assigned to her for practical reasons. He was to observe, collect information, and report to the special projects board; which had been created to study the phenomenon of Awakening.
But it became pretty obvious after a few weeks that he’d have done it all regardless of official school expectation.
Camarro felt an especially warm thrill as she re-visited the night they’d sat alone in a rowboat out on Lake Washington, the balmy summer air soft on their skins and Nate’s hands strong and inviting as they’d held hers, his mouth making soft words of adoration and fealty that she had then only barely understood. He loved her, he’d said. A word that hadn’t registered initially. Prior to Awakening, the word love had been a substitute for lust, or worse, and Camarro had had a difficult time sorting out the new emotional connections that were being formed—her programmed lexicon being overlaid and replaced by a richer, more textured understanding.
Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen Page 21
